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I’ve stopped using Amazon after AWS started political censorship. Actually, saves you a lot of money: much less impulse buying. It appears a lot of my impulse b

I’ve stopped using Amazon after AWS started political censorship. Actually, saves you a lot of money: much less impulse buying. It appears a lot of my impulse buying was caused by my trust in Amazon return policy :)

briffle 4y ago
that is not political censorship, it is illegal for US businesses to do business with Russia because of sanctions. The sanctions themselves are political, but not following them is not a choice for US businesses.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  The treasury has no business banning books. It has nothing to do with sanctions. It's purely political. Whatever happened to all the people shouting that "Republicans are banning books"? Banning books is okay, but only if it's for the right now?
- pentae 4y ago
  When they decided to terminate Parler not even giving them time to move hosts, that wasn't political censorship?
  - morby 4y ago
    There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. A *private* entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company because of that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. More people and businesses should be willing to refuse business to entities that seek to harass, abuse, or promote violence to another group of people. What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here.
    - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
      >A private entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company You mean like how OP decided not to do business with Amazon?
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      Your logic is flawed on many levels, and I will be glad to parse the errors after I have my breakfast and nothing more important emerges. Just one point for now: > What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here. My kids tried to point me in the same direction. I’ve just pointed them to the router and said: I am a private citizen paying for Internet connection in this house. In 24 hours this router will be configured to drop all connections to Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. Prepare yourself. Boy, how worried they were. Never seen any person more worried in my life. See, they use Facebook for studies and Amazon for buying textbooks, so why I am so cruel? I said: exactly my point. I was not that cruel though, but probably I should have.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        > I said: exactly my point. They're both not government action, but they're very different kinds. There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity". Along similar lines, I am deeply upset with the level of power that payment processors have/use around censorship. But I don't care too much what AWS does.
        MikePlacid 4y ago
        >There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity". On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself. On other hand - my kids faced much less obstacles than Parler: 1. They are adults, they could have purchased their own internet connection. 2. They are Russians, they know how to use VPN. Theoretically . They are just busy people, they could have coped, but would have some extra unnecessary troubles to overcome. And just a possibility of these small extra troubles caused a lot of worrying. (Parler failed to cope, they were too reliant on Amazon services or something, so unprofessional).
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself. You have twisted what I said past the breaking point. Amazon didn't stop anyone else from hosting or accessing Parler. They only refused to assist it themselves. > they know how to use VPN. Oh if VPN is allowed then it's significantly less of a problem. But you're still blocking it on the main network in a way that goes significantly beyond what Amazon did. Infrastructure should not block. I don't feel like AWS is monopolistic enough to count as infrastructure.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      > There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Extremists on Twitter often make calls to violence too. Why do we let Twitter stay online and just ban those individuals instead of kicking Twitter offline?
      - morby 4y ago
        “We” didn’t take parler offline. AWS did, surely after some pressure. In addition to this, Twitter should and is held accountable by society. You can’t possibly have missed the entire debate on its moderation. Of course, twitter also does more to Moderate the content on its site than Parler did which is what got it booted off AWS. Few services want to be associated with radical ideologues spreading violence.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Amazon sees fit to sell innumerable books by extremists which call to violence. Particularly, but not only, many famous religious texts and political manifestos.
    - cupofpython 4y ago
      On one hand I agree fully with this. On the other hand, if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations then we might as well start setting a precedent of holding large corporations to the same standards as government.
      - MikePlacid 4y ago
        >if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations Railroad period in California politics. About 187x or so. The (only) transcontinental railroad is completed. The owners, Stanford (yes, that Stanford) and Co see the enormous economic power in their hands. They can set tariffs as they please. If a farm is owned by a relative or a loyal person - shipping oranges to Chicago is extremely profitable. A "bad" person gets a prohibiting tariff. So, only a loyal person can be elected at any post. Only a loyal person can own a (profitable) newspaper. This continues for a couple dozen years, then there is a popular revolt and no railroad-connected person can ever be elected anywhere. And the first anti-monopoly laws are introduced. Suddenly a private business can't set private tariffs as it's pleased. "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." -- Having said that, the post you agree with is flawed on much simpler basis. The constitution protects us from government censorship. Protection from private censorship (and yes, it's a censorship) is placed in our own private hands. So to say "nothing to worry about" is extremely counter-productive. Exactly because there is no other recourse except the private action of stopping dealing with a business that engages is censorship.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      So. 1. There were bad people on the site, whom other people (you included) wanted to shut up. The site refused to do so. This speaks to the quality of the site, no? They refused to censor something while there was a strong push to censor it - that means they will probably not censor you, when your opinion will differ from the opinion of powerful people. That means that a person should rather support the site that does not censor opinions the person does not agree with. Unless the person hopes to always agree with the opinions of the powerful people even when the powerful opinions change. 2. The logic of the federal constitution prohibiting only Congress to pass censorship laws, as far as I get it was: if a business indulges in censorship, customers can drop it and go to its competition. That's exactly what I am doing - defending the American way of life one less purchase on Amazon at a time. Suggestion not to worry is rather strange in the context: the federal constitution puts the task of stopping censorship in private businesses on private citizens, me (and you) included. 3. Actually, I live in California and California constitution protects my right of speech from private censorship too! It even works - if a private business is a shopping mall, eg. But it does not work for Google or Facebook. Because people do not think it's important. That means a piece of paper, even if it is named "constitution" can't protect the rights declared in it - if people stop thinking these rights are important. Why shouldn't I be worried - I have a "living experience" in a country with the right of free speech in the constitution only. A clarification. 4. There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Actually, at the moment of the de-platforming it was about "Russian propaganda". Some factual information was labelled "foreign propaganda" and censored. Again, I have and enormous "living experience" in the country with a permanent ban on "foreign propaganda". A puzzle. 5. that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. My English is not that good but a dictionary tells me that: cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. prob·lem·at·ic /ˌpräbləˈmadik/ adjective constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty. To consider this neither a censorship nor problematic you should change dictionaries first (probably you all are tired of my mentioning my "living experience", but yes, I have that one too).
      - morby 4y ago
        1. First of all I didn’t care about Parler, it was a dump doomed to fail. Second this point is purely opinion. Third, your notion of what free speech is in this country is flawed. calls to commit violence and/or riot are not protected free speech under the constitution 2. I don’t care if you choose not to do business with AWS. My comment is on your opinions on whether what AWS did were legitimate. 3. Explain? How is a mall restricting you? Stores will kick you out for being loud and obstructive. It happens all the time without legal repercussion. Actually the government does protect the rights of Facebook, Google, etc to host content by users that are calls to violence, harm, abuse, etc. there are many examples of this. The constitution will never tell a company it has to do business with an entity that hosts that content though. That’s what’s crazy about the duality of free market ideologues. They want business to have free reign but then hate when they exercise it? I’m having a hard time trying to grasp what you’re getting at here, actually. My point about censorship is in juxtaposition to government censorship which is what society should be worried about. If a business doesn’t want to do business with people who break the law that’s entirely up to them.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    No, that is not political censorship.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
      - dekhn 4y ago
        thanks for the dictionary definition, Professor Placid
        MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Better than your ass-pulled definition, Professor Dekhn.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  My trigger was not Russia, it was de-platforming of Parler. I kinda care more about my life in the US and consider political de-platforming an extremely dangerous development. A “trigger” caused by my “living experience” as my son interprets it (but I think it’s more logical than that).
  - Aloha 4y ago
    The way I see it, Parler wasn't deplatformed. Parler could have rented a building, bought servers, racked and stacked those servers, networked them and gotten connectivity to the world. They didn't, they leased servers as a service from others, and then got burned when those services decided they were uncomfortable with the vitriolic anonymous speech being hosted on their hardware. Had they truly built their own platform, no one could have taken from them. (It'd be lots harder anyhow)
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Right, but the point remains: AWS kicked Parler off of their platform. It's fine to be of the opinion that AWS was in the right to do this, but your comment seems entirely contradictory: Your first sentence claims they weren't deplatformed, the rest of your comment explains how Parler should have built their own platform from the ground up after getting kicked off of AWS's platform.
    - Stupulous 4y ago
      And if their office building evicted them, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still buy some land and build their own office; it was their own fault for leasing office space as a service and getting burned. And if their ISP cut their access, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still start their own ISP; had they truly built their own platform, no ISP could have taken that from them. And if the power plant wouldn't give them electricity- okay I'll stop.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        I don't think a power plant can refuse, and an ISP shouldn't be allowed to refuse. And I don't think it's that hard to get office space with a real contract?
- AlfeG 4y ago
  Only when it's not. It's legal for AWS to have business with Russian entities. It's illegal to have business with occupied territories (LNR/DPR in particular). It's like You know. I have not suffered enough according to those sanctions. Lost a flat of my mother in my homeland. And now loss Amazon/IMBD accounts. Seems that I will be loosing my Google account soon.
pessimizer 4y ago
> It appears a lot of my impulse buying was caused by my trust in Amazon return policy :) Better to get it cheaper and less counterfeit/crappy the first time. Since delivery time from Amazon for non-Prime people has slowed to a crawl, it's a good motivator to discover best-in-class ecommerce sites rather than the mediocre-at-everything-but-sometimes-the-mediocre-thing-arrives-the-same-day-you-order-it site. Sites that aren't paying the price of Amazon marketing, or charging an Amazon premium, so usually the prices are better. You might find that you usually use Amazon 95% of the time for just a few classes of product, and you're better served buying those from three other sites and leaving the last 5% of spontaneous purchases for which you don't have a good source with Amazon.
subsubzero 4y ago
I've stopped using Amazon for years, but didn't know they did this? > AWS started political censorship

briffle 4y ago

that is not political censorship, it is illegal for US businesses to do business with Russia because of sanctions. The sanctions themselves are political, but not following them is not a choice for US businesses.

rjzzleep 4y ago
The treasury has no business banning books. It has nothing to do with sanctions. It's purely political. Whatever happened to all the people shouting that "Republicans are banning books"? Banning books is okay, but only if it's for the right now?
pentae 4y ago
When they decided to terminate Parler not even giving them time to move hosts, that wasn't political censorship?
- morby 4y ago
  There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. A *private* entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company because of that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. More people and businesses should be willing to refuse business to entities that seek to harass, abuse, or promote violence to another group of people. What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here.
  - JacobThreeThree 4y ago
    >A private entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company You mean like how OP decided not to do business with Amazon?
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    Your logic is flawed on many levels, and I will be glad to parse the errors after I have my breakfast and nothing more important emerges. Just one point for now: > What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here. My kids tried to point me in the same direction. I’ve just pointed them to the router and said: I am a private citizen paying for Internet connection in this house. In 24 hours this router will be configured to drop all connections to Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. Prepare yourself. Boy, how worried they were. Never seen any person more worried in my life. See, they use Facebook for studies and Amazon for buying textbooks, so why I am so cruel? I said: exactly my point. I was not that cruel though, but probably I should have.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > I said: exactly my point. They're both not government action, but they're very different kinds. There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity". Along similar lines, I am deeply upset with the level of power that payment processors have/use around censorship. But I don't care too much what AWS does.
      - MikePlacid 4y ago
        >There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity". On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself. On other hand - my kids faced much less obstacles than Parler: 1. They are adults, they could have purchased their own internet connection. 2. They are Russians, they know how to use VPN. Theoretically . They are just busy people, they could have coped, but would have some extra unnecessary troubles to overcome. And just a possibility of these small extra troubles caused a lot of worrying. (Parler failed to cope, they were too reliant on Amazon services or something, so unprofessional).
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself. You have twisted what I said past the breaking point. Amazon didn't stop anyone else from hosting or accessing Parler. They only refused to assist it themselves. > they know how to use VPN. Oh if VPN is allowed then it's significantly less of a problem. But you're still blocking it on the main network in a way that goes significantly beyond what Amazon did. Infrastructure should not block. I don't feel like AWS is monopolistic enough to count as infrastructure.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Extremists on Twitter often make calls to violence too. Why do we let Twitter stay online and just ban those individuals instead of kicking Twitter offline?
    - morby 4y ago
      “We” didn’t take parler offline. AWS did, surely after some pressure. In addition to this, Twitter should and is held accountable by society. You can’t possibly have missed the entire debate on its moderation. Of course, twitter also does more to Moderate the content on its site than Parler did which is what got it booted off AWS. Few services want to be associated with radical ideologues spreading violence.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Amazon sees fit to sell innumerable books by extremists which call to violence. Particularly, but not only, many famous religious texts and political manifestos.
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    On one hand I agree fully with this. On the other hand, if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations then we might as well start setting a precedent of holding large corporations to the same standards as government.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      >if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations Railroad period in California politics. About 187x or so. The (only) transcontinental railroad is completed. The owners, Stanford (yes, that Stanford) and Co see the enormous economic power in their hands. They can set tariffs as they please. If a farm is owned by a relative or a loyal person - shipping oranges to Chicago is extremely profitable. A "bad" person gets a prohibiting tariff. So, only a loyal person can be elected at any post. Only a loyal person can own a (profitable) newspaper. This continues for a couple dozen years, then there is a popular revolt and no railroad-connected person can ever be elected anywhere. And the first anti-monopoly laws are introduced. Suddenly a private business can't set private tariffs as it's pleased. "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." -- Having said that, the post you agree with is flawed on much simpler basis. The constitution protects us from government censorship. Protection from private censorship (and yes, it's a censorship) is placed in our own private hands. So to say "nothing to worry about" is extremely counter-productive. Exactly because there is no other recourse except the private action of stopping dealing with a business that engages is censorship.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    So. 1. There were bad people on the site, whom other people (you included) wanted to shut up. The site refused to do so. This speaks to the quality of the site, no? They refused to censor something while there was a strong push to censor it - that means they will probably not censor you, when your opinion will differ from the opinion of powerful people. That means that a person should rather support the site that does not censor opinions the person does not agree with. Unless the person hopes to always agree with the opinions of the powerful people even when the powerful opinions change. 2. The logic of the federal constitution prohibiting only Congress to pass censorship laws, as far as I get it was: if a business indulges in censorship, customers can drop it and go to its competition. That's exactly what I am doing - defending the American way of life one less purchase on Amazon at a time. Suggestion not to worry is rather strange in the context: the federal constitution puts the task of stopping censorship in private businesses on private citizens, me (and you) included. 3. Actually, I live in California and California constitution protects my right of speech from private censorship too! It even works - if a private business is a shopping mall, eg. But it does not work for Google or Facebook. Because people do not think it's important. That means a piece of paper, even if it is named "constitution" can't protect the rights declared in it - if people stop thinking these rights are important. Why shouldn't I be worried - I have a "living experience" in a country with the right of free speech in the constitution only. A clarification. 4. There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Actually, at the moment of the de-platforming it was about "Russian propaganda". Some factual information was labelled "foreign propaganda" and censored. Again, I have and enormous "living experience" in the country with a permanent ban on "foreign propaganda". A puzzle. 5. that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. My English is not that good but a dictionary tells me that: cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. prob·lem·at·ic /ˌpräbləˈmadik/ adjective constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty. To consider this neither a censorship nor problematic you should change dictionaries first (probably you all are tired of my mentioning my "living experience", but yes, I have that one too).
    - morby 4y ago
      1. First of all I didn’t care about Parler, it was a dump doomed to fail. Second this point is purely opinion. Third, your notion of what free speech is in this country is flawed. calls to commit violence and/or riot are not protected free speech under the constitution 2. I don’t care if you choose not to do business with AWS. My comment is on your opinions on whether what AWS did were legitimate. 3. Explain? How is a mall restricting you? Stores will kick you out for being loud and obstructive. It happens all the time without legal repercussion. Actually the government does protect the rights of Facebook, Google, etc to host content by users that are calls to violence, harm, abuse, etc. there are many examples of this. The constitution will never tell a company it has to do business with an entity that hosts that content though. That’s what’s crazy about the duality of free market ideologues. They want business to have free reign but then hate when they exercise it? I’m having a hard time trying to grasp what you’re getting at here, actually. My point about censorship is in juxtaposition to government censorship which is what society should be worried about. If a business doesn’t want to do business with people who break the law that’s entirely up to them.
- dekhn 4y ago
  No, that is not political censorship.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      thanks for the dictionary definition, Professor Placid
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Better than your ass-pulled definition, Professor Dekhn.
MikePlacid 4y ago
My trigger was not Russia, it was de-platforming of Parler. I kinda care more about my life in the US and consider political de-platforming an extremely dangerous development. A “trigger” caused by my “living experience” as my son interprets it (but I think it’s more logical than that).
- Aloha 4y ago
  The way I see it, Parler wasn't deplatformed. Parler could have rented a building, bought servers, racked and stacked those servers, networked them and gotten connectivity to the world. They didn't, they leased servers as a service from others, and then got burned when those services decided they were uncomfortable with the vitriolic anonymous speech being hosted on their hardware. Had they truly built their own platform, no one could have taken from them. (It'd be lots harder anyhow)
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Right, but the point remains: AWS kicked Parler off of their platform. It's fine to be of the opinion that AWS was in the right to do this, but your comment seems entirely contradictory: Your first sentence claims they weren't deplatformed, the rest of your comment explains how Parler should have built their own platform from the ground up after getting kicked off of AWS's platform.
  - Stupulous 4y ago
    And if their office building evicted them, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still buy some land and build their own office; it was their own fault for leasing office space as a service and getting burned. And if their ISP cut their access, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still start their own ISP; had they truly built their own platform, no ISP could have taken that from them. And if the power plant wouldn't give them electricity- okay I'll stop.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      I don't think a power plant can refuse, and an ISP shouldn't be allowed to refuse. And I don't think it's that hard to get office space with a real contract?
AlfeG 4y ago
Only when it's not. It's legal for AWS to have business with Russian entities. It's illegal to have business with occupied territories (LNR/DPR in particular). It's like You know. I have not suffered enough according to those sanctions. Lost a flat of my mother in my homeland. And now loss Amazon/IMBD accounts. Seems that I will be loosing my Google account soon.

pessimizer 4y ago

> It appears a lot of my impulse buying was caused by my trust in Amazon return policy :) Better to get it cheaper and less counterfeit/crappy the first time. Since delivery time from Amazon for non-Prime people has slowed to a crawl, it's a good motivator to discover best-in-class ecommerce sites rather than the mediocre-at-everything-but-sometimes-the-mediocre-thing-arrives-the-same-day-you-order-it site. Sites that aren't paying the price of Amazon marketing, or charging an Amazon premium, so usually the prices are better. You might find that you usually use Amazon 95% of the time for just a few classes of product, and you're better served buying those from three other sites and leaving the last 5% of spontaneous purchases for which you don't have a good source with Amazon.

subsubzero 4y ago

I've stopped using Amazon for years, but didn't know they did this? > AWS started political censorship