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I am very sympathetic to the idea that ISPs should be common carriers, but definitely not colos and platforms like AWS. Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An

I am very sympathetic to the idea that ISPs should be common carriers, but definitely not colos and platforms like AWS. Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post office, and people’s letters should not be meddled with (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual rights. But large platforms like AWS are more like large-scale mail printing and distribution, and is only really relevant to commercial enterprises. Such companies might choose to work with Sears to distribute catalogs, but decide not to work with Scientologists to distribute propaganda. They can be judicious in their choice of business partners without violating any individual rights - nobody has a right to any commercial partner they want. And in this case, AWS’s freedom of association rights (deciding not to do business with groups that aren’t federally protected, like the racist trolls who run Parler) are much more relevant here. AWS refusing to do business with Parler is not the same thing as Comcast refusing to allow access to things written by Parler’s users. It is more like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing refusing to put racist screeds in an ebook.

echelon 6y ago
If we had a fully P2P and distributed architecture for information exchange, this wouldn't be a problem. As it stands, we choose centralized websites and platforms to be how we exchange information. They're an essential ingredient in the "common carrier" recipe. How can your parents share messages without Comcast + Facebook?
- vlunkr 6y ago
  We choose to use centralize platforms out of convenience, but if Facebook magically disappeared, people would immediately move to one of the many alternatives.
  - echelon 6y ago
    That's not a counter argument to what I've said. It's a platitude that I think everyone agrees on. You don't even need to conjure "magical disappearance". Social networks often come and go as fads. YikYak, Snapchat, TikTok. The thesis of what I said is that P2P mechanics are largely invariant of and shielded from business decisions, social mores, etc. We should consider building more P2P things.
- bob33212 6y ago
  E-mail
  - echelon 6y ago
    Is email the predominant form of communication people? How many teenagers are raving about sending memes over email? edit: My point isn't to say email isn't an instance of federated/p2p communication, but rather we need more types of communication to be run on P2P rails. Social, forums, media...
belorn 6y ago
If there existed a single paper mill company that held 95% of the market, and they decided to refuse selling paper to a news paper, then I would consider that a problem. It might not look like censorship, but the practical effect is very much similar. In theory a news paper could go out and buy land, grow trees, cut them down, and mill them into sawdust, and chemically treat that sawdust in order to turn it into paper, and then finally press it and print it, but the likely outcome is almost deterministic. Thankfully we do not have that situation. Everything from forestry, wood cutters, sawmills, paper mills, printing presses and distribution is very much decentralized and have a healthy market with plenty of competition. It is so healthy that unless something is actually illegal, no one can stop someone from printing what they want. At most a company can do is create a small inconvenience. Server hosting is not that healthy but buying your own servers is much easier than producing paper, and the retail side of server hardware is healthy enough that preventing someone from buying servers would not be feasible. AWS does however have a demonstrated market power over companies that is very unhealthy so in my view they sit somewhere between a common carrier style regulated monopoly and a regular large company. If their decision to ban parler would have had minor effect on parler then we would not be having this conversation.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  If AWS has only 35% of that market, shouldn’t Parler have no problem moving to another platform? If they can’t find another platform willing to host them, I’d say the problem is Parler, not AWS.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Do any of those other platforms use any AWS services themselves? If they do, or want to have the option in the future, they might cooperate in the shunning of Parler just to avoid being shunned themselves.
cat199 6y ago
> Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post office, and people’s letters should not be meddled with (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual rights. The post office also allows you to keep mail at the post office and in PO boxes, which are regulated roughly the same as mail destined for residences/businesses - I would put anyone who runs a datacenter/servers for other people in the 'PO box provider' category, so I don't think this analogy really works

echelon 6y ago

If we had a fully P2P and distributed architecture for information exchange, this wouldn't be a problem. As it stands, we choose centralized websites and platforms to be how we exchange information. They're an essential ingredient in the "common carrier" recipe. How can your parents share messages without Comcast + Facebook?

vlunkr 6y ago
We choose to use centralize platforms out of convenience, but if Facebook magically disappeared, people would immediately move to one of the many alternatives.
- echelon 6y ago
  That's not a counter argument to what I've said. It's a platitude that I think everyone agrees on. You don't even need to conjure "magical disappearance". Social networks often come and go as fads. YikYak, Snapchat, TikTok. The thesis of what I said is that P2P mechanics are largely invariant of and shielded from business decisions, social mores, etc. We should consider building more P2P things.
bob33212 6y ago
E-mail
- echelon 6y ago
  Is email the predominant form of communication people? How many teenagers are raving about sending memes over email? edit: My point isn't to say email isn't an instance of federated/p2p communication, but rather we need more types of communication to be run on P2P rails. Social, forums, media...

belorn 6y ago

If there existed a single paper mill company that held 95% of the market, and they decided to refuse selling paper to a news paper, then I would consider that a problem. It might not look like censorship, but the practical effect is very much similar. In theory a news paper could go out and buy land, grow trees, cut them down, and mill them into sawdust, and chemically treat that sawdust in order to turn it into paper, and then finally press it and print it, but the likely outcome is almost deterministic. Thankfully we do not have that situation. Everything from forestry, wood cutters, sawmills, paper mills, printing presses and distribution is very much decentralized and have a healthy market with plenty of competition. It is so healthy that unless something is actually illegal, no one can stop someone from printing what they want. At most a company can do is create a small inconvenience. Server hosting is not that healthy but buying your own servers is much easier than producing paper, and the retail side of server hardware is healthy enough that preventing someone from buying servers would not be feasible. AWS does however have a demonstrated market power over companies that is very unhealthy so in my view they sit somewhere between a common carrier style regulated monopoly and a regular large company. If their decision to ban parler would have had minor effect on parler then we would not be having this conversation.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
If AWS has only 35% of that market, shouldn’t Parler have no problem moving to another platform? If they can’t find another platform willing to host them, I’d say the problem is Parler, not AWS.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Do any of those other platforms use any AWS services themselves? If they do, or want to have the option in the future, they might cooperate in the shunning of Parler just to avoid being shunned themselves.

cat199 6y ago

> Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post office, and people’s letters should not be meddled with (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual rights. The post office also allows you to keep mail at the post office and in PO boxes, which are regulated roughly the same as mail destined for residences/businesses - I would put anyone who runs a datacenter/servers for other people in the 'PO box provider' category, so I don't think this analogy really works