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Big Tech is the new deep state

58 points by draklor40 6y ago

Hnrobert42 6y ago
Before the internet, if you had a dangerous, fringe idea, your community would ostracize you and your idea would die. Now, you can find the fringe from all the other communities. I think it is good that our community has found a way to ostracize fringe, dangerous ideas.
- fvdessen 6y ago
  And now if Big Tech has a dangerous idea they have all the power to advertise it and also to silence the counter-arguments.
  - w8tTh0 6y ago
    They’ve not been silenced. They’ve been displaced. Encrypted email is still a thing. Decentralized internet is still a thing. How many malls are going to let violent donkeys in? Are they deep state for de-platforming a massacre? Free speech is under attack when you would force workers to participate in speech they do not want to redistribute. Freedom from pressure to serve everyone is exactly what the right wanted over gay wedding cakes. DIY, exceptional people. Quit expecting everyone else to bend over backwards to satisfy your rustled jimmies.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- xyzelement 6y ago
  The problem is - who decides what should be fringe and ostracized? At different times in history, women's rights, abolition, etc were all heretical ideas that the majority would want to squish if they could.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    We all do, collectively. That’s how society works. If you try to take “who among us can say what is right?” to the logical extreme, you get into situations like “should we not teach in schools that democracy is preferable to fascism?”
    - ptero 6y ago
      Democracy vs fascism is the discussion I hope you can win on merits. In fact I wouldn't mind honest debates on this topic at schools: it can serve to vaccinate people against intolerance and extremism. Communities that shut down such discussions are usually authoritarian sects built on faith in a leader's guidance, not enlightened democracies.
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Let’s actually switch examples to the Civil Rights Movement. That shows up on the curriculum in kindergarten. Would you have five year olds debating the merits of segregation? Consider that people were having debates about whether things like democracy and slavery and caste systems were good for centuries before people got on board. And plenty of people still aren’t! What should the teacher do if the kids on Debate Team Jim Crow actually win the debate? Step in and say “actually, equality is better, let me show you why”? Or do we now have a bunch of kids who go through life thinking that we actually should make Black people drinking from different water fountains? I also suspect that plenty of teachers themselves are not quite as bought in on racial equality as we’d hope. Because problem is that segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong. It took us hundreds of years to get here, and if we’re going to get further it will be because we drew a line in the sand and said “hey, treating people in this particular way is just better than doing it this other way”.
        ptero 6y ago
        I did not follow your reasoning about 5 years old debating the merits of segregation, can you elaborate? Many topics are introduced at young age, and can take many years until they become a part of the person's worldview that they person can meaningfully defend. But it better reach that state for key topics before the person is out of school. > segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong. Ouch! Fascism and segregation are morally wrong, but just as important they produce systems and societies that exhibit horrible features and, time and again, crumble and fail. Morality is pliable -- many things considered good two generations ago can now seen as morally wrong and vice versa. When your grandkids ask "grandpa, why did you break/prohibit/deplatform/cancel X?" you may want something better to stand on than "because we had that power and we could". Because that is how your argument reads to me.
- NhanH 6y ago
  What happened to the internet being able to empower marginalized idea, thinking out of the box and stuff like that?
  - eat_veggies 6y ago
    "marginalized idea" like white supremacy, and "thinking out of the box" like planning an armed attack on the capitol? Yeah, what happened to the internet?
  - bborud 6y ago
    If by thinking out of the box you and empowering marginalized ideas you are saying that the companies have a duty to provide the infrastructure and tools for planning violence and the disruption of democracy, then I suspect you will find that not many people in tech are too comfortable with playing an enabling role. We have been presented with a slice of reality. The legislative branch of a superpower was stormed, normal democratic process was disrupted and people were killed. A mob was egged on by lies and conspiracy theories spread by a president who is effectively trying to set in motion a coup d'etat. It is likely that this isn't the last such event we will see in the coming years. What do you think ought to be done?
    - NhanH 6y ago
      Putting those people committing the act you mentioned on trial and proceeds from that. Wait until Parler is sued or prosecuted, and if a court order to shut it down. Go ahead. There are already tools to deal with bad actors, it's the knee-jerk reactions that I don't like.
      - bborud 6y ago
        Why should companies be under any obligation to support groups who undermine democracy and incite violence? Is it not fair to allow companies to choose _not_ to support hate groups? Regardless of whether they have been successfully prosecuted in a cour of law or not. Should we not have the freedom of choosing with whom we would like to associate? Is it not hypocritical to expect companies to provide resources to hate groups on the grounds of "freedom of expression" when those same groups have shown, by their actions, that they themselves oppose freedom of expression and expel anyone who voices disagreement? You appear to be confusing the government and private companies here. Government must follow a far more stringent set of rules in which certain determinations have to be done by courts. Private companies are under no such obligations when it comes to enabling speech. You are arguing that one should be able to compel people to promote hate speech. May may not intend to argue that case, but by what is presumably thoughtlessness, that is what you appear to be doing.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  But Big Techs ideals are dangerous and fringe from the lens of like 70% of the world (Democratic social norms like gender is a social construct, trans women are literally women, not being anti-racist is being racist, pro-abortion, etc. are not acceptable to the vast majority of people on Earth). Now they are free to go on promoting those ideas to the population, slowly and surely winning as they control the world's megaphones and are cheered on by people who can stop them while they silence dissenters.
- seneca 6y ago
  The difference is that now we've centralized who decides what is "dangerous [and] fringe". Many of the ideas that are popular at big tech companies are considered exactly that by many people. Now, instead of each community deciding what's acceptable for themselves it's a small handful of companies from California deciding for everyone.
- chongli 6y ago
  We can ostracize but it remains to be seen whether we can halt the spread. Ostracism can lead to more alienation and confirmation bias for conspiracy theories. I think it’s too late to turn the ship around at this point though. We’ve done nothing at all to address working class and rural alienation. Now we’ve got to somehow weather the storm.
jcastro 6y ago
> The point was how quickly Big Tech swooped-in Seems like an odd definition of "quickly" to me.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Google, Apple, and Amazon banned Parler exactly the same day. How is that not quick and coordinate?
  - bena 6y ago
    The word you were looking for was coordinated. It also wasn't in his post or his quote. And you know why you added that, because you know quick can easily be disputed by simply looking back in time. Parler was on the services from 2018 to now. 2+ years is hardly "quick".
  - timbit42 6y ago
    Google banned Parler the day before Apple and Amazon. Apple's ban was announced the day Google banned Parler but they gave Parler 24 hours notice to comply, which they didn't.
prh8 6y ago
For all the "making the world a better place," it seems so many in tech would rather it be the downfall of society, just to make a stand on the absolute extremes of some hypothetical principles.
- eplanit 6y ago
  We just didn't realize what their idea of "better" is... they meant make the world (starting with America) like communist China.
  - prh8 6y ago
    Pretty sure if you attempt insurrection in China, it's going to end much worse for you than it did here.
- croissants 6y ago
  I don't understand this comment -- what are the "absolute extremes of some hypothetical principles" you're referring to?
  - prh8 6y ago
    The two main things are privacy and freedom. For various political discussions this year, it seems many on here believe in absolute privacy even when it's not reasonable: ie. privacy in your own home is good but that doesn't include being able to commit murder and be protected. Freedom of speech is good, but I don't think it extends to political figures being able to incite violence. And honestly, my comment was somewhat hyperbolic, in response to a lot of the discussion that occurred last night on this topic of Amazon vs Parler. Many people were equating the violence of Wednesday with "somebody not liking us," trying to suggest that this single extreme situation is an indicator of Amazon/big tech freely making political decisions (much like this linked article) for run of the mill things. I appreciate your polite question and your critical-thinking takes in your comment history.
    - croissants 6y ago
nippoo 6y ago
In this case I'm glad for the de-platforming of Parler, Trump etc. But as a knock-on effect, for anyone thinking of doing anything potentially controversial (and not just on the political right - this applies for things like WikiLeaks, and even Wikipedia itself - hosting "illegal numbers" etc) this will make companies think twice before relying on apps and the likes of AWS. For the moment, at least, webapps (vs app store apps) and self-hosted servers (potentially in a different country) are much safer from this kind of existential risk...
- xyzelement 6y ago
  Exactly the point. We shouldn't cheer sensorship of the "other" because once we have allowed it to be an acceptable tool, it will inevitably swing against us as well when someone finds our views inconvenient. When I was growing up, the ACLU would defend the rights of neo-nazis to speak, etc, because liberal people understood that if you don't protect the rights of the extreme you lose those rights yourself. It's shocking to me how quickly people seem to have lost hold of these principles.
temp 6y ago
>If the BIG TECH majority even find you a threat, not only will they cut off your ability to communicate, or deploy to a server across the world, but even prevent you from writing software in the First place. This seems like an exaggeration. There are alternatives to hosting your platform on AWS. Of course, you're not supposed to allow users on your platform to issue death threats and act like you're not supposed to do anything about it. I can't agree with holding Parler as an example of "freedom and the openess of the internet".
- eznzt 6y ago
  >This seems like an exaggeration. There are alternatives to hosting your platform on AWS. The point of TFA is that this is nullified when all hosts coordinate to take down services they do not like.
smoyer 6y ago
Until recently I worked at a university - we had several data-centers, multiple fiber connections to the Internet2 as well as direct connections to both AWS and Azure. We were ready to move many of our core services to AWS when COVID hit but our systems were designed to run on a Kubernetes cluster so we could theoretically run locally or on any cloud. This takes me back to my first Internet connection which was a partial T1 line back to a mid-tier Internet provider. We ran everything over that connection except for our main sales page and had a lot more autonomy. The provider didn't care what was running over that connection so long as they got paid. My point is that I don't think the higher education institutions (where the Internet initially flourished) will be affected, nor will the big companies who already have connections as described above. Those of us who have traded our autonomy for cheaper operating costs and more convenience will indeed find that we've lot a lot of the control we used to have.
- seneca 6y ago
  What happens when ISPs decide to deplatform you? Domain registrars, certificate authorities? What about banks? At some point you're dependent on another entity if you want to exist on the internet. I think a noble goal would be to change that, but we're far away from it.
  - w8tTh0 6y ago
    There’s a long held principle that one is not above social ostracism as a result of their actions. Other people are biological creatures too, with all the same warts. I think a noble goal would be for you personally accept that’s an arbitrary goal, expecting others to adopt it is exactly the problem you hate. If we all adopt that goal, where is the alternative thought? Is there right to question that goal? Or protest that goal? Round n round we go, regurgitating banal rhetoric, ignoring what it means in physical reality terms. Emit whatever syntax you want. No one else is obliged to agree with or act according to the semantics. Expecting such is exactly the problem.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  Some emails of my university are filtered by Hotmail. They don't go to the spam folder, there is no bounce message, they just evaporate. It's getting harder and harder to have your own email server.
airza 6y ago
Look, if your party throws everything out the window to weaken the regulatory authority of the government, and to encourage corporations' eclipsing of power, and then the extremely powerful corporations decide they are tired of facilitating your snakepit of facists, and the government is toothless to intervene... Maybe some kind of contemplation about the path that led you to this point is reasonable? I don't really have any sympathy anyway, but this is 50+ years of ideological chickens coming home to roost.
reallyreallyyy 6y ago
Should AWS and peers be compelled to host websites for Isis and other terrorist organizations? I think it makes sense that these companies do not want to be responsible for giving a platform to individuals who espouse violent viewpoints. That's what this is. Parler has become a hotbed of radical and violent extremists calling for murder of politicians and people in the media. These companies didn't shut off parler "quickly". They waited until after Parler took a large part in helping organize a violent mob that assaulted the capital.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Considering that the US considers some legitimate organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas (groups which are democratically elected representatives of their constituents) to be terrorists, yeah I don't trust the US or AWS to determine for me who is and isn't a terrorist.
- herdcall 6y ago
  Don't judge Parler with what you hear from the mainstream media. I'm on Parler and there a lot of intelligent conversations there that give you the other side, which is so hard to get otherwise (which is why I joined). Yes, I'm sure there are some crazies there, but there are many, many more by numbers on Twitter. Please join Parler and judge for yourself, don't trust the media narrative.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- twittersthesame 6y ago
  > Parler has become a hotbed of radical and violent extremists calling for murder of politicians and people in the media. Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook all have the same problem. The only way you can argue Parler being kicked out of AWS is right and Parler shouldn't be able to operate is if you think those sites should be shut down too. With some of the comments I've seen here, honestly, this site gets close sometimes too. Anybody want to talk about BDS? Because that's certainly advocating for violence and the death of lots of Jews and it's very popular among the Justice Democrats and their followers, just as an example. They consider it justified violence, just like the article "In Defense of Looting" did, but proponents of political violence always consider themselves justified. That was published by NPR, so I guess they should be shut down too, right? Or is this actually about silencing a specific kind of political speech and not really about violence at all? That seems more likely to be. The violence at the Capitol is just an excuse to silence political opponents.
T-zex 6y ago
I think tech community should bare some responsibility for preaching Chrome, Cloud (you can't get a dev job without AWS or Azure exposure), smart phones and smart TVs.
ausbah 6y ago
normally I would agree, but if you are to view the events of Jan 6th as domestic terrorism and Parler as one of the two platforms where such events were partially planned. then I think tech companies dehosting Parler because they don't moderate such content are fully within their right, outright morally obligated, to do so pipe bombs, zip ties to take hostages, weapons, and people looking to exact their version of justice on government officials were on the premises of the Capitol. things easily could have turned much worse than
- chaganated 6y ago
  Because our last reaction to "terrorists" worked out so well.
  - gruez 6y ago
    So that should be a blanket reason not to fight terrorists?
    - chaganated 6y ago
      It's a blanket reason to not overreact.
      - gruez 6y ago
        Overreact... according to whom? The side that doesn't want a reaction?
        chaganated 6y ago
        With 9/11, the planes were just a catalyst. The greatest harm, we did to ourselves.
        gruez 6y ago
        That doesn't answer the question. Moreover, the underlying problem with your argument is that "overreact" is entirely subjective. Everyone would agree that overreactions are bad, but the proponents of action would say it's not an overreaction and the opponents would say it is. The argument doesn't advance at all.
ralfn 6y ago
Where on the internet can I be free from being indoctrinated by idiots about god's and ghosts that aren't well defined enough to exist, like the 'deep state' It's such a weird and pathetic phrase to use.
rvz 6y ago
This isn't surprising, since the de-platforming already happened to Gab which now self-hosts themselves. This is the amount of control that Big Tech has on the internet that allows them to coordinate actions like this and also tells us once again that you're licensed to use their platform and don't own anything. Once you keep using their platform for your services, you risk losing this control. For example in the case for Github (now owned by Microsoft) and the developer ecosystem, I kept repeatedly making the case for self-hosting [0] rather than 'centralising everything'. Now self-hosting is another solution if the same Big Tech companies wish to de-platform your business/service for any reason. For what the Big Tech companies can give, they are more than able to take away. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565
garden_hermit 6y ago
I mean, if ever there were an exception to free speech absolutism, now is the time—the more we learn about the capitol insurrection, the more we realize just how close we came (literally seconds) to a massacre on the senate floor, egged on by the president, and planned openly on these platforms. Its possible to have a discussion about the power of big tech, about their anti-competitive behavior, and lack of democratic oversight, but perhaps those issues should be discussed separately from banning Trump and kicking Parler—which seem like good choices on the part of the companies, even though it was done far too late.
bborud 6y ago
Allowing people to express themselves freely is laudable until they abuse that freedom to incite violence. Defending someone else's access to incite violence makes one morally complicit. I really hope that is not what you are doing.
bushido 6y ago
Ironic given the article talks about fact checking, but: Fact Check 1: NASA has not lost the blueprints and ability to engineer an engine like the Rocketdyne F-1. Sources: [0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20302/were-the-saturn-v-construction-plans-destroyed https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20302/were-the-sat... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://www.space.c... /saturn_five_000313.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos; Fact Check 3: De-platforming has been a thing for a long time, for businesses like porn, crypto (at least back in the day), scams, terrorism. ----- Parler, seems to be targeted for the last one on this list, for unmoderated fringe content. Why is the expected treatment different from other similar radicalized fringe groups? Why does our complacency for not learning how to manage servers etc fall on big tech? edited: formatting
- draklor40 6y ago
  You are right. The blueprints exist. I wrote this out of memory based on reading https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the... a few years ago. and I also remember reading that they had to reverse-engineer the designed and build their own CAD models because they couldn't re-build the situation (and it looks like a lot of customization was done to each engine). But my overall point still stands, IMO. They couldn't just rebuild it , just because they had the plans. Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos; My point is , this can very quickly reverse. It won't take a lot of time for Github (and others) to add restrictions under any excuses to restrict anonymity. Just like how it took one Apple and only a couple of years to make an entire industry almost completely eschew 3.5mm jacks for seeming no good reason (One excuse was waterproofing, but my s7 had a 3.5mm jack and was still IP67 rated). Imagine if ifixit.org was de-platformed, because they were providing repair guides that was "illegal" from Apple/Google's perspective. Sure, as users we would rally behind ifixit because to us, the user's, ifixit's cause is noble. But, can you actually force Apple to reverse their decision, when it doesnt work out for your benefit ? If they don't , do you have an immediate alternative, that works for you, before your or ifixit goes out of business ?
xaduha 6y ago
Pretty naive worldview if he actually believed in that to begin with. Capitalist entities doing capitalist things in a capitalist society, why are you acting surprised? Internet just came of age and became popular, that's all. And if you want some fringe stuff no one is stopping you either.
shepik 6y ago
> If the BIG TECH majority even find you a threat, not only will they It seems to me that big techs acted against Parler not because it represented a threat to them, but because of emotional reasons. "It was the right thing to do" or something like that. If they acted for business reasons, it would likely be slow and gradual, not "like a pack of wolves hunting down a rabbit". > The days of downloading source code from sourceforge anonymously are long gone. I can't believe that author is deeply concerned about centralized github but an the same time feels nostalgia about centralized sourceforge. At least github does not spread bundleware.
draklor40 6y ago
Author here. Apologies for the factual inconsistencies in the article. I wrote the article in a fit of emotion and I do not write often, so you might find my thoughts and words messy. I do not defend Parler or the people on it either. What happened was not a civilized thing. The whole point of rule of law is that society doesn't succumb to rule of the jungle Should Parler be banned ? I don't know. A big chunk of me leans towards the answer yes. But this very answer scares me. Who am I, in a civilized, nation state, with a legislative, executive, govt. , to decide who has a voice and who doesn't ? And even if I do , who checks my powers ? What stops me from doing the unethical, the incorrect and the evil ? What I wanted to focus was, not on Parler (it was my prompt for ideas washing around in my head for a while), but on the sheer amount of centralized power and authority in the hands of Big Tech, at the moment. Wikileaks was the wakeup call. It showed how much financial, media and technological clout Big Tech has and how effectively they operate in conjunction with the government. Social media unshackled the voices of the normal people from the dependence of print and TV. It made the system of checks and balances more approachable for the common. I fear that Big Tech is now becoming the very same villain that they wanted to liberate the common man from. And it scares me.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Forcing private companies to carry all speech would be a new thing. Maybe it is the right thing, but it would be new. I think you are probably giving "Big Tech" a coherent animus that it never really had.

58 points by draklor40 6y ago

Before the internet, if you had a dangerous, fringe idea, your community would ostracize you and your idea would die. Now, you can find the fringe from all the other communities. I think it is good that our community has found a way to ostracize fringe, dangerous ideas.

fvdessen 6y ago
And now if Big Tech has a dangerous idea they have all the power to advertise it and also to silence the counter-arguments.
- w8tTh0 6y ago
  They’ve not been silenced. They’ve been displaced. Encrypted email is still a thing. Decentralized internet is still a thing. How many malls are going to let violent donkeys in? Are they deep state for de-platforming a massacre? Free speech is under attack when you would force workers to participate in speech they do not want to redistribute. Freedom from pressure to serve everyone is exactly what the right wanted over gay wedding cakes. DIY, exceptional people. Quit expecting everyone else to bend over backwards to satisfy your rustled jimmies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
xyzelement 6y ago
The problem is - who decides what should be fringe and ostracized? At different times in history, women's rights, abolition, etc were all heretical ideas that the majority would want to squish if they could.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  We all do, collectively. That’s how society works. If you try to take “who among us can say what is right?” to the logical extreme, you get into situations like “should we not teach in schools that democracy is preferable to fascism?”
  - ptero 6y ago
    Democracy vs fascism is the discussion I hope you can win on merits. In fact I wouldn't mind honest debates on this topic at schools: it can serve to vaccinate people against intolerance and extremism. Communities that shut down such discussions are usually authoritarian sects built on faith in a leader's guidance, not enlightened democracies.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      Let’s actually switch examples to the Civil Rights Movement. That shows up on the curriculum in kindergarten. Would you have five year olds debating the merits of segregation? Consider that people were having debates about whether things like democracy and slavery and caste systems were good for centuries before people got on board. And plenty of people still aren’t! What should the teacher do if the kids on Debate Team Jim Crow actually win the debate? Step in and say “actually, equality is better, let me show you why”? Or do we now have a bunch of kids who go through life thinking that we actually should make Black people drinking from different water fountains? I also suspect that plenty of teachers themselves are not quite as bought in on racial equality as we’d hope. Because problem is that segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong. It took us hundreds of years to get here, and if we’re going to get further it will be because we drew a line in the sand and said “hey, treating people in this particular way is just better than doing it this other way”.
      - ptero 6y ago
        I did not follow your reasoning about 5 years old debating the merits of segregation, can you elaborate? Many topics are introduced at young age, and can take many years until they become a part of the person's worldview that they person can meaningfully defend. But it better reach that state for key topics before the person is out of school. > segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong. Ouch! Fascism and segregation are morally wrong, but just as important they produce systems and societies that exhibit horrible features and, time and again, crumble and fail. Morality is pliable -- many things considered good two generations ago can now seen as morally wrong and vice versa. When your grandkids ask "grandpa, why did you break/prohibit/deplatform/cancel X?" you may want something better to stand on than "because we had that power and we could". Because that is how your argument reads to me.
NhanH 6y ago
What happened to the internet being able to empower marginalized idea, thinking out of the box and stuff like that?
- eat_veggies 6y ago
  "marginalized idea" like white supremacy, and "thinking out of the box" like planning an armed attack on the capitol? Yeah, what happened to the internet?
- bborud 6y ago
  If by thinking out of the box you and empowering marginalized ideas you are saying that the companies have a duty to provide the infrastructure and tools for planning violence and the disruption of democracy, then I suspect you will find that not many people in tech are too comfortable with playing an enabling role. We have been presented with a slice of reality. The legislative branch of a superpower was stormed, normal democratic process was disrupted and people were killed. A mob was egged on by lies and conspiracy theories spread by a president who is effectively trying to set in motion a coup d'etat. It is likely that this isn't the last such event we will see in the coming years. What do you think ought to be done?
  - NhanH 6y ago
    Putting those people committing the act you mentioned on trial and proceeds from that. Wait until Parler is sued or prosecuted, and if a court order to shut it down. Go ahead. There are already tools to deal with bad actors, it's the knee-jerk reactions that I don't like.
    - bborud 6y ago
      Why should companies be under any obligation to support groups who undermine democracy and incite violence? Is it not fair to allow companies to choose _not_ to support hate groups? Regardless of whether they have been successfully prosecuted in a cour of law or not. Should we not have the freedom of choosing with whom we would like to associate? Is it not hypocritical to expect companies to provide resources to hate groups on the grounds of "freedom of expression" when those same groups have shown, by their actions, that they themselves oppose freedom of expression and expel anyone who voices disagreement? You appear to be confusing the government and private companies here. Government must follow a far more stringent set of rules in which certain determinations have to be done by courts. Private companies are under no such obligations when it comes to enabling speech. You are arguing that one should be able to compel people to promote hate speech. May may not intend to argue that case, but by what is presumably thoughtlessness, that is what you appear to be doing.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
But Big Techs ideals are dangerous and fringe from the lens of like 70% of the world (Democratic social norms like gender is a social construct, trans women are literally women, not being anti-racist is being racist, pro-abortion, etc. are not acceptable to the vast majority of people on Earth). Now they are free to go on promoting those ideas to the population, slowly and surely winning as they control the world's megaphones and are cheered on by people who can stop them while they silence dissenters.
seneca 6y ago
The difference is that now we've centralized who decides what is "dangerous [and] fringe". Many of the ideas that are popular at big tech companies are considered exactly that by many people. Now, instead of each community deciding what's acceptable for themselves it's a small handful of companies from California deciding for everyone.
chongli 6y ago
We can ostracize but it remains to be seen whether we can halt the spread. Ostracism can lead to more alienation and confirmation bias for conspiracy theories. I think it’s too late to turn the ship around at this point though. We’ve done nothing at all to address working class and rural alienation. Now we’ve got to somehow weather the storm.

jcastro 6y ago

> The point was how quickly Big Tech swooped-in Seems like an odd definition of "quickly" to me.

eznzt 6y ago
Google, Apple, and Amazon banned Parler exactly the same day. How is that not quick and coordinate?
- bena 6y ago
  The word you were looking for was coordinated. It also wasn't in his post or his quote. And you know why you added that, because you know quick can easily be disputed by simply looking back in time. Parler was on the services from 2018 to now. 2+ years is hardly "quick".
- timbit42 6y ago
  Google banned Parler the day before Apple and Amazon. Apple's ban was announced the day Google banned Parler but they gave Parler 24 hours notice to comply, which they didn't.

prh8 6y ago

For all the "making the world a better place," it seems so many in tech would rather it be the downfall of society, just to make a stand on the absolute extremes of some hypothetical principles.

eplanit 6y ago
We just didn't realize what their idea of "better" is... they meant make the world (starting with America) like communist China.
- prh8 6y ago
  Pretty sure if you attempt insurrection in China, it's going to end much worse for you than it did here.
croissants 6y ago
I don't understand this comment -- what are the "absolute extremes of some hypothetical principles" you're referring to?
- prh8 6y ago
  The two main things are privacy and freedom. For various political discussions this year, it seems many on here believe in absolute privacy even when it's not reasonable: ie. privacy in your own home is good but that doesn't include being able to commit murder and be protected. Freedom of speech is good, but I don't think it extends to political figures being able to incite violence. And honestly, my comment was somewhat hyperbolic, in response to a lot of the discussion that occurred last night on this topic of Amazon vs Parler. Many people were equating the violence of Wednesday with "somebody not liking us," trying to suggest that this single extreme situation is an indicator of Amazon/big tech freely making political decisions (much like this linked article) for run of the mill things. I appreciate your polite question and your critical-thinking takes in your comment history.
  - croissants 6y ago

nippoo 6y ago

In this case I'm glad for the de-platforming of Parler, Trump etc. But as a knock-on effect, for anyone thinking of doing anything potentially controversial (and not just on the political right - this applies for things like WikiLeaks, and even Wikipedia itself - hosting "illegal numbers" etc) this will make companies think twice before relying on apps and the likes of AWS. For the moment, at least, webapps (vs app store apps) and self-hosted servers (potentially in a different country) are much safer from this kind of existential risk...

xyzelement 6y ago
Exactly the point. We shouldn't cheer sensorship of the "other" because once we have allowed it to be an acceptable tool, it will inevitably swing against us as well when someone finds our views inconvenient. When I was growing up, the ACLU would defend the rights of neo-nazis to speak, etc, because liberal people understood that if you don't protect the rights of the extreme you lose those rights yourself. It's shocking to me how quickly people seem to have lost hold of these principles.

temp 6y ago

>If the BIG TECH majority even find you a threat, not only will they cut off your ability to communicate, or deploy to a server across the world, but even prevent you from writing software in the First place. This seems like an exaggeration. There are alternatives to hosting your platform on AWS. Of course, you're not supposed to allow users on your platform to issue death threats and act like you're not supposed to do anything about it. I can't agree with holding Parler as an example of "freedom and the openess of the internet".

eznzt 6y ago
>This seems like an exaggeration. There are alternatives to hosting your platform on AWS. The point of TFA is that this is nullified when all hosts coordinate to take down services they do not like.

smoyer 6y ago

Until recently I worked at a university - we had several data-centers, multiple fiber connections to the Internet2 as well as direct connections to both AWS and Azure. We were ready to move many of our core services to AWS when COVID hit but our systems were designed to run on a Kubernetes cluster so we could theoretically run locally or on any cloud. This takes me back to my first Internet connection which was a partial T1 line back to a mid-tier Internet provider. We ran everything over that connection except for our main sales page and had a lot more autonomy. The provider didn't care what was running over that connection so long as they got paid. My point is that I don't think the higher education institutions (where the Internet initially flourished) will be affected, nor will the big companies who already have connections as described above. Those of us who have traded our autonomy for cheaper operating costs and more convenience will indeed find that we've lot a lot of the control we used to have.

seneca 6y ago
What happens when ISPs decide to deplatform you? Domain registrars, certificate authorities? What about banks? At some point you're dependent on another entity if you want to exist on the internet. I think a noble goal would be to change that, but we're far away from it.
- w8tTh0 6y ago
  There’s a long held principle that one is not above social ostracism as a result of their actions. Other people are biological creatures too, with all the same warts. I think a noble goal would be for you personally accept that’s an arbitrary goal, expecting others to adopt it is exactly the problem you hate. If we all adopt that goal, where is the alternative thought? Is there right to question that goal? Or protest that goal? Round n round we go, regurgitating banal rhetoric, ignoring what it means in physical reality terms. Emit whatever syntax you want. No one else is obliged to agree with or act according to the semantics. Expecting such is exactly the problem.
gus_massa 6y ago
Some emails of my university are filtered by Hotmail. They don't go to the spam folder, there is no bounce message, they just evaporate. It's getting harder and harder to have your own email server.

airza 6y ago

Look, if your party throws everything out the window to weaken the regulatory authority of the government, and to encourage corporations' eclipsing of power, and then the extremely powerful corporations decide they are tired of facilitating your snakepit of facists, and the government is toothless to intervene... Maybe some kind of contemplation about the path that led you to this point is reasonable? I don't really have any sympathy anyway, but this is 50+ years of ideological chickens coming home to roost.

reallyreallyyy 6y ago

Should AWS and peers be compelled to host websites for Isis and other terrorist organizations? I think it makes sense that these companies do not want to be responsible for giving a platform to individuals who espouse violent viewpoints. That's what this is. Parler has become a hotbed of radical and violent extremists calling for murder of politicians and people in the media. These companies didn't shut off parler "quickly". They waited until after Parler took a large part in helping organize a violent mob that assaulted the capital.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Considering that the US considers some legitimate organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas (groups which are democratically elected representatives of their constituents) to be terrorists, yeah I don't trust the US or AWS to determine for me who is and isn't a terrorist.
herdcall 6y ago
Don't judge Parler with what you hear from the mainstream media. I'm on Parler and there a lot of intelligent conversations there that give you the other side, which is so hard to get otherwise (which is why I joined). Yes, I'm sure there are some crazies there, but there are many, many more by numbers on Twitter. Please join Parler and judge for yourself, don't trust the media narrative.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
twittersthesame 6y ago
> Parler has become a hotbed of radical and violent extremists calling for murder of politicians and people in the media. Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook all have the same problem. The only way you can argue Parler being kicked out of AWS is right and Parler shouldn't be able to operate is if you think those sites should be shut down too. With some of the comments I've seen here, honestly, this site gets close sometimes too. Anybody want to talk about BDS? Because that's certainly advocating for violence and the death of lots of Jews and it's very popular among the Justice Democrats and their followers, just as an example. They consider it justified violence, just like the article "In Defense of Looting" did, but proponents of political violence always consider themselves justified. That was published by NPR, so I guess they should be shut down too, right? Or is this actually about silencing a specific kind of political speech and not really about violence at all? That seems more likely to be. The violence at the Capitol is just an excuse to silence political opponents.

T-zex 6y ago

I think tech community should bare some responsibility for preaching Chrome, Cloud (you can't get a dev job without AWS or Azure exposure), smart phones and smart TVs.

ausbah 6y ago

normally I would agree, but if you are to view the events of Jan 6th as domestic terrorism and Parler as one of the two platforms where such events were partially planned. then I think tech companies dehosting Parler because they don't moderate such content are fully within their right, outright morally obligated, to do so pipe bombs, zip ties to take hostages, weapons, and people looking to exact their version of justice on government officials were on the premises of the Capitol. things easily could have turned much worse than

chaganated 6y ago
Because our last reaction to "terrorists" worked out so well.
- gruez 6y ago
  So that should be a blanket reason not to fight terrorists?
  - chaganated 6y ago
    It's a blanket reason to not overreact.
    - gruez 6y ago
      Overreact... according to whom? The side that doesn't want a reaction?
      - chaganated 6y ago
        With 9/11, the planes were just a catalyst. The greatest harm, we did to ourselves.
        gruez 6y ago
        That doesn't answer the question. Moreover, the underlying problem with your argument is that "overreact" is entirely subjective. Everyone would agree that overreactions are bad, but the proponents of action would say it's not an overreaction and the opponents would say it is. The argument doesn't advance at all.

ralfn 6y ago

Where on the internet can I be free from being indoctrinated by idiots about god's and ghosts that aren't well defined enough to exist, like the 'deep state' It's such a weird and pathetic phrase to use.

rvz 6y ago

This isn't surprising, since the de-platforming already happened to Gab which now self-hosts themselves. This is the amount of control that Big Tech has on the internet that allows them to coordinate actions like this and also tells us once again that you're licensed to use their platform and don't own anything. Once you keep using their platform for your services, you risk losing this control. For example in the case for Github (now owned by Microsoft) and the developer ecosystem, I kept repeatedly making the case for self-hosting [0] rather than 'centralising everything'. Now self-hosting is another solution if the same Big Tech companies wish to de-platform your business/service for any reason. For what the Big Tech companies can give, they are more than able to take away. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565

garden_hermit 6y ago

I mean, if ever there were an exception to free speech absolutism, now is the time—the more we learn about the capitol insurrection, the more we realize just how close we came (literally seconds) to a massacre on the senate floor, egged on by the president, and planned openly on these platforms. Its possible to have a discussion about the power of big tech, about their anti-competitive behavior, and lack of democratic oversight, but perhaps those issues should be discussed separately from banning Trump and kicking Parler—which seem like good choices on the part of the companies, even though it was done far too late.

bborud 6y ago

Allowing people to express themselves freely is laudable until they abuse that freedom to incite violence. Defending someone else's access to incite violence makes one morally complicit. I really hope that is not what you are doing.

bushido 6y ago

Ironic given the article talks about fact checking, but: Fact Check 1: NASA has not lost the blueprints and ability to engineer an engine like the Rocketdyne F-1. Sources: [0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20302/were-the-saturn-v-construction-plans-destroyed https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20302/were-the-sat... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://www.space.c... /saturn_five_000313.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos; Fact Check 3: De-platforming has been a thing for a long time, for businesses like porn, crypto (at least back in the day), scams, terrorism. ----- Parler, seems to be targeted for the last one on this list, for unmoderated fringe content. Why is the expected treatment different from other similar radicalized fringe groups? Why does our complacency for not learning how to manage servers etc fall on big tech? edited: formatting

draklor40 6y ago
You are right. The blueprints exist. I wrote this out of memory based on reading https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the... a few years ago. and I also remember reading that they had to reverse-engineer the designed and build their own CAD models because they couldn't re-build the situation (and it looks like a lot of customization was done to each engine). But my overall point still stands, IMO. They couldn't just rebuild it , just because they had the plans. Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos; My point is , this can very quickly reverse. It won't take a lot of time for Github (and others) to add restrictions under any excuses to restrict anonymity. Just like how it took one Apple and only a couple of years to make an entire industry almost completely eschew 3.5mm jacks for seeming no good reason (One excuse was waterproofing, but my s7 had a 3.5mm jack and was still IP67 rated). Imagine if ifixit.org was de-platformed, because they were providing repair guides that was "illegal" from Apple/Google's perspective. Sure, as users we would rally behind ifixit because to us, the user's, ifixit's cause is noble. But, can you actually force Apple to reverse their decision, when it doesnt work out for your benefit ? If they don't , do you have an immediate alternative, that works for you, before your or ifixit goes out of business ?

xaduha 6y ago

Pretty naive worldview if he actually believed in that to begin with. Capitalist entities doing capitalist things in a capitalist society, why are you acting surprised? Internet just came of age and became popular, that's all. And if you want some fringe stuff no one is stopping you either.

shepik 6y ago

> If the BIG TECH majority even find you a threat, not only will they It seems to me that big techs acted against Parler not because it represented a threat to them, but because of emotional reasons. "It was the right thing to do" or something like that. If they acted for business reasons, it would likely be slow and gradual, not "like a pack of wolves hunting down a rabbit". > The days of downloading source code from sourceforge anonymously are long gone. I can't believe that author is deeply concerned about centralized github but an the same time feels nostalgia about centralized sourceforge. At least github does not spread bundleware.

draklor40 6y ago

Author here. Apologies for the factual inconsistencies in the article. I wrote the article in a fit of emotion and I do not write often, so you might find my thoughts and words messy. I do not defend Parler or the people on it either. What happened was not a civilized thing. The whole point of rule of law is that society doesn't succumb to rule of the jungle Should Parler be banned ? I don't know. A big chunk of me leans towards the answer yes. But this very answer scares me. Who am I, in a civilized, nation state, with a legislative, executive, govt. , to decide who has a voice and who doesn't ? And even if I do , who checks my powers ? What stops me from doing the unethical, the incorrect and the evil ? What I wanted to focus was, not on Parler (it was my prompt for ideas washing around in my head for a while), but on the sheer amount of centralized power and authority in the hands of Big Tech, at the moment. Wikileaks was the wakeup call. It showed how much financial, media and technological clout Big Tech has and how effectively they operate in conjunction with the government. Social media unshackled the voices of the normal people from the dependence of print and TV. It made the system of checks and balances more approachable for the common. I fear that Big Tech is now becoming the very same villain that they wanted to liberate the common man from. And it scares me.

maxerickson 6y ago
Forcing private companies to carry all speech would be a new thing. Maybe it is the right thing, but it would be new. I think you are probably giving "Big Tech" a coherent animus that it never really had.