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I'm glad to see this playing out, not because of the people involved, but because of the issues at stake. Never before in history has a small cabal of companie

I'm glad to see this playing out, not because of the people involved, but because of the issues at stake. Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over what we can say and who we're able to associate with. In one concerted ban action, you can be cut off from most of your friends and the ability to express yourself in any forums that have more than a tiny reach. After being banned from the big three, you are now excluded from pretty much everything your friends do and say, and your chances in any political field are essentially zero. You even lose the ability to use many services that require the big three for authentication or verification. Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. These companies have subsumed a not insignificant amount of power that was until now only within the purview of governments, with that power presumably subject to the will of the people and democratic ideals of free speech. You still weren't allowed to incite violence with your speech, for example, but investigation of that kind of behavior was the job of the police, and punishment the job of the justice system. And the bar was pretty high before censoring someone, as it should be in a non-totalitarian state. These lawsuits need to happen because we NEED to delineate where responsibilities lay in terms of protecting our rights as free citizens. And that always starts with the most despised of society because they're almost always the ones to trigger these questions. ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’

waihtis 6y ago
No crisis should go to waste. It's interesting how tech people will endlessly argue about some minor details regarding privacy in some mediocre-usage phone app but huge precedents like these are swallowed without criticism because of political stances.
- yulaow 6y ago
  From a point of view outside US, it seems to me that this is the consequence of the extreme polarization of the political situation in the US that happened in the last 8-6 years and brought what looks like a moral witch-hunt from both sides. Now, if the consequence is to strike a point against the enemy party, it seems both formations unconsciously agree to sacrifice some piece of democracy or freedom. In the end everybody lose and society decays.
  - waihtis 6y ago
    Exactly so. It's easy to argue against Trumpistas being a net negative to society on almost any level. It's much less easy to think about ways to negate them as a political force without hurting everyone else in the process, and it seems a lot of people don't even care about weighing costs and benefits. Unfortunately, when the modern political sphere is highly influenced by idiots on Twitter who are permanently stuck on first-level thinking, this is what you get.
armada651 6y ago
> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. Is it really the modern equivalent? People are not getting banned here over what they say in Twitter DMs. They are getting banned over what they publish on their timelines. You have a right to free speech, not a right to free publication. If you want to publish your opinions you will have to pay for that yourself if you can't find anyone willing to pay the costs for you. I will defend your right to say what you want, but I won't buy you a printing press.
- callamdelaney 6y ago
  As I understand, they were paying their bills.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    This is probably a case where the amount charged didn’t represent the true cost to Amazon, however. There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. It's much simpler to just not do business with them than it is to try and develop a pricing model that accounts for those things.
    - ecmascript 6y ago
      The problem with your statement is that it is subjective. Amazon removing Parler hurt them from my subjective view a lot more than hosting them. I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. I am sure Amazon hosts a lot of sites that I don't agree with but that doesn't mean I will hold them accountable. It is simply stupid. If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did (at least if you compare equal shitty places like Twitter), hold Parler accountable and not Amazon for hosting them. Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter.
      - 6y ago
tim333 6y ago
>'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ Sure. They can go say it to their mates down the pub. Private companies also generally have the right to choose who they do business with.
- lodovic 6y ago
  Twitter is a public company. So is Facebook. Shareholders etc.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dubyah 6y ago
    Being publicly traded doesn't negate the fact they are private sector entities. None of them are state owned enterprises.
- throwaway69123 6y ago
  These private companies rely on public infrastructure and public indemnity
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over what we can say and who we're able to associate with Yeah, no. Any time before the internet, getting any sort of publicity was a thousand times harder with lots of very real gatekeepers. Include anyone but white/male/hetero/christian/upper-middle-class-or-better people in your consideration, and the idea that freedom of speech went anywhere but up, almost vertically, in the last decade or two is laughable.
- lodovic 6y ago
  Not really. This is like a monopoly on paper. Sure, you can build your own press, but what are you going to use it for if you can't get paper to print on? Maybe freedom of speech went up, vertically, meaning more people can publish than ever before, but it got extremely narrow at the same time. If you publish the wrong thought your life or business can be literally destroyed within a day. (or as long as it takes to fly to Africa)
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    Parler would have never been a business. Because, for some reason, those gatekeepers weren't entirely terrible in keeping really obvious and obnoxious assholes far away from their printing presses. And let's be clear: nobody gets "literally destroyed", nor even figuratively, for publishing "one wrong thought". Parler had been peddling in low-effort violence-porn for the lowlifes that make up their userbase for what.. two years? That's hundreds of thousands of terrible... "thoughts". And nothing happened, until something happened, which happened to be peoples' deaths and a crisis of democracy. For comparison: reddit got into hot water at some point, and managed to clean up their act. The porn websites are in a similar process. It's all just actions-have-consequences, really. And the public's ire is actually the more nuanced, soft approach to do it, compared to the blunt tool of criminal law.
  - beowulfey 6y ago
    Nothing is stopping anyone from starting their own webhost. Free market economy etc.
- 6y ago
Causality1 6y ago
We need an internet sidewalk. An internet post office. An internet common carrier. I'm afraid it isn't going to swing that way. We're closer to allowing utility companies to cut people off arbitrarily than we are to forcing internet companies to keep serving users who hurt their business.
- yetihehe 6y ago
  And what do you do when someone dumps a truck of garbage on that sidewalk? We already have that sidewalk. Everyone connected to internet has a small sidewalk. Not everyone wants to tread in all neighbourhoods, and some streets are not wide enough to allow half of the world walking them, but they have that sidewalk.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    They're prosecuted by the law, just like real illegal dumpers. That's my position, that there should be a public internet content distribution platform that operates at-cost services for users and whose only rules are the laws of the United States. An internet utility.
    - yetihehe 6y ago
      > are the laws of the United States You have those already, facebook operates according to US laws. If not, it will be prosecuted. Of course, maybe government mandated ones will be better? Like public television in my country, where it is just a propaganda machine for currently ruling party? You think it will not be "moderated" by ruling party in US when operated as a public government owned utility?
      - Causality1 6y ago
        Facebook has many more rules about what content can and cannot be posted than the law requires. A public utility wouldn't even need a Terms of Service page.
vmception 6y ago
> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. Right, there will likely be a licensing regime that comes out of this which does tie user-generated content platforms to the state, reducing their ability to make arbitrary decisions.
appleflaxen 6y ago
> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over there was a monopoly on phone service in the 70s that exceeds the monopoly on cloud hosting today. and it wasn't a cabal; it was a single company. > Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over > something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are > with the modern equivalent. they aren't shutting off the phone service. they still have internet, and can publish anthing they want anywhere else. what they shut off is their television show / public feed of people calling for violence. it's completely justified.
- maccard 6y ago
  > what they shut off is their television show / public feed of people calling for violence. it's completely justified. Right, this is more akin to Fox/CNN/MSNBC deciding they're not going to allow you a platform.
- flippinburgers 6y ago
  Yes and what again happened to that phone company?
- kiwidrew 6y ago
  > there was a monopoly on phone service in the 70s that exceeds the monopoly on cloud hosting today Yes, and as part of that _regulated_ monopoly, they were required to provide "universal" service: it didn't matter how remote the customer was or how inconvenient it would be to provide them with service, telephone service had to be provided to anyone who was willing to pay the (regulated) monthly fee.
ABeeSea 6y ago
Did you read the article or the lawsuit? They make zero free speech claims in the lawsuit. They are making a Sherman anti-trust argument that Twitter and Amazon are colluding because Twitter is scared of competition from Parler. This lawsuit won’t go anywhere.
africanboy 6y ago
> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over what we can say Not really. Like many others I was born without Internet and never before in history so many people said so many things, multiple times a day, from anywhere they are, to a potentially global audience, paying nothing
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  That is the other side of the same coin. If you are a free user, you are treated as a product.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    Premise: I agree that letting public speak happen on private channels handled by some of the largest global corporations in history is dangerous, but in this case AWS is not a free service, it's paid and not really cheap.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  Yeah this whole sentiment kinda strikes me as nonsense. Never before in history has each individual had the ability to broadcast their thoughts so widely so easily. Twitter/Facebook/AWS/etc can all refuse to do business with you. You can still throw an old computer in your basement and plug it into the internet and make your thoughts accessible to the entire world. Domain name registrar or TLD banned you too? Great, pick another registrar. Pick another TLD. Pick another country with different laws. You can do it all from the country you currently inhabit and the comfort of your office chair. You can make your site accessible via IP address or virtually unblockable via Tor. Even if you're violating the laws and norms of the country you inhabit, you can host this in a way that's virtually untraceable back to you with little effort. How exactly did one accomplish that in 1930? 1830? 1730? 1630? What ability did a peasant in 830AD have to broadcast their thoughts across the entire world that we lack today?
adrr 6y ago
If you made death threats from your telephone to the point your neighbors threatened to discontinue their phone service because of the unwanted negative attention. The phone service would cut you off. No company should be forced to lose money. That’s what we are asking Amazon to do. They were going to lose customers if they kept hosting Parler.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  I don't think that's how your situation would play out. The neighbors would complain, and police would get involved. Then you would get prosecuted for making violent threats.
  - adrr 6y ago
    That’s what you think would happen. Lin wood had a call to execute pence up for over a week. Not till apple threatened to remove Parler from the store was it deleted. Policing is out, we talking about the same people who failed to activate the national guard allowing the siege of our capital.
    - perryizgr8 6y ago
      > Lin wood had a call to execute pence up for over a week. Not till apple threatened to remove Parler from the store was it deleted. I don't think it should have been deleted at all. Let concerned citizens sue Lin wood (whoever that is) and present his threat as evidence. Why should we expect people's words to be deleted from a public platform? If nobody sued him, or went to the police, maybe it wasn't a real threat. Or maybe it wasn't illegal. Who are we to judge? Let the "neighbors" take it to the police and to the courts. I really wish today's social platforms functioned like Slashdot. Their philosophy was to never delete anything posted by users, unless compelled by a court of law. That's the right thing to do.
    - crististm 6y ago
      What you are saying is equivalent to "the state is incapable of defending our values so we make ourselves the police". What do you think that implies?
hrktb 6y ago
> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. Or imagine not being able to use the banking system because banks don't like you're dealing with legal weed ? Or getting cut from payment processors as a sex worker ? Unthinkable, right.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Came here to post this. None of the arbitrary denial of service is new, it was just deployed against people without power. The right were completely fine with deplatforming sex workers through SESTA/FOSTA. I'm happy to see all the egregious machinery of things like the Patriot Act (unaccountable air travel blacklists!) being turned on the right for a change instead of just the left - because this time it's the right that's the terrorist threat. I think it was only last week that we had somebody banned from github for simply logging in from Iran.
- throwaway69123 6y ago
  This is also wrong
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Rooki 6y ago
> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? This isn't why they're being dropped though is it? I was under the impression they were being denied service because further terrorist attacks were being openly planned on their platform with no attempts at moderation happening.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it Maybe the next clause in this highschool-level aphorism should be "although I will not compel anybody to help you say it".
pmontra 6y ago
Maybe when a service grows past some level it should become a kind of public space. The private company that created it and operates it loses the privilege of making rules about who can use it and how. That becomes a matter for courts. The company should be happy with the zillions of money it makes.
beowulfey 6y ago
You’re thinking these big social media companies are like the telephone, but I would say they are more like newspapers. No one has been banned from using messenger apps, afaik, which I would say fits your metaphor better. And you can definitely find yourself banned from the editorial pages of every newspaper if you say enough evil things. I think your first statement is hyperbole. There are countless times when the few controlled the dissemination of information to the masses. What about when only monks and scribes knew how to write? What about when the printing press had just been invented? What about in the early 20th century before television even existed? If anything, people have been able to throw their opinions around more today than ever before in human history.
- babesh 6y ago
  That was not a good time when William Randolph Hearst could help start wars. But the same thing happened in the 90s when the big networks helped start the second Gulf War with fake news about weapons of mass destruction. I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    2000s for the second gulf war. I don't think that was really the newspapers on their own, they were being fed that by US intelligence services. Since there was basically zero ability to check the facts on the ground, they were left relaying lies - that had bipartisan popularity. > I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power. So am I. But the antidote to fake news from those in power is not even more fake news from random cultists and foreign intelligence services.
pron 6y ago
I have no love for big corporations, and I'm happy to finally see growing opposition to their capitalist power, but other kinds of "taboo" content, like porn, face the same hurdles and do fine. Taboo publishing has rarely been mainstream, and always held at arm's length from "civilised" business." Let's not pretend that Parler is shunned because of its users opinions on government spending; it's shunned because its violent content is so distasteful to most people that no one wants to touch it with a six foot flagpole.
mattjoyce 6y ago
Yes, I can imagine a telephone company terminating a service, if you don't adhere to the term. In fact they are very very strict. Also, email is still available, don't pretend these services are all there is, it just isn't so.
dmode 6y ago
Telephone companies ban spam callers all the time
threatofrain 6y ago
It’s notable that per the CEO of Parker, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail and texting services have cancelled on them. At the heart of this power is the freedom of association.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
raesene9 6y ago
I'm not sure I'd go with the "never before" piece. Lots of people have been banned off lots of plaforms. Take payment companies for example. If Visa and Mastercard decline to do business with you (as they did with Pornhub) you're basically stuffed. Lots of individual sex workers have also had this experience. You can't make money if the payment companies won't work with you. Also if you look back at the history of censorship you'll find loads of examples where people were effectively de-platformed. One I was reading about recently. In 1970's UK a reggae artist called Judge Dredd held the record for most songs banned by the BBC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dread). In those days, that's effectively de-platforming that artist and there for the great crime of ... double entendre.
rocketpastsix 6y ago
>‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ If you want to call a congress person an asshole, tell me that America isn't the greatest country in the world, say that the President is a treasonous tool then yes I will absolutely defend your right to say that, and more. The minute it turns to violence, insurrection and death I will make sure the authorities know exactly where to find you. And if these actions violate a Terms of Service that you agreed to, you reap what you sow. You being the generalized you. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Parler knew exactly what they were doing and who they were courting. As the saying goes, "well, well, well. if it isn't the consequences of my own actions".
DanBC 6y ago
> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. Actually, yes, in most parts of the world the telephone company was under no obligation to provide service to anyone who wanted it and there were laws about what you could say or do over the telephone.

waihtis 6y ago

No crisis should go to waste. It's interesting how tech people will endlessly argue about some minor details regarding privacy in some mediocre-usage phone app but huge precedents like these are swallowed without criticism because of political stances.

yulaow 6y ago
From a point of view outside US, it seems to me that this is the consequence of the extreme polarization of the political situation in the US that happened in the last 8-6 years and brought what looks like a moral witch-hunt from both sides. Now, if the consequence is to strike a point against the enemy party, it seems both formations unconsciously agree to sacrifice some piece of democracy or freedom. In the end everybody lose and society decays.
- waihtis 6y ago
  Exactly so. It's easy to argue against Trumpistas being a net negative to society on almost any level. It's much less easy to think about ways to negate them as a political force without hurting everyone else in the process, and it seems a lot of people don't even care about weighing costs and benefits. Unfortunately, when the modern political sphere is highly influenced by idiots on Twitter who are permanently stuck on first-level thinking, this is what you get.

armada651 6y ago

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. Is it really the modern equivalent? People are not getting banned here over what they say in Twitter DMs. They are getting banned over what they publish on their timelines. You have a right to free speech, not a right to free publication. If you want to publish your opinions you will have to pay for that yourself if you can't find anyone willing to pay the costs for you. I will defend your right to say what you want, but I won't buy you a printing press.

callamdelaney 6y ago
As I understand, they were paying their bills.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  This is probably a case where the amount charged didn’t represent the true cost to Amazon, however. There may not be an obvious monetary cost to the negative publicity, legal and other costs Parler was and would incur for Amazon, but they're costs nonetheless. It's much simpler to just not do business with them than it is to try and develop a pricing model that accounts for those things.
  - ecmascript 6y ago
    The problem with your statement is that it is subjective. Amazon removing Parler hurt them from my subjective view a lot more than hosting them. I will never host anything on AWS since I know I could get removed at any time because of political reasons. I am sure Amazon hosts a lot of sites that I don't agree with but that doesn't mean I will hold them accountable. It is simply stupid. If you think Parler did something wrong, which I don't think they did (at least if you compare equal shitty places like Twitter), hold Parler accountable and not Amazon for hosting them. Don't be part of the angry mob. Be smarter.
    - 6y ago

tim333 6y ago

>'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ Sure. They can go say it to their mates down the pub. Private companies also generally have the right to choose who they do business with.

lodovic 6y ago
Twitter is a public company. So is Facebook. Shareholders etc.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dubyah 6y ago
  Being publicly traded doesn't negate the fact they are private sector entities. None of them are state owned enterprises.
throwaway69123 6y ago
These private companies rely on public infrastructure and public indemnity

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over what we can say and who we're able to associate with Yeah, no. Any time before the internet, getting any sort of publicity was a thousand times harder with lots of very real gatekeepers. Include anyone but white/male/hetero/christian/upper-middle-class-or-better people in your consideration, and the idea that freedom of speech went anywhere but up, almost vertically, in the last decade or two is laughable.

lodovic 6y ago
Not really. This is like a monopoly on paper. Sure, you can build your own press, but what are you going to use it for if you can't get paper to print on? Maybe freedom of speech went up, vertically, meaning more people can publish than ever before, but it got extremely narrow at the same time. If you publish the wrong thought your life or business can be literally destroyed within a day. (or as long as it takes to fly to Africa)
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Parler would have never been a business. Because, for some reason, those gatekeepers weren't entirely terrible in keeping really obvious and obnoxious assholes far away from their printing presses. And let's be clear: nobody gets "literally destroyed", nor even figuratively, for publishing "one wrong thought". Parler had been peddling in low-effort violence-porn for the lowlifes that make up their userbase for what.. two years? That's hundreds of thousands of terrible... "thoughts". And nothing happened, until something happened, which happened to be peoples' deaths and a crisis of democracy. For comparison: reddit got into hot water at some point, and managed to clean up their act. The porn websites are in a similar process. It's all just actions-have-consequences, really. And the public's ire is actually the more nuanced, soft approach to do it, compared to the blunt tool of criminal law.
- beowulfey 6y ago
  Nothing is stopping anyone from starting their own webhost. Free market economy etc.
6y ago

Causality1 6y ago

We need an internet sidewalk. An internet post office. An internet common carrier. I'm afraid it isn't going to swing that way. We're closer to allowing utility companies to cut people off arbitrarily than we are to forcing internet companies to keep serving users who hurt their business.

yetihehe 6y ago
And what do you do when someone dumps a truck of garbage on that sidewalk? We already have that sidewalk. Everyone connected to internet has a small sidewalk. Not everyone wants to tread in all neighbourhoods, and some streets are not wide enough to allow half of the world walking them, but they have that sidewalk.
- Causality1 6y ago
  They're prosecuted by the law, just like real illegal dumpers. That's my position, that there should be a public internet content distribution platform that operates at-cost services for users and whose only rules are the laws of the United States. An internet utility.
  - yetihehe 6y ago
    > are the laws of the United States You have those already, facebook operates according to US laws. If not, it will be prosecuted. Of course, maybe government mandated ones will be better? Like public television in my country, where it is just a propaganda machine for currently ruling party? You think it will not be "moderated" by ruling party in US when operated as a public government owned utility?
    - Causality1 6y ago
      Facebook has many more rules about what content can and cannot be posted than the law requires. A public utility wouldn't even need a Terms of Service page.

vmception 6y ago

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are with the modern equivalent. Right, there will likely be a licensing regime that comes out of this which does tie user-generated content platforms to the state, reducing their ability to make arbitrary decisions.

appleflaxen 6y ago

> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over there was a monopoly on phone service in the 70s that exceeds the monopoly on cloud hosting today. and it wasn't a cabal; it was a single company. > Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over > something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. And yet here we are > with the modern equivalent. they aren't shutting off the phone service. they still have internet, and can publish anthing they want anywhere else. what they shut off is their television show / public feed of people calling for violence. it's completely justified.

maccard 6y ago
> what they shut off is their television show / public feed of people calling for violence. it's completely justified. Right, this is more akin to Fox/CNN/MSNBC deciding they're not going to allow you a platform.
flippinburgers 6y ago
Yes and what again happened to that phone company?
kiwidrew 6y ago
> there was a monopoly on phone service in the 70s that exceeds the monopoly on cloud hosting today Yes, and as part of that _regulated_ monopoly, they were required to provide "universal" service: it didn't matter how remote the customer was or how inconvenient it would be to provide them with service, telephone service had to be provided to anyone who was willing to pay the (regulated) monthly fee.

ABeeSea 6y ago

Did you read the article or the lawsuit? They make zero free speech claims in the lawsuit. They are making a Sherman anti-trust argument that Twitter and Amazon are colluding because Twitter is scared of competition from Parler. This lawsuit won’t go anywhere.

africanboy 6y ago

> Never before in history has a small cabal of companies welded such power over what we can say Not really. Like many others I was born without Internet and never before in history so many people said so many things, multiple times a day, from anywhere they are, to a potentially global audience, paying nothing

inglor_cz 6y ago
That is the other side of the same coin. If you are a free user, you are treated as a product.
- africanboy 6y ago
  Premise: I agree that letting public speak happen on private channels handled by some of the largest global corporations in history is dangerous, but in this case AWS is not a free service, it's paid and not really cheap.
nucleardog 6y ago
Yeah this whole sentiment kinda strikes me as nonsense. Never before in history has each individual had the ability to broadcast their thoughts so widely so easily. Twitter/Facebook/AWS/etc can all refuse to do business with you. You can still throw an old computer in your basement and plug it into the internet and make your thoughts accessible to the entire world. Domain name registrar or TLD banned you too? Great, pick another registrar. Pick another TLD. Pick another country with different laws. You can do it all from the country you currently inhabit and the comfort of your office chair. You can make your site accessible via IP address or virtually unblockable via Tor. Even if you're violating the laws and norms of the country you inhabit, you can host this in a way that's virtually untraceable back to you with little effort. How exactly did one accomplish that in 1930? 1830? 1730? 1630? What ability did a peasant in 830AD have to broadcast their thoughts across the entire world that we lack today?

adrr 6y ago

If you made death threats from your telephone to the point your neighbors threatened to discontinue their phone service because of the unwanted negative attention. The phone service would cut you off. No company should be forced to lose money. That’s what we are asking Amazon to do. They were going to lose customers if they kept hosting Parler.

perryizgr8 6y ago
I don't think that's how your situation would play out. The neighbors would complain, and police would get involved. Then you would get prosecuted for making violent threats.
- adrr 6y ago
  That’s what you think would happen. Lin wood had a call to execute pence up for over a week. Not till apple threatened to remove Parler from the store was it deleted. Policing is out, we talking about the same people who failed to activate the national guard allowing the siege of our capital.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    > Lin wood had a call to execute pence up for over a week. Not till apple threatened to remove Parler from the store was it deleted. I don't think it should have been deleted at all. Let concerned citizens sue Lin wood (whoever that is) and present his threat as evidence. Why should we expect people's words to be deleted from a public platform? If nobody sued him, or went to the police, maybe it wasn't a real threat. Or maybe it wasn't illegal. Who are we to judge? Let the "neighbors" take it to the police and to the courts. I really wish today's social platforms functioned like Slashdot. Their philosophy was to never delete anything posted by users, unless compelled by a court of law. That's the right thing to do.
  - crististm 6y ago
    What you are saying is equivalent to "the state is incapable of defending our values so we make ourselves the police". What do you think that implies?

hrktb 6y ago

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. Or imagine not being able to use the banking system because banks don't like you're dealing with legal weed ? Or getting cut from payment processors as a sex worker ? Unthinkable, right.

pjc50 6y ago
Came here to post this. None of the arbitrary denial of service is new, it was just deployed against people without power. The right were completely fine with deplatforming sex workers through SESTA/FOSTA. I'm happy to see all the egregious machinery of things like the Patriot Act (unaccountable air travel blacklists!) being turned on the right for a change instead of just the left - because this time it's the right that's the terrorist threat. I think it was only last week that we had somebody banned from github for simply logging in from Iran.
throwaway69123 6y ago
This is also wrong

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Rooki 6y ago

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? This isn't why they're being dropped though is it? I was under the impression they were being denied service because further terrorist attacks were being openly planned on their platform with no attempts at moderation happening.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it Maybe the next clause in this highschool-level aphorism should be "although I will not compel anybody to help you say it".

pmontra 6y ago

Maybe when a service grows past some level it should become a kind of public space. The private company that created it and operates it loses the privilege of making rules about who can use it and how. That becomes a matter for courts. The company should be happy with the zillions of money it makes.

beowulfey 6y ago

You’re thinking these big social media companies are like the telephone, but I would say they are more like newspapers. No one has been banned from using messenger apps, afaik, which I would say fits your metaphor better. And you can definitely find yourself banned from the editorial pages of every newspaper if you say enough evil things. I think your first statement is hyperbole. There are countless times when the few controlled the dissemination of information to the masses. What about when only monks and scribes knew how to write? What about when the printing press had just been invented? What about in the early 20th century before television even existed? If anything, people have been able to throw their opinions around more today than ever before in human history.

babesh 6y ago
That was not a good time when William Randolph Hearst could help start wars. But the same thing happened in the 90s when the big networks helped start the second Gulf War with fake news about weapons of mass destruction. I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power.
- pjc50 6y ago
  2000s for the second gulf war. I don't think that was really the newspapers on their own, they were being fed that by US intelligence services. Since there was basically zero ability to check the facts on the ground, they were left relaying lies - that had bipartisan popularity. > I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power. So am I. But the antidote to fake news from those in power is not even more fake news from random cultists and foreign intelligence services.

pron 6y ago

I have no love for big corporations, and I'm happy to finally see growing opposition to their capitalist power, but other kinds of "taboo" content, like porn, face the same hurdles and do fine. Taboo publishing has rarely been mainstream, and always held at arm's length from "civilised" business." Let's not pretend that Parler is shunned because of its users opinions on government spending; it's shunned because its violent content is so distasteful to most people that no one wants to touch it with a six foot flagpole.

mattjoyce 6y ago

Yes, I can imagine a telephone company terminating a service, if you don't adhere to the term. In fact they are very very strict. Also, email is still available, don't pretend these services are all there is, it just isn't so.

dmode 6y ago

Telephone companies ban spam callers all the time

threatofrain 6y ago

It’s notable that per the CEO of Parker, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail and texting services have cancelled on them. At the heart of this power is the freedom of association.

deleted 6y ago

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raesene9 6y ago

I'm not sure I'd go with the "never before" piece. Lots of people have been banned off lots of plaforms. Take payment companies for example. If Visa and Mastercard decline to do business with you (as they did with Pornhub) you're basically stuffed. Lots of individual sex workers have also had this experience. You can't make money if the payment companies won't work with you. Also if you look back at the history of censorship you'll find loads of examples where people were effectively de-platformed. One I was reading about recently. In 1970's UK a reggae artist called Judge Dredd held the record for most songs banned by the BBC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dread). In those days, that's effectively de-platforming that artist and there for the great crime of ... double entendre.

rocketpastsix 6y ago

>‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ If you want to call a congress person an asshole, tell me that America isn't the greatest country in the world, say that the President is a treasonous tool then yes I will absolutely defend your right to say that, and more. The minute it turns to violence, insurrection and death I will make sure the authorities know exactly where to find you. And if these actions violate a Terms of Service that you agreed to, you reap what you sow. You being the generalized you. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Parler knew exactly what they were doing and who they were courting. As the saying goes, "well, well, well. if it isn't the consequences of my own actions".

DanBC 6y ago

> Could you imagine the telephone company shutting off someone's phone service over something they said or who they associated with? Unthinkable. Actually, yes, in most parts of the world the telephone company was under no obligation to provide service to anyone who wanted it and there were laws about what you could say or do over the telephone.