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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

#551

Post by ClumsyPilot »

tptacek wrote: post #361
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.

Yes it is. It's right there in the AWS AUP. "Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable". Other providers have even stricter AUPs, for instance against otherwise-lawful pornographic content.

The guy/girl above talks about it being routine, why are you citing AUP? You'd have to show they have done this before, frequently.

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

#552

Post by evgen »

echelon wrote: post #120
smackmybishop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is neither free nor ad-supported.

AWS wouldn't exist if the web had been P2P. If YouTube was based on BitTorrent. If Facebook was based on Diaspora, Mastodon, Scuttlebutt, etc. If Messenger was based on Matrix. Centralized platforms make ad revenue, form moats, and become big business. Hosting isn't their core competency, so they outsource. Thus AWS.

Speaking as someone who was actually there, this is a delusional view of what might have been based more on fantasy than reality.

The web _was_ P2P at the start, but it became centralized because that was more efficient and increased both value and communication. The original social networks (BBS and chat channels, Usenet, etc) _were_ distributed, but it turns out that this made them easy prey for parasitic and toxic actors and all of the available tools to prevent this imposed asymmetric costs on the recipients and did not scale at all.

Distributed systems are easy, but making distributed communication systems not suck is incredibly hard. The Internet is a distributed system that was a lot better before all of you showed up and cast us into the hell of eternal September.

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

#553

Post by kortilla »

tptacek wrote: post #361
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.

Yes it is. It's right there in the AWS AUP. "Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable". Other providers have even stricter AUPs, for instance against otherwise-lawful pornographic content.

Being in the AUP does not make it routine FFS. There is a mountain of shit in every ToS that rarely gets exercised.

It’s like you’re pointing out that pilots can kick passengers off of a flight at their discretion. Completely irrelevant when the question is about how frequently they do it for what sounds like a rare reason.

That’s why I was interested in actual stats of how frequently they take down comment that is ‘otherwise objectionable’.

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

#554

Post by kortilla »

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…

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

Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent.

> 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?

You mean until right after the elections that took away all of the Republican power to regulate tech? Seems like a great time to do it.

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

#555

Post by kortilla »

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…

> 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.

Funny you should bring those news stories up, because they are often focused on how understaffed these efforts are. On a moderator to 100k user ratio, Facebook and Parler had effectively the same (0).

Just because Facebook pays a few hundred people to suffer ongoing psychological trauma doesn’t mean they are doing anything more than paying lip service to the complaints.

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

#556

Post by CaptainZapp »

roenxi wrote: post #537
ardy42 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 corre…

> 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.

Read Amazon's reply to the case. They warned Parler for Weeks that posts were a massive violation of their TOS and Parler did exactly jack shit.

Finally they were kicked off.

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

#557

Post by piokoch »

tptacek wrote: post #361
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.

Yes it is. It's right there in the AWS AUP. "Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable". Other providers have even stricter AUPs, for instance against otherwise-lawful pornographic content.

Is putting something like "otherwise objectionable" as a reason to terminate contract legal? Can AWS terminate contract with a website owner who supports, say, gay marriages, because there is someone in Amazon who considers this to be "objectionable"?

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

#558

Post by Blikkentrekker »

zamalek wrote: post #420
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because violence to advance a cause the powers agree with is suddenly protected under free speech all the same. Many have pointed out that the storming of the capitol was not too dissimilar to many of the b.l.m. riots which were also often coördinated and featured chants of killing police officers. And it very much seems that whichever side one be on very much dictates how both are treated with both sides claiming t…

I live not far from Capitol Hill in Seattle, so the worst was pretty close to me. I grok free speech. You can't outlaw some speech that is considered immoral because that speech may equate to the future moral high ground. Gay rights, as one example, would never have happened were there a moral gatekeeper on speech. I deeply understand this. There's a difference. Firstly, much of what you attribute (or what was attrib…

> The police literally stood aside for the MAGA seditionists, but opened fire on peaceful BLM protestors due to the threat of a pink umbrella. Yes, this is very true, but likely not in the way you mean to suggest.

That seems to be exactly what I meant to suggest with it.

Whom do you think the police agrees with?

Suddenly violence is given more leeway by it.

> And racist speech is protected and has been protected by the American Supreme Court on multiple occasions (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie). Racist violence is not protected and nor is BLM violence.

Speech is simply earlier ruled “violence” by the courts whenever it be speech the court doesn't agree with.

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

#559

Post by leovingi »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #462

I've been following hacker news for nearly 9+ years now. Its funny to see now is the time that everyone is finally recognizing the concept of a 'tech monopoly' when it comes time to silence a violent and hateful group of white trash morons.

>white trash

You should apologize for this racist comment

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

#560

Post by notahacker »

piokoch wrote: post #557
tptacek wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. It's right there in the AWS AUP. "Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable". Other providers have even stricter AUPs, for instance against otherwise-lawful pornographic content.

Is putting something like "otherwise objectionable" as a reason to terminate contract legal? Can AWS terminate contract with a website owner who supports, say, gay marriages, because there is someone in Amazon who considers this to be "objectionable"?

'Otherwise objectionable' is meant to be a catchall, but isn't really the one Amazon is relying on, since much of the content Parler stated it didn't want to remove is also unambiguously abusive and defamatory. The words itself are the same as Section 230, except in this instance Amazon is saying it is willing to consider its clients responsible for their user generated content.

There are religious web hosts that will terminate you for not following their Statement of Faith, so I don't think Amazon would have any issues in requiring its customers to have a particular stance on gay marriage in the very unlikely event it wanted to.

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