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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

• CivBase 6y ago
  I don't know which social media platforms use AWS to any critical extent, but I can't imagine them ejecting a big name like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc over "finding dozens of posts on the service which it said encouraged violence".
  • makeworld 6y ago
    Yes, because "dozens" represents different percentages of content on Parler vs much much bigger platforms like Twitter. Parler is filled with content that encourages violence, while Twitter is used for all kinds of things.
    • moralestapia 6y ago
      Can you provide (or estimate) numbers on that? And also, what is the threshold for deciding which platform is on one side or another?
      • eejit_compiler 6y ago
        The threshold is if the management at Amazon etc. feel that it would generate too much bad publicity and/or potential legal liability for them to provide service to an organization mired in such controversy.
        • Schiendelman 6y ago
          That’s a perfectly reasonable reason for a business to do something.
    • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      So they could have just filled their site with GPT3-generated nonsense to reach the acceptable percentage of nonviolent content? Cool!
  • gameswithgo 6y ago
    The distinction, that AWS, Google, and Apple have all claimed, is that Parler refuses to sufficiently moderate the inciting of violence. Perhaps that claim is in error, perhaps such judgements are too subjective. If so, large social media companies might avoid AWS for fear of it.
    • leereeves 6y ago
      If that means that Parler refuses to moderate the actual planning or threatening of crimes, the legal system would shut them down. Section 230 doesn't protect social media companies from criminal liability. If that merely means that Parler allows posts that make people angry with a fair amount of violent rhetoric, well, that's all social media. In that case, the distinction is partisan, not principled.
    • itsoktocry 6y ago
      >that Parler refuses to sufficiently moderate Where can one find a definition of "sufficient" in this context?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • moate 6y ago
        Probably the ToS has language about when AWS can decide to stop hosting. I would assume the langue is extremely broad, legally speaking, in how much control it gives AWS to their own platform. If you're going to build something aimed entirely at "taking down/riling up the establishment" you need to make sure you're not entirely dependent on the establishment to keep your something online.
      • jcranmer 6y ago
        The Amazon email to Parler says: > Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence. [...] It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. [...] This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. (quoting from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p..., it's a ways down the page). The email is lacking in specifics, though.
  • eejit_compiler 6y ago
    Indeed, and I think it's because Parler is best known for hosting violent, far-right content, that is linked to the recent insurrection at the Capitol Building. Whereas the other services you cite are much more generic in their clientele. So based on this, Amazon made a business decision to deny service to Parler, due to the adverse publicity (and perhaps, potential legal liability) generated for them by hosting this content.
    • CivBase 6y ago
      Then maybe AWS should just come out and say "We disabled our services for Parler because it's very unpopular and we don't want to be associated with it."
      • eejit_compiler 6y ago
        They pretty much already did. In corporate PR terms, "it contravened our Terms of Service" is essentially synonymous with "we don't want to be associated with it".
      • mech422 6y ago
        I'd be happier with something like: "parler is just not worth the aggravation" - they are likely to be a minuscule revenue source that requires constant monitoring to make sure we not facing any liability, as well as potentially pissing off our existing clients. Therefore, its in our best interests just not to bother with them. Anyone that thinks corporations care one way or another about anything except their bottom lines, has a much higher view of corporations then I do. 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. That's just capitalism. No master except the almighty dollar. but if they were at least honest about it, maybe we could stop re-hashing this everyday...
    • derision 6y ago
      What about calling for the eradication of Jews? https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784 https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784 Twitter doesn't seem to have any issue with this content
  • partiallypro 6y ago
    I would be near willing to bet that more of the Capitol Hill events were planned on private Facebook groups, chats, etc than on Parler. Signal is a chat app that is secure and group chats are big in planning... So are they going to ban Signal? Conspiracy theories are rampant on WeChat and even over text messages.
    • valuearb 6y ago
      You’d likely be wrong. You have to meet your conspirators on public platforms or in public places before you can switch to private communications.
      • sigstoat 6y ago
        public platforms like twitter and facebook and whatever for the last X years? conservatives have watched themselves banned piecemeal from these platforms, they know exactly what’s coming. the ones you’re worried about have already got private comms.
      • partiallypro 6y ago
        I just said they probably were on private Facebook groups, once you meet there you can branch out to Signal and WeChat, etc. My point is that you don't see calls to ban those apps, but everyone is celebrating Parler's death. I think everyone should be careful what they wish for.
        • Faark 6y ago
          Equating private with public messaging is ridiculous. Not sure how laws are in the US, but when doing support here in germany we had to have private in-game messages reported by a participant before we were even allowed to look at them. The company obviously had a much easier time shaping the atmosphere in the public forum. Also while ensuring those tools can never be used for "evil" is unreasonable, we should expect dominant players to do what they can or at least not do a lot worse than everyone else. Are you arguing Parler tried to moderate as much as others?
    • deleted 6y ago
  • valuearb 6y ago
    Conservatives support AWS right to decide who it wants to do business with, so implicitly they support the ejection of Parlour.
    • robertlagrant 6y ago
      That doesn't mean what you think it does.
  • jtdev 6y ago
    Ayatollah posts to Instagram... they don’t seem to care much about that.
    • margaretdouglas 6y ago
      Whataboutisms aren't an argumentative position.
      • kofejnik 6y ago
        they actually are, when we're discussing selective rule enforcement
  • standardUser 6y ago
    It's not about finding posts encouraging violence, it is about refusing to try to moderate that content, and your suggestion otherwise is disingenuous. If Facebook said "we are no longer going to try and moderate content that incites violence" there would obviously be blowback.
    • NDizzle 6y ago
      It wouldn't be such a big deal if "hurts feelings" didn't equal "incites violence". Silence is also violence. All of you lurkers will be purged as well.
      • domano 6y ago
        I do not understand what you are saying, could you clarify?
        • neogodless 6y ago
          Roughly translated, "everyone who isn't on my side is going to be killed by our side, which might upset you, but I would not consider that 'inciting violence'." EDIT: I misunderstood "purge" in this context. I disagree that silence on moderating content is "violence" just as I disagree that anything you disagree with is "violence." But I do not believe content will be "purged" unless it's part of a movement to unseat democracy or coordinate violent actions.
          • CivBase 6y ago
            I disagree with what he said, but you're seemingly doing your best to make his point. He's saying that when a person don't like something, the recent trend is to just label it as "inciting violence". He then adds onto that by saying the idea of "silence is violence" means that anyone who does not speak out against the disliked thing is inherently guilty of "inciting violence" as well, so lurkers and moderates are not safe from being labeled. Again, I disagree with what he said. However, accusing his post of threatening violence against everyone with whom he disagrees does kind of support his point.
  • kingdomcome50 6y ago
    That's not the reason, and we all know it. We live in a capitalist free-market system. Amazon (or any entity) is free to choose with whom they do business (oh the irony!). They are dropping Parler because the the current political climate has manifest in such a way that they think it will cost them more financial and/or political capital than the alternative (recall there is a lot of antitrust sentiment out there right now). Too bad so sad. Sorry not sorry. This is exactly the kind of "freedom" for which many of the above platform's users would advocate. Parler's PR team is missing the opportunity to applaud AWS for exercising their freedoms.
    • CivBase 6y ago
      Okay, but shouldn't it at least bother you that Amazon is lying about their reason? I don't think congratulating a company for exercising their rights is appropriate when they're actively lying to our faces. Unless, of course, they actually stand by what they've said. In which case we come right back to my original post.
      • kingdomcome50 6y ago
        What am I supposed to say? Amazon doesn't really come off as the "good guy" by admitting they have weighed the current political climate against their profits. Especially given whose about to be in charge. They made a business decision and wrapped up in some good 'ol PR spin/legalese. It happens all the time. About everything. It's still their right to refuse service.
        • CivBase 6y ago
          I never made the case that they don't have that right. I just called out their statement.
  • Fellshard 6y ago
    It's the clear double standard that makes this concerning.
    • Schiendelman 6y ago
      I think you have to read the standard as: did this lead to violence? If you do, it doesn’t seem like a double standard anymore.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  It would be interesting if power companies run by various oligarchs started disconnecting power to AWS servers: “go generate your own power” Or maybe food delivery truck drivers is a better analogy since that isn’t a utility...
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    This feels analogous to paper companies banding together and refusing to provide paper to a newspaper whose opinion column they disagree with.
    • ABeeSea 6y ago
      More like “whose letters to the editor page routinely featured calls for violent revolution.”
    • moate 6y ago
      It's more analogous to a single server host refusing to host a site, while the material components (actual physical servers) are still readily available if likely outside the financial range for a site at their size (tbh though, I have no idea what sort of server needs this site would actual have). Parler could still go out and build their own servers. The fact that this is a project driven by "free speech enthusiasts" and not actual engineers means they're probably going to have a real hard time getting the engineering stuff back in line. Apple/Google refusing to sell your app is just that: a store refusing to sell a product.
      • itsoktocry 6y ago
        >Parler could still go out and build their own servers. Yes, and as someone on Twitter pointed out, as a customer also denied service, Rosa Parks could have gone out and started her own bus line (likely outside her financial range though). The argument to "do it yourself" is silly. Europe sees it. The ACLU sees it. Why can't you? For the record: I think these platforms should be responsible for what they host.
• ortusdux 6y ago
  It fascinates me that the people most offended by the recent actions of google, amazon, facebook, etc are the ones pushing for the repeal of section 230.
  • valvar 6y ago
    Yes, it's quite strange, but I'm guessing it's mostly due to media disinformation about section 230. People who are actually informed and in favour of free speech and opposed to megacorp oligopolies are strongly opposing changing section 230. Rather, they advocate breaking up the megacorps or making them utilities.
    • hammock 6y ago
      I've heard this before, and I'm so confused by section 230. Where can I read some reliable info on it?
      • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...
      • Jtsummers 6y ago
        In addition to NikolaeVarius' link, here's the law itself: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 It's a quick read, it's not long, and it's actually reasonably clear what it does and does not do.
      • jcranmer 6y ago
        Ars Technica's got a good explainer, including bits on why the law was enacted and what a purported legal framework without it might look like: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
      • nenadst 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• chasing 6y ago
  Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any sort) need moderation. Certain people have turned this fact on its head and want you to believe that "completely free speech" and "healthy communities" are compatible because they want to overrun healthy channels with their garbage.
  • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe and serious than anything on Parler
    • doggosphere 6y ago
      The actual reason for the war: an informant fed the government bad intel and the state looked the other way because they wanted a reason to invade Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
      • sthnblllII 6y ago
        That is like saying the reason the bank was robbed was because it had so much money in it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strateg... The Bush administration officials who sold those lies to the public were zionist jews who had written this policy paper just 5 years before Bush appointed them into the government.
        • selimthegrim 6y ago
• gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Like what horrific stuff has been planned with gmail? Anyone use google to search for information used to do bad things? This is all incredibly focused, when the big players most certainly are rife with their own sins.
• mozillalives 6y ago
  All I’m going to say is that I’m all for free speech and setting fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler doesn’t want to do any content regulation then fine (though this should be any easy place to draw the line), but I can’t blame Amazon for saying “we don’t want that here”.
  • at_a_remove 6y ago
    "... looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles" is another way of saying "I ate the cherry pie made from the cherry-picking by the cherry-pickers." Buzzfeed is about as even-handed as the Norse god Tyr.
    • quickthrowman 6y ago
      “Buzzfeed News” and “Buzzfeed” are two distinct and separate organizations, with Buzzfeed News being a serious news-gathering organization.
  • abarringer 6y ago
    oh com'n. As if twitter doesn't allow people to post stupid junk? Multiple accounts that posted "Kill all white women" "Today seems like a good day for another reminder that all republicans deserve to die" are still active along with plenty of other insane things. You can cherry pick bad stuff from any social media site.
    • chickenpotpie 6y ago
      Twitter puts an active effort into removing those posts. You can definitely make the case they don’t go far enough, but Parler did the bare minimum. You would have to cherry pick the reasonable content off that site.
      • 6y ago
• MichaelRazum 6y ago
  Just curios. How about uber, could they refuse to service employes from parler :) ? Or lets say refuse service some right wing people. I mean it is just a private company...
  • Hitton 6y ago
    Probably yes. Neither company affiliation or political opinions are protected attributes. Possible outcome would be uncertain only if people claimed that their association with political party/company is based on their love towards it and thus its protected as sexual orientation or gender.
  • ketamine__ 6y ago
    Apparently it depends on the country. Facebook deleted personal profiles of NSO group employees because they hacked WhatsApp but then an Israeli court ruled that was illegal. Sometimes Facebook does the right thing. I think Uber should refuse service to those added to the no fly list. Some of them aren't taking it so well: https://mobile.twitter.com/rayredacted/status/1348388601118273537 https://mobile.twitter.com/rayredacted/status/13483886011182...
    • MichaelRazum 6y ago
      Interesting. How about a doctor, could he legally refuse treatment as well?
      • ketamine__ 6y ago
        Some doctors refuse treatment to anti-vaxxers now.
    • paulnechifor 6y ago
      All companies shutting them down without so much as a hearing in court will probably lead them to build parallel societies.
      • 6y ago
• chr1 6y ago
  Left wing democrats and Trump supporters want to eliminate each other, in a sense of eliminating their defining idea. Sadly in their war they are weaponizing the shared infrastructure, harming themselves and the people not interested in their war. (e.g. triggering the new wave of internet regulation in other countries, delaying a flight because there is someone with red hat etc.) The economy and civility that allow billions of different people to cooperate is a fragile thing. So we need to explain the warring sides that they need to go throw their stones in another place, e.g. try to use courts and legislation if they want to ban each other, or have different laws in different states. The situation is remarkably similar to the situation with religion in 1600s England, when people were trying to blend it with state, and only after long wars did they understand that not allowing someone into shop based on religion is not acceptable.
  • vb6sp6 6y ago
    AWS will be fine. Anyone not using these hosts to promote terrorism will be fine.
    • chr1 6y ago
      > Anyone not using these hosts to promote terrorism The power always changes hands, and people who were passing laws calling random things "terrorism" end up on the other side of their laws. I guess for now you can have fun watching how Patriot Act championed buy republicans gets used against themselves. Sadly with full control over all branches, democrats will continue eroding freedoms and laws restraining the government, which eventually will be used against them too.
      • vb6sp6 6y ago
        AWS' response wasn't based on 'calling random things "terrorism"'. it was based on things that actually happened so I think the response is proportional. > I guess for now you can have fun watching how Patriot Act championed buy republicans gets used against themselves The government didn't get involved here. This is two companies deciding not to do business with each other > Sadly with full control over all branches, democrats will continue eroding freedoms and laws restraining the government, which eventually will be used against them too. The government didn't ban or restrain parler
• clarkmoody 6y ago
  The great irony here is that these de-platformings are only concerned with non-state violence (or so they claim). There is no censorship of people advocating for disarming the entire population (using political violence) or depriving them of property (again, using state power). And as far as I can tell, none of the politicians who initiate and perpetuate war are de-platformed.
  • igravious 6y ago
    Is irony the correct word? --8<-- In May 1996 Madeleine Albright, who was then the U.S. ambassador to the UN, was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to years of U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, LS: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” To which Ambassador Albright responded, MA: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” --8<-- https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/170-sanctions/41952.html https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/170-s... Madeleine Albright is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/madeleine https://twitter.com/madeleine Depending on your morality and politics there are countless other examples. Perhaps hypocrisy is the more correct word?
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    Isn’t trump’s deplatforming contradicting your statement?
  • disposekinetics 6y ago
    Twitter has hosted the Revolutionary Communist Party USA for at least ten years. It would seem they have no ethical problem with hosting calls for a coup.
    • vevans 6y ago
      I mean the RCP has been basically irrelevant since the 60s or early 70s, so it’s not as if they’re an active concern for anyone
• garyclarke27 6y ago
  This vicious lethal (effectively kills Parler) action by Amazon - driven by a mob of woke employees - will cause long term damage to AWS. I had plans to use AWS for a potentially huge SAAS business, even though it is not likely to be contentious, just the thought of them being able to destroy everything overnight, without due process, without recourse - sends chills down my spine. I cannot now imagine, being able to trust Amazon for critical infrastructure ever again and I'm sure many other entrepreneurs will feel similarly.
  • verytrivial 6y ago
    This sounds like a reasoned moral choice for you and I applaud it. Some entrepreneurs will feel the same. And some would also be looking for providers other than AWS if they didn't hold Parler to the letter of their TOS in this case. It is also true that AWS and all network providers exist within a societal context where the speech and actions of the participants can result in consequences. Where the line is drawn and why is a never ending tension. Very, very rarely is the extreme moral position universally true IMHO -- there is possibly content you would like kicked of AWS, and there will be poeple who can defend anything in the name of free speech. Good luck with the SAAS, and may your customers not be scoundrels!
    • charly187 6y ago
      Are we supposed to pretend that the same people that pushed for this to happen don't actively fantasize about banning people like Steven Crowder and The Daily Wire/Ben Shapiro?
  • afavour 6y ago
    This is hyperbolic in the extreme, and to blame "woke employees" with everything going on right now is just plain silly. When deciding whether to choose to host your services with AWS you can answer a simple question: are you planning on violating their terms of service? If the answer is yes, do not use AWS.
    • garyclarke27 6y ago
• domano 6y ago
  I am really happy with the way Hackernews works and the way moderation works here. Thank you! I do not know if there would be a possibility to scale it for a real social network tho.
  • rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
    It’s more about social norms than moderation, and frankly things have gotten worse not better. I remember when most posts that posited any “fact” were cited with references, and often any lack of sources was responded with a request for supporting documentation. HN is slowly becoming a brainier alt-Reddit with every snide quip or uncited statement of opinion masquerading as fact.
    • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      This has been my experience as well, and I've been browsing HN since at least 2009. Downvotes/flagging are used much more heavily to express political disagreement as well now (which biases what gets downvoted due to the left-leaning bias in tech) and I think there is more politics in general (but that is true of media more broadly).
• verytrivial 6y ago
  I find it slightly ironic that the fruits of the whole ARPANET project around network routing resilience in the face of node failure due to enemy attack (domestic or foreign) ends up threatening the health of the Republic because we can no longer tell who is an ememy (domestic or foreign) on the resilient network.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Note that Parler is screwed because some "nodes" have reached a disproportionate importance.
• cs-szazz 6y ago
  Serious question, it seems AWS is by no means a monopoly on web hosting (Google, Azure, Digital Ocean, Linode, the list goes on). It seems to be they're well within their rights as a company to not host Parler, and Parler can try to go somewhere else. If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection of Parler than the hosting companies? It doesn't seem like they should be obligated to host, since that's as slippery a slope as not hosting is. Perhaps this is a decision where not everyone will ever be happy, and that's just how it's going to be?
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection of Parler than the hosting companies? Yes. The funny thing is that it happened to people who foam at the mouth about the rights of private businesses to do what they want and decry government intervention.
    • khawkins 6y ago
      You're conflating different groups of people because you don't understand the nuances of the different groups at play. These are not the same groups in the slightest.
      • dagmx 6y ago
        How are they not when they support the same group of politicians?
        • khawkins 6y ago
          Since when do people only vote for people they completely agree with and not the "better of two evils"? If the choices are the party that actively wants to censor you and the party that doesn't want to pass legislation to protect you from censorship, the choice is obvious.
          • dagmx 6y ago
• JuliusPullo 6y ago
  Giant corporations and the media, who used to encourage BLM and Antifa riots, are now openly using their power to humiliate and destroy their business competitors and political opposition. But who cares. Let's see what's new in Netflix.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    That's capitalism for ya.
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    The black cause is on a completely different moral plane than angry white people trying to keep trump in power. To cut off service to someone is not destroying a business “competitor.” The fact that they were depending on your service indicates a type of cooperation not competition.
    • 6sup6 6y ago
      According to your moral values. But your morals aren't shared by the entire world.
      • shrimpx 6y ago
        I agree, but every major decision takes into account societal forces. When I say “moral plane” I take into account broad societal forces. For example, broadly speaking in the USA the black cause for equal justice is broadly understood to be of much more importance and credence than the cause of the Aryan nation for white supremacy. And to reinforce my second point, Twitter’s decision to ban or not ban someone is largely subjective (beyond the TOS) and they are sensitive to public pressures and the overall societal climate. It’s not about my moral values but the aggregate moral values of society.
• L_226 6y ago
  Serious question (not in the US), if "all" the content on Parler was inciting terrorism or what have you, why was it not simply subpoena'd by the relevant authority for user data? Isn't a site like this basically a honeypot for undesireables, and therefore a handy place for LE to round up all the people likely to commit violence? Or are there too many for LE, or is LE itself compromised and has members on the site?
  • disposekinetics 6y ago
    My observation is just a single observation, but after all the hubbub I created a Parler account and I saw a more milquetoast Twitter. It honestly reminded me of a country club in that it was mostly an older people version of Twitter.
• chickenpotpie 6y ago
  Putting myself in AWS’s shoes makes this choice seem obvious. If I imagine myself maintaining a server and I learn it’s being used for death threats and coup plannings, I would tell them to stop doing that or I’m shutting them down. And then if they didn’t do it I would immediately revoke their access. I don’t know about everyone else on this site but I wasn’t put on this planet to design and build tools for terrorists and extremists. I’ve been on Parler and it’s disgusting. The public doesn’t want it to be on AWS and AWS doesn’t want it on AWS. There’s no reason they should be forced to host it.
  • minimuffins 6y ago
    > If I imagine myself maintaining a server and I learn it’s being used for death threats and coup plannings, I would tell them to stop doing that They better nullify their very lucrative business relationship with US intelligence services post haste then. > There’s no reason they should be forced to host it. "Forced." Poor AWS. They didn't even consent to this!
  • YarickR2 6y ago
    The public ? Oh yes famous working people of 1937's Soviet Union, condemning enemies of the state en masse
  • ketamine__ 6y ago
    Parler had the option to police their users but put an unqualified volunteer moderation team in charge. As you can imagine this leads to suboptimal results where the most egregious content isn't removed. I was on last night and saw a picture of Peloi's house with the address attached. These are dangerous people that are stalking our democratically elected leaders.
    • reaperducer 6y ago
      saw a picture of Peloi's house with the address attached. It's sad how publishing the address of a politician has become akin to a threat. When I was a journalist, all politicians had their addresses and phone numbers right in the phone book. We looked them up all the time. Voters were expected to be able to know exactly where their elected officials lived. It was also one way of verifying that they actually lived within their district. But because basic knowledge has become weaponized and abused by nutjobs, the general public now feels this is a threat. How much society has changed in a very short time.
• loraa 6y ago
  Don't ever believe you have freedom when leftists around.
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  This is troubling. I understand the 1st amendment argument, but isn't this more an anti-trust case? If a baker won't bake you a cake because you're gay there are dozens of other bakeries nearby that will, regardless of the merits or lackthereof of choosing not to bake a cake in that situation. If your service provider kicks you off their platform they've destroyed your entire business. I understand if they won't allow certain businesses to sign up, or if they give them a reasonable amount of time to transition to another provider, but revoking existing services with very little warning seems extreme.
  • analog31 6y ago
    This is actually a widespread and common business situation. I used to work for a company that made a specialized component, and a customer called us up one day and said: "We have to knock 1 cent off the cost of your component, or WalMart will drop our brand from all of their stores." More broadly, a lot of businesses are at the mercy of a single big customer or supplier. Texas Instruments could discontinue the chip that I use in my product, sending my side business into a tailspin. I had to buy a lifetime supply of another part when it was slated for obsolescence.
    • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Components are a bit different in that they are marketed as "obsolete for new designs", etc. and anyone making a physical product knows to plan for the eventuality that a supplier will be unreliable or that a part will be discontinued. This situation is not analogous since access to AWS is ongoing.
      • analog31 6y ago
        Indeed, and I could have prepared myself for the situation in any number of ways, including monitoring my components status, designing around the dependency, and so forth. I think. Not all suppliers make it easy to discover the status of components. Do you think that a sole source relationship carries an implied contract of continued service? Should that be a regulation? I don't think I'd like that. As I understand it, AWS didn't force Parler to sole-source their computing infrastructure. And Parler claimed that they had prepared for such an eventuality. I don't know if it would apply to the current situation with Parler, as my understanding is that they did agree to terms of service, and that the dispute with AWS over their content moderation didn't come up all of a sudden.
• avl999 6y ago
  They'll survive being dropped by Amazon. What they most likely won't survive is if CloudFlare wants nothing to do with them. They are done if CloudFlare drops them.
• u678u 6y ago
  Parler is obviously a cesspit. However its a minor sideshow. Most of the sickness of the last four years has been spread on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Fox News. These however are much better connected so are still running today.
• rnikander 6y ago
  Does anyone else think it's suspicious that they built everything on AWS? I mean, if you know you're going to take heat for your content being less moderated, wouldn't you diversify your infrastructure? I wonder if someone wanted this to happen, in order to increase support for certain legislative action?
  • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Why would they know they would take heat for their moderation policy? Are there any other examples? I can't think of any. Edit: I mean examples where companies lose access to core services due to their moderation policy. I know twitter and facebook get shit for theirs all the time, but nothing substantive ever happens.
    • causalmodels 6y ago
      I think Gab [1] is a relevant example. They were dropped by their GoDaddy, Stripe, PayPal, etc. after the tree of life shooter posted their manifesto on the site. Another example would be Cloudflare dropping 8chan [2] after the El Paso shooter, Christchurch shooter, and Poway synagogue shooter used the site to post their manifestos. Cloudflare also dropped support for the neo-nazi website The Daily Stormer [3] although my impression is that the reason for termination was deeply related to people on the website claiming their continued business relationship signaled ideological sympathy on the part of Cloudflare [4 -- about halfway down] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/28/far-right-social-network-gab-goes-offline-after-godaddy-tells-it-to-find-another-domain-registrar/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/28/far-right-social-network-g... [2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ [3]https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ [4] https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/
  • asdffdsa 6y ago
    Ockam's razor man, I doubt they even considered it. And by the time they did, the app was too big to move and/or even secure another cloud provider.
• lanevorockz 6y ago
  PULLS SUPPORT ? What an odd way to say deny service. The BBC journalists went mad a few years ago and now that's what is left.
  • vb6sp6 6y ago
    Free market. You don't have to bake gay wedding cakes and we don't have to host terrorist content
• ogre_codes 6y ago
  One thing which concerns me a bit about this is that removing Parler removes a big chunk of evidence about how this was planned and who was involved. - Is this archived? - Does Law enforcement have access to that archive? Seems like once it's abundantly clear there is zero profit left in this the owners will abandon any link to the data and let it all rot and vanish. This strikes me as a lost opportunity.
• gurjeet 6y ago
  This being HN I expected more commentary around how a company can/should build technology to survive such incidents, and not go down just because one of your providers either blocked you or themselves went down.
  • loveistheanswer 6y ago
    It is funny that a social media company seeking to escape from the big tech stranglehold would decide to host their platform using a big tech cloud provider.
  • moojd 6y ago
    I don't think a legal business can survive this kind of incident (becoming a pariah in the eyes of FAANG.) There isn't a point in being resilient against being dropped by one service if they all drop you in unison. If you try to take payments you will be dropped by all of the payment processors. If you try to run bare metal and are dropped by cloudflare you will be DDOS'd to death. If you go p2p you'll need to be able to ship native apps which will be dropped from the app stores or denied a certificate. Side-loading is already dead in iOS and things are moving that way for other major operating systems including desktop. If you are an illegal business there are a multitude of ways of working around many of these issues (using fake identities with hosting companies and other services, making money via shady malware riddled ad services, money laundering, etc...) Until recently I thought that p2p/crypto/etc was the solution but since you cannot do true p2p in the browser and must ship native code, at the end of the day you will still need the blessing of Apple/Google/Microsoft and agree to their TOS to exist. Of course this is perfect storm that happens rarely but it's still chilling to watch it unfold despite how contemptible the target is.
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  The rise of the Authoritarian left is upon. Brace for patriot act 2.0. Being banned from banking, flights, job opportunities, and society based on political association. Watch the crackdown as Biden is a deeply problematic and corrupt individual, that won an election that increasingly people will question as taxes are raised on the productive, and covid rules are used to justify taking away rights.
  • vb6sp6 6y ago
    if you don't want to be treated like a terrorist, you probably shouldn't fly to the nations capitol and storm congress.
    • dukeofdoom 6y ago
      Your hubris prevents them from seeing how abuses of power and petty acts of tyranny can backfire.
      • vb6sp6 6y ago
        "if you don't want your website shutdown for terrorism, you should probably moderate your site for terrorism" seems like a pretty clear and concise terms of use.
• tmpz22 6y ago
  To all the HN users defending Parler by drawing false equivalencies to BLM, the NYTimes, Saudi Arabia, and China, without acknowledging the events of The last few months: shame on you. Parler and it’s moderator team , as well as Donald Trump, has supported COVID denial, the election fraud conspiracy, and Q conspiracy, for over a year. This was a concentrated effort to brain wash American conservatives to completely distrust and disassemble the institutions of American democracy. I don’t know if you are from other countries and do not realize the context and severity of these actions, or if you’re troll accounts wishing to sow the same discord on HN. It won’t work. This isn’t a first amendment of free speech issue. This is a lifesaving step for the public commons. You can still have conservative values. Nobody got banned for supporting lower taxes, states rights, or being anti-abortion. You can promote and discuss those on Twitter Facebook and AWS on any day of the week. What you cannot do is organize thousands of individuals to commit violent acts, or call for and attempt the murder of rightfully elected public officials not just on January 6 - but again on Inauguration Day. That is why this disgusting content, on the same level of snuff porn and child porn, had to be purged from the internet.
  • ookblah 6y ago
    seriously. millions of conservatives are still on twitter/fb with no censorship. some of the biggest conservative "celebs" built their audiences on twitter and benefit from the outrage machine. it's so hilariously out of touch and ironic to me that they are criticizing these actions uncensored and then trying to make slippery slope arguments or play the persecuted minority. what happened to parler is the exception, not the rule.
    • 6sup6 6y ago
      They are in twitter as long as they don't step the line. Try to misgender someone in twitter to see what happens. The idea of misgender comes from a very specific political tribe in certain western countries.
      • tmpz22 6y ago
        Name a single fox pundit who properly uses gender pronouns. They're all still on twitter.
• spoonjim 6y ago
  Here's what I've seen when the powers-that-be disrupt online communities... most people who were "casuals" stop paying attention when the convenient options (Twitter, Parler) disappear, and just go on with their life, watching Netflix or football instead. But the truly hardcore get pushed underground into a smaller and more virulent community (which Parler was to Twitter, and which something will be to Parler). I expect Trumpism to take a hit as a political movement but thrive as an extremist movement as a consequence of this "shunning." Expect fewer 2016 elections and more January 6th terrorism.
• AHappyCamper 6y ago
  This only proves that the Big Tech companies need to be regulated and that Section 230 should be repealed. Break their power! Parler should sue them for billions. The federal gov't should also sue them for antitrust violations.
  • chrononaut 6y ago
    > Parler should sue them for billions Parler should sue AWS for billions when AWS asked Parler to build a process that reduced violent content and Parler refused?
  • zacharycohn 6y ago
    Repealing Section 230 would have no impact on this. In fact, if Section 230 was repealed than Parler would be exposed to liability for the violent coup content users posted on it and be sued.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > In fact, if Section 230 was repealed than Parler would be exposed to liability for the violent coup content users posted on it and be sued. Parler may still be liable for the violent coup content; liability for that isn’t exclusively, or even mostly, the kind of “civil liability dependent on status as a publisher” that Section 230 provides immunity from.
  • chronicsunshine 6y ago
    You seem to be confused. Repealing Section 230 would vastly increase the amount of moderation on social media platforms, because they would be directly liable for anything posted there. Also, the US has free enterprise. Businesses are free to choose who or what they do or don't do business with. Parler can sue all they want, but its a waste of their time and money.
• Fjolsvith 6y ago
  It was announced this morning that the letter Q would be removed from Sesame Street.
• satysin 6y ago
  This needs to happen. Parler is not a "social network" in the same way Twitter, Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation platform hiding behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer. I signed up for Parler 6 weeks ago and what I have seen from the platform is frightening. It isn't dumb memes and gifs but hardcore alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theories. Within hours of commenting on posts I was contacted about joining groups of "like minded patriots" (their actual words). This lead to Telegram and Discord servers dedicated to "their cause". These places are highly organised. Unique URLs with multiple 'decoy and delay' steps to find and remove people from sharing links with authorities for example. They have detailed (probably some of the best tbh) guides on signing up for secure services like Protonmail for email, installing Tor and Tails to access Onion services (this leads to a whole other world of horrors), how to use Bitcoin to purchase what are essentially burner SIM cards and phones to sign up to other services, and advice on how to recruit your friends and family such as conversation topics and “gotcha” responses, manipulated media to share, psychological and emotional manipulation techniques, etc. The techniques used are no different to what we have seen from groups like ISIS/ISIL over the past decade. I support free speech but this goes beyond that IMHO. This isn't strongly disagreeing with government policies but clearly talking about murdering those they believe are wrong. I have seen people seriously talking about kidnapping and murdering politicians. Posting photos of their weapons. Sharing detailed instructions on homemade chemical weapons and IEDs from people who clearly have military knowledge of such things. When ISIS was releasing daily videos of horrific murders everyone called for such recruitment platforms to be shut down. It wasn't a matter of free speech then and it isn't now. The only difference is that these are (mostly) white American and European people not brown people from the middle east. The message and methodologies used are the same though. Parler is without question a platform for radicalisation and recruitment for "western jihad" as I have seen people un-ironically use. It needs to go and I fully support Amazon, Apple, Google and whoever else in shutting them down. Note: I posted this yesterday in the mega thread so my apologies for repeating myself but I feel quite strongly about this and the mega thread was indeed mega so my post was most likely lost in the huge number of comments.
  • swebs 6y ago
    >Parler is not a "social network" in the same way Twitter, Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation platform hiding behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer. Actually, that's exactly how I'd describe modern reddit, and I guess Twitter too.
• swiperNoSwiping 6y ago
  feels like the US people is asking for ruler like CCP, is it all what you want? Parler is likely not innocent, but why it's Amazon to take them down? Is that mean all these big companies can shutdown any customers on their platforms for some reasons they believed are right, but what if they use it to shutdown competitions?
  • jimktrains2 6y ago
    It has always been the case that providers can shut you down for any or no reason. Look at gcp for a plethora of examples.
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    Parlor is NOT Amazon competition.
    • paulnechifor 6y ago
      It was coordinated behind locked doors with Google and Apple which are competitors.
• minikites 6y ago
  The free market has spoken and surprise, conservatives don't like it when it affects them.
• throwaway888abc 6y ago
  Some details about Parler origins and funding https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663 https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663 and https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1302815780782764033 https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1302815780782764033 For context
• whatsmyusername 6y ago
  Maybe this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=... Had something https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=... To do with it https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=... The bar for "enough moderation to show due care" isn't that high, and they intentionally limboed right under it. Oh no, the consequences of my own actions...
• ryanmarsh 6y ago
  Could a Muslim owned cloud service drop a gay customer, say an app like Grindr? I recall a case about a baker and a gay couple or something. Is this a civil matter or criminal? I grew up in a different era seriously none of this makes sense. Which groups are legally allowed to cancel the others? Where is that set forth in law? Thanks.
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    Literally any company can drop any user. It’s in their terms of service. Of course there is a lot of calculation around dropping a high profile user, or a large class of users. It could result in social upheaval and backlash if they do or do not drop someone.
  • RogerL 6y ago
    In the US? Protected classes. This is the idea that some discrimination is so pervasive and damaging that it needs protection from the law, despite the fact that that directly conflicts with the idea that businesses should be able to be run as the owner likes. The harm of the latter is small compared to the harm of allowing the former, so the argument goes (and which I agree with, not that that matters to the answer). If I decide my soup shop won't serve you because you ask a question or put your money on the counter instead of handing it to me, no problem, questions askers are not a protected class. You can trivially go to the restaurant next door and get served. If I decide I won't serve soup to anyone in a same sex relationship, someone of Jewish descent, women, or whatever, then there are legal protections in place that prohibit me from doing that. I am not a lawyer, but this goes back before you were born. There was the civil Rights act of 1866 which banned discrimination due to race or color. The Civil Rights act of 1964 added sex, national origin, religion. In 1967 age discrimination was added, and in '73 disability. ADA was introduced in 1990, and that was expanded further in 2008. So now, for example, a business is required to make reasonable accommodations for a disability. But they don't have to hire you if you scream obscenities, or wear yellow shirts, or I dunno, are vocally planning to murder a politician or destroy a Government. None of those are protected classes. No requirement to do business with them or to hire them, or to keep them in your employ.
• munificent 6y ago
  I think what I've learned this week is that there's an economic failure mode that has societal harm. It goes something like this: 1. Some people want to share toxic harmful material with the world. Sharing that has real material hosting and serving costs that those individuals would rather not pay. 2. Platform hosts like AWS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. will host material for people. They pay for that by also showing users ads and the advertisers fund the company. 3. Advertisers don't want their brand associated with toxic content. But when a platform host has a sufficient diversity of good and bad content, the brand association is with the platform itself, which is neutral, and not the content it is shown next to, which may be toxic. The end result is that advertisers end up inadvertently funding the dissemination of toxic content. Extremists are essentially free riding, sort of like riding on the back of one of those rolling billboard cars and tossing out pamphlets. This happens because the host is essentially image laundering the toxic content. When a host isn't diverse enough to accomplish this, you can see that advertisers won't touch it. That's why Parler is toast. Advertisers do not want to be funding this stuff but the hosts they use are too much of a black box to give them much control. So why do hosts end up accepting this toxic content? Is the relationship between host and toxic content authors parasitic or symbiotic? Cynics believe the hosts deliberately allow this because toxic content drives engagement and increases advertising revenue. A charitable perspective is that hosts would rather not be free riders for toxic content, but the problem is that separating the wolves and the sheep is too difficult (where "difficult" involves some combination of social, technological, and financial costs). What I haven't seen is anyone suggest that it is an emergent property of financial incentives. The primary way these hosts compete in the marketplace is through network effects and economy of scale. Social media host success is dominated by network effects. Advertisers go where the eyeballs are, and people go where the other people are. I don't think there is any natural stable equilibrium that leads to a large number of small thriving social media companies. Economies of scale exacerbate that. Users don't like viewing ads so the less ads a host shows, the more popular it becomes. This puts heavy competitive pressure on them to minimize costs which relies on all of the economies of scale that software and tech offers. The end result, I think is a consolidation onto a few hosts which in turn host so much of everything that they end up with a neutral brand that advertisers can use even though there is a mixture of toxic content in there. I don't think anyone intended this to happen. But the good news is that if we do create regulation to break up tech monopolies and push against the natural forces of network effects and economies of scale, we may also see a natural decline of toxic content free riders. Because as these hosts get smaller, they're less able to be used as image launderers.
• zmb_ 6y ago
  I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight. Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this to happen. However, now that the precedent is set, I would expect the bar to be lowered going forward. That creates risks that need to somehow be mitigated (and reflected in valuations). Even for businesses that are not in such politically charged areas, I can easily imagine getting inadvertently tangled up in some popular issue and having vendors become targets of online activist (whether it's your own vendors, or whether you are a vendor to a target). What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? Try to reduce dependence on cloud providers and vendors by building more in-house? How far would you have to go, since a colo or an ISP can drop you just as AWS can?
  • himujjal 6y ago
    exactly. look at whatsapp now for example. from being one of the most privacy friendly faces of the mobile to being portrayed as privacy invader (i know messages are E2EE). but see the effects. things happen slowly. did amazon or big tech do the right thing here? probably yes. did they see that their influence is massive? yes. (they already do know, just stirring up their convictions stronger now) Is there a chance in future that they might just misuse their powers without anyone knowing it? most certainly yes. Its a real trolley problem for me as a privacy supporter.
    • sn_master 6y ago
      Messages are E2EE, but by default get backed up into your Google/Apple account which are easily accessible by a search warrant, or from a prism backdoor.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • 6y ago
• pyronik19 6y ago
  Well the 90s vision of a free and open internet are dead. We now have big tech censored speech where anything the right of bernie sanders is targeted for removal and any platforms that are created to combat this are systemically attacked at the infrastructure level. Do people not understand WHY people were at the capitol? It's because of this bullshit.
• _nickwhite 6y ago
  Something interesting here is that not only the Parler app was pulled... the _entire_ parlor.com domain and website registration is non-existent at the moment. It's like a black hole: >dig @1.1.1.1 parler.com +short <empty>
  • 6sup6 6y ago
    Can you offer some hypothesis that explain what happened?
    • shrimpx 6y ago
      They were likely running everything on aws including dns.
      • _nickwhite 6y ago
        They were running all of their websites through AWS, but didn't use AWS as the registrar.
    • _nickwhite 6y ago
      Dreamhost is/was their domain name registrar- and even though Dreamhost didn't host Parler's services, they were taking massive heat on Twitter over it. So I guess at some point, Dreamhost as a registrar silently deleted them. Now, even if Parler wanted to move somewhere, they would have to regain control of their domain from Dreamhost.
• beefee 6y ago
  Our critical communications infrastructure is in danger. Are there any serious companies or organizations out there countering this wave of censorship?
• carabiner 6y ago
  Free speech existed before Parler, and it will exist after.
  • paulnechifor 6y ago
    Free speech approved by media giants. Everything else will be blockaded.
• BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Dang, and the other two moderators whose nicknames I don't know : My condolences for the last days, and thank you !
• cwhiz 6y ago
  The worst thing about Parler is the bots. I browsed it a bit out of curiosity, a huge portion of the content is obvious bot. I looked into this further, and apparently Parler doesn’t bother blocking or banning bots unless the FBI or police contact them. Parler really is just a haven for nonsense and conspiracy theories. My finger in the wind guess is 40-60% bots.
• jtbayly 6y ago
  Meanwhile Amazon hosts millions of random websites, Apple ships their phones with a web browser, and so does Google. Whoever is responsible for moderating the internet is failing badly. Why haven't the web browsers been banned from app stores?
• kukx 6y ago
  There is a risk of radicalization of masses. And banning people will not help with reversing it. They will find another way to communicate and the tech giants will no longer be able to challenge the flawed message. And the ideas should be challenged, especially the bad ones. Why the tech giants act this way and decrease their reach/base? It would be naive to think it is out of a good will. I suspect they want to show the new government that there is no need to regulate them, because they can do it themselves.
• shrimpx 6y ago
  Many of the questions here are of the form “Can a private business drop a customer?” And the answer is a resounding YES and has nothing to do with constitutional free speech. A company refusing to provide service to a customer is NOT constitutional free speech censorship.
• sn_master 6y ago
  If they're doing illegal things, an American court should decide that and shut them down with criminal charges. Otherwise, they shouldn't be shutdown. That's how it works in all democracies I know of. Where are US opposition groups supposed to host their content now? Russia or China, the same way groups in those countries host their content in the US?
• karmasimida 6y ago
  So is it legal to boot out a store from a plaza, selling offensive items? I think Amazon is in a very difficult position, do or don't, it is doomed. But I guess it will have to make a call on this one, to avoid looking like standing on the wrong side by the coming administration.
  • gnicholas 6y ago
    It would absolutely be legal for a mall to terminate the lease of a tenant, per its terms, if this happened.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    That happens all the time to head shops and sex shops.
• throwaway5752 6y ago
  I'm for free speech, but Parler is demonstrably against it. The aggressively ban users for ideological reasons. That doesn't impact my feelings on speech and I support it without exception. What it does impact is how I prioritize Parler's issues. Groups other than the American right face far worse probabilities of being arrested and charged for frivolous reasons. I will worry about them first. I only have finite time and resources.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• chmod600 6y ago
  This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the people.
  • halukakin 6y ago
    A good example to this is the founding of the US itself.
  • legutierr 6y ago
    It happens all the time in the banking arena. Banks are frequently used to deny market access to businesses that are undesirable to the federal government but are otherwise legal businesses.
    • yalogin 6y ago
      This is actually a great analogy. Its all about reducing risk for the overall business.
    • raunakdag 6y ago
      I hadn't thought about it this way. I assume marijuana dispensaries/businesses are one of the examples you're referencing?
      • Mehdi2277 6y ago
        Porn type content also tends to have trouble with many services like payment processors. A simple example is paypal doesn't support most porn related content. I also recall a video game company that makes weirder porn (stuff like hypnosis hentai) saying hypnosis is a trigger for some payment processors so they've had to avoid that terminology.
    • ThrowItAway2Day 6y ago
• notabee 6y ago
  Most providers also don't allow ISIS on their platforms. Another known terror-sponsoring organization. For a long time now. And yet I don't see people tying themselves into free speech knots over ISIS getting deplatformed. I wonder why that is?
  • sn_master 6y ago
    Because ISIS leaders and the organization have been convicted by courts all over the world. Parler and the other conservatives who got banned were not convicted by any court within or even outside the United States. People are mad because big tech is shutting things down without any due process simply to appease the new emperor in power. Big tech made a decision that the hell with the judicial system, Democrats now have the executive and the senate, we have to bend the knee and kiss the ring to keep our section 230 and don't get taxed into oblivion.
    • pixl97 6y ago
      Someone doesn't understand civil law. If I dont have to wait for a child porn conviction to ban you from my site for posting 'illegal' content. I will do it immediately and sever all contracts. Its funny how we have the freedom of association right up to the moment it affects those supporting fascism, then all of a sudden a different set of laws matter.
      • sn_master 6y ago
        Can you give an example of content that was within that range of offense or danger that was posted on Parler?
        • pixl97 6y ago
          I don't need to, AWS gave Parler 98 of them.
          • sn_master 6y ago
• AnonMO 6y ago
  I don't know why but I find it vey difficult to sympathize with parler. as a developer I was about to shun AWS because of their role as a infrastructure provider of the web, but even before the news came out and it was just rumors that employees were pushing for the removal. people on the platforms were calling for the bombing of server locations and the killing of the employees. At what point do we say its enough?
• throwaway329123 6y ago
  Just like the future I've pictured five years ago: if you aren't woke compliant, you get to be shut down.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• foobaw 6y ago
  what about 4chan then?
• mariopt 6y ago
  I would expect Amazon to be neutral and only make action if the government took legal action. This action is a threat to democracy on the behalf of private companies.
• SubiculumCode 6y ago
  I made an account on Parler last week, just to see. It is a cesspool of hate and delusion. I ran into some potentially illegal materials I wish to unsee, but cannot, encountered as I perused the streams chosen for me. The amount of crazy I saw made me fear posting anything, much less leaving replies that included reality, but failed to conform to their indoctrination.
• ralmidani 6y ago
  SCOTUS Justice Robert Jackson: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act." Also Robert Jackson: "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."
• trendoid 6y ago
  AWS's letter to Parler https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1348136296976408576/photo/1 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1348136296976408576/p... Seems very proper to me.
• 02020202 6y ago
  well, cloud is done for. nobody can rely on such provider any more. they fucked themselves so bad this time that they won't get any new business. maybe finally people will get back to bare metal and pay 1/100 of what they used to spend.
• nautilus12 6y ago
  Here is what I dont understand, is Parler violating Amazon's TOS or its users? Suppose that some of the users are bots, doesn't that mean that in order to fulfill amazon's TOS Parler would have to actively build something (moderation systems) to keep up with the bots? Doesn't this make any service that can't do this collateral damage? What if people built bot systems good enough to sidestep twitter (speaking in code for example, using a cypher) and levelled them at twitter, etc. would the same thing happen?
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  Amazon, fine. That’s on Parler for running their stall out of the local mall. If the mall wants them out then so be it. If their registrar dropped them then that’s far more pernicious. The Internet itself must be neutral.
• cosmiccatnap 6y ago
  xkcd.com/1357/
• wolco5 6y ago
  Politics aside. Amazon shouldn't be signing up to a private service monitoring posts and removing a site because a good enough moderation system wasn't in place? They sell disk space and bandwidth and possiblity ram. If all that Amazon is hosting is an encripted blobs I can't see how they would know what internal content they provide without spying (making an account/recording posts).
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• DataSceince123 6y ago
  Why should people be able to say hateful ideas online? No one can answer this and its why we have to use censorship
• DeerSpotter 6y ago
  Let’s try to get it running on a decentralized network. https://storj.io/ https://storj.io/
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mikaeluman 6y ago
  This has serious implications for any business thinking about hosting their applications on Amazon or other providers. I used to be a big proponent of doing this on AWS or Azure but with these actions there are suddenly real risks to consider. The precedent has been set, and it will now be used to force down other businesses, when the time is right and there is a clear viable target for outrage.
• advpetc 6y ago
  From the other side of the coin, I see that technology can be controlled if certain events happened. I remember the time when people discuss if artificial intelligence will take control of human, and we can't do anything to stop.
• bobxyz 6y ago
  You can start preparing your yellow stars, you are the new Jews. The vengeful Jews of the silicon valley are your new Nazis.
• nsxwolf 6y ago
  Who decided that Twitter does a "good enough job" at moderation? The platform was used to organize riots all summer, unchecked. I can find MAGA insurrectionists talking about violence with a simple search right now. Was Parler shut down simply because they don't moderate at all? Signal doesn't moderate at all, either. Because they can't. It's by design. Why don't we go after Signal? Out of sight, out of mind? Is that it?
  • carlhjerpe 6y ago
    > Out of sight, out of mind? Is that it? This coupled with knee-jerk actions once something surfaces reflects modern society quite well indeed.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    Is Signal even using AWS?
• Dem_Boys 6y ago
  Trump/parler is being de-platformed for "inciting violence" but what exactly does that mean? Obvious case: "Go and hurt that person" Trump's case: "The election was rigged" Trump created a (wrong)conspiracy theory that was believed by enough (radical)people to cause real violence and death. I don't __think__ he ever actually said "Storm the capital and break down the doors". So if I say on Twitter that Google is hiding Elvis in their Mountain View office and people break down the doors of Google to go see, did I just insight violence? If any idea leads to violence, should the author of the idea pay the price for the violence created by others?
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    People on parler and other platforms did conspire to storm the capitol.
• hollosi 6y ago
  Facebook also just shut government-linked accounts in Uganda ahead of elections, for "co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour", whatever that means. The bar is indeed getting lower, for better or worse. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55623722 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55623722
• rubyist5eva 6y ago
  My colleagues laughed at me when I told them my next billion dollar startup would be running on racks of Rasberry Pis in my garage instead of the big cloud players. Looks like my intuition was correct.
• adamsea 6y ago
  I love all the people who just want to ignore the attempted kidnapping / murder of the Vice President and Speaker of the house.
• system2 6y ago
  Can the domain registrar also do this?
• dang 6y ago
  Threads are currently paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it) so you need to click More at the bottom of the thread to get to the rest of the comments—or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726453&p=5
• h3cate 6y ago
  So Facebook admits it incited violence in Myanmar but is still online but parler incites violence in America and is taken down? Who's making these rules?
• 32gbsd 6y ago
  To everyone who suggested aws.
• deadbunny 6y ago
  > We want a small government! Let the markets decide! > Wait, not like that!
• godmode2019 6y ago
  I'm really sad to see people on this thread acting this way. You Americans have some real issues to work out as one people I'm not sure isolating into walled gardens is really the best path forward. I'm sad to say I'm worried about the state of your country. I hope you come together without the aid of an 'external enemy'
• nullrouten 6y ago
  Parler is back on Amazon via Donut via Epik.
• michigan707 6y ago
  I am also quesitioning if shutting down Parler servers is a pure business decision. 90% of Americans don't know what AWS servers are so I don't think they would care if AWS kept running them or not. On the other site 70 millions Trump voters will certainly take notice. I am one of them and a big fan of AWS but I am going to redirect my buying to other online companies as much as possible.
• michigan707 6y ago
  I am also questioning if shutting down Parler servers is a pure business decision. 90% of Americans don't know what AWS servers are so I don't think they would care if AWS kept running them or not. On the other site 70 millions Trump voters will certainly take notice when they are ready to place their next Amazon order.