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Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

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Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#481

Post by triceratops »

jki275 wrote: post #477
triceratops wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you push too far there won't be a union any more, because a portion of those states will walk away from a union As the lopsidedness of representation grows ever more pronounced, it increases the probability that federal law and policy will diverge significantly from the views of the majority of the nation. This will likely increase disenchantment with the federal government even further, which is just as great a…

They already have. If the people don't want things to be that way, they can pass amendments to change it.

They can't though. The states that would lose representation have the most incentive to block amendments. Amendments aren't done by referenda.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#482

Post by jcranmer »

alexeldeib wrote: post #443
jcranmer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an attorney, but I've read all the briefs in the case (you can too at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/parler-llc-v-a... ). Count 1 (antitrust) fails because you need to actually allege a conspiracy, not just say "Twitter is also a customer of AWS!" I mean, I immediately realized it was deficient on their initial brief, because they didn't even back up enough evidence to satisfy their own citations ,…

> Ignoring the very next paragraph that says AWS can terminate with no notice. Their own response to that point in the reply brief was pitiful. This is the part I don't understand. Did they really think no one would notice it?

My working theory is that they didn't notice it until AWS pointed it out in the reply brief.

Their previous attorney apparently dropped them as a client sometime around the 8th, and I suspect this lawsuit was put together in extreme rush on the 10th to keep Parler running. It absolutely wouldn't surprise me if neither Parler nor the attorney actually reviewed the agreement in enough detail to notice that AWS had the right to terminate immediately. Admittedly, this theory doesn't explain how the antitrust count gets added.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#483

Post by triceratops »

colinmhayes wrote: post #475
fjabre wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a representative democracy for a reason. It was designed that way. You can't change the rules of the game because you're losing. The United States was designed as a representative democracy on purpose by the forefathers. That is fact.

It was designed to be unfair. The small states threw a fit at the constitutional convention so now we're stuck with this bs. Why does representative democracy mean some people are more represented than others? Why can't everyone be equally represented in a representative democracy?

Right? "We are a representative democracy" is some Orwellian doublespeak. It leaves out "But some people are more represented than others."

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#484

Post by AnthonyMouse »

newacct583 wrote: post #375
kortilla wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For technology abuse (e.g. spamming, botnets, etc), legal reasons (cp, pii dumps, etc), or for not liking the content being hosted? What happened to Parler is not routine when you exclude all of the cases of blatant abuse of the service.

> or for not liking the content being hosted? Parler was widely distributing violent content from major leaders (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution) in a movement that reality showed was a real and not theoretical threat (c.f. the mob chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" in the rotunda). I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Par…

> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship.

Because the same content exists on Facebook and Twitter (for the same reason: moderation is hard) but nobody is trying to disconnect them.

> If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it?

They didn't. Twitter locked out the New York Post for reporting on the Hunter Biden story before the election.

What this appears to be about now is that the backlash from that sort of behavior was enough to cause a right-leaning social media site to become popular, and it continuing to grow in popularity would prevent them from doing similar things going forward.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#485

Post by someguydave »

triceratops wrote: post #478
someguydave wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it should make the platform similar to a public square. Taking a government grant of liability protection should come with obligations to the public.

> Taking a government grant of liability protection should come with obligations to the public. Why? That's a serious question. The reason liability protections exist for information services is because information services can't exist without them. It's not possible for an information service provider to be strictly liable for what their users post while having anything like a reasonable quality of service or cost.…

"Requiring strict liability..." which is why I did not write that.

I would propose that moderation decisions be logged and reviewable on demand (at the plantiff's cost) in front of a reputable arbitrator of the platform's choice.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#486

Post by ben509 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #449
ben509 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is that Parler sincerely wanted to start a free speech platform, and this is another data point that the idea, while well intentioned, doesn't work. It's a just-world fallacy: because free speech is a good and just thing, a business model predicated on free speech will be successful. The first trouble is that you are opening the doors to all sorts of extremists. Whether they're far left, far right or…

Did they actually want a free speech platform? I thought they were known for booting lefties off the platform.

All the partisan boards I've seen, left and right, all plainly labeled themselves as such. If you're going to be a place for like-minded people, that's a selling point.

It doesn't make a lot of business sense to say, "we invite everyone in" and then plan on kicking out a lot of users.

There are loads of simpler reasons why lefties thought they were getting booted, especially incompetence on Parler's part.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#487

Post by triceratops »

0x445442 wrote: post #452
triceratops wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is not a direct democracy, it is a representative republic. I'm aware of that. And that structure favors one side more than another. This is not a controversial statement - the numbers (y'know, facts and logic) back that up. States are lines on a map. In the current setup they have more influence than the actual people living in those states. Do you seriously not see how that can lead to disproportionate rep…

So in a one world government China and India should decide what's best for the rest of the world... Got it.

That's a good argument against having a one-world government. Do you want a one-world government? I don't.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#488

Post by tptacek »

ashtonkem wrote: post #463
tptacek wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That API --- their most obvious, public API --- appears to have done no authz, despite using sequential identifiers. There are private feeds on Parler. That's clownish. I don't understand why anyone would trust them going forwards.

I don’t understand either, but lots of people appear to be doing lots of things I don’t understand. So I’m going to assume that people will continue us to trust them going forward, even if I think they shouldn’t.

I don't know what the pill color for this is, but, like, welcome to the desert of the real and all that.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#489

Post by jcranmer »

someguydave wrote: post #437
dragonwriter wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The judge went so far as to explain why Parler’s motion fails on all of the points, Well, actually, they said that it could pass on irreperable harm, but that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that much (but not all) of the harm could be addressed by money damages. It did fail the the other 3 elements, and the balancing test in the alternate Ninth Circuit criteria.

In the balancing test the judge asserted that granting the TRO would do damage to AWS, which is laughable. The bias here is clear.

The harm to AWS is in "interfer[ing] with AWS’s ability to prevent its services from being used to promote—and, as the events of January 6, 2021 have demonstrated, even cause—violence."

I wouldn't call that a laughable claim...

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#490

Post by tptacek »

vkou wrote: post #364
duskwuff wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Parler actively avoided making technical decisions which would tie them to AWS. Their problems coming back online have primarily been because most major hosting providers have refused to take their business (and possibly also as a result of their ridiculous hardware requirements, cf. https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r/status/1350612426115452935 ).

Peruse https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/parlers-new-serverless-ar... Unless you are building your webservice like it's 1998 (And webservices in 1998 sucked ), you can't really disentangle from hosted solutions.

Sure you can, and lots of people do.
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