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Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

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Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#561
post #547
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't motivated reasoning, it is profound scepticism around how Amazon could have (1) identified the risk Parler was breaching their TOS (2) confirmed their suspicious and (3) ejected them from AWS in the time-frame that actually happened. Parler seems to have been caught completely unaware that there was a risk of AWS cancelling their service, so presumably there wasn't any serious attempt by Amazon to seek corre…

AWS drew attention to the violation of the TOS in mid November and provided extensive documentation of the kind of content they regarded as unacceptable in mid December [1]. You seem unaware of the most basic facts of the case. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

I am unaware, I'm not planning on reading the case details until after a month or two has passed. Best to get a little hindsight.

That is an interesting exhibit, thanks. It has swayed me on the time-frame, I'm not sure it changes my basic view - the AWS rep is talking about literally 3 posts in mid November, one of which seems to have 450 views in 5 days if the eye icon means what I think. From politely raising 3 horrible posts to extinguishing a business in a month and a half still leaves me questioning if the TOS was enforced politically.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they probably know they have no case but are trying to fan the flames of the culture war to generate support and keep their name in the media until they find other hosting services.

This seems likely. They bring a weak case, and when it gets thrown out, they can say that further proves their victimhood.

Victimhood, the new oil of the 21st century.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis. The two services simply aren't comparable. You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You…

> a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Funny you should bring those news stories up, because they are often focused on how understaffed these efforts are. On a moderator to 100k user ratio, Facebook and Parler had effectively the same (0). Just because Facebook pays a few hundred people to suffer…

2.8B mau & 15000 moderators is .5 per 100k for facebook.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#564
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the conclusions of a recent purge by Reddit was that it just pushed the banned users into even more radical spaces online[2]. You should re-read it. It offers that as a possibility , with terms like "may" and "could have". It does not conclude it did happen; it notes that some users migrated, but that's not at all surprising. The hardcore folks are likely to always wind up somewhere, but driving them off Red…

Actually, there is a lot of weak evidence out there that de-platforming actually worked as intended. It did push some users to more radical spaces, but it also made it very difficult for weakly-interested users to be pushed into the space and become further radicalized. When 'the algorithm' can no longer suggest a slightly more radical version of the content you are currently viewing because that version has been de-…

I think you're agreeing with me?

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#565
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, there is a lot of weak evidence out there that de-platforming actually worked as intended. It did push some users to more radical spaces, but it also made it very difficult for weakly-interested users to be pushed into the space and become further radicalized. When 'the algorithm' can no longer suggest a slightly more radical version of the content you are currently viewing because that version has been de-…

I think you're agreeing with me?

Yes, probably should have been a bit more clear about my point. It was not just Reddit and I think the evidence is a bit stronger than you hint at. The fundamental problem facing the 'free speech uber alles' crowd is that there is a growing body of evidence that shows how de-platforming works to limit and contain the most violent and toxic online actors.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning potentially monopolistic behavior. IF data storage and/or social media can be viewed as critical digital infrastructure, an argument can and will likely be made that the services are tantamount to a digital company owned town. We'll see! Either way it's very interesting and highly relevant to the indust…

> (32% market share) isn't a monopoly Well, neither was Standard Oil by that definition. Of course, we already know how to solve the problem of companies having too much leverage due to owning too big verticals - namely to break them up. Not to institute everything-goes rules.

Standard Oil controlled over 90% of production and nearly that percent of final sales.

Courts have never as far as I can find used antitrust on an actor controlling a market at the low level Amazon has here. Can you find such a case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#567
post #561
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS drew attention to the violation of the TOS in mid November and provided extensive documentation of the kind of content they regarded as unacceptable in mid December [1]. You seem unaware of the most basic facts of the case. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

I am unaware, I'm not planning on reading the case details until after a month or two has passed. Best to get a little hindsight. That is an interesting exhibit, thanks. It has swayed me on the time-frame, I'm not sure it changes my basic view - the AWS rep is talking about literally 3 posts in mid November, one of which seems to have 450 views in 5 days if the eye icon means what I think. From politely raising 3 hor…

Let's game plan for a moment. You are a hosting provider. One of your customers is violating your TOS and posting content that is objectionable. They are potentially big and growing customer so you are giving them time to respond while you try to weight the cost and benefit of enforcement at this time.

While you are working though this the customer is used as a platform to organize an attack on the government of the the country you are based in. 5 people died as a result and there is every indication that if the attack had gone the way the attackers wanted it to that more would be dead including the Vice President of the United States.

Suddenly the cost calculation changes. It has become evident over the several months of negotiation that the customer has 0 intention of coming into compliance. The speech they are hosting has already resulted in a very large and very visible terrorist act. They have ceased to be profit center and become a liability. What do you do?

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#568
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peruse https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/parlers-new-serverless-ar... Unless you are building your webservice like it's 1998 (And webservices in 1998 sucked ), you can't really disentangle from hosted solutions.

Sure you can, and lots of people do.

Heck, I do it in my current job. It's not that different from running in AWS.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#569
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It provided the platform for organising the summer of rioting the US has just seen. Twitter was literally closing accounts and deleting tweets that called for violence during that summer. There was quite a lot of complaining where twitter done it in ambiguous situations. Twitter was not perfect. But twitter was definitely at least trying. Twitter would not had issue to delete clear calls for violence that Amazon wo…

there are still plenty of tweets that havent been deleted.

Yes. And it does not matter, because perfection is not required. Requiring perfection is just rhetorical trick to create false equivalency.

Amazon did not required perfection from Parler. Amazon is taking down Parler, because Parler did not even pretended to care about the issue. They have not done even token effort. Amazon is not taking down Parler for few bad message Parler did missed or were ambiguous.

Instead, Parler refused to take down messages Amazon pointed at few weeks ago. If Amazon sends twitter similar messages and twitter will ignore the Amazon for weeks or will respond with "we cant take them down, impossible", then it would be the same. That did not happened.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit bans whole subs when they get too out of hand to moderate, while Parler effectively is one of those banned subs. Amazon presented a record of months of complaints about specific pieces of violent content on Parler, to which Parler not only didn't respond, but in fact waved off by saying they had a backlog of tens of thousands of similar pieces of content. Reddit would have killed the toxic sub and been done wi…

> Amazon presented a record of months of complaints about specific pieces of violent content on Parler, to which Parler not only didn't respond, but in fact waved off by saying they had a backlog of tens of thousands of similar pieces of content. They were adding six digit numbers of users a day. Was a temporary backlog that unreasonable? > Reddit bans whole subs when they get too out of hand to moderate, while Parle…

> And I think that's the root of it. "Nuke from orbit" against something that had the capacity to be saved through measures dramatically less drastic than that.

But Parler _didn't even try_ any of these less drastic measures. They could have properly moderated, or if that's not possible because they were growing so fast they could have limited posts from new users, or added moderation bots, or could have blanket-banned the most problematic subgroups. They didn't do these things.

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