What makes you think employees had anything to do with this? Employees at Amazon don't seem to be that well organized. I would think this decision was made by execs trying to do what is best for themselves and shareholders.
I get employees called for it, but I really doubt Parler was pulled primarily because of their complaints.
I never said it didn't. I'm not a Parler user and don't like the platform but don't think it should be systematically deplatformed in coordinated action by ideologues. It's pretty simple.
Yeah, me too. AWS is a whole lot closer to "essential public infrastructure" than, say, Twitter or Facebook. (Or Zendesk or Twilio or any of the myriad service providers that Parler happened to use.)
Where does it end?
Can the local utility provider that serves Parler's physical office decided to "deplatform" them and revoke their access to electricity?
Can the small handful of Tier 1 transit providers (which together make up "the Internet" as we know it) decide to deplatform a network by refusing to peer with it? [What if they extend that depeering to include any other networks (Tier 2 etc.) which refuse to stop peering with the target network?]
Sure, that's just a hypothetical right now, but then again last week "AWS decides to terminate you" was one of those hypothetical but very unlikely risks. How far is this witch hunt going to go?
[Sadly, given recent discourse here, I feel compelled to state that I strongly disagree with the content posted on Parler, which was indeed some truly awful stuff.]
Twitter gladly offers a platform to the former Malaysian prime minister who said that "Muslims have a right to be angry" and "kill millions of French people". [1]
He was not suspended for the post. Twitter is a platform for extremists, as long as the extremists don't go against their ideological slant.
There are literally antitrust suits against Facebook and Google currently, so at least some part of the Justice department believes these tech companies are monopolies, as does a sizeable, bipartisan part of Congress.
Networked services intrinsically reward monopolization/centralization, due to Metcalfe's Law [0]: users are more concerned with going where other users are, than the merits of the service itself. (A curious exception: Uber and Lyft, presumably because drivers can easily use both simultaneously.)
Facebook, for example, does not represent a monopoly, defined as a social media company generally; but they arguably have ~99% market share within their social niche (with some FOSS clones as a rounding error, and Twitter/Instagram/etc occupying different niches). Contrast with Netflix, which is more disruptable without social network effects, as we've seen with the proliferation of streaming services in the last 5 years.
I don't know what the threshold should be to regulate social media as utilities (mandating transparency, interoperability, and due process), but as such platforms become our de-facto political and conversational commons, I don't think we should allow those spaces to be entirely controlled by private capital, let alone manipulated by Blind Idiot God algorithms, which happily hijack our limbic systems for a quick CPM buck.
Ben Tilly (@btilly here) and Andrew Odlyzko's "A refutation of Metcalfe's Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections" gives a better estimator, n * log(n). But otherwise yes.
> Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start.
If this turns out to be true, I think it's a pretty big story. Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler", and that claim went largely unchallenged.
Similarly, the claim that Parler was a "platform for free speech" has also gone unchallenged. Since the data breach it's come to light that new users were shadowbanned by default until approved by moderators; whether that approval hinged on posting right-wing groupthink or not, that should give one pause before parroting the claim.
It's been known that Parler wasn't a "platform for free speech" though. The CEO stated he would ban antifa and stuff, and they banned parody accounts and such. It was clearly never for true free speech, and was always just a right-wing echo chamber.
I've never not heard Parler's "free speech" claim challenged, at least among the media or other credentialed sources. Critically though, TFA's argument doesn't seem to hinge on whether or not Parler is authentically devoted to free speech.
Arrested in connection feels like a weird goalpost. There have been a few dozen arrests, but obviously there were many more people involved. Why do I care only about the specific subset of people who have been arrested so far?
> Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler"
Has that really been the claim? My understanding is that Parler had no intention of moderating the insurrection, as Facebook, Twitter, etc have started doing.
In fact, that is exactly what Apple did, as an example: Apple gave them a chance to moderate, Parler did not comply, so Apple removed them.
> Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler",
No, it hasn't.
> and that claim went largely unchallenged.
On the contrary virtually every conversation on the issue on HN that has even mentioned Parler has prominently included claims that Parler was less significant than other social media platforms in the planning.
ACLU has never let their personal political views affect their principles. As an example, ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh [1] when the state seized his medical records in a drug probe.
Well, they don't support any second amendment cases, so they do pick and choose a bit about which civil liberties they care about. But they are good about uniform support of the 1st.
This is unfortunately not true at all -- the second amendment being the most obvious case in point.
I am a big ACLU donor despite this. I have an assigned "individual giving officer," and I plan to continue to make significant contributions to their cause.
I wish they would be more willing to set aside personal political views.
I'm very happy to see the ACLU take a stand on principles that are no doubt in conflict with those of people who have been increasing their donations since the election of Trump. That's the real sign of integrity IMO.
I don't find this argument convincing at all. There are multiple different cloud providers, multiple different payment providers, and you can always use the web as a distribution model instead of apps. You can buy your own servers and run Kubernetes on them if you want a cloud-like platform you have control over. It's never been easier to set up your own infrastructure if you need it.
If your app is so objectionable that you've somehow managed to violate the content policies of ALL of these players, I really don't see anything as wrong. Nobody is entitled to a platform. I mean their app is basically a breeding ground for right-wing terrorists, and we almost had members of Congress murdered because they provided space for those people to coordinate.
Reminds me of the classic quote:
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
The concern TFA raises isn't that these companies are obligated to do business with Parler, but rather that it's troubling that a small cabal of players can effectively blackball a business from 99% of certain important markets. In the case of the smartphone app market, it only takes two such players to completely blackball an app (modulo those users who are savvy enough and willing to install apps outside of that marketplace).
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 92.9 ms ] threadSlightly worse Twitter app: axed on short notice
What is the strategy of the woke AWS employees pushing for these removals?
I get employees called for it, but I really doubt Parler was pulled primarily because of their complaints.
Where does it end?
Can the local utility provider that serves Parler's physical office decided to "deplatform" them and revoke their access to electricity?
Can the small handful of Tier 1 transit providers (which together make up "the Internet" as we know it) decide to deplatform a network by refusing to peer with it? [What if they extend that depeering to include any other networks (Tier 2 etc.) which refuse to stop peering with the target network?]
Sure, that's just a hypothetical right now, but then again last week "AWS decides to terminate you" was one of those hypothetical but very unlikely risks. How far is this witch hunt going to go?
[Sadly, given recent discourse here, I feel compelled to state that I strongly disagree with the content posted on Parler, which was indeed some truly awful stuff.]
He was not suspended for the post. Twitter is a platform for extremists, as long as the extremists don't go against their ideological slant.
If that's not incitement, I don't know what is.
[1] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/former-malaysian-pri...
Additionally, the post itself directly mentions Twitter.
So, no hypocrisy at all.
That's just straight up wrong, considering the tweets 4 days ago and his account still being accessible.
People today are just making up words.
Because in this context he is taking about web infrastructure, and specially AWS.
Facebook, for example, does not represent a monopoly, defined as a social media company generally; but they arguably have ~99% market share within their social niche (with some FOSS clones as a rounding error, and Twitter/Instagram/etc occupying different niches). Contrast with Netflix, which is more disruptable without social network effects, as we've seen with the proliferation of streaming services in the last 5 years.
I don't know what the threshold should be to regulate social media as utilities (mandating transparency, interoperability, and due process), but as such platforms become our de-facto political and conversational commons, I don't think we should allow those spaces to be entirely controlled by private capital, let alone manipulated by Blind Idiot God algorithms, which happily hijack our limbic systems for a quick CPM buck.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf
My view is that there is also a costant-across-n (thouggh variable with t) cost function, so:
Where cost exceeds value, growth stops.Networks grow until log(n) = k[t](n)
n == members
t == time
If this turns out to be true, I think it's a pretty big story. Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler", and that claim went largely unchallenged.
So, can anyone find a counterexample?
GWU has a comprehensive list of those charged: https://extremism.gwu.edu/Capitol-Hill-Cases
The archives of Parler are coming: https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1348213666257252353
Was Parler the primary breeding ground for these seditious activities? Unclear. Did it play a role as did the Facebook groups? Almost certainly.
https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle...
The shadowban info is new though (I think?) and interesting.
So they were moderating the platform to remove extremists?
Has that really been the claim? My understanding is that Parler had no intention of moderating the insurrection, as Facebook, Twitter, etc have started doing.
In fact, that is exactly what Apple did, as an example: Apple gave them a chance to moderate, Parler did not comply, so Apple removed them.
No, it hasn't.
> and that claim went largely unchallenged.
On the contrary virtually every conversation on the issue on HN that has even mentioned Parler has prominently included claims that Parler was less significant than other social media platforms in the planning.
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/story/aclu-comes-to-rush-limbaughs-d...
I am a big ACLU donor despite this. I have an assigned "individual giving officer," and I plan to continue to make significant contributions to their cause.
I wish they would be more willing to set aside personal political views.
If your app is so objectionable that you've somehow managed to violate the content policies of ALL of these players, I really don't see anything as wrong. Nobody is entitled to a platform. I mean their app is basically a breeding ground for right-wing terrorists, and we almost had members of Congress murdered because they provided space for those people to coordinate.
Reminds me of the classic quote:
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
No fundamental right has been violated.