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> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think

> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. I think you should be free to say what you want and to think what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in that space. Here are three examples: (1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out? (2) You start a social media company and somehow a large contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it on the site unless it is breaking a law? (3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you want to be able to remove that? Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line? If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return? Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their regulation.

ng12 6y ago
Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability sway elections in democratic countries and help topple authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between #2 and #3.
chmod600 6y ago
It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the electric company? Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease to me.
  - ArtDev 6y ago
    I think this is a good analogy of where AWS sits here.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    A lease is just a contract. It can specify conditions for termination. Without reading the contract, it's impossible to know if it is being breached or not.
  - flerchin 6y ago
    It's a good analogy, and yes, criminal activity often breaks your lease agreement.
  - coryfklein 6y ago
    FTA > of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler
    - mcguire 6y ago
      As of this Thursday, 82 people have been arrested, according to one news report.
    - julienfr112 6y ago
      They may mostly use Android Phone. Should we ban them for Shops ?
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    Yes, most likely. Eviction is a legal process, involving the courts. Did that happen with Parler?
- eightysixfour 6y ago
  > If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside. No, and I didn't suggest that. > electric company Regulated. The electric company is a regulated monopoly. Hosting companies aren't. If an ISP had banned traffic from Parler, that would be an issue, it is a regulated monopoly. If Amazon shuts them down, there's no issue, it is an unregulated service provider.
- happyrock 6y ago
  Thought exercise: what if say, Twitter, wanted to put one of its competitors out of business, and decided to engage in mass creation of accounts/content on that competing platform with the intention of violating their ToS and getting the platform kicked off of their hosting provider. Is this a viable business strategy now? Heck, is this even illegal?
- wedn3sday 6y ago
  Im not sure this is a good metaphor. None of Apple, Amazon, or Google (no matter how hard they try) are social media companies. None of them are in direct competition with Parler, and shutting it down wont increase their market share one iota. None of the social media companies are banning people because of things they said on Parler, and I doubt that the pressure applied to Apple/Amazon/Google came from outside the companies, this is most likely the result of engineers working on the AWS team pressuring their bosses, and it snowballing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cmiles74 6y ago
  When Parler became a liability for any company associated with it, to their shock, it turned out no company wanted to be associated with it. In a world where people "vote with their wallets" companies like Amazon, Google and Apple would prefer to avoid giving people a reason to do just that. I don't understand the shock and surprise. No US company is going to choose anything over their own bottom line. Certainly not for a site as small and niche and literally riddled with hate speech as Parler. Parler and it's customers can say whatever they want to whoever they want. Can they force Amazon to take their money? Absolutely not. Should they be able to? No: forcing Amazon to host Parler would be a violation of Amazon's own right to free speech.[0] From Parler's point-of-view it would be unfortunate if they tied themselves to AWS specific infrastructure. There's absolutely no way that they now have some kind of "right" to be hosted by Amazon. Also, it's just poor planning on their part. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
the_other 6y ago
Facebook isn’t a utility, it’s an ad platform.
jpeterson 6y ago
Yes. Implicit in these "free speech" arguments is the idea that the government should be able to force private companies to publish user content that violates their policies. This is the sort of thing that the 1st Amendment is actually supposed to protect us from.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  In all the above cases (person spouting epithets at your bar, social media users posting hate on your website) these are people with whom you have no contract. They are there at your permission, as long as they behave according to your standards. When you rent space to someone, and they start using it in a way you don't like, maybe even specificially violating their lease, you can throw them out, but it becomes a legal process called eviction. You can't just put their stuff on the sidewalk and change the locks without going through that process. This is how the game is played when you get into that business. Maybe that is the part that's missing with the AWS/Parler situation. AWS doesn't want them, but they leased space and services to them and there is a contract. Breach of contract is not something that either party to the contract can determine, because they both have conflicts of interest. If we had a judge review the contract, and approve the eviction, at least there would be a lot less basis to claim that are acting capriciously or out of bias.
  - eightysixfour 6y ago
    Amazon is not a utility, they are a private company which leased Parler "space" in an unregulated industry. The contract that Parler agreed to has an Acceptable Use Policy which is very broad. If Parler believes AWS breached their contract, they can sue just like in anyone else in a contract disagreement. Maybe in the long-term we'll look at hosting more like real-estate and it will have more laws and regulations about what the providers can and cannot do, but I doubt it and I'm willing to bet the trade offs that come with that are truly terrible. Imagine how many things wouldn't get off the ground if hosting contracting was even 1/3 of the real estate process. More importantly, hosting isn't a monopoly. There's no government provided moat that justifies that level of regulation. The way I see it there are only two things that are in utilities in the internet space, ISPs (both consumer facing and interconnects) and DNS, and DNS is arguable.
Gibbon1 6y ago
(0) A large contingent of your user base is using your service to conspire to overthrow the government.

ng12 6y ago

Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability sway elections in democratic countries and help topple authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between #2 and #3.

chmod600 6y ago

It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the electric company? Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.

entropicdrifter 6y ago
If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease to me.
- ArtDev 6y ago
  I think this is a good analogy of where AWS sits here.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  A lease is just a contract. It can specify conditions for termination. Without reading the contract, it's impossible to know if it is being breached or not.
- flerchin 6y ago
  It's a good analogy, and yes, criminal activity often breaks your lease agreement.
- coryfklein 6y ago
  FTA > of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler
  - mcguire 6y ago
    As of this Thursday, 82 people have been arrested, according to one news report.
  - julienfr112 6y ago
    They may mostly use Android Phone. Should we ban them for Shops ?
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Yes, most likely. Eviction is a legal process, involving the courts. Did that happen with Parler?
eightysixfour 6y ago
> If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside. No, and I didn't suggest that. > electric company Regulated. The electric company is a regulated monopoly. Hosting companies aren't. If an ISP had banned traffic from Parler, that would be an issue, it is a regulated monopoly. If Amazon shuts them down, there's no issue, it is an unregulated service provider.
happyrock 6y ago
Thought exercise: what if say, Twitter, wanted to put one of its competitors out of business, and decided to engage in mass creation of accounts/content on that competing platform with the intention of violating their ToS and getting the platform kicked off of their hosting provider. Is this a viable business strategy now? Heck, is this even illegal?
wedn3sday 6y ago
Im not sure this is a good metaphor. None of Apple, Amazon, or Google (no matter how hard they try) are social media companies. None of them are in direct competition with Parler, and shutting it down wont increase their market share one iota. None of the social media companies are banning people because of things they said on Parler, and I doubt that the pressure applied to Apple/Amazon/Google came from outside the companies, this is most likely the result of engineers working on the AWS team pressuring their bosses, and it snowballing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cmiles74 6y ago
When Parler became a liability for any company associated with it, to their shock, it turned out no company wanted to be associated with it. In a world where people "vote with their wallets" companies like Amazon, Google and Apple would prefer to avoid giving people a reason to do just that. I don't understand the shock and surprise. No US company is going to choose anything over their own bottom line. Certainly not for a site as small and niche and literally riddled with hate speech as Parler. Parler and it's customers can say whatever they want to whoever they want. Can they force Amazon to take their money? Absolutely not. Should they be able to? No: forcing Amazon to host Parler would be a violation of Amazon's own right to free speech.[0] From Parler's point-of-view it would be unfortunate if they tied themselves to AWS specific infrastructure. There's absolutely no way that they now have some kind of "right" to be hosted by Amazon. Also, it's just poor planning on their part. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

the_other 6y ago

Facebook isn’t a utility, it’s an ad platform.

jpeterson 6y ago

Yes. Implicit in these "free speech" arguments is the idea that the government should be able to force private companies to publish user content that violates their policies. This is the sort of thing that the 1st Amendment is actually supposed to protect us from.

throwawayboise 6y ago
In all the above cases (person spouting epithets at your bar, social media users posting hate on your website) these are people with whom you have no contract. They are there at your permission, as long as they behave according to your standards. When you rent space to someone, and they start using it in a way you don't like, maybe even specificially violating their lease, you can throw them out, but it becomes a legal process called eviction. You can't just put their stuff on the sidewalk and change the locks without going through that process. This is how the game is played when you get into that business. Maybe that is the part that's missing with the AWS/Parler situation. AWS doesn't want them, but they leased space and services to them and there is a contract. Breach of contract is not something that either party to the contract can determine, because they both have conflicts of interest. If we had a judge review the contract, and approve the eviction, at least there would be a lot less basis to claim that are acting capriciously or out of bias.
- eightysixfour 6y ago
  Amazon is not a utility, they are a private company which leased Parler "space" in an unregulated industry. The contract that Parler agreed to has an Acceptable Use Policy which is very broad. If Parler believes AWS breached their contract, they can sue just like in anyone else in a contract disagreement. Maybe in the long-term we'll look at hosting more like real-estate and it will have more laws and regulations about what the providers can and cannot do, but I doubt it and I'm willing to bet the trade offs that come with that are truly terrible. Imagine how many things wouldn't get off the ground if hosting contracting was even 1/3 of the real estate process. More importantly, hosting isn't a monopoly. There's no government provided moat that justifies that level of regulation. The way I see it there are only two things that are in utilities in the internet space, ISPs (both consumer facing and interconnects) and DNS, and DNS is arguable.

Gibbon1 6y ago

(0) A large contingent of your user base is using your service to conspire to overthrow the government.