Poll: Do you agree with Amazon, Apple and Google cutting off Parler?
As evidenced by the recent article "Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25728504 the tech industry is going to have to figure out what to do about all the problems surrounding online advertising, identity and social media.
Many have long called for a federated approach to social media and online identity, along the lines of what happens with international telecommunication and the ITU. Also we should note that FOSS works because it piggy backs on international copyright legal frameworks. Perhaps we need a proliferation of bespoke social media licences? Though honestly, my imagination is not up to the task.
Anyway, please participate so that we can get a good picture of what people here think.
143 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadHowever I have sympathy for those that made this decision: The federal government is under control of one party now - they know that Clipper Chip 2.0 is a possibility.
Calls to violence are against their ToS and bannable. The scary screenshots you saw were self posted and screenshotted before they could be reported and taken down. You could do the same thing on Twitter / Reddit / etc.
"Whose bread I eat, those song I sing."
my opinion on these kinds of topics is always the same. do I object that amazon, apple, and google have kicked hateful content off of their own properties? no. do I object that getting blacklisted by a few large tech companies is effectively getting kicked off the entire internet? very much yes.
But there are plenty of other places for Parler to host, register domains, etc. There are at least dozens of hosting companies that can do cloud hosting at the scale they need (which isn't exactly huge despite the hype), there are hundreds more that could be used in tandem to cover their needs. Either Parler's inability to handle these moves is a result of them being incapable or unwilling to take slightly more effort in hosting than launching Amazon or Google server instances with a click, or there's an unprecedented amount of unity in companies against Parler. The Gab is still up, Pirate Bay is still up, 8Chan still finds its way onto the internet.
The internet is still decentralized. It's the super easy hosting part of the internet that is centralized. It's the hosting that's big enough they don't notice or have any questions about what they're hosting. Parler ran out of hosting companies they could quietly hide inside without someone noticing what they're doing, and in order to find hosting again, they'll have to have an actual conversation with a vendor that sees what Parler is doing and is OK with being a part of it.
One other: there is a caveat of “given that the system works the way it does right now,” where there is sort of a wild-west approach to these types of big communities, then yeah Google is the sheriff of Play Store and Apple is the sheriff of App Store and Amazon is the sheriff of AWS and they set their rules about how much trouble they want on their streets. But if the overall system were fundamentally different[1], then I would not be so sure; there might be some sort of “due process” expectations then which do not exist for me now.
[1] As it may well have to become—those cities were effectively governed that way given population sizes of, what, 10,000 or so? If you have 100 million users and 0.01% of your users can code apps, you have easily that many app developers you have to wrangle.
Suppose you're a single-person startup of an app called "Speak!". Speak! is pretty niche, but one day, a group of the X-People are ostracized on all the popular forums: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Because Speak! is the only remaining bastion for the X-People all of them flock to Speak!. Let's say the X-People say things that aren't exactly popular among those who are not X-People.
BigCo claims that Speak! is not properly moderated. You say that you're only a single person and a certain level of moderation cannot be expected given N number of employees.
If BigCo bans Speak! on the grounds that Speak! is not sufficiently moderated, would that mean that any small person operation who operates a surprisingly large userbase cannot operate?
I think there should be objective quantitative measures that any company can use that's applied evenly across companies. Should a company with 10,000 moderators be held to the same standard of moderation as an extremely popular forum with only a single moderator? You decide.
Only so much moderation is possible given a certain amount of moderators and company resources. Are these rules inherently biased against smaller companies?
Parler had thousands of offending posts and users and refused to moderate at all after being told to to be in compliance with various ToS.
It's no surprise that Amazon, Apple, Google, Twilio, etc., do not want to be associated with or support violent seditionists.
They explicitly chose to retain the content
Unfair to smaller firms? Maybe, but the phrase 'don't bite off more than you can chew' comes to mind.
You can post ANYTHING YOU WANT that's awful on Reddit or Twitter, then immediately screenshot it before it can be reported / cleaned by mods and scream "They allow hate speeeeech!" like they've done to Parler.
The companies made a choice based on their political views, not based on public safety / ToS violations and THAT is why have centralized duopolies on social media is so dangerous in the USA.
I do hope we push back hard if this ever gets out of hand.
why would you expect an honest answer to this poll?
[1] Assuming there are no intelligence agencies peaking at the traffic and login it on real time.
From the calls to violence on Facebook, to the terrorists on Twitter, to the hardcore pornography on Reddit, plenty of platforms break Apple’s, Google’s, or Amazon’s ToS. I don’t know how one could possibly argue that Parler isn’t being singled out.
Today it’s Parler. Tomorrow it will be whatever ideology the megacorps find inconvenient.
If anything, this whole saga underscores the need for decentralized social media and having control over our own devices and the apps we are allowed to install.
I’m genuinely surprised. HN is the last place that I’d expect to be comfortable with our snowball into a corporate dystopia.
This isn't about ideology, except in cases where an ideology is calling for violence.
Edit: it turns out Parler actually did have policies and moderation against violent content
And what use is having a moderation policy when it isn’t getting implemented anyways? KSA can still post on Twitter. Hardcore pornography will continue to exist on Reddit. Users will continue to insinuate violence on Facebook.
I honestly think this discussion "should they or shouldn't they ban x" is a poor framing of the discussion we should be having. It implies media companies can be unbiased. It implies there is some democracy implicit in social media. It implies that the right virtues can make social media work. I don't think any of those things are true and I don't think we should have a discussion that allows their presumption.
What people are doing on Twitter isn't new. What Twitter is doing isn't new. What people on Parler are doing isn't new. What Parler is doing isn't new. People who believe it is new simply have an incorrect understanding of history. They underestimate the gross bias in media historically. They underestimate the volume and extremity of seditious communication and activity. They underestimate the violence and frequency of political unrest.
If we want to have a real conversation about disassociating power and speech, disassociating money and speech, disassociating status quo and speech, I think that's a worthy conversation. The rest of this is red meat for slacktivist posters.
BUT.
Parler should still be available via 3rd party stores if the user so chooses (which isn't possible). Here we have a case of big tech acting against the will of the user "for their own good" which I fundamentally disagree with. I own the device. I should have the right to install anything I want on it, even if the company that makes the device deemed the thing I want bad for me or for society.
Amazon should not be able to kick services off of AWS they don't agree with. That's entering cloudflare/daily stormer territory and is a dangerous precedent. I prefer the "infrastructure" layers of the stack to be net neutral.
People keep bringing up ideology. This isn’t really about ideology, this is about violence. Parler was being used to organize violence.
I think it takes particular mental acrobatics to say that Parler has not been unfairly singled out here.
So are Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, ...
IMO criminal behavior on social platforms should be investigated and prosecuted by the police and FBI etc. The same would presumably happen in your hotel analogy. Shutting them down doesn’t help with that.
In addition, social platforms of a certain size IMO should be treated more like a public infrastructure, because that’s what they effectively serve as. That’s a complex topic though.
Not sure if that is the current interpretation of "with caveats" means
All seems to be working properly.
I think there is a very real concern that when the time comes, it will be impossible to organize a revolution against a tyrannical government due to reliance on centralized and regulated social media.
Apple and Google, fine. That’s distribution. They have a lot of distribution power, but that’s an antitrust question.
AWS pulling the plug is infrastructure being yanked, and that’s more concerning. It takes Parler off the web. That’s closer to silencing than removing an amplifier.
Nobody should be forced to provide services to the likes of Parler. But cutting them off with hours’ notice is excessive.
If the activity is illegal, AWS can cut off service.
Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they register a domain without using a private corporation?
Basically, I'm asking how you can realistically "self host" without going through a private corporation that might decide to cut you off at some level in the stack?
Even if you own your own datacenter, you still need peering and a way to accept payment.
For payment systems: also easy... everyone has an account at the Federal Reserve offered free as a public service (but with no overdraught or lending services). Payments are processed via SWIFT/ACH for the banks right now and that service should be opened up to all Americans without a bank or Card Services intermediary.
The progressive left has advocated for things like this for decades. Now it is affecting the right, but it's hard to have sympathy as they have been corporate sycophants for decades.
You can’t, and that is the problem with allowing Big Tech to be the arbiter of truth.
Absolutely. As I see it, one of the single biggest problems with the internet has ALWAYS been that users always have had to go through third parties—hosting sites—to gain access to the internet.
Essentially, for the vast majority, the internet does not and cannot provide unfettered access to the internet in the way that a city's Public Commons would have done in years past. The fact is that the technical infrastructure for users to bypass ISPs, social media etc. just does not exist to the extent that would allow millions to do so. As users have no guaranteed [legislated] right to access the internet's Public Commons, they're always going to be at the mercy or discretion of the party who allows them access.
As we've seen in recent days, this is a terrible state of affairs for users, as it clearly demonstrates how the owners of these access points have ultimate control over access to the internet. The fact that the US president has been censored on the whim of a gatekeeper's CEO amply demonstrates the fact. This is an intolerable* situation and ultimately it has to be rectified if we are to have a free and open internet.
Of course, governments love this situation because channeling users through common access points such as ISPs allow them to more effectively monitor and control internet traffic.
_
* Please note, I'm not describing this situation as intolerable because I'm a supporter of President Trump. The fact is that I'm not a Trump supporter but my position is more along the line commonly but wrongfully attributed to Voltaire which is that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
As far as I'm concerned, President Trump unreservedly has the right to say whatever he wishes to without being censored on a whim by some corporate body (or a bureaucratic gnome therein)—that is unless such comment is outright unlawful (which, in Trump's case, has yet to be determined—and only a court of law can ultimately adjudicate on said matter)!
In my opinion, Trump's behavior has been obnoxious in the extreme but banning what he says is not the answer (especially so given that he's still an elected official—none less than the US President).
Moreover, I believe that no matter how bad, antisocial or outright mad some of these internet cretins are (and I reckon there are many that fit that mold), it is better to know who they are and what they think than to have them and their thoughts go underground—where, in all likelihood, they'll likely fester and become even more dangerous and virulent.
The internet censorship we've seen in recent days is the most prominent example of what the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and others have been doing for quite some time. That matters have ramped up to censoring the US President may bring the matter to a head and that ultimately we'll see laws enacted that will put limits on these corporate bullies.
(Ultimately, the whole problem boils down to the fact that democracies haven't yet established at law any effective and or reliable methods or protocols to single out what should be censored and what should not—or for that matter, what internet users can actually discuss and or look at online without attracting the attention or ire of government and security services. [It seems to me that only online content that's deemed illegal at law ought to be subject to censorship—nothing else.]
The fact that governments haven't so acted is now proving to be very troubling, and until it's resolved at law the problem with Big Tech will persist.)
Sewer used to be a luxury, now it's a utility. Water used to be a luxury, now it's a utility. Natural gas used to be a luxury, now it's a utility. Electricity used to be a luxury, now it's a utility.
It's time for network access to also be a utility.
Even if you bought your own physical servers, you still need an agreement with an internet carrier and a colocation facility.
Renting a Linode is a convenient shortcut but you need that one contract with Linode. Linode can, does, and should enforce terms of service.
You can run a website off your home internet connection with a $20 raspberry pi, but your ISP can, does, and should enforce terms of service.
In theory you could become an ISP by entering into a peering agreement with other ISPs. Internet providers do this. Those ISPs will have their own terms, some of them may not regard content but I expect all of them would specifically defer to local law regarding the transported content.
"Bulletproof hosting" is the concept being discussed here. It is literally named that way because armed government agents coming to shut the site down or confiscate servers will be resisted.
Now call me a fanatical sheep, but if one think it's necessary to have that kind of hosting to get their political stories, they might just be seeking out extremely radical sources.
So then you have to setup your own generator, on your own land, to power your own ISP.
Then, of course, the domain name company may come after you. But you can also use a direct ip address. I don't think domain names are a basic human right either.
And then the RIR cuts off your AS.
Or your SSL issuer revokes your cert.
They can't win on the conventional Internet, even by playing a shell-game. So these 'deplatformed' services will move to store-and-forward mesh networking using opportunistic connectivity over ad hoc WiFi or Bluetooth or whatever. And that's going to be nearly impossible to monitor and police. How will we know what they're discussing if we don't even know that they're communicating?
The more you tighten your grip...
That's exactly what companies did not too long ago for this very reason. They wanted full control over the entire stack and yes had physical servers in physical offices.
Over time, folks laid off their IT staff and traded away their control for convenience. That's the tradeoff: their house -> their rules, your house -> your rules.
> But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off?
Now that is an insurmountable obstacle and a real problem. For that matter, what if Comcast cut off all of AWS until they banned Parler? It would take years to build a physical cable network. The highways are much more important than the parking lots.
Really, there was a time when every company that had a website would spin up their own hardware and software...
They do and that's clearly not the issue. This is coordinated.
If Parler was deemed illegal (eg: it was ruled by law that it's facilitating terrorism), then YES.
If they are violating Amazon Terms of Service / Apple's Terms of Service, then YES (TOS is a bit of a grey area, but assuming that things are clear enough, those should be enforced). One can argue about a monopolic market position, at which case it's the role of the Government to solve the issue and regulate (in a theoretically speaking, well functioning capitalistic framework).
I can’t be the only one here actually concerned about Big Tech being the ultimate arbiter of truth and information. AWS is effectively public infrastructure at this point and must be treated as such unless you want to careen into a corporate dystopia where the only information you receive is information Big Tech finds acceptable.
Because they ban politically inconvenient viewpoints.
> their platform being associated with a company that has no problem with users coordinating violent and deadly insurrections...
Does Twitter not host the leaders of terroristic regimes? Has Reddit not been implicated in murder of innocents? Does Facebook not routinely have calls to violence?
All major platforms have broken AWS TOS countless times, and much more often than Parler at that. It’s pretty clear that Parler is being singled out here, and that breaking the AWS TOS is a flimsy excuse at best.
If that were the case, then of course the answer would be "no" AWS can't just cut off service, just like Verizon can't just drop calls if they think you're discussing political issues Verizon disagrees with over the phone.
I personally don't this AWS is a utility / common carrier (I can go and buy a server and serve a website all on my own for the entire internet to access). Therefore, I don't think the government should require AWS to provide services to clients that they believe are violating their TOS.
AWS has a very clear Acceptable Use policy: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/
This snippet can be found above the fold (not hidden in a long TOS) in their acceptable use policy:
> Illegal, Harmful or Fraudulent Activities. Any activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation, including disseminating, promoting or facilitating child pornography, offering or disseminating fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions, make-money-fast schemes, ponzi and pyramid schemes, phishing, or pharming.
If nothing else, by AWS hosting Parler they were risking their reputation, which alone is enough to terminate service by the standards set in their AUP.
How? Where will the server be located? How will it be connected to the internet? ISPs are not common carriers so good luck...
I think an update is needed: Never anger a man that measures servers by the acre.