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You can't "slippery slope" when the quoted email makes it pretty clear that Amazon has outlined specific and clear problems that Parler has refused to address.

You can't "slippery slope" when the quoted email makes it pretty clear that Amazon has outlined specific and clear problems that Parler has refused to address. Unless your business is being used to post hate messages, including explicit threats to kill people, your concern is unwarranted. If it is, well, then you should probably reasonably actually be concerned about AWS shutting you down.

spaginal 6y ago
AWS has shown they will shut you down for political reasons. Intellectually, Parler hasn’t demonstrated anything other than the fact that they don’t politically fall in line with the red scare style feeling sweeping leftist politics and its associated supportive corporations.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  If demandinf murder is your political platform, and disallowing murder is leftist, then I guess AWS will shut you down for leftist political reasons, yeah.
- Sebguer 6y ago
  No, they've explicitly demonstrated that they're unwilling to moderate people making threats of violence, to a degree that Amazon is unwilling to continue to provide them with the tools to let their users make those threats. The right to threaten people with death is, weirdly enough, not actually a right.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Citation needed. Where?
- CodeShmode 6y ago
  Did you read the Parler screen captures in the article? They are blatently and directly calling for death and murder. Prohibiting the inciting of violence is not a political decision.
  - kristofferR 6y ago
    They're barely read, they have like 5 upvotes. You can't expect a startup with insane growth to employ hundreds of people in a week.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      Why not? They set themselves up as a free speech alternative to Twitter and begged people to move off that platform en masse. They already have the experience of Gab to consider. They knew what they were getting into, and this was exactly the sort of even they were hoping for (Trump being kicked off Twitter, huge numbers of people relocating to their platform).
  - spaginal 6y ago
    Are you telling me that Twitter and Facebook have 100% coverage on their platforms? Ha!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
billy_beef 6y ago
there is first amendment precedent for shutting down speech that incites violence. why is that not enough here?
- agensaequivocum 6y ago
  Because that's for the court to do not the platform.
  - billy_beef 6y ago
    so why engage the platform at all? seems like the courts could easily be tasked with dealing with this.
yanderekko 6y ago
>You can't "slippery slope" when the quoted email makes it pretty clear that Amazon has outlined specific and clear problems that Parler has refused to address Sure you can. Even if some of the circumstances will be different, it seems pretty obvious that this did not happen because of the simple facts in evidence regarding Parler, but because of the broader context that a lot of people were beginning to try to pressure Amazon to drop Parler. One could easily envision how this could also be successful in future cancellation campaigns - if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers. Do we really think this isn't going to happen absent a riot? We already have the rhetorical justification: "This is just private actors showing you the door."
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers. That's capitalism in action. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  For that to happen, you first have to be in violation of your contract like Parler was. They were in violation of the AWS AUP. For many services with millions of users, if you keep your head down, it can take them quite a while to notice you're in violation of your contract... but yes, if you make a bunch of people angry, one of those people is going to notice you're on AWS, pull up the AWS AUP that's published right on their website, see that you're in violation and report you. This should be obvious to everyone. The AUP is not a confidential agreement.. and everyone can see where your server is hosted.
- Sebguer 6y ago
  Again, you cannot claim a slippery slope when Amazon has made clear, and explicit asks of Parler that they have /refused/ to engage with. Parler does not want to moderate their platform of violent rhetoric, because their customer base is there to engage in violent rhetoric. If you think Parler should have the right to allow their users to continue to threaten violence to people, well, that's still not a slippery slope, because there is no precedent being set here other than "Amazon will not allow unmoderated calls for violence on their platform." Amazon always will, and always has, had the ability to terminate users for just about any reason. This is not them doing that, since they've provided a clear solution for Parler which is "stop allowing your users to make violent threats", and they've provided apparently an abundance of examples. Examples which Parler has not taken action against.
ImprobableTruth 6y ago
Why would you assume that Amazon is only ever going to stick to that? It's a self-imposed set of rules. What's stopping them from just changing the rules if they want to e.g. block sites critical of how they treat their workers?
- Sebguer 6y ago
  They don't need to change the rules. AWS can already terminate you at any point. In this case, they've very much not explicitly done that, and instead have given Parler warnings and clear requests to take specific actions to prevent their account from being terminated. Parler has decided not to cooperate, and Amazon is taking the next step, which is terminating that relationship. Amazon is a business, and can choose to do business with just about anyone they'd like, based on their stated terms. This isn't some weird turning point, and in fact, the email provided shows that Amazon isn't making this decision out of nowhere.
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    >They don't need to change the rules. AWS can already terminate you at any point That is literally my point, the 'rules' don't matter. The post that I responded to claimed that somehow there was no slippery slope here because they have rules after all. >Amazon is a business, and can choose to do business with just about anyone they'd like Well, that's how it currently is, but this doesn't apply to all businesses. An electric provider can't just cut you off because they don't like you, maybe it'd be a good idea to implement something similar for services that provide equally critical digital infrastructure?
- kristofferR 6y ago
  It's not hard to make an argument that referring to Amazon warehouse employees as slaves is violent speech, for example. For example Twitter argued [1] that Trumps statement of "75 million American patriots" could refer to the hundreds of Capitol rioters and that his statement of him not attending the inauguration, which Biden supports btw, was a signal that it's a safe target to attack. [1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

spaginal 6y ago

AWS has shown they will shut you down for political reasons. Intellectually, Parler hasn’t demonstrated anything other than the fact that they don’t politically fall in line with the red scare style feeling sweeping leftist politics and its associated supportive corporations.

alisonkisk 6y ago
If demandinf murder is your political platform, and disallowing murder is leftist, then I guess AWS will shut you down for leftist political reasons, yeah.
Sebguer 6y ago
No, they've explicitly demonstrated that they're unwilling to moderate people making threats of violence, to a degree that Amazon is unwilling to continue to provide them with the tools to let their users make those threats. The right to threaten people with death is, weirdly enough, not actually a right.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Citation needed. Where?
CodeShmode 6y ago
Did you read the Parler screen captures in the article? They are blatently and directly calling for death and murder. Prohibiting the inciting of violence is not a political decision.
- kristofferR 6y ago
  They're barely read, they have like 5 upvotes. You can't expect a startup with insane growth to employ hundreds of people in a week.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Why not? They set themselves up as a free speech alternative to Twitter and begged people to move off that platform en masse. They already have the experience of Gab to consider. They knew what they were getting into, and this was exactly the sort of even they were hoping for (Trump being kicked off Twitter, huge numbers of people relocating to their platform).
- spaginal 6y ago
  Are you telling me that Twitter and Facebook have 100% coverage on their platforms? Ha!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

billy_beef 6y ago

there is first amendment precedent for shutting down speech that incites violence. why is that not enough here?

agensaequivocum 6y ago
Because that's for the court to do not the platform.
- billy_beef 6y ago
  so why engage the platform at all? seems like the courts could easily be tasked with dealing with this.

yanderekko 6y ago

>You can't "slippery slope" when the quoted email makes it pretty clear that Amazon has outlined specific and clear problems that Parler has refused to address Sure you can. Even if some of the circumstances will be different, it seems pretty obvious that this did not happen because of the simple facts in evidence regarding Parler, but because of the broader context that a lot of people were beginning to try to pressure Amazon to drop Parler. One could easily envision how this could also be successful in future cancellation campaigns - if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers. Do we really think this isn't going to happen absent a riot? We already have the rhetorical justification: "This is just private actors showing you the door."

joshuamorton 6y ago
> if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers. That's capitalism in action. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
rgbrenner 6y ago
For that to happen, you first have to be in violation of your contract like Parler was. They were in violation of the AWS AUP. For many services with millions of users, if you keep your head down, it can take them quite a while to notice you're in violation of your contract... but yes, if you make a bunch of people angry, one of those people is going to notice you're on AWS, pull up the AWS AUP that's published right on their website, see that you're in violation and report you. This should be obvious to everyone. The AUP is not a confidential agreement.. and everyone can see where your server is hosted.
Sebguer 6y ago
Again, you cannot claim a slippery slope when Amazon has made clear, and explicit asks of Parler that they have /refused/ to engage with. Parler does not want to moderate their platform of violent rhetoric, because their customer base is there to engage in violent rhetoric. If you think Parler should have the right to allow their users to continue to threaten violence to people, well, that's still not a slippery slope, because there is no precedent being set here other than "Amazon will not allow unmoderated calls for violence on their platform." Amazon always will, and always has, had the ability to terminate users for just about any reason. This is not them doing that, since they've provided a clear solution for Parler which is "stop allowing your users to make violent threats", and they've provided apparently an abundance of examples. Examples which Parler has not taken action against.

ImprobableTruth 6y ago

Why would you assume that Amazon is only ever going to stick to that? It's a self-imposed set of rules. What's stopping them from just changing the rules if they want to e.g. block sites critical of how they treat their workers?

Sebguer 6y ago
They don't need to change the rules. AWS can already terminate you at any point. In this case, they've very much not explicitly done that, and instead have given Parler warnings and clear requests to take specific actions to prevent their account from being terminated. Parler has decided not to cooperate, and Amazon is taking the next step, which is terminating that relationship. Amazon is a business, and can choose to do business with just about anyone they'd like, based on their stated terms. This isn't some weird turning point, and in fact, the email provided shows that Amazon isn't making this decision out of nowhere.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  >They don't need to change the rules. AWS can already terminate you at any point That is literally my point, the 'rules' don't matter. The post that I responded to claimed that somehow there was no slippery slope here because they have rules after all. >Amazon is a business, and can choose to do business with just about anyone they'd like Well, that's how it currently is, but this doesn't apply to all businesses. An electric provider can't just cut you off because they don't like you, maybe it'd be a good idea to implement something similar for services that provide equally critical digital infrastructure?
kristofferR 6y ago
It's not hard to make an argument that referring to Amazon warehouse employees as slaves is violent speech, for example. For example Twitter argued [1] that Trumps statement of "75 million American patriots" could refer to the hundreds of Capitol rioters and that his statement of him not attending the inauguration, which Biden supports btw, was a signal that it's a safe target to attack. [1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

deleted 6y ago

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