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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

#591

Post by aegis4244 »

roenxi wrote: post #561
chalst wrote: 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…

Why is it "being enforced politically" or not important ? You are worried about it being "fair" ?

Some humans who run a biz serving other humans stood up and announced "you and you camp Auschwitz shirt friends are odious, we don't want that stank on us".

Is it political ? Maybe. Or maybe they are simply decent humans calling out some pieces of shit.

Other times and places in history people haven't stood up to the evil. In some, they did.

Amazon is fighting the good fight here. Facebook has been an open collaborator. Amazon drew a line in the sand and said " we are on this side, hope you join us"

Amazon was late, but ended up on the right side of history. Evil needs to be told that the rest of us think they are wrong. They can't figure it out on their own.

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

#592

Post by fjabre »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #439
fjabre wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cheated. And in several elections. Hats off. I know they did because the motive was there and the cost too great. I have faith in all men to make the same decisions when the time comes. Clearly there was cheating on both sides.

Does “clearly” mean you have evidence? It sounds like your argument is that everyone will cheat if they have the chance.

Most people will cheat in high stakes games. That's why I give it a high probability in a high stakes game like the last election.

I know everyone wants hard evidence but I'm establishing motives. I cannot possibly prove any of this to you.

Certainly not enough of anything to convict anyone just to point out that the likelihood of cheating on both sides was very high in the last election.

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

#593

Post by ThomPete »

TomSwirly wrote: post #584
ThomPete wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Why Parler? There are lots of other social media platforms out there using AWS with the same kind of rhetoric so that's not a good explanation or reason.

"Because you haven't yet punished all offenders, you can't punish any of them." Am I getting your argument right? Parler was the most gratuitous because: 1. They had a combination of very tight censorship of dissenting voices, and complete laissez-faire for violent and racist rhetoric as long as it was right wing. 2. It was used to organize a violent and very public revolution against the United States of America, wh…

It must be nice to be a mind reader.

I don't care about Parler or crazy righ-wingers. I just care about the inconsistency with which these big platforms seems to be acting and so far I haven't seen anything provide a proper explanation for why Parler and not some of the other social networks out there.

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

#594

Post by duxup »

lordloki wrote: post #581
duxup wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say I have a platform that someone used it to gather support for and planning some sort of attack on my local democracy. Lat's say they're successful and they can impose their own policies that do not include free speech. I'm pretty short on free speech now... It's hard to ignore that.

So you support the abolition of free speech to preemptively keep a hypothetical free speech abolitionist group from abolishing free speech?

If I'm running a platform and it's mine, I'm not impacting anyone's right to free speech... they have no such right on my platform.

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

#595

Post by Consultant32452 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #458
Consultant32452 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed those claims in my last paragraph.

I saw a lot more than screenshots. I saw a violent insurrection against the US government unfold on live TV, incited by Trump himself, with the goal of overthrowing the results of a fair election, armed sedition justified by disproven lies, which was planned and promoted and published in real time on Parler. I also saw a map of the GPS data from Parler users who posted live videos and photos of themselves storming th…

Great. Now provide the same analysis for Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, etc. The livestreams I watched which were streamed from within the WhiteHouse during the event were all on Periscope (Twitter).

I have no doubt that some Parler users went into the White House. I haven't seen any evidence that Parler had no moderation. I haven't seen any evidence that Parler was any different than Facebook or Twitter with regard to users planning illegal/violent acts, making violent comments, etc.

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

#596

Post by astura »

roenxi wrote: post #571
zaphar wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you are presenting is the worldview of someone who is biased. I do suspect AWS was thinking that - which is why I'm not ruling out political bias. Even if that interpretation of the Capitol riot somehow, miraculously, turns out to be correct there hasn't been time to prove it with evidence. But, as chalst argues, there are interpretations where they were acting reasonably.

Yeah, you're going to find that most people are very much biased against enabling a violent coup on the government that is being really good to them. A coup that, if successful, has the potential to endanger their entire business, their wealth, and possibly their lives.

BTW, "you're biased" is not, in and of itself, a reason to entirely shut down an argument as invalid.

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

#597

Post by ardy42 »

kortilla wrote: post #554
newacct583 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent. > If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it? You mean un…

> Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent.

That's misleading. While there was definitely unacceptable activity that slipped through Facebook's moderation, they were making attempts to stop it.

IIRC, a lot of the organization activity on Facebook acted as a funnel to places like Parler. E.g. a protest event on Facebook, calculated to comply with its policies, which linked to Parler or Gab where more illicit planning could take place.

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

#598

Post by nitrogen »

ardy42 wrote: post #588
nitrogen wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results.…

> Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results. What now? I pretty explicitly humanized them, and even shifted the blame a way from them. Personally, I think a lot of them are being shamelessly used and exploited. > I…

Claiming that anyone who disagrees with your conclusions didn't come to their opinions on their own, but through propaganda, implies that they can't think for themselves but you can. That is at best belittling, if not dehumanizing. It fails to acknowledge that, bizarre as what's happening on the right is, the same rhetoric and reasoning w.r.t. propaganda applies to anyone. Believing those with whom you disagree to be brainwashed, as seems to be so popular on all sides these days, will fully prevent ever healing the rifts between groups.

This patronizing belief that "those" people need to be protected from manipulation is used as more fuel on the fire. Thus the cycle of radicalization is amplified. Any victory gained by force will create the will within the defeated to build an opposing force.

Instead we have to look for the underlying causes (e.g. opioid epidemic, loss of opportunities, counterproductive cultural aversion to education, etc.) that drive people to rally together under the first cause that promises to help them, and address those.

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

#600

Post by ardy42 »

sammax wrote: post #570
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-bann…

> 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.

IIRC, Parler billed itself as an unmoderated "free speech" space [1]. IIRC, what little moderation it had was done by unpaid volunteer moderators, which in this case is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/parler-apple-g...: "Over the past several months, Parler has become one of the fastest-growing apps in the United States. Millions of President Trump’s supporters have flocked to it as Facebook and Twitter increasingly cracked down on posts that spread misinformation and incited violence, including muzzling Mr. Trump by removing his accounts this past week. By Saturday morning, Apple listed Parler as the No. 1 free app for its iPhones."

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