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Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business
- baggachipz 6y ago> "They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company. And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day." If everybody else is an asshole, maybe you're the asshole.
- Reedx 6y agoSaid the church to the scientist. Said the mob to the witch. Be careful about where this goes. This one doesn't affect you and I, but the next one might. It certainly will when it gets to HN or Signal. But then it'll be too late. First they came for...
- fuj 6y agocry me a river
- throwaway189262 6y agoEhhh I've looked at parler out of curiosity. Basically full of hate, conspiracy, calls for violence, blatant racism "kill blacks" type stuff. I'm amazed companies were willing to work with them in the first place. Providing services to a company like that is like providing service to the KKK
- Reedx 6y agoThat's pretty close to how Twitter is often described.
- j8hn 6y agoIs this speech illegal?
- loopz 6y agoHate speech, discriminatory speech and defamation, lots of speech is criminal. It depends on context and intent, for which misguided tolerance for bullying we're now witnessing. For especially bad cults, ie. Germany banned Nazi symbols and speech. Policy is made in a context, not just blind ideology.
- j8hn 6y agoWhat are tech companies liabilities for hosting criminal speech?
- loopz 6y agoIf they know of criminal conduct, they might be liable for not reporting or supporting such activities. There's also bad PR and various guilt-by association. Take a hard look what happened to the founder of Wikileaks for instance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cygx 6y agoThe right to refuse service isn't limited to illegal activity.
- simonh 6y agoInciting murder is illegal in the USA, here in Britain and in most countries.
- tzs 6y agoAnd all of that except for the "kill blacks" and calls for violence would be perfectly fine on Reddit on /r/conservative. Most of it would also be fine on Twitter or Facebook, except that some of the conspiracy stuff might get a misinformation warning and/or a fact check link. That's why sites like Parler, Gab, and Voat end up as cesspools. Those who don't feel the need to post racism and calls to violence can just stay on the mainstream services, getting both their political discussion and their non-political discussion in one convenient place. Voat tried to have the non-political stuff too, but it just ended up with racism there too. For example, in /v/movies people complaining that the "Call of the Wild" cast included a black actor, and going off about how it was the Jews in Hollywood behind this for nefarious reasons.
- chrismorgan 6y agoYet Galileo was indefinitely imprisoned for denying a geocentric model of the universe, which Everyone Knew to be True. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair The point is that the majority is often wrong, and consensus does not confer virtue. (I am deliberately making no remark on this instance; I am speaking purely of the underlying principle.)
- geofft 6y agoThis underlying principle would argue that democracy itself is unjust, and that we cannot, say, have laws against murder simply because the majority of people think that murder is bad. What if it's actually good? Consensus does not infer virtue. Shall we suspend all laws? The answer is that, while such an argument is technically true, we have yet to find a better way to structure society. Your example of Galileo strongly suggests that we should not hand over this sort of decision-making to princes or priests, which are the usual alternatives to the ballot box. The judgment of the majority is regularly wrong, but it is also the most regularly not-wrong thing we know about. If you think the majority is wrong, convince them that they are wrong. It will take time. I'm sorry there isn't a better way.
- leereeves 6y ago> This underlying principle would argue that democracy itself is unjust...while such an argument is technically true, we have yet to find a better way to structure society. We certainly have found a better way to structure society: a Constitutional government that honors certain principles that even the democratically elected Congress and President can only override with much more than a majority, with judges trusted to guard those principles.
- geofft 6y agoWho writes the constitution, and more importantly, who gives it their assent? Who appoints the judges and decides that they are trustworthy? I'm not arguing for rule by simple majority. I do agree that important things need the consensus of much more than 51% of society (let alone 51% of people who bother to vote). If it were only a simple majority of cloud hosts, text messaging services, email providers, and lawyers that ditched Parler, they would be in no danger at all.
- sto_hristo 6y agoEverybody was not an asshole for the two years this existed and suddenly became one a mere week ago. Strange, innit?
- loopz 6y agoAll those people became brainwashed last week then?
- nmjohn 6y agoPrior to a week ago, there hadn't been an attack against the US Capitol planned on the app while the owners defend the right of the planners to use it for that purpose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It should be expected that when historically unprecedented things happen, people's viewpoints change.
- sto_hristo 6y agoTrump can organize another attack on the next platform his followers migrate to. Will you ban that we well? What makes you think platforms are the problem and not the actual person that started it? Do you think with the ban of this platform the problem has been fixed?
- simonh 6y agoThey almost certainly were assholes the whole time, it’s just that very recently they proved they were not just assholes but murderous treasonous ones in action in a way that removed all reasonable doubt.
- chomp 6y agoI mean, if for a few years you lead people to believe that you’re the type of person who poops in the pool, and then you finally do it one day, who’s gonna invite you over to their house? You can make the argument that it sucks that so much infrastructure is built upon orgs that have their own first amendment rights and I’d agree with that, but just that, no one is forced to associate with you. If a group of companies are refusing your cash, might want to reevaluate your viewpoints respective to the broader community.
- nml100 6y agoThere have been enough mob rule systems in history to prove that saying entirely wrong. Was Oppenheimer an asshole during the McCarthy hysteria? Was Solschenizyn an asshole during communism? We are seeing similar methods of silencing now, starting with universities, open source projects and now free speech apps in monopolies or oligopolies that should be forced to adhere to common carrier rules.
- bra-ket 6y agoThat’s how free speech ends.
- LatteLazy 6y agoAnd yet they are still online (edit: looks like they'll be online with AWS until 1159 PCT, my mistake) I am pretty sure that coordinated withdrawal of services like this would amount to Tortious Interference wouldn't it? Given Parler/Foxx's pentant for exaggeration and playing the victim I'm a little incredulous to be honest. I don't like censorship or support it. Parler should stay, for all its issues. But that doesn't mean they're the victim of some giant conspiracy either.
- pfisch 6y agoI mean you can't run a site with no censorship where people are openly plotting the violent takeover of the us government and/or violent events. It is just a liability issue. This isn't some kind of censorship issue, that just isn't legal and never has been legal.
- LatteLazy 6y agoThe great irony here is Parler DOES engage in loads of censorship (no parody, no Pro-Cannabis comments, no positive antifa comments, I don't think you can even be left wing on there). So I'm stuck defending a censorous site against censorship!? I am a weirdo, because a public site like Parler is exactly where I hope insurrection should be planned. Why wasn't the FBI ready to swoop and arrest actual violent people given they were posting their plans in plane view? Why are we relying on AWS to moderate away trumps lies and fix the US Political landscape? To me, killing parler (for all its shit-ness), is a perfect example of "we have to do something, and this is something". Does anyone actually think that if Parler had gone offline 4 weeks ago, the events of the last week would have been different? They'd have planned on twitter or Facebook or reddit or wherever. When can we solve the actual problems here (failure to deal with trump, a poor relationship with the truth for all politicians, law enforcement complete lack of interest in right wing threats, lack of basic security etc)? Censoring random websites seems like farting in a Jucuzzi, censorship is almost always a way of ignoring actual problems while pretending you are acting. And here we are again. Sorry, its late here in the UK and I'm ranting. Thanks for reading.
- 6y ago
- paxys 6y agoDidn't he just post yesterday that there were many vendors lined up offering to host them after AWS kicked them out, and they would rewrite the app and be up and running in a week?
- mrlala 6y agoYes he did. It's the same kind of baseless lying bullshit his dear leader been spouting every day of his life.
- idunno246 6y agoI think both could be true. Yesterday it was just aws, and maybe they had a hosting provider lined up. But then today it became every vendor that they work with which is another level of problem, like having to build their own sms system.
- gvv 6y agoImagine cheering this as a victory..
- joenathanone 6y ago“Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,” Matze said today on Fox News.
- 24gttghh 6y agoGood. We should not tolerate the intolerant.
- QuizzicalCarbon 6y agoIntolerant of the intolerant?
- mrlala 6y agoExactly. I'm glad you finally understand. Are you suggesting 'tolerant' people should tolerate something like, racism? You are a logical moron if you try to make that argument. You know exactly what you are doing, and it's stupid.
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account for abusing HN for ideological flamewar. We ban accounts for that, regardless of which ideology they're for or against, and regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. You've been doing this a long time, you've been using the site primarily for it, and we've asked you many times previously to stop. HN is a site for thoughtful, curious conversation. There's no substantive and interesting discussion that can't be had that way, and accounts that are unwilling to stop setting fires and attacking others are not cool here. Ironically, the people destroying the commons this way have far more in common with their enemies than they do with the bulk of the community, who come here to find interesting things to read and to escape this sort of ragey shitfest. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. You've posted some good comments in the past, but the damage caused by the abusive ones unfortunately far outweighs the benefit of the good ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- someelephant 6y agoHow about we attempt to understand why people are thinking this way. Why are they not interested in thinking your way? What can be done to help both side talk and solve problems together?
- thefourthchime 6y agothis is entirely not surprising. He’s going to have to go overseas to get service
- yuppie_scum 6y agoThey’ll be subject to NSA monitoring at that point. Not that the executive branch was keen to act on the intel in plain sight..
- barry-cotter 6y agoIt’s not like the NSA isn’t minoring everything in the US already anyway.
- pfisch 6y agoAnd then what? Get sued into the ground by the family of the slain capitol cop, and the subsequent people that are killed by the "patriots" openly plotting violence on parler?
- dredmorbius 6y agoPeering with what carrier pigeon IP service? They'll still require a backplane service with a landing point in the US. Unless the site goes fully Tor / Onion.
- j8hn 6y agoThe cartels are all acting in unison.
- wobblyasp 6y agoPrivate companies just want to act in their best interest. Call it what you will, no one wants to be associated with them; and as such they get removed. Amazon, Google, Facebook, et.al. owe Parler exactly nothing.
- ohhhhhh 6y ago"don't like twitter, make a new one!"
- j8hn 6y agoI was just pointing out that these very powerful companies, some are claimed to be monopolies are acting in unison which can be argued seems like cartel behavior.
- loopz 6y agoThere's a big reason they act in unison now though. They're responding to a single national security threat event and possible consequencial liabilities. So it is not a random time do be doing this. There has previously been legitimate concern about extremism, and from this event seems only to accellerate until mitigated. People should enjoy free speech, but how these platforms work, the side-effects of algos and what kinds of conversations is facilitated do matter.
- username90 6y agoThat is a good reason why we need to support such businesses not in the US. There is no way a European based company would ban them on such a short notice over some minor thing happening in the US. It isn't like US based companies ban much in Europe, it is just local politics driving these decisions.
- 6y ago
- nashashmi 6y agoThere is a full on assault on anything remotely related to the Capitol Hill intrusion.
- dredmorbius 6y agoFive years too late, but I'll take it.
- artembugara 6y agoSaw this joke on Twitter today: That’s what I call “serverless infrastructure”
- My7thAccount 6y agoWould love to hear how a shared message board platform can be serverless. You are aware databases are servers right?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- slrainka 6y agoThey should be able to find a cloud provider in Russia
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoI doubt Putin trusts them.
- Fjolsvith 6y agoYeah, cause soccer moms are a real threat to Russia.
- sys_64738 6y agoIn Soviet Russia, cloud provider finds you! Miss the old /. days.
- slumdev 6y agoMost of the old /. tropes would probably earn some kind of moderation penalty here for being too similar to a low-effort Reddit-style comment. I also miss those days.
- christiansakai 6y agokeep those SSNs coming.
- christiansakai 6y agoIt will eventually be like this anyway. Nothing is preventing them from building stuffs themselves. Even if they and Trump build their own platform, they will have to build their own bare metal server clusters and scatter those across USA. Not to mention they will have to hire and pay actual market salary from DevOps, backend developers, frontend developers, UX designer, testing engineer, security engineer etc. In the end they will burn their money fast just paying those engineers salary building stuffs just for them without the ability to generalize their platform and amortizing the cost like AWS, and they will fold in a few months. There is no way out. Everything is dead end. You want to isolate yourself from your neighbors. Sure, that is fine, go alone if you want to go fast. Just don't complain when your neighbors are isolating themselves from you.
- ghaff 6y agoIn the West, the communications infrastructure will cut you off anyway. You can go elsewhere which has its own set of problems.
- christiansakai 6y agoBut the communication infrastructure is owned by the government, not a private company. If they want they always can do peer to peer, mesh network style.
- otterley 6y agoNo it isn’t, at least not in the US. Private companies own the vast majority of it.
- influx 6y agoHow far should this go? Should banks refuse to service employees? Grocery stores? Gas stations? They are private businesses, they have no reason to tolerate people who are thinking the wrong way.
- trianglem 6y agoYes fascists should be refused by everyone. It’s in everyone’s interests to have more customers so this works itself out through game theory.
- chipsa 6y agoLet's take away everything from fascists. Then they have nothing left to lose.
- trianglem 6y agoYes. Then they lash out and then there is a reckoning. This is ideal.
- krapp 6y agoThey're fascists, they're planning to lash out anyway. At least let's maybe make things slightly more difficult for them. Or even slightly less comfortable.
- Traster 6y agoOk. I mean... they had the presidncy and apparently that wasn't enough. One thing you have to reckon with is the fact that the people leading this movement have everything and are still trying to overthrow the government. There is barely a person on earth who is materially more comfortable than DT. It didn't stop him doing this. So I don't really see why the idea of fascists having nothing would be more scary than well resourced fascists. Donald Trump with no resources is 'old man yells at cloud' rather than '5 dead at the capitol'.
- My7thAccount 6y ago
- dazoot 6y agoI’d hate to be in his position right now. Business wise, i hope they have backups and hire people for moderation.
- trianglem 6y agoWhen your business is fascism you deserve this. I don’t see this being all that different from having an open marketplace for assassinations or contract killings.
- michaelt 6y agoHey, don't insult Silk Road like that.
- JCharante 6y agoI believe that in AWS's statement they said that they would help them retain their data. I'm sure it just means that after midnight their S3 and RDS services are going read only until they're done taking their data out. Maybe make a final backup of their databases and put it in a bucket. I'd be a bit more disturbed if AWS was going to remove read access after midnight.
- someelephant 6y agoThe sad thing is a platform does nothing to help us find common ground and move past the chaos which has overtaken discourse. What is the solution here?
- WannaFly 6y agoSolution is pretty simple, called Constitution of the United States.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jfengel 6y agoThe Constitution gives a format for making decisions and living with them when we don't agree. It's not really for finding common ground. That's up to us.
- WannaFly 6y agoyou don't need common ground Constitution is common ground. what are problem of just following the Constitution. Democrats and Republican abolish Constitution that is a problem.
- dredmorbius 6y agoTruth and reconciliation.
- loopz 6y agoSome people need to lose some attitude and respect fellow human beings. Nobody knows everything and believing random texts online is nuts. Just stay humble and help those around you and locally. The irony is the bad qualities they hate in others, only festers in themselves, they're unable to let go of the hate.
- dmitriid 6y agoI read this as: every vendor was pretty quiet until the final outcome becaome known and it was safe to "bravely come forward with the decision" that will benifit said vendors in discussions with the current political powers
- dredmorbius 6y agoOr pressure was applied to them.
- acl777 6y agocould it be... everything is built on AWS?? :-)
- rsynnott 6y agoI’m sure their benefactors will happily fork over a few million for some machines and space in a datacenter.
- FlyMoreRockets 6y agoSo you are saying Trump or Addleson or the Koch brothers should invest in the service.
- dredmorbius 6y agoHow many $100 millions does a good sedition + terrorism legal defence run these days? Factor in asset seizure / forfeiture.
- alkonaut 6y agoThe problem is that they don’t have many benefactors. Rich right wingers don’t throw money into a toxic hole. Ironically, if they did have moderation so it was just a Twitter with /r/conservative people and not the_donald people, it might be successful. BUT, if it was - it wouldn’t be necessary in the first place! Those people can just use Twitter! Twitter’s moderation is so permissive that the only thing left outside is going to be toxic.
- rossjudson 6y agoI wonder if anybody has asked Parler if they agree with Trump's position on Section 230. Trump wants to peel back the liability shield 230 provides.
- danhak 6y agoThere’s something very ironic about Parler—-which kicks users off its platform for espousing liberal ideology—-whining about being kicked off other platforms. From their own TOS: > "Parler may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason or no reason“
- QuizzicalCarbon 6y agoSounds boilerplate.
- mimikatz 6y agoAt this point they need to go build your own modern internet.
- masterphilo 6y agoParler may have just ended its own business, I think. They should have pivoted to be a free speech alternative to sensible conservatives, with sensible moderation, and market their product as such. As it is, no one wants to do business with a company that openly allows neo-nazis, anti-semites, and lately, criminals, on their platform, and no one with a brain would even want to be on such a platform. I'm open to a Twitter alternative that is lenient on conservative views, as long as it has the right sort of moderation. And I really hope this alternative learns from Parler's mistakes.
- otterley 6y agoTwitter itself is open to conservative views. It’s just not open to outright lies about factual matters of critical importance, or to incitements to violence or the overthrow of the state. Surely one can express conservative opinions without resorting to such things—and most do.
- masterphilo 6y agoI agree, but conservatives have been complaining about the phenomenon of shadow-banning on the platform for years, and this was pretty much confirmed after the Twitter hack last year. To allow conservative views but reduce their visibility is just a more subtle form of censorship, reflecting a left-leaning bias. I don't think Twitter or Facebook would even bother denying any of this at this point.
- otterley 6y ago> shadow-banning ... this was pretty much confirmed after the Twitter hack last year Citation? Also, Twitter says otherwise: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t... To have the technological capability to do something does not necessarily imply that it is being used for the wrong reasons. Without proof, all there is is speculation. > To allow conservative views but reduce their visibility is just a more subtle form of censorship You're moving the goalposts. I was referring to allowing speech - you're talking about amplifying it. There is a huge difference between tolerance and amplification, and nobody should expect Twitter or any other media you don't own to amplify what you say for free. If you want people to follow you, say interesting things and influence people (but don't cross the line of inciting violence or calling on people to overthrow the government). How the hell did we get from "this platform should allow me to post what I want" to "this platform should broadcast what [person X] says with equal volumetric distribution to non-subscribers as it does [person Y]?"
- barnaclejive 6y ago"our lawyers all ditched us" That pretty much should tell you this is not a free speech issue... your service is just a shit business no one wants to be associated with. BYEE
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chopin24 6y agoSo what's the next step, free speech absolutists? Force private businesses to host them? Does 1a overrule 13a?
- skynet-9000 6y agoWhen several vendors drop the same customer at the same time, and there are no state attorneys general bringing legal actions (and thus no grounds to assert illegal activity), then it seems like conspiracy to destroy a business, and a likely cause of action for tortious interference and possibly a RICO violation.
- simonh 6y agoYou’d have to prove conspiracy, but there’s no reason to believe any of these businesses conspired with each other.
- skynet-9000 6y agoYou don't necessarily need a smoking gun email. There's a (probably quite strong) case to be made that the timing -- all of these actions within 24 hours of each other -- is the proof of conspiracy.
- skynet-9000 6y agoWhy did my other comment, that the timing is a possible proof of conspiracy, get flagged? Can someone enlighten me -- in what way does that violate site guidelines?
- skynet-9000 6y agoWhy did my question get flagged as well? One of the moderators or someone with flagging power is rather quick on the flagging button. Seems like downvoting would be more appropriate, especially given the context of this discussion.
- skynet-9000 6y ago@dang why are these responses being flagged?
- candybar 6y agoThat's too generous. Even if these these businesses "conspired" to do this, that's still not a conspiracy in a legal sense, which is about an agreement to commit an actual crime. As it's not a crime to end business relationships with an entity (which btw almost certainly has been in violation of TOS), no amount of prior coordination would make this a conspiracy. It's not illegal to conspire to do something that's otherwise perfectly legal.
- meritt 6y agoThe fact that the overwhelming color of every comment on this thread is light-grey tells you there's no middle ground until everything is burned down.
- mcherm 6y agoI am very concerned about the ease and speed with which they have been deplatformed. I am not a big fan of Parler, but I am a very big fan of free speech, and if the various actors who have driven them out of business can act this quickly in this well-coordinated, what else could they decide to censor?
- danhak 6y agoThe issue is that these platforms have grown to monopolistic or duopolistic size, NOT that a private company has the right to sever a business relationship. It’s an antitrust issue, not a free speech issue.
- dredmorbius 6y ago¿Por que no los dos? But wait, there's more! - Monopoly / antitrust - Free speech - Sedition / insurrection - Property rights (of vendors) - Freedom of association (vendors) - National security - Incitement, accountability Interests and values require balancing. Some may weight more heavily than others.
- tzs 6y agoIt wasn't quickly. Parler has been around for two years, and the kind of material that got them finally kicked out of places has been there from near the beginning. Parler's lack of moderation of user content has been in violation of Apple and Google's rules for all that time. I bet if someone had started a service similar to Parler but non-political, where people posted massive amounts of death threats and hate speech but directed at people for non-political reasons and that service utterly failed to moderate, Apple and Google and the rest would not have given them two years. They would have been gone in a week.
- DenisM 6y agoIt’s an interesting hypothesis. I wonder if we can verify if. Are there really awful services out there? I’m think 4chan - do they have an app? And more to the point - would AWS and Stripe deplatform them?
- manfredo 6y agoThe way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders. I'm not worried about some moustache-twirling plot where tech companies effectively become the illuminati. I'm only slightly worried about politicians using the threat of regulation (e.g. revoking Section 230) to leverage companies into prohibiting things they don't like, or content favorable to opponents. I don't think many politicians would do this - the risk that this manipulation gets discovered and publicized is probably too great. What I'm most worried about is good-intentioned censorship that further divides and alienates large sections of our society. These bans play directly into the narrative that leftist tech companies are excluding and pushing out conservative voices, and it's having the opposite effect of what is intended. For instance, suppressing allegations of fraud is likely having the opposite effect: it's triggering a reaction along the lines of, "well clearly there's something afoot, otherwise why would these companies be deliberately shutting down talk of fraud?". Who here has ever held a view and was banned from a forum, or told to stop by the forum's authorities, (electronic or otherwise) for that view? Did it make you change said view, or did it make you even more entrenched and suspicious of the authority that issued the ban? That's what I'm most worried about: companies ostracizing certain groups or topics with the intention of curbing extremism, but to the effect of fostering ever greater extremism.
- kitkat_new 6y agonice try blaming the lefties
- manfredo 6y agoI don't really blame the companies doing the bans. In fact, if I were in their position I'd probably do the same thing. The pressure to do something would probably outweigh my suspicions that the bans are ultimately counterproductive. If I were to place blame on something, it'd have to be the increasing conflation of hosting content with approving or agreeing with said content. E.G. Facebook gets decried as a conservative echo chamber by left leaning people who point at right wing content they find offensive or extreme. And then it gets decried as a leftist echo chamber by right leaning people who see left wing content on the platform they find extreme and objectionable. In reality people should see that Facebook is a platform, and the content on Facebook is made up of individual people's views. It's a mirror of society. If we see something we don't like we should talk to the people we see in the mirror, not ask the mirror to hide them.
- jlos 6y agoI think there are actually two issues here: the incidence of violence and use of a "Content Killswitch". By a content killswitch, I mean that concerted action by 3 companies to basicaly scrub the entire internet of source materia in 24-48 hours and leave only articles giving their spin on the events. I remember the same thing happened when that stupid "Plandemic" movie came out earlier last year. Even while I had no sympathy at all for the point of view in the movie, I at least wanted to view it to make up my own mind and discuss its flaws with the family members who had recommended it to me. But it was almost impossible to find, and that was only within a day or so of it going viral. While I have no sympathy for the viewpoint censored in both cases, the ability to kill content this broadly and quickly is an extremely powerful tool. All you have to do is imagine if your particular political boogeyman with their finger on that button.
- chopin24 6y agoUnfortunately, all you have here is a stance. Having a stance is easy: it's not your company that's hosting the material, it's not your work that's being co-opted to facilitate violence, it's not your legal team that has to go to court when the company gets sued. I've got lots of stances on things that will never impact me, too. Everyone here is saying the same thing, but no one is willing to engage with the very real, actual outcomes of that stance.
- acdha 6y agoI think this argument works better as a question about decentralization: those three companies didn’t “scrub the entire Internet” — they simply chose not to provide free hosting and promotion for it on their own servers. If the authors had registered plandemic.com they’d be easy to find, but then they’d have to pay out of pocket for hosting. I think this is something a lot of us older people forget: if you experienced the internet back when there were thousands of hosting companies and people ran their own servers for everything, this seems weird since there was always another place for anyone substantially less odious than stormfr*nt. After the 2010s, though, an awful lot of people got out of that way of thinking and there are now entire businesses which only have Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube accounts. I find these “victims” detestable but it definitely doesn’t make me happy that Facebook, Google, and Apple have a huge degree of control over what the average internet user sees even if there are tons of sites which they don’t control.
- mrusme 6y agoParler is broken by design and it was predictable that it would get to this point, one way or another. The platform would have had to be designed as decentralised system in first place, since (especially for things like this) it's the only way to survive in the long run.
- ripply 6y agoYea all of this had already happened to gab with gab pivoting to activitypub a year or so ago to get around App Store bans. That the CEO didn’t plan for this is really a failure of leadership at Parler.
- dredmorbius 6y agoSpeculation: A coordinated action including of legal services strongly suggests to me that the vendors themselves have pressure applied, most likely being an ongoing federal law enforcement/security operation. The smell of this goes beyond the business community suddenly deciding Parler is an utterly dispicable organisation. This also raises the question of what heat is now being applied to Parler's backers, notably billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer. See from November 15, 2020, "Conservatives Flock To Mercer-Funded Parler, Claim Censorship On Facebook And Twitter" https://text.npr.org/934833214 https://text.npr.org/934833214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 Meet Rebekah Mercer, the deep-pocketed co-founder of Parler, a controversial conservative social network https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/i...
- DenisM 6y agoWhy would law enforcement care at this point? That’s a lot of trouble to go through, and likely illegal for them. But the precise timing is suspicious. I dunno.
- dredmorbius 6y agoNational security has an abundant interest.
- DenisM 6y agoA national security concern would have been easier dealt with by coercing parler directly rather than going to the trouble of coercing each vendor individually. It makes no sense.
- dredmorbius 6y agoIf NatSec is indeed the motivation, those planning response seem to feel differently.
- IdontRememberIt 6y agoAs the owner of a company, I am more and more afraid to be dependant on Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. because everyday on HN there is a new example proving that they can destroy your business if you are not aligned with their view, their interest or someone in their evaluation team. I use electricity, water, phone, etc. and I have never been afraid to be cut off by these companies as long as I pay the bills and respect the law. PS: I am referring to none political cases (especially with app stores) that have been happening the last years.
- DlSGUSTING 6y agoThere's also all those apps being removed from the Apple App Store for being critical of the CCP. Many such cases! People act like this is just being done because people have the wrong politics, but it's a far more pervasive problem than they realise
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- phoobahr 6y agoFunny how the reliable services are regulated utilities and the unreliable ones are byproducts of advertising companies.
- winston_smith 6y agoRegulated utilities have their own failure modes. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/california-has-first-rolling-blackouts-in-19-years-and-everyone-faces-blame-1309757 https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/...
- finnthehuman 6y ago>PS: I am referring to none political cases (especially with app stores) that have been happening the last years. It's just plain reliability to worry about your single points of failure. You can be the most unobjectionable, vanilla and milquetoast organization. It's still desirable to avoid the situation where a single irreplaceable vendor can bottleneck you. I think there has been a bit of hesitation to acknowledge it when there's so little friction to getting on desirable platforms. The risk doesn't feel as real.
- transmogrifex 6y agoThis is an opportunity for Parler to learn that rolling your own infra is not only freer but cheaper. And even if Parler is successfully killed off today, its successors will certainly learn from the mistake of trusting the FAGMAN group of companies. By overreacting to the symptoms instead of dismantling the underlying causes, cancel culture merely immunises the extremes against censorship.
- sleepysysadmin 6y agoUnfortunate, I got a good account name on there. I don't tend to do social media in general and wasn't planning to use it.