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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

#501

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #495
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Which appears to be less effective -- paid moderators aren't members of individual communities -- with the result that most of the planning of the riot happened on Facebook.

> Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis.

So does Reddit, doesn't it? Moderator of a sub is the creator, a user? And it seems to be less bad than Twitter and Facebook.

The reason people compare to Facebook and Twitter instead of Reddit is because they're worse.

> 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.

What happens if you can't do it on anybody's infrastructure who has the capacity to host a site that size?

But you're changing the subject.

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

#502

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fjabre wrote: post #413
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still missing the point. The lowest number of electors a state can have is three. Mathematically, this biases the EC in favor of low population states. The same approach (all states having two senators) biases the Senate in favor of low population states. This appears to have been intentional on the part of the founders, but that doesn't make it right. [ EDIT: s/two/three/ ]

Yes it was designed for this purpose. That's what I'm saying. So big states couldn't bully around small ones.

In just a few years, 30% of the US population will be responsible for electing 70% of the Senate.

How is that not "bullying"?

How does that play any role in an actual democratic nation, as opposed to some pre-Lincoln concept of the US a series of independent states merely "unioned"? The answer is obvious: it doesn't.

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

#503

Post by tptacek »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #501
tptacek wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Which appears to be less effective -- paid moderators aren't members of individual communities -- with the result that most of the planning of the riot happened on Facebook. > Parler hoped…

Reddit bans whole subs when they get too out of hand to moderate, while Parler effectively is one of those banned subs. Amazon presented a record of months of complaints about specific pieces of violent content on Parler, to which Parler not only didn't respond, but in fact waved off by saying they had a backlog of tens of thousands of similar pieces of content.

Reddit would have killed the toxic sub and been done with it. Parler couldn't, because they were the toxic sub.

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

#504

Post by tptacek »

someguydave wrote: post #500
tptacek wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ... ef…

So does every business. None of that means General Dynamics operates parks.

The Marsh line of decisions you're referring to was disposed of upthread. It's dead, Jim. SCOTUS just last year said you can't expect to pretend social networks operate as public squares; you can only claim functions that are normally exclusively the province of governments.

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

#505

Post by cm2187 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #428
jcranmer wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. Well, tried to. They didn't do a good job of it at all. What they actually alleged (relevant towards this theory) was: * There was set to a mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler * AWS also hosts Twitter ... They didn't even allege that AWS conspire with Twitter. Sure, they don't have any evidence of that conspiracy without discovery, but they didn't even…

> These two facts... No, the second of those is not a fact. Twitter does use AWS for some things, but the actual service is not hosted on AWS. And that's pretty much the end of it. As the judge rightly points out in today's filing, all of Parler's talk about Twitter is just a bunch of hot air. That could change if this lawsuit proceeds, and discovery reveals evidence of conspiracy. But that is all highly speculative…

Banks were just as well lawyered up and that didn't prevent damning communications in 2008.

This case may not succeed but I can see it being re-used as part of a larger antitrust lawsuit. Though I doubt a democrat DOJ will actively drive such a lawsuit against big tech.

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

#506

Post by tptacek »

someguydave wrote: post #494
jcranmer wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably†, but they don't have to. AWS's AUP sets the bar for what is or isn't acceptable on AWS, and AWS has 64 pages of Parler posts that contravened that AUP, many of which AWS warned Parler about and got no response.

† We'll all know soon enough, since Parler got dumped by a trivial IDOR vulnerability almost the moment AWS gave them notice they were going to be taken offline.

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

#507

Post by colinmhayes »

triceratops wrote: post #483
colinmhayes wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

"All votes are representative, but some votes are more representative than others."

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

#508

Post by someguydave »

tptacek wrote: post #504
someguydave wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ... ef…

So does every business. None of that means General Dynamics operates parks. The Marsh line of decisions you're referring to was disposed of upthread. It's dead, Jim. SCOTUS just last year said you can't expect to pretend social networks operate as public squares; you can only claim functions that are normally exclusively the province of governments.

Section 230 liability protection is the lifeblood of these businesses. That protection is worth billions of dollars. While the courts might be unwilling to go there, Congress should define the obligations that come with such a valuable grant from the public in law. My proposal is that the law should be reformed such that moderation decisions made by section 230 interactive computer services should be logged and reviewable (at the plantiff's expense) in a reputable third party arbitration venue of the service's choosing.

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

#509

Post by Pfhreak »

jki275 wrote: post #129
julienb_sea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the future of controversial speech is in closed, private groups on large platforms. Those fly under the radar and can escape public pressure, which has the side effect of easing pressure on Facebook to halt the "controversial" discussions. This is why violent protests will likely continue to be primarily organized on high profile platforms like Facebook.

I have watched significant centrist websites go closed or semi-closed over the past two weeks, deleting or closing historical data, removing seo, disallowing public indexing, etc. So yes -- this is probably how it will go, it's already started.

Which sites? Without any specifics you are just adding meaningless anecdotes and/or FUD.

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

#510

Post by chevill »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #140
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of Parler directly contravenes the AWS AUP, which demands that companies ensure their users comply with AWS's AUP and that companies kick users that don't. The whole point of Parler is to host Twitter users who violate Twitter's TOS, which is a cohort significantly comprised of people who are also violating AWS's TOS. To believe that Parler would have been viable on AWS to begin with, they had to actively…

I think a big part of this is accepting Amazon's claims as fact, which I would not. For example, Amazon claims Parler was not moderating when in fact Parler had some pretty strict moderation enforcement. One could make an argument of whether or not it was successful "enough" and you'd have to compare it to other industry leaders like Facebook and Twitter which both have copious amounts of child pornography, calls for…

The document states that Parler agreed they had a massive backlog of reported content to review that "potentially promoted violence". Even Parler isn't making the claim here that they were doing a good job of moderating. They are arguing that it was a breach of contract not to give them more time to fix it.

There's plenty of reason to be skeptical about lots of things. There's plenty of reasons to dislike mainstream social media companies and the large companies that do business with them. But not everything is a conspiracy.

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