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>I think we agree that no private platform should be forced to host a tenant that they object to. Yet a landlord isn't allowed to arbitrarily throw you out of y

• Reedx 6y ago
  The whole thing is such a terrible, short-sighted justification. The logic being used is setting a precedent to ban or backdoor any encrypted non-moderated form of communication. e.g., Signal and Telegram.
  • bananabreakfast 6y ago
    That's an absurd jump to take. The subject is about a platform that is specifically moderated. This has nothing to do with non-moderated communication
    • bpodgursky 6y ago
      So... Parler is worse because there is _minimal_ moderation, but _no_ moderation is totally fine? That doesn't really seem consistent with any set of guiding principles.
      • scoopertrooper 6y ago
        I don’t use either service, but the critical difference in my mind is that telegram is point-to-point or point-to-small-number-of-points medium whereas Parler aspired to be a means of mass-communication. In my mind, one holds a different level of accountability when sharing private thoughts with friends as opposed to when wielding an insurrectionist bullhorn. No doubt radical groups are sustained by access to private encrypted messaging, but they cannot grow into the sort of movement that fuelled the attempted coup that took place on 6January without wielding the reigns of mass propaganda. I am all for freedom of speech, but liberty is not a death pact. We can’t sit idle while this group, that very nearly interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, openly recruits and plans their next attack.
        • bpodgursky 6y ago
          I think you have it exactly backwards. The actual violent intruders last week absolutely coordinated plans around bombs / guns / etc via DMs and small private groups. The mass gathering was propagated via Twitter-style broadcasts sure, but not the actual violent plots. Those will effortlessly move onto Signal.
          • scoopertrooper 6y ago
            Many were almost certainly radicalised through social and alt-right mass media though. You can’t blame the opening at the end of the pipeline for the water coming out. Furthermore, I was checking in on right wing sites like theDonald.win in the lead up to 6 jan. The loudest voices all argued that the Democratic Party had systemically rigged the election, constitutional remedies had failed them, so the only response available was to fertilise the tree of liberty. I didn’t sneak into a private telegram group or discord server. This is what these people were saying openly on popular websites that anybody could wander into without so much as making an account. The same was true of charlottesville, sure parts were undoubtedly organised secretly, but facists like Baked Alaska were live streaming the whole thing - complete with antisemitic commentary. This nonsense has to end.
• bilbo0s 6y ago
  I don't think OP is asking for protections that renters would not have from landlords. For instance, we all know that illegal activity gets you kicked out immediately. You can't be running a brothel or crack house on the one hand, and demand 90 days notice on the other. At least not in my state you can't. No court judgement is required either, the cops show up and arrest you, you're gone. (In fact, in my state, if a landlord does not boot you in a swift enough fashion, the municipality can confiscate his/her property.) So that's fine. The rules should be approximately the same as the rental protection laws in the state hosting the data center. If you're running a service that is objectionable, but no cops or feds are knocking on the landlord's door, then there should be notice given that your provider wants to boot you. Again, if the owner has a fed asking him questions about you and your service, that owner should be free to act much faster. No one questions that.
  • cm2187 6y ago
    That’s for a criminal activity. Not for doing something your landlord merely finds distasteful.
    • fragmede 6y ago
      Assaulting and killing a police officer is a crime in most, if not all jurisdictions, though I'm not sure if that lets your landlord evict you if it happened in the next town or county or state over.
      • humanrebar 6y ago
        Sure, but Parler was more like someone subletting than someone actually committing a crime.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
    • bilbo0s 6y ago
      Right. I would assume there is not a fed at your landlord's door because you skinny dip in your pool. There is probably something illegal they suspect of happening at that point. In this particular instance though, with the Capitol falling, it doesn't help. Because I have to imagine that when the Capitol fell, there were a lot of feds knocking on Amazon's door. But, yes, as long as you're not doing anything that feds are at the door flashing badges about, you should be golden. If you are doing something feds are asking your landlord about, worrying about your landlord is a poor use of your time. You have bigger problems. (In fact, it's probable that your landlord also has bigger problems at that point. Feds generally don't make courtesy calls.)
• himinlomax 6y ago
  > If you are destroying the property Greenwald specifically claims that this is a lie.
  • haimez 6y ago
    Well, we should all definitely take his opinion on the matter, because he’s Gregg. Do YOU have an opinion?
  • strangattractor 6y ago
    Legally they have the right to refuse service but ethically they owe the public. However "Free Speech" does not entitle people to Freely Lie. As we have seen the wrong words from the right person can cause the loss of life. The police officer did not deserve to die to further the political ambitions of a few morally/ethically bankrupt individuals. Parler can recreate itself on another platform if they wish. Gab is still up. It is just as disgusting. The Constitution only guarantees that Congress shall pass no laws prohibiting free speech. The last time I checked Amazon or Twitter cannot pass legislation. Free speech is prevented by the use of force. We held an election. The results where not what some people liked. They tried to cancel the people's voice. That is the real speech suppression here.
    • humanrebar 6y ago
      It was people with guns and lead pipes, not lies, that hurt and killed people. The principle of free speech is the idea that open discussion and debate is sufficient to resolve conflicts of ideas. Using force to end discussion is not free expression. Of course there are limitations when fraud, slander, threats, and the like. But those should be considered in trials by peers or judges as decided in a fair court with due process. Again, words, ideas, and fair institutions are the rule, not decisions by the involved parties who happen to have enough power to get their way. At least that's the principle.
      • rorykoehler 6y ago
        Incitement is violence.
• ffggvv 6y ago
  either way we need a law so this can be adjudicated and argued, and a legal process. not just the whims of the biggest corporation and oligarch in the world.
  • greedo 6y ago
    We do have laws. Parler has taken AWS to court. We'll see how good the contract AWS had with Parler is.
    • shard972 6y ago
      What happened to innocent till proven guilty?
    • ffggvv 6y ago
      that’s not how eviction works though which was the context. just like you need to show proof before evicting someone and give them time
      • mr_toad 6y ago
        AWS is a place of business not a home. You can be immediately kicked out of a place of business for bad behaviour.
        • BlueTemplar 6y ago
          The OP makes the opposite case. We are discussing under that assumption.
    • tartoran 6y ago
      shard972: innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply in emergencies, e.g. insurgencies, coups, terrorist attacks, ... But Im sure that if Parler is proven innocent they’ll have recourse
      • mycall 6y ago
• mshanowitz 6y ago
  Your equivalency is false. Parler did not make any change of behavior. Amazon knew very well who they were and what they did when they were making 100s of k a month hosting them. Furthermore it is simply not true that Parler refused to work with Amazon. Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement. What actually happened was, when the mob decided that Parler must go, Amazon gave them little no notice or recourse before shutting them down.
  • chris_wot 6y ago
    That's not correct. Amazon advised them that they were encouraging violence, and had already reached out to them about this issue. They had responded that they would use volunteers to moderate their content, but Amazon (IMO quite reasonably!) saw that they had not moved fast enough, and were skeptical that it would work anyway. Then the violence erupted in the Capitol, and Amazon's hand was forced. They had been violating Amazon's terms of service, and they did not do enough to resolve the issue, in a timely enough manner. Therefore they no longer got to use the service.
    • proc0 6y ago
      So it was basically, "hey can you please change this... OOPS too slow LOL. Nope, not our fault, you didn't do shit, canceled!" C'mon! IT playing dumb is so stupid, they knew it, they knew what company they were going to host. Parler's whole point was to host conservative voices, yet the attitude is to pretend it's a surprise, shrug and then have a stupid reason like they didn't act fast enough. It's not a genuine response, it's an obvious attack and an insult to anyone paying attention.
      • chris_wot 6y ago
        Actually, it appears they had given them plenty of time to implement proper moderation practices to prevent incitement of violence. Their response was inadequate. They were removed from Amazon. You seem to imply they only got 24 hours to resolve the issues on their service. That's not accurate.
• dimmke 6y ago
  >If you are destroying the property you live in or using it to commit or facilitate illegal acts Ironically, this also feels like a false equivalency to me. I don't believe Parler was putting Amazon/AWS at risk in terms of legal liability (I'm pretty sure in the US you can only sue a hosting provider for material they host if it is copyrighted material and they don't take it down when they receive notices. A Google search didn't turn up anything else.) They also weren't at risk of bringing AWS down. What really happened, and should be plain to anybody is that something really awful happened last week that shook the country to its core. Parler played a role in that happening, and tech companies didn't want anything to do with them because of that. Both for reputation reasons and I'm sure personal feelings of large swathes of their employees (including leadership.) I don't actually think they were wrong for what they did. I think private companies should have the right to make such a decision. The problem for me is that these companies were in a position to wipe something out like this in the first place. This isn't what the web was supposed to be. First it was the switch by most people to using a phone that is locked down as their primary computing device. Now even websites are subject to unregulated private company control. After all - even if you set up your server somewhere, what's to stop CloudFlare or Google or anybody else who run these huge DNS services from simply blocking the domain? (assuming you can even keep one registered) Etc... I often hear the argument "Private company, they can do what they want" but at what point does a private company become so powerful that we really do need the government to step in? I've also heard people say that this isn't a slippery slope because it's all terrorist/white supremacist websites so far, but I think to this article I read a while ago about how Apple had decided to ban apps that had anything to do with vaping. This was when some people were dying due to bad black market cartridges. Vaping isn't illegal. It isn't hateful. It also isn't inherently harmful. People used those apps for legitimate reasons. Some of them used iPhone sensors through APIs that aren't available for websites/web apps. And Apple just decided "Nope, you don't get to exist anymore". I was not a Parler user and I do not support the attack on the Capitol. I also don't vape. But both of these things do bother me. And they should bother everybody.
  • tw04 6y ago
    >Ironically, this also feels like a false equivalency to me. I don't believe Parler was putting Amazon/AWS at risk in terms of legal liability (I'm pretty sure in the US you can only sue a hosting provider for material they host if it is copyrighted material and they don't take it down when they receive notices. A Google search didn't turn up anything else.) They also weren't at risk of bringing AWS down. You seriously don't think with the amount of publicity Parler was getting, that AWS' reputation was going to be hurt? When my Dad is talking about Parler and AWS it has become a PR nightmare... >I often hear the argument "Private company, they can do what they want" but at what point does a private company become so powerful that we really do need the government to step in? If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly. But it turns out AWS doesn't have anything approaching a monopoly in hosting, so it would be absurd for the government to step in. There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there. What you're seeing is that nobody agrees with the hate speech Parler is selling, and nobody wants to host it. That is the free market at work. >Vaping isn't illegal. It isn't hateful. It also isn't inherently harmful. People used those apps for legitimate reasons. Some of them used iPhone sensors through APIs that aren't available for websites/web apps. And Apple just decided "Nope, you don't get to exist anymore". So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones that don't require Apple or Google's app store. If you want the government to dictate who companies do business with, you aren't for capitalism or free market, that's all there is to it. Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.
• refurb 6y ago
  Sure, a landlord can evict you for damaging the property the rented you. But was AWS “damaged”? And landlords cannot evict you for being charged with a crime and cannot evict you generally if you are convicted of a crime (some exceptions no doubt).
  • nrb 6y ago
    Depending on where you live, they absolutely can terminate lease and evict for convictions on a huge laundry list of crimes: violent crimes, crimes that were conducted out of the domicile (especially drug convictions) anything that causes irreparable harm to people or property, etc. even in places with very strong tenant-friendly laws.
    • thu2111 6y ago
      Parler hasn't been found guilty of anything in a court of law and given the free speech protections in the constitution, probably won't be, so this sub-thread is irrelevant. The correct analogy is that a landlord cannot throw you out on a whim because they don't like your friends or your friends get in trouble. And that is true.
  • causalmodels 6y ago
    Parler agreed to abide by Amazon’s moderation policy and it agreed that it was responsible for the content of its end users. My landlord has a ‘no parties’ clause in my lease because my apartment is in a factory and someone could be easily hurt if one of the machines turned on. I agreed to this contract. If I break it my landlord is within their right to terminate my lease.
    • account42 6y ago
      I don't know where you live, but here your landlord could absolutely not throw you out on the street the next day if you throw a party, no matter what the contract says.
• BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Yours is false equivalency too. It isn't Parler that committed (or arguably, even facilitated, see Section 230) illegal acts, it's (likely, allegedly, some of) Parler's own 'tenants'. But most importantly, as made explicit in your links, it looks like the landlord can NOT evict the tenant himself, and still has to go both through the justice and the police system ? Also it seems like that when "illegal activity" is mentioned, it has to be declared illegal by some court, or at least have been processed by the law enforcement ? Also I note that this only holds in some of the states. (So arguably the laws that allow that might be 'bad'.) Finally, while it's not as bad for AWS, for App / Play Store it's like only having two landlords in the whole Western World, and get evicted from both (one of which still allows you to set up your tent in his garbage dump). > AWS gave them the time agreed to in the contract to remove offending content and present a plan for continued moderation to prevent the same thing from happening a second time. They wouldn't even commit to moderating the speech Amazon told them was in violation of the TOS. This is not what Greenwald claims. Do you have any opposing evidence ?
  • nobody9999 6y ago
    >This is not what Greenwald claims. Do you have any opposing evidence ArsTechnica[0] has some detail from Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit and quotes from Amazon that contradict this. I suppose YMMV. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-warned-parler-for-months-about-more-than-100-violent-threats/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...