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It's not that easy. If we're talking about an election in Venezuela, the courts would also laugh accusations of election rigging out of the room. To be clear,
by eloff 6y ago
It's not that easy. If we're talking about an election in Venezuela, the courts would also laugh accusations of election rigging out of the room.
To be clear, I fully side with the U.S. courts here. What I'm saying though is governments and officials lie, you can't always just trust the official story.
If parler were used for inciting civil disorder in Venezuela over the election result and the government comes to AWS and says shut them down, what do they do?
Now suddenly they're the arbitrators of what is true in the world.
I don't want to get too hypothetical here, because I think this time it was pretty black and white.
- Closi 6y ago100% agree - And the problem is that this isn't a 'hypothetical' situation. Amazon and these large players will absolutely be asked by governments around the world to intervene in similar situations. Sometimes the fraud will be false, but sometimes it will be real - that's the world. Is it now Amazon's job to be the world election supervisor and arbiter of truth and shut down dissenting speech? And can we trust these companies to act as neutral arbiters of the truth? (As an aside, the answer is absolutely not. See: Google Maps and Crimea / Ukraine / Russia)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- riwsky 6y agoExcept Amazon aren’t determining what is true for the world, they’re determining it for themselves based on their assessment of the evidence and control only their own actions? This is true of everyone. To impute a stupid decision-making algorithm to AWS and then point out that it’s stupid does not a great argument against AWS’ actual process make.
- Closi 6y agoExcept these companies are defining truth in the world. You said individuals make their own assessment based on the “evidence” - the problem here is that these companies serve up the “evidence”, so if these companies decide to only show you the “correct” evidence then that’s where they begin to define “truth”. For an example, see Google Maps and Crimea in Ukraine vs Russia.
- riwsky 6y agoThey certainly have a lot of sway, there—“history is written by the victors”, etc—but that we are having this discussion in the first place seems proof positive that said sway doesn’t prevent people from holding informed, contrary opinions.