I don't know which social media platforms use AWS to any critical extent, but I can't imagine them ejecting a big name like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc over "finding dozens of posts on the service which it said encouraged violence".
It's not about finding posts encouraging violence, it is about refusing to try to moderate that content, and your suggestion otherwise is disingenuous. If Facebook said "we are no longer going to try and moderate content that incites violence" there would obviously be blowback.
This myth that Parler doesn't moderate is simply not true. All screenshotted accounts I could find on Buzzfeed - such as ones from @QanonLV were banned from there before it was taken down.
HN is not full of morons. I do agree with you that Parler is generally misrepresented, but there is plenty of dissenters here. Things aren't as unbalanced as you perceive.
Roughly translated, "everyone who isn't on my side is going to be killed by our side, which might upset you, but I would not consider that 'inciting violence'."
EDIT: I misunderstood "purge" in this context. I disagree that silence on moderating content is "violence" just as I disagree that anything you disagree with is "violence." But I do not believe content will be "purged" unless it's part of a movement to unseat democracy or coordinate violent actions.
I disagree with what he said, but you're seemingly doing your best to make his point.
He's saying that when a person don't like something, the recent trend is to just label it as "inciting violence". He then adds onto that by saying the idea of "silence is violence" means that anyone who does not speak out against the disliked thing is inherently guilty of "inciting violence" as well, so lurkers and moderates are not safe from being labeled.
Again, I disagree with what he said. However, accusing his post of threatening violence against everyone with whom he disagrees does kind of support his point.
I may have misunderstood the grandparent post, because I'm unclear on "you lurkers will be purged." Could you translate that part for me? Are you saying "purged" to not mean removed from society?
Recently, many high-profile social media posts and accounts have been blocked under the pretext of "inciting violence". In that context, I understood his post as saying that lurkers would also be blocked in the same way - as in "purged from social media". I'm definitely concerned with the way he worded it, though.
"Parler will not knowingly allow itself to be used as a tool for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts. We will remove reported member content that a reasonable and objective observer would believe constitutes or evidences such activity. We may also remove the accounts of members who use our platform in this way."
I would be near willing to bet that more of the Capitol Hill events were planned on private Facebook groups, chats, etc than on Parler. Signal is a chat app that is secure and group chats are big in planning... So are they going to ban Signal? Conspiracy theories are rampant on WeChat and even over text messages.
Agree. Parler's discovery capability was garbage. You had to search for and follow big name people to get anywhere. So if Parler was really the breeding ground for the Capitol siege there'd be a clear smoking gun on who the organizers were. That never surfaced.
Meanwhile there are lots of private conservative/Republican groups on Facebook no one wants to talk about.
I just said they probably were on private Facebook groups, once you meet there you can branch out to Signal and WeChat, etc. My point is that you don't see calls to ban those apps, but everyone is celebrating Parler's death. I think everyone should be careful what they wish for.
Equating private with public messaging is ridiculous. Not sure how laws are in the US, but when doing support here in germany we had to have private in-game messages reported by a participant before we were even allowed to look at them. The company obviously had a much easier time shaping the atmosphere in the public forum.
Also while ensuring those tools can never be used for "evil" is unreasonable, we should expect dominant players to do what they can or at least not do a lot worse than everyone else. Are you arguing Parler tried to moderate as much as others?
The distinction, that AWS, Google, and Apple have all claimed, is that Parler refuses to sufficiently moderate the inciting of violence. Perhaps that claim is in error, perhaps such judgements are too subjective. If so, large social media companies might avoid AWS for fear of it.
> Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence. [...] It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. [...] This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you.
>You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. [...] This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you.
Assuming this is true, it's why I shed no tears for Parler and their circumstances.
However, things like "sufficient" and "urgency" need to be established in law, after which the rules are clear and all of these platforms can be held to account for the content they host and spread.
Should those things be established by law though? First amendment says the government shouldn’t be able to prosecute your for speech for a reason, letting the entity with a monopoly on violence say what speech is acceptable/how to deal with it is a massive issue. I’d much rather speech be deal with as it has here, with individual corporations and people refusing to work with bad actors as they see fit. This sort of suppression of speech is the free market of ideas in action, in my mind.
If it turns out that gives the current tech giants too much individual power, that’s a separate issue to deal with.
Probably the ToS has language about when AWS can decide to stop hosting. I would assume the langue is extremely broad, legally speaking, in how much control it gives AWS to their own platform.
If you're going to build something aimed entirely at "taking down/riling up the establishment" you need to make sure you're not entirely dependent on the establishment to keep your something online.
If that means that Parler refuses to moderate the actual planning or threatening of crimes, the legal system would shut them down. Section 230 doesn't protect social media companies from criminal liability.
If that merely means that Parler allows posts that make people angry with a fair amount of violent rhetoric, well, that's all social media. In that case, the distinction is partisan, not principled.
Not moderating their uh, “content”, is very expensive for the rest of us. It’s potentially, an extreme expense for Amazon. No one has an obligation to let their business suffer for you.
It's obvious there should have been more moderation. However, Parler is a 30 employee start up. Their efforts would fall sort of the ideal either way...
Indeed, and I think it's because Parler is best known for hosting violent, far-right content, that is linked to the recent insurrection at the Capitol Building. Whereas the other services you cite are much more generic in their clientele.
So based on this, Amazon made a business decision to deny service to Parler, due to the adverse publicity (and perhaps, potential legal liability) generated for them by hosting this content.
or the fact that nicolas maduro - a man already convicted of crimes against humanity by the UN - still has an account and has gone uncensored. how anyone here defends such blatant hypocrisy is beyond me
I don't think "convicted of crimes against humanity by the UN" violates Twitter's ToS, and I'm assuming he didn't use Twitter to commit any of the alleged crimes, so this is a pretty bad faith, whataboutism, complete non-sense, etc.. By this logic you could ban both Bush and Obama, too.
Please remind me when Nicolas Maduro led an armed mob into the US Capitol.
We judge threats not only on their intent, but on their success in executing that intent. On that measure, Parler is much more dangerous than Maduro, Putin, or the Ayatollah.
it's clear that selective enforcement occurs, especially on Twitter. while i'm sure there are examples of violence being incited on Parler, I can find just as many examples (if not more) on Twitter.
Twitter let Trump spew his garbage right up until the point that it led to an armed insurrection.
So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why they get taken more seriously.
As Twitter said, it's not just the content, but the context as well. When Iranian soldiers invade the US Capitol, I'm sure they'll face a Twitter ban as well.
The mob nearly succeeded in capturing, kidnapping, or killing democratically-elected members of Congress. Or, as they were chanting, in hanging the vice president. I see no reason not to take them seriously.
The leadership in Iran, in contrast, has not gotten any closer to its goal of destroying Israel since the Revolution.
The tweet says: "#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen."
Do you think that is not as bad as what Trump has said?
They're not wrong that it's different, Israel and Jews are two different things. You can be against Israel without being and antisemite, though I wouldn't guess that's the case here.
They're not wrong that it's different, Israel and Jews are two different things. You can be against Israel without being an antisemite, though I wouldn't guess that's the case here.
Israel is a country, Jews are a race. You can be for the replacement of Israel with a more inclusive nation-state without calling for a Jewish genocide.
Now you and I both know the Ayatollah believes in a Jewish genocide, but this particular tweet isn’t proof or evidence of it.
You have to understand things in context though. Trump never said "storm the US capitol". Twitter's official reason for banning him was for glorifying violence by tweeting that “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” and that he wouldn't be going to the inauguration.
If you can twist that into supporting the rioters and calling for violence at the inauguration, I don't see how you can't see calling for the destruction of Israel could cause people to be anti-Semitic.
If Trump tweeted that Mexico was cancerous tumor on America that has to be removed and eradicated, it is possible, and it will happen, do you think Twitter be cool with that? What if he had previously endorsed the genocide of all Mexican people? What if Americans had commonly been committing terrorist attacks against Mexicans?
Then maybe AWS should just come out and say "We disabled our services for Parler because it's very unpopular and we don't want to be associated with it."
They pretty much already did. In corporate PR terms, "it contravened our Terms of Service" is essentially synonymous with "we don't want to be associated with it".
"parler is just not worth the aggravation" - they are likely to be a minuscule revenue source that requires constant monitoring to make sure we not facing any liability, as well as potentially pissing off our existing clients. Therefore, its in our best interests just not to bother with them.
Anyone that thinks corporations care one way or another about anything except their bottom lines, has a much higher view of corporations then I do.
I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut them off. That's just capitalism. No master except the almighty dollar.
but if they were at least honest about it, maybe we could stop re-hashing this everyday...
Yes, because "dozens" represents different percentages of content on Parler vs much much bigger platforms like Twitter. Parler is filled with content that encourages violence, while Twitter is used for all kinds of things.
The threshold is if the management at Amazon etc. feel that it would generate too much bad publicity and/or potential legal liability for them to provide service to an organization mired in such controversy.
We live in a capitalist free-market system. Amazon (or any entity) is free to choose with whom they do business (oh the irony!). They are dropping Parler because the the current political climate has manifest in such a way that they think it will cost them more financial and/or political capital than the alternative (recall there is a lot of antitrust sentiment out there right now).
Too bad so sad. Sorry not sorry. This is exactly the kind of "freedom" for which many of the above platform's users would advocate. Parler's PR team is missing the opportunity to applaud AWS for exercising their freedoms.
Okay, but shouldn't it at least bother you that Amazon is lying about their reason? I don't think congratulating a company for exercising their rights is appropriate when they're actively lying to our faces.
Unless, of course, they actually stand by what they've said. In which case we come right back to my original post.
Amazon doesn't really come off as the "good guy" by admitting they have weighed the current political climate against their profits. Especially given whose about to be in charge. They made a business decision and wrapped up in some good 'ol PR spin/legalese. It happens all the time. About everything. It's still their right to refuse service.
