9 ms·

AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

40 points by imraj96 6y ago

newacct583 6y ago
Editorialized title. Link is to the response Amazon filed yesterday to Parler's law suit. That said, yeah. I don't know why people are screaming so hard about censorship when the simple truth is that this was an attempt to retroactively apply moderation to a community that had verifiably gotten out of control, at a moment where it was clear that many of these threats were real and not just rhetoric.
- gfodor 6y ago
  There are two things that can be true at the same time: - Amazon was within its legal and ethical rights to do this, and ought to win any court cases, etc. - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Is there a feasible plan to obtain better power structures in the same time scales that these people are literally plotting to overthrow governments, murder political opponents, etc.?
    - chmod600 6y ago
      Twitter and FB got a lot of credit for the Arab Spring.
      - noWeigh 6y ago
        Seems like a difference between between overthrowing fascist religious minority in power and preventing fascist religious minority from rising to power? Electoral college picks the President but two elections on and no popular vote wins for Trump. If we’re talking about suppression of speech, seems like Trump was keen on doing that as well, on the backs of a political minority.
    - gfodor 6y ago
      There isn't a "deadline" to fixing these problems, they just need to be fixed. Unfortunately, like most things, fear will primarily guide our actions not sober analysis of the long-term unintended consequences of them.
  - res0nat0r 6y ago
    The check and balance is working just fine in this case. Parler kept allowing people to post death threats, they didn't remove it because that's the entire reason their platform exists, and AWS enforced their TOS and stopped hosting them. They're free to go elsewhere.
  - _jal 6y ago
    On your second point, there will always be power structures. You can't not have them, when considering realistic arrangements made of humans. So now what? Is the complaint really that the gatekeepers are different than they were 30 or 100 years ago? Or that there is no realistic alternative that could have acted, citing some authority you find more agreeable, in an effective timeframe?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - gfodor 6y ago
      I would have much preferred if this action occurred due to a legal order, not a few CEOs making unilateral decisions. If they were bound to go through a form of due process before nuking people off of the Internet based upon speech which is assumed to be illegal, my guess is it would be much less likely to be abused. It certainly seems like such a system would have worked just fine in this situation and could be made extremely efficient. I've argued for years having a few companies mediate all consequential human communication was going to be a big problem, so this happening to wake people up of the dangers isn't a surprise to me but just another stage of the process of people realizing it.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    > - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it. When it's more than five separate organizations that all independently decide to deplatform is it still a unilateral decision? I also doubt these decisions were made unilaterally in the companies themselves. In this specific circumstance do we need to regulate these businesses to keep them from removing content related to organizing a violent insurrection? No one even removed this content until these groups literally stormed the capital chanting about hanging members of congress. I don't see the problem.
    - gfodor 6y ago
      I'll admit the use of 'unilateral' here is probably poor, I don't know the proper one. These companies exert monopoly power in the markets they are in. Decisions made by companies which are monopolies are "unilateral-ist" because once a small number of them make a decision together (perhaps colluding) then it leaves no recourse for the person or group they are deciding against. Mentioned elsewhere, the process we should all wants is one where if a company wants to nuke an entire speech platform like this due to illegal speech, they can get a judge to affirm the legality of the content and the negligence of those who are hosting it. With that in hand, their actions would be immune from criticism. Without it, we find ourselves here, where we basically have to trust them to make the right decision and not abuse their power. It's not what we should want, for the same reason that we should have wanted anti-trust laws in place to reduce the power of monopolists, despite the fact that monopolists were operating entirely legally and often ethically.
      - JamesBarney 6y ago
        Banning content moderation unless you have a judge's order seems like it could be problematic. If this law existed could dang still ban people for people for being a-holes and not following site guidelines or would he need a court order?
- jonstewart 6y ago
  If my “editorialized” you mean “edited,” yes. But it’s not opinionated, it’s stated as fact in the filing with specific details backing it up.
  - dqv 6y ago
    It's editorialized. The non-editorialized title of this post would be "Parler, LLC v. Amazon Web Services, Inc."
- tehjoker 6y ago
  I'm not totally sure what to think, but aren't many violent acts planned on Facebook and Twitter? Wasn't the insurrection at the capitol? Yet, the big boys aren't paying the price, it's the competitor that suddenly got popular that wasn't able to be influenced by politicos.
  - brandmeyer 6y ago
    > it's the competitor that suddenly got popular. You're omitting a key detail. This competitor was getting popular specifically because of their promise not to remove such violent content, while Facebook and Twitter were steadily ramping up efforts to remove it from their platforms.
  - michaelmcdonald 6y ago
    The difference: FB is alerted to those posts, they (eventually) take them down / close the communities. Parler was straight up telling AWS to piss off.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      Yea this is valid, I'm just terrified of the tech companies having this kind of power to just censor people and shut down competitors at will. They were kind of justified this time, but given corona, all our communications are flowing through these guys. They're not neutral, nor accountable, and they are very powerful. They also just demonstrated the ability to collaborate to destroy a company they didn't like without some kind of legal order forcing them to.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Twitter definitely made moves to crack down on this stuff (after all, that's why Parler thinks it was poised to gain a lot of traffic). Parler complains about the "Hang Mike Pence" hashtag, but omits the fact that Twitter in fact did kill the hashtag. Parler's sin was basically to attempt no moderation whatsoever, and even after it was clear that several individuals intended to make good on their threats (see the invasion of the Capitol), did not seem to be willing to make any serious attempts to moderate content. See ¶6 of https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.13.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... for some discussion. (Note that the executive's name in that declaration is redacted because (s)he is legitimately concerned for violence should their name be made available to the public.)
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  According to this, both Twitter and Facebook use aws: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws There have been a lot of livestreams and general calls of hate and violence on those social media sites from all political spectrums. Where are their bans? That's why theres an uproar. New York Times, A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... Pretty sure that can be considered violence. I think I feel that way due to the genocide part. Where's Facebook's ban? Oh wait, that's right, big tech is it's own good ol'boys club.
  - Maken 6y ago
    Facebook and Twitter have evident moderation (if maybe insufficient) working on removing or flagging such calls to violence. The argument of this case is not about whether there were user messages calling for execution of public figures, it's about whether Parler did anything about it.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    The argument is Facebook and Twitter are doing a better job of moderating, and Parler isn't or is outright not moderating their content. This may well be true. But the point is now we're arguing a very subjective standard, and the determiners of those standards aren't a judge or jury, but a few CEOs. The standard of "when is it justified to refuse to host an entire platform based upon the nature of how they moderate their worst content" is an incredibly complex question, with no objective answer, and how these company's answer it has a profound effect on freedom of speech, since deplatforming a site like Parler doesn't just censor the speech of those who ought to be censored (by any standard), but everyone else on the platform. It's fairly obvious where this will lead, but I doubt we will correct it before it causes immense harm (not necessarily directly, but due to the blowback that will come from censorship without due process and tit-for-tat escalation.)
  - fxleach 6y ago
    Twitter and Facebook both use their own data centers, with Twitter only recently (mid December 2020) announcing that they will be migrating to use some AWS. They also try to manage their content moderation as best they can and have policies and practices in place to remove content that violates their standards. Parler relies solely on AWS and has 0 content moderation. There are stark differences.
- dgellow 6y ago
  So, I'm not arguing one way or another, I just want to try out the following for the sake of discussion as I haven't seen it elsewhere: if we consider Amazon to be an infrastructure provider, and that by doing this they have a duty of neutrality, instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. If they find something considered bad enough to take the platform down, they would ask Amazon to take it offline. An argument for this is that it gives elected or at least government-related people some overview over the process instead of giving full power to private companies (which will backfire against the good people if normalized). Please tell me why that would be bad, I'm interested to know.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. It has been suggested by many people that in fact the causality goes the other way. The reason for the near-simultaneous action against Parler from Twilio, Google, Apple and Amazon seems likely to have been a strong suggestion from Federal law enforcement about an imminent threat. There's no evidence for that per se, but certainly the threat seems imminent.
    - dgellow 6y ago
      I agree with your last sentence. If that's what actually happened, the situation is completely different and the general debate is really missing an important point.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    I expect common carriers to have a duty to neutrality and defer to at least some government agency with oversight before deciding to pull the plug. There is one rail line to carry grain in and out of a community. That rail line is a common carrier. It shouldn't be able to arbitrarily decide whose cargo to carry or not. There is realistically only one ISP at my home. That should be a common carrier. They shouldn't be able to arbitrarily choose which IP addresses I can connect to or not, or what ports I can choose to talk on. I realistically have no choice on who to choose for that, so there's no market for alternative providers for me. AWS is not a common carrier. If you get dropped from AWS there's still Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM/Softlayer, Hertzner, Digital Ocean, Linode, Hostgator, Dreamhost, and so many other smaller cloud/VPS providers out there. And that's assuming you're for some reason entirely unable to roll your own hardware and move your app into a colo, of which there are literally hundreds of providers in the US alone. There is lots of competition in the cloud hosting industry, and if you widen it to the hosting industry in general its extremely wide.
49para 6y ago
This is why we can't have nice things. Not sure why people insist on posting comments like those identified. If you were publicly identified as making those comments, you would definitely be at risk of losing friends/jobs etc. But that said, Parler isn't alone in their issue with inappropriate comments.
- shakezula 6y ago
  But they would seem to be alone in their refusal to moderate them.
kmfrk 6y ago
Resolved URL because something in my adblocker keeps me from being forwarded, UTM tags removed: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... Mods can add a [.pdf] in title, perhaps. :)
- hnburnsy 6y ago
  Yes please change this URL!
nromiun 6y ago
I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?
- arenaninja 6y ago
  It was a hashtag about a video of the DC rioters chanting it. Context matters, and in this context it wasn't hypocritical at all Source: not on twitter but am familiar with the video
  - nromiun 6y ago
    It seems like there were some death threats on Twitter as well. Most of them were removed so I can't find any direct source. > When the rioters could not find and fulfil their ill-formed dreams in the real life, they took to Twitter to express their wish to hang Mike Pence, and soon the phrase started trending on Twitter. [0] 0. https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mike-pence-as-trump-supporters-turn-against-him-355959?&ampcf=1 https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mik...
  - finikytou 6y ago
    I dont understand your point... Couldn't people watch this video and think that they were right? Hence twitter was doing exactly the same thing than parler. It is not because you are under the impression that twitter is a democrat tool that people not thinking like you are using the platform to commit crime, promote violence, learn how to be violent and racist
    - arenaninja 6y ago
      What I mean is originally the hashtag was being used to spread the video. You're right, people took it out of context and started making actual threats. But that's when Twitter removed it all and banned the tag. This seems different from Parler which AWS asserts still hadn't addressed content they had flagged as violations before
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
LatteLazy 6y ago
It seemed to my unaided eye that the only reasonable point in the lawsuit from Parler was that they were given 30ish hours notice and the contract required 30 days. AWS have addressed that point.
- hnburnsy 6y ago
  Is it really a suspension and not a termination?
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    If its a 30 day suspension, and they give notice to terminate at the same time, its both?
rcostin2k2 6y ago
Leaving aside the discution regarding the monopoly position of AMAZON (or other technology companies), I wonder if the PARLER situation would not have been the same if it had gone to any other company offering the same services and used a pre-ownership platform. If they had developed their own stack, wouldn't their flexibility have been greater?
up2isomorphism 6y ago
AWS should have no responsibilities on what is on the platform and it is also not taking all the responsibilities, so it should not pretend taking one. That is totally legal process's role. Anyone hope a A decide what B should do for C is just not understanding the dynamics in human society.
finikytou 6y ago
I struggle to understand how it is not a way to remove a competitor and move the spotlight from those companies doing a good deed vs the black duck being parler. Twitter let ISIS terrorists post beadings and murders on its platform. A simple search on any racial keyword will show plenty of hatred that is everywhere on its platform. Facebook, not even talking about what they do, the way they use data, advertise, and leave content that is racist/dangerous. And now that parler jumps in without the $ of twitter and facebook and the process/software that took years for a FB to be able delete violent content then we censor them from the outside? How about we censor google for doing business with china and promoting censorship? Id say that is a good enough argument for the US governement to nationalize google and remove them from their monopoly.
- detaro 6y ago
  > not a way to remove a competitor Competitor to what? Amazon isn't particularly relevant in the social media space. (Goodreads and IMDB are the most social sites they run afaik, and that's a bit far fetched)
  - finikytou 6y ago
    competitor as a technology company and as a platform. amazon just wanted to participate to something "good" so that they look like the good guys... How about them destroying small businesses and coming out of covid as one of the only marketplace on earth that made billions out of people misery and despair? Id rank that way higher than a bunch of conspiracy theorist on a shady and bad twitter-clone. I wonder if they'd do same when the CCP is hosting stuff on their server such as list of people or software that directly help to put people into jail. There is a tendency within tech to think there are bad guys and good guys. I see 0 difference between palantir/parler and amazon,fb,google. Or yes there is. the scale of the later is way scarier and way more dangerous for us. aaron schwartz sad death anniversary was 2 days ago and yet we never learn, we don't understand that this is just showing how dangerous those platforms can be for the people.
  - hnburnsy 6y ago
    Twitter signed a large deal with AWS to host some of Twitters service... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+timeline&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+ti...
up2isomorphism 6y ago
All AWS/GCP/Azure is tell you guys: build you damn infrastructure, learn how to install software and configure you routes. If this is not clear, I do not know what is.
stickfigure 6y ago
It's worth pointing out the offensive content cited in the document: * “Fry’em up. The whole fkn crew. #pelosi #aoc #thesquad #soros #gates #chuckschumer #hrc #obama #adamschiff #blm #antifa we are coming for you and you will know it.” * “#JackDorsey ... you will die a bloody death alongside Mark Suckerturd [Zuckerberg].... It has been decided and plans are being put in place. Remember the photographs inside your home while you slept? Yes, that close. You will die a sudden death!” * “We are going to fight in a civil War on Jan.20th, Form MILITIAS now and acquire targets.” * “On January 20th we need to start systematicly [sic] assassinating [sic] #liberal leaders, liberal activists, #blm leaders and supporters, members of the #nba #nfl #mlb #nhl #mainstreammedia anchors and correspondents and #antifa. I already have a news worthy event planned.” * “Shoot the police that protect these shitbag senators right in the head then make the senator grovel a bit before capping they ass.” * “After the firing squads are done with the politicians the teachers are next.” * “Death to @zuckerberg @realjeffbezos @jackdorsey @pichai.” * “White people need to ignite their racial identity and rain down suffering and death like a hurricane upon zionists.” * “Put a target on these motherless trash [Antifa] they aren’t human taking one out would be like stepping on a roach no different.” * “We need to act like our forefathers did Kill [Black and Jewish people] all Leave no victims or survivors.” * “We are coming with our list we know where you live we know who you are and we are coming for you and it starts on the 6th civil war... Lol if you will think it’s a joke... Enjoy your last few days you have.” * “This bitch [Stacey Abrams] will be good target practice for our beginners.” * “This cu* [United States Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao] should be... hung for betraying their country.” * “Hang this mofo [Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger] today.” * “HANG THAt N*** ASAP” It's indefensible.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Wait, what did the NBA and NHL do?
  - orwin 6y ago
    They support racial equity, a lot of NBA and NFL player (don't know about NHL) supported their communities during Covid + BLM and paid bail/lawyer money in some states so people get their right to vote back. NBA stars were particularly active during the first lockdown.
filleokus 6y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I got really surprised when it was "revealed" that Parler was using AWS. Creating a public forum marketed towards "free speech" seems to me to fall into roughly the same category as a torrent tracker or other file sharing service. Not exactly illegal (maybe), but definitely not something that the cloud providers want to be associated with. In Sweden we have Flashback.org, an old school PHPBB/vBulletin-looking forum with a very strong free speech stance (attracting all kind of people, including those you can imagine being enticed by those rules). It's of course not hosted on any cloud plattform, or using services from any big hip tech company. Honestly it seems like a strange misstake for them to do, if you are dealing in one of these gray areas, you should probably find some hosting provider / ISP actually interested in hosting you and just do it yourself.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  I had the same thoughts. Just from an operational standpoint if your selling point is "we'll host the content one one else will" you should probably be self hosting or at the very least renting a rack from someone who is contractually obligated not to pull the plug on you.
noWeigh 6y ago
So “Big Tech” is in the spotlight for suppressing speech explicitly. Meanwhile, traditional media implicitly aligns minds to defend Democrat/Republican duopoly, who in turn protect American aristocratic power, lest those poor billionaires suffer humiliating figurative death. I do not really see the “I was hear first so I won for life.” as fostering open debate.
newacct583 6y ago
Why is this topic flagged, when so (so) many on the same subject that didn't present evidence of Parler's crimes hit the front page?
- Balgair 6y ago
  HN typically doesn't like it when threads devolve, and users will then flag the thread as such.
- edbob 6y ago
  I don't know why some topics are flagged while others aren't, but Parler didn't commit any crimes.
hnburnsy 6y ago
Lots of weird stuff in there, Amazon says Parler is suspended, but not terminated, but then says it will preserve data and help with migration. Which is it? Does Parler have a path to removing the suspension? Additionally, Amazon says Parler does moderate and remove content, but not with a sense of urgency. How does Amazon define this sense of urgency? Parler was suspended because it wasn't quick enough to remove posts all while trying to manage 12 million users, 2.3 million DAU, and have explosive growth. Is a backlog of 26000 reports really a large number?
destroyHN 6y ago
The irony of you libertarian techbros arguing about free speech on one of the most heavily moderated forums on the planet. Get the fuck over yourselves, cunts

40 points by imraj96 6y ago

Editorialized title. Link is to the response Amazon filed yesterday to Parler's law suit. That said, yeah. I don't know why people are screaming so hard about censorship when the simple truth is that this was an attempt to retroactively apply moderation to a community that had verifiably gotten out of control, at a moment where it was clear that many of these threats were real and not just rhetoric.

gfodor 6y ago
There are two things that can be true at the same time: - Amazon was within its legal and ethical rights to do this, and ought to win any court cases, etc. - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Is there a feasible plan to obtain better power structures in the same time scales that these people are literally plotting to overthrow governments, murder political opponents, etc.?
  - chmod600 6y ago
    Twitter and FB got a lot of credit for the Arab Spring.
    - noWeigh 6y ago
      Seems like a difference between between overthrowing fascist religious minority in power and preventing fascist religious minority from rising to power? Electoral college picks the President but two elections on and no popular vote wins for Trump. If we’re talking about suppression of speech, seems like Trump was keen on doing that as well, on the backs of a political minority.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    There isn't a "deadline" to fixing these problems, they just need to be fixed. Unfortunately, like most things, fear will primarily guide our actions not sober analysis of the long-term unintended consequences of them.
- res0nat0r 6y ago
  The check and balance is working just fine in this case. Parler kept allowing people to post death threats, they didn't remove it because that's the entire reason their platform exists, and AWS enforced their TOS and stopped hosting them. They're free to go elsewhere.
- _jal 6y ago
  On your second point, there will always be power structures. You can't not have them, when considering realistic arrangements made of humans. So now what? Is the complaint really that the gatekeepers are different than they were 30 or 100 years ago? Or that there is no realistic alternative that could have acted, citing some authority you find more agreeable, in an effective timeframe?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gfodor 6y ago
    I would have much preferred if this action occurred due to a legal order, not a few CEOs making unilateral decisions. If they were bound to go through a form of due process before nuking people off of the Internet based upon speech which is assumed to be illegal, my guess is it would be much less likely to be abused. It certainly seems like such a system would have worked just fine in this situation and could be made extremely efficient. I've argued for years having a few companies mediate all consequential human communication was going to be a big problem, so this happening to wake people up of the dangers isn't a surprise to me but just another stage of the process of people realizing it.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  > - The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it. When it's more than five separate organizations that all independently decide to deplatform is it still a unilateral decision? I also doubt these decisions were made unilaterally in the companies themselves. In this specific circumstance do we need to regulate these businesses to keep them from removing content related to organizing a violent insurrection? No one even removed this content until these groups literally stormed the capital chanting about hanging members of congress. I don't see the problem.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    I'll admit the use of 'unilateral' here is probably poor, I don't know the proper one. These companies exert monopoly power in the markets they are in. Decisions made by companies which are monopolies are "unilateral-ist" because once a small number of them make a decision together (perhaps colluding) then it leaves no recourse for the person or group they are deciding against. Mentioned elsewhere, the process we should all wants is one where if a company wants to nuke an entire speech platform like this due to illegal speech, they can get a judge to affirm the legality of the content and the negligence of those who are hosting it. With that in hand, their actions would be immune from criticism. Without it, we find ourselves here, where we basically have to trust them to make the right decision and not abuse their power. It's not what we should want, for the same reason that we should have wanted anti-trust laws in place to reduce the power of monopolists, despite the fact that monopolists were operating entirely legally and often ethically.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      Banning content moderation unless you have a judge's order seems like it could be problematic. If this law existed could dang still ban people for people for being a-holes and not following site guidelines or would he need a court order?
jonstewart 6y ago
If my “editorialized” you mean “edited,” yes. But it’s not opinionated, it’s stated as fact in the filing with specific details backing it up.
- dqv 6y ago
  It's editorialized. The non-editorialized title of this post would be "Parler, LLC v. Amazon Web Services, Inc."
tehjoker 6y ago
I'm not totally sure what to think, but aren't many violent acts planned on Facebook and Twitter? Wasn't the insurrection at the capitol? Yet, the big boys aren't paying the price, it's the competitor that suddenly got popular that wasn't able to be influenced by politicos.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  > it's the competitor that suddenly got popular. You're omitting a key detail. This competitor was getting popular specifically because of their promise not to remove such violent content, while Facebook and Twitter were steadily ramping up efforts to remove it from their platforms.
- michaelmcdonald 6y ago
  The difference: FB is alerted to those posts, they (eventually) take them down / close the communities. Parler was straight up telling AWS to piss off.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Yea this is valid, I'm just terrified of the tech companies having this kind of power to just censor people and shut down competitors at will. They were kind of justified this time, but given corona, all our communications are flowing through these guys. They're not neutral, nor accountable, and they are very powerful. They also just demonstrated the ability to collaborate to destroy a company they didn't like without some kind of legal order forcing them to.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Twitter definitely made moves to crack down on this stuff (after all, that's why Parler thinks it was poised to gain a lot of traffic). Parler complains about the "Hang Mike Pence" hashtag, but omits the fact that Twitter in fact did kill the hashtag. Parler's sin was basically to attempt no moderation whatsoever, and even after it was clear that several individuals intended to make good on their threats (see the invasion of the Capitol), did not seem to be willing to make any serious attempts to moderate content. See ¶6 of https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.13.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... for some discussion. (Note that the executive's name in that declaration is redacted because (s)he is legitimately concerned for violence should their name be made available to the public.)
NoOneNew 6y ago
According to this, both Twitter and Facebook use aws: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws There have been a lot of livestreams and general calls of hate and violence on those social media sites from all political spectrums. Where are their bans? That's why theres an uproar. New York Times, A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... Pretty sure that can be considered violence. I think I feel that way due to the genocide part. Where's Facebook's ban? Oh wait, that's right, big tech is it's own good ol'boys club.
- Maken 6y ago
  Facebook and Twitter have evident moderation (if maybe insufficient) working on removing or flagging such calls to violence. The argument of this case is not about whether there were user messages calling for execution of public figures, it's about whether Parler did anything about it.
- gfodor 6y ago
  The argument is Facebook and Twitter are doing a better job of moderating, and Parler isn't or is outright not moderating their content. This may well be true. But the point is now we're arguing a very subjective standard, and the determiners of those standards aren't a judge or jury, but a few CEOs. The standard of "when is it justified to refuse to host an entire platform based upon the nature of how they moderate their worst content" is an incredibly complex question, with no objective answer, and how these company's answer it has a profound effect on freedom of speech, since deplatforming a site like Parler doesn't just censor the speech of those who ought to be censored (by any standard), but everyone else on the platform. It's fairly obvious where this will lead, but I doubt we will correct it before it causes immense harm (not necessarily directly, but due to the blowback that will come from censorship without due process and tit-for-tat escalation.)
- fxleach 6y ago
  Twitter and Facebook both use their own data centers, with Twitter only recently (mid December 2020) announcing that they will be migrating to use some AWS. They also try to manage their content moderation as best they can and have policies and practices in place to remove content that violates their standards. Parler relies solely on AWS and has 0 content moderation. There are stark differences.
dgellow 6y ago
So, I'm not arguing one way or another, I just want to try out the following for the sake of discussion as I haven't seen it elsewhere: if we consider Amazon to be an infrastructure provider, and that by doing this they have a duty of neutrality, instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. If they find something considered bad enough to take the platform down, they would ask Amazon to take it offline. An argument for this is that it gives elected or at least government-related people some overview over the process instead of giving full power to private companies (which will backfire against the good people if normalized). Please tell me why that would be bad, I'm interested to know.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. It has been suggested by many people that in fact the causality goes the other way. The reason for the near-simultaneous action against Parler from Twilio, Google, Apple and Amazon seems likely to have been a strong suggestion from Federal law enforcement about an imminent threat. There's no evidence for that per se, but certainly the threat seems imminent.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    I agree with your last sentence. If that's what actually happened, the situation is completely different and the general debate is really missing an important point.
- vel0city 6y ago
  I expect common carriers to have a duty to neutrality and defer to at least some government agency with oversight before deciding to pull the plug. There is one rail line to carry grain in and out of a community. That rail line is a common carrier. It shouldn't be able to arbitrarily decide whose cargo to carry or not. There is realistically only one ISP at my home. That should be a common carrier. They shouldn't be able to arbitrarily choose which IP addresses I can connect to or not, or what ports I can choose to talk on. I realistically have no choice on who to choose for that, so there's no market for alternative providers for me. AWS is not a common carrier. If you get dropped from AWS there's still Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM/Softlayer, Hertzner, Digital Ocean, Linode, Hostgator, Dreamhost, and so many other smaller cloud/VPS providers out there. And that's assuming you're for some reason entirely unable to roll your own hardware and move your app into a colo, of which there are literally hundreds of providers in the US alone. There is lots of competition in the cloud hosting industry, and if you widen it to the hosting industry in general its extremely wide.

49para 6y ago

This is why we can't have nice things. Not sure why people insist on posting comments like those identified. If you were publicly identified as making those comments, you would definitely be at risk of losing friends/jobs etc. But that said, Parler isn't alone in their issue with inappropriate comments.

shakezula 6y ago
But they would seem to be alone in their refusal to moderate them.

kmfrk 6y ago

Resolved URL because something in my adblocker keeps me from being forwarded, UTM tags removed: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... Mods can add a [.pdf] in title, perhaps. :)

hnburnsy 6y ago
Yes please change this URL!

nromiun 6y ago

I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?

arenaninja 6y ago
It was a hashtag about a video of the DC rioters chanting it. Context matters, and in this context it wasn't hypocritical at all Source: not on twitter but am familiar with the video
- nromiun 6y ago
  It seems like there were some death threats on Twitter as well. Most of them were removed so I can't find any direct source. > When the rioters could not find and fulfil their ill-formed dreams in the real life, they took to Twitter to express their wish to hang Mike Pence, and soon the phrase started trending on Twitter. [0] 0. https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mike-pence-as-trump-supporters-turn-against-him-355959?&ampcf=1 https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mik...
- finikytou 6y ago
  I dont understand your point... Couldn't people watch this video and think that they were right? Hence twitter was doing exactly the same thing than parler. It is not because you are under the impression that twitter is a democrat tool that people not thinking like you are using the platform to commit crime, promote violence, learn how to be violent and racist
  - arenaninja 6y ago
    What I mean is originally the hashtag was being used to spread the video. You're right, people took it out of context and started making actual threats. But that's when Twitter removed it all and banned the tag. This seems different from Parler which AWS asserts still hadn't addressed content they had flagged as violations before
6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

LatteLazy 6y ago

It seemed to my unaided eye that the only reasonable point in the lawsuit from Parler was that they were given 30ish hours notice and the contract required 30 days. AWS have addressed that point.

hnburnsy 6y ago
Is it really a suspension and not a termination?
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  If its a 30 day suspension, and they give notice to terminate at the same time, its both?

rcostin2k2 6y ago

Leaving aside the discution regarding the monopoly position of AMAZON (or other technology companies), I wonder if the PARLER situation would not have been the same if it had gone to any other company offering the same services and used a pre-ownership platform. If they had developed their own stack, wouldn't their flexibility have been greater?

up2isomorphism 6y ago

AWS should have no responsibilities on what is on the platform and it is also not taking all the responsibilities, so it should not pretend taking one. That is totally legal process's role. Anyone hope a A decide what B should do for C is just not understanding the dynamics in human society.

finikytou 6y ago

I struggle to understand how it is not a way to remove a competitor and move the spotlight from those companies doing a good deed vs the black duck being parler. Twitter let ISIS terrorists post beadings and murders on its platform. A simple search on any racial keyword will show plenty of hatred that is everywhere on its platform. Facebook, not even talking about what they do, the way they use data, advertise, and leave content that is racist/dangerous. And now that parler jumps in without the $ of twitter and facebook and the process/software that took years for a FB to be able delete violent content then we censor them from the outside? How about we censor google for doing business with china and promoting censorship? Id say that is a good enough argument for the US governement to nationalize google and remove them from their monopoly.

detaro 6y ago
> not a way to remove a competitor Competitor to what? Amazon isn't particularly relevant in the social media space. (Goodreads and IMDB are the most social sites they run afaik, and that's a bit far fetched)
- finikytou 6y ago
  competitor as a technology company and as a platform. amazon just wanted to participate to something "good" so that they look like the good guys... How about them destroying small businesses and coming out of covid as one of the only marketplace on earth that made billions out of people misery and despair? Id rank that way higher than a bunch of conspiracy theorist on a shady and bad twitter-clone. I wonder if they'd do same when the CCP is hosting stuff on their server such as list of people or software that directly help to put people into jail. There is a tendency within tech to think there are bad guys and good guys. I see 0 difference between palantir/parler and amazon,fb,google. Or yes there is. the scale of the later is way scarier and way more dangerous for us. aaron schwartz sad death anniversary was 2 days ago and yet we never learn, we don't understand that this is just showing how dangerous those platforms can be for the people.
- hnburnsy 6y ago
  Twitter signed a large deal with AWS to host some of Twitters service... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+timeline&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+ti...

up2isomorphism 6y ago

All AWS/GCP/Azure is tell you guys: build you damn infrastructure, learn how to install software and configure you routes. If this is not clear, I do not know what is.

stickfigure 6y ago

It's worth pointing out the offensive content cited in the document: * “Fry’em up. The whole fkn crew. #pelosi #aoc #thesquad #soros #gates #chuckschumer #hrc #obama #adamschiff #blm #antifa we are coming for you and you will know it.” * “#JackDorsey ... you will die a bloody death alongside Mark Suckerturd [Zuckerberg].... It has been decided and plans are being put in place. Remember the photographs inside your home while you slept? Yes, that close. You will die a sudden death!” * “We are going to fight in a civil War on Jan.20th, Form MILITIAS now and acquire targets.” * “On January 20th we need to start systematicly [sic] assassinating [sic] #liberal leaders, liberal activists, #blm leaders and supporters, members of the #nba #nfl #mlb #nhl #mainstreammedia anchors and correspondents and #antifa. I already have a news worthy event planned.” * “Shoot the police that protect these shitbag senators right in the head then make the senator grovel a bit before capping they ass.” * “After the firing squads are done with the politicians the teachers are next.” * “Death to @zuckerberg @realjeffbezos @jackdorsey @pichai.” * “White people need to ignite their racial identity and rain down suffering and death like a hurricane upon zionists.” * “Put a target on these motherless trash [Antifa] they aren’t human taking one out would be like stepping on a roach no different.” * “We need to act like our forefathers did Kill [Black and Jewish people] all Leave no victims or survivors.” * “We are coming with our list we know where you live we know who you are and we are coming for you and it starts on the 6th civil war... Lol if you will think it’s a joke... Enjoy your last few days you have.” * “This bitch [Stacey Abrams] will be good target practice for our beginners.” * “This cu* [United States Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao] should be... hung for betraying their country.” * “Hang this mofo [Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger] today.” * “HANG THAt N*** ASAP” It's indefensible.

LatteLazy 6y ago
Wait, what did the NBA and NHL do?
- orwin 6y ago
  They support racial equity, a lot of NBA and NFL player (don't know about NHL) supported their communities during Covid + BLM and paid bail/lawyer money in some states so people get their right to vote back. NBA stars were particularly active during the first lockdown.

filleokus 6y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I got really surprised when it was "revealed" that Parler was using AWS. Creating a public forum marketed towards "free speech" seems to me to fall into roughly the same category as a torrent tracker or other file sharing service. Not exactly illegal (maybe), but definitely not something that the cloud providers want to be associated with. In Sweden we have Flashback.org, an old school PHPBB/vBulletin-looking forum with a very strong free speech stance (attracting all kind of people, including those you can imagine being enticed by those rules). It's of course not hosted on any cloud plattform, or using services from any big hip tech company. Honestly it seems like a strange misstake for them to do, if you are dealing in one of these gray areas, you should probably find some hosting provider / ISP actually interested in hosting you and just do it yourself.

JamesBarney 6y ago
I had the same thoughts. Just from an operational standpoint if your selling point is "we'll host the content one one else will" you should probably be self hosting or at the very least renting a rack from someone who is contractually obligated not to pull the plug on you.

noWeigh 6y ago

So “Big Tech” is in the spotlight for suppressing speech explicitly. Meanwhile, traditional media implicitly aligns minds to defend Democrat/Republican duopoly, who in turn protect American aristocratic power, lest those poor billionaires suffer humiliating figurative death. I do not really see the “I was hear first so I won for life.” as fostering open debate.

newacct583 6y ago

Why is this topic flagged, when so (so) many on the same subject that didn't present evidence of Parler's crimes hit the front page?

Balgair 6y ago
HN typically doesn't like it when threads devolve, and users will then flag the thread as such.
edbob 6y ago
I don't know why some topics are flagged while others aren't, but Parler didn't commit any crimes.

hnburnsy 6y ago

Lots of weird stuff in there, Amazon says Parler is suspended, but not terminated, but then says it will preserve data and help with migration. Which is it? Does Parler have a path to removing the suspension? Additionally, Amazon says Parler does moderate and remove content, but not with a sense of urgency. How does Amazon define this sense of urgency? Parler was suspended because it wasn't quick enough to remove posts all while trying to manage 12 million users, 2.3 million DAU, and have explosive growth. Is a backlog of 26000 reports really a large number?

destroyHN 6y ago

The irony of you libertarian techbros arguing about free speech on one of the most heavily moderated forums on the planet. Get the fuck over yourselves, cunts