Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#431

Post by CivBase » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #415

CivBase wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, any social media platform built on the idea of protecting free speech will be the only platform on which "disgusting content" can be posted. That means it will inherently have a disproportionately large amount of "disgusting content". And that's before considering the insane uphill battle any social media platform has to fight to become as popular as the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc - assuming the pres…

It's not like this was some innocent small service that suddenly got taken over. Parler was built by Trump supporters for Trump supporters.

Sure, but every Trump supporter I've talked to objects to what happened last Wednesday. Even if the Trump supporters I know are not representative of all Trump supporters, clearly not all of his supporters seek to commit or condone acts of violence. Just because the site was originally built for Trump supporters does not mean it was inherently built for "disgusting content".

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#432

Post by halukakin » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

A good example to this is the founding of the US itself.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#433

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #408

zmb_ wrote: post #321

I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight. Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this t…

I think the mitigation is "don't build a platform to attract white supremacists banned from other sites and then watch as they use it to plan a riot in the Capitol."

[deleted]

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#434

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #409

epistasis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide aud…

>If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainl…

[deleted]

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#435

Post by baron_harkonnen » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

mozillalives wrote: post #44

All I’m going to say is that I’m all for free speech and setting fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler doesn’t want to do any content regula…

> the left trying to shut down free speech

People really have no idea what the "left" even is anymore do they?

I was once down voted here for mentioning that the NYTimes is not an extreme left wing publication. The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.

It's amazing to me that the media (not just Fox-news and co) has constructed this bizarre bogey-man of the left as some control hungry liberals. Those people certainly exist, but they aren't, by anyone who is engage in leftist politics and theory, remotely left.

Believe it or not people on the left have been critical of the growing role that corporations have in setting public policy for decades. Sure, centrist liberals my be cheering, but nobody on the left wants to see corporations be the unchecked regulators of society.

However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and then be surprised at all that large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.

The entire fact that the will of the people has no direct power over corporate action is exactly why the left doesn't like the perpetual growth of corporate power and of its deregulation.

The unfortunate conclusion of all this confusion for me is that this is clearly not political in the slightest. Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#436

Post by munificent » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

emtel wrote: post #385

munificent wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host. If an author's content is so toxic that advertisers wo…

Free speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing. Free speech is a moral principle/ideal that exists independently of the US Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees a certain form of free speech in the United States. Private-sector censorship / restriction of speech is not in violation of the First Amendment. However, it may still amount to a restriction on free speech.

Fair, but in this case we're talking about a US company hosting another US company's data, so I think talking about free speech in the context of the First Amendment is reasonable.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#437

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #409

epistasis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide aud…

>If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainl…

[deleted]

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#438

Post by oceanplexian » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

chickenpotpie wrote: post #91

abarringer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh com'n. As if twitter doesn't allow people to post stupid junk? Multiple accounts that posted "Kill all white women" "Today seems like a good day for another reminder that all republicans deserve to die" are still active along with plenty of other insane things. You can cherry pick bad stuff from any social media site.

Twitter puts an active effort into removing those posts. You can definitely make the case they don’t go far enough, but Parler did the bare minimum. You would have to cherry pick the reasonable content off that site.

Several tweets like this one from Khamenei are still up: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562

Is "The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance." not a call to violence?

If Trump had posted the same Tweet do you think Twitter would have removed it?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#439

Post by starkd » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

mozillalives wrote: post #44

All I’m going to say is that I’m all for free speech and setting fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler doesn’t want to do any content regula…

But the prospect of a few powerful tech companies putting their competitors out of business should concern everyone. And there's no reason for such harsh measures.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#440

Post by legutierr » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

It happens all the time in the banking arena. Banks are frequently used to deny market access to businesses that are undesirable to the federal government but are otherwise legal businesses.