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> or for not liking the content being hosted? Parler was widely distributing violent content from major leaders (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution) i

> or for not liking the content being hosted? Parler was widely distributing violent content from major leaders (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution) in a movement that reality showed was a real and not theoretical threat (c.f. the mob chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" in the rotunda). I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Parler had been around for years, uncensored. Almost all it's major accounts had history on Twitter for years before that (often having been kicked off for similarly violent content, btw). If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it?

ardy42 6y ago
> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. It's motivated reasoning. It's how you can get to the conclusion that Amazon cutting ties with Parler is unacceptable. I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media, pushed and promoted by bad faith actors for various short term partisan ends. I'm pretty sure that's why the specious comparisons between BLM and the capitol attack became so widespread.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results. It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side".
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results. What now? I pretty explicitly humanized them, and even shifted the blame a way from them. Personally, I think a lot of them are being shamelessly used and exploited. > It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side". Not really. The largest platform favored by "the other side" (which I'm assuming is conservatives/Republicans) was and is Facebook. Parler was only favored by a much smaller, radicalized subset of conservatives, mainly those who wanted to spread false claims of election fraud (because, IIRC, it only got popular in response to Twitter putting warning labels on such claims, which offended this radicalize subset). I'm totally fine with any blowback from such people, since their cause of championing lies needs to be utterly defeated, for the good of the country.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Claiming that anyone who disagrees with your conclusions didn't come to their opinions on their own, but through propaganda, implies that they can't think for themselves but you can. That is at best belittling, if not dehumanizing. It fails to acknowledge that, bizarre as what's happening on the right is, the same rhetoric and reasoning w.r.t. propaganda applies to anyone. Believing those with whom you disagree to be brainwashed, as seems to be so popular on all sides these days, will fully prevent ever healing the rifts between groups. This patronizing belief that "those" people need to be protected from manipulation is used as more fuel on the fire. Thus the cycle of radicalization is amplified. Any victory gained by force will create the will within the defeated to build an opposing force. Instead we have to look for the underlying causes (e.g. opioid epidemic, loss of opportunities, counterproductive cultural aversion to education, etc.) that drive people to rally together under the first cause that promises to help them, and address those.
- roenxi 6y ago
  It isn't motivated reasoning, it is profound scepticism around how Amazon could have (1) identified the risk Parler was breaching their TOS (2) confirmed their suspicious and (3) ejected them from AWS in the time-frame that actually happened. Parler seems to have been caught completely unaware that there was a risk of AWS cancelling their service, so presumably there wasn't any serious attempt by Amazon to seek corrective measures. It seems unlikely there was even an attempt to understand Parler's moderation process, because having those conversations and raising/addressing concerns takes time. It is clear that the process to remove Parler wasn't slow and deliberative. The question in my mind is whether it was explicitly political, implicitly political or if someone powerful in AWS was just panicking. None of the 3 situations bode well for anyone trying to use AWS as infrastructure for communication. Which is a number of their major customers.
  - chalst 6y ago
    AWS drew attention to the violation of the TOS in mid November and provided extensive documentation of the kind of content they regarded as unacceptable in mid December [1]. You seem unaware of the most basic facts of the case. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-warned-parler-for-months-about-more-than-100-violent-threats/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...
    - roenxi 6y ago
      I am unaware, I'm not planning on reading the case details until after a month or two has passed. Best to get a little hindsight. That is an interesting exhibit, thanks. It has swayed me on the time-frame, I'm not sure it changes my basic view - the AWS rep is talking about literally 3 posts in mid November, one of which seems to have 450 views in 5 days if the eye icon means what I think. From politely raising 3 horrible posts to extinguishing a business in a month and a half still leaves me questioning if the TOS was enforced politically.
      - zaphar 6y ago
        Let's game plan for a moment. You are a hosting provider. One of your customers is violating your TOS and posting content that is objectionable. They are potentially big and growing customer so you are giving them time to respond while you try to weight the cost and benefit of enforcement at this time. While you are working though this the customer is used as a platform to organize an attack on the government of the the country you are based in. 5 people died as a result and there is every indication that if the attack had gone the way the attackers wanted it to that more would be dead including the Vice President of the United States. Suddenly the cost calculation changes. It has become evident over the several months of negotiation that the customer has 0 intention of coming into compliance. The speech they are hosting has already resulted in a very large and very visible terrorist act. They have ceased to be profit center and become a liability. What do you do?
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Because the same content exists on Facebook and Twitter (for the same reason: moderation is hard) but nobody is trying to disconnect them. > If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it? They didn't. Twitter locked out the New York Post for reporting on the Hunter Biden story before the election. What this appears to be about now is that the backlash from that sort of behavior was enough to cause a right-leaning social media site to become popular, and it continuing to grow in popularity would prevent them from doing similar things going forward.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis. The two services simply aren't comparable. You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You just can't do it on Amazon's infrastructure. Plenty of companies that aren't organizing mass shootings or insurrections manage just fine without AWS, for a variety of reasons --- some of which even include cost savings. The constant comparisons between Facebook and Parler are talking points, and insulting to our intelligence. We know better than to buy into this stuff.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Which appears to be less effective -- paid moderators aren't members of individual communities -- with the result that most of the planning of the riot happened on Facebook. > Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis. So does Reddit, doesn't it? Moderator of a sub is the creator, a user? And it seems to be less bad than Twitter and Facebook. The reason people compare to Facebook and Twitter instead of Reddit is because they're worse. > You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You just can't do it on Amazon's infrastructure. What happens if you can't do it on anybody's infrastructure who has the capacity to host a site that size? But you're changing the subject.
kortilla 6y ago
> really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent. > If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it? You mean until right after the elections that took away all of the Republican power to regulate tech? Seems like a great time to do it.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent. That's misleading. While there was definitely unacceptable activity that slipped through Facebook's moderation, they were making attempts to stop it. IIRC, a lot of the organization activity on Facebook acted as a funnel to places like Parler. E.g. a protest event on Facebook, calculated to comply with its policies, which linked to Parler or Gab where more illicit planning could take place.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Facebook is so large that their moderator to user ratio is the same approximation as the moderator to user ratio of Parler. Parler was just more honest about not being able to realistically moderate people.

ardy42 6y ago

> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. It's motivated reasoning. It's how you can get to the conclusion that Amazon cutting ties with Parler is unacceptable. I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media, pushed and promoted by bad faith actors for various short term partisan ends. I'm pretty sure that's why the specious comparisons between BLM and the capitol attack became so widespread.

nitrogen 6y ago
I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results. It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side".
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results. What now? I pretty explicitly humanized them, and even shifted the blame a way from them. Personally, I think a lot of them are being shamelessly used and exploited. > It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side". Not really. The largest platform favored by "the other side" (which I'm assuming is conservatives/Republicans) was and is Facebook. Parler was only favored by a much smaller, radicalized subset of conservatives, mainly those who wanted to spread false claims of election fraud (because, IIRC, it only got popular in response to Twitter putting warning labels on such claims, which offended this radicalize subset). I'm totally fine with any blowback from such people, since their cause of championing lies needs to be utterly defeated, for the good of the country.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Claiming that anyone who disagrees with your conclusions didn't come to their opinions on their own, but through propaganda, implies that they can't think for themselves but you can. That is at best belittling, if not dehumanizing. It fails to acknowledge that, bizarre as what's happening on the right is, the same rhetoric and reasoning w.r.t. propaganda applies to anyone. Believing those with whom you disagree to be brainwashed, as seems to be so popular on all sides these days, will fully prevent ever healing the rifts between groups. This patronizing belief that "those" people need to be protected from manipulation is used as more fuel on the fire. Thus the cycle of radicalization is amplified. Any victory gained by force will create the will within the defeated to build an opposing force. Instead we have to look for the underlying causes (e.g. opioid epidemic, loss of opportunities, counterproductive cultural aversion to education, etc.) that drive people to rally together under the first cause that promises to help them, and address those.
roenxi 6y ago
It isn't motivated reasoning, it is profound scepticism around how Amazon could have (1) identified the risk Parler was breaching their TOS (2) confirmed their suspicious and (3) ejected them from AWS in the time-frame that actually happened. Parler seems to have been caught completely unaware that there was a risk of AWS cancelling their service, so presumably there wasn't any serious attempt by Amazon to seek corrective measures. It seems unlikely there was even an attempt to understand Parler's moderation process, because having those conversations and raising/addressing concerns takes time. It is clear that the process to remove Parler wasn't slow and deliberative. The question in my mind is whether it was explicitly political, implicitly political or if someone powerful in AWS was just panicking. None of the 3 situations bode well for anyone trying to use AWS as infrastructure for communication. Which is a number of their major customers.
- chalst 6y ago
  AWS drew attention to the violation of the TOS in mid November and provided extensive documentation of the kind of content they regarded as unacceptable in mid December [1]. You seem unaware of the most basic facts of the case. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-warned-parler-for-months-about-more-than-100-violent-threats/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...
  - roenxi 6y ago
    I am unaware, I'm not planning on reading the case details until after a month or two has passed. Best to get a little hindsight. That is an interesting exhibit, thanks. It has swayed me on the time-frame, I'm not sure it changes my basic view - the AWS rep is talking about literally 3 posts in mid November, one of which seems to have 450 views in 5 days if the eye icon means what I think. From politely raising 3 horrible posts to extinguishing a business in a month and a half still leaves me questioning if the TOS was enforced politically.
    - zaphar 6y ago
      Let's game plan for a moment. You are a hosting provider. One of your customers is violating your TOS and posting content that is objectionable. They are potentially big and growing customer so you are giving them time to respond while you try to weight the cost and benefit of enforcement at this time. While you are working though this the customer is used as a platform to organize an attack on the government of the the country you are based in. 5 people died as a result and there is every indication that if the attack had gone the way the attackers wanted it to that more would be dead including the Vice President of the United States. Suddenly the cost calculation changes. It has become evident over the several months of negotiation that the customer has 0 intention of coming into compliance. The speech they are hosting has already resulted in a very large and very visible terrorist act. They have ceased to be profit center and become a liability. What do you do?

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Because the same content exists on Facebook and Twitter (for the same reason: moderation is hard) but nobody is trying to disconnect them. > If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it? They didn't. Twitter locked out the New York Post for reporting on the Hunter Biden story before the election. What this appears to be about now is that the backlash from that sort of behavior was enough to cause a right-leaning social media site to become popular, and it continuing to grow in popularity would prevent them from doing similar things going forward.

tptacek 6y ago
Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis. The two services simply aren't comparable. You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You just can't do it on Amazon's infrastructure. Plenty of companies that aren't organizing mass shootings or insurrections manage just fine without AWS, for a variety of reasons --- some of which even include cost savings. The constant comparisons between Facebook and Parler are talking points, and insulting to our intelligence. We know better than to buy into this stuff.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Facebook and Twitter spend a cubic fuckton of money on moderation, at a scale significant enough that there are, annually, news cycles about the psychic toll Facebook moderation takes on the army of people Facebook pays to do it. Which appears to be less effective -- paid moderators aren't members of individual communities -- with the result that most of the planning of the riot happened on Facebook. > Parler hoped to do moderation on a volunteer basis. So does Reddit, doesn't it? Moderator of a sub is the creator, a user? And it seems to be less bad than Twitter and Facebook. The reason people compare to Facebook and Twitter instead of Reddit is because they're worse. > You can run a service like Parler on all-volunteer (or, like Gab, no-volunteer) moderation. You just can't do it on Amazon's infrastructure. What happens if you can't do it on anybody's infrastructure who has the capacity to host a site that size? But you're changing the subject.

kortilla 6y ago

> really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship. Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent. > If Big Tech really, truly wanted to censor conservative opinions for partisan benefit... why did they wait until months after the presidential election to do it? You mean until right after the elections that took away all of the Republican power to regulate tech? Seems like a great time to do it.

ardy42 6y ago
> Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent. That's misleading. While there was definitely unacceptable activity that slipped through Facebook's moderation, they were making attempts to stop it. IIRC, a lot of the organization activity on Facebook acted as a funnel to places like Parler. E.g. a protest event on Facebook, calculated to comply with its policies, which linked to Parler or Gab where more illicit planning could take place.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Facebook is so large that their moderator to user ratio is the same approximation as the moderator to user ratio of Parler. Parler was just more honest about not being able to realistically moderate people.