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I find this particularly disturbing. Not because I think it's anything on the part of Salesforce, but that all these different corporations believe that this is

I find this particularly disturbing. Not because I think it's anything on the part of Salesforce, but that all these different corporations believe that this is something they HAVE to do. Government's don't just rule by hard power; they also rule by soft power. Soft power is social power. And the fact that companies believe that there will be negative consequences if they do not disavow the party that is now out of power, and all those that supported that party is a very dangerous situation. I think it's bad for business if that level of coercive power, hard or soft, is hanging over companies. I think it's especially bad for startups. Parler was a startup that was rapidly growing, a real startup with an actual ceo and actual investors, and AWS yanked the rug out from under them, and I doubt they'll be the last. I wonder how many promising companies that would otherwise be able to exist because we cared about their products and not their politics are likely to stop before they start, or else die early due to this environment.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
snarf21 6y ago
Governments run on $$$$. Look at the amount that goes into lobbying and PACs. Look at Citizens United. Social power is what can cut the money. Also, maybe these companies don't want a country run by literal Nazis.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  What precisely was Citizens United trying to do? Can you tell me that before we continue?
  - snarf21 6y ago
    It was to let companies pretend that they are people to bypass campaign contribution limits. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
    - Gollapalli 6y ago
      From Wikipedia: The case arose after Citizens United, a conservative non-profit organization, sought to air and advertise a film critical of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. They wanted to broadcast a film. Not an advertisement. Not a campaign ad. A film. This is what gets lost in most common discourse about the Citizens United case. Had the court ruled otherwise in the Citizens United case, it would have given the Federal Government precedent to ban films for political reasons. The other reply by Dharmab is also very useful. The effects of ruling another way on the Citizens United would have impacted not only the medium of film, but also the publication of books, and all other media. Imagine not being able to publish a book critical of a candidate before an election. Yet that would have been the result of ruling otherwise. It's probably worth actually watching the oral arguments of the case: https://www.c-span.org/video/?288797-1/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?288797-1/citizens-united-v-fed...
  - dharmab 6y ago
    The view of "Corporations acting like people" is an oversimplification of CU. Radiolab's More Perfect podcast did a very detailed episode. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/episodes/citizens-united https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/epi... Did you know that the FEC argued in the CU case before the Supreme Court that they had the right to prevent the distribution of books containing certain kinds of political speech? The audio of that is in the episode and it is a wild ride.
criddell 6y ago
> Government's don't just rule by hard power; they also rule by soft power. I guess it depends on if you see this as being driven from the top down or bottom up. Personally, I think it's bottom up but mostly I think its from within companies like Salesforce and Amazon. Also, do you really think it was Parler's politics that was the problem? I think you know that's not the case.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  >top down or bottom up I tend to think of it as more along the lines of feedback loops. It's like supply and demand. It doesn't really matter which comes first, so long as both exist commensurate to one another.
- salawat 6y ago
  The speed of this seems highly top-down, and given that almost all of these actors are the 500 pound gorillas of their respective verticals, it means the overall effective policymaking slice of the population is astonishingly small. You don't need to take my word for it. You just need to look around at how the mindset of people in the upper echelons. Everyone knows and is interconnected with each other, and sees everyone else as holding a gun to their heads, and is dependent on things staying stable and not going violent. Unfortunately, the way everything was handled (without transparency, waving on technicalities) all but ensures ill sentiment. I din't support the Ingrate in Chief. But there is a way you Irish Bar Toss someone out of office without cheesing off half the constituency, and we didn't do it. So... This is what happens.
  - criddell 6y ago
    > The speed of this seems highly top-down That could be taken two ways. 1. This happened quickly and so it seems like the government was involved. 2. It took forever for tech companies to finally act and that slow moving incompetence is a sign of government involvement. I'm guessing you see it as #1 but a lot of us think this is a long time coming. I don't think these companies and the people working there want the next generation talking about them the same way we talk about IBM's shameful work with the Nazi's 80 years ago. (Did I just Godwin myself?)
watwut 6y ago
> Parler was a startup that was rapidly growing, a real startup with an actual ceo and actual investors, and AWS yanked the rug out from under them, and I doubt they'll be the last. Reality check: Parler contained realistic threats and refused to moderate or remove those threads. First, that breaks TOS. Second, given that AWS new provably knows about those, once someone acted on those threats, they could be liable. You are acting as if Parler was removed from those services by way of irrational knee jerk.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  >Parler contained realistic threats and refused to moderate or remove those threads. Parler has filed a lawsuit alleging precisely the opposite, and alleging further that, due to Amazon's contract with Twitter, Amazon's actions were a matter, not of TOS, but of anti-competitive action, especially given that "Hang Mike Pence" was trending on Twitter at the same time that Parler was getting kicked off of AWS. Anyway, I don't know the specifics of how Parler was moderated, so I won't comment further on the matter. What I do see is a company whose mission was not explicitly political, but whose clientele was largely composed of the faction who lost the most recent election losing critical infrastructure, to the point that their service is effectively dead, even as myriad other companies move to denounce the faction who lost the most recent election. That is disturbing.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Twitter has long standing habit to remove threads, users and hashtags sending threats. And not just right wing ones, while there were left protests during summer, they were constantly removing left leaning accounts calling for violence. It is simply not true that Twitter would generally refused to remove calls for violence or harassments - at least among its English speaking users.
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      "In fact, Twitter’s abuse policy is so flaky that the platform couldn’t seem to decide if my tweets broke the rules or not. A few weeks ago, someone filed a report about the very tweet my account was locked over and tweeted out screenshots showing the “kill all white people” tweet wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s rules." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/how-trolls-locked-my-twitter-account-for-10-days-and-welp https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/how-tro... https://twitter.com/gerrikillallmen https://twitter.com/gerrikillallmen https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fgerrikillallmen%2Fstatus%2F1346957622956548098&widget=Tweet https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com... What does "Twitter do your thing" mean is this context? sounds like a call to dox and harass to me.... https://newspunch.com/buzzfeed-joe-bernstein-inciting-murder-white-men/ https://newspunch.com/buzzfeed-joe-bernstein-inciting-murder... Now the tweet is deleted but he is not banned.
gher-shyu3i 6y ago
> I find this particularly disturbing. Not because I think it's anything on the part of Salesforce, but that all these different corporations believe that this is something they HAVE to do It's virtue signaling, plain and simple. It's also free marketing for companies. Are we going to see random companies (e.g. soft drink companies) now proactively declare that they're going to refuse to cater to RNC events? I wouldn't be surprised.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

snarf21 6y ago

Governments run on $$$$. Look at the amount that goes into lobbying and PACs. Look at Citizens United. Social power is what can cut the money. Also, maybe these companies don't want a country run by literal Nazis.

Gollapalli 6y ago
What precisely was Citizens United trying to do? Can you tell me that before we continue?
- snarf21 6y ago
  It was to let companies pretend that they are people to bypass campaign contribution limits. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
  - Gollapalli 6y ago
    From Wikipedia: The case arose after Citizens United, a conservative non-profit organization, sought to air and advertise a film critical of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. They wanted to broadcast a film. Not an advertisement. Not a campaign ad. A film. This is what gets lost in most common discourse about the Citizens United case. Had the court ruled otherwise in the Citizens United case, it would have given the Federal Government precedent to ban films for political reasons. The other reply by Dharmab is also very useful. The effects of ruling another way on the Citizens United would have impacted not only the medium of film, but also the publication of books, and all other media. Imagine not being able to publish a book critical of a candidate before an election. Yet that would have been the result of ruling otherwise. It's probably worth actually watching the oral arguments of the case: https://www.c-span.org/video/?288797-1/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?288797-1/citizens-united-v-fed...
- dharmab 6y ago
  The view of "Corporations acting like people" is an oversimplification of CU. Radiolab's More Perfect podcast did a very detailed episode. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/episodes/citizens-united https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/epi... Did you know that the FEC argued in the CU case before the Supreme Court that they had the right to prevent the distribution of books containing certain kinds of political speech? The audio of that is in the episode and it is a wild ride.

criddell 6y ago

> Government's don't just rule by hard power; they also rule by soft power. I guess it depends on if you see this as being driven from the top down or bottom up. Personally, I think it's bottom up but mostly I think its from within companies like Salesforce and Amazon. Also, do you really think it was Parler's politics that was the problem? I think you know that's not the case.

Gollapalli 6y ago
>top down or bottom up I tend to think of it as more along the lines of feedback loops. It's like supply and demand. It doesn't really matter which comes first, so long as both exist commensurate to one another.
salawat 6y ago
The speed of this seems highly top-down, and given that almost all of these actors are the 500 pound gorillas of their respective verticals, it means the overall effective policymaking slice of the population is astonishingly small. You don't need to take my word for it. You just need to look around at how the mindset of people in the upper echelons. Everyone knows and is interconnected with each other, and sees everyone else as holding a gun to their heads, and is dependent on things staying stable and not going violent. Unfortunately, the way everything was handled (without transparency, waving on technicalities) all but ensures ill sentiment. I din't support the Ingrate in Chief. But there is a way you Irish Bar Toss someone out of office without cheesing off half the constituency, and we didn't do it. So... This is what happens.
- criddell 6y ago
  > The speed of this seems highly top-down That could be taken two ways. 1. This happened quickly and so it seems like the government was involved. 2. It took forever for tech companies to finally act and that slow moving incompetence is a sign of government involvement. I'm guessing you see it as #1 but a lot of us think this is a long time coming. I don't think these companies and the people working there want the next generation talking about them the same way we talk about IBM's shameful work with the Nazi's 80 years ago. (Did I just Godwin myself?)

watwut 6y ago

> Parler was a startup that was rapidly growing, a real startup with an actual ceo and actual investors, and AWS yanked the rug out from under them, and I doubt they'll be the last. Reality check: Parler contained realistic threats and refused to moderate or remove those threads. First, that breaks TOS. Second, given that AWS new provably knows about those, once someone acted on those threats, they could be liable. You are acting as if Parler was removed from those services by way of irrational knee jerk.

Gollapalli 6y ago
>Parler contained realistic threats and refused to moderate or remove those threads. Parler has filed a lawsuit alleging precisely the opposite, and alleging further that, due to Amazon's contract with Twitter, Amazon's actions were a matter, not of TOS, but of anti-competitive action, especially given that "Hang Mike Pence" was trending on Twitter at the same time that Parler was getting kicked off of AWS. Anyway, I don't know the specifics of how Parler was moderated, so I won't comment further on the matter. What I do see is a company whose mission was not explicitly political, but whose clientele was largely composed of the faction who lost the most recent election losing critical infrastructure, to the point that their service is effectively dead, even as myriad other companies move to denounce the faction who lost the most recent election. That is disturbing.
- watwut 6y ago
  Twitter has long standing habit to remove threads, users and hashtags sending threats. And not just right wing ones, while there were left protests during summer, they were constantly removing left leaning accounts calling for violence. It is simply not true that Twitter would generally refused to remove calls for violence or harassments - at least among its English speaking users.
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    "In fact, Twitter’s abuse policy is so flaky that the platform couldn’t seem to decide if my tweets broke the rules or not. A few weeks ago, someone filed a report about the very tweet my account was locked over and tweeted out screenshots showing the “kill all white people” tweet wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s rules." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/how-trolls-locked-my-twitter-account-for-10-days-and-welp https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/how-tro... https://twitter.com/gerrikillallmen https://twitter.com/gerrikillallmen https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fgerrikillallmen%2Fstatus%2F1346957622956548098&widget=Tweet https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com... What does "Twitter do your thing" mean is this context? sounds like a call to dox and harass to me.... https://newspunch.com/buzzfeed-joe-bernstein-inciting-murder-white-men/ https://newspunch.com/buzzfeed-joe-bernstein-inciting-murder... Now the tweet is deleted but he is not banned.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago

> I find this particularly disturbing. Not because I think it's anything on the part of Salesforce, but that all these different corporations believe that this is something they HAVE to do It's virtue signaling, plain and simple. It's also free marketing for companies. Are we going to see random companies (e.g. soft drink companies) now proactively declare that they're going to refuse to cater to RNC events? I wouldn't be surprised.