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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#981

Post by sn_master »

nonbirithm wrote: post #975
sn_master wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"legal" in a democracy is something that only a court can decide. I don't know what was Parler's size, but in any website with millions of visitors a handful will post aweful things each day. Were those 98 posts posted by the same user? Did anyone report them and Parler refused to take them down? Were they popular or downvoted with few views?

There is already a precedent from decades ago. The U.S. and pretty much every developed country on Earth have laws against distributing and possessing child pornography, because child pornography creates a market for exploiting children and selling the recordings online. The universal consensus is that this kind of expression needs to be restricted in the strictest possible terms, because it causes material harm to d…

Child abuse websites all get seized and their owners arrested by a court order. The websites don't just get "blocked".

Parler was not, and in all likelihood, cannot be convicted, because they were only sharing speech. The SCOTUS even ruled that anti-gay-marriage was considered free and protected speech because a good percent of the population has different opinion than the rest. Same for pro-Trump material. He had seventy two million votes just a couple of months ago. That's not the same as child abuse which is universally condemned by the entire population.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#982

Post by michigan707 »

I am also questioning if shutting down Parler servers is a pure business decision. 90% of Americans don't know what AWS servers are so I don't think they would care if AWS kept running them or not. On the other site 70 millions Trump voters will certainly take notice when they are ready to place their next Amazon order.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#983

Post by flippinburgers »

jhowell wrote: post #725
imperio59 wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullying is real. My wife and I run a side Business Saas product. She is listed as COO on her social media profile for the company. She is also in a bunch of groups about gardening in our local area. During the height of BLM protests and CHOP/CHAZ, someone made a post that was very off-topic for the group, basically saying we should all support what was happening in the CHOP and all the violence against cops was just…

> My wife took no position on the issue but politely replied saying the post felt off-topic and she didn't want to hear about politics in her favorite gardening group. > Several people attacked her on the post, calling her white privileged, racist, etc... all for suggesting the post was off-topic (even though the group's own rules prohibited political content). Isn't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a s…

It is unreasonable to expect every individual to shoulder every "other" groups genuine or perceived injustices. It just is.

This new flavor of the month which attempts to make silence on an issue a state of complicity and therefore ... a sin is something that I find deeply manipulative.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#984

Post by sn_master »

DataSceince123 wrote: post #766
sn_master wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"disgusting" like what? Can you give a few examples? (legit ask, not denying it)

disgusting is anything anti-lgbt, anti progressive, anything that is a bi-erasure or trans smear. Disgusting is that which marginalizes or unfairly imputes the character of a minority community whether black, jewish, or hispanic, since these voices are not adequately represented

"jewish":

Trump's own daughter and grandsons are Jewish.

"black, hispanic":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc

"anti-lgbt":

Trump himself attended several gay marriages in public way before running for president, late 90s/early 00s. None of the examples Amazon or Twitter gave were anti-LGBT. Trump got 72 million votes. Statistically, there is 7 million LGBT atleast who voted for him.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#985

Post by ncallaway »

Closi wrote: post #872
ncallaway wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon can't shut down any company at the push of a button. It can only shut down a company from using its services. There are many other hosting providers in the world. If Parler hadn't hosted its service on AWS, then Amazon wouldn't be able to shut them down.

It can definitely shut down companies - I used to work at a supermarket that had most of its infra in AWS. If AWS was totally nuked getting systems back up properly would probably have taken months. Even trading would have taken a few days to be fully back. Even distribution centres operate on the cloud these days. Cloud migration at any scale isn’t a 24 hour process.

What you've written doesn't contradict anything that I've said.

> It can only shut down a company from using its services.

> Amazon can't shut down *any* company at the push of a button

If you've chosen to use AWS, then yes, Amazon can shut that down. If your business relies critically on AWS, then yes, Amazon can shut down your business.

But they can't shut down *any* company. There are lots of companies that don't rely on AWS and Amazon can't shut them down.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#986

Post by Jochim »

h3cate wrote: post #902
cactus2093 wrote: post #399

Earlier 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…

Did parler really try and overturn an election? Or did some of the people that use the site walk around a building?

I didn't know it was common to bludgeon police officers to death on your morning walk.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#987

Post by cactus2093 »

imgabe wrote: post #859
cactus2093 wrote: post #399

Earlier 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…

> For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Step back for a moment and ask yourself honestly: do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that there was even the slightest, faintest, remotest chance of the dude in the viking outfit overthrowing the US government? It was a violent protest that got way out of hand, absolutely. There was never even the slig…

Step back for a moment and ask yourself honestly: do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that Trump and his supporters were not trying to keep him in power when he had clearly lost the election?

That was their clear goal. It has been for months, and Trump himself has been saying as much in no uncertain terms. They were looking to intimidate, possible kidnap or kill, members of congress and the Vice President in order to prevent the results of the election from being confirmed.

It's easy to get political fatigue in the current climate, I understand the knee-jerk impulse to assume "hey, you're probably overreacting about this political issue". But some things really are a big deal. Like overturning an election.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#988

Post by totalZero »

zmb_ wrote: post #321

I'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…

Parler isn't the first app to get cut from app/play store, and it's not the first online service to be given the cold shoulder by its infrastructure providers.

If you rely on a provider, don't motivate the provider to end its relationship with you. The best mitigation here is, first, don't cater to fascists who want to tear apart the fabric of American society.

Second, if you're going to piss people off, either set up a contract that doesn't give your infrastructure provider the freedom to end its relationship with you, or do without the benefits of cloud. AWS isn't a utility, and its services are largely replaceable -- buy some computers and set up your own servers.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#989

Post by hchz »

Closi wrote: post #716
hchz wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States Government decided it was fair, in many administrative and legal venues, across the country. Many Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even under intense and illegal pressure from the President and his cadre. This platform was used to coordinate an insurrection against the United States Government, and refused to act against those doing so. The severity of insurrection in US legal code is su…

> The United States Government decided it was fair, in many administrative and legal venues, across the country. Many Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even under intense and illegal pressure from the President and his cadre. So if the Russian government and Russian courts decide their election was fair and just, should Amazon shut down any websites which counter that viewpoint? Because that's the preceden…

We're setting the precedent that supporting White Supremacist insurrection against the United States will get punished the same way each time.

Russia doesn't have democracy, and Amazon isn't a Russian company, so I hardly understand your analogy.

Why would you compare what Russia does to political prisoners with the military's discipline in the United States?

This may be news to you, but military service members are subject to an independent justice system with different protections, different laws, and different penalties.

You're arguing that US corporations should be restricted from taking action to suppress insurrection on the basis of having your head in the sand. The US should be in a state of emergency now, and it's obvious to me that it's solely because a white supremacist has replaced the civilian leadership of our government with those complicit in this act.

You're free to ignore what has happened, or believe in an alternate reality. Some of us would be guilty of violating our oaths were we to do the same.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#990

Post by satysin »

Cabal wrote: post #627
satysin wrote: post #264

This needs to happen. Parler is not a "social network" in the same way Twitter, Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation platform hiding behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer. I signed up for Parler 6 weeks ago and what I have seen from the platform is frightening. It isn't dumb memes and gifs but hardcore alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theories. Within hours of commenting on posts I was contacted a…

I've been a Parler user for multiple months and have never seen any of the activity like the above poster is claiming. While I occasionally read the far-right stuff for fun (and the far-left stuff on Twitter), my interests are mostly in tech. Never once has someone tried to "recruit" me for any of the above. I can only assume this nonsense is trolling/preaching to the choir, etc.

Understandable. If you do not engage in their conversations how are they to know you are there.
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