3 ms·

It seems like there's at the very least a product-market fit for a cloud provider with less nebulous TOS. From the wording of the AWS contract, it sounds like t

It seems like there's at the very least a product-market fit for a cloud provider with less nebulous TOS. From the wording of the AWS contract, it sounds like the language is loose enough that any user can pretty much be terminated at whim. If/when this lawsuit gets publicity, my guess is a lot of C-suite executives are gonna be looking over their shoulders and evaluating how screwed they'd be if their current cloud provider decided to deplatform them. Amazon's probably counting on the fact that 99% of its customers' business doesn't have anything to do with politics, and therefore they'll write off the threat. But the counterpoint is that cancel culture has become so pervasive into people's personal lives that who knows what might happen. If an executive shows up to a Trump-rally or posts a politically incorrect meme on his personal time, it's not outside the scope of possibility that AWS/GCP could demand that the company fire the person or else have their account terminated. The zeigeist is increasingly moving to the ideology that "silence is violence". Are companies, like Coinbase, that espouse political neutrality next? Any company can now find itself on the wrong end of a cancel culture mob. If said mob has controls over your cloud providers TOS, then that's a major business risk.

acdha 6y ago
> If/when this lawsuit gets publicity, my guess is a lot of C-suite executives are gonna be looking over their shoulders and evaluating how screwed they'd be if their current cloud provider decided to deplatform them. Do you really think there are “a lot” of companies which host user content, refuse to moderate it, and refuse to deal with complaints forwarded by their service provider? Most C-level people are going to look at this and say “that's why we follow our contracts” or “I'm glad we don't have to worry about legal action against a rogue customer potentially impacting any infrastructure we share with them”.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  The question is what constitutes "refusal to moderate". As far as I can tell, simply calling the election fraudulent is grounds for banning on all the major platforms. To be clear, I don't believe that position, but at least 30 million Americans do. So now any company that hosts user content without the will or resources to censor the opinions held by one fifth of the electorate, can find its infrastructure turned off at the drop of hat. As a CEO, that would seem like unacceptable TOS to me.
  - acdha 6y ago
    > The question is what constitutes "refusal to moderate". As far as I can tell, simply calling the election fraudulent is grounds for banning on all the major platforms. What makes you think that? They mark those as disputed but haven’t generally touched the ones which aren’t calling for violence. The court filing in question clearly shows that Amazon wanted them to deal with violence, not dishonesty, too.

acdha 6y ago

> If/when this lawsuit gets publicity, my guess is a lot of C-suite executives are gonna be looking over their shoulders and evaluating how screwed they'd be if their current cloud provider decided to deplatform them. Do you really think there are “a lot” of companies which host user content, refuse to moderate it, and refuse to deal with complaints forwarded by their service provider? Most C-level people are going to look at this and say “that's why we follow our contracts” or “I'm glad we don't have to worry about legal action against a rogue customer potentially impacting any infrastructure we share with them”.

dcolkitt 6y ago
The question is what constitutes "refusal to moderate". As far as I can tell, simply calling the election fraudulent is grounds for banning on all the major platforms. To be clear, I don't believe that position, but at least 30 million Americans do. So now any company that hosts user content without the will or resources to censor the opinions held by one fifth of the electorate, can find its infrastructure turned off at the drop of hat. As a CEO, that would seem like unacceptable TOS to me.
- acdha 6y ago
  > The question is what constitutes "refusal to moderate". As far as I can tell, simply calling the election fraudulent is grounds for banning on all the major platforms. What makes you think that? They mark those as disputed but haven’t generally touched the ones which aren’t calling for violence. The court filing in question clearly shows that Amazon wanted them to deal with violence, not dishonesty, too.