5 ms·

AWS isn't unique anymore and charges far more than other hosting providers (especially if you consider bandwidth). Modern software deployment solutions are quic

AWS isn't unique anymore and charges far more than other hosting providers (especially if you consider bandwidth). Modern software deployment solutions are quickly negating the cost-savings and convenience of autoscaling too. This just leaves AWS with a variety of unique, overpriced, yet convenient services and their popularity as their only noteworthy selling points. My bet is that they'll end up banning the wrong customer(s) and gain a reputation for being an unreliable partner compared to other hosts, excited to watch that happen. There's also a huge risk in my mind that catering to Twitter mobs and politicians making regulatory threats will become normal as a result of this, but who knows what the zeitgeist will be in 5 years. I'll be remembering this forever though.

kragen 5y ago
More likely, non-AWS cloud providers will either fall in line or get tarred as being the Gab/Parler of hosting services, stigmatizing whoever uses them. This will lead to people moving to AWS or another cloud provider that "removes more content" in order to avoid having their site blocked from Facebook sharing, Google search, Gmail, Twitter, etc.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I think this generalizes further too. Any incumbent group that holds power (or its supporters) will assail newcomers as being [something bad]. For instance, those on the political left, which is supported in kind by big tech, might attack some new social media platform as a haven for white supremacists. The charge doesn’t have to be true - it just has to stick in order to scare everyone who fears that label away, and the damage is done. Users, advertisers, web hosts, app stores, and so on will all abandon the platform. It’s an effective way to keep power on the side of the incumbents.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Right, of course. That's how most of civilization worked for 3000 years until we invented liberalism in the 01700s: if you pled for mercy for the heretics or argued that we should hear them out, you were a heretic too. It's a major reason progress was so slow. One of the charges against Socrates at his trial was that he claimed that the Sun was not actually divine, but merely natural matter such as a stone, a charge he denied. Hopefully we can find a way to preserve some sort of enclave of liberalism despite the US abandoning it.
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      I think what worries me most is how quickly those values can be abandoned. Maybe their demise has been building up silently for a few decades, but it feels like a near sudden collapse from a society that values diversity of speech and thought to one that is much more homogeneous and intolerant. Will classic liberalism always be so easy to dismantle and so difficult and lengthy to rebuild? Maybe historians have seen these cycles previously and have an answer.
      - kragen 5y ago
        No, this is the first time liberalism exists in the historical record. It's possible that the Mohists had developed liberalism before the Burning of the Books and the Burying of the Scholars (thus removing it from the historical record, along with most of the rest of the history of China up to that point) and of course the books that survive from before Gutenberg are relatively few in number. If the Vikings in Essex had a well-developed liberal theory, for example, we'd have no idea of it, because none of their writings survive. (There were lots of slave graves, though, so they probably didn't put it into practice any more than Jefferson did, if they did have it.) There are some less depressing archaeological finds like Çatal Höyük, whose setup suggests hunter-gatherer-like egalitarianism, but we really have no idea what their philosophy was or what kinds of freedoms they enjoyed or valued; by the time cuneiform was invented, Çatal Höyük had been abandoned for 2500 years, after 2200 years of prosperity. But there's really nothing resembling liberalism in classical Rome or Greece or medieval Islam or ancient Egypt or the Vedas, and it's quite a stretch to read liberalism into the Mozi or the Laozi. I don't think it's such a sudden collapse, though. Liberalism has always been just one ideological current among many in the US, and there has never been a time when the US fully lived up to its ideals. Indentured servitude, chattel slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Comstock Act, Prohibition, imprisoning people for pacifism, the Indian schools, J. Edgar Hoover's deep state, the draft, Jim Crow, the imperialist conquest of the Philippines, the Chinese Exclusion Act, mass imprisonment, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the plea-bargaining system, Obama's mass deportations, the Comics Code, civil forfeiture, the FCC granting local media oligopolies, and the MPAA ratings system are all incompatible with liberalism, as I see it. But I do think the last 25 years have seen a decisive turn to the Right in this sense; the main political debate in the US is no longer between liberalism and conservatism, but between progressivism and conservatism, both of which are opposed to liberalism.
- christophilus 5y ago
  Not a problem if you use a CDN.

kragen 5y ago

More likely, non-AWS cloud providers will either fall in line or get tarred as being the Gab/Parler of hosting services, stigmatizing whoever uses them. This will lead to people moving to AWS or another cloud provider that "removes more content" in order to avoid having their site blocked from Facebook sharing, Google search, Gmail, Twitter, etc.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I think this generalizes further too. Any incumbent group that holds power (or its supporters) will assail newcomers as being [something bad]. For instance, those on the political left, which is supported in kind by big tech, might attack some new social media platform as a haven for white supremacists. The charge doesn’t have to be true - it just has to stick in order to scare everyone who fears that label away, and the damage is done. Users, advertisers, web hosts, app stores, and so on will all abandon the platform. It’s an effective way to keep power on the side of the incumbents.
- kragen 5y ago
  Right, of course. That's how most of civilization worked for 3000 years until we invented liberalism in the 01700s: if you pled for mercy for the heretics or argued that we should hear them out, you were a heretic too. It's a major reason progress was so slow. One of the charges against Socrates at his trial was that he claimed that the Sun was not actually divine, but merely natural matter such as a stone, a charge he denied. Hopefully we can find a way to preserve some sort of enclave of liberalism despite the US abandoning it.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    I think what worries me most is how quickly those values can be abandoned. Maybe their demise has been building up silently for a few decades, but it feels like a near sudden collapse from a society that values diversity of speech and thought to one that is much more homogeneous and intolerant. Will classic liberalism always be so easy to dismantle and so difficult and lengthy to rebuild? Maybe historians have seen these cycles previously and have an answer.
    - kragen 5y ago
      No, this is the first time liberalism exists in the historical record. It's possible that the Mohists had developed liberalism before the Burning of the Books and the Burying of the Scholars (thus removing it from the historical record, along with most of the rest of the history of China up to that point) and of course the books that survive from before Gutenberg are relatively few in number. If the Vikings in Essex had a well-developed liberal theory, for example, we'd have no idea of it, because none of their writings survive. (There were lots of slave graves, though, so they probably didn't put it into practice any more than Jefferson did, if they did have it.) There are some less depressing archaeological finds like Çatal Höyük, whose setup suggests hunter-gatherer-like egalitarianism, but we really have no idea what their philosophy was or what kinds of freedoms they enjoyed or valued; by the time cuneiform was invented, Çatal Höyük had been abandoned for 2500 years, after 2200 years of prosperity. But there's really nothing resembling liberalism in classical Rome or Greece or medieval Islam or ancient Egypt or the Vedas, and it's quite a stretch to read liberalism into the Mozi or the Laozi. I don't think it's such a sudden collapse, though. Liberalism has always been just one ideological current among many in the US, and there has never been a time when the US fully lived up to its ideals. Indentured servitude, chattel slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Comstock Act, Prohibition, imprisoning people for pacifism, the Indian schools, J. Edgar Hoover's deep state, the draft, Jim Crow, the imperialist conquest of the Philippines, the Chinese Exclusion Act, mass imprisonment, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the plea-bargaining system, Obama's mass deportations, the Comics Code, civil forfeiture, the FCC granting local media oligopolies, and the MPAA ratings system are all incompatible with liberalism, as I see it. But I do think the last 25 years have seen a decisive turn to the Right in this sense; the main political debate in the US is no longer between liberalism and conservatism, but between progressivism and conservatism, both of which are opposed to liberalism.
christophilus 5y ago
Not a problem if you use a CDN.