25 ms·

Parler is back online after a month of downtime

151 points by hadrien01 6y ago

andrewzah 6y ago
"What I will tell you is that they had a disproportionate number of abuse reports that went unprocessed. And as a result, they left themselves wide open to people using their platform for purposes that maybe weren't the original intention of the people who manage it. Does that necessarily mean that we not only take that site offline, but we burn it to the ground?" Monster said. "I don't know, but I think the site can be rehabilitated so it could be more self-governing." Just to note that Rob Monster does have certain criteria for allowing sites to use his services, as well. "It's one thing to be sent to detention. It's another thing to get a suspension. It's another thing to be sent to a penal colony for the rest of your life," Monster said. Getting kicked off of a provider is not "being sent to a penal colony". Nobody is forced to host your site. This is partly how free market capitalism works, last I recall. Allow me to play a sad song for parler on the world's smallest violin.
- ttt0 6y ago
  Yes, and Google can shut down your app or entire account for no reason at all and you have no right to complain about it, because free market capitalism.
  - ycombigator 6y ago
    Freedom intensifies
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    You can complain if you want, but the end of the day, it's really your own fault for choosing to depend on google. If you don't like google's behavior, then you should either be self-hosting or at least diversify with other providers. Expecting the government to step in and be useful in any way here is a pipe dream. Parler learned a hard lesson to not depend on AWS. I bet a lot of AWS customers also saw that and began taking steps to either move off of AWS or at least make it easy to migrate if needed.
    - Darmody 6y ago
      Build your own cloud infrastructure powered by your own power grid.
      - andrewzah 6y ago
        Alternatively, if I spend time and resources building my own cloud infrastructure, I would like to be able to choose my clients. Political beliefs are not a protected class, nor should they be. And politics aside, if a client had a bad moderation policy or refused to moderate their content per my standard, then I should be allowed to terminate the contract. They should then be free to choose another provider.
        Darmody 6y ago
        So you think it's ok to discriminate people. F*ck freedom of speech, let's make everything political. What if an employee talks about minimum wage? Or paid maternity leave? Or gay marriage? Should you be able to fire them freely because you're not OK with their political beliefs? Every day I'm more astonished by what I read in this site. About the moderation thing. They did moderate, but they couldn't manage everything due the explosive growth they had. Plans to assault the Capitol were posted in Facebook and Twitter days before but only Parler is guilty.
        andrewzah 6y ago
        "let's make everything political." Everything -is- political. For some people, the status quo is amenable to them. For others, it is not. If you want to avoid politics, I think the only real way is to venture into the wilderness and live solo. "Should you be able to fire them freely because you're not OK with their political beliefs?" I can't speak for other countries, but the US protects from being fired due to certain characteristics. Aside from that, yes, absolutely, employers should be able to fire employees. That said, there is nothing preventing said employees from giving said employer bad press, etc. There is nothing preventing employers from getting tried in the court of public opinion. I don't see why we should expect the government to intervene and say "well, you can't fire anyone, for any reason, ever, as they claim it's retribution for X, Y, or Z". That, I believe, would be referred to by most americans as the dreaded "socialism" that we're so keen to avoid in favor of free market capitalism.
  - trentgreene 6y ago
    Correct -- so when thinking through your idea, be mindful of your dependencies.
  - tor11 6y ago
    > because free market capitalism. it is not a free market as long as there is regulation. regulation creates these situations.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- trianglem 6y ago
  Rob Monster is a neo nazi cultivator. I hate cancel culture but if anyone deserves to be “cancelled” it’s his kind.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    "Nazis deserve to be cancelled" is a controversial statement to some HN users.
    - XorNot 6y ago
      They're getting downvoted because it's an asinine statement - "I hate cancel culture but...". So actually they don't hate it, they haven't even thought about it, and in this one instance when they did they concluded that people are right. They're just stopping short of considering that view any further because then they'd be like those people who are definitely wrong. Because they are.
      - trianglem 6y ago
        Cancel culture has been frivolously applied to a lot of situations where it does not make sense to. Rob Monster literally has said himself he wants to provide a place to foment specifically far-right ideology. He is extremely deserving of a “cancel”.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      Yes, it is. I don't think that you should be cancelled for being a communist, a nazi, a black nationalist or whatever, simply for holding such opinions. Really outrageous thing to say, I know.
      - andrewzah 6y ago
        " a nazi" People refusing to speak with you or buy things from you is not "being canceled". You do not have a right to force people to listen to you, or force people to do business with you. You are protected from the -government- by the 1st amendment, and other laws prohibit you or your business from discriminating based on protected classes. You are not protected from the court of public opinion, and rightly so. Of course you should be free to say "I agree with Nazi views", and of course I should be allowed to say "that's idiotic, goodbye". I really don't understand how people seem to think that I -must- respect your opinion no matter what it is, and that I -must- continue to speak with you or do business with you. Where is -my- freedom? If you disagree, then don't give me money and maybe my business will fail! But I should be free to do that.
pg5 6y ago
Seems to only be an error page at the moment.
- pelagicAustral 6y ago
  I think thats all it ever was...
alangibson 6y ago
> the loosely moderated site Was Parler really loosely moderated? I never used it, but I heard stories about some pretty heavy handed moderation. They were famously quick to ban people for perceived trolling.
- trianglem 6y ago
  Not trolling, they would ban any opposing viewpoints.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    They were demonstrated to ban people with opposing viewpoints who were trolling. That is not the same thing.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tor11 6y ago
    this is what users of social media want.
  - johndevor 6y ago
    How is that different from reddit? /r/politics does that regularly
    - 542458 6y ago
      I find this to be a bit of a bad comparison. /r/politics downvotes opposing viewpoints - they aren’t banned. And there are many, many other subreddits where you will find opinions completely different from those of the /r/politics orthodoxy.
      - commandlinefan 6y ago
        They are banned, you just don’t see it... because they’re banned.
bzb6 6y ago
I opened their website and it asked me to install their app but the App Store says it is not available in my region.
- killingtime74 6y ago
  Cool story
35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
Parler now looks to be hosted through a company called SkySilk: parler.com. IN A 216.246.208.249 https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/216.246.208.0 https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/216.246.208.0 SkySilk appears to specialize in VPCs and cloud hosting, not colocation. Their AUP doesn't appear to give Parler much relief either[1]: > We specifically reserve the right to refuse to provide the Service to customers or End Users engaged in the dissemination of material that may cause us to be subject to attacks on our network, or that while technically legal, run counter to our corporate principles. I can't imagine this arrangement lasts too long. [1]: https://www.skysilk.com/aup/ https://www.skysilk.com/aup/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thepangolino 6y ago
  I personally never understood the the appeal of Parler, be it on a technical standpoint or privacy and freedom of speech. Especially compared to Gab.
  - jmcan 6y ago
    You can't even sign up without a phone number. Never got an account or went on just for this reason alone.
    - rvz 6y ago
      My point exactly why I don't use services that do this. Signal, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and all the like. It is plain silly to require phone number verification as a 'security mechanism'
      - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
        The engineering of Gab (politics aside) is probably worthy of a front page HN post. They run on Mastodon and their entire codebase is open source.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bigmattystyles 6y ago
I'm slightly left of center so parler is not for me - but I am curious and I like to see what's going on outside of my bubble. When I had to commute to work for instance, I'd listen to AM talk radio on the way in. It did nothing but reinforce my left of center world view. In any case, my point is that in this society we live in, merely having an account is seen as an espousing of the views. With parler's poor history of user data handling, there is no way I am even creating an account and risk having my (real-life) reputation take a hit. It's a sad state of affairs. Now, one might argue that I've just said I'm slightly left of center on hackernews, why don't I fear that - it wouldn't take much for someone who already knows me to tie my person to this account. I guess parler has a reputation as being (extreme?) far right and that's the difference. Again, it doesn't make much sense.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  Actually it makes a lot of sense. There are a lot things I don’t want to be associated with. I’m also left of center and I’m not actually worried about having a Parler account, but there are a ton of websites that scare me way more.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline. I'm honestly not sure what I expected to be honest. I signed in once, scrolled a bit, recoiled in disgust and haven't been back.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      An observation that someone on HN pointed to when the Parler take-down originally occurred: > The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong. * https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
parsimo2010 6y ago
Aside from the political stuff, this illustrates how a company can be reliant on another vendor. AWS was a single point of failure for Parler (along with a few other services like domain registration). For a one man show in a garage (or a very early stage startup), it's probably okay to focus on features and not backend resiliency. But by the time you have a board of directors, someone should have asked how they would handle losing a core service. Especially in this case someone should have seen that their business was high risk- either explicitly because of their plan/model, or incidentally because of the crowd they attracted. Maybe Parler had a plan for some things, but they clearly weren't ready for a setback at this level. I wonder how prepared other companies are for losses/denial of service like this. Could Ford's supply chain weather a vendor dropping out? Could Kellogg's cereal?
- TZubiri 6y ago
  Ironically, a one man show in a garage would be more resistant to legal challenges than hosting on aws. If you want to take down my server you have to either issue a warrant to search and seize my home, or a warrant for each of my ISPs, or intervene at the IP block or DNS level. The outcries over freedom of speech were just pathetic from a technological standpoint, it's a bunch of web 4.0 developers and users who felt entitled to services that even a 90s computer enthusiast would be able to provide. On some level it's not just Parler's fault, the internet has become more complex, and maybe some ISPs and modems provide some roadblocks like shared IPs and obnoxious firewalls, but after months they are still unable to lift a physical building place computers on property they control. It's like they are either incompetent or purposely looking for refusal of service so they can martyrize themselves.
legitster 6y ago
Of all the "deplatformings" this one is the hardest to feel sorry for. They clearly had a lot of technical debt and very little expertise in what they were doing. Seeing their AWS bill, it's apparent they were not without resources either. As far as I am aware, they are still just moving around their horrendously cobbled together Wordpress monstrosity to whatever giant benefactor that has a couch they can crash on. It's clearly other peoples' fault that they are so dependent on other's technology! And while I am very receptive towards conservative ideals as well as criticisms of tech and mainstream media, this is a bit like watching someone starve to death because Blue Apron stopped delivering to them.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  From a purely technical perspective, I've never worked for a SaaS company that had SOPs for "what if our cloud provider pulls the plug on us today?". I'm sure big enterprise companies do this, but small nascent companies probably don't consider this to be one of the bigger risks that they face. Sure, they run an unpopular business, but I would not predicted the convergence of (1) the Capitol Hill riots would have taken place and (2) that the media would characterize it as a coup attempt or similar and argue that Parler was responsible (as opposed to Facebook where the planning seems to have taken place) and (3) that this would result in AWS kicking them off of their platform overnight. It's really hard to predict where the mob will focus it's wrath or in what proportion.
  - vineyardmike 6y ago
    > pulls the plug on us today To be clear, AWS had been giving them warnings for months.
    - Arnt 6y ago
      Parler's also not alone in not having any plans against "the event that we've been warned about for months actually happened".
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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londons_explore 6y ago
I would host Parler. While I don't agree with its content, I don't believe in people like hosting providers applying moral tests to their users. The Government/law should be the only people shutting them down.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Imagine that data center will ask you to move out because you're helping Parler. Imagine that your bank will ask you to find another bank in a three days and other banks will not want to work with you. When will you give up? Cancel culture is spreading fast.
  - adkadskhj 6y ago
    Calling this cancel culture is imo off base. A lot of people view this as an extremist cult bordering on brainwashing and terrorist training. I fear that there is definitely something brewing in our online habits these days, and it may be significantly damaging to society. The problem however, is that removing these groups will not inherently solve them. I would support removing of these extremists if i thought it would do good. It however, won't. It will further build the fire of self-victim identification and extremist views which fuel them. We need another approach at solving this problem. Of which i think is two fold: 1. Groups (both the left and right) struggle to stand up against the undesirable extremists within. 2. Our ingestion of information is not filtered enough by our own brains. We consume freely, and largely due to extremists and bubbles we end up consuming garbage. All of this said, i feel like attempts at dealing with Parler is vastly different than the "cancel culture" which attempted to rename the https://rubocop.org/ https://rubocop.org/ tool. One is a misguided answer to extremists - the other is an attempt at protecting hurt feelings over bad words. Very different.
    - Vaslo 6y ago
      So conservatives are extremists?
      - 6y ago
ngngngng 6y ago
I made an account pretty early on, before the thought had crossed my mind that I might acquire some perceived associations I wouldn't want. I had a silly reason, I just wanted to follow a conspiracy theorist friend of mine that moved there. They're certainly not joking about their theories but I find them hilarious. After seeing it was back online I figured I would log in and post communist memes until they banned me, but it seems I am unable to login. Looks like their technical problems continue.
- ratsmack 6y ago
  >post communist memes until they banned me I really doubt that would happen.
PaybackTony 6y ago
A number of the users from Parler joined the social network I built. Although I don't lean conservative in my own views (center), I believe that silencing those you feel are mis-informed or wrong only makes -- and has made -- the problem worse. An open ~discord~ discourse(oops, edit) is needed. People don't get that on Parler either. They should have a place they feel comfortable speaking about their (non-violent) views. And others should have the tools to voice their opposition openly -- and anonymously -- as well. Social networks have polarized people nearly beyond repair. I don't have to agree with you to believe you still have the right to voice your opinion. You have the right to be wrong. You have the right to an opportunity for growth. Funny note, Parler did a copy-pasta of our motto in their re-launch.
- warmfuzzykitten 6y ago
  I'm guessing you didn't mean to say "An open discord is needed" but thanks for the humor. :)
  - PaybackTony 6y ago
    Absolutely meant discourse. The irony.
edoceo 6y ago
why didnt 4chan pick up that crowd?
- senectus1 6y ago
  I'm still convinced that Qanon is 4Chan in origin. I imagine they enjoy messing with people at arms length, the would want their safe haven torn down with Parler.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I think that's common knowledge? It was a 4chan meme that got taken seriously because the groups it was mocking were so detached from reality that they interpreted satire as truth.
    - Havoc 6y ago
      Thought it was on one of the other chans
      - likeafox 6y ago
        The first few Q Anon branded 'drops' were on 4chan, but quickly relocated to the original 8chan. It is all but assured that there have been several different authors of the identity 'Q Anon'.
nikolay 6y ago
Online... except that many features are down. What a fiasco!
chosen1111 6y ago
Is this because gab was getting lots of users? Parler smells like honey
badmadrad 6y ago
So it seems the prevaling narrative from the lefties here is that because Parler was used to incite the riot it was deserved to be shut down? Is there proof Parler was anymore responsible than every other social media platform? If this is the case, why don't we just packet sniff the backbone and block internet to any home that is perceived to be engaging in anti-American or violence? What objective standard are you using here? Is it just ok to punish people you don't think you like? Seems like in a post truth world its more important for lefties to ensure they are controlling narrative then seeking truth. And many lefties fear free speech as they fear it will hurt them. Ironically, they are creating precedents which will hurt us all. Censorship is a double edged sword.

151 points by hadrien01 6y ago

"What I will tell you is that they had a disproportionate number of abuse reports that went unprocessed. And as a result, they left themselves wide open to people using their platform for purposes that maybe weren't the original intention of the people who manage it. Does that necessarily mean that we not only take that site offline, but we burn it to the ground?" Monster said. "I don't know, but I think the site can be rehabilitated so it could be more self-governing." Just to note that Rob Monster does have certain criteria for allowing sites to use his services, as well. "It's one thing to be sent to detention. It's another thing to get a suspension. It's another thing to be sent to a penal colony for the rest of your life," Monster said. Getting kicked off of a provider is not "being sent to a penal colony". Nobody is forced to host your site. This is partly how free market capitalism works, last I recall. Allow me to play a sad song for parler on the world's smallest violin.

ttt0 6y ago
Yes, and Google can shut down your app or entire account for no reason at all and you have no right to complain about it, because free market capitalism.
- ycombigator 6y ago
  Freedom intensifies
- andrewzah 6y ago
  You can complain if you want, but the end of the day, it's really your own fault for choosing to depend on google. If you don't like google's behavior, then you should either be self-hosting or at least diversify with other providers. Expecting the government to step in and be useful in any way here is a pipe dream. Parler learned a hard lesson to not depend on AWS. I bet a lot of AWS customers also saw that and began taking steps to either move off of AWS or at least make it easy to migrate if needed.
  - Darmody 6y ago
    Build your own cloud infrastructure powered by your own power grid.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      Alternatively, if I spend time and resources building my own cloud infrastructure, I would like to be able to choose my clients. Political beliefs are not a protected class, nor should they be. And politics aside, if a client had a bad moderation policy or refused to moderate their content per my standard, then I should be allowed to terminate the contract. They should then be free to choose another provider.
      - Darmody 6y ago
        So you think it's ok to discriminate people. F*ck freedom of speech, let's make everything political. What if an employee talks about minimum wage? Or paid maternity leave? Or gay marriage? Should you be able to fire them freely because you're not OK with their political beliefs? Every day I'm more astonished by what I read in this site. About the moderation thing. They did moderate, but they couldn't manage everything due the explosive growth they had. Plans to assault the Capitol were posted in Facebook and Twitter days before but only Parler is guilty.
        andrewzah 6y ago
        "let's make everything political." Everything -is- political. For some people, the status quo is amenable to them. For others, it is not. If you want to avoid politics, I think the only real way is to venture into the wilderness and live solo. "Should you be able to fire them freely because you're not OK with their political beliefs?" I can't speak for other countries, but the US protects from being fired due to certain characteristics. Aside from that, yes, absolutely, employers should be able to fire employees. That said, there is nothing preventing said employees from giving said employer bad press, etc. There is nothing preventing employers from getting tried in the court of public opinion. I don't see why we should expect the government to intervene and say "well, you can't fire anyone, for any reason, ever, as they claim it's retribution for X, Y, or Z". That, I believe, would be referred to by most americans as the dreaded "socialism" that we're so keen to avoid in favor of free market capitalism.
- trentgreene 6y ago
  Correct -- so when thinking through your idea, be mindful of your dependencies.
- tor11 6y ago
  > because free market capitalism. it is not a free market as long as there is regulation. regulation creates these situations.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
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trianglem 6y ago
Rob Monster is a neo nazi cultivator. I hate cancel culture but if anyone deserves to be “cancelled” it’s his kind.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  "Nazis deserve to be cancelled" is a controversial statement to some HN users.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    They're getting downvoted because it's an asinine statement - "I hate cancel culture but...". So actually they don't hate it, they haven't even thought about it, and in this one instance when they did they concluded that people are right. They're just stopping short of considering that view any further because then they'd be like those people who are definitely wrong. Because they are.
    - trianglem 6y ago
      Cancel culture has been frivolously applied to a lot of situations where it does not make sense to. Rob Monster literally has said himself he wants to provide a place to foment specifically far-right ideology. He is extremely deserving of a “cancel”.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Yes, it is. I don't think that you should be cancelled for being a communist, a nazi, a black nationalist or whatever, simply for holding such opinions. Really outrageous thing to say, I know.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      " a nazi" People refusing to speak with you or buy things from you is not "being canceled". You do not have a right to force people to listen to you, or force people to do business with you. You are protected from the -government- by the 1st amendment, and other laws prohibit you or your business from discriminating based on protected classes. You are not protected from the court of public opinion, and rightly so. Of course you should be free to say "I agree with Nazi views", and of course I should be allowed to say "that's idiotic, goodbye". I really don't understand how people seem to think that I -must- respect your opinion no matter what it is, and that I -must- continue to speak with you or do business with you. Where is -my- freedom? If you disagree, then don't give me money and maybe my business will fail! But I should be free to do that.

pg5 6y ago

Seems to only be an error page at the moment.

pelagicAustral 6y ago
I think thats all it ever was...

alangibson 6y ago

> the loosely moderated site Was Parler really loosely moderated? I never used it, but I heard stories about some pretty heavy handed moderation. They were famously quick to ban people for perceived trolling.

trianglem 6y ago
Not trolling, they would ban any opposing viewpoints.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  They were demonstrated to ban people with opposing viewpoints who were trolling. That is not the same thing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tor11 6y ago
  this is what users of social media want.
- johndevor 6y ago
  How is that different from reddit? /r/politics does that regularly
  - 542458 6y ago
    I find this to be a bit of a bad comparison. /r/politics downvotes opposing viewpoints - they aren’t banned. And there are many, many other subreddits where you will find opinions completely different from those of the /r/politics orthodoxy.
    - commandlinefan 6y ago
      They are banned, you just don’t see it... because they’re banned.

bzb6 6y ago

I opened their website and it asked me to install their app but the App Store says it is not available in my region.

killingtime74 6y ago
Cool story

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago

Parler now looks to be hosted through a company called SkySilk: parler.com. IN A 216.246.208.249 https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/216.246.208.0 https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/216.246.208.0 SkySilk appears to specialize in VPCs and cloud hosting, not colocation. Their AUP doesn't appear to give Parler much relief either[1]: > We specifically reserve the right to refuse to provide the Service to customers or End Users engaged in the dissemination of material that may cause us to be subject to attacks on our network, or that while technically legal, run counter to our corporate principles. I can't imagine this arrangement lasts too long. [1]: https://www.skysilk.com/aup/ https://www.skysilk.com/aup/

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thepangolino 6y ago
I personally never understood the the appeal of Parler, be it on a technical standpoint or privacy and freedom of speech. Especially compared to Gab.
- jmcan 6y ago
  You can't even sign up without a phone number. Never got an account or went on just for this reason alone.
  - rvz 6y ago
    My point exactly why I don't use services that do this. Signal, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and all the like. It is plain silly to require phone number verification as a 'security mechanism'
    - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
      The engineering of Gab (politics aside) is probably worthy of a front page HN post. They run on Mastodon and their entire codebase is open source.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bigmattystyles 6y ago

I'm slightly left of center so parler is not for me - but I am curious and I like to see what's going on outside of my bubble. When I had to commute to work for instance, I'd listen to AM talk radio on the way in. It did nothing but reinforce my left of center world view. In any case, my point is that in this society we live in, merely having an account is seen as an espousing of the views. With parler's poor history of user data handling, there is no way I am even creating an account and risk having my (real-life) reputation take a hit. It's a sad state of affairs. Now, one might argue that I've just said I'm slightly left of center on hackernews, why don't I fear that - it wouldn't take much for someone who already knows me to tie my person to this account. I guess parler has a reputation as being (extreme?) far right and that's the difference. Again, it doesn't make much sense.

kenjackson 6y ago
Actually it makes a lot of sense. There are a lot things I don’t want to be associated with. I’m also left of center and I’m not actually worried about having a Parler account, but there are a ton of websites that scare me way more.
- fao_ 6y ago
  I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline. I'm honestly not sure what I expected to be honest. I signed in once, scrolled a bit, recoiled in disgust and haven't been back.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    An observation that someone on HN pointed to when the Parler take-down originally occurred: > The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong. * https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

parsimo2010 6y ago

Aside from the political stuff, this illustrates how a company can be reliant on another vendor. AWS was a single point of failure for Parler (along with a few other services like domain registration). For a one man show in a garage (or a very early stage startup), it's probably okay to focus on features and not backend resiliency. But by the time you have a board of directors, someone should have asked how they would handle losing a core service. Especially in this case someone should have seen that their business was high risk- either explicitly because of their plan/model, or incidentally because of the crowd they attracted. Maybe Parler had a plan for some things, but they clearly weren't ready for a setback at this level. I wonder how prepared other companies are for losses/denial of service like this. Could Ford's supply chain weather a vendor dropping out? Could Kellogg's cereal?

TZubiri 6y ago
Ironically, a one man show in a garage would be more resistant to legal challenges than hosting on aws. If you want to take down my server you have to either issue a warrant to search and seize my home, or a warrant for each of my ISPs, or intervene at the IP block or DNS level. The outcries over freedom of speech were just pathetic from a technological standpoint, it's a bunch of web 4.0 developers and users who felt entitled to services that even a 90s computer enthusiast would be able to provide. On some level it's not just Parler's fault, the internet has become more complex, and maybe some ISPs and modems provide some roadblocks like shared IPs and obnoxious firewalls, but after months they are still unable to lift a physical building place computers on property they control. It's like they are either incompetent or purposely looking for refusal of service so they can martyrize themselves.

legitster 6y ago

Of all the "deplatformings" this one is the hardest to feel sorry for. They clearly had a lot of technical debt and very little expertise in what they were doing. Seeing their AWS bill, it's apparent they were not without resources either. As far as I am aware, they are still just moving around their horrendously cobbled together Wordpress monstrosity to whatever giant benefactor that has a couch they can crash on. It's clearly other peoples' fault that they are so dependent on other's technology! And while I am very receptive towards conservative ideals as well as criticisms of tech and mainstream media, this is a bit like watching someone starve to death because Blue Apron stopped delivering to them.

throwaway894345 6y ago
From a purely technical perspective, I've never worked for a SaaS company that had SOPs for "what if our cloud provider pulls the plug on us today?". I'm sure big enterprise companies do this, but small nascent companies probably don't consider this to be one of the bigger risks that they face. Sure, they run an unpopular business, but I would not predicted the convergence of (1) the Capitol Hill riots would have taken place and (2) that the media would characterize it as a coup attempt or similar and argue that Parler was responsible (as opposed to Facebook where the planning seems to have taken place) and (3) that this would result in AWS kicking them off of their platform overnight. It's really hard to predict where the mob will focus it's wrath or in what proportion.
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  > pulls the plug on us today To be clear, AWS had been giving them warnings for months.
  - Arnt 6y ago
    Parler's also not alone in not having any plans against "the event that we've been warned about for months actually happened".
  - throwaway894345 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

londons_explore 6y ago

I would host Parler. While I don't agree with its content, I don't believe in people like hosting providers applying moral tests to their users. The Government/law should be the only people shutting them down.

vbezhenar 6y ago
Imagine that data center will ask you to move out because you're helping Parler. Imagine that your bank will ask you to find another bank in a three days and other banks will not want to work with you. When will you give up? Cancel culture is spreading fast.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  Calling this cancel culture is imo off base. A lot of people view this as an extremist cult bordering on brainwashing and terrorist training. I fear that there is definitely something brewing in our online habits these days, and it may be significantly damaging to society. The problem however, is that removing these groups will not inherently solve them. I would support removing of these extremists if i thought it would do good. It however, won't. It will further build the fire of self-victim identification and extremist views which fuel them. We need another approach at solving this problem. Of which i think is two fold: 1. Groups (both the left and right) struggle to stand up against the undesirable extremists within. 2. Our ingestion of information is not filtered enough by our own brains. We consume freely, and largely due to extremists and bubbles we end up consuming garbage. All of this said, i feel like attempts at dealing with Parler is vastly different than the "cancel culture" which attempted to rename the https://rubocop.org/ https://rubocop.org/ tool. One is a misguided answer to extremists - the other is an attempt at protecting hurt feelings over bad words. Very different.
  - Vaslo 6y ago
    So conservatives are extremists?
    - 6y ago

ngngngng 6y ago

I made an account pretty early on, before the thought had crossed my mind that I might acquire some perceived associations I wouldn't want. I had a silly reason, I just wanted to follow a conspiracy theorist friend of mine that moved there. They're certainly not joking about their theories but I find them hilarious. After seeing it was back online I figured I would log in and post communist memes until they banned me, but it seems I am unable to login. Looks like their technical problems continue.

ratsmack 6y ago
>post communist memes until they banned me I really doubt that would happen.

PaybackTony 6y ago

A number of the users from Parler joined the social network I built. Although I don't lean conservative in my own views (center), I believe that silencing those you feel are mis-informed or wrong only makes -- and has made -- the problem worse. An open ~discord~ discourse(oops, edit) is needed. People don't get that on Parler either. They should have a place they feel comfortable speaking about their (non-violent) views. And others should have the tools to voice their opposition openly -- and anonymously -- as well. Social networks have polarized people nearly beyond repair. I don't have to agree with you to believe you still have the right to voice your opinion. You have the right to be wrong. You have the right to an opportunity for growth. Funny note, Parler did a copy-pasta of our motto in their re-launch.

warmfuzzykitten 6y ago
I'm guessing you didn't mean to say "An open discord is needed" but thanks for the humor. :)
- PaybackTony 6y ago
  Absolutely meant discourse. The irony.

edoceo 6y ago

why didnt 4chan pick up that crowd?

senectus1 6y ago
I'm still convinced that Qanon is 4Chan in origin. I imagine they enjoy messing with people at arms length, the would want their safe haven torn down with Parler.
- krapp 6y ago
  I think that's common knowledge? It was a 4chan meme that got taken seriously because the groups it was mocking were so detached from reality that they interpreted satire as truth.
  - Havoc 6y ago
    Thought it was on one of the other chans
    - likeafox 6y ago
      The first few Q Anon branded 'drops' were on 4chan, but quickly relocated to the original 8chan. It is all but assured that there have been several different authors of the identity 'Q Anon'.

nikolay 6y ago

Online... except that many features are down. What a fiasco!

chosen1111 6y ago

Is this because gab was getting lots of users? Parler smells like honey

badmadrad 6y ago

So it seems the prevaling narrative from the lefties here is that because Parler was used to incite the riot it was deserved to be shut down? Is there proof Parler was anymore responsible than every other social media platform? If this is the case, why don't we just packet sniff the backbone and block internet to any home that is perceived to be engaging in anti-American or violence? What objective standard are you using here? Is it just ok to punish people you don't think you like? Seems like in a post truth world its more important for lefties to ensure they are controlling narrative then seeking truth. And many lefties fear free speech as they fear it will hurt them. Ironically, they are creating precedents which will hurt us all. Censorship is a double edged sword.