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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#191

Post by tomatotomato37 »

cabalamat wrote: post #136
mgkimsal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I poked around on it some, and noticed something ... disturbing. I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?). The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants l…

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people. Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.

It's also a pretty good argument against anonymity being the cause of toxicity, considering these chucklefucks were literally uploading their legal identity so they could then shitpost about genocide.

Actually why the flying fuck would someone think it is a good idea to plan an insurrection on this site in the first place?? It's like opposite day opsec

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#192

Post by minimuffins »

davewritescode wrote: post #153
minimuffins wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You don't see a difference between what was occurring on Parler vs the New York Times writing an op-ed? You're intentionally conflating reasonable discourse vs facilitating a violent mob. Do I agree with that particular NY Times op-ed? No, but publishing is a reasonable way to share your views in a way Parler was literally being used to coordinate an attack on US politicians that has lead to the death of 5 people. We…

> conflating reasonable discourse...

This is precisely my point! Who gets to decide what's reasonable discourse?

I personally don't think the whole rank and file of establishment press jumping over each other to get in line behind the US state and starting two truly godawful wars is reasonable.

If I was in charge of distributing news to people in the early 2000s, I'd have simply disallowed all of it and made sure people only heard opinions about how the USA is the world's leading terror state. How would you like it if I did that? Luckily, you'll never have to find out because I don't have the power Amazon et al now have.

> Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing to do you with.

This is a deflection. I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even dream of.

Cheer it on at your own risk!

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#193

Post by reaperducer »

ketamine__ wrote: post #140
chickenpotpie wrote: post #88

Putting myself in AWS’s shoes makes this choice seem obvious. If I imagine myself maintaining a server and I learn it’s being used for death threats and coup plannings, I would tell them to stop doing that or I’m shutting them down. And then if they didn’t do it I would immediately revoke their access. I don’t know about everyone else on this site but I wasn’t put on this planet to design and build tools for terroris…

Parler had the option to police their users but put an unqualified volunteer moderation team in charge. As you can imagine this leads to suboptimal results where the most egregious content isn't removed. I was on last night and saw a picture of Peloi's house with the address attached. These are dangerous people that are stalking our democratically elected leaders.

saw a picture of Peloi's house with the address attached.

It's sad how publishing the address of a politician has become akin to a threat.

When I was a journalist, all politicians had their addresses and phone numbers right in the phone book. We looked them up all the time. Voters were expected to be able to know exactly where their elected officials lived. It was also one way of verifying that they actually lived within their district.

But because basic knowledge has become weaponized and abused by nutjobs, the general public now feels this is a threat. How much society has changed in a very short time.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#194

Post by charly187 »

standardUser wrote: post #53
CivBase wrote: post #2

I don't know which social media platforms use AWS to any critical extent, but I can't imagine them ejecting a big name like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc over "finding dozens of posts on the service which it said encouraged violence".

It's not about finding posts encouraging violence, it is about refusing to try to moderate that content, and your suggestion otherwise is disingenuous. If Facebook said "we are no longer going to try and moderate content that incites violence" there would obviously be blowback.

This myth that Parler doesn't moderate is simply not true. All screenshotted accounts I could find on Buzzfeed - such as ones from @QanonLV were banned from there before it was taken down.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#195

Post by Taikonerd »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #131

This is troubling. I understand the 1st amendment argument, but isn't this more an anti-trust case? If a baker won't bake you a cake because you're gay there are dozens of other bakeries nearby that will, regardless of the merits or lackthereof of choosing not to bake a cake in that situation. If your service provider kicks you off their platform they've destroyed your entire business. I understand if they won't allo…

I wonder if big corporations that sign deals with AWS in the future will write this into their contracts? ("Amazon agrees that, if they want to terminate our service for any reason, they will give us 6 months' notice so we can replatform our site.")

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#196

Post by neuland »

ortusdux wrote: post #7

It fascinates me that the people most offended by the recent actions of google, amazon, facebook, etc are the ones pushing for the repeal of section 230.

It's not strange if you view it through from their point of view. Rightly or wrongly, these people just want to see much less centralized moderation. And they feel unherd and oppressed (again regardless of whether that's actually true, that's what they experience and feel).

They see things in a more absolutist free speech lens, meaning any content that is legal should be allowed. And they don't see platforms as being responsible for moderation. They view centralized moderation as inherently biased and illegitimate. If they can't or wont allow legal speech, then they think 230 should be repealed and these sites should cease to exist.

They are reacting to takedowns from social media sites, SaaS providers, IaaS providers, and financial services because they view these sites as an oligopoly acting in unison to bar them from the basic infrastructure of modern life. Imagine if typewriter companies ganged up to stop selling to right leaning newspapers and authors. Or, imagine if telegraph companies said they wouldn't transmit messages for Abraham Lincon.

On 230, they see social media sites as a monopoly due to network effects. Also/alternatively they talk about a bait-and-switch, where the social media sites held themselves out as public squares when they were small. But once they were big, they started enforcing their views.

Generally, I think people are failing to put themselves in a Trump supporter's shoes. Imagine you genuinely believed that the election was stolen. The court cases were almost all dismissed on standing and laches. From their perspective, no one will substantively address their videos, affidavits, statistical anomalies, etc.

And when they protest, people call them violent insurrectionists, despite all year BLM doing very similar things (again from their perspective).

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#197

Post by cipherboy »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #183
cabalamat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people. Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.

This suggestion doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

I believe OP is more insinuating that the combination of (ip, user identity {username, cell number, real-world identity}) is an attractive data source for such an agency.

Of course they already have all government IDs. But tying it to a username helps correlate data across other services, and additionally if the user checks from mobile phone or other device, tying it to recent IPs could also be useful. OPSec could prevent some of that, but how many users are doing that?

Just a thought. Not an endorsement.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#198

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #183
cabalamat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people. Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.

This suggestion doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

[deleted]

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#199

Post by jeffreyrogers »

analog31 wrote: post #184
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Components are a bit different in that they are marketed as "obsolete for new designs", etc. and anyone making a physical product knows to plan for the eventuality that a supplier will be unreliable or that a part will be discontinued. This situation is not analogous since access to AWS is ongoing.

Indeed, and I could have prepared myself for the situation in any number of ways, including monitoring my components status, designing around the dependency, and so forth. I think. Not all suppliers make it easy to discover the status of components. Do you think that a sole source relationship carries an implied contract of continued service? Should that be a regulation? I don't think I'd like that. As I understand i…

I think it is reasonable to discontinue service if you don't like a customer.[0] But what if AWS's utility provider said we aren't going to power your datacenters because we like Parler? That seems wrong to me. I think it's reasonable to allow companies to terminate service but they should give a reasonable time frame (e.g. 3-6 months) to migrate to a new platform.

[0]: Certainly I think this in cases where you have a personal relationship with the customer/client, e.g. as a lawyer. It is less clear in the case where the service provided requires no real customer interaction as in AWS, where the services are all provided transparently, with no knowledge of who the customer is. But I don't want to get hung up on this issue.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#200

Post by vergessenmir »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #183
cabalamat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people. Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.

This suggestion doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?

I certainly agree that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. To suggest that setting up a honeypot to have fringe elements actively expose their views in what they deem as a safe environment is not outside of what security agency may do is a bit of stretch

It's a interesting thought to entertain but Parler is most likely not this.

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