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

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#51

Post by jtbayly »

yashap wrote: post #44
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?

Amazon’s main argument seems to be that they’ve been asking Parler to remove overt calls to violence since mid/late November, but Parler have refused. While Twitter does moderate this sort of thing, especially when asked to do so. I believe Twitter has been deleting #KillMikePence Tweets that are actually calling for violence, but haven’t been moderating Tweets that aren’t overt threats, like “OMG #KillMikePence was…

I can immediately find BLM and antifa calls for violence like this on Twitter and FB.

I can also report them and it might be removed fairly quickly. How? Remember all those articles about the practical slave labor camps of content reviewers with psychological problems that everybody was horrified by? And how we said we needed to stop doing that? Yeah, Parler doesn't have those slave camps.

And by the way, do you know how long it took for FB and Twitter to get to semi-decent moderation?

FTA: “During one of the calls, Parler’s CEO reported that Parler had a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violated its community standards and remained on its service.”

Parler might have refused on some of them, but the above is obviously a big part of the issue. Plus, if some people are willing to justify Twitter leaving up the "hang Mike Pence" stuff, then surely there will be some disagreement about what exactly should be removed on Parler based on context, yes?

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#52

Post by JamesBarney »

filleokus wrote: post #34

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/v…

I had the same thoughts. Just from an operational standpoint if your selling point is "we'll host the content one one else will" you should probably be self hosting or at the very least renting a rack from someone who is contractually obligated not to pull the plug on you.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#53

Post by JamesBarney »

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?

This was addressed in the document. The basic answer is AWS doesn't host Twitter(so it's not hypocritical), and Twitter blocked this phrase.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#54

Post by yashap »

gfodor wrote: post #48
yashap wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon’s main argument seems to be that they’ve been asking Parler to remove overt calls to violence since mid/late November, but Parler have refused. While Twitter does moderate this sort of thing, especially when asked to do so. I believe Twitter has been deleting #KillMikePence Tweets that are actually calling for violence, but haven’t been moderating Tweets that aren’t overt threats, like “OMG #KillMikePence was…

DMCA takedowns are defined by the legal system. The system you are describing here is completely defined by these companies. They are in their right to do so, but we ought to ask the question if we should introduce a legal structure like the DMCA to standardize it from a legal standpoint. This would cut both ways: if they de-platformed people complying with the standard, they would be in the wrong. As it is right now…

Yeah, at the moment companies are pretty free to refuse service like this, based on their own policies, but I think there’s a decent argument for a legal framework. The biggest tech companies are indeed a core place that communication happens, I believe formalizing what types of content should and shouldn’t be moderated could be a good idea.

This would be very contentious, though. Many, many Americans would be strongly against the government telling private companies how to moderate speech on their platforms. It may even be unconstitutional - would a formal, legal framework represent the government restricting free speech?

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#55

Post by detaro »

finikytou wrote: post #25

I struggle to understand how it is not a way to remove a competitor and move the spotlight from those companies doing a good deed vs the black duck being parler. Twitter let ISIS terrorists post beadings and murders on its platform. A simple search on any racial keyword will show plenty of hatred that is everywhere on its platform. Facebook, not even talking about what they do, the way they use data, advertise, and l…

> not a way to remove a competitor

Competitor to what? Amazon isn't particularly relevant in the social media space. (Goodreads and IMDB are the most social sites they run afaik, and that's a bit far fetched)

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#56

Post by jfengel »

dgellow wrote: post #41
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…

For sure, that's horrible. But the hot question is: is Amazon the entity who should decide to shut it down? I would personally prefer to have that decision be taken by a governmental agency or anything else managed by an elected person. Now, I'm not a US citizen, and I have zero trust in the current US administration, but in a "normal" context I would want to have at least some governmental overview of the shutdown p…

Here's another hot question: if it were your computer, would you like a government agency telling you if you should leave it up or take it down?

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#57

Post by gfodor »

yashap wrote: post #54
gfodor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMCA takedowns are defined by the legal system. The system you are describing here is completely defined by these companies. They are in their right to do so, but we ought to ask the question if we should introduce a legal structure like the DMCA to standardize it from a legal standpoint. This would cut both ways: if they de-platformed people complying with the standard, they would be in the wrong. As it is right now…

Yeah, at the moment companies are pretty free to refuse service like this, based on their own policies, but I think there’s a decent argument for a legal framework. The biggest tech companies are indeed a core place that communication happens, I believe formalizing what types of content should and shouldn’t be moderated could be a good idea. This would be very contentious, though. Many, many Americans would be strong…

It really depends on the details. We already have very strong legal standards around what speech is legal under the 1st amendment. If the laws surrounding corporate governance of speech effectively extend that framework into the private sector, that would probably be a fruitful debate - those who most support corporate agency are also most likely to support speech freedom maximalism. (At least, that was probably the case until recently, since now I think a lot of people are unfortunately changing their minds around how damaging large monopolistic tech companies are for society since they're seeing them flex their unprecedented power in a direction they agree with.)

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#58

Post by finikytou »

detaro wrote: post #55
finikytou wrote: post #25

I struggle to understand how it is not a way to remove a competitor and move the spotlight from those companies doing a good deed vs the black duck being parler. Twitter let ISIS terrorists post beadings and murders on its platform. A simple search on any racial keyword will show plenty of hatred that is everywhere on its platform. Facebook, not even talking about what they do, the way they use data, advertise, and l…

> not a way to remove a competitor Competitor to what? Amazon isn't particularly relevant in the social media space. (Goodreads and IMDB are the most social sites they run afaik, and that's a bit far fetched)

competitor as a technology company and as a platform. amazon just wanted to participate to something "good" so that they look like the good guys... How about them destroying small businesses and coming out of covid as one of the only marketplace on earth that made billions out of people misery and despair? Id rank that way higher than a bunch of conspiracy theorist on a shady and bad twitter-clone.

I wonder if they'd do same when the CCP is hosting stuff on their server such as list of people or software that directly help to put people into jail.

There is a tendency within tech to think there are bad guys and good guys. I see 0 difference between palantir/parler and amazon,fb,google. Or yes there is. the scale of the later is way scarier and way more dangerous for us. aaron schwartz sad death anniversary was 2 days ago and yet we never learn, we don't understand that this is just showing how dangerous those platforms can be for the people.

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#59

Post by JamesBarney »

gfodor wrote: post #50
JamesBarney wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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 and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it. When it's more t…

I'll admit the use of 'unilateral' here is probably poor, I don't know the proper one. These companies exert monopoly power in the markets they are in. Decisions made by companies which are monopolies are "unilateral-ist" because once a small number of them make a decision together (perhaps colluding) then it leaves no recourse for the person or group they are deciding against. Mentioned elsewhere, the process we sho…

Banning content moderation unless you have a judge's order seems like it could be problematic. If this law existed could dang still ban people for people for being a-holes and not following site guidelines or would he need a court order?

Re: AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

#60

Post by dgellow »

newacct583 wrote: post #49
dgellow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> 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. It has been suggested by many people that in fact the causality goes the other way. The reason for the near-simultaneous action against Parler from Twilio, Google, Apple and Amazon seems likely to h…

I agree with your last sentence. If that's what actually happened, the situation is completely different and the general debate is really missing an important point.
Post reply on HN