In this case, enforcing their Terms of Service does constitute siding with oppressive regimes. You could argue that it's not AWS' goal to help oppressive regimes, but in the struggle against censorship, that is the side they have put themselves on in practice. On one side, there are people all over the world who want to communicate freely. On the other, there are authoritarians who want to suppress and surveil that communication. AWS policy used to help the former, and now helps the latter.

I think maybe you're trying to express that under a free market ethical framework, AWS has done nothing wrong here. Which is true, and an insightful indictment of the free market as an inherently liberatory force.

That's not what "siding with" means. AWS is remaining neutral to politics as a company, which is a very good thing. Why do you want multinational corporations to get more involved in geopolitics? Do you think that will somehow lead to a better outcome?

Signal had an strategy, but it involves breaking the terms of service, so that vendor has no reason to comply and put the other customers at risk. Signal just needs to figure out another option. It's a technical issue and nobody is stopping Signal itself. AWS will still host them just fine as long as they follow the terms.

By the way, the free market is what allowed companies like AWS and Signal to exist in the first place, and lets you contributed effort and money if you'd like, so perhaps you should widen your context before throwing around indictments.

Exactly! These countries may start blocking Amazon and Cloudfront domains. Amazon needs to put its foot down.