Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 652 posts

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

#491

Post by someguydave »

JackC wrote: post #218
mercurialshark wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without addressing the specifics of the TRO (which is simply an early stage request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation): Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state. Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of 1st and 14th amendments applicable within confines of “town” o…

Regarding Marsh v Alabama: "Recently the case has been highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online communication media like Facebook as a public space to prevent it from censoring speech. However, in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck [2019] the Supreme Court found that private companies only count as state actors for first amendment purposes if they exercise 'powers traditionally exclusive to the s…

>or Amazon in particular, are somehow state actors

They operate under the extremely valuable liability protection granted them in section 230 of the CDA.

If I were to take government funds to build my warehouse, there's a pretty decent case that it is at least a public forum, if not a park.

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

#492

Post by triceratops »

someguydave wrote: post #485
triceratops wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I have no idea if this is a good idea or not. If it makes some plaintiffs feel better that they're being heard, great. But I don't believe it would substantially alter the status quo. Anyway, you do you my friend.

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

#493

Post by tptacek »

mercurialshark wrote: post #480
Someone1234 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning potentially monopolistic behavior. IF data storage and/or social media can be viewed as critical digital infrastructure, an argument can and will likely be made that the services are tantamount to a digital company owned town. We'll see! Either way it's very interesting and highly relevant to the indust…

There are separate issues. i) Antitrust - AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust issue, acting in conjunction with a cartel. A party does not need to have majority market share to function in coordination with other dominate players in order to form a cartel that can manipulate the market. There's case law concerning market manipulation, access to industry and consumer protection issues where parties didn't nee…

The judge in this case wrote at some length about the bar Parler's argument needs to clear to make an antitrust claim, and Parler hasn't come close. To make a claim under antitrust, according to the judge who will decide this case, Parler must show (1) the existence of an agreement between Twitter and Amazon somehow regarding Parler, and (2) that the agreement was in unreasonable restraint of trade.

In reality they will be able to do neither thing, because we are all aware that Twitter is not in fact worried about Parler, and that Amazon could give 3/5ths of a flying fuck whether Twitter is worried about Parler regardless. It's a fantasy which has taken on a cloak of plausibility because we have other antitrust concerns about Amazon. But that cloak will not do Parler any good in this trial, nor will our other entirely reasonable concerns about tech consolidation.

Similarly, the judge didn't so much poke holes in Parler's contract claims so much as singlehandedly demolish them, pointing out that Parler's claim about their rights under Amazon's contract were directly contradicted by the very next paragraph after the last one they cited in their complaint.

It would be helpful if you could acknowledge the ruling we're commenting on rather than continuing to argue as if this was entirely abstract. We have some (imperfect) authority to rely on now, in the form of today's ruling.

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

#494

Post by someguydave »

jcranmer wrote: post #489
someguydave wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Plenty of people have posted similar or worse things on Twitter without moderation by Twitter or much shame to Twitter's upstream service providers.

Also, can you draw a direct causal line between AWS hosted Parler posts and actual violence that took place on Jan 6th?

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

#495

Post by tptacek »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #484
newacct583 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 electi…

Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it.

Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis.

The two services simply aren't comparable.

You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You just can't do it on Amazon's infrastructure. Plenty of companies that aren't organizing mass shootings or insurrections manage just fine without AWS, for a variety of reasons --- some of which even include cost savings.

The constant comparisons between Facebook and Parler are talking points, and insulting to our intelligence. We know better than to buy into this stuff.

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

#496

Post by mercurialshark »

tptacek wrote: post #493
mercurialshark wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are separate issues. i) Antitrust - AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust issue, acting in conjunction with a cartel. A party does not need to have majority market share to function in coordination with other dominate players in order to form a cartel that can manipulate the market. There's case law concerning market manipulation, access to industry and consumer protection issues where parties didn't nee…

The judge in this case wrote at some length about the bar Parler's argument needs to clear to make an antitrust claim, and Parler hasn't come close. To make a claim under antitrust, according to the judge who will decide this case, Parler must show (1) the existence of an agreement between Twitter and Amazon somehow regarding Parler, and (2) that the agreement was in unreasonable restraint of trade. In reality they w…

There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of the case. A TRO is simply a request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation.

Additional briefs following the TRO, replies, nor responses have been filed.

There has been no discovery, no fact finding, no expert witnesses, no oral argument, no jury trial and no opinion. The case has not been adjudicated by the District Court. It has not reached a stage where it can be appealed to the Circuit Court and it certainly has not reached post appellate petition for cert to the Supreme Court.

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

#497

Post by tptacek »

someguydave wrote: post #491
JackC wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Marsh v Alabama: "Recently the case has been highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online communication media like Facebook as a public space to prevent it from censoring speech. However, in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck [2019] the Supreme Court found that private companies only count as state actors for first amendment purposes if they exercise 'powers traditionally exclusive to the s…

>or Amazon in particular, are somehow state actors They operate under the extremely valuable liability protection granted them in section 230 of the CDA. If I were to take government funds to build my warehouse, there's a pretty decent case that it is at least a public forum, if not a park.

No, that would not be a decent case that your warehouse is a public forum. That's a risible argument. Hundreds of warehouses around the country are built on government funds, none of which are public property. Try telling General Dynamics they're a theme park operator and see how far that gets you.

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

#498

Post by tptacek »

mercurialshark wrote: post #496
tptacek wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judge in this case wrote at some length about the bar Parler's argument needs to clear to make an antitrust claim, and Parler hasn't come close. To make a claim under antitrust, according to the judge who will decide this case, Parler must show (1) the existence of an agreement between Twitter and Amazon somehow regarding Parler, and (2) that the agreement was in unreasonable restraint of trade. In reality they w…

There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of the case. A TRO is simply a request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation. Additional briefs following the TRO, replies, nor responses have been filed. There has been no discovery, no fact finding, no expert witnesses, no oral argument, no jury trial and no opinion. The case has not been adjudicated by the…

That's all true, but it's also all stuff you could say without having read the ruling, or acknowledging anything the judge said about Parler's complaint.

It's a short document! It's well written! I recommend it.

Further: some of what you said upthread is contradicted by facts now acknowledged by the court. There may be some barely-colorable argument about antitrust or contracts of adhesion or something, but there is not in fact a colorable argument that Amazon was required to give notice to Parler before terminating them for violation of their AUP; that's in the plain language of the contract, which is on the record in the case, but is also the easily-downloaded AUP a Google search will provide you. Your arguments would be more credible if they acknowledged those facts, rather than implying that they were somehow still up in the air.

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

#499

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

snoshy wrote: post #442
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their proposed current hardware costs are a tiny capital outlay. Future current hardware costs are a tiny capital outlay. They will pay far more for bandwidth than they ever will for hardware.

I don't necessarily disagree with the hardware capex vs bandwidth tradeoff, but I don't think either of us are aware of their balance sheet to reasonably claim if this is an insurmountable cost for the business today or not. Paying for several thousand servers, getting them up and running, and tuning them isn't exactly a trivial effort... and then you have to deal with bandwidth.

From the tweet, looks like 540 servers max at this point. And sure, not trivial but you shouldn't be planning to run a large chat system without the technical staff to pull something like that off, whether on AWS or not.

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

#500

Post by someguydave »

tptacek wrote: post #497
someguydave wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or Amazon in particular, are somehow state actors They operate under the extremely valuable liability protection granted them in section 230 of the CDA. If I were to take government funds to build my warehouse, there's a pretty decent case that it is at least a public forum, if not a park.

No, that would not be a decent case that your warehouse is a public forum. That's a risible argument. Hundreds of warehouses around the country are built on government funds, none of which are public property. Try telling General Dynamics they're a theme park operator and see how far that gets you.

https://www.csbj.com/premier/businessnews/lawsuit-arises-fro...

>“In sum, the financial participation of the City in the Mall’s progress, the arrangements with the City police substation, and the active presence of other governmental agencies in the common areas of the Mall, constitute governmental involvement in the operation of the Mall,” the court noted. Thus, it concluded the mall’s “open and public areas ... effectively function as a public place,” and that mall owners couldn’t restrict distribution of political pamphlets or signature gathering in the mall’s common areas without violating the state Constitution.

Also, General Dynamics absolutely operates under many contractual obligations in which the federal government directly dictates how they shall run their business.

Post reply on HN