I would expect Amazon to be neutral and only make action if the government took legal action.
This action is a threat to democracy on the behalf of private companies.
Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
461–470 of 1001 posts
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#462All 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…
I voted for Biden, but I can easily find thousands of examples of "threats" on Twitter coming from far left leaning accounts. Some even from verified accounts. I still love the fact that Twitter banned Anna Kachiyan of the Red Scare podcast, assuming it wasn't a mistake?
Companies bowing to play nice with the state is troubling regardless of your politics.
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#463Most providers also don't allow ISIS on their platforms. Another known terror-sponsoring organization. For a long time now. And yet I don't see people tying themselves into free speech knots over ISIS getting deplatformed. I wonder why that is?
Because ISIS leaders and the organization have been convicted by courts all over the world. Parler and the other conservatives who got banned were not convicted by any court within or even outside the United States. People are mad because big tech is shutting things down without any due process simply to appease the new emperor in power.
Big tech made a decision that the hell with the judicial system, Democrats now have the executive and the senate, we have to bend the knee and kiss the ring to keep our section 230 and don't get taxed into oblivion.
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of. I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is a s…
That’s quite the straw man. We should separate an issue of moderation and actual motives of the platform itself. Did the platform have algorithms to make pro-capital storming posts ascend higher than other equally engaged posts? Did the owner/company make a call to violence? Did their platform spike in popularity in such a short time frame, they were unable to moderate to the same degree as other platforms? (Even Goo…
> We should separate an issue of moderation and actual motives of the platform itself
Why though? On some level in seems impossible to make a distinction "from the outside," and I'm not sure it should matter that a decision was made by a person (probably following an Excel spreadsheet) or software.
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#465I'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."
The planning was largely done on Facebook https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#466Most providers also don't allow ISIS on their platforms. Another known terror-sponsoring organization. For a long time now. And yet I don't see people tying themselves into free speech knots over ISIS getting deplatformed. I wonder why that is?
ISIS used to publish videos of them beheading people as propaganda to recruit young people for the jihad. They'd also claim terrorists attacks and encourage their supporters to do the same. So, what is your point?
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I'm in the UK, but the difference is that right now, these private companies control communication. I'm not allowed outside my house and I live alone. I'm no…
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…
All well and good. But say for instance you lived in nazi Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you have the right to say things that are outside of the overton window? You would not have the right, and your opinions would be spat upon. And yet they would be true and right for you. In your mind you would have every right to express yourself and undermine the government outside of democratic means.
The point is we can never know how far outside of what is "good" we currently circle. It is right that people with a belief strong enough to force them to action are forced to action. It is right that a state that believes itself true defends itself. It is all part of the process, all of it. Who the hell are you to know with certainty that you, specifically you, have the the eagle eyed vision to discern right from wrong? To somehow miraculously step outside of the tiny little context in which you live and know with 100% certainty that you are right.
You are the product of your surroundings, a container for thoughts passing through, a ghost in the machine. Don't be so God damned arrogant. You cannot know truth, you cannot know right. The world is unfolding as it should.
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#468This 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…
Fun fact: I spoke with two of my good buddies one up high Amazon another at Twitter. The fellow from twitter told me they will never suspend Trump because despite what he says, Twitter makes few million dollars daily (!!) off of his feed. The reason you see him being booted out is because my buddy from Amazon told me they may be ready to drop Twitter as a client altogether (mostly because of Trump) and the way their contract is designed is that Twitter would still be up for tens of millions of (now unfulfilled) hosting contract fees. And that something they won’t digest. So really the decision to boot Trump had nothing to do with freedom of speech - its AWS who thretened to withdraw, and Twitter folks did some simple math and realized the loss from AWS contract would cost more than gains from RealDonaldTrump feed.
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#469I'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…
> What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of. I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is a s…
> not everything is a slippery slope
From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence. The bar for getting "canceled" is already moving down and honestly any company that is hosting user-driven content needs to have a plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar. Part of that plan should be projected scenarios about how low the bar will go....
Part of what is really dicey here too is that the result of getting this calculation wrong is basically annihilation for your service (unless you think you can operate without "every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers"). The stakes are really high!
(Edited to fix my 'raise-the-bar' analogy)
Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
#470I made an account on Parler last week, just to see. It is a cesspool of hate and delusion. I ran into some potentially illegal materials I wish to unsee, but cannot, encountered as I perused the streams chosen for me. The amount of crazy I saw made me fear posting anything, much less leaving replies that included reality, but failed to conform to their indoctrination.