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The best mitigation strategy here is to engage your vendors with private contracts instead of depending on generic terms of service (ToS) alone. Every company

The best mitigation strategy here is to engage your vendors with private contracts instead of depending on generic terms of service (ToS) alone. Every company I've worked with has negotiated separate agreements with providers to reduce risk. Including contracts with both AWS and Azure. If your business gets to a certain size and you are still on the generic ToS and paying by credit card you have a big risk on your hands. You could be terminated at any point. With a private contract you can negotiate things like a termination notice. You can put in place a grace period before things are shut off. You can implement dispute procedures that are unique to your business needs so that when you and the vendor disagree it doesn't immediately disrupt your business. None of this is easy. But if your business absolutely depends on public cloud hosting you'd be stupid not to call up your vendor and negotiate. If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time.

runako 6y ago
I agree with this general idea, but also any bespoke service contract approved by a competent attorney will still have clauses for instant-kill under certain circumstances. For example, no provider would provide service under a bespoke contract obligating them to knowingly host & serve illegal content (because this creates legal liability for the provider). What is alleged about Parler would likely fit into the instant-kill provisions of even any reasonable bespoke contract. [Edit: obviously this does not apply to providers specifically in the business of catering to high-risk customers. Stripe doesn't do gambling or porn, but other providers presumably have different pricing or risk mitigation/tolerance and therefore on can use credit cards to pay for these items.]
- bawolff 6y ago
  I think the poster was worried about slippery slope - today they come for the evil men, tomorrow they come for the unpopular men, the next day they come for me. In such a context i assume the poster isnt actually planning to host anything illegal or even distatsteful to current views, so a good contract should be fully negotiatable.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> You could be terminated at any point. You could be "terminated at any point" regardless of what the contract says if something as bizarre as what happened last week occurs and your platform was an integral part of it. Contracts only go so far. Not everything in human affairs runs like clockwork, contracts are broken all the time.
lolc 6y ago
> If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time. I actually think that the providers would fall like dominoes. See what Apple and Google did to the app. Once a big company shows you the door because they worry about legal risks and reputational damage, other companies will take note and you'll have a hard time staying on. You'll have to find a company that does it out of idealism. Or one that is socially disconnected enough that the threats to reputation and legal risks do not apply.
jhowell 6y ago
> If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time. Isn't that what happened, they lost all of their cloud providers because the providers could not justify being part guaranteeing reliable service delivery of under moderated content?
okprod 6y ago
I don't think it's possible to secure a contract with such favorable terms that you can not get cut off for inciting physical violence on government property. OP would also need to be a fairly large player to able to negotiate favorable terms with someone like AWS to begin with.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I don’t think it’s possible to secure a contract with such favorable terms that you can not get cut off for inciting physical violence on government property. Not only is it not possible in the pragmatic sense, I don’t think its legally possible, since knowingly carrying such content is quite often criminal (not just for you, but if the higher-level vendor knows about it its criminal for them), and a contract to commit a crime is usually void.

runako 6y ago

I agree with this general idea, but also any bespoke service contract approved by a competent attorney will still have clauses for instant-kill under certain circumstances. For example, no provider would provide service under a bespoke contract obligating them to knowingly host & serve illegal content (because this creates legal liability for the provider). What is alleged about Parler would likely fit into the instant-kill provisions of even any reasonable bespoke contract. [Edit: obviously this does not apply to providers specifically in the business of catering to high-risk customers. Stripe doesn't do gambling or porn, but other providers presumably have different pricing or risk mitigation/tolerance and therefore on can use credit cards to pay for these items.]

bawolff 6y ago
I think the poster was worried about slippery slope - today they come for the evil men, tomorrow they come for the unpopular men, the next day they come for me. In such a context i assume the poster isnt actually planning to host anything illegal or even distatsteful to current views, so a good contract should be fully negotiatable.

crispyambulance 6y ago

> You could be terminated at any point. You could be "terminated at any point" regardless of what the contract says if something as bizarre as what happened last week occurs and your platform was an integral part of it. Contracts only go so far. Not everything in human affairs runs like clockwork, contracts are broken all the time.

lolc 6y ago

> If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time. I actually think that the providers would fall like dominoes. See what Apple and Google did to the app. Once a big company shows you the door because they worry about legal risks and reputational damage, other companies will take note and you'll have a hard time staying on. You'll have to find a company that does it out of idealism. Or one that is socially disconnected enough that the threats to reputation and legal risks do not apply.

jhowell 6y ago

> If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time. Isn't that what happened, they lost all of their cloud providers because the providers could not justify being part guaranteeing reliable service delivery of under moderated content?

okprod 6y ago

I don't think it's possible to secure a contract with such favorable terms that you can not get cut off for inciting physical violence on government property. OP would also need to be a fairly large player to able to negotiate favorable terms with someone like AWS to begin with.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> I don’t think it’s possible to secure a contract with such favorable terms that you can not get cut off for inciting physical violence on government property. Not only is it not possible in the pragmatic sense, I don’t think its legally possible, since knowingly carrying such content is quite often criminal (not just for you, but if the higher-level vendor knows about it its criminal for them), and a contract to commit a crime is usually void.