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The AWS banning is what really concerns me. It's a clear escalation. First it's the app level (breached by Apple and Google), then the infrastructure level (bre

by tpmx 6y ago

The AWS banning is what really concerns me. It's a clear escalation. First it's the app level (breached by Apple and Google), then the infrastructure level (breached by AWS - although there are alternatives here. Next up is DNS, I guess? And after that, routing. The ultimate Internet Death Penalty.

edbob 6y ago
> What's left after that? We're also seeing the refusal of legal representation, which seems nearly unprecedented. At some point, the only thing left will be civil death [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death
- cptskippy 6y ago
  This isn't about people having their civil liberties taken away. The social network bans are businesses protecting themselves from people whom threaten their business. Like a fast food restaurant refusing to serve customers who smoke crack in the restaurant. The platform and infrastructure bans are also businesses protecting themselves but not from people, rather from other businesses. This is on level with U-haul banning drug cartels from renting their trucks. No one's civil liberties are being taken away
  - mech422 6y ago
    Indeed, no business wants to carry unnecessary liability. Funny, Didn't see all this crying about censorship when MC & Visa cut off pornhub... edit: just to be clear, I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut them off. Thats just capitalism.
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. I can't clobber you over the head with a product I bought just like how many countries have laws to say I can't kick you out of private property that's also a public square.
      - mech422 6y ago
        >>I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. However, you can evict me from the property and charge me with trespassing, which is closer to whats happening here.. edit: Hell, you can even infringe my 2nd amendment rights and ban me from having a gun on your property! Also, I'm not sure 'private' property can be a 'public' square. At least in New England, the town commons was public land ?
        afuchs 6y ago
        There are instances where such freedoms are granted to individuals while on private property. However, it is limited to specific circumstances and only when a specific jurisdiction's laws require it. Quickly looking this up brings me to the supreme court ruling, Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins [1], which involved laws that were specific to the state of California. Notably, the applicability of this ruling was narrowed over time. Despite this, it has been brought up as an argument in situations with circumstances that differed from those of the original ruling, where questions of its applicability can be easily raised. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
        mech422 6y ago
        Hmm - must have been pretty hard to narrow, since its seems to specifically target shopping centers ? edit: I seem to remember my son's class not being able to petition in front of a grocery store in California like 20 years ago...Wonder if it had been narrowed by then?
        MrMan 6y ago
        In New England they also practiced banishment and put people in stocks for moral infractions.
        corin_ 6y ago
        Most of the world including New England still locks people up for moral infractions, even if no longer using stocks.
    - 55555 6y ago
      In my circles, there was huge backlash against the Pornhub decision by Visa and MC. It was a terrible action.
      - mech422 6y ago
        I don't recall seeing much about it? Though, I have to admit I don't do social media much.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        Certain topics are stigmatized for various reasons so lots of people don't want to be seen to complain about things because they would then be associated with the topic and get the stigma too.
  - edbob 6y ago
    Access to legal counsel is in a special category. Law firms are expected to represent people accused of the very worst crimes in order to promote a just outcome. It's extremely disturbing that political actions which may be distasteful but could never be prosecuted as crimes in normal circumstances have become a justification to harass law firms until they refuse to represent a client. I say "normal circumstances" because I'm not sure how long it will be until we get show trials and mass convictions of political figures.
    - NineStarPoint 6y ago
      Do you have reason to believe that it’s harassment that is stopping these people from getting legal counsel? Many of these people, Trump especially, have shown that they refuse to listen to legal council and will lie for no good reason at all, then throw their legal council under the bus if it seems like it will advantage them. There are many good reasons lawyers might not want to touch the current situation with a ten foot pole besides harrasement.
      - edbob 6y ago
        I'll give a few quick links, but a quick search turns up dozens and I think you're competent enough to search for yourself. You have public statements of "Yes, going after Trump’s law firms is fair game" and then you have the expected harassment and law firms pulling out en masse. Maybe the client's toxicity is a factor, but that should be the only factor. [0] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/16/exclusive-lawyer-at-pa-secretary-of-states-law-firm-harassed-trump-lawyer-accused-her-of-treason-n1152353 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/1... [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/law-firm-drops-trump-campaign-436418 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/law-firm-drops-trum... [2] https://thenewamerican.com/new-low-democrats-approve-harassment-of-trump-attorneys/ https://thenewamerican.com/new-low-democrats-approve-harassm...
        cptskippy 6y ago
        If we start compelling lawyers to provide legal counsel to clients, what protections do we afford those lawyers? In several cases over the last election, Judges threatened lawyers with sanctions and loss of right to practice for bringing forth clearly baseless lawsuits and wasting the court's time. If we affirm that the right to legal counsel is a human right and that corporations also receive that right, how do we protect lawyers from clients which ignore legal counsel and file frivolous that can threaten the lawyer's right to practice law?
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Who's being denied the right to legal representation? I'm not talking about individual lawyers refusing to represent people, I mean literally give me an example of anyone being denied the right to legal representation.
drogon2020 6y ago
It’s the ultimate power play for wealthy Silicon Valley elites to permanently deplatform the most powerful man in the world. I’m sure they all get off to it. It seems only right that they get massively regulated after an action like this. I’m sure all Trumps supporters would support this now which is half the voting population. They should worry about there platforms rather than trying to save the country - that is not their job as much as they may wish it to be. It’s sad it has to come to this though because regulation sucks, but silencing your political opponents is such a slippery slope that Les been done so many times through history.
- longtimegoogler 6y ago
  Your sick man, IMO. This isn't about any power play. This about the escalating calls for violence in our country.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> Next up is DNS, I guess? And after that, routing. Alternatively (or additionally) they could move the damage from the server side to the client: think OSes and browsers, not to mention hardware. It won't be long before "secure boot" technologies prevent people from installing "extremist" operating systems.
- userbinator 6y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jimbob45 6y ago
I disagree. Five years from now, we’re all going to look back fondly at the time we were warned about AWS/EWS gaining too much power and thank each other that we heeded the warning. At the very least, I hope this encourages companies to backup their Cloud data frequently and separately.
greesil 6y ago
Easier to just seize the servers at that point, no?
- strombofulous 6y ago
  Isn't this essentially what happened with AWS?
osgovernment 6y ago
That is precisely what IPFS and ETH domains are for: https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/websites-on-ipfs/link-a-domain/#ethereum-naming-service-ens https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/websites-on-ipfs/link-a-domain/#... I don't want this to sound wrong, but I perceive most of the people complaining about censorship to be hypocrites. They'd be the first to censor if they were in charge of these platforms. They are some of the first to ban in moderated communities like reddit. The reason they're upset is because they are not in control. I think in some ways they are like the people scared of change, and the once change has taken place they are scared of not being in control.
- LarvaFX 6y ago
  Well said. Thank you.
- grep_name 6y ago
  > I don't want this to sound wrong, but I perceive most of the people complaining about censorship to be hypocrites. They'd be the first to censor if they were in charge of these platforms. They are some of the first to ban in moderated communities like reddit. Based on what? I and many people I'm close to in real life are constantly concerned about these escalating erosions of expression and all prefer the less-moderated corners of the internet. None of us have ever sought out control and grew up consistently annoyed at one-sided media outlets, even if they represented the perspective we happened to agree with at the time. If we still use reddit (most of us are falling off), it tends to be a small subset of niche communities that don't focus on meta-politics or have auto-banning protocols. These are the people I see complaining about this around me. Is it just because I'm not on twitter?
  - osgovernment 6y ago
    r/conservative r/conspiracy r/donaldtrump all come to mind as communities that (up until one was recently banned) complained about censorship while constantly banning users for providing debate. Heck, I signed up for Gab and was almost immediately banned from the entire site after sharing my liberal opinion.
triceratops 6y ago
There was once a thing called net neutrality. As long as you had the means to operate a server, even a shitty old laptop in your mom's basement, you could have a presence online*. It's so unfortunate we don't have that anymore though. I wonder who's responsible for that... *Modulo DDOS attacks. Maybe Cloudflare et al should also be required by law to serve everyone regardless of content.
root_axis 6y ago
Ironically, if Trump supporter websites start getting banned at the ISP level they'll only have themselves to blame for their crusade against net neutrality.
est 6y ago
If you think AWS banning is bad https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/digitaloceans-position-on-parler https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/digitaloceans-position-on-... Other services include Twilio, Okta Zendesk, Sendgrid, Stipe, etc.

by tpmx 6y ago

edbob 6y ago

> What's left after that? We're also seeing the refusal of legal representation, which seems nearly unprecedented. At some point, the only thing left will be civil death [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death

cptskippy 6y ago
This isn't about people having their civil liberties taken away. The social network bans are businesses protecting themselves from people whom threaten their business. Like a fast food restaurant refusing to serve customers who smoke crack in the restaurant. The platform and infrastructure bans are also businesses protecting themselves but not from people, rather from other businesses. This is on level with U-haul banning drug cartels from renting their trucks. No one's civil liberties are being taken away
- mech422 6y ago
  Indeed, no business wants to carry unnecessary liability. Funny, Didn't see all this crying about censorship when MC & Visa cut off pornhub... edit: just to be clear, I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut them off. Thats just capitalism.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. I can't clobber you over the head with a product I bought just like how many countries have laws to say I can't kick you out of private property that's also a public square.
    - mech422 6y ago
      >>I don't agree that it's 'just capitalism'. Just because I acquire a piece of private property does not necessarily give me the right to do anything I want with it. However, you can evict me from the property and charge me with trespassing, which is closer to whats happening here.. edit: Hell, you can even infringe my 2nd amendment rights and ban me from having a gun on your property! Also, I'm not sure 'private' property can be a 'public' square. At least in New England, the town commons was public land ?
      - afuchs 6y ago
        There are instances where such freedoms are granted to individuals while on private property. However, it is limited to specific circumstances and only when a specific jurisdiction's laws require it. Quickly looking this up brings me to the supreme court ruling, Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins [1], which involved laws that were specific to the state of California. Notably, the applicability of this ruling was narrowed over time. Despite this, it has been brought up as an argument in situations with circumstances that differed from those of the original ruling, where questions of its applicability can be easily raised. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
        mech422 6y ago
        Hmm - must have been pretty hard to narrow, since its seems to specifically target shopping centers ? edit: I seem to remember my son's class not being able to petition in front of a grocery store in California like 20 years ago...Wonder if it had been narrowed by then?
      - MrMan 6y ago
        In New England they also practiced banishment and put people in stocks for moral infractions.
        corin_ 6y ago
        Most of the world including New England still locks people up for moral infractions, even if no longer using stocks.
  - 55555 6y ago
    In my circles, there was huge backlash against the Pornhub decision by Visa and MC. It was a terrible action.
    - mech422 6y ago
      I don't recall seeing much about it? Though, I have to admit I don't do social media much.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        Certain topics are stigmatized for various reasons so lots of people don't want to be seen to complain about things because they would then be associated with the topic and get the stigma too.
- edbob 6y ago
  Access to legal counsel is in a special category. Law firms are expected to represent people accused of the very worst crimes in order to promote a just outcome. It's extremely disturbing that political actions which may be distasteful but could never be prosecuted as crimes in normal circumstances have become a justification to harass law firms until they refuse to represent a client. I say "normal circumstances" because I'm not sure how long it will be until we get show trials and mass convictions of political figures.
  - NineStarPoint 6y ago
    Do you have reason to believe that it’s harassment that is stopping these people from getting legal counsel? Many of these people, Trump especially, have shown that they refuse to listen to legal council and will lie for no good reason at all, then throw their legal council under the bus if it seems like it will advantage them. There are many good reasons lawyers might not want to touch the current situation with a ten foot pole besides harrasement.
    - edbob 6y ago
      I'll give a few quick links, but a quick search turns up dozens and I think you're competent enough to search for yourself. You have public statements of "Yes, going after Trump’s law firms is fair game" and then you have the expected harassment and law firms pulling out en masse. Maybe the client's toxicity is a factor, but that should be the only factor. [0] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/16/exclusive-lawyer-at-pa-secretary-of-states-law-firm-harassed-trump-lawyer-accused-her-of-treason-n1152353 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/1... [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/law-firm-drops-trump-campaign-436418 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/law-firm-drops-trum... [2] https://thenewamerican.com/new-low-democrats-approve-harassment-of-trump-attorneys/ https://thenewamerican.com/new-low-democrats-approve-harassm...
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        If we start compelling lawyers to provide legal counsel to clients, what protections do we afford those lawyers? In several cases over the last election, Judges threatened lawyers with sanctions and loss of right to practice for bringing forth clearly baseless lawsuits and wasting the court's time. If we affirm that the right to legal counsel is a human right and that corporations also receive that right, how do we protect lawyers from clients which ignore legal counsel and file frivolous that can threaten the lawyer's right to practice law?
pmiller2 6y ago
Who's being denied the right to legal representation? I'm not talking about individual lawyers refusing to represent people, I mean literally give me an example of anyone being denied the right to legal representation.

drogon2020 6y ago

It’s the ultimate power play for wealthy Silicon Valley elites to permanently deplatform the most powerful man in the world. I’m sure they all get off to it. It seems only right that they get massively regulated after an action like this. I’m sure all Trumps supporters would support this now which is half the voting population. They should worry about there platforms rather than trying to save the country - that is not their job as much as they may wish it to be. It’s sad it has to come to this though because regulation sucks, but silencing your political opponents is such a slippery slope that Les been done so many times through history.

longtimegoogler 6y ago
Your sick man, IMO. This isn't about any power play. This about the escalating calls for violence in our country.

dane-pgp 6y ago

> Next up is DNS, I guess? And after that, routing. Alternatively (or additionally) they could move the damage from the server side to the client: think OSes and browsers, not to mention hardware. It won't be long before "secure boot" technologies prevent people from installing "extremist" operating systems.

userbinator 6y ago
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jimbob45 6y ago

I disagree. Five years from now, we’re all going to look back fondly at the time we were warned about AWS/EWS gaining too much power and thank each other that we heeded the warning. At the very least, I hope this encourages companies to backup their Cloud data frequently and separately.

greesil 6y ago

Easier to just seize the servers at that point, no?

strombofulous 6y ago
Isn't this essentially what happened with AWS?

osgovernment 6y ago

That is precisely what IPFS and ETH domains are for: https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/websites-on-ipfs/link-a-domain/#ethereum-naming-service-ens https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/websites-on-ipfs/link-a-domain/#... I don't want this to sound wrong, but I perceive most of the people complaining about censorship to be hypocrites. They'd be the first to censor if they were in charge of these platforms. They are some of the first to ban in moderated communities like reddit. The reason they're upset is because they are not in control. I think in some ways they are like the people scared of change, and the once change has taken place they are scared of not being in control.

LarvaFX 6y ago
Well said. Thank you.
grep_name 6y ago
> I don't want this to sound wrong, but I perceive most of the people complaining about censorship to be hypocrites. They'd be the first to censor if they were in charge of these platforms. They are some of the first to ban in moderated communities like reddit. Based on what? I and many people I'm close to in real life are constantly concerned about these escalating erosions of expression and all prefer the less-moderated corners of the internet. None of us have ever sought out control and grew up consistently annoyed at one-sided media outlets, even if they represented the perspective we happened to agree with at the time. If we still use reddit (most of us are falling off), it tends to be a small subset of niche communities that don't focus on meta-politics or have auto-banning protocols. These are the people I see complaining about this around me. Is it just because I'm not on twitter?
- osgovernment 6y ago
  r/conservative r/conspiracy r/donaldtrump all come to mind as communities that (up until one was recently banned) complained about censorship while constantly banning users for providing debate. Heck, I signed up for Gab and was almost immediately banned from the entire site after sharing my liberal opinion.

triceratops 6y ago

There was once a thing called net neutrality. As long as you had the means to operate a server, even a shitty old laptop in your mom's basement, you could have a presence online*. It's so unfortunate we don't have that anymore though. I wonder who's responsible for that... *Modulo DDOS attacks. Maybe Cloudflare et al should also be required by law to serve everyone regardless of content.

root_axis 6y ago

Ironically, if Trump supporter websites start getting banned at the ISP level they'll only have themselves to blame for their crusade against net neutrality.

est 6y ago

If you think AWS banning is bad https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/digitaloceans-position-on-parler https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/digitaloceans-position-on-... Other services include Twilio, Okta Zendesk, Sendgrid, Stipe, etc.