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Re: undefined

#101
post #89

Unreservedly yes, and anyone who votes "unreservedly no" on this poll should be per-banned from this site.

> anyone who votes "unreservedly no" on this poll should be per-banned from this site.

That honestly sounds fascistic. Scratch that - it literally is fascistic. Care to explain your viewpoint?

Re: undefined

#102
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly: fuck off. Anti-semtism is immoral and homosexuality is not. Homosexuality is protected under civil rights laws while racists are not. So no, kicking off a business for catering to homosexuals should be (and in many cases is) illegal. It should not be illegal to kick off a business for catering to Nazis. This false equivalence is bullshit and you are perfectly aware that it’s bullshit.

I made up a hypothetical future where political winds and morals shift to something you disagree with to expose the flaw in your logic.

You made up a truly dystopian future where many norms and laws have fallen by the wayside... including existing legal protections for gay consumers and entrepreneurs. So I don’t think your point is as great as you think it is! I agree that such a future would be bad. Congratulations.

As an entrepreneur I would refuse to do business with anyone who had a Parler account and I am honestly a bit bothered by this authoritarian suggestion that the state should force me to do business with racists.

Re: undefined

#103
post #43

All I know is, if my business was locked in to AWS (or any other single provider) I would take this as a warning to diversify my infrastructure.

Absolutely, our company had a meeting this morning, and our cloud strategy has immediately changed going forward. I wonder how many of these meetings are going on today.

Re: undefined

#105
post #69

No. If there are valid reasons to block Parler they've been evident since its inception, and should have been acted on long ago. Blocking Parler right now is political expediency.

Agreed, as there has been some questionable (violent, or other) content on Twitter that has not been blocked. Seems a little fishy to say the least.

Re: undefined

#106

Absolutely yes. Morally, violent fascists have no place in society. This isn't a slippery slope. They're not coming for the Communists and Jews next. I have no sympathy for the poor, helpless Nazis being bullied by the big, bad liberals (as if the companies listed are even reliably liberal) when all they want to do is organize an overthrow or two of the US government. The big platforms have been obscenely deferent to…

As if ANTIFA isn't a bunch of violent fascists, endlessly coordinating on Twitter.

You are the problem.

Re: undefined

#107
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly: fuck off. Anti-semtism is immoral and homosexuality is not. Homosexuality is protected under civil rights laws while racists are not. So no, kicking off a business for catering to homosexuals should be (and in many cases is) illegal. It should not be illegal to kick off a business for catering to Nazis. This false equivalence is bullshit and you are perfectly aware that it’s bullshit.

The point is that homosexuality has indeed been viewed as odious and immoral in the past, and platforms like Grindr would have been eliminated just as easily as Parler some time ago (on some bullshit TOS violations, no less). The real concern here is having Big Tech decide what you’re allowed to believe in. AWS et al should be treated as a public utility not bound by a private TOS, unless you want AWS to control what…

> AWS et al should be treated as a public utility not bound by a private TOS

How ridiculous. Individuals need water, heat, and electricity to survive in the 21st century. I would argue they also need a cell phone and internet access.

Individuals do not need cloud computing services. For-profit companies want AWS because they can use it to make money. This is not a good basis to form a utility.

Re: undefined

#108
Parler has a first-amendment right to free speech.

Amazon, etc., also have a first-amendment right to free speech. IMHO this includes deciding not to conduct business with another private party. I do not consider this on their part to be "censorship," at least not moreso than any restriction on their decision to do this.

The underlying issue is that services provided by private companies have effectively become essential infrastructure. This causes a host of problems, which have been pointed out by far-sighted individuals, and only now are some of this issues becoming visible to a broader audience. These private companies are structurally not designed to take responsibility for the activities happening on their platform, and in fact some of them are designed around not being responsible. But there's no one else to shift that responsibility onto, and a large area with a vacumm of accountability has caused problems.

Compared to private companies becoming the gatekeepers of public discourse, I have a variety of things I would prefer, including regulation. But I don't know if any of those alternatives are realistic. So, "yes with caveats."

Re: undefined

#109
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they r…

It is the nature of commerce that you must enter into contracts with other entities. The internet itself is federated but most people don't ever have a chance to see it that way because it mostly just works. Even if you bought your own physical servers, you still need an agreement with an internet carrier and a colocation facility. Renting a Linode is a convenient shortcut but you need that one contract with Linode.…

It goes even deeper than this. You also need electricity, and the electric utility can cut you off if you they believe what you are doing is illegal or otherwise goes against their TOS.

So then you have to setup your own generator, on your own land, to power your own ISP.

Re: undefined

#110
post #54

I believe companies should have a right to have a terms of service and to act on those terms of service. They do it every day. Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. If Google took the step to block them with Chrome then I think I would have issue with that.

> Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they r…

Where there's a will, there's a way. I don't believe everyone is guaranteed easy IT as a basic human right. Buy some servers. Or just setup a proxy so no one knows where the actual servers are and when one isp shuts you down you can move as fast as dns can update.

Then, of course, the domain name company may come after you. But you can also use a direct ip address. I don't think domain names are a basic human right either.

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