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Parler CEO says he was fired by board

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Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/13/parler-llc-... it took several months of moderation problems before AWS dropped Parler as a client.

According to Amazon . Parler has vociferously disputed this.

Parler isn't disputing that abusive content was posted. Their claim is for breach of contract, antitrust, and torturous interference.

The following is an excerpt from https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/34/parler-llc-... the order denying the injunction.

"AWS has submitted to the Court multiple representative examples, reflecting content posted on Parler during this period, that AWS claims violated the terms of the AUP and the parties’ Agreement. ... Parler has not denied that these posts are abusive or that they violate the Acceptable Use Policy. "

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/13/parler-llc-... it took several months of moderation problems before AWS dropped Parler as a client.

According to Amazon . Parler has vociferously disputed this.

You can read 100 different takedowns of Parler's arguments, but they're all mooted by the fact that Parler was self-evidently hosting material that contravened the AWS term allowing them to be cut off without notice. Parler has no case here.

Broken record: I'm still surprised so many people here have so little exposure to the hosting business to believe that there's actually an inviolate right to due process in keeping your stuff hosted somewhere. Hosting providers have to kick users off all the time. It is a basic fact of life in hosting: people abuse stuff.

Parler wasn't running a phishing scam, spamming, or DDoS'ing people, but that's not my point; my point is: if you're a hosting provider, your contracts basically have to give you the right to boot people at your discretion. The idea that anyone thought AWS's might not? Baffling.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#483
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is asserting unsettled matters of fact. Twitter's moderation has become partisan enough that it might be desirable to build a business on people they have kicked off. Notably Trump - while he was supremely unpopular on the left, opinion polling suggests he is leaving a more popular legacy than, eg, George W Bush. Maybe even George H.W. Bush. That is a pretty decent foundation for a business.

> Twitter's moderation has become partisan enough That's also an unsettled assertion. Especially when talking about kicking off Trump, since they had been letting him break the rules for years. Removing his exemption is arguably a reduction in partisan bias.

That is a particularly difficult argument to make - Twitter put out a statement [0] when they banned him. They do not mention 'breaking the rules for years'. They take a surreal and incoherent view that "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." is an incitement of violence.

Siding with a political majority is a safe strategy; but that statement is pretty much indefensible. Even if you believe they had grounds for the ban based on a history, their actual reasoning is different from your justification.

Nonpartisan moderation would involve, at some level, quotes or instances where Trump said something objectionable.

[0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#484

Wow, they can't figure out how to colocate a server? There are plenty of companies that would love to be the hosting face of Parler and agree with its userbase.

> There are plenty of companies that would love to be the hosting face of Parler and agree with its userbase. I don’t know if that’s really true. At least not in the Bay Area, which holds the lions share of internet companies from hosting to CDN. It’s actually remarkably hard to run any kind of website of note and not be at the mercy of some company based out of SV.

I know a variety of websites that operate on the level of petabytes a month that are similar to parler (4chan), or are big hosters of files that directly infringe many peoples copyright.

Parler isn't even half bad compared to some of the hosted content on the rest of the clearnet.

The reason this is possible is because of 1. Cloudflare for media content and 2. Colocation for everything else. I don't know of an instance of a T1 or T2 data center "deplatforming" any servers that weren't directly operating illigally and had to be told it was illigal by law enforcement.

Perhaps individual companies that you contract with to get that data centers internet line, sure, but again there's plenty of companies that don't care who you are and/or like parler. I know of one in New York that offers very affordable pricing.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#485
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a value judgment when my argument is simply about keeping your website alive in the face of powers that wish to control or censor you. Imagine hypothetically that you have website about the plight of the Uyghurs and Amazon was a Chinese business. Amazon's behavior revealed they are not above terminating service for businesses. I can imagine a world where they become emboldened and attempt to deny servic…

Alternatively, pretend you're Isis, and want to start up a website on AWS so you can plan terrorist attacks on US soil, maybe blow up Jeff's ball's in Seattle? I don't think we should force amazon to host ISIS' terrorist planning

And what if it happens with 0.01% of users on a popular Muslim social network?

What percentage of Parler users were advocating or planning for violent protest?

Also note that this stuff happens on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks all the time, and yet they're still online.

These are really messy gray areas, and the choices we're making will set precedents for our future.

There are so many potential responses by both the host and the service/platform. You can ask the network to deal with it (as they did with Parler), you can involve the FBI, invoke lawsuits... I don't think deplatforming is the second course of action to take when politely asking doesn't work out.

Was it even Amazon's prerogative to ask for content removal? It might be in their TOS, but what would the DOJ say?

Unless the FBI or CIA says it needs to go, I don't think it's Amazon's call. That should be our bar.

Social networks should be able to set their own rules and operate within the laws of the United States. Web hosts shouldn't meddle.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#486
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter's moderation has become partisan enough That's also an unsettled assertion. Especially when talking about kicking off Trump, since they had been letting him break the rules for years. Removing his exemption is arguably a reduction in partisan bias.

That is a particularly difficult argument to make - Twitter put out a statement [0] when they banned him. They do not mention 'breaking the rules for years'. They take a surreal and incoherent view that "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." is an incitement of violence. Siding with a political majority is a safe strategy; but that statement is pretty much indefensi…

I don't think the statement reflects their full reasoning when you consider the context of how they had been putting out other statements about why they weren't banning him.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#487
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to remind you that the military are supposed to take orders from their commander in chief The military (at least here in the US) swears allegiance to the Constitution, not the president. And they were very clear about broadcasting that the military was not going to interfere in domestic politics.

They don't take orders from a piece of paper, they take orders from the president. If the sitting president were affirmed by congress, they would have to continue taking orders from him. Militaries not interfering in domestic politics is one way that coups can succeed. They stand on the side lines, let the power struggle happen, and then take direction from the winner. You seem to think that it would be obvious to ev…

On January 6 it was fully obvious to everyone with any authority who the winner of the election was. All the states had certified their results. There was zero chance that this "insurrection" was going to accomplish anything.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#488

> We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media. this, from their "technical difficulties" notice, should have been enough for him to be fired on its own. requiring some users to provide government identification, building such weak security that anyone can read and archive private messages, and not stripping out damaging meta-data from media posts are three ways to not provide…

FWIW, I recently found out that AirBnB now requires government id to be shared as verification after not having logged into AirBnB since 2014. I tried to delete my account but the option is not available or may be hidden behind the forced verification requirement.

They have done this for a while, but I'm sure you could submit a GDPR request.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#489
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I recently found out that AirBnB now requires government id to be shared as verification after not having logged into AirBnB since 2014. I tried to delete my account but the option is not available or may be hidden behind the forced verification requirement.

You can't just ask Airbnb to delete your account. The procedure to delete the account yourself that's explained all over the internet does not work, at least in europe. I requested the removal of my deactivated account four times over the course of 8 months via their email support. It was always the same script: first they purposefully confuse it with account deactivation and they confirm your removal, but formulated…

The docs today claim one is able to self-delete - https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/240/how-do-i-deactivate-...

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#490
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely curious if do you see someone with a sign saying "Kill X" and someone just talking on the internet about undemocratic power change differently? If you see them differently, then why? The acts they are talking about are both crimes. My assumption is that: 1. Not everyone on Parler committed crimes in the physical world - eg. storm the Capitol, so that means that talking about something is not enough to…

Very few to no Taliban members were involved in 9/11, but the US still invaded Afghanistan to kill as many Taliban members as possible. Americans arent very forgiving to terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, and that applies to parler members just as well as taliban members

You're right about the second statement, but the first statement is inaccurate. They were not DIRECTLY involved, but the Taliban gave OBL safe haven for years, he trained his people there, and controlled his operations from there. They weren't mere bystanders.
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