Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

e.customeriomail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 96 posts

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#31

Post by dgellow »

newacct583 wrote: post #2

Editorialized title. Link is to the response Amazon filed yesterday to Parler's law suit. That said, yeah. I don't know why people are screaming so hard about censorship when the simple truth is that this was an attempt to retroactively apply moderation to a community that had verifiably gotten out of control, at a moment where it was clear that many of these threats were real and not just rhetoric.

So, I'm not arguing one way or another, I just want to try out the following for the sake of discussion as I haven't seen it elsewhere: if we consider Amazon to be an infrastructure provider, and that by doing this they have a duty of neutrality, instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. If they find something considered bad enough to take the platform down, they would ask Amazon to take it offline. An argument for this is that it gives elected or at least government-related people some overview over the process instead of giving full power to private companies (which will backfire against the good people if normalized).

Please tell me why that would be bad, I'm interested to know.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#32

Post by nromiun »

arenaninja wrote: post #19
nromiun wrote: post #15

I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?

It was a hashtag about a video of the DC rioters chanting it. Context matters, and in this context it wasn't hypocritical at all Source: not on twitter but am familiar with the video

It seems like there were some death threats on Twitter as well. Most of them were removed so I can't find any direct source.

> When the rioters could not find and fulfil their ill-formed dreams in the real life, they took to Twitter to express their wish to hang Mike Pence, and soon the phrase started trending on Twitter. [0]

0. https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mik...

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#33

Post by gfodor »

_jal wrote: post #11
gfodor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things that can be true at the same time: - Amazon was within its legal and ethical rights to do this, and ought to win any court cases, etc. - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing a…

On your second point, there will always be power structures. You can't not have them, when considering realistic arrangements made of humans. So now what? Is the complaint really that the gatekeepers are different than they were 30 or 100 years ago? Or that there is no realistic alternative that could have acted, citing some authority you find more agreeable, in an effective timeframe?

I would have much preferred if this action occurred due to a legal order, not a few CEOs making unilateral decisions. If they were bound to go through a form of due process before nuking people off of the Internet based upon speech which is assumed to be illegal, my guess is it would be much less likely to be abused. It certainly seems like such a system would have worked just fine in this situation and could be made extremely efficient.

I've argued for years having a few companies mediate all consequential human communication was going to be a big problem, so this happening to wake people up of the dangers isn't a surprise to me but just another stage of the process of people realizing it.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#34

Post by filleokus »

Maybe it's just me, but I got really surprised when it was "revealed" that Parler was using AWS.

Creating a public forum marketed towards "free speech" seems to me to fall into roughly the same category as a torrent tracker or other file sharing service. Not exactly illegal (maybe), but definitely not something that the cloud providers want to be associated with.

In Sweden we have Flashback.org, an old school PHPBB/vBulletin-looking forum with a very strong free speech stance (attracting all kind of people, including those you can imagine being enticed by those rules). It's of course not hosted on any cloud plattform, or using services from any big hip tech company.

Honestly it seems like a strange misstake for them to do, if you are dealing in one of these gray areas, you should probably find some hosting provider / ISP actually interested in hosting you and just do it yourself.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#35

Post by LatteLazy »

stickfigure wrote: post #30

It's worth pointing out the offensive content cited in the document: * “Fry’em up. The whole fkn crew. #pelosi #aoc #thesquad #soros #gates #chuckschumer #hrc #obama #adamschiff #blm #antifa we are coming for you and you will know it.” * “#JackDorsey ... you will die a bloody death alongside Mark Suckerturd [Zuckerberg].... It has been decided and plans are being put in place. Remember the photographs inside your hom…

Wait, what did the NBA and NHL do?

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#36

Post by gfodor »

tshaddox wrote: post #6
gfodor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things that can be true at the same time: - Amazon was within its legal and ethical rights to do this, and ought to win any court cases, etc. - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing a…

Is there a feasible plan to obtain better power structures in the same time scales that these people are literally plotting to overthrow governments, murder political opponents, etc.?

There isn't a "deadline" to fixing these problems, they just need to be fixed. Unfortunately, like most things, fear will primarily guide our actions not sober analysis of the long-term unintended consequences of them.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#37

Post by finikytou »

arenaninja wrote: post #19
nromiun wrote: post #15

I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?

It was a hashtag about a video of the DC rioters chanting it. Context matters, and in this context it wasn't hypocritical at all Source: not on twitter but am familiar with the video

I dont understand your point... Couldn't people watch this video and think that they were right? Hence twitter was doing exactly the same thing than parler. It is not because you are under the impression that twitter is a democrat tool that people not thinking like you are using the platform to commit crime, promote violence, learn how to be violent and racist

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#38

Post by Maken »

NoOneNew wrote: post #14
newacct583 wrote: post #2

Editorialized title. Link is to the response Amazon filed yesterday to Parler's law suit. That said, yeah. I don't know why people are screaming so hard about censorship when the simple truth is that this was an attempt to retroactively apply moderation to a community that had verifiably gotten out of control, at a moment where it was clear that many of these threats were real and not just rhetoric.

According to this, both Twitter and Facebook use aws: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws There have been a lot of livestreams and general calls of hate and violence on those social media sites from all political spectrums. Where are their bans? That's why theres an uproar. New York Times, A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanm…

Facebook and Twitter have evident moderation (if maybe insufficient) working on removing or flagging such calls to violence. The argument of this case is not about whether there were user messages calling for execution of public figures, it's about whether Parler did anything about it.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#39

Post by noWeigh »

So “Big Tech” is in the spotlight for suppressing speech explicitly.

Meanwhile, traditional media implicitly aligns minds to defend Democrat/Republican duopoly, who in turn protect American aristocratic power, lest those poor billionaires suffer humiliating figurative death.

I do not really see the “I was hear first so I won for life.” as fostering open debate.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#40

Post by kordlessagain »

nromiun wrote: post #15

I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?

Being hypocritical requires an individual to be in that state, but here you mention a vague group being in that state, which isn't a thing.
Post reply on HN