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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

#531

Post by robbrown451 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #47
throwaway45349 wrote: post #5

As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand an…

> It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Parler wasn't dropped for making Amazon look bad. Parler was dropped for repeatedly failing to address blatant terms of service violations. AWS still hosts the National Enquirer, the magazine that literally tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos. AWS is hardly in the habit of r…

Ok but dropping the National Enquirer would make Amazon look even worse.

And keeping National Enquirer doesn't make Amazon "look bad"... you are mixing issues here. National Enquirer itself may not be pro-Amazon, but they'd be that way whereever they are hosted. Their existence on AWS, though, does not impact Amazon one way or the other, because even those who dislike what they publish, aren't generally claiming they should be denied hosting.

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

#532

Post by cygx »

snoshy wrote: post #36
throwaway45349 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe that should've also been in their threat model - these guys should've acted like they were hosting The Pirate Bay 2 given the state of American politics. For instance, they could've had a low-traffic backup in read-only mode, or prevent new sign-ups. Or have an application layer switch to reduce outgoing bandwidth (HTML only) to squeeze into a coloc facility on short notice.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. Outside of unabashed copyright infringement and grossly objectionable content (child porn, etc.), there hasn't been a real precedent for a tech player getting booted like this on a moment's notice. If a scenario has never occurred before, I don't see why you'd add it to your threat model. That being said, they did not have the engineering expertise to even make a resilient stack on…

there hasn't been a real precedent for a tech player getting booted like this on a moment's notice

Gab after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting?

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

#533

Post by watwut »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #381
DonHopkins wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler had some pretty strict moderation enforcement against progressive views, just not against racism, death threats, and successfully planning violent insurrections against the government. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa... Filing: Amazon warned Parler for months about “more than 100” violent threats [...] Amazon provided "more than 100 additional representative pieces of content" advo…

I addressed those claims in my last paragraph.

The issue there is not that those messages existed somewhere hidden on the platform. It is that Amazon found them and told about them to Parler. Parler refused or was unable to take them down.

The issue is not that someone somwhere posted something bad and Parler merely failed to notice. The issue Amazon claims is that Parler had not done even bare minimum - taking down few dozens of posts that Amazon told them about.

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

#534

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#535

Post by snowwrestler »

nickysielicki wrote: post #138
tptacek wrote: post #2

Here's the denial of the TRO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg... Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to lose. I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believ…

IANAL and I'm not saying I disagree with your conclusion, but I do think the case is more interesting than just AWS booting a malicious customer (with regards to their TOS). > there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed This is funny (as in, LOL funny) to point out because it makes parler seem completely inept, but it's only technically correct. They just negotiated a fat contract to host twitter, and that'…

I’m not a lawyer either but I’ve dealt with AUP enforcement.

You don’t have to be perfect at content moderation. You do, however, need to be very responsive to the hosting provider. If they contact you about a piece of content in violation of the AUP, you better take it down ASAP.

Ultimately I think that is the core distinction between Parler and Twitter. Twitter has a professional moderation program that is responsive; Parler was not responsive, according to Amazon (and I’m sure they have the receipts).

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

#536

Post by yxhuvud »

Someone1234 wrote: post #230
mercurialshark wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. -- > Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state. Amazon isn't the state. - Correct. My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with Marsh, provides…

> 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…

> (32% market share) isn't a monopoly

Well, neither was Standard Oil by that definition.

Of course, we already know how to solve the problem of companies having too much leverage due to owning too big verticals - namely to break them up. Not to institute everything-goes rules.

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

#537

Post by roenxi »

ardy42 wrote: post #425
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. It's motivated reasoning. It's how you can get to the conclusion that Amazon cutting ties with Parler is unacceptable. I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media…

It isn't motivated reasoning, it is profound scepticism around how Amazon could have (1) identified the risk Parler was breaching their TOS (2) confirmed their suspicious and (3) ejected them from AWS in the time-frame that actually happened.

Parler seems to have been caught completely unaware that there was a risk of AWS cancelling their service, so presumably there wasn't any serious attempt by Amazon to seek corrective measures. It seems unlikely there was even an attempt to understand Parler's moderation process, because having those conversations and raising/addressing concerns takes time.

It is clear that the process to remove Parler wasn't slow and deliberative. The question in my mind is whether it was explicitly political, implicitly political or if someone powerful in AWS was just panicking. None of the 3 situations bode well for anyone trying to use AWS as infrastructure for communication. Which is a number of their major customers.

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

#538

Post by mr_toad »

ben509 wrote: post #424
throwaway45349 wrote: post #5

As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand an…

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…

When the likes of Facebook start to worry about competition or they just buy them. Look at WhatsApp.

AWS didn’t see Parler as competition, just a liability.

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

#539

Post by joshuamorton »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #516
tptacek wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

> 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. They were adding six digit numbers of users a day. Was a temporary backlog that unreasonable? > Reddit bans whole subs when they get too out of hand to moderate, while Parle…

> Parler had 10 million users, equivalent to more than 4000 subs, not one.

That's about 1/3 the size of /r/askreddit, and comparable to /r/politics. Your approach to the math here is silly for a variety of reasons (users can be members of multiple subs, membership isn't split evenly among all subreddits, there's a long tail of subs with 1 or 2 members, etc.) Parler was equivalent to a mid to large subreddit. It would have been around the 50th largest.

/r/politics, for comparison, has a moderation team of ~60, most of whom have years of experience moderating the subreddit, and is assisted by a number of bots (automoderator, as well as some /r/politics specific bots) developed and tuned over the years to help. They also have direct lines to the admins (most major subreddits do) for when they need more official assistance. The sub also has a fairly well understood set of rules, and users who are willing to report offending content.

Parler had none of those things. I've had the pleasure of moderating a (much, much!) smaller community. I once encountered a situation where it got viral for a very controversial reason. I and the rest of my moderation team was unable to keep up with the quantity of content being posted, so we did something very simple: we locked the subreddit temporarily, preventing anyone without a history in the community from participating.

I stand by that decision having been the responsible thing to do. I can understand why, for profit reasons, Parler didn't want to do the same thing, but it would have been the responsible thing to do.

> "Nuke from orbit" against something that had the capacity to be saved through measures dramatically less drastic than that.

I've yet to see any evidence that this was the case. "Saving it" in the way Amazon wanted seems to be entirely anthitetical to the approaches Parler was willing to take. Even now, the best approach Parler has been able to come up with is to use some AWS ML scanner to detect bad content.

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

#540

Post by ABeeSea »

gbear605 wrote: post #512
ABeeSea wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS also a a very large contract with another Twitter competitor: Pinterest

In what way is Pinterest a Twitter competitor?

Social media companies that compete for engagement (eye ball time) to sell to advertisers.
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