Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

I think there's a useful divide between "what should a platform allow" vs "what should an app store allow" vs "what should fundamental infrastructure for the web allow"

While I think Apple and Google are within their rights to remove an entry point to an app that has incited violence over the past week, I'm not sure I feel the same about Amazon / aws (or GCP if it had been hosted on Google).

If you remove Facebook from the app store, we could all still access the web frontend, just not the app.

Banning a site from ec2, though, feels more like Cloudflare removing ddos protection.

I don't know what was on parler. I don't know how bad it was. My thesis, though (and I think stratechery/Ben Thompson would agree), is that Amazon should require a much higher bar before banning something from ec2 than either Apple or Google do.

Fwiw, I don't think this is "coordinated" so much as big companies responding simultaneously to potential (or already ignited) PR fires

A thought experiment to test the du jour premise in extreme:

Scenario: US is at war abroad. Government officials, military, and pro-war political wing is using social networks to rally the nation, urge continued fighting, etc.

Tech companies' leadership, being pacifist and against war, decide to deplatform the war party all together. Attempts to establish alternative means of mass communication by pro-war party (and the government!) are blocked as even Cloud Providers ban them.

My conclusion (ymmv) running above in my head: national security trumps private property considerations, and those suggesting private capital operating mass communication networks and system, can behave as they please are wrong.

[p.s. What happens to Pentagon and JEDI and MS cloud, if Microsoft leadership turns pacifists in middle of a war? "Private company" can do as it pleases? The premise is ludicrous when state interests are concerned.]

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Deplatforming a sitting POTUS before constitutional means (impeachment|25th) have legally removed him from office is technically an element of a coup. Two basic things happen in coups: control of mass media, and military brass ignoring chain of command.

For the record, IMHO, there is no way FANGs would dare this if they did not have a greenlight from Pentagon and the Alphabet soup agencies.

How is this not collusion? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/collusion.asp

In 1967 the black panthers invaded the California capitol building armed with rifles.

Over the summer of 2020 protestors laid siege to the Federal building in Portland for 100 days straight.

I can list tons of riots and violent direct actions that have happened over the years. Read about the NOW bombing in Philadelphia. Oklahoma City. Waco. The Weather Report. On and on and on.

Elevating the Jan 6th direct action, however scary, tragic, and misguided it might be, to some higher level of ‘coup’ or ‘insurrection’ isn’t rational.

It is another chapter in a long line of crazy events happening around political conflict in the US.

As such, it doesn’t, in my opinion, warrant rethink everything.

I think you can still believe in free speech as defined by the 1st amendment and still conclude that these companies acted ethically. Trump and his troglodytes have other ways to reachbtheir audience. They have not bee prevented by the force of law from saying what they want to say. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to private companies and nor does it guarantee a platform. There were platforms back when it was formulated (newspapers). So, i don't think it is a case of "platforms did not exist so the 1st amendment could not account for them"