39 ms·

Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

253 points by vo2maxer 6y ago

ColinHayhurst 6y ago
Twitter is also dependent on AWS, as of December. Are they vulnerable too? https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/twitter-selects-aws-strategic-provider-serve-timelines https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
- onelovetwo 6y ago
  every company on AWS is vulnerable.
- benjohnson 6y ago
  I suspect not. Twitter only hosts calls-to-violence by the correct people. I also suspect that Unionizing activity on any FANG will encounter something akin to a shadowban.
- blueflame7 6y ago
  No they are on the heroes
- tw04 6y ago
  If they aren't actively moderating offensive* content: absolutely. I think he's going to have a REAL tough time convincing a court that Twitter doesn't moderate content given that his justification for starting Parler was Twitter being too aggressive in moderating... https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/?sh=3855f1f75016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f... *Offensive probably is the wrong term - content that violates the AWS TOS like calls for violence.
  - meekmockmook 6y ago
    Twitter didn't actively moderate the President, who broke every single policy in their rulebook, until he lost power. An argument could easily be made that they selectively enforce from that alone, but I don't see Parler's lawyers using that argument lol
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      It isn't a valid argument. AWS is under no obligation to treat all of their customers equally.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I don't think that argument would be useful. The terms of the contract between Parler and AWS are not modified by the interactions AWS has with other customers.
- Voloskaya 6y ago
  If they refuse to moderate their content, as Amazon asked Parler, presumably yes. But Twitter does moderate it's content.
ddmma 6y ago
Risk assignment on IaaS .. my house, my rules
- blueflame7 6y ago
  Even if they do it based on prejudice?
- viro 6y ago
  Do you know what a ISP is? Did you know that AT&T has a TOS?
  - ddmma 6y ago
    Worked before in an ISP but did you ever slept in any hotel? Same principles..
rdxm 6y ago
LOL....these clowns obviously don't really understand how the real world works do they.....
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
Paragraph 5 seems pretty damaging if AWS really did violate their contract as claimed.
- bjtitus 6y ago
  Don't think that flies. They quote a generic section on Termination for Convenience but completely leave out the relevant section on Suspension + Termination for Cause: From section 6.1 on Suspension: We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you if we determine ... (a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party Then they go on to complain about how AWS has completely terminated them, but that section also doesn't appear favorable. From section 7.2 on Termination: We may also terminate this Agreement immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have the right to suspend under Section 6 Parler has copious amounts of this violent content going back for months, so it seems like this is a sure case of a "willful and continuing failure" to apply the required moderation in the agreement. IMO this shows an ongoing breach of contract so the "for Cause" clauses would apply. The Anti-Trust argument seems like the strongest here but that's pretty notoriously difficult to succeed with. I guess not too far from the App Store cases going on right now. The AWS agreement is here: https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ TLDR: Content promoting violence - clearly more than mere threats given the actions of several users on Jan. 6 - is against the AWS agreement and services can be terminated immediately upon notice.
- tptacek 6y ago
  I haven't looked at standard AWS contract language but they ban people all the time for TOS violations, and I will be pretty shocked if their contracts don't have an allowance for sudden cut-offs, because that's something they routinely need to be able to do.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- devrand 6y ago
  Count Two goes into more detail. They claim that AWS is calling this a service suspension as they're retaining the data and are helping to facilitate the transfer out of AWS. Parler disputes this and calls it a termination of the contract. This will likely be be the source of the debate. It's not directly said, but I would assume AWS is suspending service until it ultimately terminates the account. So it'll be contested if the time that it's suspended, but services still somewhat being rendered, constitutes a termination.
newfeatureok 6y ago
Out of curiosity how much time for remediation is generally allowed before service is pulled? Surely the precedent is not "you do something bad and we ban you immediately"? In FTA it says AWS generally gives 30 days per their contract with Parler, but I mean in general, if there is a general precedent. Even if Parler wanted to do the right thing here, they were pretty much banned everywhere immediately.
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  There seem to be a few examples of gcp turning off service with little to no notice and no follow-up.
  - mech422 6y ago
    yeah - probably once a month(?) we hear about a new one on HN though that's in general and not google specific. But plenty of people/business have been burned before, its not like this is some one-off. edit: omg, my apologies to the english language! fix spelling/etc.
- mrkurt 6y ago
  It depends _entirely_ on the contract terms and reason for termination / suspension. On month to month services, 30 days is normal for almost any reason. But abuse and related ToS violations don't ever get 30 days.
- klyrs 6y ago
  For hosting illegal content, their TOS says service may be terminated 2 days after notice. That's what happened.
  - newfeatureok 6y ago
    Ah, interesting. Thanks for the information.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  Immediately termination is pretty much the industry standard.
drocer88 6y ago
"Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was 'Hang Mike Pence.' But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account." Is this true?
- itamarst 6y ago
  > "We blocked the phrase and other variations of it from trending," a Twitter spokesperson said. "We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. This means that at times, we may prevent certain content from trending. As per our Help Center, there are rules for trends — if we identify accounts that violate these rules, we’ll take enforcement action." E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pence-twitter-stops-phrase-trending-capitol-breach https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
- sib301 6y ago
  It is true. The difference is Twitter took action and removed offending posts, and removed it from the trending list.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tbenst 6y ago
  False equivocation. This did happen but Twitter promptly banned this and variants [1]. Parler is failing / refusing to moderate. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pence-twitter-stops-phrase-trending-capitol-breach https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
  - charly187 6y ago
    EDIT: I see you changed your post from "Parler is refusing to moderate" to "Parler is refusing/failing to moderate". The post below is an answer to "Parler is refusing to moderate". This is false. Parler has also been banning accounts explicitly calling for violence. I encourage you all to read the complaint: > AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove content that encouraged violence was false—because over the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to its attention and more. I know my word probably doesn't mean much to you, but I verified this personally - almost all of the "example" violent post I could find on the news were all deleted and the accounts were banned before Parler was taken down.
chrisco255 6y ago
This coordinated banning of a service by Silicon Valley is indicative of collusion between these giant monopolies. If the Justice Department does not go after these companies for antitrust, we don't have a Justice Department.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hctaw 6y ago
  how is it indicative of collusion? Do you have evidence that they communicated with each other? If anything, the domino-like behavior (Google Play -> Apple ultimatum, AWS pulling support) suggests no one colluded about anything.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Did you watch the most recent Zuckerberg testimony in Congress? There, Senator Hawley grilled Zuckerberg about a communication platform, SENTRA, in which Twitter, Google, Facebook, absolutely are known to collaborate on who to ban and what to ban. He shows a screenshot in the hearing to Zuckerberg, and Mark is caught weaseling in his chair about it. That is collusion. https://rumble.com/vbru89-republican-senator-grills-zuckerberg-on-facebook-google-and-twitter-collabo.html https://rumble.com/vbru89-republican-senator-grills-zuckerbe...
    - tptacek 6y ago
      "Collusion" isn't generally a thing. Providers can lawfully cooperate for all sorts of reasons; the exceptions are the cases they can't, not the cases they can. For instance, providers could run private channels for banning users that spread CSAM (and I'd be surprised if they didn't).
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        And in doing so, they would be forming a centralized information cartel. And the opportunities for abuse of such systems is now more than apparent. They have effectively booted a Twitter competitor off the internet, working in concert. If that's not legal cause for antitrust action, then antitrust is no longer a thing.
meekmockmook 6y ago
I have seen so many violent threats and incitements on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram over the last 5 years that Parler could possibly make the case that they've been singled out, but I doubt it. They're just too unsympathetic of a plaintiff, imho. That said, antitrust battles against Big Tech will dominate the next four years of economic policy, and rightfully so. GAFA is too big, too powerful, too manipulative, and needs to be brought to heel by every legal means necessary. The US government should also move to immediately outlaw targeted algorithmic advertising, which would make a huge impact on Big Tech's sectarian violence cashcow. (And yes, that's what this absolutely is. Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.)
- webXL 6y ago
  They already had plenty of enemies on the left. Now they got a ton more on the right. Elon Musk was just tweeting about the hatred headed their way. Time to check my investments.
  - pishpash 6y ago
    Left or right? No no, it's got nothing to do with that. They're in trouble because they've now got enemies in power. Did you notice things only move when those in power are threatened?
    - webXL 6y ago
      I didn't notice much 2009-2017.
    - meekmockmook 6y ago
      Yeah, the idea of GAFA as left wing is ludicrous. Sure, they plaster the internet with those ugly flat art cartoons of diverse people working together, (Corporate Memphis, I've learned the style is called) but they are anti-union, anti-competitive, and dedicated to growth at all cost, even if it means sectarian violence and loss of faith in democratic norms
  - danaos 6y ago
waynekerr 6y ago
amazon also pulled wikileaks servers....
cpitman 6y ago
This complaint alleges that AWS is shutting down Parler for the benefit of Twitter. That seems like a stretch, does AWS really have an interest in Twitter succeeding above any other social network, especially when both run on AWS?
tharne 6y ago
Run your own metal.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  You’re always dependent on somebody
  - tharne 6y ago
    Fair enough. At least be dependent on somebody without a near monopoly on the service you need.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- drocer88 6y ago
  Won't the fencepost move to the service provider blocking the box somebody owns? Does the net neutrality repeal apply here?
  - root_axis 6y ago
    It's pretty ironic that conservatives destroyed net neutrality when that would have been the final backstop to ensure that they were able to keep their servers connected to the internet. Frankly, I'll be happy to see the return of net neutrality even if it comes from a place of political dishonesty.
- sigstoat 6y ago
  will the data centers hosting your "metal" not implement the same policies?
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  They didn't like Twitter, so they built their own. That wasn't good enough. You're right, they need their own metal / backend / hardware. Of course... that would be a problem when Visa / Chase / Paypal / Stipe / Square all refuse to run their payments. So maybe while they're building their own metal, they should build their own banking system too.
listless 6y ago
If you’re a business, do you really want to be on a provider that can pull your card with little to no notice? That’s a lot of power. The boot is coming down hard right now. The cloud is looking like a risky bet.
- adrr 6y ago
  As a business we only do business with vendors that don’t host controversial sites due to risk from boycotts and negative press. I picked AWS because it was a safe choice because of actions like kicking off Parler.
  - mech422 6y ago
    not to pick on you... but customers like you are probably why AWS is taking the position they are. They don't want to risk other customers just to keep parler. That actually sounds like something a profit motivated company would do.... no conspiracies required. edit: should probably note, customers/advertisers have boycotted companies before for having a whiff of scandal around them..
    - adrr 6y ago
      Sendgrid is a good example. We moved to mandrill because we don’t want any drama with our vendors. Sendgrid was ddosed over some drama with their evangelist and it affected our business. Last thing I want to do is having to explain to my exec team that our emails aren’t going out because of a vendor choice I made.
      - mech422 6y ago
        Yeah - I vaguely remember that. And this economy is not the time to take unnecessary risks with your livelihood.
  - listless 6y ago
    This is a good point and I agree with it. The market will sort this out better than we could with regulation. I do think that some may see this is a reason to go back to their own data center. It's also a reason why some content creators moved off Patreon to their own subscription services. Although to rebut my own point, that doesn't seem to have affected Patreon much at all.
xvector 6y ago
And here we see the problem with centralized social media. Did anyone think that handing control over to megacorps would end differently? Today it’s Parler, tomorrow it’s whatever political ideology Big Tech finds inconvenient.
- thomasjudge 6y ago
  "Handing control over." Seriously, do you have a realistic alternative? If we are going to have social media, at scale, in a capitalist society, it's hard to see how there's much of an alternative to for-profit companies. Do you want the government to run Twitter?
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    In some ways, yes. For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings. For something controversial that will likely face legal challenges, this seems like the only reasonable way to do things (see: wikileaks, sci-hub etc.)
    - sigstoat 6y ago
      > For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings what do you think the difference between AWS' terms of service, and the terms of service of a data center will be? the last data center contract i signed had most of the same stuff, they just had to return my hardware if they were kicking me out.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    We could rebuild social media on the same principles as the World Wide Web, where it's not run by any single group at all. (I'd argue that's actually what we had back in the days of the "blogosphere".)
  - needz 6y ago
    Why not decentralized/federated services run by by various communities all across the world?
wnevets 6y ago
I don't know if people trying to argue that twitter is just as bad as Parler are doing it out of ignorance of the issues or just bad faith. Parler isn't being dropped by private companies because a user said something mean on their service. They're being dropped by AWS, Apple, Google etc because they allow, even encourages its users to conspire to commit violence and assassinate public officials. The main reasons its users went to Parler in the first place is because they weren't allowed to do that on twitter and reddit.
- moate 6y ago
  I feel like the AWS lawyer is going to make the following claims: 1- This action (dropping Parler) is within the actions established in our ToS. 2- Parler's very goal is to attract these sort of demographics and similar actions have been taken in the past (Stormfront comes to mind) The only chance this has is if Parler has language in their contract requiring that 30-day notice of service termination. My guess is that they don't. They also spend a LOT of time in this filing pointing out that AWS is a very big share of the market (the court won't care) and that they host Twitter (the court will again, not care) in an effort to say that AWS was worried the shift to Parler from Twitter would financially hurt Twitter and then AWS (which doesn't make sense, since AWS is hosting both so 6 million people shifting just means one check gets smaller and the other larger). This is the quality of legal filings I've begun to expect surrounding these issues. "They're bad, and it's pretty obvious to everyone, duh!" doesn't actually hold up in court though...
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The claim on contract violation is probably their strongest claim. Or probably would be were the exhibit of the contract offered not this: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.1.2.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... To be fair, that does look more like a mistake--the HTML-to-PDF conversion appears to truncate a decent amount of text per page. Ooh, just noticed, the contract also has this gem: > Disputes will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify. Which tosses out any claims of contract violation because you agreed to arbitrate it first!
demygale 6y ago
Parler has a moderation policy and they don’t apply it. Content that promotes illegal activity is not protected free speech and is also prohibited by Parler’s policies. They selectively applied that moderation after they became popular with MAGA. Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  > Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host? Although I agree that 4chan is problematic sometimes, many people that just put blame on it don't actually use it. I remember when Netflix's Cuties was released, 4chan prohibited posting any image/video from the show
  - jansan 6y ago
    The German government maintains a blacklist of websites not suitable for minors. We can use this blacklist when setting up web access for children to block at least the worst websites (mainly porn). The last time I checked, 4Chan was not on that list.
    - baud147258 6y ago
      if the goal of that list is to block porn, 4chan should totally be blocked, since there are boards for porn there.
- r00fus 6y ago
  Was 4chan actually found to be culpable in organizing an illegal activity, or was that 8chan?
  - gruez 6y ago
    the latter, if you're talking about the new zealand shootings.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  4chan is regularly censored and banned (not sure about hosting specifically, I only browse maybe once a month), and threads aren't available forever. It's a different kettle of fish to running a social network - you'd struggle to organise much of anything like this on 4chan.
jariel 6y ago
Amazon may have the right to deny anyone service - but can they do it 'immediately' on whatever grounds? Parler could very well make more money suing Amazon than anything else. This was a huge moment for Parler, and AMZN may have grounded them. There's a difference between 'we don't want to do business with you' ... and 'we will make you dependent on us, but the we'll drop you like a rock and put you out of business'.
- objectivetruth 6y ago
  > we will make you dependent on us How on Earth did Amazon "make" Parler rely on Amazon exclusively?
- ookblah 6y ago
  you lost me on the last part there, you can't have it both ways. if they don't want to do business with you they don't have to point blank (barring any outstanding contracts which can be settled). as a business you choose to take risks relying on other vendors. we're all dependent on any business and they could drop us at any time, but that's the risk we take for convenience or what not. we make the calculation the risk is low. if you know there's a growing base of extremism on your site and you have a precedent like gab, why wouldn't you potentially prepare for it?
throwaway4good 6y ago
Who Amazon does business with is their own decision. But terminating Parler with such short notice that they had no chance of moving to an alternative without major disruption of their business. Well. That is deliberate destruction. Without knowing anything about US civil law, I would expect Parler to have a strong case.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  The suit states that Amazon and Parler had a contract which stated that 30 day notice would be given before service termination, and if that's true then this does seem like a strong suit. But the entire text seems really biased and borderline crazy (all that stuff about monopoly/antitrust - since when is AWS even close to a monopoly?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they elided that the contract also allowed for early terminaiton if certain terms were being violated.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    Had they been given 30 days, they probably could have moved to Oracle or even had setup their own servers.
- reddog 6y ago
  The optics are certainly bad. It looks like the Big Tech Cartel colluded to destroy one of their members closest competitors.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  There's a more in depth discussion of the standard AWS contract here where there is a clause allowing immediate termination. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25733333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25733333
gt565k 6y ago
How does stuff like this work in Germany, as I believe they have a lot of anti nazi laws against hate speech etc? Like this should would have been shut down weeks in advance in Germany. Have we learned nothing from history? I can't believe people are fighting to give racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists a platform to organize and plot violent acts behind the disguise of free speech.
- revlolz 6y ago
  I have one question for you. At what point do you begin to question your ideology for it's intolerance, double standards, and moral inconsistencies? Have YOU learned nothing from history, ironically Hitler's rise to power, to even question the dogma being fed to you regarding racism and violence? I'm not saying you have to tolerate or even agree with your opposition. However, I'd challenge you to not partake in the past dictator's favorite action of belittling and scapegoating his political opposition. You are contributing to the very acts you espouse to be against by labeling all of your opposition as racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists. All you've demonstrated with your words is violence is okay, so long as you agree with the cause as we experienced COUNTLESS acts of violence in the US riots occurring throughout the year.
  - gt565k 6y ago
    My man, the site (parler) is literally used by people who believe the lies that the election is stolen, who want to hang mike pence, who want to go to the capitol with guns and kill the elected representatives. It failed to moderate content that incites violence and was literally build to attract extremists who are on that platform to plot violent acts. There's a reason it got shut down by everyone. Get your head out of your ass.
    - yes_no_maybe 6y ago
      > The site (parler) is literally used by people who believe the lies that the election is stolen, who want to hang mike pence, who want to go to the capitol with guns and kill the elected representatives. Have you ever used twitter? I've routinely encountered examples just as bad if not worse there.
Nacdor 6y ago
Glenn Greenwald has been investigating the planning of the Capitol protests and says "it was largely done on Facebook". So far he hasn't been able to identify a single person who was arrested and active on Parler: > Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start. > For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler. > The article will be up shortly. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293 I would be more interested in hearing if all these prominent figures in the Capitol protests were active across multiple (or all) social media platforms, which often seems to be the case. If that is true, then it makes for an even stronger argument that Parler has been singled out.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I'm really scared to trust Greenwald on anything political at the moment. For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Greenwald's own news organization kicked him out because he refused to let anyone fact check his grossly inaccurate posts.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    > For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting. The complaint alleges there are deeper ties: Less than a month ago, AWS announced with a press release a new multi-year deal with Twitter. AWS will “provide global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.” Twitter Selects AWS as Strategic Provider to Serve Timelines, Press Center, Amazon, (Dec. 15, 2020), https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/twitter-selects-aws-strategic-provider-serve-timelines https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det....
ookblah 6y ago
and here we see the effects of this!!! as millions of people are still free to insult others and share their opinions of twitter's actions unhindered lol... everyone can also cherry pick out instances where moderation has failed or things have fallen through the cracks. parler's entire MO has been to breed this kind of environment for growth. removing one of the DIRECT causes to an attack on our foundational institutions is completely warranted IMO. save the slippery slope argument for something else, please.
Imnimo 6y ago
If your claim is that "[AWS's decision] is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter." and therefore an antitrust violation, you probably shouldn't also mention that "Parler’s rival social media apps, such as conservative-oriented Gab or conservative media Rumble, are also experiencing record growth right now"...
jmull 6y ago
Here's the proper context and venue to resolve the Parler/AWS dispute: a contract dispute in court. Parler is blowing it in the third paragraph: > Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was “Hang Mike Pence.” But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account. The distinction, of course, is that the it was trending because the tweets were discussing the videos of violent Trump supporters chanting "Hang Mike Pence", and not calling for violence, as was widely occurring on Parler. That weak sauce isn't going to go far in court. P4 is speculation on Amazon's motives. Parler would need some good evidence to show this claim is true. P5 seems the strongest. If their contract really says 30-days notice (given the disingenuous p3, I wouldn't assume that), Amazon could be forced to replatform them for a while and have some damages.
Sunspark 6y ago
I did some testing this morning when a friend shared a link to Parler content and the server did not resolve. I don't know whether it is DNS censorship as well or just poorly configured TTL caching on some DNS servers, but if you have a link to video.parler.com and it doesn't resolve anymore, you can replace video.parler.com with the actual IP address of the server 8.240.251.252 8.240.147.124 8.240.248.252 they are still online though the DNS is beginning to fail globally.
- ulysses 6y ago
  They use AWS for their DNS, so of course it's failing... Trying j.gtld-servers.net. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-8.awsdns-01.com. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-715.awsdns-25.net. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1170.awsdns-18.org. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1848.awsdns-39.co.uk.
bigtones 6y ago
1). AWS can suspend service for any customer immediately upon giving that customer notice. They do not have to provide a "remediation period" or give the customer any grace time at all. Every customer agrees to this as part of the AWS Customer Agreement 2). AWS can terminate an account immediately if they deem you in violation of their policies instead of a suspension - as was the case with Parler. It's all in the AWS customer agreement, which Parler agreed to. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
- COGlory 6y ago
  The question is whether that's legal, or anticompetitive
  - nostoc 6y ago
    Anticompetitive? Is parler competing with amazon in any ways, shape or form?
    - vmception 6y ago
      A court can definitely rule on the clauses of a contract, about time someone made some case law here on modern software agreements
    - COGlory 6y ago
      I don't think so. Maybe if competitors use AWS? Tough to imagine this won't get thrown out though.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      You didn’t read before posting did you? They make the case that Amazon is because they provide hosting for Parlers larger competitors.
    - tidepod12 6y ago
      Antitrust laws are broader than that. A company can be guilty of anti-competitive behavior even if that company is not a direct competitor of the parties affected.
hairofadog 6y ago
Is anyone else getting exhausted by these discussions? This is an important topic and I have strong opinions about it and the events surrounding it but gosh, something about the tenor of the back-and-forth in here is just wearing me out.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  I read TFA and came back to upvote the post. Given that this is HN I expected to find some good discussion in the comments - and there is a bit, increasing over time - but there's just so much propaganda / outright stupid stuff here in the comments. This article seems like it should be on HN, but the stuff in the comments made me want to flag it (I didn't). Fortunately it seems the good discussion is coming out on top over time, and the worst comments do get down voted & flagged pretty quickly. But, as you said, there is a lot of repetitive back-and-forth here which has already been done over the past few days.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hartator 6y ago
> AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service Well, that's not cool nor fair.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Or true.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Amazon isn't dumb. There are obvious outs for scenarios like this. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ > 6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you... I'd bet they cite this as the reason: > could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vmception 6y ago
Who is David J. Groesbeck, P.S. didnt Parler’s CEO say they lost their lawyers? It seems this would have been filed a day or two before they lost their lawyers.
- cosmic_shame 6y ago
  https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jan/11/spokane-attorney-files-suit-for-online-chat-site-p/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jan/11/spokane-attorn...
deleted 6y ago
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caminocorner 6y ago
> However, Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was “Hang Mike Pence. This has been going on for 12 years. More evidence that both sides use Twitter for violence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/violent-antipolice-memes-surge/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/violent...
- vmception 6y ago
  I would love to see Amazon drop Twitter and other large clients, and vice versa I might drop everything and start building data center myself if that’s the case
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  It wasn't too long ago that we cheer-on and celebrate how Twitter hosted calls for political violence. Much was said about how Twitter enabled the Arab Spring, and how that was so wonderful. There's even a wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri... Now the Western elite (on both sides, mind you -- whether it's against BLM or the Proud Boys) are doing their best pikachu face. Mob-style tyrannical democracy for thee, but not for me.
  - hollerith 6y ago
    That's a good point, and also I've seen comments here praising the "Arab Spring" years after it killed many millions of people (in Syria, Libya, etc.).
WhySoCEREAL 6y ago
I found Kara Swisher's interview with John Matze the CEO very informative on how things are handled (or lack thereof) on Parler. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-matze.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
modernpacifist 6y ago
In seeing all of these complaints about the cloud providers getting too big, owning the internet etc, have folks forgotten how to run their own equipment or what renting a dedicated server is? The internet did function prior to cloud computing existing and surprise, running a rack full of NUCs can give you a lot of capacity to run a glorified message board.
- nip180 6y ago
  Let’s be clear, access to cloud computing companies like AWS is a competitive advantage because it requires less upfront capital and less engineering time to manage. I can 100% see why Parler would prefer having access to AWS compared to running their own hardware. Ianal, so I can’t judge the merits of this legal case. To be honest I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.
  - cudgy 6y ago
    “I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.” Personally, I am surprised at the opposite. That a company cannot find lawyers to defend their position or process payments from their customers without due process is horrible. The fact that you were not surprised by it is quite worrisome. I don’t mean that as a personal attack on you, but more as an observation of what has become acceptable or at least ordinary in a society.
    - nip180 6y ago
      I think you misunderstand me. I was surprised that the domino effect started with Parler, but that was several days ago. Now I’m surprised that the domino effect hasn’t reached everyone they do business with.
paxys 6y ago
This is quite clearly yet another lawsuit without merit just to grab headlines, and will be dropped or dismissed before it gets to trial. What's sad is that we are giving them the attention they want.
fishtoaster 6y ago
This complaint seems to include a ton of things like: - AWS was especially mean to us - AWS is hypocritical, look how bad twitter is - We were singled out for political reasons - This will kill us All of which might be true, but none of which is illegal. The main (only?) real legal complaint here seems to amount to "AWS banned us to prop up Twitter in an anticompetitive way that's illegal under antitrust laws." That seems incredibly weak to anyone who's been following this story at all. The charitable interpretation of AWS's actions would be that they banned Parler for refusing to moderate effectively. The less charitable version is that AWS doesn't care about Parler, but caved to public and internal pressure to ban them. In no reasonable interpretation did AWS do it because they just love Twitter so much. I don't see this suit going anywhere.
- yes_no_maybe 6y ago
  The supposed breach of contract seems bigger to me. > AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided.
djsumdog 6y ago
I just want to say, I called this years ago: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-... They came for Alex Jones and I said nothing Because I didn't believe in gay frogs[1] They came for Daily Stormer and I said nothing Because I knew nothing about Daily Stormer and believed everything the media I said about them because their site was gone They came for ever heterodox opinion on Reddit and I said nothing Because I believed those opinions were wrong and Reddit was within their rights as a private company to ban them Then I had a heterodox opinion and lost my Google account, my Facebook account, my phone numbers I ported to Twilio because I thought that was safe, and all means of communicating with friends whose phone numbers I did not get. And there was no one left to give a shit. It's really your fault you know. [1]: https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/
- tptacek 6y ago
  This is like "first they came for the socialists, then they came for the socialists, then they came for the socialists, and then they came for the socialists".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    No, I mean those individual things. There may be some intersection between Alex Jones fans, Daily Stormer Fans and Reddit users ... but they're certainly not the same audiences at all. You can replace them with anyone you want that's heterodox that's been banned honestly.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      You think there may be some intersection between Alex Jones fans and Daily Stormer readers? The Stop The Steal rioters were wearing Auschwitz t-shirts.
daniel-thompson 6y ago
> "Doing so is the equivalent of pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support. It will kill Parler’s business — at the very time it is set to skyrocket." While I get what they're trying to say, this is a really odd metaphor for them to use.
CyanLite2 6y ago
It's all fun and games until you try to overthrow the government. Parler's entire business model was centered around Trump holding onto power, by any means necessary. This isn't a "free speech" issue. Don't promote violence, and don't try to incite insurrection and you'll be fine.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
I am sure the fight will be watched closely. Both parties are well-heeled and motivated ( I am sure Mercers wouldn't want to lose their investment ). I know what I think and how I feel about it, but I do not want to derail this thread.
jcranmer 6y ago
IANAL, but I already see one massive issue with the lawsuit: Count 1 is a claim against the Sherman Antitrust Act. By their own citation (see claim 31), they need to allege specific facts that would conclude (1) the existence of a conspiracy, (2) intention on the part of the co-conspirators to restrain trade, and (3) actual injury to competition. There's no facts that allege (2). Actually, I suspect they also need to list Twitter as a defendant to properly claim (1) as well, since it's Twitter that has the alleged monopoly, and the one for whom the alleged conspiracy to restrain trade exists. Their facts probably don't even amount to alleging (1). They basically say "AWS also provides services to Twitter" (okay that's not a conspiracy by itself) and "Twitter also had an issue with the #HangMikePence hashtag" (omitting the fact that Twitter did kill the hashtag)--which still doesn't allege a conspiracy. I'm sure some actual lawyers will shortly comment on whatever other gross procedural filings this lawsuit has (https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1348700506470952960 https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134870050647095296... suggests there's quite a few).
- moate 6y ago
  This whole filing reads like "QQ, TWITTER HURT ME, MUH USERS!!!!1!!1!" It is...not a good complaint. They should be focusing a LOT more on breach of contract. Unless, you know, AWS didn't actually do that per the terms. For anyone reading this, Tort law (which is what this is) boils down to this basic idea: Was there a legal agreement between two parties, and did the violation of that agreement cause damage to one of the parties. From what I've seen (IDK the specifics of Parler's contract with AWS, and I'm just guessing based on general understanding of how good a ToS from a mega-corp like Amazon is) the answer is yes there are damages, but they seem unlikely to stem from the violation of the terms of a contract.
joshuak 6y ago
Genuine question. Why don't platforms support both up and down voting? I've always found it pretty obnoxious that you can only encourage content you want not discourage content you don't want. HN seems to have a good system. Shouldn't platforms allow free speech but give the community the tools to discourage destructive speech?
walrus01 6y ago
Alexa, search for colocation services in Russia.
andr 6y ago
It's amazing how arbitrarily lines are drawn in this thread. I'd be eager to see people that disapprove AWS's actions what they would say in the following situation: 1) Parler banning some of its own users for trolling. 2) Their own employer/company banning people that use it to distribute child porn. 3) A utility company disconnecting users that continuously disrupt its electrical grid. Of course you'd be fine with 1, 2 because neither your company nor Parler are common carriers, as defined by law, and have no obligation to provide their service to anyone. Guess what - AWS is not a common carrier either. But even a common carrier such as the electric company can terminate users that purposefully violate its terms of service. At the end of the day, we all know this. We know that private services have no First Amendment obligation. And yet, thread after thread, its all the same fake outrage that's masking a much simple emotion - "I hate it when my guys lose".
nickysielicki 6y ago
I hope this gets to discovery. There was clearly some coordination between Facebook and Twitter simultaneously taking down offical Trump accounts, Google and Apple simultaneously taking down the Parler app listing, and then Amazon removing them from AWS. Slack chatlogs exist, and if those are made public, the public backlash is going to be real.
throw_nbvc1234 6y ago
IF a company's terms of service refer (or intend to refer) to some kind of external standard (such as federal law) why should the company itself have the power to determine what does or doesn't meet that standard. In the USA, there's a government body which can make a preliminary judgment on this, it's called the courts. Why shouldn't Amazon be compelled to get a preliminary opinion from a judge on whether this is illegal or not. Based on that decision they can preemptively remove the content and let the defendant "appeal" (probably incorrect legal term) the decision. If the court rules it's not illegal, then there should be no risk of legal liability to continuing to provide the service. If things are parler are as bad as people are making it out to be (i haven't been following it closely) then this should be a trivial step that legitimizes the decision.
shripadk 6y ago
Amazon leaked the email to BuzzFeed 1 hour before Parler received the email. Shocking detail if true. What was Amazon trying to do? Quoting from the case pdf file: "Strangely, the article with the letter was posted before Parler itself received the letter in an email, received at 7:19 pm PST, over an hour after the BuzzFeed article went online, meaning AWS leaked the letter to BuzzFeed before sending it to Parler. See Exhibit A."
root_axis 6y ago
You reap what you sow. Conservatives are normally champions of corporate freedom, they never had a problem with the extreme bias on cable news or talk radio, but now that big tech companies have eclipsed the platforms they dominate they cry foul. AWS isn't an ISP, but if conservatives hadn't destroyed net neutrality they might have a legal leg to stand on when ISPs inevitably refuse to give them a business contract so that they might house their own servers. I think they deserve this outcome for being persistent bad faith actors in this regard, but I'd be happy to see a restoration of net neutrality now that conservatives are selfishly motivated to support it.
exabrial 6y ago
So the latest fake news is that everyone is being told to shut off operating system updates permanently on their devices to "block apple and google". Good job Big Tech. Now we have a million unpatchable devices.
sp_nster 6y ago
The irony is that a few years ago everyone thought the telco's were going to be the ones to control what you see/do on the internet. lol Has this become an anti-trust issue (assuming there is a way to tie it to the Sherman Act) based on monopoly power? Google and Apple have 99.83% market share, owning both the platforms and distribution? Is it time to break these up? /s https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
Rapzid 6y ago
FBI is warning of armed protests at all state capitals between now and 20th. I can't help but feel that by the time anything comes of this, the primary goal of AWS and a lot of other companies involved in the recent bans will have already been accomplished; smothering an escalation of the current situation until after the 20th. It feels like we are witnessing a sort of immune response from these companies triggered to protect them from an existential threat to their business. Set off by Wednesdays events. Instability is bad for business.
ultrablack 6y ago
Funny enough, Amazon still sells Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and the Bible and the Quran.. Maybe they should censor themselves.
vectorboost 6y ago
Sure there were far-right people and calls for violence on Parler, but the same thing is on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook is literally overflowing with nazis, fascist, communists openly calling for violence against ppl or a particular class. And some accounts are left unchecked for very very long time. Calling for genocide of jews, killing of cops, racist comments against black people, asians etc. And suddenly Parler is the problem? I don't get this. Twitter is full of pedos and rape videos and that's totally ok too? This is pathetic.
eftychis 6y ago
Focusing on the brief itself, I can see merits for injunctive relief (breach of contract). Bear in mind I am sure there are clauses that Amazon is going to cite against -- we only have access to this document. (It also appears hastily written a bit, which I can guess was the case.) I would hold my breath for Sherman (Anti-trust) Act being applied. (Especially, as there is the whole people stormed Congress elephant in the room.) But in summary, the perception I get is that this is a strictly business to business lawsuit, contracts were signed etc. I am curious if some Washington knowledgeable in the area lawyer can provide any insight and their point of view. P.S. Of course this is just the point of view of one-side and we can not say anything concrete until this is litigated. N.B. I am not a lawyer, not familiar and not licensed to practice in Washington.

253 points by vo2maxer 6y ago

Twitter is also dependent on AWS, as of December. Are they vulnerable too? https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/twitter-selects-aws-strategic-provider-serve-timelines https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det...

onelovetwo 6y ago
every company on AWS is vulnerable.
benjohnson 6y ago
I suspect not. Twitter only hosts calls-to-violence by the correct people. I also suspect that Unionizing activity on any FANG will encounter something akin to a shadowban.
blueflame7 6y ago
No they are on the heroes
tw04 6y ago
If they aren't actively moderating offensive* content: absolutely. I think he's going to have a REAL tough time convincing a court that Twitter doesn't moderate content given that his justification for starting Parler was Twitter being too aggressive in moderating... https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/?sh=3855f1f75016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f... *Offensive probably is the wrong term - content that violates the AWS TOS like calls for violence.
- meekmockmook 6y ago
  Twitter didn't actively moderate the President, who broke every single policy in their rulebook, until he lost power. An argument could easily be made that they selectively enforce from that alone, but I don't see Parler's lawyers using that argument lol
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    It isn't a valid argument. AWS is under no obligation to treat all of their customers equally.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I don't think that argument would be useful. The terms of the contract between Parler and AWS are not modified by the interactions AWS has with other customers.
Voloskaya 6y ago
If they refuse to moderate their content, as Amazon asked Parler, presumably yes. But Twitter does moderate it's content.

ddmma 6y ago

Risk assignment on IaaS .. my house, my rules

blueflame7 6y ago
Even if they do it based on prejudice?
viro 6y ago
Do you know what a ISP is? Did you know that AT&T has a TOS?
- ddmma 6y ago
  Worked before in an ISP but did you ever slept in any hotel? Same principles..

rdxm 6y ago

LOL....these clowns obviously don't really understand how the real world works do they.....

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

Paragraph 5 seems pretty damaging if AWS really did violate their contract as claimed.

bjtitus 6y ago
Don't think that flies. They quote a generic section on Termination for Convenience but completely leave out the relevant section on Suspension + Termination for Cause: From section 6.1 on Suspension: We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you if we determine ... (a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party Then they go on to complain about how AWS has completely terminated them, but that section also doesn't appear favorable. From section 7.2 on Termination: We may also terminate this Agreement immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have the right to suspend under Section 6 Parler has copious amounts of this violent content going back for months, so it seems like this is a sure case of a "willful and continuing failure" to apply the required moderation in the agreement. IMO this shows an ongoing breach of contract so the "for Cause" clauses would apply. The Anti-Trust argument seems like the strongest here but that's pretty notoriously difficult to succeed with. I guess not too far from the App Store cases going on right now. The AWS agreement is here: https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ TLDR: Content promoting violence - clearly more than mere threats given the actions of several users on Jan. 6 - is against the AWS agreement and services can be terminated immediately upon notice.
tptacek 6y ago
I haven't looked at standard AWS contract language but they ban people all the time for TOS violations, and I will be pretty shocked if their contracts don't have an allowance for sudden cut-offs, because that's something they routinely need to be able to do.
deleted 6y ago
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devrand 6y ago
Count Two goes into more detail. They claim that AWS is calling this a service suspension as they're retaining the data and are helping to facilitate the transfer out of AWS. Parler disputes this and calls it a termination of the contract. This will likely be be the source of the debate. It's not directly said, but I would assume AWS is suspending service until it ultimately terminates the account. So it'll be contested if the time that it's suspended, but services still somewhat being rendered, constitutes a termination.

newfeatureok 6y ago

Out of curiosity how much time for remediation is generally allowed before service is pulled? Surely the precedent is not "you do something bad and we ban you immediately"? In FTA it says AWS generally gives 30 days per their contract with Parler, but I mean in general, if there is a general precedent. Even if Parler wanted to do the right thing here, they were pretty much banned everywhere immediately.

jimktrains2 6y ago
There seem to be a few examples of gcp turning off service with little to no notice and no follow-up.
- mech422 6y ago
  yeah - probably once a month(?) we hear about a new one on HN though that's in general and not google specific. But plenty of people/business have been burned before, its not like this is some one-off. edit: omg, my apologies to the english language! fix spelling/etc.
mrkurt 6y ago
It depends _entirely_ on the contract terms and reason for termination / suspension. On month to month services, 30 days is normal for almost any reason. But abuse and related ToS violations don't ever get 30 days.
klyrs 6y ago
For hosting illegal content, their TOS says service may be terminated 2 days after notice. That's what happened.
- newfeatureok 6y ago
  Ah, interesting. Thanks for the information.
ryanlol 6y ago
Immediately termination is pretty much the industry standard.

drocer88 6y ago

"Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was 'Hang Mike Pence.' But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account." Is this true?

itamarst 6y ago
> "We blocked the phrase and other variations of it from trending," a Twitter spokesperson said. "We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. This means that at times, we may prevent certain content from trending. As per our Help Center, there are rules for trends — if we identify accounts that violate these rules, we’ll take enforcement action." E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pence-twitter-stops-phrase-trending-capitol-breach https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
sib301 6y ago
It is true. The difference is Twitter took action and removed offending posts, and removed it from the trending list.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tbenst 6y ago
False equivocation. This did happen but Twitter promptly banned this and variants [1]. Parler is failing / refusing to moderate. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pence-twitter-stops-phrase-trending-capitol-breach https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
- charly187 6y ago
  EDIT: I see you changed your post from "Parler is refusing to moderate" to "Parler is refusing/failing to moderate". The post below is an answer to "Parler is refusing to moderate". This is false. Parler has also been banning accounts explicitly calling for violence. I encourage you all to read the complaint: > AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove content that encouraged violence was false—because over the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to its attention and more. I know my word probably doesn't mean much to you, but I verified this personally - almost all of the "example" violent post I could find on the news were all deleted and the accounts were banned before Parler was taken down.

chrisco255 6y ago

This coordinated banning of a service by Silicon Valley is indicative of collusion between these giant monopolies. If the Justice Department does not go after these companies for antitrust, we don't have a Justice Department.

deleted 6y ago
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hctaw 6y ago
how is it indicative of collusion? Do you have evidence that they communicated with each other? If anything, the domino-like behavior (Google Play -> Apple ultimatum, AWS pulling support) suggests no one colluded about anything.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Did you watch the most recent Zuckerberg testimony in Congress? There, Senator Hawley grilled Zuckerberg about a communication platform, SENTRA, in which Twitter, Google, Facebook, absolutely are known to collaborate on who to ban and what to ban. He shows a screenshot in the hearing to Zuckerberg, and Mark is caught weaseling in his chair about it. That is collusion. https://rumble.com/vbru89-republican-senator-grills-zuckerberg-on-facebook-google-and-twitter-collabo.html https://rumble.com/vbru89-republican-senator-grills-zuckerbe...
  - tptacek 6y ago
    "Collusion" isn't generally a thing. Providers can lawfully cooperate for all sorts of reasons; the exceptions are the cases they can't, not the cases they can. For instance, providers could run private channels for banning users that spread CSAM (and I'd be surprised if they didn't).
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      And in doing so, they would be forming a centralized information cartel. And the opportunities for abuse of such systems is now more than apparent. They have effectively booted a Twitter competitor off the internet, working in concert. If that's not legal cause for antitrust action, then antitrust is no longer a thing.

meekmockmook 6y ago

I have seen so many violent threats and incitements on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram over the last 5 years that Parler could possibly make the case that they've been singled out, but I doubt it. They're just too unsympathetic of a plaintiff, imho. That said, antitrust battles against Big Tech will dominate the next four years of economic policy, and rightfully so. GAFA is too big, too powerful, too manipulative, and needs to be brought to heel by every legal means necessary. The US government should also move to immediately outlaw targeted algorithmic advertising, which would make a huge impact on Big Tech's sectarian violence cashcow. (And yes, that's what this absolutely is. Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.)

webXL 6y ago
They already had plenty of enemies on the left. Now they got a ton more on the right. Elon Musk was just tweeting about the hatred headed their way. Time to check my investments.
- pishpash 6y ago
  Left or right? No no, it's got nothing to do with that. They're in trouble because they've now got enemies in power. Did you notice things only move when those in power are threatened?
  - webXL 6y ago
    I didn't notice much 2009-2017.
  - meekmockmook 6y ago
    Yeah, the idea of GAFA as left wing is ludicrous. Sure, they plaster the internet with those ugly flat art cartoons of diverse people working together, (Corporate Memphis, I've learned the style is called) but they are anti-union, anti-competitive, and dedicated to growth at all cost, even if it means sectarian violence and loss of faith in democratic norms
- danaos 6y ago

waynekerr 6y ago

amazon also pulled wikileaks servers....

cpitman 6y ago

This complaint alleges that AWS is shutting down Parler for the benefit of Twitter. That seems like a stretch, does AWS really have an interest in Twitter succeeding above any other social network, especially when both run on AWS?

tharne 6y ago

Run your own metal.

beamatronic 6y ago
You’re always dependent on somebody
- tharne 6y ago
  Fair enough. At least be dependent on somebody without a near monopoly on the service you need.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
drocer88 6y ago
Won't the fencepost move to the service provider blocking the box somebody owns? Does the net neutrality repeal apply here?
- root_axis 6y ago
  It's pretty ironic that conservatives destroyed net neutrality when that would have been the final backstop to ensure that they were able to keep their servers connected to the internet. Frankly, I'll be happy to see the return of net neutrality even if it comes from a place of political dishonesty.
sigstoat 6y ago
will the data centers hosting your "metal" not implement the same policies?
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
They didn't like Twitter, so they built their own. That wasn't good enough. You're right, they need their own metal / backend / hardware. Of course... that would be a problem when Visa / Chase / Paypal / Stipe / Square all refuse to run their payments. So maybe while they're building their own metal, they should build their own banking system too.

listless 6y ago

If you’re a business, do you really want to be on a provider that can pull your card with little to no notice? That’s a lot of power. The boot is coming down hard right now. The cloud is looking like a risky bet.

adrr 6y ago
As a business we only do business with vendors that don’t host controversial sites due to risk from boycotts and negative press. I picked AWS because it was a safe choice because of actions like kicking off Parler.
- mech422 6y ago
  not to pick on you... but customers like you are probably why AWS is taking the position they are. They don't want to risk other customers just to keep parler. That actually sounds like something a profit motivated company would do.... no conspiracies required. edit: should probably note, customers/advertisers have boycotted companies before for having a whiff of scandal around them..
  - adrr 6y ago
    Sendgrid is a good example. We moved to mandrill because we don’t want any drama with our vendors. Sendgrid was ddosed over some drama with their evangelist and it affected our business. Last thing I want to do is having to explain to my exec team that our emails aren’t going out because of a vendor choice I made.
    - mech422 6y ago
      Yeah - I vaguely remember that. And this economy is not the time to take unnecessary risks with your livelihood.
- listless 6y ago
  This is a good point and I agree with it. The market will sort this out better than we could with regulation. I do think that some may see this is a reason to go back to their own data center. It's also a reason why some content creators moved off Patreon to their own subscription services. Although to rebut my own point, that doesn't seem to have affected Patreon much at all.

xvector 6y ago

And here we see the problem with centralized social media. Did anyone think that handing control over to megacorps would end differently? Today it’s Parler, tomorrow it’s whatever political ideology Big Tech finds inconvenient.

thomasjudge 6y ago
"Handing control over." Seriously, do you have a realistic alternative? If we are going to have social media, at scale, in a capitalist society, it's hard to see how there's much of an alternative to for-profit companies. Do you want the government to run Twitter?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  In some ways, yes. For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings. For something controversial that will likely face legal challenges, this seems like the only reasonable way to do things (see: wikileaks, sci-hub etc.)
  - sigstoat 6y ago
    > For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings what do you think the difference between AWS' terms of service, and the terms of service of a data center will be? the last data center contract i signed had most of the same stuff, they just had to return my hardware if they were kicking me out.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  We could rebuild social media on the same principles as the World Wide Web, where it's not run by any single group at all. (I'd argue that's actually what we had back in the days of the "blogosphere".)
- needz 6y ago
  Why not decentralized/federated services run by by various communities all across the world?

wnevets 6y ago

I don't know if people trying to argue that twitter is just as bad as Parler are doing it out of ignorance of the issues or just bad faith. Parler isn't being dropped by private companies because a user said something mean on their service. They're being dropped by AWS, Apple, Google etc because they allow, even encourages its users to conspire to commit violence and assassinate public officials. The main reasons its users went to Parler in the first place is because they weren't allowed to do that on twitter and reddit.

moate 6y ago
I feel like the AWS lawyer is going to make the following claims: 1- This action (dropping Parler) is within the actions established in our ToS. 2- Parler's very goal is to attract these sort of demographics and similar actions have been taken in the past (Stormfront comes to mind) The only chance this has is if Parler has language in their contract requiring that 30-day notice of service termination. My guess is that they don't. They also spend a LOT of time in this filing pointing out that AWS is a very big share of the market (the court won't care) and that they host Twitter (the court will again, not care) in an effort to say that AWS was worried the shift to Parler from Twitter would financially hurt Twitter and then AWS (which doesn't make sense, since AWS is hosting both so 6 million people shifting just means one check gets smaller and the other larger). This is the quality of legal filings I've begun to expect surrounding these issues. "They're bad, and it's pretty obvious to everyone, duh!" doesn't actually hold up in court though...
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The claim on contract violation is probably their strongest claim. Or probably would be were the exhibit of the contract offered not this: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.1.2.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... To be fair, that does look more like a mistake--the HTML-to-PDF conversion appears to truncate a decent amount of text per page. Ooh, just noticed, the contract also has this gem: > Disputes will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify. Which tosses out any claims of contract violation because you agreed to arbitrate it first!

demygale 6y ago

Parler has a moderation policy and they don’t apply it. Content that promotes illegal activity is not protected free speech and is also prohibited by Parler’s policies. They selectively applied that moderation after they became popular with MAGA. Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?

FalconSensei 6y ago
> Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host? Although I agree that 4chan is problematic sometimes, many people that just put blame on it don't actually use it. I remember when Netflix's Cuties was released, 4chan prohibited posting any image/video from the show
- jansan 6y ago
  The German government maintains a blacklist of websites not suitable for minors. We can use this blacklist when setting up web access for children to block at least the worst websites (mainly porn). The last time I checked, 4Chan was not on that list.
  - baud147258 6y ago
    if the goal of that list is to block porn, 4chan should totally be blocked, since there are boards for porn there.
r00fus 6y ago
Was 4chan actually found to be culpable in organizing an illegal activity, or was that 8chan?
- gruez 6y ago
  the latter, if you're talking about the new zealand shootings.
mhh__ 6y ago
4chan is regularly censored and banned (not sure about hosting specifically, I only browse maybe once a month), and threads aren't available forever. It's a different kettle of fish to running a social network - you'd struggle to organise much of anything like this on 4chan.

jariel 6y ago

Amazon may have the right to deny anyone service - but can they do it 'immediately' on whatever grounds? Parler could very well make more money suing Amazon than anything else. This was a huge moment for Parler, and AMZN may have grounded them. There's a difference between 'we don't want to do business with you' ... and 'we will make you dependent on us, but the we'll drop you like a rock and put you out of business'.

objectivetruth 6y ago
> we will make you dependent on us How on Earth did Amazon "make" Parler rely on Amazon exclusively?
ookblah 6y ago
you lost me on the last part there, you can't have it both ways. if they don't want to do business with you they don't have to point blank (barring any outstanding contracts which can be settled). as a business you choose to take risks relying on other vendors. we're all dependent on any business and they could drop us at any time, but that's the risk we take for convenience or what not. we make the calculation the risk is low. if you know there's a growing base of extremism on your site and you have a precedent like gab, why wouldn't you potentially prepare for it?

throwaway4good 6y ago

Who Amazon does business with is their own decision. But terminating Parler with such short notice that they had no chance of moving to an alternative without major disruption of their business. Well. That is deliberate destruction. Without knowing anything about US civil law, I would expect Parler to have a strong case.

the_pwner224 6y ago
The suit states that Amazon and Parler had a contract which stated that 30 day notice would be given before service termination, and if that's true then this does seem like a strong suit. But the entire text seems really biased and borderline crazy (all that stuff about monopoly/antitrust - since when is AWS even close to a monopoly?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they elided that the contract also allowed for early terminaiton if certain terms were being violated.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  Had they been given 30 days, they probably could have moved to Oracle or even had setup their own servers.
reddog 6y ago
The optics are certainly bad. It looks like the Big Tech Cartel colluded to destroy one of their members closest competitors.
rtkwe 6y ago
There's a more in depth discussion of the standard AWS contract here where there is a clause allowing immediate termination. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25733333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25733333

gt565k 6y ago

How does stuff like this work in Germany, as I believe they have a lot of anti nazi laws against hate speech etc? Like this should would have been shut down weeks in advance in Germany. Have we learned nothing from history? I can't believe people are fighting to give racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists a platform to organize and plot violent acts behind the disguise of free speech.

revlolz 6y ago
I have one question for you. At what point do you begin to question your ideology for it's intolerance, double standards, and moral inconsistencies? Have YOU learned nothing from history, ironically Hitler's rise to power, to even question the dogma being fed to you regarding racism and violence? I'm not saying you have to tolerate or even agree with your opposition. However, I'd challenge you to not partake in the past dictator's favorite action of belittling and scapegoating his political opposition. You are contributing to the very acts you espouse to be against by labeling all of your opposition as racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists. All you've demonstrated with your words is violence is okay, so long as you agree with the cause as we experienced COUNTLESS acts of violence in the US riots occurring throughout the year.
- gt565k 6y ago
  My man, the site (parler) is literally used by people who believe the lies that the election is stolen, who want to hang mike pence, who want to go to the capitol with guns and kill the elected representatives. It failed to moderate content that incites violence and was literally build to attract extremists who are on that platform to plot violent acts. There's a reason it got shut down by everyone. Get your head out of your ass.
  - yes_no_maybe 6y ago
    > The site (parler) is literally used by people who believe the lies that the election is stolen, who want to hang mike pence, who want to go to the capitol with guns and kill the elected representatives. Have you ever used twitter? I've routinely encountered examples just as bad if not worse there.

Nacdor 6y ago

Glenn Greenwald has been investigating the planning of the Capitol protests and says "it was largely done on Facebook". So far he hasn't been able to identify a single person who was arrested and active on Parler: > Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start. > For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler. > The article will be up shortly. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293 I would be more interested in hearing if all these prominent figures in the Capitol protests were active across multiple (or all) social media platforms, which often seems to be the case. If that is true, then it makes for an even stronger argument that Parler has been singled out.

mhh__ 6y ago
I'm really scared to trust Greenwald on anything political at the moment. For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Greenwald's own news organization kicked him out because he refused to let anyone fact check his grossly inaccurate posts.
- Natsu 6y ago
  > For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting. The complaint alleges there are deeper ties: Less than a month ago, AWS announced with a press release a new multi-year deal with Twitter. AWS will “provide global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.” Twitter Selects AWS as Strategic Provider to Serve Timelines, Press Center, Amazon, (Dec. 15, 2020), https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/twitter-selects-aws-strategic-provider-serve-timelines https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det....

ookblah 6y ago

and here we see the effects of this!!! as millions of people are still free to insult others and share their opinions of twitter's actions unhindered lol... everyone can also cherry pick out instances where moderation has failed or things have fallen through the cracks. parler's entire MO has been to breed this kind of environment for growth. removing one of the DIRECT causes to an attack on our foundational institutions is completely warranted IMO. save the slippery slope argument for something else, please.

Imnimo 6y ago

If your claim is that "[AWS's decision] is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter." and therefore an antitrust violation, you probably shouldn't also mention that "Parler’s rival social media apps, such as conservative-oriented Gab or conservative media Rumble, are also experiencing record growth right now"...

jmull 6y ago

Here's the proper context and venue to resolve the Parler/AWS dispute: a contract dispute in court. Parler is blowing it in the third paragraph: > Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was “Hang Mike Pence.” But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account. The distinction, of course, is that the it was trending because the tweets were discussing the videos of violent Trump supporters chanting "Hang Mike Pence", and not calling for violence, as was widely occurring on Parler. That weak sauce isn't going to go far in court. P4 is speculation on Amazon's motives. Parler would need some good evidence to show this claim is true. P5 seems the strongest. If their contract really says 30-days notice (given the disingenuous p3, I wouldn't assume that), Amazon could be forced to replatform them for a while and have some damages.

Sunspark 6y ago

I did some testing this morning when a friend shared a link to Parler content and the server did not resolve. I don't know whether it is DNS censorship as well or just poorly configured TTL caching on some DNS servers, but if you have a link to video.parler.com and it doesn't resolve anymore, you can replace video.parler.com with the actual IP address of the server 8.240.251.252 8.240.147.124 8.240.248.252 they are still online though the DNS is beginning to fail globally.

ulysses 6y ago
They use AWS for their DNS, so of course it's failing... Trying j.gtld-servers.net. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-8.awsdns-01.com. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-715.awsdns-25.net. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1170.awsdns-18.org. parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1848.awsdns-39.co.uk.

bigtones 6y ago

1). AWS can suspend service for any customer immediately upon giving that customer notice. They do not have to provide a "remediation period" or give the customer any grace time at all. Every customer agrees to this as part of the AWS Customer Agreement 2). AWS can terminate an account immediately if they deem you in violation of their policies instead of a suspension - as was the case with Parler. It's all in the AWS customer agreement, which Parler agreed to. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/

COGlory 6y ago
The question is whether that's legal, or anticompetitive
- nostoc 6y ago
  Anticompetitive? Is parler competing with amazon in any ways, shape or form?
  - vmception 6y ago
    A court can definitely rule on the clauses of a contract, about time someone made some case law here on modern software agreements
  - COGlory 6y ago
    I don't think so. Maybe if competitors use AWS? Tough to imagine this won't get thrown out though.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    You didn’t read before posting did you? They make the case that Amazon is because they provide hosting for Parlers larger competitors.
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    Antitrust laws are broader than that. A company can be guilty of anti-competitive behavior even if that company is not a direct competitor of the parties affected.

hairofadog 6y ago

Is anyone else getting exhausted by these discussions? This is an important topic and I have strong opinions about it and the events surrounding it but gosh, something about the tenor of the back-and-forth in here is just wearing me out.

the_pwner224 6y ago
I read TFA and came back to upvote the post. Given that this is HN I expected to find some good discussion in the comments - and there is a bit, increasing over time - but there's just so much propaganda / outright stupid stuff here in the comments. This article seems like it should be on HN, but the stuff in the comments made me want to flag it (I didn't). Fortunately it seems the good discussion is coming out on top over time, and the worst comments do get down voted & flagged pretty quickly. But, as you said, there is a lot of repetitive back-and-forth here which has already been done over the past few days.

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hartator 6y ago

> AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service Well, that's not cool nor fair.

tptacek 6y ago
Or true.
ceejayoz 6y ago
Amazon isn't dumb. There are obvious outs for scenarios like this. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ > 6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you... I'd bet they cite this as the reason: > could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability

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vmception 6y ago

Who is David J. Groesbeck, P.S. didnt Parler’s CEO say they lost their lawyers? It seems this would have been filed a day or two before they lost their lawyers.

cosmic_shame 6y ago
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jan/11/spokane-attorney-files-suit-for-online-chat-site-p/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jan/11/spokane-attorn...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

caminocorner 6y ago

> However, Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was “Hang Mike Pence. This has been going on for 12 years. More evidence that both sides use Twitter for violence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/violent-antipolice-memes-surge/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/violent...

vmception 6y ago
I would love to see Amazon drop Twitter and other large clients, and vice versa I might drop everything and start building data center myself if that’s the case
nickysielicki 6y ago
It wasn't too long ago that we cheer-on and celebrate how Twitter hosted calls for political violence. Much was said about how Twitter enabled the Arab Spring, and how that was so wonderful. There's even a wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri... Now the Western elite (on both sides, mind you -- whether it's against BLM or the Proud Boys) are doing their best pikachu face. Mob-style tyrannical democracy for thee, but not for me.
- hollerith 6y ago
  That's a good point, and also I've seen comments here praising the "Arab Spring" years after it killed many millions of people (in Syria, Libya, etc.).

WhySoCEREAL 6y ago

I found Kara Swisher's interview with John Matze the CEO very informative on how things are handled (or lack thereof) on Parler. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-matze.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...

modernpacifist 6y ago

In seeing all of these complaints about the cloud providers getting too big, owning the internet etc, have folks forgotten how to run their own equipment or what renting a dedicated server is? The internet did function prior to cloud computing existing and surprise, running a rack full of NUCs can give you a lot of capacity to run a glorified message board.

nip180 6y ago
Let’s be clear, access to cloud computing companies like AWS is a competitive advantage because it requires less upfront capital and less engineering time to manage. I can 100% see why Parler would prefer having access to AWS compared to running their own hardware. Ianal, so I can’t judge the merits of this legal case. To be honest I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.
- cudgy 6y ago
  “I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.” Personally, I am surprised at the opposite. That a company cannot find lawyers to defend their position or process payments from their customers without due process is horrible. The fact that you were not surprised by it is quite worrisome. I don’t mean that as a personal attack on you, but more as an observation of what has become acceptable or at least ordinary in a society.
  - nip180 6y ago
    I think you misunderstand me. I was surprised that the domino effect started with Parler, but that was several days ago. Now I’m surprised that the domino effect hasn’t reached everyone they do business with.

paxys 6y ago

This is quite clearly yet another lawsuit without merit just to grab headlines, and will be dropped or dismissed before it gets to trial. What's sad is that we are giving them the attention they want.

fishtoaster 6y ago

This complaint seems to include a ton of things like: - AWS was especially mean to us - AWS is hypocritical, look how bad twitter is - We were singled out for political reasons - This will kill us All of which might be true, but none of which is illegal. The main (only?) real legal complaint here seems to amount to "AWS banned us to prop up Twitter in an anticompetitive way that's illegal under antitrust laws." That seems incredibly weak to anyone who's been following this story at all. The charitable interpretation of AWS's actions would be that they banned Parler for refusing to moderate effectively. The less charitable version is that AWS doesn't care about Parler, but caved to public and internal pressure to ban them. In no reasonable interpretation did AWS do it because they just love Twitter so much. I don't see this suit going anywhere.

yes_no_maybe 6y ago
The supposed breach of contract seems bigger to me. > AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided.

djsumdog 6y ago

I just want to say, I called this years ago: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-... They came for Alex Jones and I said nothing Because I didn't believe in gay frogs[1] They came for Daily Stormer and I said nothing Because I knew nothing about Daily Stormer and believed everything the media I said about them because their site was gone They came for ever heterodox opinion on Reddit and I said nothing Because I believed those opinions were wrong and Reddit was within their rights as a private company to ban them Then I had a heterodox opinion and lost my Google account, my Facebook account, my phone numbers I ported to Twilio because I thought that was safe, and all means of communicating with friends whose phone numbers I did not get. And there was no one left to give a shit. It's really your fault you know. [1]: https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

tptacek 6y ago
This is like "first they came for the socialists, then they came for the socialists, then they came for the socialists, and then they came for the socialists".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 6y ago
  No, I mean those individual things. There may be some intersection between Alex Jones fans, Daily Stormer Fans and Reddit users ... but they're certainly not the same audiences at all. You can replace them with anyone you want that's heterodox that's been banned honestly.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    You think there may be some intersection between Alex Jones fans and Daily Stormer readers? The Stop The Steal rioters were wearing Auschwitz t-shirts.

daniel-thompson 6y ago

> "Doing so is the equivalent of pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support. It will kill Parler’s business — at the very time it is set to skyrocket." While I get what they're trying to say, this is a really odd metaphor for them to use.

CyanLite2 6y ago

It's all fun and games until you try to overthrow the government. Parler's entire business model was centered around Trump holding onto power, by any means necessary. This isn't a "free speech" issue. Don't promote violence, and don't try to incite insurrection and you'll be fine.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

I am sure the fight will be watched closely. Both parties are well-heeled and motivated ( I am sure Mercers wouldn't want to lose their investment ). I know what I think and how I feel about it, but I do not want to derail this thread.

jcranmer 6y ago

IANAL, but I already see one massive issue with the lawsuit: Count 1 is a claim against the Sherman Antitrust Act. By their own citation (see claim 31), they need to allege specific facts that would conclude (1) the existence of a conspiracy, (2) intention on the part of the co-conspirators to restrain trade, and (3) actual injury to competition. There's no facts that allege (2). Actually, I suspect they also need to list Twitter as a defendant to properly claim (1) as well, since it's Twitter that has the alleged monopoly, and the one for whom the alleged conspiracy to restrain trade exists. Their facts probably don't even amount to alleging (1). They basically say "AWS also provides services to Twitter" (okay that's not a conspiracy by itself) and "Twitter also had an issue with the #HangMikePence hashtag" (omitting the fact that Twitter did kill the hashtag)--which still doesn't allege a conspiracy. I'm sure some actual lawyers will shortly comment on whatever other gross procedural filings this lawsuit has (https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1348700506470952960 https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134870050647095296... suggests there's quite a few).

moate 6y ago
This whole filing reads like "QQ, TWITTER HURT ME, MUH USERS!!!!1!!1!" It is...not a good complaint. They should be focusing a LOT more on breach of contract. Unless, you know, AWS didn't actually do that per the terms. For anyone reading this, Tort law (which is what this is) boils down to this basic idea: Was there a legal agreement between two parties, and did the violation of that agreement cause damage to one of the parties. From what I've seen (IDK the specifics of Parler's contract with AWS, and I'm just guessing based on general understanding of how good a ToS from a mega-corp like Amazon is) the answer is yes there are damages, but they seem unlikely to stem from the violation of the terms of a contract.

joshuak 6y ago

Genuine question. Why don't platforms support both up and down voting? I've always found it pretty obnoxious that you can only encourage content you want not discourage content you don't want. HN seems to have a good system. Shouldn't platforms allow free speech but give the community the tools to discourage destructive speech?

walrus01 6y ago

Alexa, search for colocation services in Russia.

andr 6y ago

It's amazing how arbitrarily lines are drawn in this thread. I'd be eager to see people that disapprove AWS's actions what they would say in the following situation: 1) Parler banning some of its own users for trolling. 2) Their own employer/company banning people that use it to distribute child porn. 3) A utility company disconnecting users that continuously disrupt its electrical grid. Of course you'd be fine with 1, 2 because neither your company nor Parler are common carriers, as defined by law, and have no obligation to provide their service to anyone. Guess what - AWS is not a common carrier either. But even a common carrier such as the electric company can terminate users that purposefully violate its terms of service. At the end of the day, we all know this. We know that private services have no First Amendment obligation. And yet, thread after thread, its all the same fake outrage that's masking a much simple emotion - "I hate it when my guys lose".

nickysielicki 6y ago

I hope this gets to discovery. There was clearly some coordination between Facebook and Twitter simultaneously taking down offical Trump accounts, Google and Apple simultaneously taking down the Parler app listing, and then Amazon removing them from AWS. Slack chatlogs exist, and if those are made public, the public backlash is going to be real.

throw_nbvc1234 6y ago

IF a company's terms of service refer (or intend to refer) to some kind of external standard (such as federal law) why should the company itself have the power to determine what does or doesn't meet that standard. In the USA, there's a government body which can make a preliminary judgment on this, it's called the courts. Why shouldn't Amazon be compelled to get a preliminary opinion from a judge on whether this is illegal or not. Based on that decision they can preemptively remove the content and let the defendant "appeal" (probably incorrect legal term) the decision. If the court rules it's not illegal, then there should be no risk of legal liability to continuing to provide the service. If things are parler are as bad as people are making it out to be (i haven't been following it closely) then this should be a trivial step that legitimizes the decision.

shripadk 6y ago

Amazon leaked the email to BuzzFeed 1 hour before Parler received the email. Shocking detail if true. What was Amazon trying to do? Quoting from the case pdf file: "Strangely, the article with the letter was posted before Parler itself received the letter in an email, received at 7:19 pm PST, over an hour after the BuzzFeed article went online, meaning AWS leaked the letter to BuzzFeed before sending it to Parler. See Exhibit A."

root_axis 6y ago

You reap what you sow. Conservatives are normally champions of corporate freedom, they never had a problem with the extreme bias on cable news or talk radio, but now that big tech companies have eclipsed the platforms they dominate they cry foul. AWS isn't an ISP, but if conservatives hadn't destroyed net neutrality they might have a legal leg to stand on when ISPs inevitably refuse to give them a business contract so that they might house their own servers. I think they deserve this outcome for being persistent bad faith actors in this regard, but I'd be happy to see a restoration of net neutrality now that conservatives are selfishly motivated to support it.

exabrial 6y ago

So the latest fake news is that everyone is being told to shut off operating system updates permanently on their devices to "block apple and google". Good job Big Tech. Now we have a million unpatchable devices.

sp_nster 6y ago

The irony is that a few years ago everyone thought the telco's were going to be the ones to control what you see/do on the internet. lol Has this become an anti-trust issue (assuming there is a way to tie it to the Sherman Act) based on monopoly power? Google and Apple have 99.83% market share, owning both the platforms and distribution? Is it time to break these up? /s https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

Rapzid 6y ago

FBI is warning of armed protests at all state capitals between now and 20th. I can't help but feel that by the time anything comes of this, the primary goal of AWS and a lot of other companies involved in the recent bans will have already been accomplished; smothering an escalation of the current situation until after the 20th. It feels like we are witnessing a sort of immune response from these companies triggered to protect them from an existential threat to their business. Set off by Wednesdays events. Instability is bad for business.

ultrablack 6y ago

Funny enough, Amazon still sells Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and the Bible and the Quran.. Maybe they should censor themselves.

vectorboost 6y ago

Sure there were far-right people and calls for violence on Parler, but the same thing is on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook is literally overflowing with nazis, fascist, communists openly calling for violence against ppl or a particular class. And some accounts are left unchecked for very very long time. Calling for genocide of jews, killing of cops, racist comments against black people, asians etc. And suddenly Parler is the problem? I don't get this. Twitter is full of pedos and rape videos and that's totally ok too? This is pathetic.

eftychis 6y ago

Focusing on the brief itself, I can see merits for injunctive relief (breach of contract). Bear in mind I am sure there are clauses that Amazon is going to cite against -- we only have access to this document. (It also appears hastily written a bit, which I can guess was the case.) I would hold my breath for Sherman (Anti-trust) Act being applied. (Especially, as there is the whole people stormed Congress elephant in the room.) But in summary, the perception I get is that this is a strictly business to business lawsuit, contracts were signed etc. I am curious if some Washington knowledgeable in the area lawyer can provide any insight and their point of view. P.S. Of course this is just the point of view of one-side and we can not say anything concrete until this is litigated. N.B. I am not a lawyer, not familiar and not licensed to practice in Washington.