https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/videos has an entire video series on this (and other) cases where he goes through the filings by both sides.
Recommended watching.
Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
421–430 of 652 posts
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you disagree with these people, say that to them That doesn't seem to be working in a post-truth world. Not sure what the solution is, but this isn't nearly enough.
We live in a post truth world because of social media algorithms, which made that content successful. I think we need to heavily regulate those ASAP.
Government having the power to dictate which information should be spread more is not less of a problem...
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everything is a grand conspiracy. Sometimes society really isn't okay with what you're doing.
If society wasn't ok they wouldn't be the most downloaded app. This is like saying that society wasn't ok with Trump when almost half voted for him. Trying to rewrite history because there's a Ideological and political control of tech companies doesn't mean you're right. The same goes for law. Just because something is legal or you don't win a case, it doesn't mean it's right or fair.
Being an especially rabid minority does not make a majority.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#424As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand an…
The real problem is that Parler sincerely wanted to start a free speech platform, and this is another data point that the idea, while well intentioned, doesn't work. It's a just-world fallacy: because free speech is a good and just thing, a business model predicated on free speech will be successful.
The first trouble is that you are opening the doors to all sorts of extremists. Whether they're far left, far right or simply personally unhinged, they are as predatory as spammers. They have no qualms about abusing your good will and s**ing in the punch bowl.
Same thing happened with Gab and Minds, but also smaller bulletin boards I've seen over the years. You set up a free speech site, and next thing you have a bunch of Nazis festooning it with swastikas. They're just like spammers, except they're spamming ideology instead of work from home scams.
The second trouble is that Parler is a competitor to established media corporations, who have a strong incentive to shut them down. That's a reality that every new business needs to face: established firms do not want competition.
All the people running amok provide the established firms with plenty of ammo to tar the upstart's reputation. And while they are biased by their incentives, they feel they are acting justly because they see all the extremist lunatics there. AWS didn't fabricate those incidents on Parler, all those were real posts.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
For technology abuse (e.g. spamming, botnets, etc), legal reasons (cp, pii dumps, etc), or for not liking the content being hosted? What happened to Parler is not routine when you exclude all of the cases of blatant abuse of the service.
> or for not liking the content being hosted? Parler was widely distributing violent content from major leaders (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution) in a movement that reality showed was a real and not theoretical threat (c.f. the mob chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" in the rotunda). I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Par…
> 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, pushed and promoted by bad faith actors for various short term partisan ends. I'm pretty sure that's why the specious comparisons between BLM and the capitol attack became so widespread.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moderation scales with the size of the site. Obviously a tiny little web forum with a few dozen users isn't expected to have a Twitter-sized moderation team -- but if you're at a few million users and growing fast, you're expected to have some plans in place.
That sounds good on paper, but what happens when your revenue doesn't closely correlate with the number of users? Hypothetically, a site can have a million users but have a shoestring budget. On the other side of the scale, Twitter not only has the support structure to mass moderate but they have investors providing millions of dollars. Hiring a full time moderator isn't trivial; it's thousands a year per person, whi…
> but what happens when your revenue doesn't closely correlate with the number of users?
Then you stop chasing growth at all costs or you go under/lose business partnerships/etc. Sounds like the free market to me - I don't get the idea that a business is entitled to existence no matter what, whether or not it can afford to pay labour (or even get enough volunteers) to do its work.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is false. The left now has the Senate and the Presidency. The electoral college does not matter. They go the way their states go as was made quite clear in the last election. EDIT: Of course it matters how the voting system was designed. The EC votes the way their State votes. The forefathers intended for states to have some say in the matter. We are a representative democracy. That is how the system was designe…
Yes, we should change the system. It was a compromise that is now well outdated.
The entire premise of a republic is that power is checked and balanced. The aim is not to represent the "will of the people", because the will of a majority is frequently to oppress a minority.
The EC was more than a compromise, it was an integral part of a system that prevents too much power being handed to any one institution or demographic. And forcing national candidates to appeal to a multitude of states rather than a handful of cities has a moderating effect.
If anything, what's outdated about the EC is we need more checks on the political influence that is centralized in cities because the founders didn't anticipate urbanization.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
> parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. It was rejected because "Parler...proffered only faint and factually inaccurate speculation in support of a Sherman Act violation. AWS, in contrast...submitted sworn testimony disputing Parler’s allegations." That said, Parler "has not yet had an opportunity to conduct disc…
> Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. Well, tried to. They didn't do a good job of it at all. What they actually alleged (relevant towards this theory) was: * There was set to a mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler * AWS also hosts Twitter ... They didn't even allege that AWS conspire with Twitter. Sure, they don't have any evidence of that conspiracy without discovery, but they didn't even…
> These two facts...
No, the second of those is not a fact. Twitter does use AWS for some things, but the actual service is not hosted on AWS.
And that's pretty much the end of it. As the judge rightly points out in today's filing, all of Parler's talk about Twitter is just a bunch of hot air.
That could change if this lawsuit proceeds, and discovery reveals evidence of conspiracy. But that is all highly speculative at this point, and I would not be surprised if a company as lawyered up as Amazon has taken steps to make it all but impossible for such a thing to occur.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tech attorney here (with no relation to this specific matter). I wouldn't say they don't have a leg to stand on. I think it will prove to be very interesting.
Without addressing the specifics of the TRO (which is simply an early stage request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation): Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state. Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of 1st and 14th amendments applicable within confines of “town” o…
I fail to see how either of these cases you cite are the slightest bit relevant to Parler v AWS.
Judge Rothstein stated it quite plainly in today's order: "It is important to note what this case is not about. Parler is not asserting a violation of any First Amendment rights." (Page 2, lines 4-5)
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, America doesn't have any meaningful left-wing politics of any kind. There's not a single left politician elected to any federal office anywhere in the nation, for example. Hollywood (the industry funded by the US Military to put pro-military-industrial-state advertisements into movies) is not "left leaning" in any meaningful way. "News Media" all lean either slight-right (MSNBC, NPR) to ha…
> But I'm not aware of even a single left-leaning politician in any federal elected office. For example, no elected federal politician is advocating for the nationalization of all private corporations, or elimination of all for-profit entities, or for a complete cap on individual wealth, or for giving Hawaii back to the aboriginal Hawaiians, or anything like that, so, given this, that NPR is right-leaning, and bernie…
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 engage with in good faith - the Cold War really did a number on that country's collective sense of a political spectrum. Left/right are instead essentially reduced to only being about social issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, with some lip service paid to the environment.
"Imperialist capitalism, but make the marginal tax rate somewhat higher and appoint more minorities" is not leftism.