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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

#581

Post by lordloki »

duxup wrote: post #371
three_seagrass wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike the people that support facist, racist beliefs, but I 100% will defend their right to say such things. Even if allowing fascists and racists to express their speech actively harms or silences you in turn? Relevant: https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1031008855210123264/p...

Lets say I have a platform that someone used it to gather support for and planning some sort of attack on my local democracy. Lat's say they're successful and they can impose their own policies that do not include free speech. I'm pretty short on free speech now... It's hard to ignore that.

So you support the abolition of free speech to preemptively keep a hypothetical free speech abolitionist group from abolishing free speech?

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

#582

Post by filleduchaos »

stale2002 wrote: post #527
filleduchaos wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an American, but > NPR is right-leaning Yes. > bernie/AOC are 'centrist' Yes. Though I would describe Sanders as left-of-centre (apart from her stance on the environment, Ocasio-Cortez is quite the centrist). > am I correct in your assessment that basically just about only bolshevism counts as 'left'? No. There is an entire range of actual leftist politics and economics that Americans tend to utterly refuse to en…

[flagged]

See, this is the exact refusal to engage in good faith that I'm talking about. The red scare really did do a number on y'all.

Geopolitically speaking, opposition to colonialism and imperialism (and their neo- variants) are generally considered to be leftist ideals. Internationalism skews left and globalism skews right, despite American conservatives' pearl-clutching in that regard. Decentralisation of power (with the extreme including advocating for anarchic/acephalous societies) also skews heavily left, with the flaw that without strong systems this often leads to the re-centralisation of power in the hands of one or a few (conversely, hierarchism which skews heavily right often leads to codification of power in de facto aristocracies).

Economically, capitalism is unambiguously a right-wing economic theory (note that capitalism is not the same think as markets - another thing that people would rather remain cheerfully ignorant about). If your politico-economic system involves capitalism, you'd be very hard pressed to describe it as anything further left than centrist at best (as most mixed economies are). Actual leftist economics would include the somewhat vague blob that is left-libertarianism, encompassing everything from Georgism (often criticised as capitalism lite) to syndicalism, mutualism, anarcho-collectivism and the (of particular interest to me) various schools of African socialism. Opposition to capital/private ownership/wage theft takes many forms, not only that of the communist bogeyman.

Why do people want to think of themselves/be thought of as being on the left so badly when they're completely unwilling to actually engage with what leftism means?

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

#583

Post by minikites »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #181
sparrish wrote: post #23

Amazon has a right to associate (or not associate) with whomever they want. This is a fundamental principle of freedom - something Parler should know, understand, and espouse. Why are they fighting? They should be applauding.

This is true with one important exception: you can not refuse business on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Refusing business based on political ideology is not only allowed but seems to be encouraged!

Do you really think refusing business based on someone's race is the same as refusing business based on someone's violent rhetoric?

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

#584

Post by TomSwirly »

ThomPete wrote: post #574
watwut wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And it does not matter, because perfection is not required. Requiring perfection is just rhetorical trick to create false equivalency. Amazon did not required perfection from Parler. Amazon is taking down Parler, because Parler did not even pretended to care about the issue. They have not done even token effort. Amazon is not taking down Parler for few bad message Parler did missed or were ambiguous. Instead, Pa…

You are missing the point. Why Parler? There are lots of other social media platforms out there using AWS with the same kind of rhetoric so that's not a good explanation or reason.

"Because you haven't yet punished all offenders, you can't punish any of them."

Am I getting your argument right?

Parler was the most gratuitous because:

1. They had a combination of very tight censorship of dissenting voices, and complete laissez-faire for violent and racist rhetoric as long as it was right wing.

2. It was used to organize a violent and very public revolution against the United States of America, which resulted in five deaths.

You almost certainly knew all these things already. The likely reason you are supporting Parler in this comment is because you agree with their political stance.

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

#585

Post by chalst »

roenxi wrote: post #561
chalst wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS drew attention to the violation of the TOS in mid November and provided extensive documentation of the kind of content they regarded as unacceptable in mid December [1]. You seem unaware of the most basic facts of the case. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

I am unaware, I'm not planning on reading the case details until after a month or two has passed. Best to get a little hindsight. That is an interesting exhibit, thanks. It has swayed me on the time-frame, I'm not sure it changes my basic view - the AWS rep is talking about literally 3 posts in mid November, one of which seems to have 450 views in 5 days if the eye icon means what I think. From politely raising 3 hor…

The most likely explanation for Amazon changing its approach is that the issue was taken over from risk-averse managers who hoped Parler would do the right thing by closure-hungry executives who were not willing to wait and were willing to risk a lawsuit and conservative backlash.

The more interesting question is why Parler were willing to risk being shut down in this way. I see two possibilities: either they did not have a realistic understanding of their situation, or they preferred to have Amazon pull the plug rather than being responsible for unpopular moderation of their users.

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

#586

Post by TomSwirly »

kortilla wrote: post #553
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.

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 ‘…

Suppose a group of passengers started a violent revolution against the pilot, and killed a flight attendant. Would you say that the pilot was being reasonable to throw them off the flight?

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

#587

Post by TomSwirly »

roenxi wrote: post #571
zaphar wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's game plan for a moment. You are a hosting provider. One of your customers is violating your TOS and posting content that is objectionable. They are potentially big and growing customer so you are giving them time to respond while you try to weight the cost and benefit of enforcement at this time. While you are working though this the customer is used as a platform to organize an attack on the government of the…

What you are presenting is the worldview of someone who is biased. I do suspect AWS was thinking that - which is why I'm not ruling out political bias. Even if that interpretation of the Capitol riot somehow, miraculously, turns out to be correct there hasn't been time to prove it with evidence. But, as chalst argues, there are interpretations where they were acting reasonably.

> What you are presenting is the worldview of someone who is biased.

"This site we host was just used to plan a violent revolution. It's more trouble than it's worth, let's dump them."

Is this what you mean by "bias"?

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

#588

Post by ardy42 »

nitrogen wrote: post #524
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…

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 Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results.…

> Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results.

What now? I pretty explicitly humanized them, and even shifted the blame a way from them. Personally, I think a lot of them are being shamelessly used and exploited.

> It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side".

Not really. The largest platform favored by "the other side" (which I'm assuming is conservatives/Republicans) was and is Facebook.

Parler was only favored by a much smaller, radicalized subset of conservatives, mainly those who wanted to spread false claims of election fraud (because, IIRC, it only got popular in response to Twitter putting warning labels on such claims, which offended this radicalize subset). I'm totally fine with any blowback from such people, since their cause of championing lies needs to be utterly defeated, for the good of the country.

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

#589

Post by OniBait »

ben509 wrote: post #417
dukeofdoom wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon did not give Parler time to remedy the issue, which was in the contract. And is now trying to blur the line between a suspension and termination. Robert Barnes, on the Parler lawsuit https://youtu.be/pAFZw7fGY4A Viva Frey, a lawyer did a breakdown on the lawsuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 Robert Barnes, On section 230, and the tech lawsuits https://youtu.be/rD-Zb0nTJw0 Their take on it is tha…

Barnes and Frey didn't read the contract closely. Uncivil Law is a friend of theirs and he goes over the contract here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhWDKx9myI0&t=6187s He's a conservative lawyer, so he doesn't have a political bias against Parler. They just don't have a case. I think Parler's lawyers misread the contract and thought the 30-day notice applied to termination for cause.

Yeah. Barnes and Frei didn't read the contract at all. They were just going off the court filings. I don't think they were aware of the additional provision about AWS having the right to terminate right after the 30 day suspension notice provision.

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

#590

Post by ThomPete »

dragonwriter wrote: post #580
ThomPete wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Why Parler? There are lots of other social media platforms out there using AWS with the same kind of rhetoric so that's not a good explanation or reason.

The general class of rhetoric is not the issue. The complete failure to take action about specific, identified pieces of content when notified about it is the issue. Now

You are missing the point too.

Why did someone decide for that specific case and not the numerous others by ex. Twitter that are still there.

Picking on the little guy just because they are little seems to be a pretty questionable move.

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