7 ms·

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.

by ttt0 6y ago

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.
      - NicoJuicy 6y ago
        Free speech doesn't mean they can't face criticism or consequences by people/businesses outside of the government. Their rights aren't violated. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ seems appropriate.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    You don't necessarily need the cloud, a lot of times you pay a lot more for using AWS, GCP, Azure etc. There are of course times it may make sense but just because you can't or don't want to use the cloud does not mean you cannot put a service on the internet you're just going to need some classical dev ops and networking.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    Hilariously, you are missing the point that it actually is illegal for the power company to deny service. In fact in my country it's illegal for them to cut your power off even if you're not paying your bills since it's considered an essential service.
- ttt0 6y ago
  Not that I disagree, no one should ever rely on Google or do any business with them. But as it stands right now, our corporate overlords completely privatized our freedom of speech, especially considering the fact that we're in the middle of Covid lockdowns, so you can't just go out and speak your mind. That's why I think the government should take action.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
    > That's why I think the government should take action. And do what, exactly?
    - ttt0 6y ago
      Like extending free speech laws to these corporations. So banks, domain registrars, payment processors, cloud services, DDOS protection services etc. can't just terminate the contract for simply disagreeing with speech that is protected under the First Amendment.
      - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
        You're essentially asking the government to compel private businesses to host speech that they disagree with. I don't think that's a viable path.
        ttt0 6y ago
        Specifically with the things I listed - yes, I do. In regards to banking it's not even a free market in the first place.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway19937 6y ago
        This change would substantially benefit large providers at the expense of smaller providers. AWS can afford to be sued for hosting a forum or the costs of a boycott for hosting Stormfront - a smaller provider could easily be wiped out. Edited to add the following. Most of this post was wrong. ttt0 is right that section 230 protects providers in the cases I mentioned. TIL about the scope of section 230 provider protection.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  If "you can complain if you want", then "Nobody is forced to host your site. This is partly how free market capitalism works" is not any kind of rebuttal to their complaint, is it?
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    You can complain about anything that you want to complain about, even if there is no legal/etc justification. Google is totally allowed to terminate your account for no reason, but it's still considered a dick move.
    - MikeUt 6y ago
      So your entire argument is that nothing illegal was done? I don't think anyone claimed otherwise, so that doesn't contribute anything to the conversation.
- rvz 6y ago
  > It's really your own fault for choosing to depend on google. There you go. Signing up to their services means that you are aware of the terms and conditions and it includes termination of service for any reason. Tough. > If you don't like google's behaviour, then you should either be self-hosting or at least diversify with other providers. They didn't listen to us when GitHub kept going down nor did they listen when Google took Element and Mastodon's apps off the Play Store (The outrage was visible). Oh well, its their platform and they are private companies, blah blah blah. I guess when rvz was screaming for self-hosting and having control over your own infrastructure as possible, others said AWS, GCP and Azure made it a point and click setup and 'It's just easier because someone else is the sys-admin and its not my server'. We learn the hard way I guess.
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]

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.

by 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.
    - NicoJuicy 6y ago
      Free speech doesn't mean they can't face criticism or consequences by people/businesses outside of the government. Their rights aren't violated. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ seems appropriate.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  You don't necessarily need the cloud, a lot of times you pay a lot more for using AWS, GCP, Azure etc. There are of course times it may make sense but just because you can't or don't want to use the cloud does not mean you cannot put a service on the internet you're just going to need some classical dev ops and networking.
- XorNot 6y ago
  Hilariously, you are missing the point that it actually is illegal for the power company to deny service. In fact in my country it's illegal for them to cut your power off even if you're not paying your bills since it's considered an essential service.
ttt0 6y ago
Not that I disagree, no one should ever rely on Google or do any business with them. But as it stands right now, our corporate overlords completely privatized our freedom of speech, especially considering the fact that we're in the middle of Covid lockdowns, so you can't just go out and speak your mind. That's why I think the government should take action.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  > That's why I think the government should take action. And do what, exactly?
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Like extending free speech laws to these corporations. So banks, domain registrars, payment processors, cloud services, DDOS protection services etc. can't just terminate the contract for simply disagreeing with speech that is protected under the First Amendment.
    - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
      You're essentially asking the government to compel private businesses to host speech that they disagree with. I don't think that's a viable path.
      - ttt0 6y ago
        Specifically with the things I listed - yes, I do. In regards to banking it's not even a free market in the first place.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway19937 6y ago
      This change would substantially benefit large providers at the expense of smaller providers. AWS can afford to be sued for hosting a forum or the costs of a boycott for hosting Stormfront - a smaller provider could easily be wiped out. Edited to add the following. Most of this post was wrong. ttt0 is right that section 230 protects providers in the cases I mentioned. TIL about the scope of section 230 provider protection.
MikeUt 6y ago
If "you can complain if you want", then "Nobody is forced to host your site. This is partly how free market capitalism works" is not any kind of rebuttal to their complaint, is it?
- andrewzah 6y ago
  You can complain about anything that you want to complain about, even if there is no legal/etc justification. Google is totally allowed to terminate your account for no reason, but it's still considered a dick move.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    So your entire argument is that nothing illegal was done? I don't think anyone claimed otherwise, so that doesn't contribute anything to the conversation.
rvz 6y ago
> It's really your own fault for choosing to depend on google. There you go. Signing up to their services means that you are aware of the terms and conditions and it includes termination of service for any reason. Tough. > If you don't like google's behaviour, then you should either be self-hosting or at least diversify with other providers. They didn't listen to us when GitHub kept going down nor did they listen when Google took Element and Mastodon's apps off the Play Store (The outrage was visible). Oh well, its their platform and they are private companies, blah blah blah. I guess when rvz was screaming for self-hosting and having control over your own infrastructure as possible, others said AWS, GCP and Azure made it a point and click setup and 'It's just easier because someone else is the sys-admin and its not my server'. We learn the hard way I guess.

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]