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Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

332 points by eu 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
All politics aside, I was more sympathetic to the "build your own alternative" argument regarding the general deplatforming trend of the last few years. Now I'm not nearly as sympathetic to that argument. Having POTUS45 removed from twitter was basically the chance in a lifetime for Parler, and in that critical 48 hours their hosting provider pulled the rug out from them and their app was removed from BOTH app stores (I have a hard time believing there wasn't some form of coordination here). It seems especially sinister to me, but maybe that's because I'm viewing it outside of a political lens.
tptacek 6y ago
Here's the denial of the TRO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKgWZyCq/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg... Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to lose. I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the time. You almost have to not know anything about the hosting business to think there could be a case here. But if you need to read a judge laughing Parler's claims off, well, now you can. Real "based" energy in excerpting the AWS AUP in their complaint and clipping it right before the clause that gives AWS the right to terminate service without notice to customers who violate their AUP. The judge, uh, noticed. (As the judge points out, among the many problems with Parler's restraint of trade argument, there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed.)
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  Expanding on this, "courts have repeatedly emphasized, an injunction represents an 'extraordinary remedy' that is never awarded as a matter of right... For a preliminary injunction to issue, the moving party has the burden of demonstrating all four of the following elements: (1) that it is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) that it is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; (3) that the balance of equities tips in its favor; and (4) that an injunction serves the public interest." Parler failed the first test.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    And likely the third and fourth as well. The judge mentions explicitly that they don't think reinstating Parler is in the public interest. Clearly Parler will suffer irreparable harm here, but they failed by a good margin to meet any of the other tests here.
- snoshy 6y ago
  It seemed apparent right when the case was filed that Parler didn't have a leg to stand on. It was partly a play for publicity that plays well into their customer demographics, and a dying gasp of trying to seek some kind of injunctive help from the administration, no matter how impossible it seemed. Judging by how weak their infrastructure was in the first place, getting any kind of resilient hosting in place after all the industry behemoths turned their backs on Parler was clear not a viable option. If you can't get your site to work well with all the best tools, you really have little hope in the wild west.
  - mercurialshark 6y ago
    Tech attorney here (with no relation to this specific matter). I wouldn't say they don't have a leg to stand on. I think it will prove to be very interesting.
    - snoshy 6y ago
      I'm curious... how so?
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Say more!
    - acdha 6y ago
      Can you explain?
      - mercurialshark 6y ago
        Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment works. That's not how anything works...
        Someone1234 6y ago
        Maybe they, like me, read the court's frankly damning opinion and didn't find that your fact-less argument from authority contributed to the discussion. If you wanted to write a "long form" (?) reply then you could have done so. In the meantime the hand wave above has to stand on its own merits; or more specifically fall on its lack thereof.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The judge went so far as to explain why Parler's motion fails on all of the points, not just the "likelihood of success on the merits". That's a pretty irate judge: they're going out of their way, incurring more work upon themselves, to berate you. The only surprising things here are a) it took the judge a week to deny this motion, and b) AWS hasn't asked for the case to be transferred to arbitration (given the mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS somewhere).
  - akersten 6y ago
    > (given the mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS somewhere). This was the most surprising angle to me - that the case didn't fail prima facie on this clause alone. I guess at least it serves to really emphasize how bad of a case they brought.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The judge went so far as to explain why Parler’s motion fails on all of the points, Well, actually, they said that it could pass on irreperable harm, but that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that much (but not all) of the harm could be addressed by money damages. It did fail the the other 3 elements, and the balancing test in the alternate Ninth Circuit criteria.
    - someguydave 6y ago
      In the balancing test the judge asserted that granting the TRO would do damage to AWS, which is laughable. The bias here is clear.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        The harm to AWS is in "interfer[ing] with AWS’s ability to prevent its services from being used to promote—and, as the events of January 6, 2021 have demonstrated, even cause—violence." I wouldn't call that a laughable claim...
        6y ago
- boringg 6y ago
  I think they probably know they have no case but are trying to fan the flames of the culture war to generate support and keep their name in the media until they find other hosting services.
  - SantalBlush 6y ago
    This seems likely. They bring a weak case, and when it gets thrown out, they can say that further proves their victimhood.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      Victimhood, the new oil of the 21st century.
      - boringg 6y ago
        The lifeblood of the GOP
        trident5000 6y ago
        Goes even further than that.
        boringg 6y ago
        True
  - curryst 6y ago
    > keep their name in the media until they find other hosting services. This is the winner right here. It's a rather brilliant play, it keeps reminding their users that they exist. If they can find new hosting before they run out of ways to get in the headlines, they stand a good chance of keeping many of their users. I would expect to see another wild filing after discovery. They'll find a quote from low-level employees from Amazon and Twitter talking to each other, inflate their credentials so they seem like they have authority, and then make a Sherman Act claim out of it. I'm curious what lawyer would be willing to file these. The judge even takes the time to point out the places where Parler undermines their own case. This seems like it's just sacrificing your legal career; who would hire you after showing up in court and arguing this with a straight face?
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  IANAL and I'm not saying I disagree with your conclusion, but I do think the case is more interesting than just AWS booting a malicious customer (with regards to their TOS). > there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed This is funny (as in, LOL funny) to point out because it makes parler seem completely inept, but it's only technically correct. They just negotiated a fat contract to host twitter, and that's set to go live in the next few months. Can that really not be considered an endorsement of twitter's content with respect to AWS' ToS? It's not like twitter just signed up for an AWS account like the rest of us do. There was a bidding and negotiation process. Sales teams on both sides worked on that contract. I don't think it's so unreasonable to take the existence of that contract as evidence that AWS reviewed twitter's content and deemed it acceptable content. Why does this matter? Legally, I don't think it does. I don't see any good reason why AWS shouldn't be allowed to selectively enforce their ToS. But Parler sought to compete directly with twitter. At the time of account termination, they were growing at a rate of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of users per day, and in a way where it's not hard to imagine it being zero-sum (twitter users terminating their accounts and going to parler). I don't think the case would succeed, but I do think that parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. It was rejected because "Parler...proffered only faint and factually inaccurate speculation in support of a Sherman Act violation. AWS, in contrast...submitted sworn testimony disputing Parler’s allegations." That said, Parler "has not yet had an opportunity to conduct discovery," so maybe there's a bombshell text somewhere.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      > Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. Well, tried to. They didn't do a good job of it at all. What they actually alleged (relevant towards this theory) was: * There was set to a mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler * AWS also hosts Twitter ... They didn't even allege that AWS conspire with Twitter. Sure, they don't have any evidence of that conspiracy without discovery, but they didn't even allege a fact that could be proven with discovery. These two facts are supposed to sustain the theory that AWS had no other reason to kick off Parler other than a conspiracy to keep Twitter the dominant platform. Despite the complaint itself opening up by alleging that AWS kicked off Parler because Parler espouses conservative views and later conceding that Parler knew that its content violated AWS's terms, albeit Parler was attempting to rectify it. There's another issue with Parler's claims that I haven't seen anyone else bring up: if Parler was expecting the influx of Twitter users as a result of Twitter banning Trump, how would kicking off Parler keep these users on Twitter or otherwise buttress Twitter's dominance?
- fasdf1122 6y ago
  This is crazy, it proves the censorship and corruption runs deeper than just some tech CEOs.
- perlgeek 6y ago
  A bit off-topic, but after reading this and a few other court decisions (for example in the context of contesting election results), it strikes me that they are pretty well-written. They provide context for a lay audience, and while their language isn't simple, it is understandable to a non-native speaker like me. Is this usual? or is it that for such cases with high publicity, the courts select judges that are know as good writers?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    This is pretty normal. Judicial decisions are, in general (though not all of this applies to every decision) written to be read by people remote from the decision (either in time or otherwise) and be clear, to justify themselves in the case of appeal, to make clear to the parties what the expectations are of them under them, and to make clear to future courts (including the same court) what was determined and why to support proceedings to enforce, modify, etc., the results. There’s an extensive body of specialized knowledge and terminology in the law, and a lot of that comes through making short-hand out of bits of decisions or enactments for the convenience of having brevity in reference, but with decisions clarity, both of results and reasoning, is a pretty big goal.
  - curryst 6y ago
    That's fairly normal. It depends on the judge to a degree, as each has their own writing style, but most tend to write fairly clearly like this. I dated a court clerk and asked about the writing style, and was told that they write that way because the parties have a right to understand the court's opinion. Most judges take that to mean that they should write in a manner that a layperson can understand fairly well, because there are members of both parties that are not lawyers, and their case may end up being cited by a pro se plaintiff or defendant (i.e. they are not represented by a lawyer). > the courts select judges that are know as good writers? These aren't generally written solely by the judge. The judge's clerk will often draft some or all of it, which the judge can then edit or sign off on. The judge may also consult it with other people or judge's if they want or need to.
- walrus01 6y ago
  > you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers I absolutely agree with you. This is as true now as it has ever been, since the earliest days of purely commercial httpd hosting operations in like, 1994 or thereabouts. Long before the existence of individual virtual machines that anyone with a credit card could rent, hosting companies and colocation/datacenter type places have regularly declined to do business with customers they perceive as toxic, and have ended hosting relationships with customers they no longer wanted.
- barbacoa 6y ago
  >To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the time. They haven't released the actual contract itself but from what Parler said in their lawsuit, they had a clause in their contract that if AWS wanted to terminate their contract with cause, AWS would have to give Parler 30 days notice to cure the contract breach or get booted. AWS did not do this instead giving them 24 hours. Edit: Reading AWS terms does appear to give them the right to terminate. not ashamed to be proven wrong. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
  - zaltekk 6y ago
    The contract is the standard Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy to which it refers. As mentioned above, they don’t have to give you 30 days before suspending for violating the AUP.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Amazon had been warning parlor about their content and lack of moderation for months.
    - bleah1000 6y ago
      That is not what the contract says (at least from the current lawsuit). Amazon has to formally give a notice that gives them 30 days. Amazon telling Parler that they are violating is not in accordance what most people believe the contract says. Now it's possible that the contract has some other wording, or that Amazon will argue that they didn't need to be as formal as Parler thinks. But as this goes through the courts, we will find out more.
      - 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dukeofdoom 6y ago
  Amazon did not give Parler time to remedy the issue, which was in the contract. And is now trying to blur the line between a suspension and termination. Robert Barnes, on the Parler lawsuit https://youtu.be/pAFZw7fGY4A https://youtu.be/pAFZw7fGY4A Viva Frey, a lawyer did a breakdown on the lawsuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 Robert Barnes, On section 230, and the tech lawsuits https://youtu.be/rD-Zb0nTJw0 https://youtu.be/rD-Zb0nTJw0 Their take on it is that the tech companies have gone too far, and are too arrogant. And now the political climate has shifted. So they will start losing some of these section 230 related cases.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I'm not going to bother watching Youtube videos on this, because the authority I'm citing here is the judge who wrote the ruling in the TRO, citing the AWS contracts that show Amazon was not under the circumstances required to give Parler notice.
  - ben509 6y ago
    Barnes and Frey didn't read the contract closely. Uncivil Law is a friend of theirs and he goes over the contract here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhWDKx9myI0&t=6187s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhWDKx9myI0&t=6187s He's a conservative lawyer, so he doesn't have a political bias against Parler. They just don't have a case. I think Parler's lawyers misread the contract and thought the 30-day notice applied to termination for cause.
    - OniBait 6y ago
      Yeah. Barnes and Frei didn't read the contract at all. They were just going off the court filings. I don't think they were aware of the additional provision about AWS having the right to terminate right after the 30 day suspension notice provision.
- crb002 6y ago
  Parler will win in discovery that AWS allowed far more content on Twitter etc without breaching contract - and that staff worked overtime to remove everything AWS had issue with. This was 100% about protecting the Twitter advertising revenue stream to AWS.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Twitter is not hosted in AWS. They just signed the contract, the content hasn’t moved yet.
- Trias11 6y ago
  This case is likely going to be more hairy than AWS wants it to be.
- la6471 6y ago
  It’s really simple. I can decide to do business with you or decide not to do business with you. Also I don’t understand what is preventing Parler from simply hosting a forum? Unless it is because none of the hosting companies want them? So that is it. Let’s stop regurgitating on this forever. Let’s move on.
unethical_ban 6y ago
I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a court order should get a site booted off the web entirely.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues They booted Parler off for violence issues. One may personally disagree about where to draw that blurry line, but I think there's more than enough plausible deniability here. This is not the trigger of a grand slippery slope. If Amazon drops a company purely for non-violent political differences, by all means, lets raise those pitchforks.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Apparently mostly facebook was used, not parler.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      Sure, maybe? Doesn't mean parler wasn't a toxic violent place. If you want to hold facebook to a higher standard, by all means, I agree.
    - snoshy 6y ago
      This smacks of whataboutism to me. No doubt Facebook hosted large amounts of this activity, but it does not negate the fact that Parler did so as well. Amazon's court filing detailed hundreds of incidents that they had given Parler months to fix.
      - oh_sigh 6y ago
        Crying "whataboutism" is just a meme-y way to shutdown claims of hypocrisy. Husband: Two glasses of white wine in one night honey? You need to cut back for your health's sake Wife: But dear, you drink a handle of vodka every night and have refused any attempts at intervention. Husband: A-ha, classic whataboutism edit: I'd love to respond to the people below me, but HN has decided that one post an hour is too much (despite having a 10 year old account and 4000+ karma)
scohesc 6y ago
Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is horrendously thought out. The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the same companies that they're doing business with. Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou" (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and will likely not survive the next few years. The true future of free speech is through federated platforms/services similar to how email servers were back 20-25 years ago. People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows.
- benburleson 6y ago
  It wasn't even that their goal was to be a "free speech platform," they existed specifically as a platform for radical conservatives (only). If they cared about free speech, they wouldn't have aligned with any specific ideology.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  > People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows. I'd argue the completely other way: people have traded convenience for freedom. The convenience of using the Internet for has massively eroded freedom of speech. It's been immensely convenient for tens of thousands of people to be able to say any kind of harmful trash on the Internet without suffering any negative consequences and that's what they have been doing for years now, and so now we all pay the price. The term "freedom of speech" has been appropriated by alt-right and modern Nazi movements and is now associated almost strictly with, which means that it is now feasible to call this freedom a real and actual risk to human life and take real steps towards curbing that freedom in general, even for people who are not abusing it to actively work towards harming other people.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    Another problem is the term 'harm' (just like 'freedom of speech') has also been poisoned by those on the left who would have you believe words are more dangerous than actual violence. When actual discussions and conversations cannot take place under the guise of pretend harm, real violence happens. I do wholeheartedly believe the attack on the capitol is just the result of a disenfranchised part of the population who've been shit on and deplatformed for the last 4 years by the establishment (including Orange Man, FWIW).
throwaway45349 6y ago
As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand and pretend the risk of de-platforming never existed.
- freedomben 6y ago
  If you listen to the Megyn Kelly interview with Parler's CEO, they did expect this and had a second entirely different hosting provider lined up. They would have made the move by the deadline too, except the second hosting provider also dropped them due to extreme pressure.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    I do believe that should've also been in their threat model - these guys should've acted like they were hosting The Pirate Bay 2 given the state of American politics. For instance, they could've had a low-traffic backup in read-only mode, or prevent new sign-ups. Or have an application layer switch to reduce outgoing bandwidth (HTML only) to squeeze into a coloc facility on short notice.
    - Threeve303 6y ago
      Engineering the site well to stay online might be beside the point now. Parler wanted to be taken down so that they could fight this legal battle, likely with an eye on Section 230. As an added bonus, they can frame the removal as persecution.
      - bilbo0s 6y ago
        Clearly it's a battle they're likely to lose, but I wish them luck. The only way forward in my view is to actually change laws. Anything short of that, is a fool's errand. All this is already settled law and has been litigated previously multiple times. You have to change the law in order to reclassify these entities if you want things to change. What orgs like Parler keep doing right now is spitting into the wind.
sjansen 6y ago
Not really a surprise given the weakness of their arguments. If you’d like to hear a lawyer read and comment on their complaint, I recommend https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50 https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Vive Frei has done a good job breaking down the lawsuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiZKk4_-lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiZKk4_-lA
philshem 6y ago
Parler, or at least their data, is ironically back on AWS: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler
sparrish 6y ago
Amazon has a right to associate (or not associate) with whomever they want. This is a fundamental principle of freedom - something Parler should know, understand, and espouse. Why are they fighting? They should be applauding.
- minikites 6y ago
  Free market for thee, but not for me.
  - crooked-v 6y ago
    > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
    - mjburgess 6y ago
      It is propagandistic to call that "conservatism". It's commonly called, "tribalism". And yes, healthy politics is conducted on the basis that human societies are tribal. Democracy is just the "accounting system" for competing tribal concerns. Universalism, "classical liberalism", etc. is an occasional side effect of "healthy tribalism". It cannot be a political goal, because there are genuine contradictions in the preferences of various groups -- and they cannot be all jointly-realised. Faux-universalism fails to acknowledge this an ends up preferencing the "natural" distribution of resources, ie., that arising from the most powerful groups (taking, competing) with the weaksest.
    - glangdale 6y ago
      This is certainly true of modern "Trumpian" conservatism. I think it's possible to imagine a cautious centre-right conservative for whom this characterization does not hold (a la Buckley's quote "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.") I'm not either kind of conservative myself, but I'd much rather deal with the old-school variety, who at their best represent a reasonable chunk of society.
minikites 6y ago
A lot of free market advocates sure seem bent out of shape when the free market works against them for once. Amazon shouldn't be required to host violent hate speech and I don't understand how someone can believe in "the free market" and argue otherwise.
jariel 6y ago
There is way, way too much room for political manoeuvring here - we should all be scared. Facebook is used to coordinate literal genocide. [1] And so AWS everyone is cool with that? I get that Parler was being used to do something 'violent and bad in the US' and that there was arguably not enough oversight - so they are a 'problem case'. But the system is a little bit hypocritical, I don't feel it's backed by science or some kind of reasonable application of policy and frankly, I have little trust in the judicial systems ability to sort this out. While many people are happy 'That Guy' is gone from politics (for now) - we need to wake up to the crude realization that 'regular politics' was never fair or reasonable to begin with and that this issue is going to weaponized by those who think they can do that, and they will use 'Parler and 'President Voldemort' example as cover for whatever it is they want to do. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  What does it mean, concretely, to "wake up" to this realization? I certainly acknowledge that Amazon might make bad content moderation decisions in the future, and if they do I'll speak out against those decisions. I just don't follow why I'd need to do something about that today.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Because the insurrection on capitol hill provides the cover of legitimacy for people to act in a manner that also may be very inconsistent and politicized. Jeff Bezos owns news publications, he has a worldview and likes to flaunt it to some extent, moreover, these systems are prone to the possibility of arbitrary, and often political decisions. Note that historically, rich dudes bought newspapers to attack their political and business rivals. Though I don't think it's entirely like that today, we can't say there isn't some of that going on. Literally Emamnuel Macron and Angela Merkel have spoken out about the arbitrary 'banning' of groups and individuals, and because there is an 'imminent consideration over here in the US' doesn't abnegate our broader concerns about arbitrary banning. The EU will likely be acting on it. Banning the KKK is not something anyone is worried about. Banning some app because we don't like the extent to which they have moderated their discussions, is a much more slippery slope. Especially in light of other institutions that don't moderate very well either. If the case could rationally be made that FB and Twitter are in the end, equally problematic in their moderation ... then it's likely they would not get banned from various places - they have money, power, influence and possibly friendly relations with other platforms. It's a dangerous precedent and the EU leaders are essentially correct to speak out and even more so to act.
navbaker 6y ago
I've been seeing posts from some of my more conservative friends pop up in my FB feed advertising their imminent departure for MeWe. My surface level Google research tells me MeWe bills their service as "lightly moderated". I'm wondering how long before the spotlight gets turned on them and they're forced to either up their standards or face the same fate?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's not obvious to me that the spotlight has any special powers to make companies adopt high moderation standards. 4chan is still up, after all.
travisoneill1 6y ago
1. Democratic party threatens tech industry with heavy regulation because they don't censor to the degree that the Democrats want. 2. Democratic party takes over control of the government. 3. Major companies in the tech industry work together to boot a competitor, and political opponent of the Democratic party off the internet. At what point is this a legit first amendment issue? The government can't just pressure private companies to do things the government can't do and then hide behind the fact that they are private entities, right?
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  An alternative framing: 1. Republican party threatens teach industry with heavy regulation if they censor to the degree that the tech industry wishes to. 2. Republican party looses power. 3. Major companies in the tech industry do what they wanted to do the whole time. At what point is (1) a first amendment issue? The government shouldn't pressure private companies to do things that violate those groups first amendment rights.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so they can save money on moderation. Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more.
    - esoterica 6y ago
      They can't sell ads next to terroristic threats or other forms of extremism. So they would absolutely need to moderate even without political pressure.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so they can save money on moderation. No, they'd like to be approachable by the broadest groups possible (or really the broadest set of ad-viewing groups possible). Calls to violence are unappealing to most people. This is the reason unmoderated platforms fail: people don't enjoy spending time on them. To be palatable to normal people, the sites need moderation, which they do, to appeal to users. > Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more. This is completely untrue. Here's one of the first Trump related posts I can find: https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-cross-the-line-on-social-media https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-cr..., notably "Though it apparently violated Facebook’s own internal guidelines, Trump’s video was not removed". They've been, since the beginning, getting blowback for making exceptions for politicians instead of evenhandedly applying their policies. What you've seen over the past 5 years is simply the platforms growing in influence (and thus controversy). The act of not moderating trump when he violated existing policies was an attempt to appear neutral to conservative users, while actually biasing to more loosely moderate a particular conservative. I can only hope platforms have learned from their mistakes.
paxys 6y ago
This is a great thread summarizing Parler's case and Amazon's response – https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1349162165698252802 https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134916216569825280....
ngngngng 6y ago
Reminder that Parler's claim to be in support of free speech was bogus, as their CEO would personally work alongside a team of volunteers to ban anyone that joined the platform and posted left wing views. https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/?sh=26f7eac75016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...
guerrilla 6y ago
Just one question I haven't seen answered: In what way are they supposedly a competitor of Amazon?
- jcranmer 6y ago
  They're not. They're a competitor to Twitter, and they're claiming (or attempting to, at least) that Amazon colluded with Twitter to keep them out of the market.
alkonaut 6y ago
Can they really expect to be reinstated? Suing for breach of contract and demanding compensation I can understand.
elldoubleyew 6y ago
I don't understand what's keeping the Parler team from just standing up their own servers in a garage somewhere. Its still an early stage platform, and its not like they were experiencing explosive growth as far as I understand. This seems like a perfect use case for a small home server. If they find a revenue stream then they can scale to renting some rack space somewhere. I know its not as easy as clicking a button in AWS but its not totally debilitating.
- jki275 6y ago
  I think you underestimate their size. They were a lot larger than a home server. As far as hosting, it can certainly be done privately, but it requires more work than cloud hosting, as gab learned when they went entirely internally hosted.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    They had thousands of machines, but it's hard to imagine why that is. It would be very interesting to get a description of what their hardware is actually doing. Considering how StackeOverflow ran on a small handful of machines to a pretty large scale (and still isn't excessive), I can't see how more than a few machines should be necessary to run a site that serves small texts, even among millions of users. There is one caveat though and that's media. If media is transcoded, and/or if more than a small fraction of messages contain video - then the service might face using most of its resources towards that. But in that case , if I was running their ops I'd just disable media attachments while figuring out how to run the full service.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
Honestly Parler just needs to park their front end someplace, don’t think anyone would be the wiser if they used AWS on the backend for their database/storage. But on the other hand Parler’s tech people seem mediocre so who knows if they could manage to not leak AWS ips or headers that would tip off they are using AWS and allow Amazon to figure out which account. Would only take one slip. If they pay their bills and it wasn’t dead obvious AWS was involved then Amazon might not try hard to find them.
deleted 6y ago
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balozi 6y ago
Maybe AWS was right, maybe they were wrong. Ditto Parler. All I know is that there is now a mental shift in our orgs where our cloud and infrastructure providers are now considered potential significant hostiles.
lorax_108 6y ago
awww i guess the russian propaganda site will have to stay in russia...lol
theqult 6y ago
"Oh no ! Anyway..." cit.
repeatafterme1 6y ago
Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "I am ok with others cancelling companies/people I don't agree with politically". Deep breath out. Ahhh, that feels much better! PD. Just don't you dare cancel those I agree with!
jeofken 6y ago
Makes sense. Just like no one should be forced to bake a wedding cake, rent out a car to a <25yo, not refuse a hire based on sex or race, it is also not right for any man to force an equal child of creation to host a website. Luckily there are federated protocols for social media which can be used by free speech absolutists.
jeremyfromca 6y ago
Censorship is good. The republican party needs to be abolished. Trump supporters should be required to go to mandatory re-education classes to deprogram them. If they refuse they should be fired from their jobs.
drummer 6y ago
> "It sort of made me laugh a little bit," she said. "Has Amazon read the rest of the Internet? Ninety-eight pieces of content or whatever is not that many. I mean, has Amazon read Amazon?" Has Facebook read Facebook? Has Twitter read Twitter?
cush 6y ago
Imagine trying to sue Amazon. Good luck with that.
TeeMassive 6y ago
> U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein sided with Amazon, which argued that Parler would not take down posts threatening public safety even in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and that it is within Amazon's rights to punish the company over its refusal. The problem with that is that the Capitol protests and riot were organized on Facebook and Twitter while Parler doesn't have events nor anything kind of organizing was found in the leak.
robin21 6y ago
I wonder if we will get to a point where services will run background checks on the companies that come on their platforms to make sure they adhere to their ideological viewpoints. Or blacklists will be created barring certain companies from doing business with a group of companies all at once. Like a reverse boycott kind of thing - I’m sure there is a good term for it. The capitalistic profit incentive has largely prevented this kind of behavior up until now but with left leaning oligopolies it starts to edge towards a market failure.
rurounijones 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/videos has an entire video series on this (and other) cases where he goes through the filings by both sides. Recommended watching.
godmode2019 6y ago
A YouTube lawyer does a pretty good break down of the case. Parlers suit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 Amazon response: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I don't know enough about law to be able to tell if it's being presented with or without a bias, but that intro in the first link did not give me hope
  - godmode2019 6y ago
    His content is pretty unbiased , sitting on the fence most of the time, the topics however are geared to his audience.
robbywashere_ 6y ago
I've been following hacker news for nearly 9+ years now. Its funny to see now is the time that everyone is finally recognizing the concept of a 'tech monopoly' when it comes time to silence a violent and hateful group of white trash morons.
- leovingi 6y ago
  >white trash You should apologize for this racist comment

332 points by eu 6y ago

All politics aside, I was more sympathetic to the "build your own alternative" argument regarding the general deplatforming trend of the last few years. Now I'm not nearly as sympathetic to that argument. Having POTUS45 removed from twitter was basically the chance in a lifetime for Parler, and in that critical 48 hours their hosting provider pulled the rug out from them and their app was removed from BOTH app stores (I have a hard time believing there wasn't some form of coordination here). It seems especially sinister to me, but maybe that's because I'm viewing it outside of a political lens.

tptacek 6y ago

Here's the denial of the TRO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKgWZyCq/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg... Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to lose. I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the time. You almost have to not know anything about the hosting business to think there could be a case here. But if you need to read a judge laughing Parler's claims off, well, now you can. Real "based" energy in excerpting the AWS AUP in their complaint and clipping it right before the clause that gives AWS the right to terminate service without notice to customers who violate their AUP. The judge, uh, noticed. (As the judge points out, among the many problems with Parler's restraint of trade argument, there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed.)

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
Expanding on this, "courts have repeatedly emphasized, an injunction represents an 'extraordinary remedy' that is never awarded as a matter of right... For a preliminary injunction to issue, the moving party has the burden of demonstrating all four of the following elements: (1) that it is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) that it is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; (3) that the balance of equities tips in its favor; and (4) that an injunction serves the public interest." Parler failed the first test.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  And likely the third and fourth as well. The judge mentions explicitly that they don't think reinstating Parler is in the public interest. Clearly Parler will suffer irreparable harm here, but they failed by a good margin to meet any of the other tests here.
snoshy 6y ago
It seemed apparent right when the case was filed that Parler didn't have a leg to stand on. It was partly a play for publicity that plays well into their customer demographics, and a dying gasp of trying to seek some kind of injunctive help from the administration, no matter how impossible it seemed. Judging by how weak their infrastructure was in the first place, getting any kind of resilient hosting in place after all the industry behemoths turned their backs on Parler was clear not a viable option. If you can't get your site to work well with all the best tools, you really have little hope in the wild west.
- mercurialshark 6y ago
  Tech attorney here (with no relation to this specific matter). I wouldn't say they don't have a leg to stand on. I think it will prove to be very interesting.
  - snoshy 6y ago
    I'm curious... how so?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Say more!
  - acdha 6y ago
    Can you explain?
    - mercurialshark 6y ago
      Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment works. That's not how anything works...
      - Someone1234 6y ago
        Maybe they, like me, read the court's frankly damning opinion and didn't find that your fact-less argument from authority contributed to the discussion. If you wanted to write a "long form" (?) reply then you could have done so. In the meantime the hand wave above has to stand on its own merits; or more specifically fall on its lack thereof.
jcranmer 6y ago
The judge went so far as to explain why Parler's motion fails on all of the points, not just the "likelihood of success on the merits". That's a pretty irate judge: they're going out of their way, incurring more work upon themselves, to berate you. The only surprising things here are a) it took the judge a week to deny this motion, and b) AWS hasn't asked for the case to be transferred to arbitration (given the mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS somewhere).
- akersten 6y ago
  > (given the mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS somewhere). This was the most surprising angle to me - that the case didn't fail prima facie on this clause alone. I guess at least it serves to really emphasize how bad of a case they brought.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The judge went so far as to explain why Parler’s motion fails on all of the points, Well, actually, they said that it could pass on irreperable harm, but that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that much (but not all) of the harm could be addressed by money damages. It did fail the the other 3 elements, and the balancing test in the alternate Ninth Circuit criteria.
  - someguydave 6y ago
    In the balancing test the judge asserted that granting the TRO would do damage to AWS, which is laughable. The bias here is clear.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      The harm to AWS is in "interfer[ing] with AWS’s ability to prevent its services from being used to promote—and, as the events of January 6, 2021 have demonstrated, even cause—violence." I wouldn't call that a laughable claim...
      - 6y ago
boringg 6y ago
I think they probably know they have no case but are trying to fan the flames of the culture war to generate support and keep their name in the media until they find other hosting services.
- SantalBlush 6y ago
  This seems likely. They bring a weak case, and when it gets thrown out, they can say that further proves their victimhood.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    Victimhood, the new oil of the 21st century.
    - boringg 6y ago
      The lifeblood of the GOP
      - trident5000 6y ago
        Goes even further than that.
        boringg 6y ago
        True
- curryst 6y ago
  > keep their name in the media until they find other hosting services. This is the winner right here. It's a rather brilliant play, it keeps reminding their users that they exist. If they can find new hosting before they run out of ways to get in the headlines, they stand a good chance of keeping many of their users. I would expect to see another wild filing after discovery. They'll find a quote from low-level employees from Amazon and Twitter talking to each other, inflate their credentials so they seem like they have authority, and then make a Sherman Act claim out of it. I'm curious what lawyer would be willing to file these. The judge even takes the time to point out the places where Parler undermines their own case. This seems like it's just sacrificing your legal career; who would hire you after showing up in court and arguing this with a straight face?
nickysielicki 6y ago
IANAL and I'm not saying I disagree with your conclusion, but I do think the case is more interesting than just AWS booting a malicious customer (with regards to their TOS). > there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed This is funny (as in, LOL funny) to point out because it makes parler seem completely inept, but it's only technically correct. They just negotiated a fat contract to host twitter, and that's set to go live in the next few months. Can that really not be considered an endorsement of twitter's content with respect to AWS' ToS? It's not like twitter just signed up for an AWS account like the rest of us do. There was a bidding and negotiation process. Sales teams on both sides worked on that contract. I don't think it's so unreasonable to take the existence of that contract as evidence that AWS reviewed twitter's content and deemed it acceptable content. Why does this matter? Legally, I don't think it does. I don't see any good reason why AWS shouldn't be allowed to selectively enforce their ToS. But Parler sought to compete directly with twitter. At the time of account termination, they were growing at a rate of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of users per day, and in a way where it's not hard to imagine it being zero-sum (twitter users terminating their accounts and going to parler). I don't think the case would succeed, but I do think that parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. It was rejected because "Parler...proffered only faint and factually inaccurate speculation in support of a Sherman Act violation. AWS, in contrast...submitted sworn testimony disputing Parler’s allegations." That said, Parler "has not yet had an opportunity to conduct discovery," so maybe there's a bombshell text somewhere.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act. Well, tried to. They didn't do a good job of it at all. What they actually alleged (relevant towards this theory) was: * There was set to a mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler * AWS also hosts Twitter ... They didn't even allege that AWS conspire with Twitter. Sure, they don't have any evidence of that conspiracy without discovery, but they didn't even allege a fact that could be proven with discovery. These two facts are supposed to sustain the theory that AWS had no other reason to kick off Parler other than a conspiracy to keep Twitter the dominant platform. Despite the complaint itself opening up by alleging that AWS kicked off Parler because Parler espouses conservative views and later conceding that Parler knew that its content violated AWS's terms, albeit Parler was attempting to rectify it. There's another issue with Parler's claims that I haven't seen anyone else bring up: if Parler was expecting the influx of Twitter users as a result of Twitter banning Trump, how would kicking off Parler keep these users on Twitter or otherwise buttress Twitter's dominance?
fasdf1122 6y ago
This is crazy, it proves the censorship and corruption runs deeper than just some tech CEOs.
perlgeek 6y ago
A bit off-topic, but after reading this and a few other court decisions (for example in the context of contesting election results), it strikes me that they are pretty well-written. They provide context for a lay audience, and while their language isn't simple, it is understandable to a non-native speaker like me. Is this usual? or is it that for such cases with high publicity, the courts select judges that are know as good writers?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  This is pretty normal. Judicial decisions are, in general (though not all of this applies to every decision) written to be read by people remote from the decision (either in time or otherwise) and be clear, to justify themselves in the case of appeal, to make clear to the parties what the expectations are of them under them, and to make clear to future courts (including the same court) what was determined and why to support proceedings to enforce, modify, etc., the results. There’s an extensive body of specialized knowledge and terminology in the law, and a lot of that comes through making short-hand out of bits of decisions or enactments for the convenience of having brevity in reference, but with decisions clarity, both of results and reasoning, is a pretty big goal.
- curryst 6y ago
  That's fairly normal. It depends on the judge to a degree, as each has their own writing style, but most tend to write fairly clearly like this. I dated a court clerk and asked about the writing style, and was told that they write that way because the parties have a right to understand the court's opinion. Most judges take that to mean that they should write in a manner that a layperson can understand fairly well, because there are members of both parties that are not lawyers, and their case may end up being cited by a pro se plaintiff or defendant (i.e. they are not represented by a lawyer). > the courts select judges that are know as good writers? These aren't generally written solely by the judge. The judge's clerk will often draft some or all of it, which the judge can then edit or sign off on. The judge may also consult it with other people or judge's if they want or need to.
walrus01 6y ago
> you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers I absolutely agree with you. This is as true now as it has ever been, since the earliest days of purely commercial httpd hosting operations in like, 1994 or thereabouts. Long before the existence of individual virtual machines that anyone with a credit card could rent, hosting companies and colocation/datacenter type places have regularly declined to do business with customers they perceive as toxic, and have ended hosting relationships with customers they no longer wanted.
barbacoa 6y ago
>To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the time. They haven't released the actual contract itself but from what Parler said in their lawsuit, they had a clause in their contract that if AWS wanted to terminate their contract with cause, AWS would have to give Parler 30 days notice to cure the contract breach or get booted. AWS did not do this instead giving them 24 hours. Edit: Reading AWS terms does appear to give them the right to terminate. not ashamed to be proven wrong. https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
- zaltekk 6y ago
  The contract is the standard Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy to which it refers. As mentioned above, they don’t have to give you 30 days before suspending for violating the AUP.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- TylerE 6y ago
  Amazon had been warning parlor about their content and lack of moderation for months.
  - bleah1000 6y ago
    That is not what the contract says (at least from the current lawsuit). Amazon has to formally give a notice that gives them 30 days. Amazon telling Parler that they are violating is not in accordance what most people believe the contract says. Now it's possible that the contract has some other wording, or that Amazon will argue that they didn't need to be as formal as Parler thinks. But as this goes through the courts, we will find out more.
    - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dukeofdoom 6y ago
Amazon did not give Parler time to remedy the issue, which was in the contract. And is now trying to blur the line between a suspension and termination. Robert Barnes, on the Parler lawsuit https://youtu.be/pAFZw7fGY4A https://youtu.be/pAFZw7fGY4A Viva Frey, a lawyer did a breakdown on the lawsuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 Robert Barnes, On section 230, and the tech lawsuits https://youtu.be/rD-Zb0nTJw0 https://youtu.be/rD-Zb0nTJw0 Their take on it is that the tech companies have gone too far, and are too arrogant. And now the political climate has shifted. So they will start losing some of these section 230 related cases.
- tptacek 6y ago
  I'm not going to bother watching Youtube videos on this, because the authority I'm citing here is the judge who wrote the ruling in the TRO, citing the AWS contracts that show Amazon was not under the circumstances required to give Parler notice.
- ben509 6y ago
  Barnes and Frey didn't read the contract closely. Uncivil Law is a friend of theirs and he goes over the contract here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhWDKx9myI0&t=6187s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhWDKx9myI0&t=6187s He's a conservative lawyer, so he doesn't have a political bias against Parler. They just don't have a case. I think Parler's lawyers misread the contract and thought the 30-day notice applied to termination for cause.
  - OniBait 6y ago
    Yeah. Barnes and Frei didn't read the contract at all. They were just going off the court filings. I don't think they were aware of the additional provision about AWS having the right to terminate right after the 30 day suspension notice provision.
crb002 6y ago
Parler will win in discovery that AWS allowed far more content on Twitter etc without breaching contract - and that staff worked overtime to remove everything AWS had issue with. This was 100% about protecting the Twitter advertising revenue stream to AWS.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Twitter is not hosted in AWS. They just signed the contract, the content hasn’t moved yet.
Trias11 6y ago
This case is likely going to be more hairy than AWS wants it to be.
la6471 6y ago
It’s really simple. I can decide to do business with you or decide not to do business with you. Also I don’t understand what is preventing Parler from simply hosting a forum? Unless it is because none of the hosting companies want them? So that is it. Let’s stop regurgitating on this forever. Let’s move on.

unethical_ban 6y ago

I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a court order should get a site booted off the web entirely.

klmadfejno 6y ago
> It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues They booted Parler off for violence issues. One may personally disagree about where to draw that blurry line, but I think there's more than enough plausible deniability here. This is not the trigger of a grand slippery slope. If Amazon drops a company purely for non-violent political differences, by all means, lets raise those pitchforks.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Apparently mostly facebook was used, not parler.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    Sure, maybe? Doesn't mean parler wasn't a toxic violent place. If you want to hold facebook to a higher standard, by all means, I agree.
  - snoshy 6y ago
    This smacks of whataboutism to me. No doubt Facebook hosted large amounts of this activity, but it does not negate the fact that Parler did so as well. Amazon's court filing detailed hundreds of incidents that they had given Parler months to fix.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      Crying "whataboutism" is just a meme-y way to shutdown claims of hypocrisy. Husband: Two glasses of white wine in one night honey? You need to cut back for your health's sake Wife: But dear, you drink a handle of vodka every night and have refused any attempts at intervention. Husband: A-ha, classic whataboutism edit: I'd love to respond to the people below me, but HN has decided that one post an hour is too much (despite having a 10 year old account and 4000+ karma)

scohesc 6y ago

Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is horrendously thought out. The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the same companies that they're doing business with. Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou" (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and will likely not survive the next few years. The true future of free speech is through federated platforms/services similar to how email servers were back 20-25 years ago. People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows.

benburleson 6y ago
It wasn't even that their goal was to be a "free speech platform," they existed specifically as a platform for radical conservatives (only). If they cared about free speech, they wouldn't have aligned with any specific ideology.
phoe-krk 6y ago
> People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows. I'd argue the completely other way: people have traded convenience for freedom. The convenience of using the Internet for has massively eroded freedom of speech. It's been immensely convenient for tens of thousands of people to be able to say any kind of harmful trash on the Internet without suffering any negative consequences and that's what they have been doing for years now, and so now we all pay the price. The term "freedom of speech" has been appropriated by alt-right and modern Nazi movements and is now associated almost strictly with, which means that it is now feasible to call this freedom a real and actual risk to human life and take real steps towards curbing that freedom in general, even for people who are not abusing it to actively work towards harming other people.
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  Another problem is the term 'harm' (just like 'freedom of speech') has also been poisoned by those on the left who would have you believe words are more dangerous than actual violence. When actual discussions and conversations cannot take place under the guise of pretend harm, real violence happens. I do wholeheartedly believe the attack on the capitol is just the result of a disenfranchised part of the population who've been shit on and deplatformed for the last 4 years by the establishment (including Orange Man, FWIW).

throwaway45349 6y ago

As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand and pretend the risk of de-platforming never existed.

freedomben 6y ago
If you listen to the Megyn Kelly interview with Parler's CEO, they did expect this and had a second entirely different hosting provider lined up. They would have made the move by the deadline too, except the second hosting provider also dropped them due to extreme pressure.
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  I do believe that should've also been in their threat model - these guys should've acted like they were hosting The Pirate Bay 2 given the state of American politics. For instance, they could've had a low-traffic backup in read-only mode, or prevent new sign-ups. Or have an application layer switch to reduce outgoing bandwidth (HTML only) to squeeze into a coloc facility on short notice.
  - Threeve303 6y ago
    Engineering the site well to stay online might be beside the point now. Parler wanted to be taken down so that they could fight this legal battle, likely with an eye on Section 230. As an added bonus, they can frame the removal as persecution.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      Clearly it's a battle they're likely to lose, but I wish them luck. The only way forward in my view is to actually change laws. Anything short of that, is a fool's errand. All this is already settled law and has been litigated previously multiple times. You have to change the law in order to reclassify these entities if you want things to change. What orgs like Parler keep doing right now is spitting into the wind.

sjansen 6y ago

Not really a surprise given the weakness of their arguments. If you’d like to hear a lawyer read and comment on their complaint, I recommend https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50 https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Vive Frei has done a good job breaking down the lawsuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiZKk4_-lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiZKk4_-lA

philshem 6y ago

Parler, or at least their data, is ironically back on AWS: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler

sparrish 6y ago

Amazon has a right to associate (or not associate) with whomever they want. This is a fundamental principle of freedom - something Parler should know, understand, and espouse. Why are they fighting? They should be applauding.

minikites 6y ago
Free market for thee, but not for me.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    It is propagandistic to call that "conservatism". It's commonly called, "tribalism". And yes, healthy politics is conducted on the basis that human societies are tribal. Democracy is just the "accounting system" for competing tribal concerns. Universalism, "classical liberalism", etc. is an occasional side effect of "healthy tribalism". It cannot be a political goal, because there are genuine contradictions in the preferences of various groups -- and they cannot be all jointly-realised. Faux-universalism fails to acknowledge this an ends up preferencing the "natural" distribution of resources, ie., that arising from the most powerful groups (taking, competing) with the weaksest.
  - glangdale 6y ago
    This is certainly true of modern "Trumpian" conservatism. I think it's possible to imagine a cautious centre-right conservative for whom this characterization does not hold (a la Buckley's quote "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.") I'm not either kind of conservative myself, but I'd much rather deal with the old-school variety, who at their best represent a reasonable chunk of society.

minikites 6y ago

A lot of free market advocates sure seem bent out of shape when the free market works against them for once. Amazon shouldn't be required to host violent hate speech and I don't understand how someone can believe in "the free market" and argue otherwise.

jariel 6y ago

There is way, way too much room for political manoeuvring here - we should all be scared. Facebook is used to coordinate literal genocide. [1] And so AWS everyone is cool with that? I get that Parler was being used to do something 'violent and bad in the US' and that there was arguably not enough oversight - so they are a 'problem case'. But the system is a little bit hypocritical, I don't feel it's backed by science or some kind of reasonable application of policy and frankly, I have little trust in the judicial systems ability to sort this out. While many people are happy 'That Guy' is gone from politics (for now) - we need to wake up to the crude realization that 'regular politics' was never fair or reasonable to begin with and that this issue is going to weaponized by those who think they can do that, and they will use 'Parler and 'President Voldemort' example as cover for whatever it is they want to do. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
What does it mean, concretely, to "wake up" to this realization? I certainly acknowledge that Amazon might make bad content moderation decisions in the future, and if they do I'll speak out against those decisions. I just don't follow why I'd need to do something about that today.
- jariel 6y ago
  Because the insurrection on capitol hill provides the cover of legitimacy for people to act in a manner that also may be very inconsistent and politicized. Jeff Bezos owns news publications, he has a worldview and likes to flaunt it to some extent, moreover, these systems are prone to the possibility of arbitrary, and often political decisions. Note that historically, rich dudes bought newspapers to attack their political and business rivals. Though I don't think it's entirely like that today, we can't say there isn't some of that going on. Literally Emamnuel Macron and Angela Merkel have spoken out about the arbitrary 'banning' of groups and individuals, and because there is an 'imminent consideration over here in the US' doesn't abnegate our broader concerns about arbitrary banning. The EU will likely be acting on it. Banning the KKK is not something anyone is worried about. Banning some app because we don't like the extent to which they have moderated their discussions, is a much more slippery slope. Especially in light of other institutions that don't moderate very well either. If the case could rationally be made that FB and Twitter are in the end, equally problematic in their moderation ... then it's likely they would not get banned from various places - they have money, power, influence and possibly friendly relations with other platforms. It's a dangerous precedent and the EU leaders are essentially correct to speak out and even more so to act.

navbaker 6y ago

I've been seeing posts from some of my more conservative friends pop up in my FB feed advertising their imminent departure for MeWe. My surface level Google research tells me MeWe bills their service as "lightly moderated". I'm wondering how long before the spotlight gets turned on them and they're forced to either up their standards or face the same fate?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's not obvious to me that the spotlight has any special powers to make companies adopt high moderation standards. 4chan is still up, after all.

travisoneill1 6y ago

1. Democratic party threatens tech industry with heavy regulation because they don't censor to the degree that the Democrats want. 2. Democratic party takes over control of the government. 3. Major companies in the tech industry work together to boot a competitor, and political opponent of the Democratic party off the internet. At what point is this a legit first amendment issue? The government can't just pressure private companies to do things the government can't do and then hide behind the fact that they are private entities, right?

joshuamorton 6y ago
An alternative framing: 1. Republican party threatens teach industry with heavy regulation if they censor to the degree that the tech industry wishes to. 2. Republican party looses power. 3. Major companies in the tech industry do what they wanted to do the whole time. At what point is (1) a first amendment issue? The government shouldn't pressure private companies to do things that violate those groups first amendment rights.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so they can save money on moderation. Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more.
  - esoterica 6y ago
    They can't sell ads next to terroristic threats or other forms of extremism. So they would absolutely need to moderate even without political pressure.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so they can save money on moderation. No, they'd like to be approachable by the broadest groups possible (or really the broadest set of ad-viewing groups possible). Calls to violence are unappealing to most people. This is the reason unmoderated platforms fail: people don't enjoy spending time on them. To be palatable to normal people, the sites need moderation, which they do, to appeal to users. > Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few years ago when they started getting a lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating more. This is completely untrue. Here's one of the first Trump related posts I can find: https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-cross-the-line-on-social-media https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-cr..., notably "Though it apparently violated Facebook’s own internal guidelines, Trump’s video was not removed". They've been, since the beginning, getting blowback for making exceptions for politicians instead of evenhandedly applying their policies. What you've seen over the past 5 years is simply the platforms growing in influence (and thus controversy). The act of not moderating trump when he violated existing policies was an attempt to appear neutral to conservative users, while actually biasing to more loosely moderate a particular conservative. I can only hope platforms have learned from their mistakes.

paxys 6y ago

This is a great thread summarizing Parler's case and Amazon's response – https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1349162165698252802 https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134916216569825280....

ngngngng 6y ago

Reminder that Parler's claim to be in support of free speech was bogus, as their CEO would personally work alongside a team of volunteers to ban anyone that joined the platform and posted left wing views. https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/?sh=26f7eac75016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...

guerrilla 6y ago

Just one question I haven't seen answered: In what way are they supposedly a competitor of Amazon?

jcranmer 6y ago
They're not. They're a competitor to Twitter, and they're claiming (or attempting to, at least) that Amazon colluded with Twitter to keep them out of the market.

alkonaut 6y ago

Can they really expect to be reinstated? Suing for breach of contract and demanding compensation I can understand.

elldoubleyew 6y ago

I don't understand what's keeping the Parler team from just standing up their own servers in a garage somewhere. Its still an early stage platform, and its not like they were experiencing explosive growth as far as I understand. This seems like a perfect use case for a small home server. If they find a revenue stream then they can scale to renting some rack space somewhere. I know its not as easy as clicking a button in AWS but its not totally debilitating.

jki275 6y ago
I think you underestimate their size. They were a lot larger than a home server. As far as hosting, it can certainly be done privately, but it requires more work than cloud hosting, as gab learned when they went entirely internally hosted.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  They had thousands of machines, but it's hard to imagine why that is. It would be very interesting to get a description of what their hardware is actually doing. Considering how StackeOverflow ran on a small handful of machines to a pretty large scale (and still isn't excessive), I can't see how more than a few machines should be necessary to run a site that serves small texts, even among millions of users. There is one caveat though and that's media. If media is transcoded, and/or if more than a small fraction of messages contain video - then the service might face using most of its resources towards that. But in that case , if I was running their ops I'd just disable media attachments while figuring out how to run the full service.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

Honestly Parler just needs to park their front end someplace, don’t think anyone would be the wiser if they used AWS on the backend for their database/storage. But on the other hand Parler’s tech people seem mediocre so who knows if they could manage to not leak AWS ips or headers that would tip off they are using AWS and allow Amazon to figure out which account. Would only take one slip. If they pay their bills and it wasn’t dead obvious AWS was involved then Amazon might not try hard to find them.

deleted 6y ago

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balozi 6y ago

Maybe AWS was right, maybe they were wrong. Ditto Parler. All I know is that there is now a mental shift in our orgs where our cloud and infrastructure providers are now considered potential significant hostiles.

lorax_108 6y ago

awww i guess the russian propaganda site will have to stay in russia...lol

theqult 6y ago

"Oh no ! Anyway..." cit.

repeatafterme1 6y ago

Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "I am ok with others cancelling companies/people I don't agree with politically". Deep breath out. Ahhh, that feels much better! PD. Just don't you dare cancel those I agree with!

jeofken 6y ago

Makes sense. Just like no one should be forced to bake a wedding cake, rent out a car to a <25yo, not refuse a hire based on sex or race, it is also not right for any man to force an equal child of creation to host a website. Luckily there are federated protocols for social media which can be used by free speech absolutists.

jeremyfromca 6y ago

Censorship is good. The republican party needs to be abolished. Trump supporters should be required to go to mandatory re-education classes to deprogram them. If they refuse they should be fired from their jobs.

drummer 6y ago

> "It sort of made me laugh a little bit," she said. "Has Amazon read the rest of the Internet? Ninety-eight pieces of content or whatever is not that many. I mean, has Amazon read Amazon?" Has Facebook read Facebook? Has Twitter read Twitter?

cush 6y ago

Imagine trying to sue Amazon. Good luck with that.

TeeMassive 6y ago

> U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein sided with Amazon, which argued that Parler would not take down posts threatening public safety even in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and that it is within Amazon's rights to punish the company over its refusal. The problem with that is that the Capitol protests and riot were organized on Facebook and Twitter while Parler doesn't have events nor anything kind of organizing was found in the leak.

robin21 6y ago

I wonder if we will get to a point where services will run background checks on the companies that come on their platforms to make sure they adhere to their ideological viewpoints. Or blacklists will be created barring certain companies from doing business with a group of companies all at once. Like a reverse boycott kind of thing - I’m sure there is a good term for it. The capitalistic profit incentive has largely prevented this kind of behavior up until now but with left leaning oligopolies it starts to edge towards a market failure.

rurounijones 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/videos has an entire video series on this (and other) cases where he goes through the filings by both sides. Recommended watching.

godmode2019 6y ago

A YouTube lawyer does a pretty good break down of the case. Parlers suit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp5E7akgy8 Amazon response: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GB06JtDbtvU

jedimastert 6y ago
I don't know enough about law to be able to tell if it's being presented with or without a bias, but that intro in the first link did not give me hope
- godmode2019 6y ago
  His content is pretty unbiased , sitting on the fence most of the time, the topics however are geared to his audience.

robbywashere_ 6y ago

I've been following hacker news for nearly 9+ years now. Its funny to see now is the time that everyone is finally recognizing the concept of a 'tech monopoly' when it comes time to silence a violent and hateful group of white trash morons.

leovingi 6y ago
>white trash You should apologize for this racist comment