7 ms·

Amazon warned Parler for months about “more than 100” violent threats

51 points by AndrewDucker 6y ago

chaganated 6y ago
By cheering this on, many people here are supporting a barrier-to-entry that they also fall short of.
- tuxracer 6y ago
  If society may be destabilized because one has the knowhow to create something of this scale but not the resources to properly moderate specific violent threats then perhaps a barrier-to-entry preventing that is a good thing
  - chaganated 6y ago
    Only an ideologue would buy that. So many threats, plots, doxxings, stalkings left unmoderated on Facebook and Twitter--and that's only summer of 2020! This is clearly retaliation for the H1-B caps / S230 threats of the outgoing administration, rather than corporate concern for the stability of the republic. How many people here can even say "corporate concern" with a straight face? Business is war, alliances change. What they do to the MAGA grannies today might not be so amusing when the targets change.
    - rualca 6y ago
      > So many threats, plots, doxxings, stalkings left unmoderated on Facebook and Twitter Parler's userbase is comprised of people who were either banned or migrated away from Facebook and Twitter in protest of them cracking down on hate speech and systematic appeals to violent action. They moved to Parker as Parker rather explicitly stated they would not act on hate speech and systematic appeals to violent action.
- Z4YzKhxSzpbQLGP 6y ago
  Evidence suggests the site was actively moderated. They actively encourage, organized, an participated in the forming radical cells, their plans, and execution. Its purpose was to attack our democracy. To replace it with something lacking the freedoms we take for granted every day. They should be federally investigated on these grounds. Don't act like it was some innocent people putting together a social media site just because it wasn't allowed to bear fruit. Your argument is week. I don't think any startups on here are activity trying to destabilize the American government in favor of racist authoritarians? That is pretty fucking high bar to qualify for. And why doesn't everyone at Amazon get a say in how there work is used in the world? Should we actively work for people and causes that go against our beliefs? It is a simple matter. They are such assholes no one with a brain is wants to help them. And thankfully, they are allowed to refuse them service over because of their actions. And finally, freedom of speech? Really? Have you ever seen content policies? Or do disagree with those as well? And any moderation (although like I said above the site was actively moderated to conform to particular content and social graphs).
- smt88 6y ago
  Powerful people funded Parler and promoted it publicly, and they specifically marketed it to people who create this type of ToS violation. It's safe to say few other companies have scaled through that mechanism and simultaneously targeted hard-to-moderate audiences.
treeman79 6y ago
By same logic twitter should be Shutdown. Constant death threats and calls for violence. Heck many rappers make a living glorifying violence. Even watched in real-time this past summer as people organized to come burn down my neighborhood. But those were good democrats that wanted white people to burn, so that’s excusable. This has nothing to with violence, and is pure political suppression. Amazon, twitter and others were just waiting for the first viable excuse. Downvote me to hell, but study history of other socialist / Marxist take overs; you will see the same pattern.
- davmar 6y ago
  So your neighborhood got burned down by democrats? Link please, it must have been a huge news story.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please stop posting political battle comments to HN. You've been using HN primarily for that lately, and we ban such accounts, because it destroys what this site is for. I'm not going to ban you right now because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668906 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667176 are fine posts. But you've unfortunately been posting a lot of comments that break the site guidelines—please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that any more.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- olliej 6y ago
  Twitter very aggressively filters, suspends, and bans people for posting violence, promotion of violence, attacks on groups based on religion, race, etc Parler actively avoided moderating even explicitly called out posts by their own service provider. In fact the only thing parler apparently moderated was insufficiently right wing accounts, as accounts apparently started off shadow banned until their account was found to be sufficiently right wing.
smt88 6y ago
Amazon's problem is not that Parler had threats, but rather that they did nothing to prevent or remove them. Twitter has a huge team to work on that and removes them when they see them. > Downvote me to hell, but study history of other socialist / Marxist take overs; you will see the same pattern. You're right, a lot of socialist revolutions do start with people storming a capitol building and trying to murder government officials.
- bleah1000 6y ago
  That's not what they claimed. Amazon is claiming that Parler didn't remove them quickly enough and that the system Parler is using doesn't remove these kinds of comments fast enough. Here's a video from a lawyer (a Canadian one, but he's been pretty good about American issues) that describes the Amazon response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU
- cassac 6y ago
  It’s absurd to think that anyone was trying to murder anyone and you can’t actually believe that. Everyone is so over the top, all of the time, it’s exhausting to even read it. My hope is that once Trump is gone everyone can STFU and get on with their lives but I guess that’ll never happen because someone somewhere will still be wrong on the internet.
  - twalla 6y ago
    > It’s absurd to think that anyone was trying to murder anyone I'm certain the family of the cop that was beat to death[1] or the aides hiding in their offices, some of which may have had their panic buttons removed prior sometime prior to the rioting[2] or Nancy Pelosi, who had an opposition senator live-tweeting her location[3] during the insurrection, or the guy who drove up from Alabama with a list of names, 3 handguns, an AR15 and a cooler full of molotov cocktails [4] would all beg to differ. https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-colleague-brian-d-sicknick https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-c... https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/01/13/democratic-rep-says-authorities-probing-her-report-that-her-office-panic-buttons-were-removed-before-capitol-riot/?sh=243cf445bce4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/01/13/democratic-... https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/12/nation/colorado-republican-tweeted-about-pelosis-location-during-capitol-siege-shes-now-facing-calls-resign/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/12/nation/colorado-repub... https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/alabama-man-charged-possession-eleven-molotov-cocktails-found-near-protest-us-capitol https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/alabama-man-charged-posse...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wtfiswiththis 6y ago
Funded by the Mercer family, Parler was a single purpose site. Not independent, not neutral. This is not a debate about free speech but of one of accountability towards entities that took exacting efforts to radicalize and activate political terrorist and reality denial in a good portion of the US population. Parler Reportedly Backed by Mercers, Same Family That Funded Cambridge Analytica: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/parler-reportedly-backed-by-mercers-same-family-that-funded-cambridge-analytica/ar-BB1b1deS https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/parler-reportedly-... >Hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer, former principal investor in the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, and his daughter Rebekah Mercer are among Parler's financial backers, according to a new report. >People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal about the Mercers' ties to Parler—an American microblogging and social networking service launched in 2018 that has a significant user base of Trump supporters. Parler CEO John Matze confirmed that Rebekah Mercer was a lead investor in the early stages of the company and that her funding was conditional on the app relinquishing control to users on what they can see. Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit is damning: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20449127-amazon_response https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20449127-amazon_res... >In interview's Parler's CEO stated he doesn't think it is Parler's obligation to monitor the full range of user activity. >Content encouraging violence continued to grow rapidly after the events of Jan 6 >During a call with Amazon Parler CEO stated they had a backlog of 26,000 reported pieces of content. >Parler CEO posted "we could be operational within 12 hours of downtime from Amazon. That they had prepared for events like this by not relying on services like AWS and having bare metal products." The Mercer funded Parler project doesn't think it needs to moderate it's content, has a backlog of reports they have been unwilling to surmount, and they stated they don't need Amazon anyways because they prepared for it. Please don't bother complaining about AWS depriving them of necessary services unless you can prove a requirement to knowingly disseminate terrorist propaganda without functioning moderation.
- kemitchell 6y ago
  > Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit is damning If there's any damnation to come, it's from the court, not from the parties. I read both the original complaint and Amazon's opposition, front to back. Both are pleadings---one side's statement of events and how the law should apply to their version. Not established fact. Not neutral determinations. I do commend Amazon's counsel, at least at surface level. Doran and Wickers left a strong impression.
kemitchell 6y ago
Why did you omit "Filing:" from the headline submitted? I'd argue even Ars' headline is clickbait, since people uninvolved in the legal system don't know what "Filing:" means. This is not established fact. It's what Amazon has alleged in its filed response to Parler's lawsuit. They might yet prove it. But they haven't done that yet.
- lupire 6y ago
  99% of HN headlines are not court decisions. There's a bizarre meme where people apply a lower standard of proof to PR campaigns and random bloggers than statements made under penalty of perjury.
JoeyBananas 6y ago
"More than 100" isn't a big deal at the scale Parler was operating.

51 points by AndrewDucker 6y ago

chaganated 6y ago

By cheering this on, many people here are supporting a barrier-to-entry that they also fall short of.

tuxracer 6y ago
If society may be destabilized because one has the knowhow to create something of this scale but not the resources to properly moderate specific violent threats then perhaps a barrier-to-entry preventing that is a good thing
- chaganated 6y ago
  Only an ideologue would buy that. So many threats, plots, doxxings, stalkings left unmoderated on Facebook and Twitter--and that's only summer of 2020! This is clearly retaliation for the H1-B caps / S230 threats of the outgoing administration, rather than corporate concern for the stability of the republic. How many people here can even say "corporate concern" with a straight face? Business is war, alliances change. What they do to the MAGA grannies today might not be so amusing when the targets change.
  - rualca 6y ago
    > So many threats, plots, doxxings, stalkings left unmoderated on Facebook and Twitter Parler's userbase is comprised of people who were either banned or migrated away from Facebook and Twitter in protest of them cracking down on hate speech and systematic appeals to violent action. They moved to Parker as Parker rather explicitly stated they would not act on hate speech and systematic appeals to violent action.
Z4YzKhxSzpbQLGP 6y ago
Evidence suggests the site was actively moderated. They actively encourage, organized, an participated in the forming radical cells, their plans, and execution. Its purpose was to attack our democracy. To replace it with something lacking the freedoms we take for granted every day. They should be federally investigated on these grounds. Don't act like it was some innocent people putting together a social media site just because it wasn't allowed to bear fruit. Your argument is week. I don't think any startups on here are activity trying to destabilize the American government in favor of racist authoritarians? That is pretty fucking high bar to qualify for. And why doesn't everyone at Amazon get a say in how there work is used in the world? Should we actively work for people and causes that go against our beliefs? It is a simple matter. They are such assholes no one with a brain is wants to help them. And thankfully, they are allowed to refuse them service over because of their actions. And finally, freedom of speech? Really? Have you ever seen content policies? Or do disagree with those as well? And any moderation (although like I said above the site was actively moderated to conform to particular content and social graphs).
smt88 6y ago
Powerful people funded Parler and promoted it publicly, and they specifically marketed it to people who create this type of ToS violation. It's safe to say few other companies have scaled through that mechanism and simultaneously targeted hard-to-moderate audiences.

treeman79 6y ago

By same logic twitter should be Shutdown. Constant death threats and calls for violence. Heck many rappers make a living glorifying violence. Even watched in real-time this past summer as people organized to come burn down my neighborhood. But those were good democrats that wanted white people to burn, so that’s excusable. This has nothing to with violence, and is pure political suppression. Amazon, twitter and others were just waiting for the first viable excuse. Downvote me to hell, but study history of other socialist / Marxist take overs; you will see the same pattern.

davmar 6y ago
So your neighborhood got burned down by democrats? Link please, it must have been a huge news story.
- dang 6y ago
  Please stop posting political battle comments to HN. You've been using HN primarily for that lately, and we ban such accounts, because it destroys what this site is for. I'm not going to ban you right now because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668906 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667176 are fine posts. But you've unfortunately been posting a lot of comments that break the site guidelines—please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that any more.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
olliej 6y ago
Twitter very aggressively filters, suspends, and bans people for posting violence, promotion of violence, attacks on groups based on religion, race, etc Parler actively avoided moderating even explicitly called out posts by their own service provider. In fact the only thing parler apparently moderated was insufficiently right wing accounts, as accounts apparently started off shadow banned until their account was found to be sufficiently right wing.

smt88 6y ago

Amazon's problem is not that Parler had threats, but rather that they did nothing to prevent or remove them. Twitter has a huge team to work on that and removes them when they see them. > Downvote me to hell, but study history of other socialist / Marxist take overs; you will see the same pattern. You're right, a lot of socialist revolutions do start with people storming a capitol building and trying to murder government officials.

bleah1000 6y ago
That's not what they claimed. Amazon is claiming that Parler didn't remove them quickly enough and that the system Parler is using doesn't remove these kinds of comments fast enough. Here's a video from a lawyer (a Canadian one, but he's been pretty good about American issues) that describes the Amazon response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU
cassac 6y ago
It’s absurd to think that anyone was trying to murder anyone and you can’t actually believe that. Everyone is so over the top, all of the time, it’s exhausting to even read it. My hope is that once Trump is gone everyone can STFU and get on with their lives but I guess that’ll never happen because someone somewhere will still be wrong on the internet.
- twalla 6y ago
  > It’s absurd to think that anyone was trying to murder anyone I'm certain the family of the cop that was beat to death[1] or the aides hiding in their offices, some of which may have had their panic buttons removed prior sometime prior to the rioting[2] or Nancy Pelosi, who had an opposition senator live-tweeting her location[3] during the insurrection, or the guy who drove up from Alabama with a list of names, 3 handguns, an AR15 and a cooler full of molotov cocktails [4] would all beg to differ. https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-colleague-brian-d-sicknick https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-c... https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/01/13/democratic-rep-says-authorities-probing-her-report-that-her-office-panic-buttons-were-removed-before-capitol-riot/?sh=243cf445bce4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/01/13/democratic-... https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/12/nation/colorado-republican-tweeted-about-pelosis-location-during-capitol-siege-shes-now-facing-calls-resign/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/12/nation/colorado-repub... https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/alabama-man-charged-possession-eleven-molotov-cocktails-found-near-protest-us-capitol https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/alabama-man-charged-posse...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wtfiswiththis 6y ago

Funded by the Mercer family, Parler was a single purpose site. Not independent, not neutral. This is not a debate about free speech but of one of accountability towards entities that took exacting efforts to radicalize and activate political terrorist and reality denial in a good portion of the US population. Parler Reportedly Backed by Mercers, Same Family That Funded Cambridge Analytica: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/parler-reportedly-backed-by-mercers-same-family-that-funded-cambridge-analytica/ar-BB1b1deS https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/parler-reportedly-... >Hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer, former principal investor in the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, and his daughter Rebekah Mercer are among Parler's financial backers, according to a new report. >People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal about the Mercers' ties to Parler—an American microblogging and social networking service launched in 2018 that has a significant user base of Trump supporters. Parler CEO John Matze confirmed that Rebekah Mercer was a lead investor in the early stages of the company and that her funding was conditional on the app relinquishing control to users on what they can see. Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit is damning: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20449127-amazon_response https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20449127-amazon_res... >In interview's Parler's CEO stated he doesn't think it is Parler's obligation to monitor the full range of user activity. >Content encouraging violence continued to grow rapidly after the events of Jan 6 >During a call with Amazon Parler CEO stated they had a backlog of 26,000 reported pieces of content. >Parler CEO posted "we could be operational within 12 hours of downtime from Amazon. That they had prepared for events like this by not relying on services like AWS and having bare metal products." The Mercer funded Parler project doesn't think it needs to moderate it's content, has a backlog of reports they have been unwilling to surmount, and they stated they don't need Amazon anyways because they prepared for it. Please don't bother complaining about AWS depriving them of necessary services unless you can prove a requirement to knowingly disseminate terrorist propaganda without functioning moderation.

kemitchell 6y ago
> Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit is damning If there's any damnation to come, it's from the court, not from the parties. I read both the original complaint and Amazon's opposition, front to back. Both are pleadings---one side's statement of events and how the law should apply to their version. Not established fact. Not neutral determinations. I do commend Amazon's counsel, at least at surface level. Doran and Wickers left a strong impression.

kemitchell 6y ago

Why did you omit "Filing:" from the headline submitted? I'd argue even Ars' headline is clickbait, since people uninvolved in the legal system don't know what "Filing:" means. This is not established fact. It's what Amazon has alleged in its filed response to Parler's lawsuit. They might yet prove it. But they haven't done that yet.

lupire 6y ago
99% of HN headlines are not court decisions. There's a bizarre meme where people apply a lower standard of proof to PR campaigns and random bloggers than statements made under penalty of perjury.

JoeyBananas 6y ago

"More than 100" isn't a big deal at the scale Parler was operating.