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I'm generally anti-regulation, but one potential consideration is to apply the same standards of eviction to cloud hosts as we do to landlords.
I think we agree that no private platform should be forced to host a tenant that they object to. Yet a landlord isn't allowed to arbitrarily throw you out of your house on a moments notice. Even if your lease is on a month-to-month basis, the law requires giving the tenant a reasonable timeframe to let them find new accommodations.
Even if the landlord insists on a contract abrogating this, it's unenforceable. Policy restricts this because 1) landlords generally have very high negotiation power, and 2) tenants rarely read the fine print. It seems to me that both conditions are approximately true for the major cloud providers.
If you agree with tenant eviction protections, then you should probably support similar eviction protections for cloud computing. AWS/GCP/Gmail/iCloud could ban you as a customer, but only with 90 days notice. Otherwise, immediate eviction could only occur if it involved legally codified egregious behavior, and would require a court judgement.
I think this would eliminate nightmare scenarios where somebody suddenly finds themselves locked out of their Google Drive and Gmail for some algorithmic mishap. But it would put very little operating burden on the cloud providers.
>I think we agree that no private platform should be forced to host a tenant that they object to. Yet a landlord isn't allowed to arbitrarily throw you out of your house on a moments notice. Even if your lease is on a month-to-month basis, the law requires giving the tenant a reasonable timeframe to let them find new accommodations.
This is false equivalency. AWS didn't "arbitrarily" kick them out. If you are destroying the property you live in or using it to commit or facilitate illegal acts, a landlord can ABSOLUTELY evict you immediately in all sorts of states.
AWS gave them the time agreed to in the contract to remove offending content and present a plan for continued moderation to prevent the same thing from happening a second time. They wouldn't even commit to moderating the speech Amazon told them was in violation of the TOS.
I think AWS can very easily make the argument that continuing to host Parler when they're allowing calls for violence would do significant harm to their business.
Your equivalency is false. Parler did not make any change of behavior. Amazon knew very well who they were and what they did when they were making 100s of k a month hosting them.
Furthermore it is simply not true that Parler refused to work with Amazon. Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement.
What actually happened was, when the mob decided that Parler must go, Amazon gave them little no notice or recourse before shutting them down.
>Furthermore it is simply not true that Parler refused to work with Amazon. Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement.
Defenders of Parler keep repeating various versions of this, but it doesn't reflect reality. So either you're being lied to by their founder and taking him at his word and just repeating it without verifying, or you're intentionally misrepresenting what was actually on the site.
Amazon cited 98 examples of hate speech/calls for violence with included images that they had reported over weeks, long before "the mob" you speak of witnessed an attack on the Capitol and decided enough is enough. Odd choice of words too, "the mob" you speak of are freedom loving Americans who support the peaceful transition of power, even when it doesn't go their way.
> Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence. Here are a few examples below from the ones we’ve sent previously: [See images above.]
>It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation.
> Amazon cited 98 examples of hate speech/calls for violence with included images that they had reported over weeks
This is meaningless without comparing it to how many instances of hate speech or calls for violence exist on competing sites like Twitter. What would you bet that it's not more than 98?
It's evidence that moderation is a hard problem, not that no effort to moderate is made.
Twitter and Facebook regularly ban people for violating their TOS with inappropriate content. Parler did not.
Sure, corporations will turn a blind eye to a lot for a little more profit, but this does not extend to supporting a platform full of people trying to violently overthrow the government.
Just think about this for a second: every major provider shut down seditious media shortly after what happened on 1/6. When's the last time Apple, Google, Amazon, Shopify, etc., agreed on anything in the same day?
They are not going to risk the lawsuits and possible market share loss to competitors unless they have an iron clad insurance policy. In my opinion, the only thing that offers that kind of policy is a very clear signal from law enforcement.
Who knows if it was a friendly tip or a boat load of subpoenas under seal. Whatever it was, it was scary enough to move every single cloud provider in the same direction within hours of each other. Despite this kind of coordination being more evidence for monopolistic behavior, they all came to the same conclusion: create space between us and anything related to the 1/6 sedition. Now.
> Who knows if it was a friendly tip or a boat load of subpoenas under seal.
Do you have any evidence for this at all?
There are several other alternative explanations for them doing this. There is the one the Republicans put forth, which is that they're doing it to gain favor with the party that will control the House, Senate and Presidency in a few days and be prosecuting the antitrust suits against them.
And then there's the business reason, which is that they don't want a new competitor and are taking an excuse to crush it.
Also, you can tell that everything is broken when doing something anti-competitive makes it more likely for you to win an antitrust case against you.
Did you even bother to read the Newsweek article? It says they banned anyone posting left-leaning content. There are plenty of articles saying they didn't censor violent right-wing content, but you'll have to read them to figure that out.
> There is the one the Republicans put forth, which is that they're doing it to gain favor with the party that will control the House, Senate and Presidency in a few days and be prosecuting the antitrust suits against them.
So, at the same time, and for the first time in the six election cycles they've gone through, every single cloud provider came to the same conclusion and course of action without any outside pressure in a way that provides more evidence for antitrust behavior. It's a theory, but not a good one.
> And then there's the business reason, which is that they don't want a new competitor and are taking an excuse to crush it.
There is no timeline or even universe where Parler is competition for Facebook, Google, Apple or Amazon.
> So, at the same time, and for the first time in the six election cycles they've gone through, every single cloud provider came to the same conclusion and course of action without any outside pressure in a way that provides more evidence for antitrust behavior. It's a theory, but not a good one.
Why is the businesses and politicians aligning a significant thing for you? It should be terrifying.
Also no outside pressure? A small group of employees pushed this for the entire lot. That’s outside pressure.
> Did you even bother to read the Newsweek article? It says they banned anyone posting left-leaning content.
It says this:
> Judging from the posts announcing that they've been booted, at least some of the banned Parler users seem to have signed up for the service precisely to test the limits of the app's so-called "freedom of speech" policy.
I read this to mean that people showed up to purposely troll hard enough to get banned so they could claim they got banned, and then they were. Your claim was that they don't "regularly ban people for violating their TOS with inappropriate content."
> So, at the same time, and for the first time in the six election cycles they've gone through, every single cloud provider came to the same conclusion and course of action without any outside pressure in a way that provides more evidence for antitrust behavior.
Even if there was outside pressure, you're still speculating that it was from law enforcement rather than the political branches.
How are you even sure this is the first time this has happened? Certainly it's the most high profile, but tech companies have been quietly disappearing "undesirables" for years.
> There is no timeline or even universe where Parler is competition for Facebook, Google, Apple or Amazon.
Not if they get ground into dust by competitors just as they're hitting the exponential growth stage.
I will. In the past I have advocated for them maintaining their own interests. Now I will join the group asking for them to open their phones up. By gov force if necessary because they attempted to control speech.
> This is meaningless without comparing it to how many instances of hate speech or calls of violence exist on competing sites like Twitter. What would you bet that it's not more than 98?
The better comparison would be instances of hate speech or calls to violence that were directly reported to Twitter by its hosting provider for the express purpose of requesting that they be taken down. I'd certainly give you even odds that the number of such reports that Twitter both received and ignored during that same time frame was fewer than 98, despite the fact that Twitter is orders of magnitude larger.
No doubt there are instances of similar behavior that go under the radar on Twitter and every other comparable site, but once your hosting provider has contacted you about a specific instance that's probably a sign you should do something about it.
>The lawsuit parler filed states they deleted every piece of content (and more) that AWS brought to their attention. Moderation is hard.
From an Ars Technica article[0]:
"But far from getting cut off suddenly, Parler had months of warning, Amazon says. Amazon's filing included copies of emails it sent to Parler in mid-November (PDF, content warning for racial slurs) containing screenshots full of racist invective about Democrats, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, with a series of responses from other users to "kill 'em all."
And
"Representatives from AWS spoke with Parler executive leadership on both January 8 and 9 about the platform's "content moderation policies, processes, and tools," Amazon said. In response, Parler allegedly offered steps that would rely on "volunteer" moderation, and Parler CEO John Matze allegedly told AWS that "Parler had a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violated its community standards and remained on its service."
I mean there's no way parler (up until recent growth explosion) was pulling in more than 1MM - with 30 employees I doubt they could afford to pay moderators. It's not fair to judge a small company by the same standards as established companies w.r.t. hard problems like moderation, but here many people are comparing them more harshly than they compare established businesses like twitter and facebook which routinely are used to incite riots and violence.
Twitter and Facebook both use AWS for hosting parts of their website. Both of them are top 10 clients of AWS, with Facebook being on the AWS's biggest clients.
> This is meaningless without comparing it to how many instances of hate speech or calls for violence exist on competing sites like Twitter.
I think at most this would allow you to accuse AWS of hypocrisy, but the point is moot since Twitter, while an AWS customer, does not host content on AWS as far as I'm aware.
Really though, it has no bearing. You can argue that AWS is inconsistent in its enforcement but it does not change whether they have the right to that enforcement.
> This is meaningless without comparing it to how many instances of hate speech or calls for violence exist on competing sites like Twitter.
This statement omits the fact that Parler's userbase originated from Twitter's crackdown on hate speech and calls for violence that got a fair share of them banned from the platform.
It is not meaningless at all. Twitter has no bearing on agreements between AWS and Parler. Just because Parler considers them a competitor doesn't mean they have anything to do with a two-party contract when they aren't a party to it.
That's not really the point. It's a question of whether the expectation is reasonable. If Twitter and Facebook can't do it then it's strong evidence that it's not.
> That's not really the point. It's a question of whether the expectation is reasonable
That’s a made up point, though. The AWS contract makes no mention of “reasonable effort” or anything like that.
Yes, it is worthwhile to compare moderation on Parler to that of FB etc, but it has no bearing on whether Amazon had the right to terminate Parler’s contract, which they absolutely did. Within the context of that discussion the comparison to FB and Twitter is just whataboutism. They aren’t Parler and they aren’t hosted by AWS.
in parlers lawsuit they state that they deleted every post AWS brought to their attention on top of other posts they moderate. If you read their policy pre-DC riots you'll see they very clearly have content moderation strategy explicitly talked about in both the ToS and the linked community guidelines. It was simply not their marketing talking about it a lot for obvious reasons.
As far as I can tell there's zero evidence that moderation didn't happen with anything that was reported.
>During one of the calls, Parler’s CEO reported that Parler had a backlog of 26,000
reports of content that violated its community standards and remained on its service.
They were clearly lying when they claimed everything had been deleted... Their content moderation strategy is based entirely on volunteer moderators. You can keep claiming that AWS is just trying to deplatform conservatives but that's just not what happened.
I'm not sure how you're reading that - it's clearly showing they were trying to delete everything but the backlog was outpacing their ability to moderate. As I said, moderation is hard.
And why would you take Parler’s word for it? When your entire marketing is based on a lack of moderation and you have this insane backlog of offending content, but you look to their TOS as a source of truth and intent, you’re being disingenuous and willfully ignorant.
why would you take anyones word for anything? I'm sympathetic to the underdog that's being targeted so I have my bias, but I have a hard time watching any platform (I've never used parler) get targeted because of politics. I have a hard time believing that anyone truly believes parler was the primary reason DC riots happened just as I have a hard time understanding that people actually think this targeted de platforming will somehow create fewer extremists. In my mind it's rather obvious political targeting creates extremism and there are a number of platforms those extremists can use to communicate.
Lots of things are hard. It's not AWS's problem that your job is hard. If you can't do the hard work to run your business, your business doesn't get to run.
If AWS cancel any customer that fails to succeed to an entirely arbitrary standard at problems that are "hard" then yeah, it kinda is AWS' problem. Or more specifically it's now Silicon Valley's problem because when these firms make identical decisions within 24 hours of each other nobody in politics is going to treat them all as unique and special snowflakes. The left have seen that they can apply pressure to get anything that isn't controlled by leftists erased from the internet, so they're going to amp up the volume 10,000% now. And the right have been complaining for years that tech firms have been captured by the censoring left - how will anyone ever convince them otherwise now? Claiming that Parler was full of Nazis? It's a tired strategy, it doesn't work anymore, the left describe anyone who isn't the left as Nazis and fascists. It won't convince anyone.
That's obviously not the case. It's very clearly Parler's problem. I don't see why AWS should accommodate a customer just because the customer's problems are "hard".
The rest of your post is basically irrelevant imo, I'm not going to respond to rhetoric about party.
If you're 26,000 pieces of content behind, might 98 of those 26,000 be the ones you've been asked specifically to address by the other party in your contract?
Why is a backlog of 26,000 tasks acceptable? Why can't they auto-flag things upon report and hide them pending review? This is not a hard technical problem. This is a people and motivation problem.
Try getting 26,000 flagged operations behind when the flag is OFAC or underage porn and see who shuts down your business.
You think parler is a site of thugs because that's all you've seen. Just the same way you don't understand twitter to have tons of thugs because of what you've seen. More people have been killed and linked to #killallmen (which has trended nationally on twitter multiple times) than died at the DC riots. There's plenty of room for subjectivity, but I do think it's objective to say thugs exist on both platforms.
That's not correct. Amazon advised them that they were encouraging violence, and had already reached out to them about this issue. They had responded that they would use volunteers to moderate their content, but Amazon (IMO quite reasonably!) saw that they had not moved fast enough, and were skeptical that it would work anyway.
Then the violence erupted in the Capitol, and Amazon's hand was forced. They had been violating Amazon's terms of service, and they did not do enough to resolve the issue, in a timely enough manner. Therefore they no longer got to use the service.
So it was basically, "hey can you please change this... OOPS too slow LOL. Nope, not our fault, you didn't do shit, canceled!"
C'mon! IT playing dumb is so stupid, they knew it, they knew what company they were going to host. Parler's whole point was to host conservative voices, yet the attitude is to pretend it's a surprise, shrug and then have a stupid reason like they didn't act fast enough. It's not a genuine response, it's an obvious attack and an insult to anyone paying attention.
Isn't it the exact opposite? They were given lots of time to fix this and didn't. Something very bad happened which was partly caused by their inaction.
It seems the timing was more of a cover for what they already had planned, or at least not every chance was given. Small features in large apps take months, and big features easily take a year. It didn't seem in good faith IMHO, granted this isn't just AWS at the moment.
Ok, but that's not an excuse right? If your platform is too immature to be effectively stopping/mitigating child porn from being published, you don't get the chance to say "yeah but it'll take a while to write the code". They always had the option to shut down while they fix the problem.
Actually, it appears they had given them plenty of time to implement proper moderation practices to prevent incitement of violence. Their response was inadequate. They were removed from Amazon.
You seem to imply they only got 24 hours to resolve the issues on their service. That's not accurate.
Incitement of violence isn't measurable. The US had autonomous zones and communication was allegedly through Twitter.
It is a cheap excuse to take blame from the actual perpetrators to inconvenient platforms.
I like unfiltered platforms very much and Parler wasn't that attractive, so I appreciate them being the fall guy. But I also have problems with blatant different weights that are used to measure transgressions.
From Amazon’s POV, the same sequence of events may look like this: people were kicked off from Twitter; they sign up for Parler; the amount of insurrection planning on the platform skyrockets; FBI starts calling Amazon; leadership decides they’ll rather take a lawsuit than risk being involved.
If Parler was serious, the owners would have hand-moderated the specific complaints Amazon made. Their response is like a streaming service that responds to a DMCA takedown by saying they plan on making it possible to comply sooner or later rather than immediately yanking the content.
I'm inclined to think the Parler mgt preferred this outcome, where they get to play victim, to actually moderating content and making their users angry.
Parlor did not get thrown out of the bar because of their "conservative voices", they got thrown out because they threatened the other drinkers with knifes, shat on the floor and pissed on the tables while shouting 'Fuck Yea America !'
You imply that all "conservative voices" are raging fuckwits, and while I long resisted that big brush view its becoming harder and harder to do. Especially when self-confessed "conservatives" just assert that yea, that's just the way we talk and act, fuck off if you don't like it. And now the conservative snowflakes scream blue murder when the same rules are applied to them.
Well if they are not all like that... then why censor a whole network? I guess Parler must not be a private company... all other platforms censor their own way not according to American Law, yet other smaller platforms can't do it their way? Sure, they decided to use AWS, that was dumb in hindsight, but still the scale of it and timing is scary. In other words, you can't be a private business and use AWS, they will own you.
For contrast, YouTube was knowingly and illegally hosting pirated content for years before Google bought them and developed ContentID, and relied entirely on volunteer moderation (user flags) to detect it. Facebook has up until very recently relied entirely on user flags for moderation. Google web search is theoretically entirely unmoderated. And so on.
Valley firms built their financial success on being content neutral and even turning a blind eye to blatantly illegal content until they found ways to automate enforcement (or not), but are now forbidding competitors from being the same.
You don't recall Parler doing that either, because they didn't.
Now if you compare apples with apples, can you recall people using Google to research how to do bad things? Sure. Plenty of people who went to prison after police found they'd been searching for stuff like "how to hide a body" or bomb making instructions.
This does not read like they wanted to cooperate. 7 weeks is a nothing for a large feature. Apple gave them 24 hours which is a joke, if not an insult. Features are complex in large apps that are social networks (which in fact are dozens of apps under the hood, on the backend and frontend).
If they really wanted them to implement some content moderation, it would have been more time, not to mention a clear specification for the feature changes they want, to prevent the solution from getting rejected again.
Apple didn't give a reasonable timeframe to respond, but that is typical for them. The 7 weeks Amazon gave absolutely is reasonable: if this was a priority for Parler they could have put some effective measure in place.
>If you are destroying the property you live in or using it to commit or facilitate illegal acts
Ironically, this also feels like a false equivalency to me. I don't believe Parler was putting Amazon/AWS at risk in terms of legal liability (I'm pretty sure in the US you can only sue a hosting provider for material they host if it is copyrighted material and they don't take it down when they receive notices. A Google search didn't turn up anything else.) They also weren't at risk of bringing AWS down.
What really happened, and should be plain to anybody is that something really awful happened last week that shook the country to its core. Parler played a role in that happening, and tech companies didn't want anything to do with them because of that. Both for reputation reasons and I'm sure personal feelings of large swathes of their employees (including leadership.)
I don't actually think they were wrong for what they did. I think private companies should have the right to make such a decision. The problem for me is that these companies were in a position to wipe something out like this in the first place.
This isn't what the web was supposed to be. First it was the switch by most people to using a phone that is locked down as their primary computing device.
Now even websites are subject to unregulated private company control. After all - even if you set up your server somewhere, what's to stop CloudFlare or Google or anybody else who run these huge DNS services from simply blocking the domain? (assuming you can even keep one registered) Etc...
I often hear the argument "Private company, they can do what they want" but at what point does a private company become so powerful that we really do need the government to step in? I've also heard people say that this isn't a slippery slope because it's all terrorist/white supremacist websites so far, but I think to this article I read a while ago about how Apple had decided to ban apps that had anything to do with vaping. This was when some people were dying due to bad black market cartridges.
Vaping isn't illegal. It isn't hateful. It also isn't inherently harmful. People used those apps for legitimate reasons. Some of them used iPhone sensors through APIs that aren't available for websites/web apps. And Apple just decided "Nope, you don't get to exist anymore".
I was not a Parler user and I do not support the attack on the Capitol. I also don't vape. But both of these things do bother me. And they should bother everybody.
Vaping is, I think, fairly harmful. But it is absolutely clear that the government should step in and say no to these companies who are in the business of deciding which other companies are allowed to exist.
This isn't just about "other companies" though - that's what is so crazy to me about this. We've reached a point where the idea of creating and providing software is almost exclusively thought of through the lens of capitalism. That's so dystopian.
I notice it in other areas too like verbiage such as "business logic" or "product owners"
AWS doesn’t have the power to wipe people out that don’t tie their stack to them. Parler could’ve avoided this, it’s not AWS fault that Parler could t move.
How AWS-specific your code needs to be depends on which AWS services you're using and how you use them. An EC2 instance is just a Linux system, as is a Lightsail system.
Other systems like MinIO and Ceph have S3 interfaces for object storage, so the code could be kept. Operationally you'd need to retrieve it from Amazon S3 and re-store it. RDS is an export, transfer, and import away from being loaded into a normal database server, but that can take quite a bit of time.
Getting geo-sensitive DNS and implicit testing of backends out of Route 53 isn't so simple. Getting stuff out of Lambda and onto a commodity platform isn't quick and easy. If you have data in Glacier there's a substantial lead time to recover your first byte.
Depends how much prep they did beforehand. Lots of businesses have contingency plans for negative situations including needing to leave AWS, and they're far less likely to get booted. I’m not sure why they didn’t just start with Epik; they already host Gab and won’t give a crap about what Parler does.
FWIW the Parler CEO claimed 12 hours, an obvious falsehood, and that’s now being used against him in his lawsuit against AWS.
Most probably couldn't. But most will likely never have to think of that. Parler's inherent value proposition increased this risk and they were foolish not to consider and plan for that.
Risk management is part of the job. Businesses that don't do it properly will often fail. Sometimes this is an unfortunate thing, sometimes it's a happy accident.
Parler set themselves up for this by not going with their own servers but wimping out and using a cloud provider. Get a high speed line and host it yourself straight up. Save money too.
>Ironically, this also feels like a false equivalency to me. I don't believe Parler was putting Amazon/AWS at risk in terms of legal liability (I'm pretty sure in the US you can only sue a hosting provider for material they host if it is copyrighted material and they don't take it down when they receive notices. A Google search didn't turn up anything else.) They also weren't at risk of bringing AWS down.
You seriously don't think with the amount of publicity Parler was getting, that AWS' reputation was going to be hurt? When my Dad is talking about Parler and AWS it has become a PR nightmare...
>I often hear the argument "Private company, they can do what they want" but at what point does a private company become so powerful that we really do need the government to step in?
If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly. But it turns out AWS doesn't have anything approaching a monopoly in hosting, so it would be absurd for the government to step in. There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there.
What you're seeing is that nobody agrees with the hate speech Parler is selling, and nobody wants to host it. That is the free market at work.
>Vaping isn't illegal. It isn't hateful. It also isn't inherently harmful. People used those apps for legitimate reasons. Some of them used iPhone sensors through APIs that aren't available for websites/web apps. And Apple just decided "Nope, you don't get to exist anymore".
So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones that don't require Apple or Google's app store. If you want the government to dictate who companies do business with, you aren't for capitalism or free market, that's all there is to it. Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.
>If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly.
I definitely agree that the government does need to break up some large tech companies. But I don't agree that that should be the only form of regulation. I think the government should regulate technology companies in several ways. Here are some no brainers:
ISPs - Net neutrality required. No data caps allowed.
Device manufacturers - Right to repair. Can't lock down the device the way that gaming consoles and mobile phones (and TVs, etc...) often do.
Cloud providers - Greater privacy protections like they have in Europe.
>There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there.
You're glossing over the other infrastructure examples I named. We're talking about a cumulative effect here. It makes me uncomfortable that key parts of the internet's infrastructure are controlled by private companies with little to no regulation on what they can do. And I feel like it's getting worse every year.
>So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones
Not everybody gets to choose what phone they have. Maybe they got their phone handed down to them or donated to them and can't afford to buy a new one. For a lot of people, their phone might be their only computer. Also, vaping was just one example. Apple routinely blocks apps and only backpedals if the app creator has enough clout. They tried to do it with the open source blogging platform WordPress a few months ago.
If there were regulation in place that Apple could maintain their own app store, but couldn't block or make it difficult for regular users to install other apps then nobody to choose. Same thing with like a gaming console - buy a gaming console and you could install Linux and use it as a general purpose machine without having to break some encryption scheme.
It's clear that maintaining an operating system/platform is an expensive endeavor - and maybe it just isn't feasible for more than those two operating systems to exist. That's where regulation comes in. There need to be ground rules especially when the barrier to competition is so high.
>Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.
So companies should be able to do whatever they want as long as they're not discriminatory/racist about it?
I am really trying to understand your perspective on this, because it's so obviously not true. Companies are regulated by the government and limited with what they can do in a lot of different ways.
Net neutrality is a form of regulation that I am advocating for - and it sounds like you're in support of it too which would seem to contradict this.
I was looking at some of your other comments on this subject and saw you posted this one day ago:
>Maybe Cloudflare et al should also be required by law to serve everyone regardless of content.
You're advocating for regulation of tech companies here too.
Let me clarify. I support net neutrality. Including DDOS protection in that is to ensure that you can't be taken offline even if every hosting provider in the world hates your guts and you have to self-host (as might be the case for a lot of the people and organizations being banned these days). And I'm not an expert on DDOS mitigation, so it might be that you don't have to require even them to serve everyone.
I was pointing out the irony that net neutrality was repealed under this same administration.
I am yet to be convinced that "neutrality" or a requirement to provide service regardless of content should be enforced by any government regulation above the network layer.
Companies IRL have the right to discriminate against their customers based on their speech. If I walk into your bar and start insulting other patrons it's totally legal for you to kick me out. And in fact if you fail to do that, your other patrons might leave and never come back.
I don't see why that shouldn't extend online. Except at the network layer. Because if you don't have that, you can't have any speech online. Which is also unjust.
I think this is self-consistent. Feel free to tell me if there are any holes in it.
First of all, this is a great reply and yes it does clarify your viewpoint. I really value that it's possible to have discussions like this on the internet.
>I am yet to be convinced that "neutrality" or a requirement to provide service regardless of content should be enforced by any government regulation above the network layer.
I agree with you. I wouldn't be in favor of a government regulation at the level of social media that would prevent specific services like Facebook or Twitter from banning things. But the bigger problem for me is that we've all just decided that it's okay for really fundamental things about the web to be controlled by private companies.
The web was designed to be an open system and it's slowly being more closed in. There's still areas of openness, but they get smaller every year. And every time there's a new layer of restriction added there's always someone to point out that you still can do x y and z, it's just 10-20% harder than it used to be.
When apps for phones came out it was "Well, you can always just make a web app. They have no control over that." but consumers are less likely to use a web app and you don't have the same access to the device.
Now it's "Just move to a different hosting company!" which is disingenuous for several reasons. First, any company they move to is going to get pressured to drop them in the same way. Secondly, even if they did find a new hosting company that was okay with them, the pressure would just get applied to a different point (like Cloudflare.) You can roll your own hosting system but it's prohibitively expensive for most people especially if the site has a lot of traffic, DDoS and regular hacking attempts. The fact that web hosting beyond the basics is complex and hard is the reason that cloud services exist and are so popular these days to begin with.
So yeah, I think we're basically on the same page. I don't see this getting better. But I still think it's worth pointing out.
>The web was designed to be an open system and it's slowly being more closed in. There's still areas of openness, but they get smaller every year. And every time there's a new layer of restriction added there's always someone to point out that you still can do x y and z, it's just 10-20% harder than it used to be.
I agree with the tone of your post, but it's not the web that's open (every website is created/owned/controlled by someone), it's the Internet as a whole that needs to be open.
>When apps for phones came out it was "Well, you can always just make a web app. They have no control over that." but consumers are less likely to use a web app and you don't have the same access to the device.
I understand your frustration, but while we have freedom of speech and freedom of association, etc.
And while you certainly have a right to start your own business, you don't have the right to force others to make it easy for you.
Again, I understand your frustration, but what you're arguing for just doesn't make sense.
Why should other companies be forced to change their business practices to make your life/business easier?
That's a rhetorical question of course, but you don't have to treat it as one if you don't want to.
I don't think OP is asking for protections that renters would not have from landlords. For instance, we all know that illegal activity gets you kicked out immediately. You can't be running a brothel or crack house on the one hand, and demand 90 days notice on the other. At least not in my state you can't. No court judgement is required either, the cops show up and arrest you, you're gone. (In fact, in my state, if a landlord does not boot you in a swift enough fashion, the municipality can confiscate his/her property.)
So that's fine. The rules should be approximately the same as the rental protection laws in the state hosting the data center. If you're running a service that is objectionable, but no cops or feds are knocking on the landlord's door, then there should be notice given that your provider wants to boot you. Again, if the owner has a fed asking him questions about you and your service, that owner should be free to act much faster. No one questions that.
I would assume there is not a fed at your landlord's door because you skinny dip in your pool. There is probably something illegal they suspect of happening at that point.
In this particular instance though, with the Capitol falling, it doesn't help. Because I have to imagine that when the Capitol fell, there were a lot of feds knocking on Amazon's door. But, yes, as long as you're not doing anything that feds are at the door flashing badges about, you should be golden. If you are doing something feds are asking your landlord about, worrying about your landlord is a poor use of your time. You have bigger problems. (In fact, it's probable that your landlord also has bigger problems at that point. Feds generally don't make courtesy calls.)
I feel like if you read some of the dump recently released then you might suggest it’s worse than merely “distasteful”. Seeing a person say they want to round up people registered to a particular political party so that they can skin and murder their families in front of them is obviously pretty awful!
I also hate this conflation of conservative views and people calling for murder. I have a lot of very conservative family who liked Parler but didn’t like being lumped in with all the Qanon galaxy-brains.
The dump is "hacked data" that if I remember from two weeks ago, is supposed to be grounds for booting it off of every platform, yet archive.org is hosting it now and everyone is promoting it instead of banning links to it.
Assaulting and killing a police officer is a crime in most, if not all jurisdictions, though I'm not sure if that lets your landlord evict you if it happened in the next town or county or state over.
Sure, a landlord can evict you for damaging the property the rented you. But was AWS “damaged”?
And landlords cannot evict you for being charged with a crime and cannot evict you generally if you are convicted of a crime (some exceptions no doubt).
Parler agreed to abide by Amazon’s moderation policy and it agreed that it was responsible for the content of its end users.
My landlord has a ‘no parties’ clause in my lease because my apartment is in a factory and someone could be easily hurt if one of the machines turned on. I agreed to this contract. If I break it my landlord is within their right to terminate my lease.
I don't know where you live, but here your landlord could absolutely not throw you out on the street the next day if you throw a party, no matter what the contract says.
Depending on where you live, they absolutely can terminate lease and evict for convictions on a huge laundry list of crimes: violent crimes, crimes that were conducted out of the domicile (especially drug convictions) anything that causes irreparable harm to people or property, etc. even in places with very strong tenant-friendly laws.
Parler hasn't been found guilty of anything in a court of law and given the free speech protections in the constitution, probably won't be, so this sub-thread is irrelevant.
The correct analogy is that a landlord cannot throw you out on a whim because they don't like your friends or your friends get in trouble. And that is true.
It isn't Parler that committed (or arguably, even facilitated, see Section 230) illegal acts, it's (likely, allegedly, some of) Parler's own 'tenants'.
But most importantly, as made explicit in your links, it looks like the landlord can NOT evict the tenant himself, and still has to go both through the justice and the police system ?
Also it seems like that when "illegal activity" is mentioned, it has to be declared illegal by some court, or at least have been processed by the law enforcement ?
Also I note that this only holds in some of the states. (So arguably the laws that allow that might be 'bad'.)
Finally, while it's not as bad for AWS, for App / Play Store it's like only having two landlords in the whole Western World, and get evicted from both (one of which still allows you to set up your tent in his garbage dump).
> AWS gave them the time agreed to in the contract to remove offending content and present a plan for continued moderation to prevent the same thing from happening a second time. They wouldn't even commit to moderating the speech Amazon told them was in violation of the TOS.
This is not what Greenwald claims. Do you have any opposing evidence ?
Legally they have the right to refuse service but ethically they owe the public. However "Free Speech" does not entitle people to Freely Lie. As we have seen the wrong words from the right person can cause the loss of life. The police officer did not deserve to die to further the political ambitions of a few morally/ethically bankrupt individuals.
Parler can recreate itself on another platform if they wish. Gab is still up. It is just as disgusting. The Constitution only guarantees that Congress shall pass no laws prohibiting free speech. The last time I checked Amazon or Twitter cannot pass legislation.
Free speech is prevented by the use of force. We held an election. The results where not what some people liked. They tried to cancel the people's voice. That is the real speech suppression here.
It was people with guns and lead pipes, not lies, that hurt and killed people.
The principle of free speech is the idea that open discussion and debate is sufficient to resolve conflicts of ideas. Using force to end discussion is not free expression.
Of course there are limitations when fraud, slander, threats, and the like. But those should be considered in trials by peers or judges as decided in a fair court with due process. Again, words, ideas, and fair institutions are the rule, not decisions by the involved parties who happen to have enough power to get their way.
Thought experiment: Let us say that Anthony Fauci, well respected Dr., had a brain tumor and suddenly started telling people during a live TV interview to do something stupid and dangerous like drink bleach or expose their lungs to intense UV. Stuff so dangerous and stupid that only an idiot would think of it..
If he's sick, you do not broadcast his mental illness out of decency and respect. That's not the interesting thought experiment. The interesting one is broadcasting true believers in their right minds.
In those cases, you make the best argument possible to refute that drinking bleach us harmful... which honestly isn't that hard to make. The hard part is building up a reputation as being someone respectable and respectful enough to deserve attention. I think that silencing of sincerely held beliefs undermines efforts to actually persuade, inform, and make progress (and peace!).
>The principle of free speech is the idea that open discussion and debate is sufficient to resolve conflicts of ideas. Using force to end discussion is not free expression.
Absolutely. However, not all speech is protected speech. At least not in the US.
Speech can also be part of a conspiracy. And conspiracy to commit criminal acts is a felony.
Which is, as I understand it, what the issue is in this case. Apparently (if you take Amazon's word for it, and once the dump from Parler is available, we can see for ourselves if that's true), folks on Parler were planning acts of violence and insurrection on Parler.
Again, that's my understanding. And if that is the case, it's not just folks exercising free speech. It's folks planning violence and insurrection against the US government. Those are absolutely crimes and not protected speech in the US.
Check out the Gizmodo article; all of Parler has been dumped, because Parler had no authz on links, and huge amounts of GPS metadata got dumped. They have Parler users practically down to the room in the Capitol (modulo the floor). The jig is up for this Greenwald argument.
The whole thing is such a terrible, short-sighted justification. The logic being used is setting a precedent to ban or backdoor any encrypted non-moderated form of communication. e.g., Signal and Telegram.
So... Parler is worse because there is _minimal_ moderation, but _no_ moderation is totally fine? That doesn't really seem consistent with any set of guiding principles.
I don’t use either service, but the critical difference in my mind is that telegram is point-to-point or point-to-small-number-of-points medium whereas Parler aspired to be a means of mass-communication.
In my mind, one holds a different level of accountability when sharing private thoughts with friends as opposed to when wielding an insurrectionist bullhorn.
No doubt radical groups are sustained by access to private encrypted messaging, but they cannot grow into the sort of movement that fuelled the attempted coup that took place on 6January without wielding the reigns of mass propaganda.
I am all for freedom of speech, but liberty is not a death pact. We can’t sit idle while this group, that very nearly interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, openly recruits and plans their next attack.
I think you have it exactly backwards. The actual violent intruders last week absolutely coordinated plans around bombs / guns / etc via DMs and small private groups.
The mass gathering was propagated via Twitter-style broadcasts sure, but not the actual violent plots. Those will effortlessly move onto Signal.
Many were almost certainly radicalised through social and alt-right mass media though. You can’t blame the opening at the end of the pipeline for the water coming out.
Furthermore, I was checking in on right wing sites like theDonald.win in the lead up to 6 jan. The loudest voices all argued that the Democratic Party had systemically rigged the election, constitutional remedies had failed them, so the only response available was to fertilise the tree of liberty.
I didn’t sneak into a private telegram group or discord server. This is what these people were saying openly on popular websites that anybody could wander into without so much as making an account.
The same was true of charlottesville, sure parts were undoubtedly organised secretly, but facists like Baked Alaska were live streaming the whole thing - complete with antisemitic commentary.
Saying something like “Refresh the tree of liberty” or “hang the traitors” etc. still doesn’t rise to the level of illegal speech or an imminent call to violence which is the standard under the law. In fact, if you were to claim language like that crosses the line we would have to pull books off library shelves because the same language has been used repeatedly by politicians in American History. I’ve also seen similar language used in reference to Trunp like “He will get what’s coming to him if he comes to our city” etc.
It’s distasteful but it’s legal and part of our political culture.
Distasteful speech is legal and so is kicking distasteful speech off your private platform. The primary limitation on what businesses can and can't do with who uses their platforms are that they need to avoid affecting protected classes.
If you think we need to protect MAGA supporters as a class, I just flat out disagree that there's any cause for it. That group of folks are largely already brimming with privilege that protects them (see walking away from storming the Capitol after killing multiple people).
If you think that the government should force private entities to not enforce consequences to speech they disagree with, I believe the government would struggle to prove that that doesn't itself impact the free speech rights of the private entities and it face immediate law suits to overturn such a law. The 1st amendment protects us from the government, not us from each other.
In the context of discrimination law, there is a commonly-held misunderstanding that "protected class" refers to a group of people, but actually, it refers to a classification.
A particular race is not a protected class. Race is a protected class.
Also keep in mind Parler and Gab were explicitly designed for the far right that claimed wasn't being treated fairly by Facebook and Twitter (which we now know is not factually correct).
> For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler.
> The article will be up shortly.
(The article is the one this discussion is attached to.)
"The data, obtained by a computer hacker through legal means ahead of Parler’s shutdown on Monday, offers a bird’s eye view of its users swarming the Capitol grounds after receiving encouragement from President Trump — and during a violent breach that sent lawmakers and Capitol Hill visitors scrambling amid gunshots and calls for their death. GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
Greenwald literally says in the twit you referenced that zero active Parler users were arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion.
Evidence says: "GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
https://gizmodo.com/parler-users-breached-deep-inside-u-s-ca...
"The data, obtained by a computer hacker through legal means ahead of Parler’s shutdown on Monday, offers a bird’s eye view of its users swarming the Capitol grounds after receiving encouragement from President Trump — and during a violent breach that sent lawmakers and Capitol Hill visitors scrambling amid gunshots and calls for their death. GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
It only seems inconsistent because you are comparing apples and oranges, signal and telegram are in a different category entirely to parler and twitter.
either way we need a law so this can be adjudicated and argued, and a legal process. not just the whims of the biggest corporation and oligarch in the world.
That's the thing that's pretty dumb here. Regardless of what anyone thinks about what happened, the Parler owners should have expected something like this to happen and planned for it.
Sure, but they don't need a "cloud". Just a hosting provider that would sell them enough dedicated servers to run the service. Like how everyone hosted a website before 10 years ago or so.
You're citing protection for residential tenants - the rights for commercial tenants are generally limited to whatever they negotiated in the lease.
And the protection for residential tenants isn't due to the difficulty of finding new accommodation, but the consequences of not finding new accommodation - homelessness. It's substantially harder for commercial tenants to find new space than for residential tenants, but they do not enjoy such protection as residential tenants, because the consequences - going out of business - are substantially less dire.
Given that anyone losing access to AWS faces consequences more along the lines of a commercial tenant being evicted, rather than a residential tenant being evicted, this analogy does not work.
It's even another level down from that. I haven't heard about their landlord kicking them out of whatever office they have. That would have its own real world knock-on effects like the storage of valuables and confidential material.
Arguably web hosting is more important to Parler but that makes their lack of prior communication with their vendors like Amazon that much more inexplicable. There are (or were, last I checked) plenty of hosting providers that cater to controversial websites. They charge a premium for not doing this kind of thing. Seems like they tried to pinch pennies in the wrong place.
AWS, maybe, but for App / Play Store it's like only having two tenants in the whole Western world, and both have evicted you (though one of them allows you to put your tent in his garbage dump).
> If you agree with tenant eviction protections, then you should probably support similar eviction protections for cloud computing
I can't say I agree or that I find this analogy valid. Tenant eviction protection is, in part, to protect human life acknowledging the necessity of shelter. The same just doesn't apply to cloud computing.
It's an analogy. None are perfect. But people need livelihoods to live. It's not okay or fair to destroy a business arbitrarily and capriciously.
My lesson here is that the Internet is essential infrastructure, and once companies reach a certain size (Google, Facebook, AWS), they should be regulated similarly to public utilities.
An electric company shouldn't be able to cut off electricity to a crack house or brothel unless law enforcement first asks for it. Law enforcement should have due process appropriate to the situation; a terrorist attack should be cut off right now. A company making pirated copies of Windows should have their day in court. Your propaganda-believing gun-toting drunk crazy uncle should probably keep their electricity (which isn't to say he shouldn't be handled somehow, but perhaps committed to a medical facility).
I don't feel good or bad about them being taken off-line, since I don't actually know what they hosted. I do feel bad about that decision being made by corporations behind closed doors.
It's more than just an analogy when the parent comment claimed that if you support one, you should support the other. I'm not disagreeing that the scenarios aren't analogous. I'm disagreeing that the same logic that makes one of those things essential to a functioning society should be tried to be wedged in as an argument for the other.
There is, perhaps, a slightly different power dynamic between you as a subscriber paying $9 a month, and you as a client of a huge near monopoly who can kill your livelihood at the whim of an algorithm.
That’s is because the electric company are monopolies created by the government. And unlike power utilities there are zero laws about which cloud provider you are forced to used.
Parler is not some rube. They are a company with access to legal counsel. They agreed to moderate their end users in accordance with Amazon’s content policy and chose not to. They made extremely stupid decisions they do not deserve to be coddled for.
Most utilities weren't created by the government. My local power company came from a series of merges of companies founded in the eighteen-hundreds.
The government, at some point, decided to regulate utilities. It certainly didn't create them or their monopolies. Most have a natural monopoly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly).
It was a good idea, at the time, and it's just helpful to update our list of what constitutes a utility.
>It's not okay or fair to destroy a business arbitrarily and capriciously.
Yeah! The employees of organized criminal gangs need to feed their families too!
They're honest, hardworking people. Why should they be penalized because the repressive system in which they live persecutes them for extortion, robbery, murder, sex trafficking and the like.
Arresting them and putting them in jail is just cruel and unfair!
>Arresting them and putting them in jail is just cruel and unfair!
Isn't this the point?
It isn't a responsibility of the electricity company or the landlord to investigate or apply punishments in criminal matters. Arresting them and putting them in jail is something the lawful authorities do, and there is a due process for it.
I think it's pretty analogous to a commercial tenant lease.
Commercial leases usually have limited contractual clauses to allow eviction of paying tenants within the, usually 10 year, term.
Of course because AWS/GCS/MCS are sort of an oligopoly, they don't have long duration terms.
Regardless of what end of this debate you're on, I wouldn't be surprised if more customers didn't start asking for lease terms.
If I were really any right-leaning media organization I'd really hesitate going to a cloud provider without some sort of durable contract. Think about - is Fox News at risk if it's on AWS? What about The Wall Street Journal? Even Bloomberg has pretty right-leaning opinion pieces often... should they be worried about their content triggering a backlash since there's no contract?
...or maybe we'll just see a resurgence self-hosted platforms?
> If you agree with tenant eviction protections, then you should probably support similar eviction protections for cloud computing.
Nope.
1. Kicking a company off of a cloud platform is not putting someone on the street without notice. Companies are not people, clouds are not beds.
2. It's the company's responsibility to manage risk, including the risk of getting kicked off of a platform. Most companies manage this risk by minimizing it - it's extremely easy, and well trodden territory. Things most companies will do is moderate content, it's pretty much dead simple. If your company won't do those things you'll have to mitigate risk in some other way.
3. You might argue "well companies aren't people, clouds aren't beds, but workers will lose their jobs". This is true, if the company has been poorly managed. But we already have nets for those situations. There's bankruptcy, unemployment, various tax benefits, notice to apply for a new job, etc.
I actually don't feel particularly compelled at all by your analogy.
Of course a landlord can throw you out on a moment's notice if your use of the property is illegal and presents a clear and present mortal danger to public safety.
Where I live, while the use of leased property in various unacceptable and/or illegal activities is a basis for canceling the contract and subsequent eviction (among other reasons more directly relevant to housing), one generally needs an order of court to evict a tenant if they protest. This applies to both housing and business proprties, though people's homes have greater protections.
Also, in some situations here the landlord may lose the grounds to proceed if they won't press the issue as soon as they become aware of it. This is exactly to avoid situations where the one side arbitrarily decides throw the book on whatever the other's activities they can pin down on them.
(Whether the comparison is adequate depends ofc if AWS has consistently made complaints to Parler about the objectionable content. Their message included a part where they pointed out they had requested moderation action earlier, so I suppose they have.)
I can see the issues relevant to cloud hosting are different enough so that analogies are not 1-1 anyway. In general, it is a good principle that content that encourages violence and other illegalities is removed from the public. It would be still also a good idea to have procedures where the hosted party could protest if they are engaging in illegal acts or other breach of contract claimed by other party and the enforcement is applied equally.
What kind of "clear and present mortal danger to public safety" would involve an eviction before contacting the authorities and likely arrest (followed by abandonment and eviction in absentia)?
Mere hearsay is not sufficient cause for eviction. Might be grounds for calling the cops, but not locking someone out of their home. For all the landlord knows it was a TV show.
Could you please find an example of a tenant being legally kicked out by the landlord himself without even involving the law enforcement or a court of law ?
Yep, on many states something as simple as doing drugs is enough to kick you out at a moments notice even if are making no damage to the property. A digital platform being used to orchestrate the destroying of government buildings as well as planning the kidnap of gov officials and making death threats should get more lenience? Get outta here.
Twitter can make a good-faith argument they attempt to remove content that is questionable or that incites violence–they can point to millions of accounts and posts they’ve removed for those very reasons. The ceo of parler can not.
This wasn't one of the ways Parlor was being used, was the ONLY way it was being used, there were not thousands of scientists, mathematicians or people from all the politican spectrum like Twitter there, so any comparison with big social networks is misguided to put it mildly.
Sorry, but I think you are being highly disingenuous. An ACTUAL equivalency would be a phone company throwing you off their phone system, while colluding with other phone companies and tech companies (not even related to the phone service) to also simultaneously ban you from using their services. Also, this is clearly politically targeted, while using words that hide this. Otherwise, please explain to me how all of them just up and decided to do this at once?
We as a society have said that is not ok for phone companies to do. Why are we making exceptions for what is now services that are holding a large portion, if not the majority, of online sites and services at this time?
Also, what evidence has been presented of illegal activity on this app and proof they were not following Section 230 law and refusing to remove it? How were they handling things differently from Twitter (or any social media site for that matter), who also has these problems with their service, and why is Twitter still able to be up? No, I don't mean AWS claims they weren't doing it. I want to know actual evidence. If the post exists, their should be screenshots of them still up now, no?
At this point, cloud services have gotten so large that they probably need to be regulated at this point as a public utility is.
To say AWS is the same as a rental/tenant relationship is laughable. If it was, there would be millions of different cloud services one could go to and this would be a non-issue. But, it clearly isn't close to the same.
Also, if illegal activity is being done (and this stuff was handled like a public utility, as frankly that is the size of these cloud services at this point), then that needs to be handled in a court of law.
I did read your post. You did not explicitly mention regulating cloud services as common carriers. If your policy suggestion is to enact more regulation for cloud services, and to treat them as common carriers, then I think things are little more clear.
What part of "At this point, cloud services have gotten so large that they probably need to be regulated at this point as a public utility is." was unclear? Please read posts in full before replying to them.
I think this is a form of what might be generally called "due process" -- something that is missing from many of the operational actions made by online platforms long before any of the recent incidents.
AWS cancelling a contract is not a criminal sentence. This is a business contract dispute between two private companies, neither of which is a part of the government. AWS took an action under the contract accusing Parler of breach. Parler sued in civil court to get the dispute resolved. This is nothing like locking people in prison without a trial.
Due process isn't some concept that is only applicable to government actions. IANAL, but I feel like contract law includes lots of elements of due process.
Due process is handled entirely differently in contract law than in criminal law. That's the damn point. Amazon cancelling the contract is entirely different from any situation in criminal law, where the state is already involved and the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt before one can act.
Buying a cheeseburger is also a type of contract. Can you imagine McDonald's having to reserve a court date to kick someone out of their restaurant for disturbing the other customers?
This is extremely reasonable especially in light of the fact that cloud providers intentional attempt to lock customers into proprietary apis that are designed to be challenging to migrate across clouds.
Tells us you don't understand the purpose of regulation.
The entire premise that regulation is bad is a disinformation campaign against rational thought. Do you understand how regulation comes into existence? Regulation is the result of someone, some corporation, some city, some legal entity abusing the public's trust to the degree a law is enacted to oversee future such situations because the general public has proved it cannot self regulate this aspect of the public's trust.
That is certainly the most optimistic version I've ever read of how regulation comes into existence. Nothing about this origin story rehabilitates regulations as a whole, however. Even if it were actually 100% true, it would still be possible for most regulations to be bad based on misunderstandings, the calculation problem, and other forms of unintended consequences. Clearly, there also exist examples of regulations enacted for less enlightened reasons.
The failure of our species to govern itself so laws are enacted is optimistic?
You're statement that "it would still be possible for most regulations to be bad" is sheer lunacy. Are you listening to yourself? If I listened to your logic, I'd expect airplanes to be falling from the sky, computers are not possible, and the moon landed must be fake - because they is no way, the misunderstandings, the calculation problem, the unintended consequences... humbug.
Kind of an easy question. What do you do if you find out a tenant is cooking drugs on your property? Same kind of thing is going to apply here. I imagine liability in either case is going to be a concern. I'm not worried for the huge hosts.
For a tenant: You call the police and they maybe get arrested. They're still legally allowed to enter the property until you evict them, which takes 30 days or more in most jurisdictions. You might be able to start eviction proceedings. You eventually sue them for damage to the property.
For a webhost, you call the police and....well what they're doing isn't illegal so the police have no reason to care. If they were doing something illegal, ultimately the police might ask (or depending on the law, might need to get a court order) to ask you to shutdown the account. At this point, they'd no longer have access to the account.
In fact, if you imagine a person who does both on the same day, if they got out on bail, they would still be allowed into the house during the course of the eviction process. So they could continue using the house for a minimum of 30 days.
I don't find this comparison to a landlord at all compelling.
Does action in such a case rely on accusation or conviction? This is a question, not bait, because I don't know but I assume it would require conviction which takes time.
DDoSing is already an illegal cybercrime in the US. A DDoS attack could be classified as a federal criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)[1].
Under Damaging a Computer, 1030(a)(5)
> The provision may also be used to prosecute
the perpetrators of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which occur, for example, when an attacker overwhelms a server’s ability to process legitimate requests by overloading the server with a flood of illegitimate traffic.
No, you're conflicting two different things. DDoS is obviously illegal as you're attacking someone else. The "forced to host a tenant that they object to" the other commentator is mentioning is regarding not liking their speech and ideas, not actions. Of course we should try to stop illegal activities that actively harm others. When it comes to Parler, it's unclear if Parler themselves were active in inciting the violence, just members who happened to be using Parler, or if they are related at all.
They are very similar. Both situations leave you in a situation where you are unable to respond quickly enough and can cause massive financial damage. Just because the situations are not identical does not mean they are not similar and that rules from one can't be moved over to the other.
I don't think google should be able to simply lock people out of their accounts and data without any notice for them to take their data out. I was hit by this personally when google docs locked on of the documents I was working on for school at a time I critically needed it. Their given reason was simply "tos violations" despite nothing in the document being a violation and they unlocked the document 2 days later.
You do not have a right to a Google account. You do not have a right to force them to store your bits on their servers. They offer a free service which they may revoke at their discretion. If you do not like those terms, you are completely free to use any of the other free mail services out there or host your own mail server.
I'm not saying I'm entitled to a google account, but I do think I should be entitled to fair warning that I am being kicked off. Google should be required to send me notice so I can get my data out and on to a competing platform.
Like with rentals, they can deny me service at the start, but once they take me on to the platform, short of a gross abuse of the service, I should be entitled to a warning before the service is terminated.
"I think we agree that no private platform should be forced to host a tenant that they object to. " Can a confectionary refuse to sell cake to a gay couple just because they are gay?
At least where I live, your home rental is far more protected than your business rental. It takes a lot to get you out of a house, definitely not a month’s notice under normal circumstances. It takes a normal breach of contract to lose your business rental.
90 days notice to spammers botnets and other undesirables? Ridiculous.
Edit: utterly ridiculous. Imagine applying the same standards to other physical businesses. Image a bar not being able to evict an unruly patron without 90 days notice or a court order.
This is frankly completely unworkable. And I think once the EU gets off their high horse they’ll find they have to accept that too.
Landlords? Let's take one step back. Just like in the Title I vs Title II debate, let's go one step earlier. WHY do we have these issues in the first place?
It's because our entire society is permeated with ideas about capitalism and competition being the best way to organize something, almost part of the moral fabric of the country. Someone "built it", now they ought to "own" the platform. Then they get all this responsibility to moderate, not moderate, or whatever.
Compare with science, wikipedia, open source projects, etc. where things are peer reviewed before the wider public sees them, and there is collaboration instead of competition. People contribute to a growing snowball. There is no profit motive or market competition. There is no private ownership of ideas. There are no celebrities, no heroes. No one can tweet to 5 million people at 3 am.
Somehow, this has mistakenly become a “freedom of speech” issue instead of an issue of capitalism and private ownership of the means of distribution. In this perverse sense, "freedom of speech" even means corporations should have a right to buy local news stations and tell news anchors the exact talking points to say, word for word, or replacing the human mouthpieces if they don't
Really this is just capitalism, where capital consists of audience/followers instead of money/dollars. Top down control by a corporation is normal in capitalism. You just see a landlord (Parler) crying about higher landlord ... ironically crying to the even higher landlord, the US government - to use force and “punish” Facebook.
Going further, it means corporations (considered by some to have the same rights as people) using their infrastructure and distribution agreements to push messages and agendas crafted by a small group of people to millions. Celebrity culture is the result. Ashton Kutcher was the first to 1 million Twitter followers because kingmakers in the movie industry chose him earlier on to star in movies, and so on down the line.
Many companies themselves employ social media managers to regularly moderate their own Facebook Pages and comments, deleting even off-topic comments. Why should they have an inalienable right to be on a platform? So inside their own website and page these private companies can moderate and choose not to partner with someone but private companies Facebook and Twitter should be prevented from making decisions about content on THEIR own platform.
You want a platform that can’t kick you off? It’s called open source software, and decentralized networks. You know what they don’t have? Private ownership of the whole network. “But I built it so I get to own it” is the capitalist attitude that leads to exactly this situation. The only way we will get there is if people build it and then DON’T own the whole platform. Think about it!
Are you familiar enough with AWS contracts in general, and possibly the Parler contract specifically, to know they breached the contract? (Honest question, as you may be an employee of Parler, for example. HN is an interesting place).
I ask because contracts typically, despite their duration, contain a variety of exit clauses. In this case, Amazon could argue they were exercising a "compliance with laws" clause (if it was in the agreement) such as,
"<Licensee> will not use, or allow its products to be used, in violation of any laws or regulations."
It becomes a legal argument as to whether Parler's members that advocated violence against the government caused Parler to violate the clause, and whether that amounts to a material breach that triggers contract termination.
That is very different than a blanket statement that Amazon "breached that contract and bowed to the mob." In fact, Amazon can sue Parler for breaching the agreement and exposing Amazon to significant liability for (at the most extreme) aiding and abetting terrorism.
Note that I'm not arguing either way, simply stating what lawyers are likely discussing behind the scenes.
that is something that has to be proven in court, before playing any such cards
If that is the case and you defend it, then this is a very unique situation, where law is not enforced by state institution, but by Google, Apple and Amazon. The question is what law? As clearly it is not US law.
If there is breach to the law, then there should be article Nr of breached law, otherwise all of these arguments are nonsensical. Nowhere in the world - even in Saudi Arabia it is possible to be judged and sentenced by unwritten law - by nongovernmental entities. Otherwise it is unlawful lynching by mob and there are countries that allow those, but US kinda positioned themselves as a country that guarantees The Law. Now that guarantee does not work.
I don't have much to add to the sibling comment. It is purely up to the parties of the contract to determine if the other breached it. The remedies of that breach are specifically covered in the contract itself.
Nothing needs to be "proven in court, before playing any such cards." It needs to be asserted. Once asserted, there may be a cure period (the licensee might have 30 days to remedy the problem, otherwise the contract terminates).
The party may disagree, and could negotiate different remedies or timelines - again, no court is required here. However, if they can't come to terms, then they can pursue this in contract court.
Be aware that I'm not defending, or justifying, or taking a position on any of this. It's just how it is. If you don't like it, then work on reforming tort and contract law as opposed to stating on Hacker News that the basis of most worldwide commerce is "nonsensical."
It is not something that has to be shown in court beforehand. Amazon accused Parler of breach of their contract. That means the contract no longer exists. If a court finds that Amazon is the party in breach, they'll be liable for damages.
None of this is criminal law. It's contract law and it will be dealt with per the laws, procedures, precedents, customs, and traditions of civil jurisprudence.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Unless you know that the Parler/Amazon contract included a cure period, the specificity of that period, that Amazon hadn't notified Parler of contract violations previously (i.e., so they extended past the cure period), and also included no other relevant termination clauses (including termination for convenience), then we simply can't say that Amazon breached the agreement despite Parler removing content. There are a myriad of ways they could have fulfilled the agreement, and/or Parler breached the agreement with Amazon.
Please, separate legal arguments from emotional arguments. I'm strictly speaking legally.
Regarding Facebook, the choice to enforce, or not to enforce, a contract term is exclusively the right of the parties to the contract. Amazon may have unfairly chosen to enforce contract terms against Parler and not enforce those same terms against Facebook (for example; though I don't believe Messenger is hosted on AWS).
That's completely irrelevant; so far as I know, no law says all parties to all contracts must be treated equitably.
You will have a compelling argument when and if law enforcement chooses to crack down on child porn on Parler but not on Messenger. In this case though, you're comparing apples to baseballs: their similarities are vastly outweighed by their differences.
The terms of the contract likely are just that AWS will give them their money back. Pretty much all contracts have some sort of clause to allow you to break it with some penalty.
I... don't understand? You were an unpopular speech platform. I worked in porn for 20 years. I know what it's like to get kicked out of AWS, so does John Young. Why weren't they dockerized and prepared to move containers and backups at the drop of a hat? Why didn't they have hot spares elsewhere? There are literally thousands of hosting companies running the gamut from penny-ante to larger platforms like Rackspace, operating in a hundred countries, many of which don't know and don't wanna know what you're doing. The same is true to a lesser extent of registries. And Apple/Google kicking you out of their stores? You can still bookmark a mobile-friendly web app onto the home screen of an Apple device. You're not going to lose Qspiracy fans and nazis just because they have to do an extra step to get to your site.
Nevermind that maybe, just maybe, if your platform users advocate for violent revolution, you're going to have a harder go of things. Prior to approximately October, 2001, there was a taleban.com too. I didn't read any hand-wringing when they got the axe. Newsflash: At least Tor can't remove you.
The simplest explanation is that they saw this coming a mile away (who honestly didn't?) and this is engineered martyrdom.
"The simplest explanation is that they saw this coming a mile away (who honestly didn't?) and this is engineered martyrdom."
I think its more boring than that. Their platform was built by amateurs who didn't know what they were doing. Things like soft-deleting posts and auto-incrementing post IDs. This is why it was so easily crawled in a day before the shutdown.
This is the real answer. It was very clear they had no competence to make an app of this scale. It would have collapsed under its own weight before long.
The most common criticism I'm aware of is that it leaks information about your system and its users. For example, you can gauge growth by how fast ids grow, and relative age of accounts. The former is potentially financially valuable. Often the latter is exposed properly through the UI, but the that can be a choice, rather than exposed due to an implementation detail. There are likely other criticisms as well.
It makes it easy to crawl. If you're trying to get all of the user profiles for a given website and all of the URLs look like foo.com/user/123 it's easy to download all of them, whereas foo.com/user/1234-abcdef1234-1234 is much harder to guess.
There's nothing particularly wrong about it. Twitter does something like this with a bit of timing thrown in the mix, which is why some smart-asses have made self-referencing tweets:
I believe they also for a long time had a public API^.. and I'm pretty sure they soft-delete posts (bonus that they could revive the tweet down the track if it was a 'mistake'). I don't think the Twitter team are amateurs though.
Having monotonically increasing IDs for non-distributed systems removes the possibility of duplicate IDs. In distributed systems ID conflicts are unavoidable, and you might have less conflicts if you generate random IDs, as well as it becomes difficult for an attacker to guess IDs.
^ likely it would have been rate-limited, which isn't a problem if you've got a large pool of users you can authenticate with
> Having monotonically increasing IDs for non-distributed systems removes the possibility of duplicate IDs.
In parler's case, having monotonically increasing ID typed as signed 32-bit integer _guaranteed_ duplicate IDs once they reached 2.1 billion unique items. This is well-known failure mode, and yet it took them by surprise.
Okay.. I concede, 32-bit is a rookie mistake. I didn't know that. Wow. Did they not account for millions of daily active users in a Twitter competitor...
Exactly, these people don't want to put in the work. They just want to use shortcuts, but just as you're not entitled to an account Twitter, you're also not entitled to a cloud service provider.
Parler hasn't seen 1/10th the the deplatforming that The Pirate Bay has seen for example, yet that managed to survive throughout the years and is still up now. The reality is that whoever was running Parler had no clue what they were doing.
Its more that nothing they do can overcome the fact that everyone has blacklisted them. You can't run a site on the internet without having ISPs and DNS registers on your side at least. Even if they rehost somewhere else they will just be hit with the next level of blocks and have wasted the money rehosting.
Who says it is the end of the story for Parler? They came on the scene many years after Twitter and Facebook. They have a lot of catching up to do, with a lot less money at their disposal. In the early days, Twitter ran on Ruby on Rails, hardly a scalable decision, either.
what a ridiculous comment. it was a crowd of some of the dumbest people alive - some attempting to kidnap, injure, and kill lawmakers, some thinking that by entering the building they'd find an OVERTHROW GOVT button. Idiots.
anyone that tries to both sides this shit deserves eternal shame
I personally just want a social network were I don't have to worry about being banned every minute. (Not sure if PArler qualifies, but I suppose it is their selling point).
Depends how much time it will take them to be back up again : if it takes too long, most of their potential users will have moved on, for instance to Gab.
What makes you think they can't attract talent? There are plenty of libertarians in tech that would be willing to work with them, including this SRE right here. I think they had other issues. Perhaps they were just out of their league and didn't have the leadership capable of fighting fires while simultaneously recruiting, scaling, policing, etc. Typical successful startup skills that many people don't have.
I’m responding to a person who made this assertion, but designing your site in a way that non-users can archive all media uploaded to it seems like a good sign!
apparently it's harder for them to get back than they thought.
I guess they are now facing the equivalent of the Holywood blacklist. Dockerized setups will not help if you can't get an alternative host.
"Matze said that Parler had faced trouble in finding a new service provider, ... He also said that others had refused to work with Parler: "Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler#Attempts_to_return_onli...
It is probably easier to find an alternative hosting platform when you are booted from AWS because of porn. In the case of parler they also might need to migrate more data.
Their lawyers bailing gave me pause. Suggests things are substantially more serious than Amazon, Apple, Google, and Twilio suddenly finding a paying customer distasteful.
I don't think it's unreasonable for Parler to attempt to create the same kind of mainstream platform that these other services enjoy. Their service is not criminal in nature. Regardless of what some may claim, their service is simply a social media platform. If you're a technical user you can probably figure out the 'Darkweb'. You can't blame them for not wanting to restrict their userbase to only technical users. They're trying to be a viable alternative to the Silicon Valley giants. That's a reasonable thing to do.
They provided ~90 example out of millions of posts and comments. I signed up to see what all the fuss was about and didn’t see any examples of violence whatsoever, other than some nutty conspiracy stuff and some vaguely violent language that wouldn’t be out of place on Vox or Mother Jones.
If a platform has ANY illegal content what standard is then acceptable? If you moderate 99.999% of your content is it reasonable for you to be blacklisted for the 0.001%? If someone found 90 examples of calls to violence on Twitter would that make it OK to deplatform them too?
> If you moderate 99.999% of your content is it reasonable for you to be blacklisted for the 0.001%?
This sounds like you're trying to get us to pretend along that Parler had a moderation policy that was in any way effective, equally applied, or not just pandering to the crowd it was trying to entice.
> They provided ~90 example out of millions of posts and comments
This argument is problematic. In any criminal endeavor, what most of the criminals do isn’t illegal or even unusual.
When HSBC was laundering cartel money, they also served regular customers. They processed credit cards, gave loans and so on. 99.9999% legal activities and yet they were fined billions of dollars for fascinating money laundering operation of few murderous warlords.
If that’s your logic, then clearly Facebook and Twitter are 1,000x as guilty as Parler, considering that they have hosted extremely violent speech. The genocide in Myanmar, for instance.
This is about money and power, nothing else. Facebook is “too big to fail” so clearly it will never face any consequences, while Parler is a random little site that’s easy to pick on.
I do not object to the claim that FB/Twitter etc. are no better. I am simply pointing out that "arithmetically most of the things they did are harmless" is not a good argument. Most of the things Bin Laden did are benign, Him studying eating, partying, watching TV, taking a dump, playing a ball etc. probably accounts for %99.999 of his actions and being a horrible terrorist is just %0.001 of who he is, if we are looking for a benign/illegal ratio.
IMHO social media needs to be regulated, companies should not be able to simply cut you off from the rest of the public and you shouldn't be unaccountable for your actions and there must be ways for harm reduction. (if you tell/share a something, them maybe people affected by it should have right to equal exposure to challenge it. i.e. their POV could be attached to your post and everyone who interacted with your post receives a notification that the post was challenged)
Wouldn't the platform be protected by section 230? I imagine a large part of the reason Parler even exists is to abuse section 230, or get section 230 removed so they can then go after big tech, or call people hypocrites when only their service gets removed. But as it stands, isn't the service protected?
> The law allows for companies to engage in “good Samaritan” moderation of “objectionable” material without being treated like a publisher or speaker under the law.
My understanding is that the law simply says that doing _some_ moderation doesn't make you the publisher.
Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd - but I find the conflation of "right to free speech" and "right to a platform for said speech" to be odd.
I don't agree that "infringement of free speech" can happen in a commercial context. The right to free speech is the right that you cannot have government force act on you for what you are saying; e.g. the government has no right to tell you "don't say this or it will have consequences". As for private contracts: Trying to enforce "free speech" that must not be infringed upon in private contracts would also mean all NDAs are always void, and would be a huge intrusion into another liberty: That of entering into arbitrary agreements with each other.
The .cn regulator cracking down on Ant Financial because they did not like what Jack Ma said is an infringement on free speech. A private business actor deciding to terminate a contract because they don't like the business partner is not.
Free-speech-as-legal-right and free-speech-as-moral-principle are different: the legal right exists to uphold the moral principle. You're probably correct when you say the legal right can't be infringed in a commercial context, but the moral principle can be violated by anyone.
I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who support free-speech-as-moral-principle.
The issue to me is that people view free-speech-as-moral-principle often as a binary choice. It's either "you allow all speech or it's immoral"
Here's the rub, I think most people also support limiting extreme speech. IDK that there are many (any?) defenders of someone shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.
That, to me, indicates that the morality of limiting speech is more than just a simple binary choice "any limits are bad, no limits are good".
That's what "Free-speech-as-legal-right" is really trying to get at. It is the law trying to make the moral arguments for what free speech is and isn't and when it can be morally curtailed.
To me, the law has struck a decent balance. I don't think it's hugely immoral for a social media company to moderate their own content however they choose. Are downvotes in HN immoral? I don't think so. Do people here in HN believe flagged content is immoral or content that goes against the community rules? I don't think so.
To me, the only way this would be an issue is if Parler had no method to get their platform running. That's not the case. They can self host if they so choose. It isn't unreasonable for them to do that (many companies do).
That being said, I DO have an issue with ISPs choosing what content their customers have access to. That is mainly because a lot of people DON'T have a choice of provider. There is often only 1 high speed choice in a region. For them to filter or block content is a major issue.
> It's either "you allow all speech or it's immoral"
Not really. There's not currently any huge controversy about banning spammers, DDoS attacks, or child pornography. A few fringe groups will argue it, but most sensible discussion concedes that censorship is useful and we need limits.
Tech companies aren't deciding what viewpoints are allowed. They are exercising their right of freedom of association.
Parler's moderation policies caused their own problems. They decided they wanted to be a platform friendly to violent extremists. Their noted lack of moderation of violent rhetoric, calls to violence, and planning of violence made them a pariah.
Amazon is free to associate with whoever they want. They don't owe service to Parler or anyone else.
So tech companies are editorial institutions? I thought they were platforms.
And it's not as if you can just go to the social media network down the street. Sites like Parler are trying to be those alternatives, and it's a tough business to even be #2 in.
Higher quality people might not like the seedy pawn shop in that strip mall with all the WW2 memorabilia, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to try to do business.
Where do you get me suggesting cloud provider companies are editorial institutions? That's just asinine. By choosing not to business with Parler they're exercising their freedom of assembly. They can't be compelled to do business with Parler. This has nothing at all to do with editorial anything. AWS is just infrastructure you pay to use and have to agree to their terms of service.
No part of AWS or Twilio fall under common carrier regulations. They can choose with whom they do business. They would and do cancel service for clients doing illegal things or against their TOS.
Amazon doesn't owe Parler a viable business. Parler made themselves into a toxic environment that drove third parties to abandon them.
>The issue to me is that people view free-speech-as-moral-principle often as a binary choice. It's either "you allow all speech or it's immoral"
I disagree with this argument not because I disagree with your conclusion, but because the issue is much, much darker.
It's not that folks are claiming "you must allow all speech," it's that they're saying "your free speech rights aren't as important as mine. As such, you should be forced to host/amplify my speech even if you don't want to do so."
That's not advocating for free speech, that's demanding that some folks' free speech rights be limited in favor of those of others.
And that's not only wrong, it's hypocritical and morally reprehensible.
In college we had preachers that would come on campus and scream about homosexualality. They were some times directed in their criticism.
These preachers set a great example of batshit old guy. Some times an amateur philosopher would debate them. Usually everyone in the audience came away convinced if the horrors of homosexual bigotry.
Where are people to see these shining examples and learn not to go down that path? How do they sharpen their arguments or even know the opposition?
You can hope for this, but polls show a large group of Americans listened to the years of obviously false information topped off by the recent months of "election fraud" disinformation, and ended up believing the batshit old guys. It would be nice if things worked out rationally, but that's not a guarantee.
It's hard to differentiate between people who are different flavors of "more extreme than one's self"
If you're coming at this from the point of view who sees considers private companies doing the bare legal minimum to be fine and acceptable than pretty much everyone who think private entities should be more accommodating to speech than that is just going to look like various flavors of free speech absolutists/extremists.
I'm not sure that free-speech-as-moral-principle applies to platforming speech vs. not platforming speech. Everyone is free to say and think and express themselves as they want to, and this seems totally separate from a right to reach millions via the work of others.
Like all moral principles, everyone interprets it differently, and your interpretation probably differs from my interpretation.
My personal belief about why free speech should exist is that it helps us discover the truth, both morally and factually. As such, I think we should make spaces accessible that allow any idea to be discussed, even the ones we currently think are wrong, and if we limit speech we should do it such that no idea is rendered inexpressible. However, I understand that not every space should be a complete free-for-all, and I have no problem with limiting the way in which an idea can be presented to ensure politeness or harmlessness.
Within the scope of this belief, I find it obviously okay to deplatform speech up until doing so harms our overall ability to discover the truth. Past that point a tradeoff exists. I think that the removal of Parler is a tradeoff between the free speech of its users, vs the self-determination of Google, the potential harm done by Parler, and the existence of other spaces where ideas can still be discussed. While I therefore find removing Parler to be acceptable, I still feel that the moral principle of free speech must be applied to that decision, even if it's outweighed by other factors.
1. The moral principle of what should be platformed (which you agree is not everything)
2. The moral principle of free speech (which is what is in the constitution preventing the government from preventing freedom of expression)
>I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who support free-speech-as-moral-principle.
I think we can agree that there is confusion but not on the type of confusion.
Even free-speech-as-moral-principle has limits, as defined by John Stuart Mill, who said that free speech can be curtailed when the expression causes harm. People get confused about this because they think free speech means all speech is free of consequence.
Inciting violence, coordinating death threats against individuals, and other similar expression causes harm.
I understand that. Not disputing that. But that is an entirely different (as in not the same) thing than being the source of the violent/illegal threats or incitement.
The comment I was responding to was misleading IMHO ("the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for").
As you point out, they aren't being kicked off "for speech" they are being kicked off for insufficient moderation of someone else's speech, which speaks to the difficulties of being an at-scale content provider.
Content moderation at scale is hard and expensive, but so is regulating emissions from industrial processes, and we don’t (or at least shouldn’t?) throw up our hands and say “let’s not bother then”.
Again though, we’re getting lost in the weeds here. Parler’s entire selling point, and the only reason it had any users or any product, was the implicit promise that “we won’t moderate content”.
Yeah, when you advertise your platform as "Twitter but without the strict moderation", and then people find a ton of calls for violence on your platform, it's a little hard to argue you were actually trying to moderate said content.
Maybe they were, it'll be tricky to show it for certain from our vantage point, but it certainly doesn't help their case that the whole point of platform that they weren't going to moderate said content.
And wink, wink, nudge, nudge because everyone knows what they mean by that.
You can’t build a platform for organizing murders, knowingly allow users to organize murders on your site, and then claim it’s not your fault because technically you aren’t responsible for UGC. Surely there’s a line where it’s just a veneer of an excuse.
Is it possible to build a platform with user generated content that is agnostic regarding the content in the same way that a traditional telco is agnostic about the content of phone calls (or SMS)? Is the difference that the messages are private rather than public?
We don't expect telco's to create filters or to independently moderate or to block the content of phone calls or SMS messages and basically legal mechanisms must be used to trigger any action against a subscriber. I realize that this is largely due to the legal framework of a "common carrier".
What I'm asking is, what would a "common carrier" look like for platform that had user generated content? Perhaps it isn't possible?
Sure. I think you might have a decent argument there for 1:1 messengers or email, but even then, texting spam is now a big problem.
The problem with a social service behaving that way is everyone who tried the "anything goes" approach over the last 30 years started idealistic either gave up and added some rules or became a toxic cesspool.
That makes sense to me. There are zero social environments on earth where some type of obnoxious behavior won't get you thrown out. Why would the web be all that different?
--
To be clear, this is a hypothetical about idealists acting in good faith. Over the years we've also seen bad actors feign utopian motives to try and avoid responsibility for their actions, which is a different conversation entirely.
> Is the difference that the messages are private rather than public?
100%. Absolutely.
> We don't expect telco's to create filters or to independently moderate or to block the content of phone calls or SMS messages and basically legal mechanisms must be used to trigger any action against a subscriber. I realize that this is largely due to the legal framework of a "common carrier".
Not only do we not expect it, but the more privacy-oriented people expect it to not even be possible, and use things like end-to-end encryption that make it impossible for the carrier to know what the messages contain.
You answered your own question. Yes, it _is_ that messages are private vs public. Telco has no concept of public. Everything is direct communication. Similarly, you can talk to as many people as you want on twitter in DMs about doing illegal things, and if none of them report you, you won't be cancelled. (I cant confirm whether or not this will trigger a law enforcement investigation or not though). This is why so many spammers user forms of Direct communication. Because the spam ads/posts/etc are usually moderated into oblivion.
Well no, what I was trying to imagine was something beyond messaging that included public, user-generated content but analogous to common-carrier status.
But perhaps there simply is an inherent problem with being a platform for user-generated content and that it requires somewhat robust moderation to avoid being cancelled, sued, or arrested.
> Well no, what I was trying to imagine was something beyond messaging that included public, user-generated content but analogous to common-carrier status.
I think you need to define was "common-carrier" means.
As far as I'm concerned, once a message is deemed to be intended to be public, "common carrier" goes away for the service that is going to be broadcasting that message to others. The copper/fiber/etc. lines between me and Twitter are still a common carrier, because even though my Tweet is going to be public, the individual TCP packets going to Twitter are still intended to be private.
Yeah, I wasn't really talking about that sort of thing. Just trying to speculate on how you could build a platform that supported user-generated content and resolved the difficulties and bias inherent in moderation mechanisms -- a vibrant digital public square that wasn't overwhelmed by bad-actors.
Any moderation system is going to have inherent bias whether it's humans moderating manually or an algorithm.
Any system for publicly posting messages that isn't moderated will be overwhelmed by bad actors, since bad actors will nearly always be kicked off of moderated platforms.
It is odd. I've tried
(unsuccessfully) explaining it like, you have a right to free speech, but you don't have a right to use my phone to call people, or use my database to store your opinions.
There's a difference between refusing someone service because they're black, or queer, and refusing a corporation service because their user base stormed the capitol to disrupt a free and fair election. If those men had found Pelosi, Schumer, or "The Squad", the same people they've been talking about killing for years, what do you honestly think would have happened?
That's one of the ideas behind why these platforms which facilitate so much societal communication should not be treated as private corporate entities with regards to free speech they should be treated as public utilities
(1) There is a better solution. The problem is that they are monopolies. So bust the monopolies. Require interoperability — a proven solution in other industries. A service needs to be treated as a utility — meaning large amounts of regulation — when it is a natural monopoly, meaning there’s no practical way to avoid a monopoly. That’s not the case here. Don’t use a ton of regulation where a much smaller amount will do.
(2) It doesn’t solve the problem. A social network utility still needs moderation. How would making a social network a utility make the moderation decisions better than what you’re getting now? Complicating things, in the US the first amendment means the government can’t establish laws to limit free speech, so a public utility would have to be a minimally moderated cesspool.
I think consistent standards about it what is and what is not free speech and what is and what isn't protected and what is and what isn't allowed to propagate on a big platforms is something that's good for the culture. so I see making them public utilities that are regulated as creating that overlap between the state definition of free speech and the corporate enforced reality.
Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd
Actually yours is the predominant view of those on the left and HN in general - “they are private companies so deal with it”. From a purely legal perspective, that view is almost certainly correct.
The issue is a societal one. Half the country isn’t just going to sit down and shut up because a few liberal billionaires told them to. They’ll create alternatives, and then we will have not just a philosophically divided country, but effectively two Internets - one for conservatives and one for liberals. Where does it end from there? Do hotels and restaurants in California demand to see proof that you are a registered Democrat before you are allowed to patronize them? Do liberal employers start carrying out mass firings of conservative employees?
We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before. I can’t think of something less American than a bunch of business owners ganging together to strangle the life out of a small business because they disagree with the politics of some its users.
> Actually yours is the predominant view of those on the left
Actually it is the predominant view, left and right.
Except in this specific case, where the right doesn't like it.
> We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before.
The Civil War may beg to differ. The real issue is that we've never reconciled the divergent view point from that war. Race is still the largest dividing factor in this country and this incident was about race (and ego) more than anything else.
Except in this specific case, where the right doesn't like it.
Show me an instance where anything remotely close to this happened - right leaning businesses banding together to take a left-leaning business entirely offline by cutting off all services to them. I’ll wait.
Civil War...
The Civil War occurred at a time when actual physical war was the predominant way that societal differences were settled. That is no longer the case, except perhaps in the minds of some of the idiots that stormed the Capitol.
But on an intellectual level, this event with Parler is akin to an act of modern civil war. When you endeavor to kill an organization, are you not in a sense declaring war on them? Further, was this action not designed to frighten others into getting in line with the ruling party, lest they suffer the same fate? While no guns were used, those seem very similar to the actions normally taken by those engaging in civil war.
You’re right. But Apple, Google, and Amazon all colluding for the singular purpose of warning others that conservative speech will get their businesses instantly killed by the largest and most powerful companies on earth? That sure is.
> Show me an instance where anything remotely close to this happened - right leaning businesses banding together to take a left-leaning business entirely offline by cutting off all services to them.
An example is pirate sites or underground drug sites. Those are largely blacklisted -- and fit into a (far) left-leaning philosophy around a class of freedom. I'd argue most of those are less extreme than Parler.
> When you endeavor to kill an organization, are you not in a sense declaring war on them?
Isn't that what Trump wanted to do with the NFL after Kaep took a knee?
> Further, was this action not designed to frighten others into getting in line with the ruling party, lest they suffer the same fate?
Sure, in the same way that death penalty is meant to scare murderers.
You're trying to make this out to be a site of critical thinkers espousing different views that are being trampled on, while most everyone else recognizes it more like a revenge porn site.
Sure, in the same way that death penalty is meant to scare murderers.
You are comparing the exercise of freedom of speech to committing murder. Not quite the same thing in my opinion.
An example is pirate sites or underground drug sites. Those are largely blacklisted -- and fit into a (far) left-leaning philosophy around a class of freedom.
Those sites are offering illegal goods and services. That is why they are offline. Companies are generally ordered by law enforcement to take them down. Again...hardly comparable.
> You are comparing the exercise of freedom of speech to committing murder. Not quite the same thing in my opinion.
The point is they weren't only exercising free speech. They were inciting a violent riot.
> Those sites are offering illegal goods and services. That is why they are offline. Companies are generally ordered by law enforcement to take them down. Again...hardly comparable.
Again, the calls to march into the Capitol, provocation of violence, etc... are also illegal. But you won't find our government ever willing to take that stand. The distinction is less clear than you suggest.
Lets put it this way, no one is suggesting to blacklist the WSJ or the National Review. The Parler is the equivalent to an Antifa social media network for planning attacks on right wing establishments.
Have you ever been on Parler? I had never heard of it until the left decided to cancel it and it made news. So I went there a couple of days ago, and saw nothing of which you speak. Certainly nothing that would equate it to an “Antifa social media network”.
Speaking of Antifa...if Parler is equivalent to it...it’s bit hypocritical that they still have a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/antifaintl?s=21
I did go on Parler a few days before the Capitol attack and it was pretty crazy. Not everything was violent, but definitely a different take on virtually everything. And definitely calls towards violence and overthrow mixed in. Haven’t been back since.
Note, Parler does have a Twitter account too. I have not heard people looking to ban that — so really not hypocritical at all.
Interesting, because I went on there after the attack and found nothing of which you speak. I found no plans for attacks, calls to violence, or anything else. There were a few links to pro-Trump news articles, but that was about the most “right” thing I saw on there.
OK, you were on a very different version of Parler than I was on. And different than the one that Amazon noted in their response to Parler or all of the various articles that I've read written about Parler. Maybe we all just ended up in the bad part of Parler.
Right, we are talking about social norms. The social norm for most transaction commerce seems to be, that if the fees are paid and the services isn't "abused" (in a criminal sense) then the private beliefs of the purchaser don't matter. The grocer should still sell lettuce to heinous racists.
But we are starting to break that norm, beginning with the natural wedges: commerce where the service or product _IS_ enabling the purchasing in a direct way. The question is if we can stop at _direct_ enablement or whether it will continue to indirect forms.
A scary example would be for Square to start refusing to process payments for ideological reasons.
I suppose one could argue your scary example has already occurred. I believe stripe cut off Donald Trump [1]. As a non-American, I don't really care about Trump and may be a bit ignorant here, but I find the big tech companies cutting him off under "inciting violence" a bit of a stretch. To me, it's actually extra scary to cut off a politician's fundraising for disagreeing with their "politics".
This is why I mentioned square, not stripe. Anyone acting more like a utility or common carrier. Stripe is good, but there are many other comparable options out there. But my local coffee shop only uses a single POS systems. The latter seems more sinister to me, especially since they would be taking an action that is potentially independent of the their customer (the business).
For stripe, the example would be refusing to process any CC payments (as a consumer) for registered republicans whatsoever. Beyond it being foolish commercially, it is much more intrusive than a refusing a direct 1:1 contract.
>it's actually extra scary to cut off a politician's fundraising for disagreeing with their "politics"
Except that's not what happened. Stripe didn't cut off the Trump campaign's ability to raise funds. They didn't block access to their bank accounts. They didn't freeze their assets.
Rather, one company (and they aren't even close to the largest player in that industry) chose not to process online credit card transactions for them.
The Trump campaign has many other online payment processors that it can do business with. They can still accept donations via many other means (checks, bank transfers, cash, etc., etc.).
A single company (which is just a group of people) decided they didn't want to do business with another group of people.
Stripe, it's shareholders and employees are under no obligation to do business with anyone.
And the fact that the customer is a political entity strengthens that, as their right to support (or not) any particular political entity, candidate or position is integral to a free society.
>Rather, one company... chose not to process online credit card transactions for them.
I don't see how people can make this argument with a straight face. If you accept that this one company should be allowed to decide to cut off someone for ideological reasons, you tacitly accept that all companies could cut someone off for the same reason. Hiding behind it being "only one" right now is to use a technicality to dodge having to defend the principle you are implicitly advocating. The action isn't more right or wrong because one or more company is doing it--you either defend the principle at full usage or you disavow it.
>I don't see how people can make this argument with a straight face. If you accept that this one company should be allowed to decide to cut off someone for ideological reasons, you tacitly accept that all companies could cut someone off for the same reason.
I'm not people. I'm just me and don't represent anyone else except myself.
As for it being "just one company," that isn't really important. It could be 10 or 100 or 1000 companies and I'd say the same thing.
And not because of the content of the political views being (or not) supported.
It has nothing to do with any of that.
If the government can force Stripe (or anyone else) to support a particular (it doesn't matter which one either) viewpoint by forcing them to associate with a person or group they don't wish to associate with, then they can force me (or you, for that matter) to do the same.
I can't and don't speak for anyone else. For me, it's about specific constitutional rights. I don't and won't support abridgement of those rights for anyone, whether I agree with them or not.
If you believe that it's just fine for persons or organizations to have their freedom of association rights abridged, then you are anti-freedom and stand in opposition to the liberties and ideals in my constitution.
And if that's true, then so be it. But don't try to pretend that your argument is anything other than an anti-liberty, anti-democratic (small d) one.
>If you believe that it's just fine for persons or organizations to have their freedom of association rights abridged, then you are anti-freedom and stand in opposition...
This is utter nonsense. For example, abridging a company's right to not "associate" with minorities/gays/etc, i.e. their right to not serve them, is not anti-liberty. If the goal is maximizing liberty, it takes targeted regulation to achieve the maximal state. Ensuring everyone can participate in the economic and social infrastructure is a feature of maximizing liberty.
>This is utter nonsense. For example, abridging a company's right to not "associate" with minorities/gays/etc, i.e. their right to not serve them, is not anti-liberty. If the goal is maximizing liberty, it takes targeted regulation to achieve the maximal state. Ensuring everyone can participate in the economic and social infrastructure is a feature of maximizing liberty
I didn't realize that I needed to specify that this didn't apply to protected classes[0]. I assumed that was understood, but I guess not.
Yes, there are a number of groups (see link) which individuals and businesses are barred from discriminating against. But in this circumstance, that's irrelevant.
Because political affiliation is not a protected class under federal law, and even where it is (CA, NY and a few other states) that only applies to employment issues, not business-to-business contracts/transactions.
The right to political association has never been abridged, nor should it be. Any suggestion otherwise is, as I said, anti-liberty and anti-democratic.
Political choice is a bedrock principle of our system. And forcing anyone to support a political viewpoint they do not wish to support violates both settled constitutional law and the ideals of a free society.
Nitpick about protected groups if you like, but there's no "there" there.
The law is the law. We are a nation of laws. We are not a nation of "do what hackinthebochs wants."
There you go again, hiding behind technicalities to dodge the interesting discussion. Laws aren't magic; protected classes aren't magic. The laws reflect our understanding that abridging liberty in some narrow cases served the greater good in some manner. My argument is that some restrictions on liberty serve to maximize liberty more broadly. If you want to argue that political viewpoint should not be one of them, you have to actually make the argument. Simply citing the law doesn't make your case.
Political choice is a bedrock principle of our system. And forcing anyone to support a political viewpoint they do not wish to support violates both settled constitutional law and the ideals of a free society.
Given that being “censored” by sites like Twitter is also a big complaint of the far left (because it has happened a lot), my hope is that splintering to alternative sites won’t be so binary. Having 40 Twitter clones seems better to me than having just one or two.
>Where does it end from there? Do hotels and restaurants in California demand to see proof that you are a registered Democrat before you are allowed to patronize them? Do liberal employers start carrying out mass firings of conservative employees?
Except those are false equivalences. It's not "conservatives" that are the problem. And they aren't.
They have just as much right as anyone else to their point of view, political preferences and to advocate for them as anyone else.
However, those who would use violence, intimidation and lies to advance their political goals are not conservatives. Or liberals.
They are, at best criminal thugs and, at worst, radical insurrectionists bent on destroying our constitutional republic and the rule of law.
And calling such folks out for their behavior isn't a slap at "conservatives," because those who are honest when they call themselves that (at least in the US) want to preserve our constitutional system of government and the rule of law.
Don't conflate the two. Because they aren't even remotely similar.
Glenn Greenwald never disappoints me. He is spot on once again. For years all of these conspiracy theories, calls for violence and allegations of fraud make it to the front page of Twitter/Facebook/YouTube for any user that shows interest in similar topics. However, the day that a competitor decides to openly embrace this content, Silicon Valley goes against it like a pack of predators.
I guess they want a monopoly in being the only platforms allowed to subvert democracies.
It was actually the day Silicon Valley realized Parler was a platform for recruiting, planning, and executing a violent insurrection to end democracy in the US that they all ran in the opposite direction.
Perhaps these companies are all secretly happy for the excuse, but there’s no question they did the right thing in this case.
The president and his supporters are unrepentant, proud of their successes, and will do more if they can.
Let's look at how great of a point Greenwald is making.
> they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections.
Not stripping EXIF data, getting social security number from users, using the trial version of their IAM system, poorly coded allowing everyone to exfiltrate the data and god knows how many other exploits. So much for privacy...
> As Silicon Valley censorship radically escalated over the past several months — banning pre-election reporting by The New York Post about the Biden family
Yeah, what happened to that? Looks like they suddenly stopped caring about that, and no one ever managed to corroborate the obviously fake news pushed by NYP. Let's not forget how Carlson went on a whole fake drama about "losing incriminating papers", but then when UPS found the papers, suddenly Carlson says he no longer wants to spill secrets about hunters private life... What?
This whole thing is BS. The Pirate Bay was deplatformed orders of magnitude harder than Parler ever did and they survived just fine. Parler was just created by a bunch of people who had no clue what they were doing, and they crumbled by their own inaptitude.
>no one ever managed to corroborate the obviously fake news pushed by NYP.
At least two of the messages were DKIM-authenticated by an unrelated third party. Combine that with:
* The FBI, the DOJ, and the DNI all refuting the "Russian disinfo" theory
* Biden's campaign explicitly refusing to call the emails inauthentic
* Pics of Hunter in compromising positions
* The laptop being the subject of a grand jury subpoena
...and there's more evidence pointing towards the story's legitimacy than away from it. In fact, that leaves the only real thing pointing away as "it's a sketchy-ass tabloid", which is adhom at the end of the day.
Greenwald is unrecognizable from the Snowden era. It’s like a dementia victim morphing into a completely different person. Very sad to see him like this. The Hunter Biden article fiasco is embarrassing for him, and this makes it appear he is just doubling down in tabloid garbage right-leaning-for-attention nonsense.
The US has one of its worst, most cruel, presidential administrations in its history and the only subject he is obsessed with critiquing is the left and media and tech companies.
Agreed, I just checked and their web view is a readability nightmare, though thankfully it does not apply to mailing lists. (I read a couple of Substack publications via email, but am unwilling to pay for it or publish through it myself as infatuation of folks like Greenwald with it and Kik background lend it a dubious aura.)
As with almost everything with these lower quality right wing media content, there's a whole lot of brouhaha, and then suddenly it all goes silent and they're never called out for their lies. They just sweep it under the rug and move on. Meanwhile, whenever the NYT gets something wrong, they come out publicly with a redaction, and people use that as proof that NYT is "fake news". I've never seen right wing news ever write a redaction for the countless lies they've posted.
Just last week, all of right wing media was full of posts about those 3 people at the capitol being antifa. Their proof? A cropped image of Q Shaman at a BLM protest (coincidentally cropping his Q sign), and a Google Image Search finding a photo of the other two guys on phillyantifa.com, even though clicking on the page showed that it was an article about white supremacists.
Feel free to come back and post here once the hunter biden "fiasco" gets resolved, but the fact that Tucker Carlson suddenly decided that he no longer cared right after receiving his "highly incriminating secret papers" tells me everything I need to know about the drama.
Yeah, I think the laptop mostly smelled like bullshit, but still think there are legitimate concerns around Burisma and whether pay-for-access happened.
There is zero credible evidence about pay for access. Meanwhile the people spending their entire life digging through Burisma seem to not give a single shit about the hundreds of pay-for-access story surrounding Trump and his properties. Foreign countries literally booking dozens of his properties for months inhabited.
Trump's own children literally got jobs at the white house, ffs. The hypocrisy is deafening.
And one politician being corrupt doesn't mean that they are all corrupt. Get back to us when there is actual proof of corruption and not the same right wing rage machine making all kinds of baseless allegations.
Thanks for this. Society needs to start setting a higher bar for public discourse all around.
Tired of these bullshit conspiracy theories running rampant on certain media platforms. There have been dozens of them since the election alone and not a single one has been validated. You would think people would be tired of being obviously fooled over and over, but it seems every time another fake story comes along, they take the bait.
This whole rant looks like a personal thing for Greenwald. Ever since leaving the Intercept because of the Biden story he became very narrow minded. He's definitely in the wrong about Parler. The platforms have a rightful expectation that you can moderate the content on your site and it was proven that they have the right tools for the job. It was also shown that a huge part of the moderators were indeed MAGAs. It also seems to have incentivized users to spread disinformation [1]
Additionally: wasn't there a post recently about the investors being unknown? I read speculations about a Mercer involvement but other than that little is known. How can Greenwald make naive assumptions like this only looking at the public figures? Aren't there connections to Russia that had to be investigated? (Can't find source right now, it's on HN though)
I'm not seeing the contradiction here. Are you suggesting that Greenwald denied that Parler was used for planning/coordination? Perhaps you missed this paragraph?
> It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
It's ad hominem, and Greenwald has always been incompetent. Just look at his PRISM reporting, which he still hasn't issued a correction for and just never talks about anymore (not a single mention in his pardon rant on Substack) after apparently finally realizing how embarrassingly wrong his reporting was.
It was entirely wrong. The slides he published very clearly showed that it was an integration project with the FBI. The companies sent the FBI data for specific accounts under court order, and that is the only data that PRISM ingested. Greenwald thought the NSA could access arbitrary accounts' data. He could easily have gotten this right (like the New York Times did the very next day and CNET and the rest of the tech media shortly after) if he had bothered to figure out what each piece of the diagrams meant or if he had consulted anybody who understood computers at all instead of just a high school dropout SharePoint admin — you know, journalism.
IIRC that was Snowden’s claim too and he worked on it (I don’t have an exact text quote since this is from the Citizenfour doc), and the claim is that the data can be requested as long as the individual is suspected, which can be for something as frivolous as a ML look-alike match on traffic patterns.
Also the key piece of the reporting was on the abuse of the Patriot’s act. Without Greenwald and Snowden the New York Times wouldn’t even touch the topic.
> IIRC that was Snowden’s claim too and he worked on it
Snowden did not work on PRISM, nor did he ever claim to. He had failed a test necessary to even see data collected under Section 702, so he couldn't so much as see the data that PRISM ingested. https://www.vice.com/en/article/mb9mza/exclusive-snowden-tri...
> and the claim is that the data can be requested as long as the individual is suspected, which can be for something as frivolous as a ML look-alike match on traffic patterns.
No. It goes through the normal court order process where the company will push back if it isn't legit. Section 702 court orders can only request data for non-Americans outside the US, and the company that gets the order will have a good idea of whether this is true for a particular account.
> Also the key piece of the reporting was on the abuse of the Patriot’s act.
The only illegal US program that they exposed was phone metadata collection. The pair of illiterates thought that PRISM was something supremely sinister (that anybody with the most rudimentary computing and reading skills can easily figure out it isn't), so they hyped that story a lot. People corrected Greenwald on Twitter on day one, but it took years for him to understand how much he botched that story, and his ego prevented him from issuing a correction. Instead, he just stopped talking about it and now only ever mentions phone metadata. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-ed...
Where did he move the goal posts? From the article...
>Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube
The tweet you linked shows a post on parler dated November 16. That's not evidence the poster was an "active user of Parler". In fact, it suggests the opposite. All we know is he made one post in November.
He's not listed as part of the 13 people charged by the DoJ. It's possible that he was arrested later. But Glenn didn't lie here.
So the parler exec probably looked at this list, checked to see if any one of these people used his platform, and found none did. Then he told Glenn. However, more people have since been charged.
Glenn is absolutely right here. If anything, the article needs an update because of all the authoritarian shit (new patriot act, sending rioters to gitmo, etc) proposed over the last week.
I’m not dismissing him because of one mistake, I dismiss him because the only lens he looks at anything through anymore is how the it’s all actually the left or the media’s fault.
With the state of American politics today, saying "I don't think we have enough evidence to conclusively tie ____ to Russia" is sufficient evidence for a significant chunk of the population to accuse the speaker of being "in the pocket of Russia". Unfortunately.
But his main point is that free speech is curtailed unevenly, which isn't false.
You just feel betrayed that he went from criticism government to criticizing corporate, and to calling out the double standards in the culture that protect liberals, and punish conservatives, which as a "tolerant centrist" you should be against.
Instead you call him a gimp while it's your attitude that sounds like unapologetic hypocrisy feverishly licking the boots of whoever you're no longer allowed to criticize... As George Carlin (i think) said, that tells you who's in charge and what they fear. I'm sure they thank you for supporting their cause.
In the early 1990s, if you wanted to have an online presence you needed to buy hardware, connect it to the internet and run some software on it.
If Parler had done this, the ways they could have been "destroyed" would have been:
1. refusal to provide DNS for their address
2. refusal to certify an SSL certificate (not absolutely required but more than just a detail in 2021)
3. refusal by an ISP to carry their bits
I believe that even the progressive end of the tech community would have been extremely negative about any company that did any of these 3 things. I also think its very unlikely that any of them would have happened, though the Gab case provides some evidence to the contrary.
Instead, Parler followed the unfortunate dumbification of online presence over the last 20-30 years, and instead of doing the above, contracted with a large corporation to take care of things for them. The large corporation decided they didn't want to do that anymore, and Parler lost its online presence.
Parler is not exactly unique in having made this choice. But perhaps the consequence of the choice they made might convince more people/organizations/corporations to think a bit more clearly about the type of hosting infrastructure they really want/need. If Parler had followed the self-hosted pathway, I think it is extremely unlikely (though sure, not impossible) that they would be offline at this point.
I don't the know the details of that case (and I don't expect the WE reporter does either). It seems as if GoDaddy refused to continue hosting the site. That's quite different from providing just DNS for a server owned and administered by the organization.
From linked article: “As a result, we[=godaddy] informed the site yesterday that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another registrar, as they have violated our terms of service" i.e. domain, not hosting.
Their registrar is and was epik.com, starting in 1997 according to whois records.
I can't find an obvious link between godaddy and epik (though one may exist).
Their current DNS service is provided by ... AWS :)
I'm not convinced that the quote from godaddy is technically informative here, though using the word "registrar" would seem to be more indicative of something other than hosting.
> I guess "Creation Date" refers to the original registration of the domain anywhere rather than with the current registrar.
Correct. Even more interestingly if you backorder a domain name owned by another person and that domain name expires, the creation date reflected in the WHOIS record once you obtain it will be the previous owner's creation date, not the date you obtained the domain. I think this behavior varies by registrar but that is how it seems to function on GoDaddy.
Transfers between registrars do not usually reset the "Creation Date". Actually the creation date field is not correct anymore for most domain names. Some registrars just show a fixed date such as 1985-01-01.
I think this is an English thing. That “widely trafficked forum” means to me that it is popular. If I wanted to imply they were a part of trafficking I would write “ar15 a popular forum for the trafficking of firearms” or something like that. Trafficked does imply the illegal part, but the way it’s written that makes no sense.
I definitely forgot about 4, but since the colo provider is also likely the ISP, I think this is effectively covered by 3, generalized to "ISP cancels its contract based on your bitstream or other reason".
5 doesn't really cover the scenarios that I think we're talking about. Yes, if you believe that we live in a fascist, near-fascist or just plain punitive state, then fear of law enforcement is probably going to make this concern rank fairly high for you. But I think for most of us, if law enforcement is coming to remove your servers from a colo facility, something much bigger is going on.
Do you think Parler's servers would still be in their possession if they had bare metal at a colo? I'm pretty sure the USSS would have already grabbed them to investigate threats against the life of the Vice President and Congress. In fact, being in the cloud probably saved them.
It's a good question. Did the USSS do anything re: investigating Parler while it was still up on AWS? What did they do? Did they grab servers? Did they grab anything?
From your question & answer, I assume that you think it likely that the USSS (or FBI or whoever) would have moved to grab the hardware had there been hardware to grab?
Also, the pirate bay is still alive to date, so clearly it's doable. They've seen orders of magnitude more deplatforming than Parler did and they survived it, same for sci-hub. This is proof that it very much is possible to survive online, Parler just doesn't either doesn't have the skills or doesn't want to put in the effort.
They want to make as much noise about it as possible, because Parler has an axe to grind. If they got back on air too quickly they wouldn’t be able to make such a fuss.
I'm waiting for the not so distant possibility of power companies deciding to cut service to companies who host services they don't approve of. This is not a joke.
For: yes, we should have regulation that ensures net neutrality, right down to "complete ignorance of the bitstream".
Against: ISP needs to cover more than just the last mile, and for everything except the last mile, competition seems like a positive thing (though potentially wasteful).
So I'd like to see all physical layer providers bound to absolute net neutrality (service and contracts can never be pulled based on contet), and the last mile regulated similarly to other utilities.
Looks like they can refuse to issue you a certificate:
>"ISRG may, in its sole discretion, refuse to grant Your request for a Let’s Encrypt Certificate, including for any lawful reason stated or not stated in this Agreement."
>"You also acknowledge and accept that ISRG may, without advance notice, immediately revoke Your Certificate if ISRG determines, in its sole discretion, that [...]
(v) You have violated any applicable law, agreement (including this Agreement), or other obligation;
(vi) Your Certificate is being used, or has been used, to enable any criminal activity (such as phishing attacks, fraud or the distribution of malware);
(ix) ISRG is legally required to revoke Your Certificate pursuant to a valid court order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction;
(x) this Agreement has terminated; or
(xi) there are other reasonable and lawful grounds for revocation
"
OK, so I was at least somewhat wrong, since presumably (xi) is the means-what-you-want clause.
Refusing to grant the initial cert. seems unlikely for a new organization, so revocation is the key problem. And indeed (xi) is a problem there.
I wonder if LE really thinks this way. Their primary role is to say "foobar has certified that they really are foobar". I wonder how suspectible they are to the sorts of considerations that have driven FANGT to take the steps that they did.
It's likely more of a failsafe. All CA's, registrars, DNS providers, CDN's and hosting providers have some variant of that wording so that they can terminate your account without facing legal recourse. It's easy to miss it, some AUP's are massive and default to tiny font.
easy - think about the pain and toil of standing up a webapp in 1992, compare it to logging into aws and spinning up a template that uses managed databases and lambda functions with some templating engines, write minimal code, lots of configs, etc.
the latter requires much less knowledge and enginnering than the former.
That's only true if you plan to use some of the many AWS "services".
Get an instance, choose some linux distro image that comes with ssh and nginx installed, start it up, configure a few files, grab an elastic IP, you're done.
I set up the first public web server in the pacific northwest in 1993. It wasn't that hard, but mostly because I already admin'ed the machine(s) it ran on anyway.
OK, "dumbification" is unnecessarily antagonistic. But one can bring up an online presence today with astoundingly little knowledge of the technology or the implications. So maybe "massive simplification" is a fairer, nicer and more reasonable tone.
You also need DDoS protection. Cloudflare has booted people off for naughty speech before and got away with it, so no reason to expect anyone else in the game wouldn't.
Was that when the CEO penned a letter that started "I kicked X off the internet because I was in a bad mood this morning"?IIRC, even they felt this power was a bad thing at the time, even if the instance of it was ok
It is material to any discussion of whether or not AWS, Amazon or Silicon Valley or corporations in general have "Monopolistic Force" abilities in this area.
I fully agree, and even with all these points I don't think it's likely.
1. You should be running your own authoritative DNS, it's not hard. The only thing that can really happen to you is your registrar pulling your domain name, so you need to have a bunch registered piratebay-style. You should also own your IP space but that can be a bit pricey -- but once you own it it basically can't ever be revoked and you can advertise it to whoever you wish.
2. I sincerely doubt Let's Encrypt / ISRG would blacklist a domain name for cert issuance. Even if they did there's a whole lotta roots in the trust stores, I'm sure you'd find an issuer happy to make you a cert for a fee.
3. I deal with T1/T2 carriers in $dayjob and I promise they don't give a triangular shit about what you push through their pipes, given the constant stream of phishing/spam/ddos/malware they're happy to carry as long as someone pays the bills.
> 2- Signing an SSL certificate is a one-time thing.
Certificates are definitely the weak spot here, as many of them already have a poor track record regarding security so probably poor spines too. Certificates requires central authority somewhere in the chain, and if they don't let you in, you don't stand a chance. Self-signed certificates are not gonna fly for most parts, unless you teach people to self-validate certificates with out-of-band ones.
I'd say the same about CloudFlare some time ago when it comes to blocking "enemies" that are not explicitly breaking the law, but here we are. Never say never, and even if an organization would never do such a thing today, who knows who is controlling the organization tomorrow.
TOS and documents like that are written by lawyers. What an organization might or might not do in practice has almost no bearing to their "subscriber agreement" and other legal documents.
Yeah, here I thought the same would happen if technology companies started banning people without any anti-criminal justification but again, here we are. Parler built a platform that could be used for bad, so instead of letting the country deal with the bad outcomes of the platform (like how we deal with Twitter and Facebook), the "modern" western world decided, without any intervention from the government, that Parler is not allowed to exist anymore.
Technically yes, but no issuer will provide long expiry certificates anymore [1]. They won't be recognised by major browsers even if they do anyway.
Some still sell 2 or 3 year certificates but that's a marketing ploy. You pay the price for the next 3 years in advance but you still have to renew it every year.
When we used to talk about "monopolies", we referred to specific private enterprises. But these companies aren't actually monopolies. Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on social networking, there's Twitter and TikTok and Snap too. AWS doesn't have a monopoly on cloud infra, there's GCP and Azure and Oracle and Digital Ocean too.
The author knows that these companies aren't actually monopolies, so he insinuates that the whole region (Silicon Valley) is a monopoly. And one of these companies (Amazon) it isn't even located in the Silicon Valley region; it's located in the state of Washington.
So really the author has expanded the target of the ire to a whole industry. That is to say, the tech industry has a monopoly on the tech industry.
If Amazon isn't a monopoly (or at least close) then why is Amazon facing action or under investigation for antitrust from Congress, the European Union, the DOJ and 3 states?
The European Commission is investigating Amazon based on "distorting competition in online retail markets" [1]. I don't see a claim by the commission that Amazon is a monopoly. You can be investigated and have antitrust related actions applied to you without actually being a monopoly [2].
Further, the investigation is related to Amazon's retail marketplace business, not Amazon as a provider of cloud infrastructure. What is congress investigating Amazon for? I think you need to be more specific.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law "In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws that regulate the conduct and organization of business corporations and are generally intended to promote competition for the benefit of consumers."
1) Antitrust accusations include participating in anti-competitive behavior, which may or may not be with a company who has as a monopoly.
2) Antitrust accusations are relatively low cost to make and sometimes used as cheap political tools to score points with a base, despite not having a chance to go anywhere.
All the investigation as far as I know is on the web store side of their business, with Amazon Basics specifically. The blog above is talking about AWS, which is a different side of their business.
Meta: Hey @dang and crew, I just want you all to know how much I love this community and all the hard work you do- reading articles like this makes me aware of how much effort it must take to keep HN a fun civil place. Thank you for all your efforts.
As someone who makes a boatload of money in large part because tech companies are not regulated, I have to say - it's time to regulate large platforms like utilities. You cannot cut someone's power because they broadcast a death threat from their house. All you can do is sue (if that). It should be the same with oligopolistic cloud and social media platforms, since "breaking them up" doesn't really seem workable.
I think the line is 'due process under color of law'- The legal framework would/should make any action automatic and any debate is done under the court system.
> it's time to regulate large platforms like utilities.
Not if we aren’t first regulating lower levels of the internet infrastructure that way. Starting with ISPs, DNS providerd, etc. And even if we were doing the lower levels, it still wouldn't be, but we might relieve the perceived need.
What amount to algorithmically assembled personalized magazines, like all the newsfeed-focussed social media outlets, are pretty much the least utility-like and most-media-outlet like (hence, the name) parts of the internet, and regulating them like state-directed utilities makes as much sense as treating the New York Times as a state-directed utility.
Lower levels should definitely be regulated or split up if practical. I think busting monopolies is better in general, but sometimes (like for existing utilities) it makes more sense to regulate a "natural" monopoly.
Facebook is not really an "magazine". In this analogy, it's more like a print shop or a point of sale, except that 3 giant corporations own all the printing equipment/all the newspaper stands, and they decided to stop printing/selling NYT because some opinion piece in there used bad language.
There are degrees of regulation; people on HN tend to like "net neutrality", and I don't think many people are against anti-discrimination laws for businesses, so why not "hosting neutrality" where cloud platforms, oligopolic in particular, don't get to kick people off their hosting just because they supposedly disagree with them?
Currently I have at least 5 different that I can choose from and probably quite a few more that I am not aware of.
I do not have anywhere near this level of choice in Social Media.
In my opinion the question of whether or not these companies should be regulated has nothing at all to do with whether they more resemble media companies or they more resemble utilities.
> I do not have anywhere near this level of choice in Social Media.
You don't have to use social media to be online. But if all 5 ISPs decide to cut you off, you can't even access your social media accounts.
Seriously, secure the lower parts of the stack first. This administration went and did the exact opposite of that by repealing net neutrality. I have no sympathy for them if their ISP cancels their accounts. It's called reaping what you sow.
129 million people have access to only 1 broadband provider. That's 40% of the country [1]. With wireless carriers maybe that increases to a little bit more, but they're prohibitively expensive usually to run as your main home internet connection.
For social media you have: Facebook (Instagram, Whatsapp), Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, WeChat, TikTok. And these are just the ones with > 100 million users. You can find way more with users in the tens of millions or less.
>makes as much sense as treating the New York Times as a state-directed utility.
This just reminded me there are laws, such as changing one's name, which require things to be announced in one or more prominent local papers (which laws depends on your state and local governments).
I'm not totally sure if that's evidence against making a "utility" social media or for making a "utility" newspaper.
Both newspapers and social networks are multicast, but a newspaper is one-to-many and a social network is many-to-many. There's a material cost to publishing a newspaper that doesn't exist with electronic social networks. I don't know if a utility is a good analogy for a social network platform, but I am confident a newspaper is not either.
Yep; so someone should have called whatever the Fed equivalent of police is to investigate specific people calling for terrorism. Not unilaterally ban the entire site.
Come think of it, in my original analogy, it would be more like cutting power to an entire condo building because one resident is broadcasting death threats.
How are you planning on accessing Facebook and Twitter if Comcast boots you off their network because they're allowed to? We don't even have net neutrality anymore.
I'm going to agree with the parent comment: The question of ISPs being a public utility or not is crucial for this discussion because it goes to the core of the issue of what should be a privilege and what should be a right.
If you can be booted from Amazon because it's a private company then you can also be refused service by your ISP. And there's an argument to be made that, at some point down the chain (AWS, DNS, ISP) you should have a right to internet access. Should Amazon be forced to offer unconditional access to Parler? Probably not. But right now there's nothing stopping ISPs from cutting people's internet connection just because they don't like what the customers are doing with it, and that's a much thornier issue.
Regulating ISPs like utilities would delineate a clear line in the sand for problems like this.
Forcing the equation by talking about this from the perspective of ISPs is a lot easier in my head.
Other technologies that build upon the basic connectivity are much more subjective in their entitlements. I.e. you could run your own DNS name servers, so perhaps something like DNS or DDoS protection is viewed more as an open-market opportunity on top of the utility.
The barest of essentials for a self-operated cloud service would be IP connectivity, public TLS CA and domain registrar. Maybe we should look at these technology features in the same way we do frequency control, voltage and standardization in the electrical grid. DNS, compute, storage, DDoS protection, et. al., would be analogous to all of the various appliances you have connected to your electrical system at home or work.
>I'm going to agree with the parent comment: The question of ISPs being a public utility or not is crucial for this discussion because it goes to the core of the issue of what should be a privilege and what should be a right.
I'd go further than that. Requiring ISPs to be dumb pipes (that means no port blocking or throttling, among other things) can reduce the power and influence of the large social media players by making it easier to host your own data[0][1][2] and share what you want with whom you want.
No middlemen, no abusive data mining/tracking, etc.
But doing so requires that ISPs are not gatekeepers, just suppliers of bandwidth/routing.
> You cannot cut someone's power because they broadcast a death threat from their house.
This is a bad, needlessly hyperbolic analogy. The reasons there are regulations prohibiting the shutoff of utilities is that these are basic needs without which people can be directly harmed (often very seriously, if you cut off heating in the winter, etc...).
There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler account.
I'm not saying I disagree that some level of regulation is appropriate. But this issue is (for somewhat obvious reasons) being wildly overstated. Parler was shut down for explicitly violent rhetoric which inspired real political violence, period.
Surely everyone agrees that this particular speech should have been banned, right? We just disagree about the specifics of how it should be done. If so, why are we screaming so loud about "Silicon Valley" showing "Monopolistic Force"?
Is hyperbole really the answer here? Or is it an attempt to deflect discussion from things that seem a little more important at the moment?
No, I don't agree that "this speech" ought to be banned, and also not in this particular manner. First of all, were %%ge of Parler posts contained incitement? I honestly have no idea, but I suspect it's by far not the majority. More importantly, Brandenburg case is a pretty good standard for banning speech as far as I'm concerned, and it's a pretty high bar. What %%ge of Parler posts met THAT standard?
> There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler account
Canada considers internet access a basic human right, and it's pretty clear the rest of the world will move in that direction shortly.
I think it's very clear you can harm a person by cutting them off from the world / loved ones, news, etc. Especially in communities that have no outside access other than internet based.
Maybe not Parler specifically, but certainly internet access. And if the vast majority of the world and people around you are getting news and info and social life from <website>, it could be argued that denying access to <website> will harm a person.
>> There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler account
>Canada considers internet access a basic human right, and it's pretty clear the rest of the world will move in that direction shortly.
Having a Parler account and having access to the internet are two different things.
Funny that you mention Canada. Parler would likely have trouble existing as a Canadian entity due to Canada’s hate speech laws and the courts’ propensity to leave carriers exposed to liability for hosting content that violates those laws.
Also, the Canadian government has a broad power to restrict speech in times of crisis through the War Measures Act. They could easily have switched a site like Parler off if a similar event occurred.
That also doesn't remove your access to the Internet.
They also weren't banned. Their hosting provider refused to continue hosting them. There are thousands of competing companies out there they can take their business to.
This is like all the grocery stores choosing not to carry brand of product in their grocery stores. You didn't lose access to the grocery store. That brand can start their own grocery store and host their own product if they want to.
And similarly: likening the banning of one site that was a hotbed of rhetoric akin to (or directly related to) a serious incident of political violence to the "vast majority of people around you" losing all internet access is senselessly hyperbolic and unhelpful.
If we grant that the reason we're currently in this crisis of democracy is that people are addicted to an outrage machine (stop the steal, #resistance, whatever), then maybe it's our job to get us off the train.
Why can't banning Parler just be about banning Parler and not an assault on democracy or whatever? I mean, we all agree that the kind of speech banned should be banned somehow, right?
I don't think the comparison is between social media access and electricity access. The comparison is between access to internet and access to electricity. You just picked a specific case of "internet access" to make it look more silly and easier to defeat.
Using that same technique, I can say "Comparing internet access to being able to use your toaster is the height of disingenuous absurdity". You can see why this technique isn't really legitimate and should be avoided in public arguments.
Well, sure, how about access to electricity for the purpose of broadcasting? In some other fork I posted an example where Russian govt has extra-legally shut down a live opposition broadcast by cutting power to the studio.
This is not a switch, but a spectrum. Monopolies/oligopolies should be either broken down or regulated. Electrical companies should be more regulated, cloud providers less regulated, social networks perhaps much less regulated.
I frankly don't think social networks are that important at all, but I am trying to account for my biases. For many people and organizations, they are not really like a newspaper, a comparison many make here - they are more like a printing press, or a radio transmitter or something. If one company owns the entire radio spectrum or all the printing presses, it ought to be regulated.
I agree 100%. The mega-tech corporations enjoy legal protection as a platform vs a publisher. They are clearly taking an opinionated stance re content moderation and should lose their legal protections as a platform and become liable for content like a traditional publisher.
"If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" I regret to inform you that you are wrong."
While it's a shame when the HN crowd takes down a site due to us mobbing it, given the number of folks who are seriously confused about Section 230 I wouldn't mind if techdirt took that hit.
It would save me (and you) from having to post that link every 25 minutes or so.
I'm pretty sure what GP is saying is that they think it should work differently (to note, I disagree, although my position is that moderation for platforms like Facebook/Twitter, where visibility is off-by-default, should ideally be limited to targeted removal of explicitly illegal content, and there should be some regulation to that effect for platforms above a certain market share by some definition).
>I'm pretty sure what GP is saying is that they think it should work differently (to note, I disagree, although my position is that moderation for platforms like Facebook/Twitter, where visibility is off-by-default, should ideally be limited to targeted removal of explicitly illegal content, and there should be some regulation to that effect for platforms above a certain market share by some definition).
That's as may be. However, none of that is the law.
I strongly agree that Facebook, Twitter, et al have disproportionate influence due to the strong network effects of their user bases.
And I believe that we should take steps to limit that power and influence. However, modifying/repealing Section 230 is not the way to do so.
In fact, reducing or eliminating the protections of Section 230 would have the opposite effect, because only those with deep, deep pockets could continue to operate in a world without Section 230.
I made other suggestions[0] which I think could help by providing other places for people to go.
Any success would depend on folks voting with their feet. Let's make that easy to do and give people a better, more positive experience, with more privacy and choice and less ads and tracking, and people will run away from these monsters.
I'll say it again. Repealing/weakening Section 230 would hurt everyone else much more than it would hurt Facebook and Twitter. In fact, it would significantly harm free speech on the Internet -- which is what Section 230 was designed to (and has done for 25 years) protect.
I think the solution is the opposite. This would be removing the section 230 protection from any platform that moderates lawful content, other than technical things such as spam or attempts of intrusion.
Any enthusiast message board would be unable to remove political offtopic material without losing section 230 protection. I don't really want to wade through a bunch of political ranting when I want to learn about the best graphics card for the newest AAA game. But on that same site I may want to read about some potential defamatory claims about manipulation of benchmarks.
If the removal is done by the moderators not affiliated with the platform, this rule would not apply. As long as the platform (host) itself does not engage in political moderation. So you would create a community within a platform and moderate it as much as you want, as long as you are not an employee of that platform, just a regular user.
I've never used Parler, but I find it strange that most of the discussion around it is based on characterizations of the platform without evidence, so I was interested to see an article with actual evidence.
But the evidence in this article didn't seem to match the claims. To prove that Parler banned people with different political views, they show a screenshot of CEO John Matze posting this message:
>To all the ANTIFA supporters who have been spinning up Parler accounts... next time you should leave your chat server private... Im pretty sad you guys kicked me out... PS. Your VPNs can't save you
The article author treats that as evidence that Matze indiscriminately kicked out people who identify as part of Antifa. I think it's hard to tell from that screenshot alone, but my reading of the quote is that Matze found a public chat server where Antifa members were conspiring to create Parler accounts strictly for the sake of disrupting the platform. I don't view this as political censorship.
The article also paints Matze as hypocritical for banning Parler users who disrupt conversations by spamming porn or pictures of feces. That doesn't seem hypocritical to me, either. You can be welcoming to alternative viewpoints while still enforcing rules that encourage constructive discussion.
Yeah you might be right about the antifa post, but the CEO should call them spammers and trolls instead of ANTIFA then, because the he's banning spammers or trolls then, not people specifically for being antifa. He also shouldn't be publicly posting in an excited way about banning them. Finally, only right-wingers and generally people who don't like antifa capitalize every letter of ANTIFA, so that just further makes this post horrible PR, and seems like he's gleefully banning political views he doesn't agree with.
It's funny how the same group of people who say things like "government should get out of the way of business" cry foul as soon as those unregulated businesses do something they don't like.
Do they ask for the state to intervene? Then it is inconsistent.
If they are just unhappy with the way their hosting providers behaved, and what arguments they used to explain their eviction, then, well, it's understandable.
If they are asking the state to enforce any contracts/agreements then that is very much consistent with a laissez-faire stance.
The 'Freedom of Speech'-line of reasoning is invalid in a laissez-faire context, though it _is_ however an argument I'd expect to bee seen as valid by several large crowds between the political extremes.
I agree about the freedom of contract, and assume that the terms of service likely included the right of the provider to cancel the service and terminate the contract at any time, without giving any reasons.
The problem I see that everyone sees e.g. Parler as so toxic that they expect their reputation to increase, on average, for kicking them away. It's the low tolerance to dissent and the high social opinion pressure what is troubling, not the action.
Section 230 of the CDA is the government getting in the way of business; granting these businesses privileged immunity such that they can have all the advantages of operating as a common carrier, while actually operating as a publisher.
Take away that government-giveaway, and the problem is solved.
Take away section 230 and now companies can be sued for what they're hosting, and so they will more aggressively start banning people.
Also you can't realistically remove section 230, the risk is too high. Say a rogue user uploads an illegal image to your site, you've now hosted this illegal image which is a felony. Even if you delete it quickly, you've already committed the crime by hosting it in the first place. It's completely impractical to run any internet service without this protection.
Huh? I’m not remotely confused, but it would seem that you are.
Without section 230, companies can carry whatever content they like, but they’re legally liable for it.
A common carrier is not responsible for the content they carry, as long as they carry it for customers without discrimination.
In exchange for serving the public good, common carriers are granted the privilege of immunity.
Section 230, however, eliminates that exchange — a government grant of privileged immunity, in exchange for nothing — while also having editorial control over what they publish.
Imagine how HN would look without moderation, if it allowed everyone to post "without discrimination". Then tell me that Section 230 was a bad idea.
The only reason you're able to have this conversation with us is because of Section 230. Without it, the only people left on this site would be spammers, trolls, and racists.
Are you suggesting we didn’t have conversations like this, quite successfully, on Usenet and other message boards prior
to the CDA being passed in 1996?
And why don't we use Usenet anymore? I'm too young to have used it, but Wikipedia offers a hint: "Almost all unmoderated Usenet groups have become collections of spam".[1] There were other factors too, but this seems like a major one. Who would want to stay on an unmoderated, spam-filled board? You have freedom of speech but there'd be no one around to listen.
The evidence suggests users like moderated spaces. Otherwise wouldn't your utopias of unmoderated free speech still be flourishing? Why aren't you on Usenet right now, and making your arguments over there?
>Section 230 of the CDA is the government getting in the way of business; granting these businesses privileged immunity such that they can have all the advantages of operating as a common carrier, while actually operating as a publisher.
Section 230 doesn't "grant these businesses privileged immunity." Section 230 applies to all persons and all devices connected to the Internet in the United States.
It provides that you cannot be sued for something another person says. That's it.
And it applies to you and me and Hacker News and fuckfacebook.pro and Twitter and your github repo, your favorite twitch channel and any other internet user or resource when more than one person can share bits.
If there was no section 230, it would destroy free speech on the Internet.
Let's take HackerNews as an example. Without Section 230, if the owners of HackerNews continued to allow up/downvotes/flags, they would be liable to be sued for any content they did not delete that anyone chose to sue over.
Given that they almost certainly can't afford that sort of liability, they would have three choices:
1. Do not allow any third-party content (user submissions, user comments), which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of the site except as a place to drop PR pieces for YC companies;
2. Do not perform any moderation at all. Which would include spam, porn and all other manner of ridiculous, offensive and/or irrelevant material, or;
3. Shut down the site.
And that would be true for all sites (including github repos, mailing lists, mastodon instances, most web sites, etc., etc., etc) except those with deep enough pockets to be able to fight the innumerable lawsuits.
Who would that be? Facebook, Twitter and Google. The very people you decry would be the only ones who could afford the liability in a world without Section 230.
> Section 230 doesn't "grant these businesses privileged immunity." Section 230 applies to all persons and all devices connected to the Internet in the United States.
This is specious; said blanket immunity is a privilege, and we do not demand any concessions in return. We allow platforms (happier?) to profit from the benefits of operating as a public square and an editorial publisher, simultaneously.
> If there was no section 230, it would destroy free speech on the Internet.
Prior to the CDA’s passage in 1996, the internet provided almost unlimited, unhindered free speech. What we have now pales in comparison.
If you think existing protections for common carriers and “mechanical distributors” are not strong enough, then we can surely update them for the internet.
However, that does not even remotely begin to justify the give-away that 230 represents. If we’re going to grant the privilege of immunity to platforms such that they can safely privatize the public square, we ought to demand they actually make some concessions to operate like actual public squares.
Mark Zuckerberg was asked whether the companies are synchronizing who they are banning with a special platform that was created for it, and Mark didn’t answer.
Everybody can see that in the last few years banning got centralized, there’s no real competition between the big companies anymore on free speech. Like others have written it, it’s a cartel at this poimt.
None of those would immediately take Parler offline. Parler quickly found new lawyers, obviously, as they were able to release a very well-written complaint yesterday that described how AWS broke the law in several different ways when it gave Parler the death penalty at the height of its popularity.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence though. It could be that the CEO was also trained not to respond to questions that could be twisted around in an anti-trust allegation.
This article makes me sad, because I used to support Greenwald. It's surprising he doesn't know the definition of monopoly (i.e. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter do not compose a monopoly).
In the US there are two mobile OS options (Android and iOS) with a combined 99.8% market share. And large companies like Microsoft (Windows Mobile), Amazon (Fire OS), and Samsung (Tizen) haven't been able to grow their market share, so the barrier to entry seems pretty high.
even if that's true (it is and it isn't, but the pedantry isn't important), what you're saying is effectively is that a duopoly over mobile devices is the same as a monopoly over the internet.
that's patently untrue. it's untrue in the simplistic sense that you can access the internet with non-mobile technology, and its even untrue in the slightly less simplistic sense that an organization can provides its online presence as a website (gasp!) so as to avoid the need to have an app available on corporately-controlled stores.
> two mobile OS options (Android and iOS) with a combined 99.8% market share
Not to mention the fact that if you're kicked out of only one of the two you're basically finished if you live on network effect. If Google decided to kick Whatsapp out of the Android store, even those who have iPhones would have no reason to use it any more.
I mean Greenwald has also asserted that no Parler user was involved in the insurrection, which is a straight-up lie. The fact his work has such an uncritical following on HN doesn't say much could about HN's pretensions to offer high quality discussion.
> I mean Greenwald has also asserted that no Parler user was involved in the insurrection, which is a straight-up lie.
Actually, what is written is, and I quote, "a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler." But I'm sure that was an innocent mistake on your part, not a straight-up lie like you accuse Greenwald of.
While this differs in form, it doesn't seem to differ in substance.
"a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler."
So Greenwald reports that there were 13 people, a number small enough to stretch credulity, and they all happen to be inactive. The thrust of this statement, that it was a handful of inactive accounts is functionally the same as saying that there weren't any Parler users involved in the insurrection.
13 inactive accounts vs no accounts has little meaningful difference in meaning.
>I mean Greenwald has also asserted that no Parler user was involved in the insurrection, which is a straight-up lie.
He did not make this assertion in the article. Quote:
>Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube. As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.”
Edit: on reading the article, his source for the assertion seems to be Parler employees: "Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler."
He reported that on Twitter as "Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero."
I think that's bad journalism even if you agree with his conclusions. It's single-sourced and the source has every reason to downplay their involvement in the events of January 6th. I think that at the very least, Greenwald should have checked those 13 users to see if they had active Parler accounts, rather than just taking Parler's word for it.
Further, the number is inaccurate. The DoJ press release (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/thirteen-charged-federal-cour...) says 13 people were charged in federal court, and 40 were charged in superior court. That was as of Friday; I can't quickly find info on whether or not more people were charged over the weekend, but then again, I'm not a professional journalist.
The fact that there's relentless pro-parler, pro-insurrectionist takes hitting the front page, but Amazon's detailed rebuttal to Parler's legal claims or technically quite interesting citizen investiations of the attack on the US Capitol tells you a lot about HN's worldview.
Cartel may be a better term, but the argument holds. The point is they collectively wield undue market power and function as a de facto collective in the use of that power.
According to the CEO of Parler, their bank and payment provider, law firm, and mail and texting providers all cancelled as well. What are you supposed to do then? Store cash in boxes? Receive cash through mail?
Parker was destroyed when their business partners exercised freedom of association and cancelled on them.
How do HN readers, who I presume would generally support safe harbor provisions for free speech, common carrier rules etc, not find it deeply alarming that this is happening? Even if Parler hosted straight up illegal content, surely the proportional response is to block those accounts, not the entire platform? If no, why aren't we deplatforming Twitter or Facebook next?
Blocking individual accounts is something Parler can do (and chose not to), not Amazon/Facebook/Google who don't have access to the contents of those accounts (at least not easily).
Also, it's worth looking at some of the hacked info that was released - Parler had a serious moderation system, but it was used to make sure people had MAGA viewpoints, not to prevent violence. This is not some free and open platform, it was a controlled one that purposely built an echo chamber of violent rhetoric. Twitter and Facebook don't allow the same kind of violent rhetoric, lies, etc., and while they may not do an ideal (or even good) job at it, the fact is they're broad platforms used for a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people and are absolutely not comparable to Parler.
I can remember very well calls for violence in twitter against Nick Sandemann. And I remember very well those calls for violence not being removed at all.
Also, during the riots of 2020, it was extremely common to find calls to violence in twitter that weren't deleted.
What's your point, that they apply TOS inconsistently? I don't think anyone will disagree with that assessment. They let Trump violate the TOS for 4 years.
They are perfectly within their rights as a private business to make those exceptions. Is it fair? No. Would we much rather they apply things consistently? Yes.
The question is, do we want to enforce who and what they can and cannot allow on their platform via law, or do we want private businesses to control who they are allowed to do business with?
Because Parler was explicitly designed to host reprehensible speech, and was not making a good-faith effort in censoring their platform. Those hosting the platform decided "nah, we don't want to be associated with this" and cut them off.
These free-speech advocates still have the ability to create mastodon instances or a listserv or something else where a company doesn't have that leverage over them. They still have options and this crying is overblown.
I am actually comforted by the fact that people are allowed to espouse views and ideas that I personally find reprehensible.
However, I do not find psy-ops to undermine our democracy by Russia and other parties to be freedom of expression, any more than they have a right to use platforms to rob a bank (something I'm grudgingly somewhat sympathetic toward).
I personally would be very angry if their ISP refused them access, because I believe the internet should be a public utility that everyone can use and "you can still yell on the public square" wouldn't be a good faith argument.
But I don't feel the same way about AWS, because they are not as critical as an ISP would be. Nothing is stopping Parler from plugging in and managing their own servers. I see AWS as a convenience, and as such I don't think anyone is entitled to it.
As a side note: I would like to take a minute to remind the youngsters that no one owes them a revolution. If you want to go fight against the status quo, you should really have a plan for when the status quo fights back.
The key thing here is that Parler _refused_ to do this.
Had Parler done this these companies wouldn’t have distanced themselves from them. But also their whole brand is enabling those accounts so had they blocked those accounts they wouldn’t have a community.
> Even if Parler hosted straight up illegal content, surely the proportional response is to block those accounts, not the entire platform? If no, why aren't we deplatforming Twitter or Facebook next?
I've made this exact argument. It's a blatant double standard that Youtube or Twitter, as you said, aren't held liable for the content their users upload, but Amazon and Google can deplatform whoever they want for whatever they want.
I've read a joke that we're officially in a cyberpunk world now that corporations are "going to war" with each other. I've thought that our society has been heading towards civil war for years, but only in the past year with so many riots and corporate overreach have I started to believe it might actually come sooner than later.
Except Twitter and Youtube routinely moderate their content.
It isn't perfect but they are actively and publicly doing so. Parler publicly seems to take the stance of no to little moderation. I haven't read the hacked info from the site on principle of how it was distributed/hacked but seems that data confirms it based on others notes in the thread
So lets think about this for a minute. What is the goal? To stop violence and to stop promulgating illegal material? Or to make it look like you want to stop violence?
If its the latter, then lets continue to deplatform people. If its the former, then lets ban facebook, twitter et al given their proven history of allowing violence and hate speech and as an essential tool to organize mobs.
The logic here is terrible and you can't argue against that. No matter how many users parler gets, it won't even come close to having the same reach.
> If its the former, then lets ban facebook, twitter et al given their proven history of allowing violence and hate speech and as an essential tool to organize mobs.
Sounds good to me... They're totally culpable for the domestic terrorism that happened at the capitol. Facebook too. Dogshit companies that track our behavior and make money off of outrage.
I think the goal is to largely remove illegal content, which is obviously a massive problem you want to be more conservative about when you consider moderation. In that regard, it is a good thing that Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc. aren't perfect yet but are clearly trying to remove that kind of content because it signifies they are conservatively (and in some cases quite blatantly not acting fast/well/consistently enough).
Compare that to Parler which has built its whole marketing image on "absolute free speech" which technically isn't legal and their platform's contents reflect that.
Parler is blatantly NOT trying to stop illegal material, the other platforms are at least trying to...
You're missing the point. This is the real world, not the try Olympics. If I buy a burger from you at a fast food place, and you bring me back a bun, but you tried really hard to make me that burger -- I don't care. Go get me my burger.
If you're trying really hard no to, but still facilitate 1000x the amount of violence (made up statistics), it doesn't matter. The real world results are what matter. At least, its what should matter.
No, I think you are missing the point by a LOT. Your expectation is that EVERY burger must be made perfectly and if it's not its fixed RIGHT away.
Even at a moderately busy McDonalds there will be errors in your order. You can always go back and tell them to fix it and then you will wait... because they are busy filling new orders. And even after you waited there is a chance that they forgot about your fix, they remade it and it is still wrong, or something else happens.
This kind of stuff happens all the time in the real world. In fact, restaurants and food safety scores are the epitome of "try Olympics." You can have a rat in a kitchen in San Francisco and still not be immediately closed. But if you are making conscious efforts to remedy that, you can stay open and often have a long time to fix it.
What is an objective measure we can codify into law as to whether a platform is moderated enough?
Parler likely had a much higher percentage of content advocating for violence, but youtube and twitter probably have hundreds or thousands of times the quantity and reach for the violence advocacy content they host.
Didn't Twitter block that from trending [1]? Considering that it was moderated, how is this a counter argument to a claim that Twitter moderates content posted to its site?
This is action taken because AWS's customer (Parler) specifically did not take that action. Since the raison d'etre for Parler is to host content not acceptable to mainstream social media sites, it seems reasonable to assume they won't in good faith moderate their content.
Why should AWS care though? It's infrastructure. They should not be disconnecting service just because the infrastructure is used for something they perceive as evil. It would be like Verizon automatically dropping calls if you make a phone call and try to say something evil to the person on the other line.
Maybe, but that's not how internet services are currently regulated. Ironically, because the Republicans have fought that type of regulation tooth and nail.
AWS cares because they're a public company with a reputation, and many of their customers and employees are anti-rioter.
What is your definition of Free speach? In america we have a fredom of speach to protect the people from the government. Not to protect the government from the people. As a buisness owner i may refuse some one/entitiy service, it is how the free market works.
Can you really? Here in Sweden, if a business owner refuses service to people based on political opinions or similar they are in for a world of hurt. I imagine it’s the same in most of the western world.
(In US) I agree that business owners should never refuse people based on political opinions. I would be firmly against AWS/Google not willing to work with a company because it has conservative views.
In Parler's case, the issue isn't that they are conservative. The issue is that they refuse to take any responsibility for the hate and violence on their platform. John Matze had every opportunity to take responsibility for the content, but he was vocal that he would not do anything about it.
If I were running a cloud provider company, I wouldn't want anything to do with this behavior either. Who cares whether the users lean right or left - hate and violence are unacceptable.
And yet, there's plenty of hate and violence on Twitter, but they're not getting 24h notices before being deplatformed from the Apple app store. Take some key phrases from the Parler screenshots and paste them into a Twitter search.. it's pretty eye-opening.
I think the owner would get sued, but I'm not sure if it would hold up in US court. We have laws preventing businesses from discriminating based on race, sex, ethnicity, and national origin, but I don't know if there are any such protections that apply to businesses for political affiliation.
The US tends to bias towards letting market pressures take care of this sort of thing, and then stepping in if there are enough high-profile cases of failure.
There are also a bunch of edge cases that I think most people would be ok with. There are conservative-only dating sites. I wouldn't be allowed on the platform, but that doesn't really bother me. If there was a republican-only grocery store, that gets sketchy. And if there was a democrat-only government program, that would clearly be illegal.
> I think the owner would get sued, but I'm not sure if it would hold up in US court. We have laws preventing businesses from discriminating based on race, sex, ethnicity, and national origin, but I don't know if there are any such protections that apply to businesses for political affiliation.
It depends on the context.
Political affiliation is a protected class for employment in some states[0].
Political affiliation is a protected class for accommodations such as grocery stores in DC[1] and Madison, Wisconsin[2].
Fun fact- political affiliation, which is not a protected class in most of the US, IS in fact a protected class in DC. So yeah, you can kick someone out of your bar simply for wearing a MAGA hat in almost the entire US...except for DC.
Broadly speaking, the situation you described is legal in the US. We have protected classes that you're not allowed to discriminate against, but "political belief/affiliation" isn't one of them.
Actually, it’s not in Sweden either. I thought it was, but it’s apparently not.
There are other laws that prevent business owners from denying people entry or removing somebody from their store or similar (see Supreme Court decision NJA 1995 s. 84). They can’t even prevent people who have historically stolen from them from coming in and spending time in the store. But apparently they don’t have to do business with them. I thought they did.
> if a business owner refuses service to people based on political opinions or similar they are in for a world of hurt
That surprises me. "Political opinion" is not a protected class [1] in most jurisdictions in the US, and I assume that the same holds for whatever the local equivalent is to protected class. Especially considering that a lot of European countries also have laws that prohibit Holocaust denial--which are unconstitutional in the US per the 1st Amendment.
[1] Protected class, in US discrimination law jargon, is an attribute that you cannot legally use to discriminate against. The usual protected classes are sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation, and gender identity, although there is some variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (e.g., military service is protected in my state).
You’re right to be surprised. I looked it up and political opinion actually isn’t protected in Sweden either.
There are other laws that prevent business owners from denying people entry or removing somebody from their store or similar (see Supreme Court decision NJA 1995 s. 84). They can’t even prevent people who have historically stolen from them from coming in and spending time in the store. But apparently they don’t have to do business with them. I thought they did.
So if a neo-Nazi walks into a restaurant and says that all Jews should burn to death then tries to order lunch and is refused, that owner is in for a world of hurt?
We need to stop pretending like everyone's viewpoint is equal and we shouldn't exclude people for what they believe. Violent racists should be ostracized and pushed out of society. People who choose to have those kinds of beliefs are a constant threat to the safety of people around them.
Now obviously it's a blurry line, but again, the neo-Nazis storming the capital and their ilk are just way over the line. Just because it's blurry doesn't mean we have to pretend it doesn't exist out of some sense of fairness.
It is a founding principle of western civilization that you cannot be prosecuted for thoughts and ideas. All viewpoints and thoughts are equal before the law; only actions can be prosecuted.
> We need to stop pretending like everyone's viewpoint is equal and we shouldn't exclude people for what they believe. Violent racists should be ostracized and pushed out of society. People who choose to have those kinds of beliefs are a constant threat to the safety of people around them.
I will hard disagree with this every day of the week. To me this is a clear example of how ideology has taken the place of religion in today's society. It's no longer enough for you to be civil and respect the laws, but even having the wrong thoughts is considered criminal, just like lust and envy are considered sinful in religion.
We're heading in a dark direction if we're re-adopting the same principles and perspectives that were behind McCarthyism, let alone used to burn witches and conduct the Inquisition.
So do you agree we were wrong to ban ISIS recruiting groups on facebook?
Less sarcastically, do you agree that the amplification of thought and rhetoric possible using social media isn't something that was considered 500 years ago? i.e. having wrong thoughts isn't dangerous, but having 75 million followers and pushing your wrong thoughts on them is dangerous. It isn't thoughts any longer - it's an action.
> All viewpoints and thoughts are equal before the law; only actions can be prosecuted.
And this would be an issue if we were actually talking about government action, but we are talking about private individuals deciding who they will associate with. When the government gets involved then you have reason for concern, but if this is private parties engaging in commerce you have absolutely no leg to stand on.
It's a bad faith argument, yet it's everywhere. I'd think HN would be better than that, yet here we are, having the same fight every time free speech is the topic.
Also note that the parent mentioned "government action" whereas the GP is referring to a business taking action. The distinction is incredibly important, yet so many free-speech purists respond to corporate action as if it was a government action.
Freedom of speech exists to provide freedom of expression, even if it is controversial. I don't consider planning crimes, especially ones that would end freedom of expression as a societal value, to be covered under freedom of speech.
Certainly each individual comment on Parler can't be considered to be planning a crime. That can't be said for the platform as a whole.
The entire point of "freedom of speech" is freedom of expression. Ongoing psy-ops from Russia and other parties to undermine US democracy are not what I would consider freedom of expression.
Parler stated in its lawsuit that it removed all the content that Amazon pointed out...
'On January 8, 2021, AWS brought concerns to Parler about user content that encouraged violence. Parler addressed them, and then AWS said it was “okay” with Parler.'
'The next day, January 9, 2021, AWS brought more “bad” content to Parler and Parler took down all of that content by the evening'
"AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove content that encouraged violence was false—because over the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to its attention and more. Yet AWS sought to defame Parler nonetheless."
How long has Amazon been asking them to moderate violent content? The lawsuit says it was a three day timeline, start to suspension, and then 36 hours until they were taken offline. I haven't seen any comment from Amazon talking about the timeline on their decision. I get a pit in my stomach thinking that in the span of 3 days an internet business with +10 million users can get shut down instantly. Was there no middle ground where they worked collaboratively to let Parler pause, clean up, and get moderation in place? Sure the CEO was bombastic, but in the lawsuit they said Amazon ghosted them and that their contract said they get 30 days.
The current AWS Acceptable Use Policy has been in place since September 16th, 2016. It's not like Amazon suddenly changed the rules with little notice.
If you are going to run a site full of user content, you really need to read the rules you are agreeing to regarding what content services you depend on such as web hosting allows, and put in place mechanisms to keep your users from posting that kind of content and to find and remove it when it does get through.
If my account could downvote I would. I dont want the top comment once again to be some generic free speech fundamentalism. It amounts to putting our head in the sand. We should be able to rank, sort, and discriminate between different competing challenges to the peaceful (as if everyone even agrees that this is good) conduct of civilization.
By all means "deplatform" Facebook, please, but why would you condone that and condemn deplatforming Parler? makes no sense.
I think it’s one thing if Twitter bans DJT. In the end it’s their platform, and their rules. But I feel very different about infrastructure players starting their censorship based on what’s happening 1 or even 2 steps further down the line. It’s a wrong move and will just push the discussion somewhere else, the least. The worst that this might lead is that the internet breaks off into several non-communicating islands, which we all don’t want.
If we’re talking about individual ISPs, backhaul providers, and electricity companies, I agree. But we’re not.
If anything, we should be more bothered that people consider something like AWS or any of the other major clouds, core infrastructure akin to backhaul or electricity. (Google Play and the App Store have always had very clear TOS rules that limit certain types of content so I don’t even see them as being part of the discussion.)
I fundamentally agree that something like Parler, as abhorrent as much of its content was, has the right to exist somewhere on the internet, but I just as fundamentally disagree that Amazon should be forced to provide them with services or that we should equate having a right to exist with “having the right to exist on X’s brand of compute.”
But how far can this principle be applied? I admit this is complete hyperbole, but what if your local grocery stores forbade you from buying food there because they didn't want people associating them with you? I think there's a grey area to explore here where that principle becomes unsustainable, and even though this banning was done for noble purposes it still isn't a norm I'd want to curse future generations with.
Hasn’t this always been the norm though? People with abhorrent views are not welcome in polite society. The idea that I should be forced to associate with those people is definitely not a norm I’d want to curse future generations with.
But in your grocery store example, if the stores rules are “customers need to wear a mask, wear shoes, wear a shirt,” and I refuse to do those things, or I strip naked inside the store, or cause a commotion and start screaming epithets at other customers, that store is more than welcome to ban me from entering again. Now, if it is literally the only store in existence, that’s a more complicated question, but me being inconvenienced by having to go to a store further away as a consequence of not following a place of businesses rules is fair game.
What a store can’t do (at least in the US), is say, “we won’t let you shop here because your skin color is this, or you’re from this part of town, or you practice this religion, or are this sexual orientation.” Now, if a person who matches one of those descriptions and chooses to violate rules and screams at people in the middle of the store, they can be denied service for that reason, just not on the basis of their race or religion, etc.
Parler violated AWS’s terms of service. I’m not going to be obtuse pretend that the type of political ideology that Parler actively seeks out/evangelizes/caters to, doesn’t make them a target, of course it does. That doesn’t negate the fact that the TOS was violated and there was no real plan of action from excising content that violated Amazon’s TOS from the platform. (Although I want to be clear, getting a bunch of conservative celebrities and Fox News hosts on your platform as a way to try to buy respectability doesn’t mean that the rhetoric extolled by Parler CEO and championed by the service is mainstream or even mainstream conservative. Parler was/is a place that was not about free speech but about pro-Trump speech; dissenters were banned from the service, which is Parler’s right, but it was hardly a “free speech” platform.)
Again, I’m not arguing Parler doesn’t have the right to exist. But I am arguing that AWS shouldn’t be obligated to host it. I’m also arguing that as big as AWS and the other clouds are, they are not yet at the point of being true pieces of immovable infrastructure. And honestly, I hope they never are. Even those of us who don’t shed any tears for Parler, probably agree that we don’t want to live in a world where the only options for hosting a website or app belong to a FAANG.
If it were an issue of an ISP or a backhaul provider denying access to the service, I would be the very first person criticizing and standing up to the action. But that’s not what happened here. Someone came into a store without shoes, without a shirt, without a mask, screaming in the face of the employees and other customers. They aren’t allowed to shop at that store anymore. But a store that might be a little further away is still an option.
Parler was never a good faith actor. They are profiteers looking to corral a conservative audience. They were more than happen to moderate descriptions of areola, but not violence.
We do have a big tech problem. Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet, and Apple should be broken up. Twitter should be required to improve moderation and bot removal. Public/Private enterprises should be established to provide alternates to Twitter/Parler.
One current model of what's happened/happening, is the US system of politics is broken (first-past-the-post voting in states, 2 seats per state, two party, polarization ... and now on top of that the drawback of the separately elected president is that now the Executive and the Legislation was in a deadlock), so the private sector stepped in its usual awkward way. (FB/Tw/YT profited from hosting recruiting content, they did some minor moderation to calm advertisers, but now real people realized that they have the capacity, right and maybe even moral duty to do something with the problem they helped to create, so reverse course, full throttle backward, bam-bam, ban, ban.)
It's not about illegal content. It's about politics and ethics. (And private companies can choose to do or not do business with whomever they want - except a few protected things. But there's a gay wedding cake somewhere too in this. Free association and free speech. Ethically it's hard to coerce anyone to say or not say something, and to host or not host some content.)
Furthermore, there's the power imbalance aspect. Twitter banning SciHub is probably Twitter abusing its power, Twitter banning Trump is less likely an abuse. (Though there very well could be and are exceptions.)
Free speech doesn’t mean you have the right to go over to your neighbors house and print out and distribute hate speech from their printer.
Parlour used AWS property to allow its members to help organize sedition. AWS has the right to nope out.
All the problems with large private entities like Twitter and Facebook hosting speech on their own terms pale in to comparison with letting governments dictate how they host speech.
Parlour can find or create another hosting device and get back up quickly. If they want to use mainstream services, they should moderate out something other than liberals.
> "That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country. If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor."
I'm not buying the premise of this argument. If anything, Parler, a social network, was a (diminutive) competitor to Facebook and Twitter. Amazon, Google and Apple do not come to mind as companies standing to gain by destroying it.
The author seems to have an axe to grind against companies he perceives as monopolies and is stretching the facts to support his world view.
Read the letter [AWS sent them][1]. This isn't AWS punishing a corporation for having different political views, this is AWS not taking on the risk that their infra contributes to violent acts.
I read it and Amazon said they found 98 posts across serval weeks that were related to violence and the included screen shots showed very little engagement with those posts. I read that Parler had 2.3 million DAU in December. Feels like weak sauce from Amazon, but I do get their objection to the CEOs moderation comment.
Parler said in its lawsuit they did address everything Amazon raised. My point was the small number against the large user base. BTW, that bomb post had 0,0,0 which I assume is retweeets, up votes, and down votes. Amazon looked over several weeks and that was the best they could find?
It's not that Amazon was able to find these comments, it's that they had looked for examples, given those examples to Parler, and even that low barrier for moderation wasn't reached after a normal amount of time. As in 'here's specific examples of what you agree clearly need moderation, and are calling for terrorist attacks on our (Amazon)'s infratstructure, you (Parler) still haven't taken down days later'.
> It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you.
They sent the examples well before they sent the final letter, gave Parler plenty of time, and Parler refused to even moderate under those extremely generous circumstances.
Yup, in its lawsuit Parler said..."AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove content that encouraged violence was false because over the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to its attention and more. Yet AWS sought to defame Parler nonetheless."
Ehh, why don't you go ahead and post proof. A single example will be sufficient for me: show me a single example of something Amazon asked Parler to remove that Parler didn't remove. It's okay, I'll wait...
A big reason this is happening IMO is due to the inaction of the government. I don't want companies to bring down sites, however the government seemingly actively refuses to take action. There is precedent for limiting free speech in the case of violence apparently
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
And it seems like there is some correlation with communications being had on Parler and the insurrection on January 6th.
It is unclear how this could be enforced in the internet domain, but maybe the website could have huge fines levied against it or criminal charges levied against the founders (so not the posters) if its possible to prove violent intent. Its also not a very slippery slope. We have hate crime laws, but they are notoriously hard to prove. I imagine violent intent on the internet will be similarly hard to prove and only be applied to the extremely obvious cases.
Its also a bit weird. Nobody made a huge deal about PornHub (from what I can tell) being forced to take down tons of content due to Visa, because guess what. Its hard to disagree that the source of a lot of content on PornHub is troubling and very likely illegal. This isn't that much different from what Amazon and other companies are doing to Parler. The intent of a lot of posters (even if its a minority) seems to be to incite violence. Parler actively didn't try to monitor the content and boom, it got taken down. I imagine if PornHub didn't make a good faith attempt to remove a lot of content, we'd have seen Amazon (or whoever hosts PornHub).
Imminent lawless action as defined by the courts is a very high bar. It is going to be very hard for anything posted to a form of asynchronous communication to qualify short of a popular leader telling his followers to commit a specific unlawful act or specifically targeted threats made by people with the means to carry them out.
You're right that this will be damn near impossible to enforce except in the most stupidly obvious cases.
I think its good that it is a high bar. A lot of stuff online isn't serious or actionable, but with this Parler situation is on the cusp IMO of genuinely being designed to promote right wing extremism. That's how this seems to be playing out at least.
Also, plenty of people complained about Pornhub being forced to take down content. You were either in a bubble, it's not paying attention. Specifically, that it appears that if you want to avoid getting bullied by online activists through your providers, you also seem to need to have your own bank.
A lot of things happen with the inaction or perhaps with the deliberate ignorance of government regulators.
Reading greenwald's take on it I come to feel that it seems likely that this cabal of corporate hegemons, utilized multiple private intelligence security firms to stoke and instigate the riot for the purposes of destroying their competitor as well as sending a message to people who dared utilize that app instead of one of the conventional apps that you're not safe if you do that. it was an extremely effective and coordinated campaign and I respect their ingenuity and will to dominance. fledgling startups should be aware of these sort of tactics and take steps to mitigate them for their own success, but I think aside from the purely political and free speech problems that poses I think and the important corporate monopolistic issues are companies should not be delivering these negative results for consumers who want to choose to use an alternate app, they shouldn't be using their monopoly power nor coordinating with other monopolies in order to shut out a competitor.
Perhaps this operation was a favor to the incoming administration who promised to go soft on the antitrust stuff if the techs would pull off this coup against these politically inconvenient free speech enabling technologies that go against the dominant ideology advocated by the group trying to maintain control. Win win.
Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (i.e. the American colloquial phrase, "Everyone is out to get me").
Paranoia is a useful blinker to keep people like you from going insane by considering ideas outside of your scope of comprehension so you should keep using it but people who can really think clearly have no need of that. But don't stop foreshortening the range of your thought by invoking such useful blinkers because it may be dangerous to your health and mental health.
America (and my own country the UK) really need to have a serious reckoning with a whole mess of things: Fake news, Populism, weak leadership, short termism, lack of compromise and partisanship, the rise of extremism, censorship and cancel-culture, demographics vs democracy issues, racism, over-zealous anti-racism, and win-at-all-cost politicians to name but a few.
But it isn't ready or willing to even start.
Until then, it's hard to really care about any of this. I don't like censorship or big companies deciding what's acceptable. But someone has to, and no one else is willing to oppose some of the worst people and events we've had in generations.
OK. This guys an idiot. Just like the developers of Parler are.
If you rely completely on third party vendors and don’t understand and know their TOS then you only have yourself to blame.
But calling Amazon a monopoly of the cloud is ridiculous. They could use A litany of other providers. Oracle, 1to1, Microsoft, linode, digital ocean, vulture. The list is almost endless.
Diversity of hosting is key to uptime and scaling.
Also, with a little bit of work, they could deploy open stack on their own servers in a matter of hours to days if they weren’t complete noobs.
The complaint Parler filed in its lawsuit against AWS cites 30% market share. It also mentions they've been unable to find another hosting company, though it doesn't go into why. The antitrust claim wasn't that AWS cut them off. That was the breach of contract claim. The antitrust claim was based on allegations that AWS and Twitter just did a multi-year cloud deal, and conspired to shut Parler down. Section 1 anticompetitive conduct claim. IIRC, the relevant market was microblogging, not cloud infra.
The Nadler Committee report Glenn cites puts AWS at 24% of US spend and "close to half" of global spend on cloud services. US courts don't typically find "market power" below 50% in the relevant market. The concept of abusing "dominant position", mentioned over and over in the report, comes from European competition law, not US antitrust law.
Anecdotally, I use cloud services and I don't use AWS at all anymore. As an attorney who advises on terms of service for cloud services, I'd also expect every major cloud platform has broad "acceptable use" or similar terms that let them refuse or terminate customers that cause more problems---law enforcement requests, law suits, marketing crises---than they're worth.
A number of my cloud clients rack their own iron. Others intentionally seek out providers and services with permissive or aligned activist reputations. Those services often cost more, both because they're smaller and because they deal with more warrants, lawsuits, DMCA takedowns, &c. &c. &c. I personally prefer to patronize smaller, upstart providers. Which is only possible if you don't bite the hooks---k8s, vendor-specific APIs, and so on.
On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's gone, and it took far too long to deal with it. And just like I wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS recruitment site, I don't really see any loss here.
On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
Overall it feels like a legislative failure - in an ideal world, we have laws applied even handedly to deal with this. But in the absence of political will for these laws, what should be done? I think we are better off without Parler, but how can we do that in an even handed and consistent way?
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
I think it's fine to be concerned about the principle while in agreement on this use. Both things can be true.
And FWIW, that's the state in which I find myself. The president used Twitter to promote lies about the election that were consumed by his followers who then used social media to plan and execute violence in the US capitol. When that same cycle threatened to repeat, these companies stepped in. Good for them, what was their other choice?
But appropriate action in this case does not mean that the process and standards used are OK in the arbitrary case and completely agree that lack of legislative standards is the problem. The tech companies had not good choices here because as a society we've not yet set any reasonable rules.
As per Wikipedia: "A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom."
The Unites States is not in that list. Hence it is more vulnerable to problems associated with allowing hate speech (i.e. incitement of violence by foreign-state actors, etc.).
Companies that operate on the global markets tend to operate with the standards that are acceptable globally. In particular: "On 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours."
So in that particular case, influence of these companies might be bringing United States closer to best practices adopted in the majority of developed democracies.
> So in that particular case, influence of these companies might be bringing United States closer to best practices adopted in the majority of developed democracies.
Best practices for maintaining a democracy or best practices for maintaining social order? There's a difference. You might argue that restricting hate speech is actually a step away from democracy towards more government control.
You can look at the following parameters that are critical for the health of democracies: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture.
And consider how moderation of hate speech affects these parameters. Evaluating these on an example of presidential debates of 2020 might be a good option. As there is a contrast between the first debate, that included no moderation and a second debate, that included some.
From an optics point of view, if it looked like they were handling all users the same way, there'd be so much less of a problem here. But right now, it is like selective law enforcement -- action will be taken if we don't like you, much more than whether you are deemed to be complying with the terms of service.
What they could've done is consistently enforced their rules all the way along, to people of all political persuasions.
Is there evidence that there are other AWS customers with easily discoverable content that incites violence, which AWS is not working to have removed due to their terms of service?
People rioting under the guise of "antifa" killed innocent people in Portland. They even bombed a court house. There's videos of "antifa" who tried to molotov police but accidentally self-immolated instead. It's a meme that the media will call these "peaceful protests".
As someone who has no dog in the race, and hates violence -- is this "fake news"?? Do these rabid maga idiots actually have a point?
If these protests were organized using FB or Twitter then why aren't they also removed from the app stores?
FB profited from radicalizing people using "engagement metrics" and machine learning at a massive scale just to sell ads. Now they want to wash their hands clean?
These billionaires weren't democratically elected and they shouldn't be shaping our democracy.
If there was a social network whose primary objective was to promote these actions, then sure.
As it happens, these actions are not coordinated en masse, are neither promoted nor supported by even the vast majority of people who are supposedly aligned ideologically with is perpetrators, and are not organized in spaces mostly devoted to that purpose.
Is this responsive to my comment? I am asking whether there are examples of posts of the kind that Amazon asked Parler to take down (clear incitement to violence / glorification of terrorism), which another service hosted on AWS has refused to take down when made aware of them? I don't know whether there are or aren't, which is why I'm asking. Your comment does not answer this question.
> You're continuing to demonstrate that if I answer your questions it has no bearing on your ideology.
Again, how am I demonstrating that? I honestly can't see anyway that you have any idea what I think, from my comments in this thread, without just completely making up a projection out of whole cloth.
> Now you want to know if Twitter has an active account with AWS. I could answer that. But does it matter?
It does seem to matter, when the question is "should AWS stop hosting Twitter because of the way in which they moderate their content?". AWS can't do that if Twitter is not hosted on AWS... So I fail to see how it doesn't matter.
To answer what I think your original question was, filling in assumptions for my (still unanswered...) questions: if Twitter is hosted on AWS, and if AWS notifies them of content they are hosting with AWS that violates the AWS terms, and Twitter refuses to remove that content, then yes, I believe AWS is within their rights to suspend Twitter's account.
I was actually in Seattle while similar protests occured, and seeing things myself, I can say that the media did mis-portray things greatly. 99% of the protestors were completely peaceful and tens of thousands of people rallied to protest day over day all peacefully. I was surprised the media coverage didn't really cover those much, it chose to focus on like the single instance of a car lit on fire at 3am and those very minor instances, sometimes the media photoshopped images too, where they'd like superimpose a person holding a weapon in front of the photo of the car on fire and things like that. And I mean all media, left-wing, right-wing, small media, big media, like they all did this, which I was very surprised about.
I felt pretty safe for the most part, when people weren't protesting I'd still go and have coffee and order croissant at my favourite places in the area that was "occupied".
Things got scary when "anti-protester" started showing up, and suddenly everyone felt like people would show up with guns so protesters felt they needed guns too, and then there was this weird tension of like why we all have guns?
I was really surprised personally at the intensity of the police response, especially in the beginning, and to me it felt like the police really escalated tensions early on which is what led to protesters starting to bring fireworks and umbrellas to protect themselves from police "croud control". Like if a single person in the croud threw a single bottle that was enough for the police to just start pepper spraying and tear gazing everyone. I always wondered why the police doesn't just go after that person that threw a bottle or broke a window, I'm not sure what justified all this collateral damage from them. There were kids and moms and even handicapped people at a lot of those protests.
Most striking is the way the police organises around protesters, even though the protests are peaceful, they flank the croud, and really position themselves like the police and protesters are about to have a Braveheart style face off. I don't understand why the police doesn't spread themselves through the croud and instead help keep the protest peaceful by deterring the few people who are there to cause raucous. They should focus on the people disrupting the protests, help protect others from them, and arrest those.
I was just really surprised by that, because if there was a parade, the police would do what I'm describing, but for a protest it seems they treat the protesters like a huge threat and that makes the whole thing really tense and makes people feel like the police is actually against them. It didn't help that the protesters were there to protest police brutality and they were welcomed by more police brutality and confrontation.
What I really want people to focus on here is this fact, I'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously, and when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars are lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people celebrate the victory to the street or morn the loss of our hockey team!
Now in Seattle, you had 60000!! Yes I said Sixty Thousand!!! PEOPLE marching an entire day completely peacefully without a single broken window or fire: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thousands-march-in... when the population of the whole city is 600000. That means 1 in 10 people participated in this protest, and there were not even minor raucous! That's the most peaceful assembly of such a large number of people I've ever seen in my life.
In Montreal, you have 1k people in the street it doesn't matter why and there's more raucous then that.
And these protests, they didn't just happen once, day over day thousands of people over and over again, and everytime only a handful of incidents, mostly in the late evening or at night. Just do the math, 60k people, if 100 of them broke windows, threw rocks and lit some things on fire that would be 0.16% of the protestors. It be enough for the media to have footage ad-nauseam and publish 100 article about the "riots" and for police to bring out the tear gas. But it also means that 99.84% of the protestors were peaceful. Honestly, if it was for me, I think I'd call these the most peaceful protest I've ever seen, I think they should be given an award for how peaceful these were given the amount of people and the circumstances of how tense the topic was and how they were received by the authorities.
Disclosure: I'm just a bystander here, I didn't participate in the protests myself, I only observed and watched from the sidelines, and I knew people who did and heard from them. So take my info for what it is.
> What I really want people to focus on here is this fact, I'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously, and when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars are lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people celebrate the victory to the street or morn the loss of our hockey team!
Happens in almost every city I've ever lived in. I've seen far more violence at a Los Angeles Lakers or San Francisco Giants riots after they win a championship than at my local BLM protests.
I find the phrase “incite violence” to be a deceptive term to use.
A threat of violence is a very defined term. Both legally and in common understanding.
“Incites violence” is vague and takes the responsibility away from the one conducting violence, and places it on somebody else who may or may not have been promoting violence. It’s usage is not defined legally or in common usage.
“Barney is the worst dinosaur” could be “inciting violence” if somebody attacked the purple children’s mascot.
Should we have to mute ourselves because crazy people might use our words as justification for their madness?
Should others censor my opinions because in their opinion, a third party might use my words for justification for their madness?
The usage I’m seeing does not fit the below defined criteria:
The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND
The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”
I personally believe the posts Amazon asked to have taken down meet the Brandenburg test, but note that Amazon is not beholden to apply the legal test, though I do believe it is a good starting point. Another reason to take things down is "glorification of terrorism", which I believe also applies to some of the posts.
It's one thing if I say the election was stolen. I should not be censored for saying that it was. My voice alone will not sway anything. The problem is that so much power is concentrated with the president that it ONLY takes his voice to throw an entire country into chaos. That's too much power with one person.
So what am I saying? That I should have freedoms the president should not?
Well, the USA could impeach and remove that person, or they could reduce the power of his office. But so far the people and their elected representatives have opted not to do either of those things.
This same power has been used, on a less dramatic scale over the past year and for a long time before now, to attack police reform activists and disrupt organizing of the local activist communities that exist to oppose this shit on the ground.
It's not really a situation of "this may be socially chilling", it's been happening, and now it's just the first time they contravened the president and made the news cycle.
I don't really see any other decision they could have made this past week. But if social media and capital in general would stop kneecapping every political option but ineffective liberalism and dogwhistle fascism, maybe the large numbers of people who are angry and feel helpless would currently have a pressure valve in a healthier direction.
Three or four massive companies with incentives to suppress the slightest disruption to profit, that hold unprecedented surveillance power, and exercise detailed control over individual and mass communication, that make apparently ideological decisions about who is allowed to exist online, are not compatible with a healthy society or any path that could lead us out of this situation.
"Opposing this shit on the ground" is why we're in this nightmare in the first place. Imagine if there had been counterprotestors "opposing this shit on the ground" at the Capitol insurrection: we'd probably be pretty fucking close to a civil war right now instead of near universal condemnation of the extremist forces.
If you have anything to do with "opposing this shit on the ground", please fucking stop. You are accomplishing less than nothing.
>Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the difficulty of debunking bullshit: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."
> If they are lies then why can't they be refuted instead of suppressed?
It's harder to refute lies in the marketplace of ideas if everyone with a megaphone is obligated to echo them. Perhaps this wouldn't be true if people were perfectly rational, but if people were perfectly rational they wouldn't be believing and spreading lies in the first place.
This was my attitude too until about 3 years ago. But we're dealing with a group of people who genuinely believe that Trump is saving the world from a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles, and if Biden becomes president they'll all be carted off to FEMA camps. How do you reason with someone like that?
This is a false equivalence. The clearest reason is that zero of these cases resulted in sedition. This argument is distracting, it is classic whataboutism. In no way is it the case that moderating the app stores and shutting down access to Parler or the President's Tweets equivalent to condoning Clinton's or Jackson-Lee's or Sander's actions. I recommend that you look at this particular case and draw your conclusions about it without complaining about the failure to respond the same way to very different situations from other people years prior.
I'd like to see the evidence of how violent actions by pro-DNC parties like BLM/antifa which occurred after these words are any less tied to them than the actions that happened after Trump's words. For empirical data's sake.
Other than the President giving an in person speech before this exact group of people on the same morning as the events took place in which he directed them to march toward the Capitol building?
During: President begins speech at approximately noon. Some protestors already amassed at Capitol. During speech, crowd begins moving away from the speech location, gather at the Capitol building, and breach outer perimeter “bike fence”.
After: The President’s speech ends at approximately 1:10pm. Crowd is still outside the Capitol doors. Congress begins certifying the vote. Protestors clash with police, both sides spraying chemical irritants.
Protesters continue to gather in numbers, surrounding the Capitol building until breaching the exterior doors at approximately 2:10pm.
Other than the planting of pipe bombs at the Capitol/RNC/DNC (which I haven’t seen reporting on the timing), all significant violence took place shortly after the President’s speech ended.
The constitution prohibits the government from banning political speech unless it will, e.g. incite imminent violence. Keyword being imminent. Merely supporting violence in general and non-specific terms is not illegal and cannot be made illegal under the constitution, so the government cannot decide to ban most of the types of speech that the tech companies have chosen to ban (including Trump's recent tweets that got him banned).
If you think it is good that the recent bans took place then you have no choice but to delegate decision making authority to the industry, because the government is not constitutionally permitted to demand that tech companies make those decisions.
I believe the distinction between the two (though note: I am very willing to change this belief based on learning details I don't currently know) is that Facebook tries to remove such content (though it may not perfectly succeed) whereas Parler actively refused to do so when AWS made them aware and asked them to remove it.
And the US government should bring a case against them. I don't think you'll find me inconsistent in that thought, I also argued an ISP yesterday that blocked FB is fully within its rights to do so.
Personally I think we need anti-trust action against a lot of larger tech companies and second that they have now opened the door on further regulation regarding content moderation. I think getting rid of Section 230 entirely would be a mistake but I won't be surprised to see it amended in some form.
Never mind plain old lobbying, any legislator who supports a crackdown on Facebook could be de-platformed. These tech leviathans have captured the regulators in a way that has never been seen before, and now they are flaunting grotesque anti-competitive bullying in all of our faces. Depending on the government to fix this mess is not going to go well.
This is one reason why amazon pulled the plug and the violent posts were "rapidly growing". This kind of customer is probably a huge headache to deal with, and complaints were being sent/forwarded from amazon and "some" were acted on.
Amazon said:
"It's clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. 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. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t "feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform." This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts."
I guess it’s theoretically possible to set up an arm of law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all social media, along with a judicial division that could stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment takedowns. Maybe.
>>I guess it’s theoretically possible to set up an arm of law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all social media, along with a judicial division that could stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment takedowns
They're not deciding what is acceptable speech. They're deciding what is acceptable speech for their platforms and services. And given how absolutely insane and extreme that speech became before they took action, it's just strange to look at these companies like they're a problem. They tolerated increasingly violent and hateful rhetoric until people literally stormed the Capitol, then took action against the worst offender that helped to plan violence against our elected officials. This isn't some theoretical case of billionaires imposing their worldviews by banning people that we should be tremendously fearful of.
AWS is more interesting in that case, though, since it's usually transparent to end users. AWS not doing business with Parler is a little like a craft store not selling posterboard and markers to a klansman, or a gun store not selling rounds to the guy who keeps talking about insurrection.
From the letter AWS sent, a better analogy would be:
Craft store noticed their brand logo was on a poster board with messages calling for rape and execution of named individuals (a clearly illegal act). Craft store said in their sale recipt that the reserve the right to stop serving customers that promote illegal conduct.
First, however, the craft store asked the organizer to stop providing their poster boards to people organizing mass rape and execution event planning. "Please moderate, and you can continue to use our service"
The organizer days "go bleep yourself", to the store, followed by "if my members want to organize a mass execution of people, that's their protected speech!”
Store says "okay, your not welcome here anymore, see our terms of service"
AWS gave them a chance.. but at the end of the day, those messages calling for illegal acts are stored on AWS servers.. and Parler wanted to promote that kind of content to continue and amplify (it's good for business), but every day AWS is probably getting 50 warrants for information tied to having Parler as a customer. AWS service mark up doesn't cover 20 full time lawyers
I'll say if you're making this argument, then aws should be responsible for all content on aws servers. No hosting protections, direct responsibility. After all, the illegal data was on their servers, thus they should be directly responsible.
They are? They cooperate with law enforcement for illegal material takedowns on a regular basis. You might have heard of raids for botnet hosting, or if not those, the ones for child porn or movie piracy. AWS is absolutely committed to having no illegal activity on their servers.
>gun store not selling rounds to the guy who keeps talking about insurrection
Yes, imagine a small town, and there's a guy known for always ranting about the coming insurrection, pedophile conspiracies, how "The Great Awakening" is near... then one day he walks into the town gun store and asks to buy a bunch of AR-15s and a ton of ammo, and the owner of the store says: "Hmm... no."
To elaborate on your point here, gun store owners choosing not to sell firearms to particular customers because they suspect those customers are a danger to themselves or others for any reason (including just the owners' hunch) is very commonplace, and not generally controversial.
> ...or a gun store not selling rounds to the guy who keeps talking about insurrection.
If he follows that up with "Allahu Akbar," do you expect the gun store to complete the sale, or call the feds? Is that a limit on "freedom of religion"?
Or if you go to buy a ton of fertilizer, and as they're loading it into your truck, you talk about blowing up the white house -- what do you think is gonna happen?
> This isn't some theoretical case of billionaires imposing their worldviews by banning people that we should be tremendously fearful of.
I think you've missed the point. The concern OP raises is that this is no longer theoretical - these few billionaires actually can impose their worldview by controlling speech. In this case, we can all agree that Parler had to go. But the precedent / principle of the issue can be considered separately.
> They're not deciding what is acceptable speech. They're deciding what is acceptable speech for their platforms and services.
This is a distinction without a difference. If the major platforms all ban you, you are silenced. Its time we recognize the power these platforms have.
I disagree, there is an extreme difference there. Freedom of speech is specifically in regards to the government giving you the negative right of being able to say whatever you want without government prosecution (aside from some edge cases like direct threats and the like, which are closer to actual violence). What they do not do is guarantee you a platform. You are free to say whatever you like, but you are not owed the right to be listened to. Removing someone from a platform is not silencing them. A private company does not owe you anything, let alone service.
No. The first amendment is about the government. The concept of freedom of speech is broader. If in a pandemic I can only legally communicate via digital tools, and the billionaires running the digital tools all decide to ban me, I am silenced.
>the billionaires running the digital tools all decide to ban me, I am silenced.
How so? Are you incapable of using non-digital media to communicate? Are you incapable of creating your own digital platforms for communication or using alternative, less popular means to do so? Are you prevented from going to city hall, council meetings, political rallies, or voting? Your speech as it relates to your rights granted in the constitution remains completely intact. Your rights are unaffected by your access to certain digital platforms.
I support banning Parler, but this argument becomes more transparently untrue by the day. The internet is speech now. Visiting city halls and council meetings doesn't affect elections or policies, voting is useless without being part of an organized bloc, which can no longer happen without the internet, and Parler was one of several alt-right attempts to make their own platform--control of the internet is centralized enough that making a platform for non-technical users against the will of the megacorporations is not possible.
If you don't believe free speech absolutism should be allowed, say so, but free speech and this level of corporate dominance are not compatible.
I agree that corporations should be curtailed in both their size and power. This would resolve the paradox of speech being free, but it's platforms being controlled by a few large organizations. However, to say that free speech is absolute is absurd, because absolute free speech in this context would require the limitation of rights of organizations and owners too.
> However, to say that free speech is absolute is absurd, because absolute free speech in this context would require the limitation of rights of organizations and owners too.
If you are on the no fly list of an airline, aren’t you free to buy your own B787, get a pilot license, get the relevant airport slots and authorisations and go fly by yourself anywhere you want? I mean in theory yes.
If the first amendment and your concept of freedom of speech don't line up, then one or the other need to change I would think. If a right is not recognized by others/the government, then it effectively doesn't exist. That's not to say it's not right or that you couldn't rationally defend it though.
>If in a pandemic I can only legally communicate via digital tools
I see the conflict you're bringing up, it's in effect illegal to communicate in person a lot of the time due to the pandemic, so digital tools are very useful for you to be able to communicate, but if you are somehow banned from those you have few options, if any. I think the thing that is incorrect here is actually the government making it illegal to communicate via non-digital tools, even if a lot of times it is in an individual's best interest to stay inside. And once again, no one owes you a platform. You are, in your words, silenced, but I don't think that that is an issue that requires government action.
I think it could require government action: I could argue that it was government inaction in allowing a monopoly/oligopoly over the conduits of free speech that is now depriving me of my rights.
For what reason are we considering these platforms "conduits of free speech"? They are simply private services, private property. In the same way you can legally remove people from your home that you don't want in there, they can bar you from their service. They also didn't always exist. At what point in their existence would you argue that being banned from being able to use them was depriving you of some right? Can they have a monopoly over all of the "conduits of free speech" if all the old methods of communication still exist? If those alternatives exist, could they really be called a monopoly? (Although for things like Twitter, they're definitely not a monopoly, but if we're talking about govt backed ISPs, which can be a monopoly, then that is indeed a different story, but I would argue that ISPs should be divorced from any government regulation/subsidies).
"In the same way you can legally remove people from your home that you don't want in there" -> I agree with you in principle, but this is the type of thing where the principle doesn't generalize at every level of scale, and at a big enough scale it becomes problematic.
Let's consider the other extreme with a fictional corporation "MEGA INC", which suppose owns all web hosting, all ISPs. Let's also throw in that they have a monopoly over paper production and publishing. Now, do you think your argument that "this private entity can do whatever it wants" is problematic? I should hope so.
I'm not making the case that it's black/white and that this situation with Big Tech is equivalent to MEGA INC. But, it's not that our free speech rights are binary. My point is simply that we're somewhere along the spectrum spanning "private home" <-> "MEGA INC", and at this point rights are actually being diminished because of the oligopolistic nature of a significant corner where discourse happens.
So, unfortunately, I think it's a nuanced situation that's not easily reduced to a simplistic principle such as what you've stated. We have clear principles to reason about the extremes, but it's hard to make an argument in the hairy middle because both can be made to apply.
There's no shortage of conduits for free speech you have a right to use, on and off the internet.
The oligopoly only concerns distribution to the widest possible audience, whether it's social media or broadcast media. And even a First Amendment constrained government is allowed to pick and choose which speech it distributes
You're right, but the reality is that physical mail is no longer an effective form of communication relative to the speed of online platforms in most cases.
> What they do not do is guarantee you a platform.
I think this is a really important point. How I have framed this to others is: "the 6 o'clock news isn't required to give you airtime."
In the past, you could write articles to the newspaper, or contact the news and hope they picked up your story. There was not a right to be heard.
That said, I'm still not sure how I feel about what has transpired in the last week. Freedom of speech (as a principle, not in the US legal sense) has always felt like a core principle of the Internet.
I agree that nobody's first amendment rights were violated. I maintain that big tech is controlling _acceptable speech_. All the major platforms are working together to decide what kind of speech society gets to hear, which is dangerous.
Utility companies are for all intents and purposes, governmental. Regulating social networks like utilities is one possible course of action our society could choose. But it is not how we do it today.
PG&E is a government-granted monopoly and is close to being part of the government itself (in that the government gets to decide how much profit the company is allowed to make, and insists they service every individual).
I can see the argument that basic Internet access should be similarly regulated, especially as it uses either public frequencies (e.g. 5G) or public land (sidewalks etc) to provide the service.
> Its time we recognize the power these platforms have.
We have. That's why millions of people have pushed these companies to take a stand against hate. None of these companies are doing this because they want to lose money. If they thought it would be profitable long-term, they would keep doing it. It's the invisible hand of the market that you're really upset with here.
It's not their job to "take a stand against hate." I don't buy books from Amazon because I like their opinion on the homelessness situation in the world today. I don't ask my cashier at the grocery store his thoughts on gay marriage, and I don't expect corporations to do more than sell me goods I need.
The weird politicization of commerce is baffling to me.
Consumers using their collective economic power to push for change is not a new concept. I would suggest you take advantage of your willingness to buy books on Amazon if this is truly a baffling concept to you. Then read some of them.
Casual reminder that the slippery slope fallacy is ultimately a fallacy.
I think the issue isn't really controlled speech with these platforms but more often a loss of control of the narrative. They are ill-preppared to deal with hate speech and often will act as the very propagators of it. (See FB in 2016). The real issue to be found is the massive control they have in light of their blindness to the context of their product and inability to enact real censorship of things that are truly intolerant. Personally looking from the outside in, I think that makes them a long-term risk to themselves rather than just a risk to society. It's worth noting that this will likely lead to a platform that intentionally 'free' to intolerant behavior that will compete and likely compete well as it will be additive to those looking for hate.
Modeling them as independent businesses that can decide — based on any non-protected principle they choose — to censor speech is too generic to be useful. They are closer to telephone or radio or broadcast TV companies than to private enterprise as an overarching category. Communication business are, of course, regulated around what they can and cannot say on air (the broadcast ones, specifically), and we probably need a similar approach to handling social media.
Yet we do not treat them like regulated broadcast media, which I guess is unsurprising in that regulation lags behind technology. In the context of Parler, it seems they tried to make the best of a bad situation.
But I don't know that we should cheer this as "the right outcome", even if, in this case, it seems justified (my gut is that this was the right thing to do, in this specific case). It's time to ask broader questions around whether these companies should have that power at all, or if we need government to step in.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
I think this question conflates "private company exercises right to refuse service" and "private company decides what's acceptable speech". The internet is not truly centralized and no tech giant has a monopoly on speech. There remains plenty of internet real estate to host ideas on that's not owned by tech giants. I think it should remain the right of these companies not to do business with organizations they choose not to and that said organization should also have the right to find another provider who will do business with them (or create their own if need be).
Is this not basically the same as porn hosting? There are hosts who don't want to be associated with it, and there are hosts who have no qualms taking porn money.
This line of thinking is similar to what happened in the deep south before the civil rights movement. Private businesses didn't want to serve African Americans and the excuse given was its their right to refuse service. Except when all private businesses colluded to deny service to African Americans to enforce an informal segregation.
Eventually the federal government came in and decided race was a protected class.
Obviously the problem isn't as simple as saying Google or anyone else must allow certain groups to use their platforms. Because that compels speech. Which the government also can't do.
Proper legal experts would have to craft it but I think the limit should be somewhere around access and use of the infrastructure. Domain registrars and hosts cannot discriminate. However If Twitter doesn't want someone on their platform I can't see why they shouldn't be allowed to kick them. We just cant allow for those paltform hosts to collude with the infrastructure providers to deplatform others completely.
And I can think of two reasons why from a legal standpoint. 1: most of the internet infrastructure in the US was built with public dollars. Even if its nominally owned by a private ISP, they were paid by the government to build it. Historically the courts have used government funds as a way to enforce legal limits.
2: coordinated deplatforming like what happened with Parlor looks an awful lot like it was an intentional hit to take out a potential competitor to the current online status quo. That should worry everyone really.
Google and Apple have a duopoly on mobile platforms, which are the natural place for any communication app. If those two act in concert you are facing a monopoly. There are only two ways out. Competition or regulation.
For AWS, I agree there are many alternatives, and in fact what shocked me wasn’t so much that they terminated their contract with Parler, but the fact that they seem to have done so with zero notice period. Which I find extremely cavalier.
You can't get an OnlyFans app in Google or Apple's app stores either, much as I'm sure the company in question would like the exposure of having one, because much of that website's user generated content also falls foul of Google and Apple's content policies. I don't understand what appears to be a commonly held view that it was fine for the appstore duopoly to deem content unsuitable for their store until the content in question was calls to hang the vice president and shitposts about Jews.
Yeah, I think that both of those things should probably have more public input when the players at hand effectively control the entire market for smartphones in the US.
We have strong bill of rights restrictions on governmental power because of the massive amount of power held by the government. So having that power be controlled by small numbers of entirely unaccountable figures with more power than the government in certain areas doesn't seem better at all?
I think the main thing is if you want to make a case for there being anti-trust or user freedom or dubious moderation priorities issues with app stores, a campaign centred around examples other than Parler is much more likely to win widespread support.
Up to a certain point. No amount of money would prevent congress from toughening bank regulations after the financial crisis. I also doubt that the republicans are going to give big tech companies a pass when they come back to power.
Market share is low, but there certainly are other mobile OS options out there. The fact that people in general don't want to use them doesn't make Android & iOS a "duopoly".
With a Parler, the dependence on aws, twilio, and other solutions took them out of the iaas world and into paas and saas. They depended on Amazon and other vendor solutions, so migrating to anything else would be almost impossible.
When it comes to issues like these I tend to agree with the sentiment of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
But this isn't about criminalising speech promoting conspiracy theories, radicalisation, and racism. It's about private entities withdrawing the infrastructure of speech, which obviously gets a lot more complicated to reason about and legislate.
I'm mostly okay with Apple and Google removing the app from their stores. I'm slightly less okay with Amazon withdrawing their services. But if Parler ends up reborn on a server running out of someones house or business I would be very much against their utility providers cutting off access.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm with you and don't quite know what to think about this either.
However I do worry that if we're not careful as a society someone posting on HN (or maybe a government approved Facebook group) will eventually say:
>The internet was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's gone, and it took far too long to deal with it.
Let's put it a different way then. Imagine right wing dystopia where everything you value is considered bad. Now you try to discuss Gay rights. You can't talk about it on Facebook, nor on any platform, as they ban you instantly. You build your own platform. Aws/gcp/azure ban you there too and kill the whole thing. I'm going to go the next step. Now credit cards and other payment services refuse services as well.
Are you supposed to rebuild the entire tech ecosystem that the entire world runs on? Fight through every damn moat along the way? Is this the bar we set here?
Its easy to talk free speech for popular speech. It's how people react to unpopular speech that shows their true colours.
I'm mostly in agreement with you, and if the choice were left to me I probably wouldn't have banned Parler from the app stores or AWS. Although I'd have to reconsider if an incoming Biden administration would punish me in any upcoming anti-trust case, as cowardly as that may seem.
But I also think the rights of the services providers have to considered as well. Should Nintendo be forced to publish porn apps in their Switch online store for example? Should HN be prevented from moderating comments here? Should thedonald.win be prevented from deleting anti-Trump comments? No is my answer to those rhetorical questions.
At the same time I don't think that electricity, water, and internet service providers should be allowed to cut off Westboro Baptist Church either. Likewise for their domain name provider.
I think things like AWS and payment services are more like electric and water suppliers then they are like app stores and web forums. So I suppose that I'm in favour of drawing a line in a reasonable place, it's just not clear to me yet exactly where that line should be.
What would help is what we should have done a long time ago: Apple should either allow users to install different app stores or submit to regulation as a platform.
There are other laws than the 1st Amendment that come into play here.
The 3 biggest technology companies in the world united in the last two days to shut down an upstart competitor who was, at the time, literally the #1 app on iPhone and Android.
So the issue is primarily one of anti-trust laws. Monopolies do not get to arbitrarily and selectively enforce their ToS against competitors; that is an illegal abuse of market power.
The tech giants this week seem to have demonstrated that they do in fact hold monopoly power in the market, and are willing to use it to crush a potential competitor. This seems to me to be an unprecedented situation, a likely anti-trust violation, and potentially to the extent that it was a coordinated action by these companies, a violation of RICO statutes.
I think it is fair to say that Parler, like every social network, could be used to post hateful messages, or messages advocating violence. GP stated that Parler was a “hate site” but I think it’s more accurate to say that Parler was a site that carried some hateful messages. It was by no means a site formed or designed specifically to carry hate.
A corollary that I would raise is a similar standard in copyright infringement. Sites which are designed specifically with the intent of committing copyright infringement are now criminally liable — it has recently become a serious felony to make these kinds of sites. However, site that show a significant non-infringement purpose are not illegal, even if some infringement takes place on their platform. You might recall that YouTube was a site that got its start with rampant copyright infringement, and to this day has a significant amount of infringing material on its servers, but it is not criminally liable, or even civilly liable for that content due to the fact that the site has a significant non-infringement purpose. I think that’s a fair analogy with Parler.
If there’s a copyright or public safety issue with a piece of content posted on a social media platform, the law should provide for a takedown procedure against the content, not against the whole platform. The cause of action should be against the poster, not against the entire platform. Nuking the entire platform from orbit is not an appropriate remedy, and in any case should be done through a court of law, not through the actions of a monopolistic cartel.
If there’s a copyright or public safety issue with a piece of content posted on a social media platform, the law should provide for a takedown procedure against the content, not against the whole platform. The cause of action should be against the poster, not against the entire platform.
Remember Parler was asked by the tech co's to moderate such content, and it refused.
> If there’s a copyright or public safety issue with a piece of content posted on a social media platform, the law should provide for a takedown procedure against the content, not against the whole platform.
For many kinds of criminal content posing an acute public safety hazard, it does, and it's very simple: if you have knowledge of the existence of the material, you must take it down or become yourself criminally liable for it, in addition to anyone who is already criminally liable. (For copyright, there's the DMCA takedown process, which is more generous because people don't tend to get killed as a forseeable consequence of civil copyright violations.)
Of course, if you are a second level host and don't have item-by-item control (such as AWS for a site hosted there by another firm), the only efficient way to acheived that may be to drop the entire account.
> For many kinds of criminal content posing an acute public safety hazard, it does, and it's very simple: if you have knowledge of the existence of the material, you must take it down or become yourself criminally liable for it.
I'd be quite surprised if this is true in the USA. If you could provide an example of such a case I'd be very interested. The only time I'm aware of the Supreme Court ruling on online hate speech was to overturn the conviction of a Anthony Elois, who posted some truly disgusting things online. [1]
I'm not aware of any case where an internet platform was held crminally liable for content posted on their platform, in fact Section 230 provides "wide immunity" for both criminal and civil liability for the content that users post. [2]
For example, from [2];
> A recent case [3] out of the 2nd Circuit illustrates the types of issues courts are facing in our era of social media predominance and terrorist attacks.
> The 2nd Circuit case arose after Hamas posted content on Facebook that both directly and indirectly led to the attack and death of several Israeli nationals, including a 10 year-old girl. The victims subsequently sued Facebook for allowing the posts to exist, and to “match” terrorist sympathizers with terrorist organizations.
> While the content at issue violated Facebook’s terms of service and Community Standards, Facebook did not remove the content prior to the attacks.
> > For many kinds of criminal content posing an acute public safety hazard, it does, and it's very simple: if you have knowledge of the existence of the material, you must take it down or become yourself criminally liable for it.
> I'd be quite surprised if this is true in the USA. If you could provide an example of such a case I'd be very interested. The only time I'm aware of the Supreme Court ruling on online hate speech
This isn't about hate speech, which is protected speech. It's about a subset of content which is itself criminal (that is, for which the source would be criminally liable), where a service provider knows of the content and the facts which make it criminal (whether or not they understand the criminal prohibition itself)
And it's not about civil liability (things some private party can sue you for damages, and where therefore the Section 230 protection is likely to apply) but criminal liability, that is, things where the government can take action leading to criminal fines and/or imprisonment.
Examples of laws creating this kind of knowledge-based obligation are 18 USC Sec 2339A regarding material sorry to terrorists and 18 USC Sec 1466A with regard to obscene visual representation of the sexual abuse of children.
I posted this in response to another of your comments, but in Section 2339a;
> ...it is necessary that a defendant in some sort associate himself with the venture, that he participate in it as in something that he wishes to bring about, [and] that he seek by his action to make it succeed.”
The example of Sec 1466a is an excellent one. Facebook is the world’s largest platform for sharing exactly those types images, and they have not been charged under 1466a, because they are not liable under it.
What would be pertinent is 18 USC 2258A [2] which requires service providers to report any such content that that are made aware of to the tip line, but by now we are far afield of the topic at hand.
A simple introduction on hosting and platform liability, for example [1].
> The tech giants this week seem to have demonstrated that they do in fact hold monopoly power in the market, and are willing to use it to crush a potential competitor. This seems to me to be an unprecedented situation, a likely anti-trust violation, and potentially to the extent that it was a coordinated action by these companies,
Coordinated? Competitor? Where do you find evidence of coordination? Why do you think parler is a competitor?
> it’s more accurate to say that Parler was a site that carried some hateful messages
Not accurate at all. Why do you think people used parler instead of twitter.
> Nuking the entire platform from orbit is not an appropriate remedy
When the entire platform resists and refuses to moderate, nuking from orbit is a fine remedy. Parler was too stupid to build alternatives into their risk profile. I think they believed their own hype.
> The 3 biggest technology companies in the world united in the last two days to shut down an upstart competitor who was, at the time, literally the #1 app on iPhone and Android.
Maybe Facebook, but...
How did Parler compete with Apple? What market were they competing in?
How did Parler compete with AWS? Did they share the same sort of clients?
> When it comes to issues like these I tend to agree with the sentiment of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
That approach, combined with filter bubbles and AI recommendations driving engagement/addiction, gave us rise of things like Antivax movement, Trump, QAnon and now an attempted coup in the US.
We should probably think hard before we consider it the only possible approach.
At the same time, saying "some speech actually isn't ok" doesn't mean that unaccountable monopolies of corporate overlords that wield more power than some nation states are ok. Both things can be true at the same time.
The root cause of the things you describe aren’t free speech or filter bubbles.
It’s a lack of confidence and trust in our governments and corporations. The fact that those same governments and corporations own our media makes it even worse.
I think criminalising unpopular speech will make the symptoms of this problem worse rather than better.
"Criminalizing unpopular speech" is a peculiar way to answer to "some speech might be harmful".
Is sharing someone else's private information, publishing outright lies about safety of vaccines, or claiming some ethnicities or nationalities are subhuman and should be murdered right now "unpopular speech"?
I mean, I sure as hell hope it is unpopular!
But it is much more than just "unpopular speech". Framing it like "criminalizing unpopular speech" makes it sound like someone wants to criminalize saying "I think the Twilight series were genuinely good movies." but we're talking about people saying "All those <insert slur> should be killed."
And yet, you are right that in some cases this happens - for example when some US states decided to solve problem of people complaining about animal cruelty by making filming on farms illegal. That's a complete bullshit and it is harmful to the society.
But people who incite violence and Antivaxxers who actively hurt people by spreading diseases? I don't think so.
I’ll try to address all of your points. I’ll start by saying that inciting people to violence is already illegal so I don’t think this particular point needs addressing further.
I use the term unpopular speech as a binary divider of speech between popular speech and unpopular speech. Popular speech doesn’t require protection by definition so the implication is that free speech laws exist to protect unpopular speech. I wasn’t suggesting that “I like Twilight” is equivalent to “<slurs> should be killed.”
Yes I would describe lies about vaccines, claiming that some groups of humans are subhuman, and doxing as both harmful and as examples of unpopular speech. Also they are unpopular because they are harmful rather than because they are untrue (doxing people is harmful directly because the information is correct).
All those things, despite being harmful, are legal. It seems that you are suggesting that we should consider banning some forms of unpopular speech because it is harmful. By banning it I assume you mean to make it illegal. If you mean something else please let me know!
Depending on where you are. I come from a place where saying "All <slur> deserve to be killed!" already is illegal and would already possibly land you in prison.
Not vaccines though, but that might come to pass as well, since vaccine safety misinformation is basically manipulation that runs vulnerable people into biological weapons and that's pretty bad.
And life is ... fine. We go on without having the (pretty much uniquely USian) 100 % unlimited free speech.
Comparing different places is always difficult - Germany is understandably much harsher at limiting Nazis than US is - but saying there's less school shooters and domestic terrorists because of it probably doesn't see the whole truth like mental healthcare, quality of education and access to weapons etc.
How was it different from Facebook? Plenty of hate there, for months, why aren't they shutdown?
Just listen to the Parler executives account of what happened. Contrary to all the nonsense being spewed by ideologues, Parler did have a moderation policy that prohibited incitement to violence, and they did enforce it, but it was neither perfect nor instantaneous (since, by deliberate choice, only humans were involved). They also complied to the requests from the three tech titans, but of course that did not matter, their fate was sealed before the first letter was sent.
This is a moment of astonishing hypocrisy and terrible abuse of power. Silicon Valley has proven to half of America that the system is rigged beyond recourse, and for a number of those Americans that might be the straw that breaks the camels back, leading them into radicalization and terrorism. It would be very wise for all of us in tech, in any position of influence, to urge calm and dialogue and to provide space for all speech that is not urging violence. We are not children to throw away our country because of a single deranged fool. We need to show to the country that tech is not an instrument available to only those of a certain ideological bent and that we can talk and sort out our differences without violence or repression.
Parler was created to be a place where the alt-right could freely spout their lies without fear of censorship. Facebook has that, but it's not the reason the platform exists. The intent is completely different.
People digging into Parler found out that all new users were shadowbanned by default until a group of like-minded moderators reviewed and approved their posts.
These moderators were overwhelmingly MAGA/Trump supporters, so I'm sure you can guess what kind of posts they expected to see before they unblocked a new user.
This was all shared/revealed on Twitter, so take it as "evidence" with whatever grain of salt you like, but people didn't just make up these claims about what Parler was..
So while perhaps Parler claimed to be a place for open debate and unrestricted ideas, it is seems that was just a thin cover for their much more focused goal of being a home for all this extremist right-wing talk in America.
Thanks, I took a look. It is not the most coherent presentation but I can see there were examples of crappy posts in there, but so there are everywhere else. The AWS letter made the most reasonable argument and it amounted to an indictment of Parler's technical ability to keep manual moderation working in the face of increasing traffic. Whether that really was the problem or just a virtue display from Amazon is unclear to me.
Vice also published a good summary of the stuff that was scraped from Parler when their SaaS providers went down, but most of it is based on interview with the Twitter user above.
Do you even hear yourself? AWS banning Parlor will cause radicalization and terrorism? You are blaming AWS for the violence, not the sites refusing to moderate and the people doing it?
I guess shutting down mosques that promoted terrorism led to more terrorism?
Analogies are fun, but here's a better one. What do you think would happen if you bombed to rubble a mosque that for the most part is frequented by regular people but occasionally is visited by terrorists? For the sake of fairness let's assume you first gave the mosque 24 hours to put in a place a system that you are confident will prevent any terrorist from coming through the door.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
I find it ironic that the ban is what makes people think the techCos are controlling society rather than the fact that all actions of social networks and hosting services impact society. Like the time when FB make some news feeds more negative to track impact and engagement. Or how the radicalization of users on FB can happen due to the Algo.
Ultimately this is a legislative failure, but it also is how a free market should defend itself of dangerous content as well. (keep in mind a Civil war 2 isn't exactly great for the economy).
What is wild is that the laws for this all exist and are in use. The behavior here is the use of Section 230 as designed. The definition of insurrection and hate speech are all defined. Clearly what has happened is actually late action by social platforms rather than overreach as the US Gov lacks any mode to actually take on this content.
I don't think there's an easy answer. 2 possible solutions:
(1) deplatforming could be either a democratic process, or be challengeable through some kind of democratic process.
(2) deplatforming could be at the sole discretion of platforms, but the platforms themselves need to use open standards and protocols such that it is sufficiently easy for those who were deplatformed to switch to the opposition or self-platform (for example: ios allowing competing app stores). This would be difficult and technically challenging to enact in many situations (what does it mean in the case of social networks for example?), And if there's no competition we need antitrust ASAP
If all the competition are also deplatforming you, I think at a certain point it becomes fair to say that you were more or less democratically rejected, much like if every bar in town kicks out neo-nazis that's not a failure of free speech but a success of the free market. But that relies on a large, healthy, robust competitive ecosystem which does not exist in a billionaire-dominated tech scene.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
No, because you don't need AWS or Twitter or Cloudflare or any of the name tech companies to run a high-traffic web site successfully.
This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to do business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If both Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App Stores, what exactly is your recourse?
Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the constitution is supposed to protect, which is the difference between feudalism and democracy, is de-facto (though not de-jure), owned by monopolistic corporations. They are only accountable to their shareholders, and they have nearly complete power over their platforms. The vast majority of public discourse, news and financial transactions take place on these feudal fiefdoms.
This is an oversight in the current legal framework, and will have to be corrected eventually.
> Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the constitution is supposed to protect, which is the difference between feudalism and democracy, is de-facto (though not de-jure), owned by monopolistic corporations.
That's quite the exaggeration. You can quite literally still gather in a physical public square. Just because it's more convenient to do so online doesn't mean it's a granted right.
> The vast majority of public discourse, news and financial transactions take place on these feudal fiefdoms.
And? If a bank decides they don't want you as a customer, you can still perform cash transactions. You aren't entitled to a bank account just because the majority of people do banking.
Also, what Parler was doing was not so much "gathering in the public square" as they were renting a storefront in a privately owned mall. The mall owners are well within their rights to evict the tenant.
> You can quite literally still gather in a physical public square.
You can? Last I checked I can't, if I do that I get arrested for breaking social distancing...
> you can still perform cash transactions.
You mean, like in Japan and Sweden, that decided to attempt to go cashless by creating more and more rules on cash so that only debit (or credit) cards are practical?
That’s quite a pedantic interpretation of gathering in a public square at a particular moment in time where doing so is detrimental to the health and economy of a community. In the event that you’re not disingenuously asking that question, as with all things, “it depends”, on specific local ordinance, how many people, the ability to maintain six feet distance, etc.
> This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to do business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If both Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App Stores, what exactly is your recourse?
Host on your own infrastructure. Present a mobile-responsive web site. Take Bitcoin.
(we're talking, politely, about free speech extremists - so none of this seems wildly inappropriate, right?)
> Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform people.
For a while now. Sex workers, sex shops have complained about it for years. Nobody cared. I find it ironic that the same group of people advocating against consumer and worker protections now seem to demand them.
It's tempting to think that it's concern trolling by fascists, really. No interest in whether Google wants to get rid of a high-profile AI ethicist, because hey, it's a private company. No interest in Facebook censoring breastfeeding groups because OMG NIPPLE. No interest in, as you say, making it impossible for legal sex work to operate. No complaints that Apple forbid R18 material in the app store years ago because Steve Jobs didn't like it.
Now, suddenly, it's a great big issue because a bunch of neo-Nazis got run out of town? Not a great look, eh.
I don't doubt that it could be used as a hint among other points, but doesn't that approach scream "tyranny of the mob"? How often in the past has a minority view been objectively right and a majority view been wrong? For example, Galileo was accused of heresy due to his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. The "maybe that someone is the problem" view would say Galileo was the problem.
The free market argument is that it isn't tyranny of the mob. It's tyranny of the market. The companies are responding to market forces, which implies that so many people are concerned that it's actually a democratic push of people voting with their wallets.
Not my logic.
Refusing service to someone based on their sexual orientation, religion, or color of their skin is a very different moral proposition than refusing service based on facilitating the subversion of the democratically elected government that sustains said business.
Then add political affiliation as a protected class and prosecute people who break actual laws.
My personal opinion is that this discussion about tech, politics, censorship, etc. is something that needs to happen, and maybe all parties were completely within their rights to act how they did.
There are a lot of people who don't see that as self-evident, and what they are hearing is "if you are pro-Trump, you deserve to be a social pariah." That is a real quick path to radicalization.
Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon rules. If you convince enough people through your actions that the rules are "Heads I win, Tails you lose", then they'll decide not to play by those rules anymore. And then all hell breaks loose.
> Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon rules.
Agreed, and it follows from that that "political affiliation" protection cannot include "wants to destroy the government" -- no matter from what quadrant that sentiment flows (anarchist, socialist, fascist, whatever).
Agreeing to democracy -- and probably republicanism -- (note, both lowercase) is a bright line across which you've really decided to step outside of our mutual rules.
Neither "conservatives", "republicans", nor any other actual political affiliation are being shut out by any of these companies.
People who affiliate with "opposing a democratic election with direct violence" are.
> People who affiliate with "opposing a democratic election with direct violence" are.
The trouble is that many of the same people saying these actions were perfectly acceptable also have a habit of casually stating that all people who voted for Trump are the irredeemable scum of the earth.
But you do need Google and Apple to have a mobile app.
I do agree with you that AWS dropping them isn't evidence of a monopoly. There's plenty of competitors in that space. None of them, however, are going to touch Parler with a 10ft pole at this point.
Like how they prevent people from getting the ISIS websites, Hamas websites, neo-Nazi web sites? Looks like they have more than a decade to do so and still nothing. Maybe your hyperbolic slippery slope argument is wrong?
Apple do it in certain degree. By makes their mobile browser extreme buggy and feature lacking. You don't even have proper notification support on it. How could it be used as a proper app? A social app that can't tell you that someone send a message to you sounds a no-go to me.
Telecom companies are common carriers and do not have the luxury of being able to deny customers access if they are not breaking the law. Nothing preventing these people from starting up their own ISP and hosting company.
Nothing stopping them from fabricating their own silicon too, right? How far down this hole till we reach the bottom?
I wonder if this was the same sort of argument used to justify denying minorities homes / home loans? "Well they're free to build their own house!" "Well they're free to cut their own lumber!" "Well they're free to forge their own hammers!" "Well they're free to..."
Denying people homes or loans because of race is vastly different, because one’s race is an inherited physical characteristic.[1] Here, companies are denying service to Parler based on the beliefs (edit: and behavior) of its users.
This situation lies somewhere between “refusing service based on someone’s religion” and “refusing service because I just don’t like them.” Political affiliation is not yet recognized as a religious belief, so they are not a protected class. I don’t know enough about the law to say on what grounds a company stands if they drop/refuse service because they think someone is being a dick.
[1] it’s more nuanced than that of course, but I’m speaking broadly here
Thank you for this example. I’ll be using it. I’ve been struggling to articulate that just because technically someone is free to do something doesn’t mean they aren’t being meaningfully hindered from doing it.
Depends where in the world they are. But US carriers are nowhere near as fussy over who they supply unless their clients end up overwhelming their networks.
I don't know why it's right to ban conspiracies. Conspiracies are to be debunked, not banned. Otherwise, people who believe such conspiracies simply go underground and we end up cultivating anger, distrust, and cynicism. Is that covid-19 would turn into a global pandemic back in Feb a conspiracy? Is criticizing USSR in the 30s a conspiracy? Is that earth is not the center of our universe a conspiracy 700 years ago? Is that FBI's infiltration and surveillance on political groups a conspiracy? Are all the questioning on the reasons for the US to invade Iraq conspiracy theories? Where are the WMDs now?
In general, are we sure that no conspiracy ever turned out to be true? How many heresies turned out to be correct and changed the course of our history? And how many people were persecuted in the name of spreading conspiracy? Why are we so afraid of conspiracies?
Most of the modern, big conspiracies have been thoroughly debunked, but that doesn't stop their spread. Any flat-earther has heard all of the flat-earth debunking. Sadly, I know a handful of flat-earthers, and I tried arguing for a while, but it does no good. Instead it appears that the theorists double-down on the conspiracy.
I think people believe in conspiracies, not because they're mislead on a certain topic, but because they want to believe. So debunking conspiracies is attacking their faith, which is what causes zealotry.
It's more like spreading a religion, which, yeah, you can't really ban it. You just have to let people do their thing.
tl;dr I agree that one shouldn't censor it, but only because it does no good.
Right. It's frustrating that the term conspiracy theory has become a blunt weapon that can be used to quickly dismiss allegations of wrong doing and paint the accuser as a fringe lunatic. Sometimes people do evil things or conspire with others to do evil things (see Tuskegee experiments, Epstein, etc.). Just because someone doesn't currently have irrefutable proof that something happened doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to talk about it.
I'm in the same boat as you - I'm glad parler is gone but I go back and forth on the implications of the ability of a few to silence so many - the most reasonable way I've come to think of it is if David Duke (huge racist scumbag) suddenly wanted to go on CNN and speak for an hour once a week - should CNN let him? You wouldn't think twice about it, you'd likely think - why would CNN have to comply? It's not a perfect analogy, but that's the best way I've been able to think of it.
In the end, it's lose-lose for non fascists. While we're all debating whether there was overreach and or if it should be mitigated, actual fascists are regrouping and planning their next assault.
Are they actually being silenced, as in someone is forcing them to not express their thoughts? Can they not congregate together the old fashioned way and have as much free speech as they want?
It's hard to quantify, but I can provide an example of a specific post that likely wouldn't have stayed up on twitter:
"Everyone said Pence sold out!!! Time to enter the capitol. Go patriots. Echo and enter the building dont let them vote. Put pressure. We are riding in!!! Echo big"
That said, I still don't support taking down a site because there's no moderation. These people won't go away; I wonder if decentralized/p2p technologies will see more adoption by the radical right for this reason.
> I wonder if decentralized/p2p technologies will see more adoption by the radical right for this reason.
It seems as though there is in inverse relationship between ease of use and centralization (obviously). As communication becomes decentralized, the ability to accrue a large audience becomes more difficult. This supports the rise of ideas that can gain widespread support on their merit, as opposed to gaining widespread support via having a mass audience to start with.
To illustrate: on one side, we have a centralized extreme: Twitter (or Reddit, or Facebook). On the other side we have a decentralized extreme: spoken word. Which is easier to radicalize a country with?
If extremists move to decentralized or p2p alternatives to social media, they will shrink in the long run, letting the fringe ideas remain on the fringe.
If all social media went the way of decentralization, we would see far less extremism in general, simply because most people wouldn't go looking for it and it's pretty hard to spread extremist ideas in a one-on-one conversation.
Right. So a somewhat rough analysis would be: sample a range of "average" tweets on both platform and somehow aggregate an average "hate" value.
What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate" will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about storming the capitol isn't good evidence that Twitter is better. Because, for exmaple, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would be left alone on Twitter but moderated in Parler. Perhaps some ML bot can quantity sentiment of tweets.
> This is a question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence at all that Parler had more “hate” than Twitter, etc.?
The problem isn't just that they had more, though logic would suggest they did; after all, their user base are refugees from other platforms that pushed them out for extremist language, advocating for violence, conspiracy theories, etc.
It's that Parler refused to remove it.
So even if the rate of introduction of this content was the same on Parler (which I don't buy for a second, see argument above), the total concentration and visibility of it is higher because it's not taken down.
i imagine twitter has more in absolute terms, just due to the relative size of the two sites. I think the major difference is worse than just refusing to remove it, Parler advertised itself as the place where you can say things that most sites would moderate away, it actively encouraged it, so as a percentage it was much larger
This is another question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence at all that you're not knowingly asking that as a political/debating tactic to suggest your proposition is reasonable, knowing full well that the purpose of Parler's existence is (was) to facilitate communication that larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate speech?
I think it's very interesting that you lead off citing good faith in a situation where, in my experience, you're about to demonstrate literal bad faith. It's like you wish to take off the table the interpretation that you are intentionally lying for the sake of argument.
Tu quoque; it seems uncharitable of you to respond to a "question in good faith" by immediately accusing them of bad faith and of lying, and asking them to prove their innocence by proving a negative.
I think the parent raises a very legitimate question of what defines a "hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism." I've never had a Twitter account myself, but some of the publicly-available content I've seen there there certainly fits that description. Conversely, I did briefly have a Parler account, and what I saw in my particular bubble did not fit that description at all - It was crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and comedians. I'm not trying to imply that my anecdote is data or that Parler is some bastion of positivity, but the way your premise is stated only requires a single counterexample: some "hate speech" exists on Twitter, and not everything on Parler is.
You say, "the purpose of Parler's existence is (was) to facilitate communication that larger social networks stifle." To me that sounds like the old adage that "the Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it." At least five years ago that was largely seen as a feature rather than a bug. But recently the tide of popular opinion seems to have shifted in general favor of censorship. Undeniably there are some bad ideas out there, but I worry that the "cure" of censorship is a slippery slope that could very quickly become worse than the disease.
> This is another question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence at all that you're not knowingly asking that as a political/debating tactic to suggest your proposition is reasonable, knowing full well that the purpose of Parler's existence is (was) to facilitate communication that larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate speech?
Maybe something is lost over text, but I genuinely prefaced my question because I know it's a delicate political topic for people. But your response is just childish. I literally barely know anything about Parler. Also, how is asking for evidence so triggering? That should be the cornerstone of any these types of discussions.
But to answer your question: No, I can't prove to you what I'm thinking. Nobody ever can. So perhaps you should just take my question on face value and stop assuming malicious intent.
So the answer is no. In that case let me answer for you while you have your moment of outrage.
A hacker named donk_enby made a back up that will soon be available for researchers to answer just this question. We will be able to look at this data set and see if Parler incites more violence both in absolute numbers and in percentage terms. My best guess is that twitter/has has more calls to violence in absolute terms because it is several times larger and has been around for several years. They have a large moderation team but they're not as responsive in all languages. In percentage terms, that can't be answered yet without looking at the data.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2021/01/11/parler-h...
> that larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate speech?
Let me fix that:
> that multiple countries and international organizations categorize as hate speech?
A casual reminder that when most think these open air rules are intended to stifle conversation it is generally for very clear legal and moral reasons. If you believe this is used by them to control people then you should also believe that a replacement should view this speech as antithetical to the existence of the free speech social company.
It's one thing to ban talk about the platform you are talking on.
It's not the same thing to ban intolerant behavior.
I've seen this argument so many times, and it always strikes me that those who cite it often have either not read, or completely miss the point Karl Popper was trying to make. He goes so far as to even say: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." I am quite sick of the usage of the paradox of tolerance being used as an attack against a free, pluralistic society.
Clearly you didn't quote the rest of that exact line for a reason.
He goes on to explain what situation would call for use of suppression, for example, the use of violence or rejecting reason or logic by the intolerant (Which, obviously both are what happened in January 6th and in this narrative) ;)
The ban isn't on conservative viewpoints, it is on intolerant speech that has no want to make a logical discussion and resorts to violence. Trust me, I'm using it correctly.
The funny thing about intolerance is that it's pretty easy to define:
Unwillingness to accept(or tolerate) views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own.
When we talk about intolerant behavior we are talking about actions and statements that are intended to demean others by design (and praise the inverse), this is pretty easy to define. Saying that a person's skin color or gender makes them lesser or to be despised is clearly intolerant, the person in context is clearly unable to change this as it is how they are. Whats funny about this is that the US Bill of rights is a statement on intolerance by design. It's meant to both give rights but also set tone.
God forbid anyone wants to discuss anything "that the larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate speech". Anyone that expresses such a desire is guilty of hate speech and must be silenced.
1. Probably. Take a look at some of the Parker dumps before it was shut down. Calls for death squads weren't couched in metaphor.
2. Even if not, Twitter, as much as I loathe it, also has many non-hateful users. Parler was a haven for alt-right extremism.
Anybody who has ever talked about housing on Twitter or Facebook knows that pictures of Mao and guillotines frequently accompany calls to kill all landlords (just to take one example I'm familiar with).
Are these legitimate calls to violence? Or just jokey memes? Is there a difference? Who decides that? In what sense do these posts not demonstrate support for political violence?
In the case of Parler, it turned out that yes, the calls to violence were real and not jokes.
You might say all these platforms previously gave Parler the benefit of the doubt and then were faced with incontrovertible evidence that Parler was facilitating political violence.
I believe that once any social media site gets big enough people with radical and violent views show up. It's unavoidable. Some of them are just trolls and troublemakers. The real question becomes how they deal with those people. Parler already had a moderation policy in-place, but to be fair they are a growing company that experienced an absolute surge of new users. Twitter is a fully mature company with much more moderation in place. Even still, you can find a ton of calls for violence on Twitter by blue checkmark people and nothing ever seems to come from that.
Just because radical things are posted on your website doesn't mean all the discourse on the site is bad and your site should be deplatformed. We already apply that standard to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and others.
As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs outside of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to coordinate and not Parler.
A policy that was FAR more relaxed than any of their competitors, which was by design and part of their marketing pitch: come here to say those things you're not allowed to say elsewhere.
Parler's position is: unless the language is strictly illegal according to the letter of the law that's designed limit government censorship of speech, then it's allowed.
By that definition, if I call for someone's death, unless I have the means and the opportunity and mention a specific time, then it doesn't count and the post stays up.
Clearly Amazon, Google, and Apple have policies that are more strict than US law. And that makes sense: US law is shaped by the constitution, which is meant to restrict the government's ability to limit speech. And we should absolutely want the rules regarding government censorship to be as narrow as possible.
But private services are free to operate by different rules.
For example, if I walk into a McDonalds and start swearing at all the customers, I'll get kicked out even if I'm not breaking the letter of the law.
So, did they have a moderation policy? Yes, technically. But did that policy allow extremist and violent language to persist on their site at a level above and beyond what's seen on any competing platform outside of, say, 8chan? Absolutely.
> As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs outside of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to coordinate and not Parler.
And Facebook would pull that content down if they found it.
Parler won't.
That's what got them pulled from AWS, and the Google and Apple app stores.
"But private services are free to operate by different rules."
But that's just it, isn't it? Parler tried to make a new service that plays by a new set of rules. And they were crushed, because it turns out that you actually can't have your own rules unless you are already at the scale of Apple, AWS, etc.
I didn't say it was illegal or an infringement of Constitutional rights. But it is pretty worrying.
Before this, the power was somewhat theoretical and used in tiny marginal cases. Now, it's proven that they can effectively exercise the power in a major way, and that's news.
> Now, it's proven that they can effectively exercise the power in a major way, and that's news.
Honestly, it's really not. We've seen groups like ISIS kicked off social media, for example, and no one blinked an eye. Heck, Milo Yiannopoulos was deplatformed way back in 2016.
The thing that's news is that a significant percentage of a major US political party is now associated with a form of right wing extremism and wrapped up in a major conspiracy theory movement whose adherents are willing to commit violence in an attempt to subvert an election.
> But that's just it, isn't it? Parler tried to make a new service that plays by a new set of rules. And they were crushed, because it turns out that you actually can't have your own rules unless you are already at the scale of Apple, AWS, etc.
That's not at all true. If I recall the same thing happened to 8chan/8kun. Yet somehow they live on. If Parler has a market, they'll find a way.
That said, it sucks but, well, that's capitalism for ya.
What else would you suggest? Regulating these various companies such that the government gets to decide who can use their services?
Because if so, a) that would require new laws, b) it'd probably fall afoul of the first amendment, and c) it doesn't seem to align well with free market conservative ideology, and so should be opposed by the very users of Parler that are being affected by this.
It perfectly valid for you to dismiss my account as anecdotal because admittedly that's all it is.
But man, wow. I joined Parler several months ago and that's literally all my default feed was -- various flavors of right wing rage. Not all was violent or racist. Some were verified celebrities and right wing politicians; those tended to be rather mild.
But typing various slurs or words like "shoot" or "hang" into the search box returned some eye-watering results.
The difference between it and Twitter was not subtle.
You have provided an exmaple (I assume, I didn't click the link because I have a productivity blocker which I obviously need to update for Hacker News, lol) of a bad thing on one platform, but not another. But ok, are there vice versa examples?
What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate" will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about e.g. storming the Capitol being banned on Twitter but not Parler isn't good evidence that Twitter is better. Because, for example, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would be left alone on Twitter but censored on Parler. Perhaps some ML bot can quantity sentiment of tweets. That's the kind of evidence I would like to see.
Twitter, Youtube, Facebook all get hundreds of comments of similar nature every hour. They tend to be pretty good about removing them promptly.
If I start a new social media service, what are the objective measures I can use to ensure I'm moderating well and quickly enough? How should we allow this to interact with scale?
If a new startup goes from 10 to 10,000 users overnight, and 0.5% of users post offensive comments that first day, how long does that startup have to remove them all before they are designated as "bad"?
Also, how should we view overmoderation within this context? I think most people would find it injust and orwellian to ban a black sociology professor for posting an academic analysis of the use of the n-word through history, but I fear society is going to overcorrect.
The relevant question is about Twitter/FB at a similar development stage. Now, they have all kinds of moderation algorithms and employees, so it's not really a fair comparison.
Others have mentioned it, but there is a multi-TB dump of parler posts and videos out there if you feel like digging. In addition to the widely recognized fact that hate speech and outright calls to political violence were tolerated on Parler we have evidence that what little moderation did exist on the platform was dedicated towards suppressing dissenting opinions and reinforcing the Trump viewpoint. As an absolute number Parler probably had fewer objectionable messages, but they were a much larger percentage of the whole and unlike on Twitter there was no moderation that was preventing them from being distributed.
Good question. Normally I would try to figure this out for myself by logging on to Parler and taking a look. But Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg have decided that I can't be trusted to do that -- I could become a Nazi or Qanon nutter and try to violently overthrow the government.
I really dodged a bullet. Thank God for our tech overlords and their new Ministry of Truth. I can now sleep easy knowing that they are busy scouring the rest of the internet and it's marketplace of ideas for more doubleplusbadthink from which to shield me.
> Overall it feels like a legislative failure - in an ideal world, we have laws applied even handedly to deal with this.
Whether it will be applied even-handedly remains to be seen, but there is a law to deal with this, and I suspect it's a factor in why businesses of all kinds are running screaming from anything connected to the attacks (including other businesses that fail to themselves cut off any activity with a nexus to the attack, the attackers, and the apparent planning for future attacks): 18 USC Sec 2339A, which makes it a federal crime to knowingly provide any goods or services except medicine and religious materials connected to any of an enumerated list of federal criminal offenses collectively designated “terrorism”, punishable by fines and imprisonment for up to 15 years unless death occurs as a result of the crime, in which case the imprisonment becomes for any term of years or life.
There are laws, but as a practical matter they aren't enforced.
Individuals are not held responsible for the threats and illegal speech they make. Look at all the threats made against people on social media. The fact that there is almost no accountability means it keeps happening.
The only repercussions most of the time is that the platform kicks you off. Part of it is, its their platform and from a business perspective having you around if you are too toxic isn't wise.
It seems like a society problem. Non enforcement and a lot of people with nothing to loose.
In my opinion, things are working as expected. The US federal and state level governments are not supposed to regulate speech, per the US Constitution. In this case they are not regulating speech.
Private companies are regulating speech (in their applications, through their services and websites, etc.) as they are free to do under the US Constitution. While there may be a market for the speech Parler promotes and amplifies that market is not sufficiently large (in the opinion of these companies) to offset possible bad public relations or the loss of other customers.
I don't think there's any place for legislation that forces private companies to take a loss in this manner. It's clearly anti-free market and definitely anti-free speech, forcing Amazon to associate with speech they feel might harm the companies financial outlook.
Also, is it necessary? There are many BitTorrent tracker sites that are treated as illegal in the US and are still available. If Parler was really dedicated to keeping their website running they could surely do so. Maybe they won't have applications in the Apple App Store but that's not a right, is it? You have to have product that Apple feels helps the overall goal of their App Store, which is to make money for Apple.
"Private companies are regulating speech (in their applications, through their services and websites, etc.) as they are free to do under the US Constitution. "
Technically, there is no barrier that restricts a corporation from granting free space, so it isn't "free" to do so, moreso that it was not addressed because at the time of the framing of the constitution, the bigger dissenters of free speech were government, and religion, backed by government (or being the government.)
I disagree that this was an oversight of the of the US Constitution. Newspapers and books were both things when the US Constitution was written and, in all the years since, we haven't seen any amendments that would force a newspaper to print articles or letters that might cost them customers. Publishers are not forced to publish books that they feel might tarnish or otherwise harm their brands.
Indeed, it's my position that such laws would in fact be infringing on the free speech of those private companies. In addition they might cost those companies money, making these hypothetical laws also anti-free market.
While not an amendment, there certainly have been provisions to compel entities from providing a forum for sides they don't want to promote. [0] See also the now-repealed fairness doctrine. [1]
I’m in the US, and old enough to remember the time before the Internet, and that’s what I remember. You had three or so TV networks and a handful of national magazines and newspapers. Big tech isn’t really any different from the media zeitgeist I grew up with.
It’s just the last 20 years or so of everybody having a megaphone that is outside the norm.
It is very different. Everyone saw the same or very similar information on the TV. People watching the same channels would see the exact same thing.
With social media, your feed is perfectly catered to you as an individual, by using as much data on you as they can get their hands on, and a nearly endless supply of content from the "megaphones" of other users. Even if you have many of the same friends as someone, and politically align with them, you probably would find scrolling through their feed to be less interesting than scrolling through your own.
I kind of feel the same as you. I'm happy that Parler is gone but on the other hand I think that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are monopolies and should be broken up.
These are 4 different companies that compete with each other (Google Cloud vs. AWS and Facebook vs. Twitter, also although you didn't list it Apple vs. Google) in the spaces relevant to this conversation (cloud services, social media, and phone apps).
One can always list all the players in an industry and call that set "a monopoly and should be broken up". Or we can just take this for what it is, which is that some entity is so toxic that none of these companies (which compete with each other otherwise) want to touch it.
Google has monopoly on search, Amazon on online retail and to a lesser extent cloud hosting, Facebook on social media. Twitter on 140 character word dumps so that's maybe not at the same level bad as the others. Edit: Apple doesn't really have a monopoly on anything.
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are
monopolies and should be broken up.
Dominant market share != monopoly
For a monopoly, you need anticompetitive practices. Is Facebook unfairly preventing the success of other social networks? A good example of a monopoly was 90's era Microsoft, which prevented its OEMs from shipping competing operating systems.
Terminology aside, I completely agree with you that we need far, far more choice in the marketplace.
I agree. I see a lot of people pushing to give them special status or make them town squares and I think that is the exact opposite solution we need. We should take anti-monopoly action and foster competition in their respective markets instead.
We should really be talking about Ron Paul because as a test plaintiff Parker is awful. Per their CEO, law firms, banks and payment providers, mail and texting services have also cancelled on them.
By that point, what would having your own tech stack do? How do you even collect revenue when banks and payment providers cancel on you? This is the power of freedom of association at work, the power behind cancellation.
Indeed - Ron Paul is not so much the "canary in the coalmine" - this is the whole mining crew succumbing to the toxic fumes!
Even for people who don't agree with his libertarian politics, there's no arguing that he is anything short of an uncommonly decent man. He's certainly the closest I've ever seen anyone come to being the mythical "honest politician." So of course they're attacking him...
What? He wrote a whole bunch of extremely racist op-eds about how black people are inferior and slavery was a boon to them. Your post is a lot of dissembling nonsense.
That seems unlikely. Do you have links to any reliable primary sources, if they haven't been conveniently censored?
I have a hunch that any "extremely racist" comments may have been more to the effect that although slavery was very bad indeed, there might have been better ways to dismantle it than by half the country fighting the other half [0], which is a sentiment worth considering in the context of current events.
You as the consumer accepted the terms of service of the hosting site. So don't be surprised when things like this happen once you've violated the terms of service.
This will push towards a balkanization of the Internet at the platform level as people will want to self-determine the terms of service for the basis of their communication. Second boom spurred by corporate hubris. You might think there's nothing wrong with this hubris, depending on how comfy your pockets are when lined with their money. The grand majority of the world will not agree – they are not paid by them, when they are they are not treated fairly, and if they are treated fairly they are likely within a sociological bubble.
This will push towards a balkanization of the
Internet at the platform level as people will
want to self-determine the terms of service
for the basis of their communication.
This seems like a good outcome. Rather than arguing about whether or not Facebook and Twitter should allow various kinds of content, folks can choose the sorts of spaces to which they'd rather belong. And it's not like you have to pick one and only one. It just seems like a non-problem.
My feeling is that most people would not like to belong to a space where open racism and other abhorrent views are tolerated and encouraged.
Those that do can have their fringe spaces, but they shouldn't expect mainstream companies to help them do so.
At the level of speech, yes I agree with you. It becomes a problem when these commercial platforms meddle with government business and the social contract. Things everyone is supposed to have and equally. This means access to fundamental goods and services – health, banking, food and water, employment, emancipation, etc. Software only gets to eat the world if it involves itself in every industry and aspect of life, end to end. And no one makes money in startups unless you are a unicorn (unlikely) or acquired by a large existing player (more likely). Where does this go in a post-COVID recovery with 60% unemployment and the destruction of small business?
I never thought I would say this, but I have become a fan of Europe's approach to regulation. They've pushed for GDPR which at least gets us the ability to obtain and delete our data, they've acknowledged the right to repair, and as self-serving as it may be, they understand the ramifications of a unilateral takedown of the communications of a head of state – particularly the precedent it sets. They will likely continue their fight until they've setup their own alternatives to SV-based infrastructure.
Would Voltaire's famous "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" apply here?
Perhaps we need a better, faster judicial mechanism for taking down "major content". I'm not saying the government is a great solution for this problem, but IMHO it beats the status quo until we can find a better system.
Interesting examples - both Newspapers and TV Stations, for their public "platform" nature, don't enjoy certain libel protections that Social Media does.
FB's "platform" feature is largely listener-driven. You can still use FB and not listen to persons X, Y and Z. It's all posted by users, and users decide what to follow or read (except paid content). Not like TV Stations and Newspapers. That's what Social Media companies have been telling us for a while!
But if we want apply usual standards of platform rights and responsibilities to FB, we should then require it to also be responsible for what's posted there.
The pivotal book about freedom of speech, 'On Liberty' from J. S. Mill, is predominantly interested in freedom from societal suppression, not just government suppression:
"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own."
Mill may be the most passionate philosopher to defend this maximalist interpretation of free speech, but he is hopelessly out of date. Mill was a proponent of the 'marketplace of ideas' delusion that has been shown over the past few decades to be an illusion; Mill seems to think that knowledge, and only knowledge, emerges from arguments between dedicated opponents. These quaint bon mots from twee English gentlemen of the Victorian period are about as relevant to modern life as are their opinions about medicine, hygiene, education, and the role of women. Interesting as a historical artifact but not for much more.
You are saying that social censure is no longer something that humans need to worry about. That the concept of is a free exchange of ideas is antiquated, and that the principle of letting people learn from their debates was only valid a hundred years ago? All because of some tech algorithms?
This book had no bearing on the First Amendment's conception of freedom of speech, seeing as how it was written several decades after the formation of the U.S.
This book may have been pivotal to British utilitarianists, but it didn't have much, if any, impact on the U.S.
As an ex-Scientologist it saddens me that I have to tell HN readers this, but please read "On liberty" which explains why censorship is a flawed approach.
Before the U.S., nobody even thought free speech was possible. England was the closest, but their version of free speech was still subject to government censorship.
It was the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the Bill of Rights in particular, that established the doctrine that is today known as "freedom of speech."
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen expressed freedom of speech at roughly the same time as american Bill of Rights, and used formulation that is more general and does not restrict just the government:
"The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."
I saw a great analogy on Twitter:
Imagine Twitter as the anti-homosexual cake shop and Q-Anon/Trump/Radical Right as the couple who want a cake for their gay wedding.
Specifically, how does banning people for their actions work well as an analogy for banning someone for who they are (and you must take that for granted, because that's the legal frameworks opinions on the matter)?
That's also an even worse example because the supreme court found in favor of the cake shop.
I think it is the reverse. If a baker can't be forced to bake a rainbow cake (for members of a protected class) then AWS most certainly cannot be forced to provide service to people espousing violent political action (not a protected class.)
We can empower democratic institutions like the FTC to be able to take action in these cases, rather than leaving important decisions in the hands of private corporations.
> ...what Parler is doing should be illegal, because it should be responsible on product liability terms for the known outcomes of its product, aka violence. ... But what Parler is doing is not illegal, because Section 230 means it has no obligation for what its product does.... Similarly, what these platforms did in removing Parler should be illegal, because they should have a public obligation to carry all customers engaging in legal activity on equal terms. But it’s not illegal, because there is no such obligation. These are private entities operating public rights of way, but they are not regulated as such.
I'll simplify the issue for you. Your tribe won out in this particular battle but you're worried that may not always be the case. You should absolutely be worried about that.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
And what did start-ups do before AWS et al? Didn't they 'just': rent a rack, fill it with computers, get an ASN/IP block, and make it accessible by DNS?
I understand it's more 'agile' to just spin up instances as needed, but are we in a place that the Old Way can no longer work? (At least theoretically.)
Doesn't Stack Overflow (still?) run on their own hardware?
Parler.com is down too. It's been removed from DNS. DNS server is EPIK.COM ("Resilient domains"). Their DNS server is returning 0.0.0.0, instead of NXDOMAIN. The domain is still on Verisign, and they don't seem to be doing anything to it.
Lets not forget that Twitter just last month signed a new deal with Amazon to be hosted on AWS. Don't suppose this has anything to do with Amazon booting Twitter's largest competitor from the platform do you?
As for hateful rhetoric on Parler, that same hateful rhetoric exists on Twitter as well, don't fool yourself, it is only the fact that it is the left threatening the right that anyone allows it. Remember when Kathy Griffin held the bloody head of the President, or the current rise up and kill cops tweets you find everywhere on Twitter. Or the white people should all be dead tweets? Whether you agree to it or not does not therefore make hate speech. There is no clear cut defined line for hate speech to begin with. Anything can be declared hate speech, hell what I am saying now could be considered hate speech because I actually defend Parler and the people on its right to speech. At least then we can show examples of see this guy right here? He is a moron and believes in really dumb stuff. All they are doing by silencing these people is forcing them deeper underground where even more nefarious ideas and figures lie becoming more radicalized and more violent. But I guess that is what establishment wants, a perpetual idea to scare people with so that they give up even more freedom of thought.
On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them?
That has always been the history of media, see Hearst, Murdoch, Mercer, etc. The democracy of the early Internet was the exception from billionaires being in charge, not the norm.
Hearst used to be the voice of print media for decades.
The situation in radio is the same as it is on the internet: a few publicly-owned companies own a supermajority of the FM airwaves. If you wonder why you can change the station and hear the same song simultaneously on 5 different stations, it's because they're all owned by the same company.
In TV, for most of the past 2 decades, conservative billionaires have owned more than 75% of the public TV stations in the U.S. and Australia, and have been using that bully pulpit on behalf of conservatives during that time. Murdoch especially was instrumental in providing Trump (and other extremist candidates like Cruz) thousands of hours of free coverage during the 2016 campaign. The ownership groups would regularly interfere with local media and demand they either air or avoid topics as directed by ownership. Where was conservative outrage over billionaires deciding speech during this time?
I think one difference is that people inhabit and create social media in a way that they didn't with print and TV. A significant percentage of our lives is spent in these de factor public squares.
As a media company that 'creates' tweets to be displayed on CNN, etc., or read by logged out users, the analogy to traditional media is more straightforward.
As much as some of the Parler content was definitely awful, I've seen much worse on dialup BBS's and during the Great Cognitive Corruption of Usenet that started in the 80's and greatly accelerated onwards from there.
I'm more troubled by the total cessation of infrastructure as the mitigation of choice, rather than a temporary pause of services. During the pause, work with law enforcement to identify those specific posts that satisfy the Brandenberg "imminent" criteria, mark those as redacted, then return to service. Leaving open possible further work with law enforcement to share a feed and tie in redaction by future judicial decisions. I'm hoping I missed where it says that Parler was offered this choice and turned it down.
I'm even more troubled by the continued "let them eat cake" dismissive ennui of the chattering classes to the natural-world plights of the most radicalized members of the Trump supporters (and for that matter, to BLM supporters' plights treatment by other chattering classes), as they're pretty much at the "nothing left to lose" stage. Having been not simply ignored since the 70's onwards, but jeered at, derided, and mocked, instead of rehabilitating their life situations, has driven them into the arms of malign ideologies that openly lie to them fealty will improve their lot in life, when no other ideology will have them.
Just like in my enterprise work with my clients, when I hear extreme dissatisfaction, that's an opportunity for me to listen, empathize, then work together iteratively to solve problems. Instead, the US treats such expressions as opportunities to suppress. That only guarantees the pressure builds up elsewhere you cannot predict (in enterprise work, it often manifests as political chits being called in, and budget found where none was found before to completely pivot away and build the users' own solution, however imperfect it may be).
The US treats many of its have-nots (all along the political spectrum and not just along one vector) like it treats its prisoners. Brutalize with platitude-laden inaction instead of rehabilitate. It's no wonder the nation manufactures a dictatorship-loving consent.
I keep seeing this sentiment pop up here on HN and I've come at it in other posts.
All of the Trump supporters I know are upper middle class suburbanites who have been fairly well off for quite a while. Not sure I have any empathy for the contempt at all. I just don't buy this sob story what-so-ever.
I feel even less bad for violent extremists that have zero goals or demands except to destabilize everything because they believe whatever they see on the internet. There is no ideology for them to defend; only their right to hate. They only want the ability to have whatever they believe to be true to be the case even when it is not the case.
Ironically, if the people who were truly destitute and down-trodden could find some way to ignore the superficial partisanship that they've been sold and unite under social and economic policy we might have an actual movement on our hands. Unfortunately they've all been convinced that their superficial differences aren't superficial at all and that the other side is wrong; now it appears at any cost.
That's likely an artifact of the circles you run in. If you're on HN, then odds are really good you don't mill around in the lower socio-economic milieu many of the "foot soldiers" of radical movements draw upon, whichever part of the political spectrum we're discussing. Our very vocabulary distinguishes us as a separate "other"; when I speak with them, I have to consciously "tune into" their preferred vocabularies.
The financial bifurcation in the US and to a lesser extent in many other parts of the developed world is quite big, and I don't know how big it has to get before a competent demagogue gets traction in the US. The extremes in both the GOP and the DNC have just been handed a dangerous working template with Trump's history lesson. They just learned that extremism works, and it scales from local to national politics. It was not always so; one of the salient features of American politics in the past was just how consistently difficult it was to move the center any appreciable distance politically, the infamous "lumpentariat".
I believe this is because the US valuation landscape is fundamentally broken. This goes way beyond the economic or financial system. How we account for value over time is structured in very perverse incentive structures leading to the power law popping up in an all-over fashion when in the past it didn't use to dominate the landscape so much (it had localized instantiations but these were more local maxima than a general law more widely applicable). It's generating a "desperation deciles" that the means and averages of metrics sweep under statistical rugs.
I think these deciles are mattering now due to the law of large numbers. With "only" a 100M population base, such deciles are manageable, whether through coercion (unfavorable), assistance (nominal approach), or generationally long-term rehabilitative policy like public education (ideal). But I suspect there is something about near-billion- and billion-scale population governance our governing systems are not scaling to meet.
Also, a consistent theme I see in these kinds of discussions is similar to your "...if the people who were truly destitute and down-trodden could find some way to ignore the superficial partisanship that they've been sold and unite under social and economic policy...". In my humble and limited experience, the ones in the developed world are short-term focused on survival, putting food on the table and a roof over their heads, then with what limited discretionary time and cognitive energy left over, trying to find some happiness in a pretty bleak outlook as globalism systemically blocks their avenues of escape.
There are some limited avenues left, but the arithmetic doesn't support lifting enough of the desperation deciles out of poverty or functional poverty to matter through transitioning them to plumbers, welders, fitters, rig work, etc. While there are currently screaming needs for many of those skills, it isn't in the tens of millions scale we're needing (law of large numbers).
Poor people don't riot if their poverty is perceptibly, contiguously improving over time. Rich people don't incite malign ideologies if there aren't poor people who will act as foot soldiers absorbing the brunt of adverse consequences of swearing fealty to such beliefs. When there is a chicken in every pot, people will riot over sports teams, but not politics. Actual getting-policies-and-legislation-established-and-practiced politics is dead-ass boring to the vast majority, so getting this many people to even pay attention to just the cartoonish depictions of politics we see in the US now is a major signal. I currently don't think it is a good signal. And I suspect it is a more complex signal than "get the wrongthink upper middle class suburbanites to shut up". But I'm just a layperson throwing some brush strokes out there and wanting to hear thoughts from folks like you. I hope I'm wrong-wrong-wrong since I'm operating from very limited data. I don't know what the hell the on-the-money forecasters are making of all this, but in a world this big, I gotta believe there is someone or some entity out there that has had access to sufficient data and has been consistently right for a couple decades plus, and some very wealthy people are paying very dearly for their ongoing analysis.
"just like I wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS recruitment site, I don't really see any loss here."
There were about 10 million people on Parler before it was taken down. If you really think its comporable to an ISIS recruitment site, we got a much, much bigger problem here.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
Putting aside questions around whether or not a media filter has always existed in some form...
You're using social media hosted on EC2 instances that can be terminated vs instead of your local newspaper and other similar, less directly filtered options. That's the trade off. I don't really see anything unusual about it - a newspaper could fire a writer (or even hire writers that reflect a certain tone), and nobody batted an eye.
IF we proceed from the hypothesis that X is "a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism"
AND we want to ban the whole platform X,
THEN it would be logical to ban also all the layers down the technological stack: AWS, Google Play Store, Telecoms that transported the traffic etc.
Indeed, X platform has approximately the same responsibility as other platform layers and hence they all should be punished.
Another idea is to punish them proportionally to their ability to check the content published on the platform so that telecoms probably will not be punished at all because they are not able to read encrypted traffic.
Parler was not a "hate site." It's a social media platform that chose to take a reactive rather than proactive approach to policing illegal behavior, and experienced the growing pains of an up-and-comer advertising itself as a Twitter alternative that then had to deal with a flood of Twitter refugees during a political crisis.
The overwhelming vast majority of the people on Parler were simply normal people tired of what they perceived as a double standard in Twitter's treatment of conservatives as opposed to liberals, and wished to support a competitor.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
Parler was co-founded by an unelected billionaire as a "grassroots" way for the Mercers to push their ideology and their version of "acceptable speech". I don't really have any qualms with their power play getting shut down, and I don't think other businesses should be forced to support it.
It's like a newspaper, with editors deciding which letters to the editor to publish or not. Tech companies are really media companies, it's just that we don't consume dead trees anymore.
I don't think it's inconsistent to simultaneously believe:
* In general, tech companies should be less powerful and monopolistic.
* In this specific case, the tech companies used the power they have in a way that is overall beneficial to society.
Trump incited a violent insurrection on the US Capitol. If Senators and Representatives had not successfully escaped through tunnels before the rioters got to them, some of them would be dead. The fact that Trump is still in office after that shows that the US absolutely does not have a functioning legislative branch to check Trump's executive power.
In the absence of that, we need some entity powerful enough to push back against rising fascism and authoritarianism. I don't like that that power apparently has to be a handful of tech giant companies, but I'll take that (temporarily at least) over the US becoming a right-wing dictatorship.
> the US absolutely does not have a functioning legislative branch
I'm more concerned by this than anything else. In effect this results in calcified government, which can neither regulate tech companies (or anything) effectively, or serve as a check on executive power. People need to start moving to Wyoming and Alaska, yeah the weather sucks.....but we need to redefine 'civic duty'.
Have you seen Twitter, Reddit? It's filled with hate, conspiracy, radicalization and racism.
It's astounding how quickly people fall back to their dfault political leanings and stop being objective.
If they can do this to Parler citing politically motivated excuse to shut them down, what stops your company from getting booted off the internet because some of your users posted "lets blow stuff up"?
This sets a dangerous precedent going forward and it affects all of us regardless of your political spectrum. I get that AWS is an independent commercial entity that has its own terms but do you realize the problem of trusting billionaires and their monopoly to always do the right thing?
Tomorrow, the currents might change, and it could be you too.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist....
That's where I think people are missing the point to some extent. I'm taking on good faith what was reported by these companies - but their statements claimed they observed actual concrete planning to organise actual violence and further insurrection. Stopping speech is one thing. But the claim is it is not the speech they are worried about, it is the violence. The infrastructure is being used for more than speech. Removing the infrastructure is being done to impede those larger effects.
Does it change the flavor if I rewrite the phrase as
First they came for the murderers and I did not speak out ...
?
I don't think an argument of consistency really works here. Sure that has happened. And possibly in those countries they suffered consequences for their part in that. That does not mean they should not apply those principles in the US, in this instance. All these things are context specific, driven by judgement taking into account the whole circumstances.
It kills the argument that Parler is exclusively used for organizing violence although the insurrection part is where they will have a lot of trouble with specifically because they chose the worst possible place.
The problem is not that that's what it is "exclusively used for". The problem is that AWS asked them to moderate/remove content inciting/planning rape, torture and assassination of named public officials and others and Parler refused to do so.
> in an ideal world, we have laws applied even handedly to deal with this
We have laws protecting people from discrimination based on race, sexuality, etc. A grocery store can't refuse to serve people by race. Maybe we should expand these protected classes and make sure they apply to Internet businesses as well. I don't think we will (or should) expand them in such a way that Parler would be included, though.
This is exactly the point that the article misses. It's not contradictory to hold the views that "This was the right decision" and "This decision shouldn't have been up to private companies".
While there are significant improvements that could be made to our laws, the most significant failure here is one of enforcement. When Republican senators chose not to hear witnesses during the impeachment trial they took a significant step towards making Donald Trump a despot and legitimizing the alt-right. The recent strife is a direct consequence.
Come on. People keep citing "key events" that led to this. It's silly. The rioters would've not rioted if more witnesses had been heard? You think they even are aware of the trial proceedings?
If these witnesses were presented and heard, leading to (long shot maybe, but still) a conviction by the Senate of Trump, of course, things would have been very different today.
You can argue that the violent events of last week would have simply taken place early last year, but at least it might not have threatened peaceful transfer of power after the elections.
I believe the market will work it out. They overuse this power there will be consequences/outcry. We can figure it out when we get there. I'm not worried about any slippery slope.
Gonna disagree there a bit, semantically. Parler was a no-censorship social site, open to everyone. Extreme right-wing people flocked to it while very few people with other perspectives did. Parler being a hate site was not purely of their making, but rather a result of society's bias toward silencing opposing views. We need more people like Daryl Davis (a black jass musician who has converted hundreds of KKK members through kindness and friendship and music) so that censorship seems less and less like a good idea.
I'm not surprised at the end result, but the effort to retain free speech was a valiant one. Forcing extremist views underground doesn't silence them, it emboldens them and makes it harder to know what they're up to. Not a good idea.
Parler was moderated, and it was explicitly moderated for coherence with a right-wing/reactionary viewpoint. It was not a neutral, unfiltered platform.
I’ve been using Parler since June to discuss fairly mainstream views and talk about day to day life on a Twitter alternative. This week that option was taken away from me, without due process for me or the company in question. The alleged violations were nothing I hadn’t seen on Twitter, except Twitter regularly hosts even worse content, but I guess it has enough important people using it to crush alternatives on shaky claims and spotty evidence.
I suspect the bottom line is that general anonymity on the internet needs to be discarded.
No, wait, hear me out.
No moderation isn't acceptable. Really. (If someone wants to make a counter-assertion, I merely point to this site.)
Non-transparent, corporate moderation doesn't seem palatable to anyone. There are just too many pitfalls.
Independent moderation falls apart when you consider that different fora have different moderation requirements. (A forum for Cinderblock the obese cat is going to be very different from any kind of political or technical site.)
The best case seems to me to be case-by-case, transparent moderation with precedents, similar to common law. And ultimately, I expect transparent moderation to, in the extreme, go to the court system, so that's not necessarily a bad starting point.
Unfortunately, that falls apart when large numbers of participants are (including, say, moderators) are not speaking in good faith. I see two possible ideas to address that: First, to tie accounts to physical identities (but not necessarily disallowing the account to be effectively anonymous), to cut the number of bots, multiple accounts, etc. Second, to attach an account to a user's reputation (which does break anonymity). The results I see are to cut down on the volume of crap while ensuring users have skin in the game (with a side order of making legal action against stalking, harassment, and threats).
But what about those situations that require anonymity? Most of those already have legal and social protections: psychological, religious, and legal counseling, for example. I would support anonymity for those fora, which places responsibility for moderation on the fora, of course, as well as meaning that the moderation cannot be transparent.
One area does require special handling: whistleblowing. It does require anonymity, and does not have any current legal or social protections. That needs to be fixed.
But anyway, as a general rule, the default for social media should not support anonymity. The only way to free providers like Facebook, Reddit, this site, or AWS from responsibility for what is posted there is to place that responsibility on the actual posters---having no responsibility doesn't work, and giving that power to the discretion of the owner of the provider isn't acceptable.
There are some objections that I think I can answer, but this comment is getting too long for me, so I'll wait until anyone cares.
And no, the irony of Parler's requirement of photo-ids and (allegedly) SSNs isn't lost on me.
> but not necessarily disallowing the account to be effectively anonymous
With the average opsec of chat sites, would you bet on "effectively"? Ironically Parler itself just had a leak.
Even if a company currently has good opsec, it can be acquired and go downhill (or turn evil).
In the current climate, this comment could (and would) be construed as implicit support of Parler, with all the consequences. The rich left loves "consequences", except for themselves.
Yep, a random company would not be a good identity provider. (I've been up to my elbows in SAML2 before, so that's going to color my response.)
But suppose you set up a specific semi-public organization to act as the identity provider. (Like IANA? Maybe that's not a good example. :-)) Following something like a provably secure communications flow[1], the chat site gets a unique number representing the user. That's all they know about the user.
Alternatively, and with the approval of the user, the site gets the user's name or whatever the user wishes their online reputation to be associated with and can display that, for their comments to be taken seriously.
Ok, so let's take the example of Parler. Parler doesn't moderate its content, and actively resists attempts outside attempts to do so. However, anything illegal is still associated with individuals and the court system can force Parler to complete the link (that's the "effectively anonymous" approach, here), resulting in that user facing legal consequences. (This is opposed to the current system, where Parler could be technically designed to be unable to complete that link (Yeah, Parler are idiots.) and any kind of moderation relies on Parler's goodwill.)
AWS can continue to host Parler under the cover of a statement like "The POPO are keeping them in check." Or, AWS can kick them off based on measurable facts like "they got more than 10 or 15 subpoenas a day for three months".
As for your last paragraph...
Personally, I think Parler was a sewer filled with the morally and intellectually challenged who lack any sense of responsibility as citizens of the United States of America. (My understanding is that its users were limited to the US, btw.) I understand and agree with its vendor's decisions not to do business with them any more, in the same way I understand and agree with their decisions not to do business with ISIS recruitment sites.
The rich left loves "consequences", except for themselves. The rich right loves "consequences", except for themselves.
The poor love "consequences", except for themselves. Libertarians love "consequences", except for themselves. You love "consequences", except for yourself. I love "consequences", except for myself.[2] Everyone loves "consequences", except for themselves. Because humans suck.
[1] Yeah, I'm a formal logic guy.
[2] Except I don't really, schadenfreude aside. I seem find in myself a streak of moralism and an excessive sensitivity to fairness. It sucks. Even my schadenfreude doesn't extend to the Darwin awards.
Parler may sue to have their site reinstated, which they are, I don't see an issue here. If these companies were wrong to take them down the courts will force these companies to reverse it. I don't think they will though because multiple posts, comments etc on Parler apparently match the criteria for incitement which Parler insufficiently moderated and is not covered by 1st Amendment rights.
> do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech
Historically newspapers, television and radio have decided what is acceptable to be published through their media. There is no reason modern internet-based media should be any different.
Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers.
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.
Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
I’d go a step higher, the normative framework that informs our legislation is old and needs to be examined.
We support a market place of ideas because, it was argued that bad ideas would eventually be trumped by better ideas - only by examining bad ideas would we be able to move past them.
Part of that remains true today, but it does not account for the realities of mass communication.
The model ends up painting a passive, solitary image of ideas.
But ideas are neither passive, nor without context. Signal without context is noise.
Nor are brains neutral processors of information, they are vulnerable to psyops, malformed arguments, pressure, ignorance and emotion.
I have read propaganda, I have seen arguments which sound legitimate, but underlying it is xenophobia and hatred.
I know for a fact, that Popper was right and you cannot tolerate the intolerant.
They do not come to discuss or exchange ideas. They come to use your platform as an opportunity to gain followers.
And they use the gaps in our norms to create space for themselves.
Counter speech is not a panacea, it require conditions to work. If those conditions are not satisfied, the strategy fails.
The norms behind modern speech need to account for these trade offs.
The status quo comes with the trade off that partisanship will increase, more people will be radicalized.
This is the trade off, and people have to decide if they are willing to enjoy this trade off.
It is the same thing when they take down any other hate site: bye bye haters. Intolerance cannot be allowed to be free speech. Just like you can't walk into a club and yell fire without consequences. We have tragic historical events that set precedence.
> Intolerance cannot be allowed to be free speech.
That's just "I'm for free speech unless I disagree with the speech", right?
Who decides what's too intolerant?
We all love our Popper quotes but it's a very hard line to draw. Nearly any opinion can be explained at being somehow intolerant if you try hard enough.
Pretty much either you agree that Nazis are bad and those that are like them, regardless of the time period are also bad, or you're an idiot. Hate, violence, threats based there upon, are pretty cut and dry.
The whole do on to others as you would have them do on to you is not a new concept. And act like a terrorist and do terrorist acts, makes you a terrorist. And we don't support them. In the end if you want to hate people because it makes you feel better, sure go ahead, just keep your mouth shut and don't act.
My concern is not that AWS should be forced to host content they don't want. It's that AWS (and Apple, Facebook, and others) have misrepresented what they do.
It's no shock that DailyKos shouldn't have to host pro-Trump content. Nor should /theDonald have to host pro-Bernie content. We all agree that people can choose who to associate with, and that free association is important.
But AWS (and Facebook and others) didn't say "we're sites that present only one kind of content" the way /theDonald and DailyKos did. They presented themselves as universal tools for people to express themselves, build their own sites, install apps, etc.
So it comes as a shock when AWS says "we actually only want to support sites that present views that Jeff Bezos thinks are reasonable." And when Apple says "you can only download apps on your phone that we think do a good enough job moderating." And when Facebook bans people for posting wrong opinions.
The government can't and probably shouldn't force AWS to host content that Bezos doesn't agree with. It would be Amazon's right to host only content that is pro-Trump, or equally Amazon's right to only host content that is anti-Trump. But when Amazon presents something as a neutral utility but secretly enforces different rules, we can and should criticize them.
That's true even if all the content being removed today is garbage. I haven't seen any "worthwhile" content that's been affected by the recent moves, and I have never heard of any valuable speech on Parler. But I am still concerned that Apple gets to decide what apps I can install on my phone because they don't like the content. For every Apple (managed in California by socially liberal periople) there's a Walmart (managed in Arkansas by social conservatives) that will take the same powers and use them in a different way. Walmart is legally free to remove pro-BLM books from their online bookshelves, but we can and should criticize them if they do.
I feel like erotic, kink and LGBTQ+ communities got hit with all the new rules. Over the last few years they've been kicked out of Tumblr, now Instagram, Twitch and Youtube aren't really happy with non PG13 content, Apple refusing to publish Fetlife app for years or Onlyfans, Pornhub deleting all content from non-partners and so on...
Honestly feels like just companies are trying to maximize their profits and "don't be evil" became just an old memory.
They aren't deciding what free speech is acceptable, they're deciding what free speech is acceptable on their private platforms.
People are pretending like the platforms that deplatformed the group inciting violence are the only platforms on the internet that they could have used, they're not - they're not monopolies in regards to that. They are however the most convenient platforms to use because of various reasons, however we're not talking about having a right to convenience - we're talking about having the right to free speech, which everyone still does in America and on the internet.
Some advice: if you're going to have a mob boss and wannabe tyrant like Trump and rally your followers on a platform, I'd recommend using, depending on, technology layers of owners who are aligned with you and okay with inciting of violence; Trump goes on Fox News to say whatever the fuck he wants to millions of people while saying he's being prevented from free speech - come on now people, let's come back to reality and stop getting sucked into the gaslighting.
Your definition of monopoly is wrong. Microsoft was judged by the court to be abusing its monopoly power by bundling IE with Windows and making it difficult to uninstall even though users could still install competing browsers if they spent the extra effort.
There's no natural monopoly that you can't find an alternative to if you're willing to spend enough effort.
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech
Billionaires like the Mercer family, who fund Parler?
You're on a site run as part of the outreach for a VC firm where the owners are best buds with Peter Theil, Facebook board member, early Trump backer, a billionaire who literally hunted for a chance to sue a news organization out of existence because he didn't like a story they wrote about him; a site where a large number of the companies they fund and people who comment are intimately involved with AdTech and/or social media.
And you're only now noticing that billionaires have an unreasonable sway on discourse?
You didn't notice that not only does Rupert Murdoch own print press, book publishing, an TV all over the English-speaking world? You didn't notice the Mercer family also setting up Cambridge Analytica and being principal backers of Brexit?
I would agree - what's interesting to me is that taking Parler off the mainstream platforms like Google and Apple app stores though will probably only contribute to the radicalization of its content.
Essentially, these companies are probably just contributing to the thing they are against. But I guess so long as their hands aren't getting dirty they get to pretend like they're doing the right thing and taking the moral high ground.
> On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's gone, and it took far too long to deal with it. And just like I wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS recruitment site, I don't really see any loss here.
(I'm going to leave aside the unfounded assertion that Parler was a "hate site." If it is, then every popular website is a "hate site," from Facebook and Google all the way down. Scores of prominent people who aren't hateful but for bizarre Left-wing constructions of the word "hate" use Parler to communicate with millions of people who are themselves not hateful conspiracy theorists.)
I always feel there's an unjustified logical jump on the part of authoritarian sentiments such as this. The argument seems to be, "X hosts hateful content that it refuses to remove. If we remove X, then we will have reduced hate."
This doesn't make much sense. Has anyone's mind actually changed because of Parler? It makes even less sense for conspiracy theories, where censorship makes conspiracy theorists feel like they're on the right track.
I remember looking up some moon landing hoaxer content on YouTube probably five to eight years ago. There was a lot of it on YouTube, but then YouTube also recommended some debunking videos (a few of which had been made specifically in response to the conspiracy theory videos themselves). The debunking videos were just frankly more persuasive. (The only issue with my little experiment was that the "Algorithm" recommended me conspiracy nonsense for a few weeks after.) There were no passive-aggressive, condescending propaganda boxes, no appeals to the authority of the media or legal system, no "fact checks." Just arguments for and against.
This is not to say that people can't do bad things with speech. We have stories like a random lynch mob forming in India over a viral series of videos shared via WhatsApp.[1] There are other stories like this. All are appalling. And technology has removed frictions that existed before to keep these things from happening.
But let's not forget that the world in which speech is restricted is much, much scarier. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was perpetrated by the most powerful members of Rwandan society, who used their monstrous power to slaughter Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus who spoke against the killings.
In the South under Jim Crow, speech was also violently suppressed with the aid of the states, who turned a blind eye to terrorist groups like the Klan going after black southerners or even white "race traitors" with lynching.
"Censorship, but only for the bad stuff" seems to be an unworkable system. People get riled up, and the consequences can be horrific, but they seem worse in a regime with heavy censorship that doesn't allow a safety valve for the bad ideas.
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. It's tedious, extremely repetitive, and invariably turns nasty. It's not what this site is for and it destroys what it is for.
I think your statement is the reverse of what was implied.
Doesn't libertarianism posit a weak central government, shedding all responsibilities (that can be shed) to the free market, where competition ensures the best outcomes, choices for all, etc?
If that's true, the current situation of wealthy corporations controlling various social media platforms is... the desired outcome?
The fact that competition is better in areas such as motor vehicles, due to physical standards like roads that work for everyone, lack of network effects, and so on, is beside the point. It isn't the government's fault that Orkut and MySpace didn't compete well against Facebook, or that Parler entered a service contract with another corporation that decided their TOS was violated.
This will all be sorted out in the courts, interpreting contracts which are the ultimate source of truth in the libertarian world view. Fear nothing, justice will prevail. If Parler was not in violation of the contract, they will be compensated. If they were, too bad, they failed to adhere to the contract they agreed to. They deserve to fail and the NEXT competitor to take up the mantle will have incrementally better information and chances to succeed.
That's like saying "Humans produce carbon dioxide, cars produce carbon dioxide, lets study human anatomy to learn how cars work".
OP's statement of "this is what we get" strongly implies that the current state of things is somehow the result of libertarian policies.
There is nothing libertarian about our government. That's why I bring up the extremely high spending and unjust laws we have. Blaming libertarianism for anything happening in the world requires some serious mental gymnastics.
China also has large corporations, should we blame libertarianism for all the human rights offences happening there?
Please stop posting political battle comments and flamebait to HN. This kind of dross is what's destroying this site, and we have to ban accounts that do that.
Can't you disagree with a philosophy without calling it a cancer? It's this warping of language, 1984-style as in the original comment, that is the biggest problem.
It might not make you a communist, but I'd say definitely a statist at least, of which there are both left and right leaning flavors.
If libertarianism and individualism are "a cancer" and "literal poison" then then they are the most benign and beneficial ones I've ever heard of. Of course any ideology has a spectrum of interpretations and people involved, but the core ideas of "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" (and maybe also "leave me alone") seem pretty good to me.
Nobody would bat an eye if you were banned from HN or reddit for hate speech. Why should a platform be any different? If my customer started using my services to spread Nazism, I'd ban them too. Let's say I was a baker - would it be reasonable that I be compelled to draw swastikas on cakes? Obviously, that's absurd! It is equally absurd to demand that other businesses provide platforms for behavior they don't condone.
Freedom of speech is freedom from oppression by government. Parler isn't being oppressed, they just aren't being given a platform to oppress others by private citizens and corporations. Well, not anymore, although lots of corps made some money from them while they could.
I think the issue is that the town square that the first is supposed to protect doesn’t exist anymore. The town square is now Twitter, and valid or not, the de-platforming of a lot of conservatives is going to have a lasting backlash against tech companies.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see GOP resurgence in 2022, along with another very real attack on section 230.
With the town square metaphor: while you cannot be prosecuted for what you say in the square, you can be persecuted by your civilian peers; folks may stop speaking to you, or begin informing others of your nature.
Twitter et al booting persons from their services is the neighbour slamming their door in your face, or the baker refusing to do business with you.
The town square is tcp/ip, not the services on top of it.
Twitter is not the town square since real town squares are owned by the State. They are public spaces for all and, let me point out, that you usually need a permit to speak or have a rally. So they are not that free as everyone thinks.
Twitter is more like a mall owned by a large corporation and while there is some trouble there, they will kick people off the property that are too offensive. If you try to start an insurrection at a mall, you will be kicked out and banned.
It is in Twitters and mall owners best interest to start insurrections on their properties because there will be ramifications for allowing that to happen, that is not good for business.
Comments that are acceptable on Parler: "Personally I'm hoping for war I'd love to crush leftist skulls and rip out their spines. Rally your soy boys. Your Pantifa and BLM wannabe gangsters. I'll bath myself is leftist blood and drink from your skullcaps."
Comments that are unacceptable on Parler: Pretending to be a cow owned by Devin Nunes
What makes you think the former is acceptable on Parler? Are there documented cases where something like that was reported and Parler refused to take it down?
Isn’t the solution pretty simple? Make platforms choose, either only remove illegal material, or be regulated as a publisher. Would take care of calls to violence and freedom of speech.
Would also put a huge burden on small businesses. I run a little forum for by business. I want to remove spam and off-topic posts, so I'll be classed as a publisher, but I don't want to be subject to restrictions of "Publishers may be held liable for omissions, mistakes, and transgressions of their authors". What if a user quotes somebody else's words but doesn't use proper quotation marks? My problem!
Well, marking posts as spam or off-topic isn’t the same thing as blocking someone though, so there should be a middle ground.
And in any case, it seems pretty straightforward to forbid platforms from banning PEOPLE, it should only be possible to ban utterances. At the very least, Trump should have a legal right to be unbanned as long as he doesn’t post things that Twitter doesn’t allow.
You can still say what you want. It’s just harder to say DIVISIVE HATEFUL RACIST INCITING VIOLENCE against blank. (Caps because I don’t have italics on phone, not yelling). I control what’s on my private network. Issue is people “want” to use these networks to spread their “#%$&£x” to the largest audience. These bad faith arguments, because you can’t come to “my house” and cause your trouble. No you don’t have that right. Do it at “your house”. Can someone explain how Twitter/Amazon/Apple/Google owe me?
> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech
Yes? I mean, look where you're posting. HN is very heavily moderated. Check out dang's post history for all the work he has to do. HN has very clear ideas on what speech is "acceptable" and what is not, and they are significantly more complicated than the "don't incite political violence" standard being enforced against Parler.
I mean, really. Parler failed to clear even the simplest, most straightforward, most consensus- and norm-driven ideals of how public discourse is supposed to work. And they didn't really get "moderated" any harder than any of us would have.
Yet we still have to rally behind them as the standard-bearer for megacorp censorship? Really? Can't we wait for at least a tiny bit of evidence that they're misusing their power first?
So he goes on and on [0] about how great Parler is/was. But what I've seen reported is that:
. You were shadow banned until the right users voted you up
. To get more privileges, you had to scan photo ID
. Influencers were being paid to post "organic" material without disclosing it https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/how-parler-app-plans-to-make-money.html
So it was constructed as an echo chamber where people were being paid to push products.
[0]"In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants."
This sounds a lot like Fox News claim of being "Fair and Balanced". You might think their point of view is fair but there's no way that it's balanced.
While obviously a timely example for Glenn to refer to, it is a strange counter example for him to refer to when he makes arguments that "Silicon Valley" is attempting to manipulate a narrative.[0][1][2] One could argue that a platform that is explicitly against the average political opinion of SV's employee base may be at a disadvantage, I am not sure Parler was the hill to stake that claim on.
While I generally disagree with Greenwald, he makes a good point here:
> So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?
No, this is not a good point. Parler is a one-purpose app that existed solely (and was moderated by its own employees) to foment a chamber of hateful, violent rhetoric. Facebook and YouTube are used for many things by many people. Also Facebook and YouTube remove those kinds of content (even if they don't do a great job of it, they spend a whole lot of money employing a lot of people to get rid of it). Parler moderators removed those people who disagreed with the violent MAGA rhetoric. They're just not comparable, and pretending they are is ridiculous.
I signed up and used Parler and I was never hateful or violent. Its purpose was not that but to have a place where conservative voices (or anyone for that matter) could speak freely without the risk of being silenced by Twitter, Facebook etc. because your views didn't align with the left.
Can you give some (just 1 is fine) examples of people being silenced because their views didn't align with the left? I have yet to see a single one. I see people that were silenced for
- Denying the current covid-sars-2 pandemic
- Direct calls to violence
I have seen people that were "fact-checked" (which is itself discussion, not silencing) for claiming that the 2020 election result is fraudulent.
None of this is silencing because your views don't align with the left. If you believe covid is a hoax created by George Soros or that Bill Gates bought votes in the 2020 election, your views don't align with reality.
Milo had a book deal and was scheduled to speak at CPAC until someone uncovered a podcast of him defending the molestation of 13 year olds as a normal coming of age ritual.
I am not sure whether to assume you have not researched how he lost his platform or if you feel that defending molestation is "views that don't align with the left".
Milo was not defending molestation, context matters. If anyone that has made stupid statements in the past should be removed from social media then it's time to just shut it all down.
"I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim. Between the ages of 13 and 16, two men touched me in ways they should not have," he began a news conference in Manhattan. "This isn’t how I wanted my parents to find out about this either.”
"My experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say almost anything on the subject, no matter how outrageous," he said. “I do not advocate for illegal behavior...I believe the age of consent is right.”
No, Milo did defend molestation, and then he took it back and apologized for it.
Although I think Milo is rude, bigoted, and unapologetic, he is a victim, and I agree that he should have plenty of latitude to speak on the subject. What he said in the podcast was inappropriate, and based on his apology, Milo seems to agree.
"The law is probably about right. It's probably roughly the right age; it's probably about okay. But there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age. I certainly consider myself to be one of them." - Milo Yiannopoulos
Seems like the example meets your criteria. There was nothing in his statements that were inherently illegal and so cancelling him for legal speech is an example of the Left's overreach among silicon valley decision-makers. This article[1] mentions more such far-right personalities that were banned for more traditional far-right views.
Milo losing his book deal was not chosen by "the Left" or "silicon valley decision-makers" as they are not the publishing company. People have lost book deals for much less. Such is business. He lost his Twitter and Facebook for harassing people and his official Youtube is doing just fine.
> Traditional far-right views
Can you give an example of a traditional far-right view any of the 3 people in the article were banned for?
The article mentions Alex Jones and Laura Loomer. They were taken off of social media repeatedly encouraging followers to harass people (mobbing). Encouraging/organizing mobbing will even get you banned from 4chan. The number of sites that allow such behavior is exceedingly low, and Alex Jones got several chances to stop before being taken off of youtube and facebook.
I have no problem with losing a book deal when you say something that endangers your ability to sell books. Regarding social media, I was referring to him being banned from Facebook for unspecific reasons[1]
Regarding Laura Loomer, her twitter ban doesn't appear to constitute harassment by any reasonable definition[2]. Even if we grant she harassed Omar on twitter, that doesn't justify being banned from payment processors, uber, and food delivery services[3].
Democratic politicians have been hounding Facebook and YouTube since 2016.
Perhaps you mean why did we focus so much of our efforts on a single website? In this very moment, it's because this website was used to coordinate the efforts of a national group of potential terrorists. The pot boiled hard and fast.
Charlottesville was a proving ground. Trump's singing to white nationalists, violence against "the other side", casualti(es).
In this particular case Trump directly ordered the attack. (At first I put quotes on order and attack, but alas no quotes needed, it's what it is.) But he has been flaring these flames since ... that fucking birth certificate dog whistle.
The reason Parler is popular in the first place is because YouTube and Facebook are no longer viable options for this kind of hate speech. That fight already concluded.
"while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis"
I am not sure this is true? The point could have been made without resort to hyperbole stretching into disingenuousness. What about that other platform should not be the issue - social network apps/sites are all subject to and propagate abuse.
The question is, was this an exception, or they changed policy, and will they start to enforce similar rules with regards to those bigger platforms/groups?
You ban people from Twitter they go to Parler, you destroy Parler they go somewhere else where no opposite point of view will ever be herd and no dialog can ever happen. This is how you create domestic isis. Is there a patriot act 2.0 already in the making to guard US from this self made media sponsored disaster?
Yeap. Let’s make sure all Parlers users end up on q and see what happens? You understand that a larger number of radicals will eventually produce radically different results than the yahoos you mentioned? Or do you think the Viking guy who is not eating in prison because food is not organic was the real threat?
Does anybody know a place where moderate conservative can have adult conversations? No Q-Anon nonsense. No white supremacy. No baseless accusations against political opponents. A place where people carefully consider their positions, post research from reputable sources, and avoid the absolute nuttery that infests all of the conservative spaces on Reddit, Parler, Facebook, Twitter, etc...?
One of the reasons moderate Republicans are going the way of the Dodo is they have no place to form a community. It seems like every time someone starts one the entire place immediately veers off into whackjob city.
This feels like it's confusing cause and effect. It seems more likely to me that there is no place for moderate Republicans to form community because moderate Republicans are declining in number. Communities do not create the people, people create the communities.
No, because "moderate conservative" is not a stable political position, at least as far as social issues go. It really consists of people who are comfortable with things how they are and who oppose liberal attempts to remove unprincipled exceptions to liberalism. Liberals have a vision of what they are fighting for, conservatives only have something they are fighting against. The one exception to this which has had some political success is abortion, because it has been successfully framed as fighting for the rights of the unborn.
Consider the "moderate conservative" opinion 100 years ago on women having the vote; compared to today's moderate conservative. Or on segregation 60 years ago. Or on gay marriage 20 years ago. Or on transgender issues today vs what will be considered "moderate conservative" 20 years from now.
The only cohesion they do have is on economic issues, but people are finally starting to realize that it's been a grift all along, perpetuated by big business and conservative establishment elites. "We'll pander to you on social issues (and then fold like a house of cards) in exchange for moving your job overseas, importing workers to reduce labor costs, and lowering taxes on the rich"
So given this loss of trust in the conservative establishment, people find themselves rootless and end up finding a community in this sort of nuttery (whether it be Q-Anon or ethnostate fantasies). Barring a return to throne-and-altar conservatism (which seems unlikely) I don't see it getting better any time soon.
It doesn't have to be a "stable" political position for people to have principled discussion. In fact I'd expect any community to drift as the norms of society change. Granted, Conservatives should resist such change because that's what it means to be conservative, but it doesn't mean you set a marker in the sand and never deviate. That would be reactionary.
> In fact I'd expect any community to drift as the norms of society change.
But then, you've already conceded that progressivism is right (but perhaps moving too fast for your comfort) - so what is the point? If you know that whatever you're defending will be seen as beyond the pale of civilized discourse within a generation?
Imagine a moderate conservative forum dedicated to principled discussions created in 2000. Everyone there agrees that gay marriage is a bad idea. Now teleport that forum into 2021 - do contemporary moderate Republicans denounce it as a hotbed of homophobia and profusely apologize for their posts there 20 years ago? Or do they hold it up as an example of a community of moderate conservatives dedicated to principled discussions of the issues?
Would Twitter/FB have lived up to these standards early on?
It seems like any new social platform could be pretty easily crushed under these standards. So the only way we will see a new social media platform is if they build their own data centers, and can grow without having an app.
And maybe they need their own browser, maybe client hardware like phones and tablets?
It seems unlikely that a startup would succeed under these conditions. So we better be happy with our current overlords (and whatever humans happen to be in charge of those companies in the future).
This is what happens if you build a platform on somebody else's platform: you're subject to their whims. Any and all people who make their living off of YouTube understands this, and they intentionally diversify so they have options if their primary platform becomes unavailable.
Outside of that, though, I couldn't care less that fascist organization platforms are being tanked. Free speech as an abstract principle has been used as cover for fascism in the U.S. for the better part of the past half century.
A few years ago, the power was cut to the broadcasting studio of Navalny's organization (a Russian opposition guy), while they were live covering the anti-corruption protests. I guess "this is what happens if you build a platform on somebody else's platform", instead of running your own power plant!
Cutting power to a studio is no more likely to harm someone/deprive them of necessities of life than cutting off the cloud access. Why not "needing to run your own generator" then? Maybe the power company just didn't want to be associated with the protest coverage.
It's time to treat monopolistic/oligopolistic entities providing these services more like utilities; perhaps not as regulated as power companies, but on the same spectrum.
My concern is how far down "somebody else's platform" goes. Twitter bans Trump: they're a platform, they can ban whoever they want. AWS bans Parler: they're a platform, they can ban whoever they want. Verizon is an ISP... are they a platform? Can they ban whoever they want? GoDaddy is a domain registrar. Are they a platform? Can they ban whoever they want?
Yes, this is the different between utilities and other forms of business. If you think everybody is entitled to cloud compute resources, then your argument holds water.
Here is the most important paragraph in the article. Can anyone confirm or refute the part about Parler's TOS and moderation?
It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
I cannot; however, I heard the CEO of Parler say on a podcast on Jan 7 that moderation decisions were made by (I’m paraphrasing as closely as I can) “a random jury of the user’s peers. If the jury decides the content doesn’t break the TOS, it remains”.
Which generally requires collusion. There was no collusion. These are independent actors in a competitive space that arrived at the same conclusion independently.
People want free speech. You get free speech so long as your speech doesn’t unduly impinge on other’s liberties. That is the trade off we accept when we exchange the rule of force for the rule of law in a self governing, democratic society.
People are not complaining about business practices. People are complaining about not being able to say whatever they want over whatever medium they want even if other people get dead.
I suppose that the article is talking about monopolies in their respective market (namely iOS app stores, Android app store, and "the cloud").
Unless you're quite tech savvy, you can't sign up for Parler anymore by using a competitor. So, while I mostly disagree with Greenwald, I don't think this characterisation is unfair.
Ya why would AWS have any reason to stop providing service to a customer who didn’t follow their terms of service and took pride in a festering a community of terrorists who are now making credible threats to attack aws and recently tried to overthrow the US government in a violent coup.
The mental gymnastics of the people defending Parler on here are wild. If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
Please make your substantive points without posting in the flamewar style. We're trying to avoid the latter here because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious, thoughtful conversation about interesting things.
When accounts build up a track record of flamewar, snark, political/ideological battle, and other things that break the site guidelines, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise this place will be engulfed by hellfire and then become scorched earth. Those things may be exciting and/or activating for a while, but they're not interesting.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful. You can still express your views in that spirit, as many other HN users have been showing.
I was initially troubled by the booting of Parler, but I've come around to seeing AWS's position as similar to the payment processors who don't want to deal with porn sites. Doing business with some clients creates risks. Traditional players don't want to deal with risky clients, but there are specialized services who are willing to take them. However, they are more expensive for the same nominal service (because of the risks.) While the payment processors are dealing with frequent charge-backs, the risks I'd see in hosting Parler are more about liability and litigation.
There are clearly hosting providers (like Epik) who would be willing to take them on as clients from the start. If you read AWS's acceptable use policy, and then read the Parler's TOS, it is clear AWS was a terrible match as a hosting provider. By my read, AWS doesn't want to deal with anything that can be construed as "harmful" where Parler only forbade directly illegal behavior. (And it is apparent they barely felt a responsibility to moderate even to that level.) This was never going to work. Jan 6 brought things to a head, but as I see it, this business relationship was doomed from the start.
Completely not true. ISIS, Hamas, and other Wahhabistic groups still maintain a very large presence on these platforms. A little closer to home, riots and looting were planned in real time on Twitter. It's admittedly a very hard problem to solve.
In 2018 Twitter banned over 1 million ISIS linked accounts. Prior to that they banned hundreds of thousands. Without much of a peep from the free speech fundamentalists.
Back in 2014, ~50K accounts were posting support for ISIS. Parlor got one day's notice. How much notice did twitter get before the liberal consensus was to remove it from the Internet for inciting hate?
Not true. AWS has been working with Parler for "several weeks" [0] to help it comply with their TOS. Not only did they fail to remove the posts Amazon provided, the calls for violence on their platform got worse during that time.
If you're really going to go down this line of argument - do you think it's incorrect to say that AWS banned Parler because the Parler team can still 'use' AWS through twitter?
I'm not sure what the point of this nitpicking is. The context of this conversation is someone asking for an example of ISIS using AWS, in a conversation about the capitol hill rioters "using" AWS. And my response is that they indeed use it in the same way. Now, if you want to argue that this doesn't in fact constitute "using", then the capitol hill rioters didn't use AWS either, and AWS isn't responsible for them.
I think we have different reads of the root comment of this thread. Yoav[1] was talking about the contract between AWS and Parler as corporate entities. I'm not sure how you made the leap from organizational relationships to individuals using services implemented on AWS.
That's why I asked about members of Parler still being able to "use" AWS through other AWS-hosted services. I don't get what you're driving at.
> AWS isn't responsible for them.
Again, I'm not sure I understand what point this is responding to. No one is claiming AWS is responsible for the capital hill folks. They are claiming that Parler bears some responsibility and did so in such a way that violated AWS' policies. So AWS banned them.
I do not know if Twitter uses AWS now but it looks like they will be, I believe that Parler mentioned it in the lawsuit it filed.
'Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN, Amazon Web Services announced Tuesday that Twitter Inc. would be using its cloud services to support its delivery of users' timeliness.'
This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist" and denied basic rights like expression and put on no-fly lists. Anti-government rhetoric is routinely suppressed, fire-walled, and forced out. Are you sure that is what you want?
And then when you take up arms and commit sedition you get to act all surprised that actions have consequences. The people who invaded the US Capitol building ARE TERRORISTS. Pure and simple. They should be put on no-fly lists and denied basic rights like the right to exist outside of a small cell (after they are tried and convicted for their crimes.)
This is what it feels like to live in a country which tries to uphold the rule of law. Sorry if it inconveniences you, but not sorry.
I absolutely agree that those who advocated for violent acts should be investigated and punished. Go after those authors on Parler. But shutting down an entire platform, which is used by lots of other people who are NOT violent, on the basis of some violent posts? You can find far worse content on Facebook, are you going to advocate shutting down the whole platform?
Facebook and Twitter do not have the violent posts solved by any measure. But at the very least they make the gestures and put money towards trying to fix it.
Parler has been vocal that they have no plans solving it. If they had at least showed some vague plan to resolve it, they would have earned some sympathy.
Did you see the images of these so called terrorists? They have committed an illegal act by trespassing on government property but to call them seditious terrorists is a bit too far fetched. They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.
I'm not American, but what I saw on my TV last week was an outgoing President organising an armed mob outside the seat of Government and inciting them to disrupt the democratic transition of power. There were people inside the building that were clearly intending to take hostages.
There was a gallows out the front.
In any other nation on earth, this was an attempted coup. Just because it failed doesn't mean that those involved didn't have intent.
Well, it was a very incompetent coup. If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters. He shouldn't have said "now go home". It's a very half-hearted coup on the part of the president.
Note well: I am far from saying that Trump is innocent. He absolutely should have known that his words would incite violence. In the most charitable light possible, he's still clueless about the effect his words would have. (I could kind of see his intent being to use the mob to pressure Congress, so that they would be inclined to see it Trump's way. He may have intended the mob surrounding the Capitol, but not the breach... in a very charitable interpretation. Even in that interpretation, though, he still very dangerously misjudged the effects of his words.)
And Trump may well be guilty of more than that. He may well be guilty of attempting a coup to remain in power, and just not have had any idea of how to do it right. (I prefer that rogues be incompetent...)
The Armed Forces [1], Capitol Police [2], and other law enforcement agencies around the country are investigating the participation of their members. It's going to take a while to sort everything out, but I'm betting it's more sinister than it appears give the gallows, flex cuffs, the former AF officers in tacticool gear, and the general rhetoric.
> If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters.
There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.
> He shouldn't have said "now go home".
I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?
Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone attempting an actual coup.
But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...
> They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.
Clowns who beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher, planted pipe bombs, and roamed the capitol with sidearms and zip ties to take hostages.
Not denying that part of the group became violent. They should absolutely charged with whatever crimes they committed. But a lot of the reaction to them is a coordinated theatre by the left to make it seem much much worse that it was. Part of the strategy to make things seem worse then they are is to use words like sedition, insurrection etc
They didn't "become" violent. It was an organized attempt to prevent the lawfully elected head of state from being certified and overthrow American democracy using violence.
Even the least violent among them committed a felony by entering the Capitol building. That someone else broke the window they entered doesn't make their entry any less illegal.
Inserrectionists who stormed the capitol to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves
> to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves
There's no contradiction there, despite your efforts to portray one.
People often take glee in and celebrate violence even as they commit it against others.
The german language has even given us a word for it: schadenfreude.
Thanks to the lies from the politicians and media personalities they follow, primarily the president, many of these people also fantastically believed that they were overturning a fraudulent election, and were therefore celebrating what they thought was an imminent success in that objective.
Some of my favorites are the little old lady carrying a little American flag, the people walking in a line between the roped off areas and the folks cleaning up after a couple of trash cans got overturned.
Seemed incredibly tame compared to the riots that went on over the summer that had massive amounts of looting and had buildings burnt to the ground.
I dunno. I think once you build a gallows, hang a noose on it,
and start chanting about hanging someone as you push against barricaded doors where that person is sheltering, tame is no longer is quite the right word.
This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist"
There's a big difference between criticizing the government and storming the capitol.
Talk all you want. Engage in constructive debate. Run for office. Change laws through the system. All of those things are OK in the United States.
Dragging a police officer down the stairs and beating him with a flag pole is not OK in the United States.
There is a qualitative difference between concretely planning an attack and the things you describe. I am taking the platform's statements at face value, but what I understand is that they observed concrete, specific planning to coordinate a physical attack on US democratic institutions. In that sense, this is not about free speech at all. The actions taken were done with intent of preventing violence, not speech.
Okay, sure, China is scary _but Parler was literally doing those things_. This was not some overreaction, this is not ostracizing mere disagreeing philosophies, this is not like Trump calling the media the enemy of the people. They literally were plotting kidnapping, murder, and sedition. This is an appropriate response.
I can show you screenshots of tweets that are as bad or worse. The difference is that Twitter actually has built up, over time, the ability to moderate fairly well.
The value of Twitter isn't really that you can post and view small snippets of text. It's that they've developed technology that allows them to effectively moderate.
Any poorly moderated site eventually becomes associated with the right.
Agreed. One Parler, one could search for terms like "execute" or "hang" and get thousands of results. It was a vile place. The owners of the site have chosen to die on the hill of protecting that as "free speech".
> If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
This is the accusation without evidence that I'm talking about. It's not an accusation against random parler users, but an accusation against those of us who do not think that AWS should decide what's allowed on the internet.
That anything is justified as long as it's done in the same of anti-fascism is indeed a coherent principle, though not exactly one with a noble history. The official name of the Berlin Wall was Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart[1].
>>Not even an attempt to formulate any coherent principle, just acccusations of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism, without any evidence whatsoever.
The US Capitol got breached and looted by deranged insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021. There was a guy walking with a Confederate flag inside the building. And they were all supported and incited by many prominent conservative figures, including current politicians. Including the President himself.
What other evidence do you need that these people have been acting on bad faith, hypocrisy and racism?
Come on now. The President and prominent republicans and their allies fanned enough flames by claiming election was stolen. Its not one speech or one instance, its the collective narrative thats been going around since the time it was clear that Trump is going to be on the losing side.
If I convince you falsely and knowingly that someone has tortured and murdered your child and I tell you "we can't let that happen, the courts won't do anything, we have to fight much harder, he's at this restaurant right now, you should go" and you go and kill or maim that person, am I not responsible in your mind?
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder. …
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. … And I actually — I just spoke to Mike. I said: ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.’”
“I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of the U.S. Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Josh Hawley. … Senators have stepped up. We want to thank them. I actually think, though, it takes, again, more courage not to step up, and I think a lot of those people are going to find that out. And you better start looking at your leadership, because your leadership has led you down the tubes.”
“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. …
“You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen. These are the facts that you won’t hear from the fake news media. It’s all part of the suppression effort. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. …
“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
---
This is incitement, pure and simple. I mean, look at this shit:
"We will never give up. We will never concede."
"You will have an illegitimate president... and we can't let that happen."
"...if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
What else do you need? Are you looking for instances where Trump told the crowd to attack and breach the Capitol before you're convinced that he's guilty?
None of those sound all that inflammatory. Mostly just political rhetoric.
"We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong." -- In context, he is saying: "Cheer for the Republicans in congress, maybe not so much for the ones who aren't backing me because they aren't showing strength" -- nothing about that seems like it is incitement.
Yet somehow Democrats saying worse things is applauded.
Compare that to where actual violence is implied:
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere."
- Maxine Waters
"Go to the Hill today. Please, get up in the face of some congresspeople." - Cory Booker
"We owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose." - Nancy Pelosi
That's exactly what I'm looking for: evidence that he told the crowd to attack and breach the Capitol. Because there isn't any and yet that's what he's being accused of in the media. You are of course welcome to read these words and interpret them any way you see fit but I don't see any incitement or calls for violence here. Neither would a court.
"fighting" is often used in a political context, we have people on both sides of congress saying it publicly as recently as 2020. This is constitutionally-protected political speech.
Your case would be much stronger had Trump not explicitly said people should go "peacefully".
> If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
This is the accusation of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism that I'm talking about. It's not an accusation against random parler users, but an accusation against those of us who do not think that AWS should decide what's allowed on the internet.
Think of this analogy: Almost every driver in the US breaks traffic laws every time they drive. They speed, cross a line, don't come to a complete stop at stop signs, etc. Imagine that there was a company in charge of doling out violations, and only conservative drivers were having their licenses revoked.
Every platform has people who violate the TOS, and by that standard, they all should be deplatformed. But that is not happening. You cannot say with any level of proof that Parler was worse at moderating content than any of the other social platforms
> how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
From the start, this stood out to me as a very faulty premise. How exactly was Parler, a social media site, a competitor to Amazon, Google, or Apple? It would be different if this were Facebook, but we're talking about ecosystems/infrastructure vs a single app/website.
Also how can the power of three separate companies be a monopoly? The argument seems to be that Silicon Valley is itself a monopoly, except Silicon Valley is only a geographic location.
The left has been censored and deleted enough times from social media and regular media, that this is a cause for concern. Any laws which restruc freedom of speech could come back to haunt us.
> Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler.
Presumably, this was of the first 13 people to be charged in US District Court (when about 40 others were charged in D.C. Superior Court). And maybe it's true of those 13, though “a Parler executive told me...none appear” seems to be below the threshold of factual information that a responsible journalist would rest any conclusion on besides “that’s what Parler is advancing as a PR position”.
This article deliberately creates a narrative that portrays Google, Amazon, and Apple as alarming monopolistic roles, which has nothing to do with their decisions to remove Parler. The main concern here is national security, instead of showing off their regulation power (which is an aspect these tech giants always try to conceal).
The narrative in the article such as "how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor" looks absurd to me. The competitors of parler Is Facebook, Twitter, i.e. social media platforms, NOT Google, Amazon, and Apple.
It feels like the author deliberately misused these kinds of association to trigger irrelevant focus.
I feel like you have the right to free speech. You don't have a right to a platform though. If you want to spread your hate person to person go for it. We're not going to broadcast your nonsense to the world.
How this cesspool got built is a metaphor for the wingnuts who used it.
Most of us here know - if you want a resilient, censorship-free service, you can still: buy your own physical servers, rent data centre space (or a garage), buy multiple transit pipes to ensure traffic can get to them from a variety of places. You can move your servers around if you have to and keep your sovereignty despite everything else changing. It's how the internet was designed! Amazon, Google, Apple and most other private companies can go whistle if they want you offline.
Sure it takes expertise, time, expense, negotiation... but that's the price of true freedom, internet patriots!
Instead they built everything on top of the conveniences and goodwill of a single US company, with no backup plan. Hardly living in the wild west - and that's this mob down to a tee. Rich, well-connected dorks who desperately need the society they organise to tear down - why be surprised when the society hits back in such a tiny way as terminating their AWS account?
Please make your substantive points without posting in the flamewar style. We're trying to avoid the latter here because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious, thoughtful conversation about interesting things.
When accounts build up a track record of flamewar, snark, political/ideological battle, and other things that break the site guidelines, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise this place will be engulfed by hellfire and then become scorched earth. Those things may be exciting and/or activating for a while, but they're not interesting.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful. You can still express your views in that spirit, as many other HN users have been showing.
If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus, she could have just started her own bus line!
If GMC wouldn't sell her a bus, she could just make her own!
Sure it takes expertise, time, expense, negotiation... but that's the price of true freedom!
Before anyone comes crying: I in no way support the assault on the Capitol, calls to violence (which should be illegal), alt-right ethno-state madness, Qanon delusions etc. Nazism is a cancer on society.
> If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus,
Buses are run by governments. And Rosa Parks wasn't advocating throwing molotov cocktails at bus drivers, she sat in the wrong damn seat in an act of civil disobedience.
> If GMC wouldn't sell her a bus,
It'd be great if GMC would refuse selling vehicles to insurrectionist militias, IMHO.
Not only that, Rosa Parks was discriminated because of who she was while the MAGA goons and the platform they used are receiving backlash for behaving like pos and refusing to moderate the violent posts.
The parent poster is deliberately muddying the water with the twisted analogy.
> Rosa Parks wasn't advocating throwing molotov cocktails at bus drivers, she sat in the wrong damn seat in an act of civil disobedience.
Agreed. But because some others didn't take her approach to civils rights, but were violent, why should she be canceled? It would be interesting to ask people at that time in history whether they saw her actions as violence or inciting violence. I bet the answer is a big ol' yes. I bet even many thought it was inciting the overthrow society/government.
"The Montgomery City Lines is sorry if anyone expects us to be exempt from any state or city law ... [w]e are sorry that the colored people blame us for any state or city ordinance which we didn't have passed."
There is a significant difference between refusing business on the basis of race (which is rightfully a protected status) and refusing business with a platform that hosts far-right content. This particular example, comparing the far-right to Rosa Parks, is especially distasteful.
> If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus, she could have just started her own bus line!
Or she and like minded people could have boycotted the bus lines, in modern terms "cancelling" them. (In case any non-US users don't know, that's exactly what they did, it was called the "Montgomery Bus Boycott").
Ironically, racists in those days tried to use the government to shut that movement down, just like Republicans are trying to use the government to go after people cancelling Parler today.
In the USA, there are many kinds busses that are not public transit. Greyhound and Trailways were historically the most famous, but there are still lots of long and intermediate distance services (i.e. not just shuttling you around a town) that are still completely private bus services. Today, Megabus and Bolt would be contemporary examples. They are subject to some regulation as a kind of "public transportation", but their services, facilities, investment and staff are in any significant way controlled by governments.
This line is exactly why ISPs should be treated as a utility and not be allowed to deny service to anyone except in special circumstances. Many people depend on the internet for their livelihoods (like me!) and denying them access at their home is almost akin to an electric company denying someone access to the grid.
Call them and ask! They may punt you to one of their customers if you just want a U or 2.
If you plan on your own AS and IP space - full network independence - ask which carriers are there, and plan on a quarter or half rack for a router. You'd also need to become a member of your regional Internet registry (e.g. ARIN in the US) and ask them for resources - e.g. IP space and an AS number.
Reminds me of all the libertarians who flocked to Bitcoin because it was considered a way to circumvent the government, and then realized that a) you need governments to run the pipes, b) much of the mining is done by conglomerates and c) the unregulated market is about as stable as a ship at sea
This is the beginning of the end for America. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with what someone says, a free society depends on freedom of expression. It's the first right in the Bill of Rights for a good reason. Layers and layers of legal loopholes make politically biased corporate censorship perfectly legal. I weep for those whose livelihood depends on social media and e-commerce, because they now must live in fear of having their lives destroyed for expressing an opinion. Or for no reason at all.
This is a really bad take. This country has never accepted calls for violent overthrow of our democratic system as "freedom of expression", and that's a view that's been upheld by all three branches of government across all eras of our history from the founding (Shays Rebellion?) through the Civil War (which definitively settled that armed rebellion is not a permissible way to settle political differences) through World War I (which defined our current laws about sedition and restrictions on the freedoms in the First Amendment) to the present day. You don't have a right to force anyone else -- individuals or private corporations -- to amplify your views, and you certainly don't have a right to incite violence or rebellion even on your own dime.
EDIT: This would be a less bad take if Parler had been booted just because people on the platform voted for Trump, but to be clear: Parler was booted because it was used to organize an armed rebellion with the explicit goal of finding and executing members of Congress certifying a democratic vote, and its users have been encouraging people to feed Democrats' families into woodchippers while making them watch.
No one is defending calls for violent overthrow, but typically we hold the people that have actually committed the acts responsible. Here, we're shifting the responsibility a level above with the sentiment that "this happened on your platform, so you have a duty to moderate". The kicker is that these tech giants employed the polar opposite of this philosophy for the majority of their existence to eschew as much responsibility as possible for their users' content.
Let's see. If I go and organize a violent insurrection using GMail, what does Google need to do to comply with it's own philosophy here? It seems that it needs to start scanning all emails for inciting violence and send them to a moderation queue. Of course, it's never going to do any of that, because unlike Parler it doesn't have any overlords holding it by the neck.
Google, Apple, and Amazon like to do whatever they can get away with when it comes to anti-competitive practices, and enjoy the protections granted to them as private entities. On the other hand, this shows that they're willing to also take unilateral action to silence millions of people, based on nothing more than a whim and a holier-than-thou attitude. There's a messy contradiction here. They're not subject to having to abide by the 1st amendment because they're private companies, but in practice they're in control of the majority of public discourse. This is a big problem.
And this returns me to what I think was a big point in the article. The response to any free-speech concerns has been: "if you don't like Facebook or Google's policies, you're free to create your own." But the sway of FB/Google's policies is no longer just over their own content, but also the platforms they manage. Which as it turns out, form the majority of the infrastructure of the internet.
> Layers and layers of legal loopholes make politically biased corporate censorship perfectly legal.
What loopholes? The 1st amendment protects you from being persecuted by the government for your speech. It does not require private entities to publish, promote, transmit, or broadcast your speech. Similarly, discrimination is legal in the US. It is only illegal to discriminate against members of protected classes on the basis of them being members of those protected classes. Political affiliation is not a protected class.
Anyone that wants to spout off abhorrent things on the internet is free to do so. However, no private entity can be forced to allow such behavior. You do not have a right to have your tweet published by Twitter. You do not have a right to store your bits on an Amazon server.
boohoo - if I have to be afraid of half the country putting me on a kill list because of what they read on social media, then people who peddle poison via social media - including the social media firms themselves - should be as uncomfortable as me and my family.
To me, the worldview where half the population of the country are mindless zombies that can be remotely controlled through their social media feed and need to be shepherded by Uncle Faang just to prevent them from killing people is even bleaker than GP's perspective.
Parler was providing material support to terrorists. Not cutting off Parler would also be providing material support to terrorists.
This Administration publicly announced a policy of maximum prosecution of offenses connected in any way to domestic civil unrest, in general (now, at the top this was obviously, though not on its face, politically targeted at their opponents, but the career prosecutors called on to execute the policy are perhaps less likely to apply it narrowly in that way), and, in specific, both the D.C. AG and the US Attorney for the District of Columbia have separately indicated that they will be actively pursuing all connections out from the attack on the Capitol, including incitement, in the DC AG’s case explictly including that which may have been committed by the sitting President’s inner circle, and, though charges would need to be held until after he leaves office, the President himself.
There's a reason people are fleeing from any material connection to the terrorists or anyone seen to have a connection who isn't themselves actively cutting ties with them.
People complain that this violates free speech rights but what about the rights of those at AWS, Twitter, etc? They have the right not to do business or associate with these people.
There is no "right to be broadcast" or "right to be published" in the right to free speech. You have the right to say it, but you don't have the right to force others to listen, read or see it - nor are publishers or conduits required to broadcast or transmit it.
Your online "self" does not exist. There is no such thing as a right to free speech in an online sense as there is no shared utility that must accept all speech. Every step of the way is owned by a business - be it your ISP (which is not a utility - at least at the moment), a platform provider, or content publisher, or web infrastructure provider. All of them can and do have Terms of Use that any user must comply with in order to use their service. Unless/until that changes, any discussion of "right" to free speech online is patently ridiculous.
Greenwald said of those arrested so far none are known to use parler. That tweet is about people who were at the protest using parlor. How is Greenwald lying?
It's called a boycott. It's not a "monopolistic force" when they're many different companies ranging from lawyers and accountants to cloud providers and app stores.
Boycott: "withdraw from commercial or social relations with (a country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest."
I think you should read the article again (I'm assuming you did read it before commenting, and must have just missed the relevant parts):
> contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
A whole central point of Parler was that they don't surveil and analyze their users. From reading that letter it seems like that is the problem AWS had with them. AWS wanted them to violate their principles of not surveilling users by introducing automated moderation bots.
I would guess AWS had a solid point that without it there's no way Parler could keep up with the moderation, but without knowing more details about what Parler was planning, it's hard to know.
Perhaps Parler had an interesting plan to crowd source moderation? Sites like Stack Overflow and Hacker News do that sort of thing with some success (augmented by real moderators). I have no idea if that's what they were thinking of, but it's an interesting thought.
If Apple and Google can do whatever they want on their platform (where they have a combined 99.8% market share in the US), then what's to stop AT&T/Verizon/CenturyLink/Comcast from doing whatever they want on their platform, the internet?
Ok, but I assume (could be wrong) that's because of the difficulty of creating your own water/sewage/electric service. But isn't it comparably difficult to create your own app store or payment processor?
It's not just difficulty- it's really not a good thing for anybody if you have three different sewers and four different electrical service lines running to your house. It's expensive, wasteful, a mess, and can even degrade quality of service.
But a variety of app stores or payment processors functioning over a common carrier (ISP, USPS) is a good thing.
What all these companies (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Visa etc...) did was textbook market coordination [1]. Nothing illegal or crazy about it, it happens all the time on different levels.
What people should be griping about is that they put so much faith and trust into private organizations that are not the commons or public services and have no obligation to anyone beyond the contract that they enter into (ToS etc...).
Is Substack becoming the Parler of journalism in a way? It seems to be attracting "overton window" challengers from both sides, but I wonder if it's going to devolve into a cesspool in it's own way.
It’s a common failure mode of funding everything from advertising: controversy attracts attention and you can ratchet that up profitably for a long time before you reach a point where advertisers don’t want to be associated with you.
> I considered him a respected journalist, but this article doesn't seem like it's either balanced or fact-checked
Having started a media outlet but given someone else the Editor in Chief job because he was more interested in being a reporter and didn't want editorial responsibility, he rage-quit to substack on his own because he also didn't like anyone else exercising editorial oversight of his work.
It almost seems like the practice of having someone detached from the work of writing a piece that is responsible for assuring balance, fact-checking, etc., is addressed serves a purpose...
Questions like "do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech" are getting ahead of the game.
First, why was it that these supposedly too-powerful tech giants could be intimidated into allowing activity that was clearly against ToS to go on for years before they grew a pair?
"Free speech" in privately owned spaces is a difficult problem. i would settle for even handed enforcement of ToS and a more transparent ToS appeal process.
"free speech" is like the power of pardon. In that until toxic individuals insisted on testing its most extreme boundaries it was allowed to remain, in theory, nearly unlimited.
"Free Speech" is a great thing when it's used with wisdom and solid judgment. It can be a vehicle for insight, innovation, and new ways to think about the world. This reflects the constructive uses of "free speech"
If you look at the other side of the coin you have these eruptions of toxic individualism. The power of "free speech" isn't used for constructive reasons. Instead it's a show of force. I am going to say this and there is nothing you can do to stop me. This has continued even as we see real material setbacks manifest because of this capricious use of "free speech"
Returning for a moment to the power of the pardon. It's likely we will see that power reigned in. It was never scrutinized before because the wielders of that power always used it responsibly and judiciously. I think we're going to have to turn the same scrutiny to speech on the internet. In the end you can point the fingers at the selfish few that ruined a good thing for the rest of us.
Are you perhaps referring to Bill Clinton, who pardoned Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist that set off a bomb in US federal buildings and committed armed robberies?
> Are you perhaps referring to Bill Clinton, who pardoned Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist that set off a bomb in US federal buildings and committed armed robberies?
Bill Clinton did not pardon her, he commuted her sentence to the 16+ years she had already served. Commutation and pardon are significantly different.
Are you in a jurisdiction that disenfranchises felons? If you are pardoned, you can vote. If your sentencd was commuted, you can't.
Is there a job that bars felons (either in general, or who have committed the kind of offense you are convicted of)? If you are pardoned, you can be hired for it. If your sentencd was commuted, you cannot.
Is there a job that, while it doesn't strictly ban ex-offenders, requires a criminal background check. If you were pardoned, the conviction was wiped away. If your sentence was commuted, it is still there.
Etc. Pardon undoes the conviction. Commutation stops incarceration and leaves the conviction and all its ancillary effects in place.
> Would you find it appropriate to "commute" the sentence of any other terrorists?
If, as one hypothetical pattern, their sentence was unusually long form the crimes they were convicted of with no apparent explanation beyond the political circumstances at the time of conviction, if they'd served more time than the typical sentence for the offense, and their conduct in prison showed a high probability of successful reintegration into society, sure.
They are materially different. A pardon reflects forgiveness and seeks to redress civil disability typically as a result of a systemic injustice.
A commutation is a lessening of the penalty. It implies that the act was wrong and the sentence was deserved but perhaps it was heavy handed. There is no implication of innocence in a commutation.
The author uses the word "united" liberally, implying there was some kind of collusion between Amazon, Apple and Google. I would imagine it was quite the opposite, they each would have independently banned/limited Parler regardless of what the other company did. Parler also doesn't compete with any of those companies. It competes with Facebook and Twitter. So where's the anti-competitive conduct?
The guy with no shirt and no shoes does not have an anti trust lawsuit because McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's all decided to prohibit his entry into their restaurants.
Sometimes the customer is the reason they all make the same decision.
That's if it is equally applied to everyone. Examples, similar to yours, are used as basis of racial discrimination lawsuits when the evidence shows that it is selectively applied to a group of people.
Discrimination is perfectly legal in the US. It is only illegal if you discriminate against someone within a protected class on the basis of them being a member of that protected class. Political affiliation is not a protected class.
This take strikes my as a bit absurd. You have to take a pretty all-encompassing view of 'tech' for it to make sense. Apple success on the shoulders of a wide app developer ecosystem, not on the narrower set of other tech titans. Google, via Android, is in a similar spot. And AWS is even further afield.
Two names not included in the de-platforming accusations here are Facebook and Twitter. If anybody of the tech titans were to benefit from this cynical take on the actions against Parler, it was them.
SV is not one entity, and each of the five listed above has very different goals for themselves, so I'm pretty skeptical of this conspiratorial perspective.
I understand the sense that these things are monopolistic, but of course there are real alternatives. They are harder, and more expensive, but the cost is borne by the transgressor of pretty reasonable common norms (don't tolerate promotion of violence).
Parler gets to join Stormfront and all the torrent sites on the lower decks not because Apple, Google and Amazon are knocking out nascent competition, but because those sites violate reasonable, privately set and moderated rules.
Is Parler content, or a service? If the former, then taking it down seems reasonable. If the latter, horrifying.
Of course it's both, like all social media.
The content is horrible now, but it's quite possible -- likely even -- that it would have broadened quite a bit. It was a likely home not just for political extremists, but also quite acceptable content that's being deplatformed elsewhere, like firearms-related content.
When it comes to baking cakes for gay weddings or offering birth control in health insurance plans the far-right considers the discretion of a business to determine how it is run inviolable.
When it’s their own interests at stake for the same reason, suddenly it’s unconscionable that a private company should exercise such unilateral control.
Legally they have the right to refuse service but ethically they owe the public. However "Free Speech" does not entitle people to Freely Lie. As we have seen the wrong words from the right person can cause the loss of life. The police officer did not deserve to die to further the political ambitions of a few morally/ethically bankrupt individuals.
Parler can recreate itself on another platform if they wish. Gab is still up. It is just as disgusting. The Constitution only guarantees that Congress shall pass no laws prohibiting free speech. The last time I checked Amazon or Twitter cannot pass legislation.
Free speech is prevented by the use of force. We held an election. The results where not what some people liked. They tried to cancel the people's voice. That is the real speech suppression here.
In business, the customer is getting value from the economies of scale of the business, while the business collects their margin to further grow those economies of scale. If the customer is reducing the value for other customers, then they are breaking the virtuous cycle of the business. This is unstable and will result in either the customer or the business being hurt. If the business is hurt, all of its customers are hurt to some degree because the cost will be passed onto them. This is a matter of consumer protection. Bad actors who reduce the value of other customers should not be tolerated. Simply sharing vendors with Parler had costs for other companies and reduced the value from doing business with the vendor.
> Bad actors who reduce the value of other customers should not be tolerated.
I don't agree with this argument.
"Bad" is subjective and changes based on political perspective. If Parler was instead a pro-abortion forum, and it was taken down by a conservative company citing that abortion is an 'act of violence' (I don't agree, but many pro-lifers do) I think we'd see very few of the same voices cheering.
Businesses should tolerate some higher-cost customers. Ex. If a restaurant wants to exceed regulatory accessibility requirements to make their business serve disabled clients better, that is a good thing. Similar examples: multilingual support, making female hygiene product freely available, parental leave. This does 'reduce value for other customers' but is a net societal good (and hopefully most customers get some amount of that reduced value back in feeling good about helping people). Some customers costing business more isn't necessarily a bad thing that should be avoided.
If a site did nothing but post links to copyrighted/ pirated songs, it would get banned. We know this because we've seen it happen over and over.
If a site posted links to houses where people were on vacation and discussed best ways to break into them. It would get banned. Nobody would complain.
Why is it that a site which is essentially built to allow people to discuss violent crimes against people is supposed to be tolerated? We should tolerate it because it's discussing violent crimes against politicians? I don't even think it's limited to that regardless.
Parler was created so people could discuss things which were banned on other sites for being too violent and had too much hate speech. It's unofficial charter is based on supporting criminal activities.
I don't understand why people are acting like this is free speech when so many similar crime-based sites are not tolerated.
>Parler was created so people could discuss things which were banned on other sites for being too violent and had too much hate speech. It's unofficial charter is based on supporting criminal activities.
You think Parler has a page that says they know a big percentage of their content will be hate speech and plotting violence. Like an official unofficial policy page?
Then maybe you should stop spreading unsubstantiated claims if you have nothing to back them up with. You could have, for example, taken a screenshot of the front page of Parler when it was up, to display that the majority of the popular topics were criminal in intent (personally I have a hard time believing that that would've been the case).
Parler knew exactly what their platform was for. They don't delete this shit because it's their competitive advantage. If they don't post threats and violent plots, there is no reason for them to exist.
Their executive team knows this and leaves it up for exactly that reason.
> Unsubstantiated? Maybe you should open your eyes.
I literally just asked you for evidence and you literally refused to give any. Then I asked you to stop spreading unsubstantiated claims. Somehow you are surprised at that reaction?
I could easily find similar posts on Facebook and Twitter. The questions are: how prevalent is this & did Parler really not delete this stuff?
> They don't delete this shit because it's their competitive advantage.
Parler claims to have deleted every single post reported by Amazon. You claim that they didn't delete any of them. Do you have proof? It would be pretty weird for Parler to flat out lie on this point, so unless I see some evidence I'm going to assume Parler is (in this particular instance) telling the truth and you are lying.
> If they don't post threats and violent plots, there is no reason for them to exist.
You fail to imagine any other reason for Parler to exist other than for "threats and violent plots"? That's so outlandish I don't think you believe it yourself.
Many comments here mentioned free speech though constitution only stipulates that congress should make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Surely a person is within his rights to reject such protest happening in his own backyard when it comes to the right to assembly. Why can't Apple, a private company, forbid an app from its own appstore? It is a matter of monopoly, if Apple, Google and Facebook alike are acting like market regulators, since they together owns the market itself when it comes to mobile app consumption, which is traditionally something only the government is capable of doing.
This is just a good ole' fashioned reactionary claw back. It's not a show of force. I feel bad for Parler, they got the short end of the stick. But can't have your cake and eat it too.
> That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.
I think I heard this point before about it trending to most popular for a fleeting moment. Does anyone have specific dates when that occurred and how long that trend lasted? Where exactly is this information conveyed, in the app stores themselves? Is there some archived location I can go look up to verify the veracity of the claim?
Maybe I'm wrong but this isnt about politics, its about violence to the public. Only when that line was crossed did private companies concluded their terms of service were breached.
Only when it was clear the Republican party would hold little power in the US government did private companies concluded their terms of service were breached.
It feels like the tech giants are dipping their toes into partisan politics and they don't like the message more than the tactics.
For example, if BLM had occupied the capital does anyone think that BLM would have been removed from the big tech platforms within two days or the response would be remotely similar? Although BLM is a much better cause, there were fringe elements that advocated violence for change that received no widespread tech backlash. Furthermore, there were BLM protests for months in nearly every state capital and Seattle had an occupied portion for weeks with no similar response.
Sure, perhaps in this case BLM is such a better cause than Trump's election shenanigans. However, couldn't someone on the center or right could see this as a problematic precedent? Today it's clear cut, but in the future it could be 'agree with the left or be 'cancelled''?
We just saw the awesome power of Big Tech go from "theoretical" to "wow, they actually did it".
The reasons are not as important as the fact that it happened.
Power doesn't truly exist until it's exercised, because you don't really know how things will play out. Now we do know how it plays out: exactly like we feared.
An unsypathetic "victim" to experiment on with their overwhelming strength. Now it's just a matter of who is next and when. It's OK, that victim might be evil also.
Uhhh, no. If you know you are going to be attracting users with some extreme views, make sure you have a strategy to scale up your moderation tools and staff, or at least APPEAR to be doing it. Their "oh, it's just too hard to moderate" argument is pretty pathetic. Even Youtube, in the make or break moment with copyright holders, struck a deal with Viacom so that they may survive. That's how you build a "tech" company.
> That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country
It became the most downloaded app _because_ Apple gave them the 1 day ultimatum to start moderating their content. Only then more people heard of the app and downloaded it before it’s off the store.
From the piece:
> It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque.
It is the same to me as saying “it is true one can find sexually explicit images of children on a dark net pedo site”. Parler was made to harbour the kind of content which is getting purged by any platform caring about not appearing as a Daily Stormer outpost.
If this is a call to regulate the internet then it is now a utility and must be treated as such. That would essentially have to ask big tech to be broken up. The model we have now does not treat the internet and its platforms as a utility. I am not sure if we can even do a middle ground. It is either one or the other.
We have discussed this in my workplace (a bank) to reconsider lifting our k8s and shifting it to a cloud provider from our data centres. I imagine this is a conversation many other companies re going to have specially when those companies are outside of USA and using US companies services.
Is it ok to say that anything I can put on a placard and walk around a city displaying without getting arrested or breaking any law should be considered acceptable free speech on the internet?
Just trying to separate the medium from the message.
ISPs, plausibly. But that's because physical infrastructure is such an important component. It's the same reason you generally only have a single choice for an ISP. THAT's the problem there, and that's why there's a good argument for ISPs to be utilities, and why net neutrality is so important.
Hosting and domain registration are commoditized services. If one doesn't want to do business with you (or vice versa) there are thousands of other options.
Whack-a-mole. Users will move to decentralized platforms or other providers in no time. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25 million new users from around the world joined Telegram, an app built by Russians.
This may be true, but this is a lousy excuse for tolerating Nazis on your platform.
Sure, banning a Nazi from Twitter doesn't actually kill the Nazi. They still exist, they still have Internet access, and they're still filled with hate. But at least they're not on Twitter anymore.
And when AWS sees that they're flocking to a hate site hosted on their platform, there's no reason they have to tolerate it. Sure, they'll go somewhere else, and maybe the hate site will find a new hosting provider, but at least they aren't hosted on AWS anymore.
If we have to play an constant game of Whack-a-Nazi, I vote we whack as many Nazis as we can.
The whole free speech debate boils down to this, Do you think we have enough freedoms, do you think that every civil liberty is now afforded to everyone. The Civil Rights Movement in the 60s was considered hateful and violent at one point, without free speech they would have been driven into the sea. Gay and Trans rights were once considered not valid speech as well. Without Unregulated and uncontrolled speech. All of these things could have been labeled as hateful speech, hateful to white people or hateful to the traditional family unit. Any talk about limiting speech by the government or social media only dictates that we have enough freedoms and liberties and anything new that comes up is fair game to be labeled as "hate speech"
While I understand the motive for the article, should service provider companies really have to be egalitarian? What happened to the likes of "No shoes, no shirt, no service"?
Or, "How Parler outsourced nearly every critical aspect of its business, incurring massive risk in pursuit of maximizing profits." This is the risk of the modern, ultra-lean online enterprise. Parler got kicked off for knowingly providing a communications platform for terrorists. But other businesses that ride along on the backs of FAANG, like the business equivalent of remora eels, have been similarly affected by factors out of their control like changing search algorithms and shifting app store policies. It's a risk of running a business on top of someone else's business.
"There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont." [https://xkcd.com/2399/]
I was a big fan of Glenn Greenwald starting in the W administration. What went wrong with him?
The worst is that most of his current criticisms have considerable truth, which he destroys with his focus on bad examples.
Yes, it is a bad thing that FAANG have too much power, but removing Parler, a racist hate site where people blatantly plan violent crimes, is the world's most terrible example.
There isn't going to be _any_ model of an internet we want to have where sites which encourage violence will be acceptable. So what's his problem?
> In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them.
Sure, Parler isn't going to serve you a custom feed with that data, but what are they doing with it? They collect an insane amount of PII to create an account, when compared with alternatives Reddit and Twitter.
On another note, this whole article is written in bad faith:
- The AppStore screen shot shows Parler at the top of the social media list on Jan 8th, when it was trending because the impending ban, but the image is intended to show Parler as a more popular app. Bad Faith.
- The claim that there was a united attack is unsubstantiated, and, in order with Occam's Razor, it is far more believable that these companies banned their support of Parler as a response to violations of ToS from those companies than any sort of conspiracy.
- In referencing the Congressional report on anti-competitive practices, the article seeks to conflate the actions taken against Parler with anti-competitive behavior. This doesn't come close to being anti-competitive. ToS were violated, and private companies have to right to not host whatever they want, and the right to moderate it however they want.
- The article seeks to conflate the actions of some mega corporations with _all_ liberals, claiming all liberals cheered for this. That is also unsubstantiated mudslinging.
- The article overall seeks to conflate freedom of speech with access to private platforms and mass audiences. This is not the reality. Parler itself may have promoted itself as a free-speech platform, but that was only true if you agreed with the common opinion on the platform, and anyone who promoted dissenting ideas there were banned.
The whole article is a bad-faith farce, and should be treated as such. Ignore it.
There are real points to be made about how the behavior of these companies might impact discourse, whether they have too much power, and more. However, this bad faith argument is a distraction from meaningful discourse.
>The whole article is a bad-faith farce, and should be treated as such. Ignore it.
>
>There are real points to be made about how the behavior of these companies might impact discourse, whether they have too much power, and more. However, this bad faith argument is a distraction from meaningful discourse.
I disagree that the article distracts from meaningful discourse. To the contrary, the article has elicited a great deal of meaningful discourse (in these HN threads) that helps us examine the role of social media in modern society.
No one sheds a tear for Parlor, but lets also be clear about this, the social media companies just showed a token of conscience and it doesn't mean anything. They still didn't boot people like Cruz, Hawley and Gaetz and the numerous others still inciting the insurrection. I am sure they will not boot these lawmakers as they will face retaliation if they do. I don't trust the change of heart they are showing.
> No one sheds a tear for Parlor, but lets also be clear about this, the social media companies just showed a token of conscience and it doesn't mean anything. They still didn't boot people like Cruz, Hawley and Gaetz and the numerous others still inciting the insurrection.
If following a constitutional process for protesting a State's results in a presidential election is "inciting the insurrection", somebody better start fitting Nancy Pelosi for an orange jumpsuit: https://www.c-span.org/video/?185005-2/debate-ohio-electoral...
> Didn’t realize people on HN rationalize sedition and insurrection too.
It's not sedition or insurrection to wait your turn and speak out in Congress that the results for a State are invalid. That's exactly what the Constitution stipulates you should do. It wasn't a crime or an insurrection when Pelosi did it and it's not a crime now.
If you want a word to describe then versus now I'd go with hypocrisy.
On the wider topic, it's sad that people's biases have become so blatant against others with different political views that they interpret every comment in the most disingenuous light, with the dumbest of assumptions. One does not have to call out "Violence is bad!" in every comment or statement that they make for it to be true. It should be assumed as that's the default for any sane individual in modern society.
So, yes violence is bad. We all know that. But unless you can show me where Cruz or Hawley actually committed acts of violence or directly instructed people to do the same, talk of them being guilty of insurrection is totally out of line. If telling your supporters to "March to the capital and make your voices heard!" is an insurrection we're not going to have room in our prisons.
I am going to take your argument in good faith. People form their beliefs thinking its the right thing.
So, this is exactly how leaders want you to think. I suggest reading up on how coups happen and how the leaders in those situations use the media and exactly what they say and how they say it. We have a lot of examples in this world and they have been very well documented too. Also in these cases its irrefutable evidence once the coup has happened who the bad guys are, so the books will not be controversial.
Here is a book to look at if you want - Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.
> So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance about that platform, and about basic principles of free speech. I’d be very surprised if more than a tiny fraction of liberals cheering Parler’s removal from the internet have ever used the platform or know anything about it other than the snippets they have been shown by those seeking to justify its destruction and to depict it as some neo-Nazi stronghold.
This is a serious question: Was there a bastion of nuanced discussion and debate occurring on Parler? Almost everything I've ever seen has been amplification of disinformation. I am sure some nuanced discussions were there, but Glenn it making it seem like it was a minor part of the service or perhaps mirrored how common it might be on Twitter and other platforms? Is that what he's trying to imply?
Silicon Valley does not control the Internet though. I get that headlines like this make for good clickbait, but it's not like Parler can no longer exist on the Internet.
Parler can go buy some servers, hook them up to the internet, and come back online.
America is so blinded by their love of free speech they fail to see that most countries operate quite well with modest limits on speech. If American style free speech were so great the country would not be tearing itself apart as we speak.
The discussion here focuses on the free speech aspect of online platforms as applied to private companies. This seems like a topic where a political solution is called for, as there seems to be enough opinion on both sides to warrant an examination of the current laws. Certainly many people seem to feel that somehow these social media platforms now represent a type of public platform.
I wonder if the united States at this point is capable of that discussion? In a healthy democratic political process as applied to this issue, there probably needs to be input from both the free speech side and the societal protection side, and some compromise legal solution reached.
If Biden follows through on his rhetoric that seems possible, but that seems like a big if, with political power apparently firmly in Democratic hands for the next couple of years at least.
This is so stupid. Silicon Valley is not a company or a federation, so the charge of "monopolistic force" is false. It's just a hub of innovation. Parler is a terrorist network.
"Hashtags on Parler denoting Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories — #Dominion, #Sharpiegate, #QAnon — trend freely, without the restrictions Twitter and Facebook have instituted to suppress them."
Hashtags trend freely. Oh no! I might be exposed to free range hashtags! I may have to actually think for myself.
It's not so much the "refused to take down" anything, the community was doing exactly what site intended. The problem is that community started planning violence.
I haven't shifted the goalpost. Greenwald says, right there in his twitter thread talking about this article, that nobody was planning Jan 6th on Parler. They were planning it on Facebook. That's it.
You went from "the majority of the planning", to "was planned", and now "They were planning it on Facebook", all while simultaneously ignoring the question about how much planning is acceptable, thus my comment about if it acceptable to have "a little planning for a treat." This is a move from less than half, to none. That's what I'm referring to. While I'm willing to accept for argument's sake that less than half happened on Parler, we both know that it was more than zero. So what's the acceptable amount?
More importantly, you've also conveniently dropped the crux of my argument, about when does the government get to force political association on private entities, including surrendering their private property for political use they disagree with. I would really like an answer to the this. That's why I used the reductio absurdum of having my band practice in your living room. If you'd rather, I'm also open to putting political bumper stickers on your car.
What a backwards ass situation we've found ourselves in.
Imagine the flip side. Imagine if a bunch of "conservatives" from Mississippi started a web hosting company 10 years ago and then an anti-fascist social media platform sprouted up on their infrastructure. Imagine people on this platform started posting about how black lives matter on the platform.
Imagine what the "conservative" reaction would be.
You take a platform for violent extremists off of _private_ servers hosted by a _private_ company on the West Coast and everyone flips their lid. "Conservatives" have no shame.
"That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. "
Oh that's rich. There are good reasons to be alarmed by the power these tech giants hold over people's ability to communicate with one another, and Greenwald even talks about a few. But these are weasel words. These are cynical words which are desperately attempting to distract from the gravity of events that precipitated the tech giants' actions.
Difficult to entertain bad faith arguments like these.
Apple, while accusing Parler of not monitoring what it users send, technically is guilty of the same, when users send SMS messages to each other to bomb a place.
Now that Apple is enforcing tenants on its platform such as de-platforming Parler, it should also be held responsible for the actions of any other app ( left or right wing), since it has stepped up to do that.
If this is not acceptable, all talk of free speech is really hogwash.
I'm more concerned about the app store bans than AWS ban.
The app stores are true monopolies that as gatekeepers to users loading apps on phones (particularly so in apple's case). There isn't really any alternative to them.
In contrast, a hosting solution can be swapped out for another hosting solution. While non-trivial (especially if you are using a bunch of AWS specific services), there are viable solutions.
Parler has already found a new hosting solution with epik. [1]
Given that anyone can host a website (potentially even by buying their own bare metal hardware and procuring IP addresses), then one always has the ability to disseminate one's ideas. The "public square" equivalent is simply having your content online as it is available for all to read / consume.
That does not entitle you to speech on other people's platforms. That is the equivalent of saying you should have the right to go into a private venue, hosting a private event, and espouse your ideas.
I've long thought that we should reinterpret campaign finance law from this perspective. Specifically, that because the internet enables anyone to get their ideas published and accessible, then we should remove the ability of political campaigns to buy ANY advertisements. Having the right to speak should not be expanded to having the right to BUY eyeballs / impressions. You should be able to speak all you want, freely, on the internet. But all traffic should be earned, organic traffic from folks actually wanting to listen to you.
The ability to use targeted advertising to target specific messages to specific political segments seems disingenuous. It allows the politician to choose their voter instead of the voter to choose to listen to their politician. It is like digital gerrymandering.
Given that a politician can easily host videos, content, etc that can literally be consumed by the entire planet with relative ease (not to belittle the complexity of youtube), free speech exists fundamentally in the foundation of the internet / web.
Attacks on those fundamental components of the internet are concerning though. For example, SciHub having its domain names revoked and thus being unable to have DNS properly route to their servers is of grave concern. But the recent developments of NextDNS and similar decentralized DNS solutions are promising [2].
I've seen a lot of people say Parler was intentionally designed to host morally objectionable content and that they refused to moderate it. Many arguments supporting the de-platforming of Parler hinge on those assertions.
I have not seen any evidence backing up those claims, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you're aware of any such evidence, could you please post it? I'd honestly just like to understand the situation better.
In the absence of such evidence, I see two plausible explanations:
1.) Parler was a small-scale operation (30 employees from what I've heard) who built a social media platform intended to appeal to pro-Trump conservatives by tolerating a higher degree of free speech compared to the likes of established social media platforms. It became very popular very quickly and speech on the platform became increasingly violent. Parler's relatively small team was unable to keep up with moderating so much content, which enabled a lot of extremist calls for violence to propagate. Since they could not keep up with AWS's requests to moderate their platform and it was facing public scrutiy after events at the capitol, AWS pulled the plug.
2.) Parler was intended as a platform for violent, pro-Trump extremists and used "free speech" as a week justification to not moderate their platform. It became very popular very quickly and speech on the platform became increasingly violent. Parler still refused to moderate the platform even after events at the capitol, so AWS pulled the plug.
AWS is not necessarily in the wrong in either case. However, the optics for Parler looks very different between the scenarios.
Parler isn't destroyed. They're in the process of migrating to Epik and will be back online. Epik is also who hosts Gab, InfoWars, and other similar right wing sites.
They signed a contract with AWS and didn't live up to it, so AWS cancelled it. That's how free markets work.
The pattern of evidence is consistent with Parler being part of Russia's disinfo/anti-democracy attack on the US, along with their asset Trump himself. I cant prove this 100% but is the wise way to bet, given the total context.
This is what polarizing actions do, they force people to choose sides. And as the American right coalesces into two camps, pro-Trump and everyone else, the left is forced to harden around it's majority mindset. And that mindset includes, platforms and megaphones aren't free. The people that built Silicon Valley are liberals, and until called on to protect those liberal values, they'll allow (and make money from) everybody else.
If the finger-quote conservatives want their own platform with which they can plot the downfall of American democracy unrestricted, they're going to need their own infrastructure and their own apps and, it's starting to look like soon, their own banks and financial industries to handle their money.
You have ANY idea how hard it is to get a bank to overlook a pecuniary interest for a moral one? Apparently you have to erect a gallows on the Capitol lawn.
The whole debate has been framed in terms of free speech. Which is misleading. Because, technically, any corporation are free to impose their policies, as long as they abide by the laws of the state. The debate should be pivoted to tech concentration and monopoly. This has been argued by Elizabeth Warren during her presidential run. However, the same people who are complaining about tech's supposed censor of free speech, where vehemently against Warren's plan for tech break up
First off, I like Glenn Greenwald very much as a journalist.
Remember that he and Laura Poitras helped Edward Snowden disclose to the world what he did, in 2013.
In other words, as a journalist, he does, or should command a huge amount of respect from the HN community.
He has my respect.
Now, with that as a background, let's talk about this article.
It's an important article, and yes, broadly speaking, the claims that are made are true.
But the problem I have with this article (and not with Glenn Greenwald personally, who again, is a great journalist!) is that it's a little bit too broad...
To give you an understanding of this, let's say that in the future, I ran an online service with an App Store, like Apple or Google.
OK, so now, for whatever reason, the Parler App is removed from the App Store that I run.
But, to tell me (and the newsreader) that it was an act of Tech Tyranny, of Monopolistic Force -- is not good enough.
In other words, I'd like (as a member of the public) an "organizational backtrace", starting with the engineer who physically removed the App from the app store, moving from there to his manager that ordered it, and moving from there up levels of management.
In other words, WHO ordered WHAT, WHEN, and WHY.
In other words, don't start with the highest level effect, the silencing of free speech, start with the lowest level effect -- the physical removal of the App from the App Store by the engineer that did it.
From that point, use the 5 WHYS to work backward, something like, "OK, this engineer did this because he was ordered to by his manager", so WHY did the manager do it?, "Because he was ordered to by his manager", etc.
But now the question arises -- Who was at the highest level of management at that company that gave that order?
And now we ask WHY again... so we need to talk to him, and find out exactly WHY (what socio-political-moral-ethic-legal-or-whatever pressure was applied to him, and how?)
See, answer all of those questions, and THEN you have the true story!
But all this being said, I do love Glenn Greenwald!
I use to have an immense respect for Glen Greenwald and follow his writing regularly, but Greenwald's tone has changed drastically recently. I'm not sure why, but he seems to have a rather myopic view of the left. It's a sudden departure from the writing he was known for during the days of The Intercept and Salon.com. I am honestly even starting to question the honesty of his writing, even.
An example for this article:
> including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them.
He says this but fails to mention that the same people who were the founders of Cambridge Analytica also were the founder of Parler
Furthermore there seems to be little, if any, mention of the fact that the Mercers who were major funders for the Trump organization were also using the data obtained from Cambridge Analytica to target political advertising.
I know this is beyond the scope of the article that Greenwald was writing but having read his writing for years I have to wonder why it wasn't mentioned? It's not something that would typical go without mention in writing from earlier in his career.
I am not one to typically hedge on the side of removing "free speech" from people, but Parler represented a clear and present threat to American democracy. The ties to the Trump organization and it's funders were innumerable. Why does Greenwald have an agenda to foment discord regarding this? His writing lately, the twitter screeds that he has gone on against the left, and his staunch denial of the Russian interference in the 2016 election makes me question if he hasn't been compromised in some way.
Has anybody here actually READ the first amendment? Nobody is blocking anyone's free speech.
Facebook, Twitter, etc are PRIVATE property. They are legally ALLOWED to set terms of use on their property - whatever those terms may be. If anyone breaks those rules they can then be throw out!
Trump, and company can peddling their LIES wherever it is allowed, like on FAUX news :-). His free speech STILL exists over there.
The stupidest possible take on things always seems to rise to the top of social media.
First, I fully agree that the entire mobile ecosystem is walled-garden first. That should be addressed to a greater degree than sideloading apps on android. Second, the idea that this is 'monopolistic' seems deeply silly. Parler isn't offline because Amazon, the only provider of web services, told them to get off the internet. It's offline because Amazon and most of their specialized service providers (twilio, etc) kicked them off as well as all of those service providers' competitors. This is not an example of monopolistic power. It's an example of an entire industry choosing to reject a company they find odious. This is very similar to what happened with Stormfront some years ago[1].
Still, this is troubling. I feel like it's reasonable to see Parler as acting in bad faith. It seems to me like they knowingly fostered an environment that would lead to militants using the service to plan attacks. I think they protest too much.
I also think that hosting truly "free" speech in an ethical way is enormously, obviously difficult. Threats are genuinely hard to evaluate and must be taken seriously. Mass communication has been at the center of all the modern genocides (and early forms of communication were key to the older ones). I think this is the discussion we should be having - what is the "right" way to create a space where people are save to speak? How could Parler have existed to allow people to speak their minds while preventing the platform from providing aid to violent hate groups? I suspect it's impossible to allow people to speak freely about their belief that other people are not human without fomenting violence but it's clear that not everyone agrees with that and I think we need to talk about it.
P.s. Quite sad to see that Greenwald has descended into red-faced sputtering grievance-listing. I agree that the moral case for shutting down Parler and shutting down Facebook is the same. I think both should be shut down for fomenting and planning violence. We can reopen both of them when we figure out how to more effectively stop their use in violence. I didn't even need ten paragraphs to say it.
Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, or something that should be regulated.
Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored.
"Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this discussion. You can be convinced of something without being brainwashed.
I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it, I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can lead to.
Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't been brainwashed into.
After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced.
And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.
The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way.
Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.
I think it just comes down to Popper, who puts it elegantly enough:
> ... In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
>The hobbit is simply embarrassed into compliance by his elven betters. The ideas he believes become a dangerous mental disease. This diagnosis is written into history. The sooner he gives up this nonsense, the better. To help convince him, we'll make this idea quasi-illegal. The sooner he gives it up, the less his life will suffer. Eventually he can be fired for staying an idiot. Everyone will agree that he deserved it.
>This is Popper’s paradox of tolerance. Popper discovers that every real regime must have the apparatus of the Inquisition in its back pocket. If it hesitates to deploy its intellectual rack and thumbscrew, it will be replaced by a regime with no such qualms.
>Popper, read logically, advises the Nazis to repress the Communists, the Communists to repress the Nazis, the liberals to repress both and both to repress the liberals. From his “open society” he comes all the way around to Hobbes, Schmitt and Machiavelli. Next he will tell us, in Esperanto, that “the earth is nothing but a vast bloody altar.”
Popper's point is that if someone wants to curtail your right to free speech, you have the right to curtail theirs. On the other hand, if a political opponent respects your right to speak freely, you should do the same for them. It's not really a paradox; it's about symmetry.
By analogy, imagine if someone commits murder. Would putting them to death as punishment also be murder? No. You have the right to life as long as you respect other people's right to the same.
The problems always begins with grey and ends in black. Who defines when, where and how someone is curtailing their right to free speech? There is always asymmetry in power.
This is correct. You can't have democracy without free speech. If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able to deduce the truth, you shouldn't trust them to cast their own vote.
This is the most unfortunate consequence of the idea that free speech must be limited.
If it is accepted that a part of the people cannot be trusted to not do wrong things when others tell them to do so, then an unavoidable consequence is that to that part of the people the right to vote must also be denied, because if they may be convinced by lies to do very wrong things, like violence, then it is even more certain that they will be easily convinced by lies to do a minor mistake, like casting a wrong vote.
Any proposal to deny the right of voting to stupid people, or to give different weight to the votes, depending on the "intelligence" of the voters, would rightly generate huge protests.
However, any proposal to restrict the free speech without also restricting the right to vote is logically inconsistent, even if many seem to not notice this.
> If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able to deduce the truth...
Do you trust people who live in an echo chamber overrun with disinformation to deduce the truth about the outcome of the US election? If so, can you speak to the mechanism by which such people can determine the truth? And could you speak to the empirical failure of this population to discover the truth?
With almost every technological advance, destructive power arrives long before the protective powers. It's much easier to destroy something with a nuclear weapon than it is to build a nuclear power plant. Likewise, we arrived at muskets before the combustion engine. Disinformation is much cheaper (and profitable for media companies surviving on outrage driven clicks) than delivering self-verifiable empirical information. This will change in time.
There are no single criteria that can be used to judge how democratic a country is.
Many European countries have more restrictions on free speech than USA, so yes, they are less democratic by this criterion.
By other criteria, e.g. by evaluating how many abusive laws they have that favor a few rich individuals that own some large companies against the majority of the citizens, most European countries are more democratic than USA.
The same conclusion comes from other criteria, like how easy is for most citizens to access education or health services.
>The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way.
You're leaving out some very well-established restrictions on free speech, including slander, libel, copyright infringement, obscenity, privacy violation... in short, absolutism hasn't been a prevailing philosophy for centuries. This sudden resurgence of it feels like a refusal to engage with the very real, very difficult debate on what speech deserves censorship.
It doesn't have anything at all to do with intelligence, but the observed consequences of certain kinds of speech. Lies, for example, that manipulate peoples' emotions. This is not unique to "stupid people."
Some other poster already mentioned that what you list are actions that are punishable by various laws, at least in most countries.
There is a huge difference between punishing someone for something already done, e.g. slander or libel, and denying him access to publication media because you believe that in the future that person might say something that might have who knows what effect on other people, who might do some crimes.
I completely agree that whoever abuses the free speech right to do something punishable by law must be judged and punished if found guilty.
On the other hand, I do not agree with any of these "deplatforming" actions based on vague beliefs about the future actions of some people.
If Trump or anyone else is expected to do a speech crime, then watch him and, as soon as he does that, fine him or arrest him.
If he already did such a crime, then also fine him or arrest him.
Otherwise, "deplatforming" him has no basis in facts.
> denying him access to publication media because you believe that in the future that person might say something that might have who knows what effect on other people, who might do some crimes.
Is this the case here?
The statements in question are already made. Typically, the deplatforming happens after a violation has already been made. Which seems to be the case here, unless I am misunderstanding.
In the case of banishing someone like Trump from Twitter, where that is justified by many previous misleading messages, I agree that this is right.
However, this discussion thread started about the actions done against Parler.
I had not previously heard about Parler, but I understand that the efforts to stop its activity are based on claims that it does not perform adequate censorship of the content published there, unlike Facebook or Twitter.
If there are people that have published there things that are punishable by law, they should be punished. If Parler itself has done something illegal, then they should be punished.
However, if some private companies sabotage Parler based on the fact that Parler does not have the same censorship rules as themselves, then that is clearly wrong.
From what I have heard here, it might be good if Parler disappears, but I cannot accept that the end justifies the means.
And of course, those advocating limiting speech are sure that they are not among the stupid. They're always advocating limiting someone else's speech, not their own, because they're smart people who are not fooled by the wrong things, and who listen to and believe the right things.
> Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.
I don't know about this part. the narrative seems to be more about protecting the vulnerable from the stupid, not so much protecting the stupid from themselves.
Nobody can be so vulnerable to the words of other people that they will do obviously bad things, unless they are stupid.
Normal people are vulnerable to lies only in the sense that when presented with deliberately false information that they cannot verify immediately, they may trust the liar and make a wrong decision to do something that they cannot know yet whether it is right or wrong, e.g. buying something cheap for a high price or being the victim for another kind of fraud.
Only someone stupid will beat someone or burn a house because of some false accusations.
All the arguments for these deplatforming actions were that the people, who would have heard the propaganda of those to whom the access is denied now, would have been easily convinced to do stupid things.
> but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.
It's not them I want to protect (though I don't have any explicit desire for them to _not_ be protected). It's me I want to protect. Your right to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose, and your right to yell "Fire!" or "Stop the steal" or "Storm the Bastille!" are likewise constrained when they infringe on my rights.
The practical implementation and realisation of rights is always a trade-off of rights vs rights. What is under discussion is where the balance of those trade-offs lay.
Having said that, there is a very strong case to be made that we need to address people's propensity to listen to, invest in, and act on, obvious bullshit (e.g. flat-earthers, reptilians etc). More than education is required. My brother-in-law - a highly functioning, tertiary educated small business owner and nice guy - is a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracist, believing the most outrageous things. Having a rational discussion with him has not budged him from his beliefs one iota. I believe it's a psychological condition as common as depression or anxiety.
There are no easy answers nor quick fixes for this problem.
>The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way.
I don't see why this is true; intelligent people can be harmed by speech just as much as stupid people can. Everyone can certainly be harmed by the immediate follow-on effects of speech. Some words can harm in a way it is unreasonable to expect guard against, or those for which it is impossible to guard against.
The scholarly literature on speech, harm, and legality has dozens of such examples.
>but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell
I can courageously say now that I'm not in favor of restrictions on speech for reasons of "stupidity" but rather the demonstrable harm speech can cause.
I don’t agree, perfectly rational otherwise smart people can be duped by lies, to suggest otherwise is to deny the evidence of the entire advertising industries existence. We need to protect everyone from predatory actors, propaganda and lies irrespective of their intellect because we are all susceptible.
I'm not sure you have actually shown the equivalency.
But if you did, how is that different from worker protections or consumer protections or environmental protections or mandatory seatbelt or million other laws?
> Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.
Maybe people don't actually espouse that stated position because it's a strawman.
Intelligent people can be fooled and manipulated without being stupid - they have been for ages. What's different now is the speed and concentration of misinformation.
Platforms of mass misinformation and manipulation are curious beasts, and susceptibility to radicalization != stupidity. Something somewhat novel appears to be happening due the new ways we communicate, and it's not unreasonable to suggest that "something" should be done about it.
edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any discussion below is fruitless.
I think parent was pointing out that the question of "where should the line be drawn and who should draw it" has already been settled. Those things are already illegal, so we don't need to impose further restrictions on speech in order to prevent those things.
> I think parent was pointing out that the question of "where should the line be drawn and who should draw it" has already been settled. Those things are already illegal, so we don't need to impose further restrictions on speech in order to prevent those things.
I'm skeptical that such a line can ever be truly "settled." Sure, it can be settled in a particular social and technological context, but when those latter things change, the line may need to be adjusted.
See Trope 9: "This speech may be protected for now, but the law is always changing."
TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"
> See Trope 9: "This speech may be protected for now, but the law is always changing."
It's worth noting that no legally forbidden censorship has been happening with regards to the recent insurrection against congress.
> TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"
But that's not a fixed fact of nature, it's a reaction to a particular social and technological context.
For instance, if someone discovers an idea instantly turns 10% those who hear it into murderous zealots (sort of like the poem in "The Tyranny of Heaven" by Stephen Baxter), that idea is going to censored hard and the Supreme Court will be like "yup, ban it."
Likewise, if some social change or technology renders the legal regime that the Supreme Court has created a cause of serious dysfunction, then Supreme Court is going to have to change that regime to accommodate. Idealism's great, but not when it doesn't work.
> no legally forbidden censorship has been happening with regards to the recent insurrection against congress.
Yes, this is true as far as I am aware as well. But I find myself in a conundrum; had this "inciting" speech taken place in the town square or a public park, much of it likely could not have been censored because it would have been protected by the 1st amendment and the last 100 years of case law. Where, then, is the town square and public park of 2021?
Despite the fact that the legal protections of public speech haven't changed much in decades, the practical protections of public speech (as I discuss in greater detail in [1]) have indeed been eroded, because social media platforms and, apparently, web hosting and device makers are now the arbiters of the vast majority of speech. Free speech that only applies where virtually noone can hear you is a very limited free speech indeed.
The town squares and public parks are still there.
The existence of Twitter, Facebook, etc. have accustomed people to the ability to air their opinions globally free of charge, however that is a very novel phenomenon. It's hard for me, having come of age in the 1980s/1990s, to see this as an inalienable right.
Of course they are still there! But the conversations increasingly aren't taking place there. If free speech is essential to a liberal democracy, we're moving to a place where the majority of speech takes place in non-free-speech areas, and that does not bode well for the health of our democracy.
> Of course they are still there! But the conversations increasingly aren't taking place there. If free speech is essential to a liberal democracy, we're moving to a place where the majority of speech takes place in non-free-speech areas, and that does not bode well for the health of our democracy.
You have a right to speak, but not a right to reach.
The majority of speech always took place in areas with some kind of limits. For instance: in some guy's tavern or in the pages of a local newspaper.
Furthermore, what's happening to Parler could also be conceived as a kind of self-defense exception: the factions it embraced have recently attempted to literally attack (in the name of a selfish demagogue) the heart of the liberal order that enables free speech, and they cannot be tolerated if toleration is to survive.
> If free speech is essential to a liberal democracy, we're moving to a place where the majority of speech takes place in non-free-speech areas, and that does not bode well for the health of our democracy.
The majority of conversation in democracies has always taken place in private venues that were free to control who had access and did absolutely do so based on political viewpoint.
That these private spaces are now virtual rather than physical doesn't change the essence of that fact.
>the question of "where should the line be drawn and who should draw it" has already been settled
I think it should at least be a line open to challenge without being accused of being brainwashed. If that line cannot be questioned, we're skating on dogmatism. There are very few good reasons for a special guarantee of free speech (versus, say, a special guarantee to be able to eat fries) which stand up to closer scrutiny.
The only convincing reason for a constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech is mistrust in the government, but again, that depends where you draw the line. Food regulation is arguably just as important in our lives, but few mistrust the FDA as to call for its abolition, or propose a constitutional amendment banning all regulation of foods.
This isn't a matter of what the law is, it's a matter of what the law should be - whether it's a constitutional law or not.
no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion. Saying “we storm Capiton at 8:00am on Jan 6” is a call to violent action, not an idea, thought, or opinion and obviously must be taken down ASAP
> no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion.
But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie.
Most of the people who are complaining about free speech being limited are really arguing for things like the above.
You preventing signs on your lawn are fine, you preventing specific messages on systemically important communications infrastructure you happen to own is not. It’s the same reason that AT&T was heavily regulated back when it carried 90% of telecom traffic and before it was ultimately broken up via antitrust.
You running a corner store the way you want is fine, you running the only store in the country the way you want is not.
> You preventing signs on your lawn are fine, you preventing specific messages on systemically important communications infrastructure you happen to own is not. It’s the same reason that AT&T was heavily regulated back when it carried 90% of telecom traffic and before it was ultimately broken up via antitrust.
You know, you don't need AWS to run a website, right? Similarly, newspapers have often been local monopolies, but as far as I know, they've always been able to decline to publish a letter to the editor.
Whoever wants to stick a sign on my lawn is going to come up with some rationale to force me to do it, but that doesn't mean it holds any water.
We got to the latter because of years and years of the former.
"You're allowed to talk people into believing that they need to violently rebel, but you're not allowed to actually do the rebelling" is not a particularly reasonable position.
I'm working on a blog, where users will post about their experience with a particular drug and its side effects. Since, I am paying for hosting and I created the blog, I will NOT allow any pseudo science. Am I limiting free speech? No.
There is a good reason twitter, facebook, youtube does remove certain content. They have the right to remove whatever they want.
All speech is free speech. Avoid hyperbole here because it doesn't help. Your examples both kinds of speech that people think should be limited, trying to discard one as not speech rather than focusing at hand on what speech should be limited does nothing but rile up those that disagree with your examples.
If someone publishes fake news about vaccines, it takes a lot of effort then for people to keep explaining to other people how this is not true. It is harmful to society, and unfair - it takes less time to invent a new hoax than to fact-check it.
Just like loitering on the ground is considered an offence, so should be publishing fake news. It doesn't hurt one person, but it hurts society.
There also are objective criteria for determining if something is fake or not - so it is possible to create laws that forbid it and don't limit a freedom of opinion.
Why is everyone debating on whether they should be limits on free speech when that is irrelevant? Free speech is something provided by the government, not by private companies. Any private company, such as a restaurant, can throw you out for any reason outside of discriminating against a protected class.
What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?
> What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?
You mention protected classes in your first paragraph, but then act like it's self-evident that it's bad to "force people to work with (and serve) people they abhor". What else is the concept of a protected class if not this?
It's clear that we already don't have full freedom of association, and the question is where the line should be drawn. When people talk about big tech regulation, it's undergirded by many of these platforms' unique amount of market power. This isn't a novel concept; utility companies are an example of a natural monopoly: benefiting from scale, considered critical infrastructure, and legally prohibited from cutting off power to its customers, even if they don't like their politics. The topic under discussion here is whether the "new public square" (or things like payment infrastructure!) are considered critical enough to society that we want to protect access to them.
I'm constitutionally (not "Constitutionally") disinclined against ill-considered regulation, and most of the conversation by government about tech regulation is pants-on-head stupid. But the dissonance between the two paras in your comment are a good indication that this discussion isn't nearly as simple as you're framing it.
> The topic under discussion here is whether the "new public square" (or things like payment infrastructure!) are considered critical enough to society that we want to protect access to them.
That's one core question. Another is whether it should be up to these companies to police their own platforms. Inciting violence is illegal. They're banning people and platforms inciting violence.
"Repeal section 230" seems to be about making these companies responsible for policing their own platforms. When people incited violence/genocide on Facebook in Myanmar, some people held Facebook partially responsible. Now, there are people are inciting violence on Facebook in the US, and it's still an open question whether Facebook should be held liable.
When people incited violence/genocide on <radio> in Myanmar, some people held <radio> partially responsible. Now, there are people are inciting violence on <radio> in the US, and it's still an open question whether <radio> should be held liable.
There are important differences, but the parallels between the Rwandan genocide and the growth of talk radio in the US in the 90's have always struck me as interesting.
That being said, I think that the new public square argument is strong, and if we're going to have internet monopolies, then they probably need to be regulated similarly to the utilities.
Alternatively, they can be broken up. I don't think the current state is sustainable over the longer term.
I agree that this is a limit on corporations’ free speech. Monopolistic corporations do have a well founded legal limit to their free speech rights.
For example, it’s a form of free speech for Microsoft to decide how they write their own software. One of those decisions was to bundle a free web browser in with their OS and tie the OS function tightly together with that browser. Microsoft Corporation was almost broken up by the government because they did that.
The issue that Greenwald is raising is similarly rooted in anti-trust;
> If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. Just like individuals’ free speech rights have limits such as incitement to violence, corporations also have limits to their “free speech” rights based in anti-trust law and anti-racketeering laws in how they can attack potential competitors.
It isn't really free speech, you are right. It is more of an anti-trust issue, that a couple companies could get together to completely ban another one. We should consider if too much power has been concentrated in the hands of a few tech companies, if essentially their content moderation policies can so easily be misinterpreted as free speech issues.
That the outcome here is banning a community that was apparently mostly used for hate speech (never actually checked it out) is... maybe a red herring? I mean, they obviously didn't build these massive companies with the primary goal of banning niche hateful websites.
If we were to, say, break up social media and internet infrastructure giants, then this sort of website would probably be able to persist by hopping from host to host until they found one without any morals. But could consider if losing the ability to perform this kind of deplatforming would be worth it, in exchange for a much more competitive marketplace.
Keep in mind that sites like parler are not actually banned. They could simply hook up their own computer to the internet and run their site if they wished. No one has some natural right to be able to use a convenient service like AWS. And if AWS refuses to do business with you, there are hundreds of other hosting companies that you can choose from.
Ultimately, if not one of the hundreds of hosting companies out there wants to work with you, that should be a very strong indication that the community is not something we want. But if you really really want this community anyways, just hook up your computer to an internet connection and host the site yourself.
> Free speech is something provided by the government, not by private companies
It is not provided by the government. Congress is prohibited from passing laws that abridge freedom of speech; Congress is not the fountain that free speech springs from.
It is perfectly relevant to discuss freedom of speech in contexts where someone else might be doing the abridging besides the U.S. Congress.
So when a politician or pundit cherry-picks one sentence out of a larger statement and spins that to imply something other than what the speaker meant, perhaps even the complete opposite of what he meant, is that "fake news" or is that "opinion?" And who decides?
However, I want to repeat what I have already replied to another similar post.
All these speech crimes should be punished according to the law, as soon as they are committed.
Restricting the speech of someone, by denying access to publication media, just because it is believed that they might commit some speech crime in the future, that is clearly an arbitrary and baseless restriction of the free speech right.
The problem is people are idiots who will believe someone who calls themself Q and claims the deep state is trying to take down the president. Once you convince people of that you don't need to use illegal speech to inspire violence, they're already inspired.
If I threaten to kill you, or commit fraud, in person, you call the police, give them what information you have about me, and ideally I get a knock on the door. If I do it online, well, you don't have much recourse.
If the author of such an online message cannot be identified, then the recourse is what is already common practice, to delete the offending message or possibly to replace the deceiving information with correct information.
If the author can be identified, which is frequently true, then it should be the same for online as for in person.
If you want to frame it that way then fine by me: "there are no limits to free speech, but there are limits to what can be described as free speech". I'd argue that it's effectively exactly the same problematic seen from a slightly different angle.
Saying things like "I support Nazis" could be considered a valid political opinion protected by free speech in some countries and illegal hate speech in others.
I'm not American and I don't have a strong opinion on the events you refer to (I actually had to read the replies to understand what you were getting at), so I definitely would've told you exactly the same thing in June of 2020. Feel free to ask me again whenever you see fit.
Protesting anything is fine. It's how far you take that protest that is the problem. When does a protest become a riot?
When you block traffic?
When you enter a secured space?
When you break into a federal building?
When you set fire to a federal building?
When you set fire to cop cars?
When you break windows of local businesses?
When you loot local businesses?
When you spray paint hate speech?
When you threaten cops families with death?
When you throw fireworks at people?
When you throw Molotov cocktails at people?
These all occurred in large numbers during between the death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating efforts for those protests/riots?
Hm. I think a lot of people reasonably draw the line on speech somewhere after the protests & property damage that happened during 2020, but before action coordinated to take control of the seat of government/potentially kidnap or kill elected representatives.
Or, people are just inconsistent and not thinking about things beyond their politics.
People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th.
People are fine with Parler getting banned by all their vendors for not moderating violence and threats. But people would loose their minds if the same thing happened to Facebook for their failure to moderate violence around the Rohingyan genocide.
> People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th.
The reason why someone might hold these competing beliefs is simple: they strongly value democratic institutions. Violence, in the name of promoting democratic institutions, and ideally expanding human rights, is justifiable. Violence in the name of authoritarian insurrection is not.
Now, of course this gets really tricky, because many people on Parler, and in the capitol riots, fully believed that they were protecting democracy from massive voter-fraud. No clear answer to address that issue, but it is something that democratic societies will need to reckon with. How does one preserve democratic ideals (including promoting free speech, to whatever extent possible), while still maintaining a healthy society that doesn't tear itself apart?
> People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th.
This is a great point. It's also key to consider that some of the groups that praised the Arab Spring were the Obama State Department which was led by Hillary Clinton at the time.
It appears the threshold is "support violent insurrection in other countries but stamp out the discussion of it here".
Or, perhaps, "support violent insurrection after peaceful protests against authoritarianism, human rights violations, political corruption have failed, when there is no further peaceful opportunity for opposition."
(The United States had an election, right? One with no more than the usual, minor, issues, right? One where legal actions were taken and weighed appropriately, right? One where one specific loser seems only to be complaining about losing, right? One where all of the other contemporaneous votes were not objected to, right? One that will be revisited in 2 to 4 years, right?)
Serious question: Which of the lawsuits went into discovery and were heard to weigh those claims? I'd love to read the details as that could dispel rumors and bs.
"In this case, the district court issued an emergency temporary restraining order at the plaintiffs’ request, worked at a breakneck pace to provide them an opportunity for broader relief, and was ready to enter an appealable order on the merits of their claims immediately after its expedited hearing on December 4, 2020. But the plaintiffs would not take the district court’s “yes” for an answer. They appealed instead. And, because they appealed , the evidentiary hearing has been stayed and the case considerably delayed. For our part, the law requires that we dismiss the appeal and return the case to the district court for further proceedings."
Georgia's a pain in the butt. Apparently, their official court documents site wants $.50 / page for the PDFs of filings. That's not happening.
Many of the court records can apparently be found on democracydocket.com, but my browser is complaining about the site. Sorry.
Trump v. Kemp, 1:20-cv-5310 (N.D. Ga.) (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.285271...) (from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/voting-ri...) is interesting, though. The plaintiff's first claim is that the election was not conducted in accord with election laws established by the GA legislature. The court decides "Therefore, Plaintiffs Electors Clause claim belongs, if it belongs to anyone, only to the Georgia General Assembly" and since none of the plaintiffs are members of the assembly, they don't have standing. (That's rather fine logic chopping, but....)
The rest of the ruling seems to be that the governor and secretary of state of the state are not the ones legally responsible for verification of ballots, so the second claim cannot apply to them.
Ok, now I've been sucked in. I started from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related..., which lists a number of the cases, mostly in federal court, and mostly (I think) appeals, which don't deal with matters of fact. I'm having to dig through those to the original cases, in state courts.
For example, Bowyer et al. v. Ducey et al., which has a currently unresolved (https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-azd-2_20-cv-023... is the latest federal dismissal) but the dismissal refers to Ward, CV 2020-015285 (Ariz. 2020); (Doc. 81-1) (and has a short explanation of the ruling that goes into the evidence).
So, that brings me to Ward v. Jackson et al (CV2020-015285) (https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/records/election-2020/...). https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1... is the minutes of the first evidentiary hearing and https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1... is the minutes of the second evidentiary hearing and ruling. (The minutes don't include the evidence, just who gave testimony and what the evidence is.) The ruling is 1) Background, 2) The Burden Of Proof In An Election Contest ("The Plaintiff in an election contest has a high burden of proof and the actions of election officials are presumed to be free from fraud and misconduct."), 3) The Evidence Does Not Show Fraud Or Misconduct (see below), 4) The Evidence Does Not Show Illegal Votes, 5) The Evidence Does Not Show An Erroneous Vote Count, and 6) Orders.
P: "A.R.S. § 16-672(A)(1) permits an election contest “[f]or misconduct on the part of election boards or any members thereof in any of the counties of the state, or on the part of any officer making or participating in a canvass for a state election.” Plaintiff alleges misconduct in three respects. First is that insufficient opportunity was given to observe the actions of election officials."
C: "The observation procedures for the November general election were materially the same as for the August primary election, and any objection to them should have been brought at a time when any legal deficiencies could have been cured."
P: "Second, Plaintiff alleges that election officials overcounted mail-in ballots by not being sufficiently skeptical in their comparison of signatures on the mail-in envelope/affidavits with signatures on file."
C: "Maricopa County election officials followed [the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures Manual, with multiple verification steps] process faithfully in 2020. Approximately 1.9 million mail-in ballots were cast and, of these, approximately 20,000 were identified that required contacting the voter. Of those, only 587 ultimately could not be validated.[...] The Court ordered that counsel and their forensic document examiners could review 100 randomly selected envelope/affidavits to do a signature comparison. [...] Of the 100 envelope/affidavits reviewed, Plaintiff’s forensic document examiner found 6 signatures to be “inconclusive,” meaning she could not testify that the signature on the envelope/affidavit matched the signature on file. She found no sign of forgery or simulation as to any of these ballots. Defendants’ expert testified that 11 of the 100 envelopes were inconclusive, mostly because there were insufficient specimens to which to compare them. He too found no sign of forgery or simulation, and found no basis for rejecting any of the signatures. [...] None of them shows an abuse of discretion on the part of the reviewer. Every one of them listed a phone number that matched a phone number already on file, either through voter registration records or from a prior ballot. The evidence does not show that these affidavits are fraudulent, or that someone other than the voter signed them. There is no evidence that the manner in which signatures were reviewed was designed to benefit one candidate or another, or that there was any misconduct, impropriety, or violation of Arizona law with respect to the review of mail-in ballots."
P: "Third, Plaintiff alleges errors in the duplication of ballots. Arizona law requires election officials to duplicate a ballot under a number of circumstances. One is where the voter is overseas and submits a ballot under UOCAVA, the Uniformed And Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Another is where the ballot is damaged or otherwise cannot be machine-tabulated."
C: "The Court ordered that counsel could review 100 duplicate ballots. Maricopa County voluntarily made another 1,526 duplicate ballots available for review. [...] Of the 1,626 ballots reviewed, 9 had an error in the duplication of the vote for president. Plaintiff called a number of witnesses who observed the duplication process as credentialed election observers. There was credible testimony that they saw errors in which the duplicated ballot did not accurately reflect the voter’s apparent intent as reflected on the original ballot. This testimony is corroborated by the review of the 1,626 duplicate ballots in this case, and it confirms both that there were mistakes in the duplication process, and that the mistakes were few. When mistakes were brought to the attention of election workers, they were fixed. The duplication process prescribed by the Legislature necessarily requires manual action and human judgment, which entail a risk of human error. Despite that, the duplication process for the presidential election was 99.45% accurate. And there is no evidence that the inaccuracies were intentional or part of a fraudulent scheme. They were mistakes. And given both the small number of duplicate ballots and the low error rate, the evidence does not show any impact on the outcome."
The Arizona Supreme Court decision (https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1...) makes for good reading. It's pretty clear, with a summary of the evidence (for the parts that were appealed). Weirdly, it takes the three claims in reverse order. I particularly liked the statements that the Secretary [of State, of Arizona] represented an error of 0.37%, while the appellants say it represented an error of 0.55%; the trial court accepted the appellants' number but it and the Supreme Court note that extrapolated to the total number of duplicated ballots, that doesn't come close to what would be required for a recount. The appellant offered no evidence that 1626 ballot sample was inadequate. The court accepts that there were irregularities, but that they did not even render the result uncertain.
So, there's one. I'll go fishing for more.
From what I know about law (NOT A LAWYER!), they're probably all in state courts---elections are state procedures---and thus not reported like the federal cases (which seem to fall into two classes: appeals, which deal with laws and procedures, not evidence, and them as were dismissed due to lack of standing since state procedures are a matter for state laws.
Let's talk AI. In this case, Clark county used a machine to sort mail-in ballots and to do a first pass validation of signatures. For 453,248 ballots. For reasons, including that the signature exemplars from the DMV were less than 200DPI, 70% of the ballots were viewed as sketchy, while 30% were found machine-okey-dokey and passed on without further review. The complaint wants those 130,000 votes invalidated.
The interesting thing is that the 70% that required manual review, 1-1.5% were initially rejected due to signature mismatch. Most were "cured" by voters (presumably by officials actually contacting the voters), leaving 0.3% to be completely rejected. The court notes that Washoe county (not using the magic machine) had a pre-cure reject rate of 1.53%. [So, if I have my sums right, the complaint wants 130,000 (30% of mail-in votes) plus some unknown number (greater than 1%) of the remainder invalidated, full stop, because between 1,400 and 6,900 were invalid. Or something.]
The complaint also includes Nevada's electronic voting machines ("not less than 1000 illegal and improper votes" counted and "not less than 1000 legal and proper votes" not counted). And no less than 15,000 illegal and improper mail-in votes from out-of-state. And the USPS, which was "directed" to deliver mail-in ballots where the addressee was deceased, moved, or had no known affiliation with the address. No less than 500 votes from dead people. There are also allegations of fraud in vote counting and observation. (It's a laundry list.)
According to the court, the Agilis sorting machines were determined to be ok in a previous case, Klaus v. Cegavske (which I have yet to look up).
As far as evidence, the court ordered the contestants to disclose all witnesses and evidence they intended to use by 5:00 pm Nov. 25. The contestants did not issue their first deposition notices until Nov. 27. Therefore the contestants' evidence consists of non-deposition witness declarations, with no cross-examination. The court considered these hearsay.
Michael Baselice offered expert evidence on the incidence of illegal voting based on a phone survey. He was unable to identify the source of his data and conducted no quality control. Similar questions faced Jesse Kamzol's analysis of various databases of voters. Scott Gessler's report lacked citations of facts and evidence and did not include any exhibits in support of his conclusions; his conclusions are based on a handful of affidavits. The complainants' experts were found to be of little or no value, but were not excluded from consideration, although given little weight.
The defendants provided a stack of testimony that court judged credible (including Dr. Michael Herron and the president of the company manufacturing Agilis).
Based on Herron's testimony, the court finds no evidence of a higher rate of voter fraud associated with mail-in voting. He also found that an illegal vote rate of 0.00054 percent between 2012 and prior to the 2020 general election. Herron testified that the contestant's implied double voting rate was 89 times larger than a conservative academic estimate. He finally testified that the contestants provided no persuasive evidence that fraudulent votes affected the presidential margin of 33,596 votes. (Gessler also testified that he had no personal knowledge of any voter fraud.)
The court found that the record does not support allegations of problems with provisional ballots.
The court found that the Agilis machine did not accept any signatures that should have been rejected and that the record did not support a finding that ballots with improper signatures were counted.
And on, and on. The court finds that the record does not support the allegations of the complainants, hearsay declarations included, under "any standards of evidence". The contestants failed to meet their burden and the case was dismissed.
J claims that election workers coached voters and was instructed not to ask for photo ID from voters. However J does not name the location, provide the number of incidents, or name the employees. J never told a supervisor of the incidents nor took steps to address them. (J only came forward after reports of Biden winning.) J also claims, at the TCF center, she was directed not to compare signatures and to "pre-date" absentee ballots received at TCF on Dec. 4. The State Elections Director, CT, answers that signatures were previously verified at the Detroit Election Headquarters and that the "pre-dating" involved completing a data field inadvertently left blank during that earlier process. (I wonder if Michigan use the envelope/affidavit and anonymous ballot approach like Arizona, which ideally would have stripped off the signature part before vote counting for privacy. Michigan may need to do some work, if vote counters can match signatures with ballots.)
State Senator RJ wasn't there and makes claims based on other affidavits.
AS was a Republican challenger that didn't attend the training. AS claims out-of-state license plates brought "tens of thousands" of ballots in at 4:30 am, and that every ballot after that was for Biden. CT responds that rental trucks with out-of-state plates were used, all ballots were brought in the same way, the number of ballots he claims is speculation, and that 220,000 more votes were made for Biden.
DG claims large numbers of ballots were delivered in unsealed containers. Plaintiffs never supplied any legal requirement that sealed containers were required.
PC claims that computers were connected to the internet, based on an icon on one of the computers, but provides no other evidence. CT asserts that only the computers that needed to be connected were. (The Court notes that CT, in a Facebook post prior to the election, claims that Democrats were using COVID to commit election fraud (They see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake. (I'm getting punchy here.)) and that the predilection to see fraud undermines his claims.
MC was an IT consultant from Dominion Voting Services at TCF. MC claims witnessing "nothing but fraudulent events take place" including tabulating machines that jammed a lot (?) and a cover-up of the loss of vast amounts of data. No one else corroborates MC's claims, and by no one the court says the other complaintants.
Ex-Assistant Attorney General ZL claims that he was mistreated, that ballots were processed without confirmation of eligibility, that he was unable to observe because he was required to stand 6 feet away, and that he was excluded from the room after leaving to get something to eat because he was a Republican. However, two Democratic observers were also excluded, with the reason being the maximum occupancy of the room. Further, as mentioned above, voting eligibility was determined elsewhere. A large monitor was provided to allow observation at a safe distance. ZL also did not file any complaints at the time.
There's a bit about injunctive relief, irreparable harm, and legal remedy. (Michigan law provides for the Secretary of State and county clerks to audit races, but that doesn't seem satisfactory for the plaintiffs.)
The court finds that the plaintiffs have legal remedies and suffer no harm without an injunction, but that the defendants would be harmed by an injunction, as well as the public interest. The plaintiff's affidavits are contradicted by the State Election Director, whose account is corroborated by five other affidavits. An injunction and independent audit is denied.
This one is kind of interesting, even though the "independent audit" thing seems only like some kind of delaying tactic, rather than trying to get the election discarded.
On one hand, there's the assumption that election procedures and officials are legal and fair, and the further consideration that a ruling for the plaintiffs would be a big deal. (Judges apparently don't like to be backed into a corner and forced to make rulings that result in big deals, particularly on short notice. The phrase "judicial activism" shows up, for example.) On the other, these are serious accusations that are being considered seriously.
In this case, the court decided that the plaintiffs had other options they could use, and that the affidavits were not credible enough to override other considerations.
It's been a decade, I think people's opinions of the Arab Spring have been revised since then. The Arab Spring worked out best for the actual country it originated in, Tunisia.
But you know that people only think about the narrative. If its BLM everything goes. If its the other side, its evil, has to be stopped. And the best thing is that they are completely oblivious to their double standards.
That is one perspective, although it’s very limited in its nuance. A lot of people supported BLMs pre-violence protests because they wanted police held accountable. And a reasonable person can discuss whether the violence would have escalated if the police hadn’t been so aggressive.
Compare that to the Capitol insurrection, where the goal was to overturn the results of an election. To overturn the government. Where the people inciting the violence were in the same tent.
There was never good intent on the side of the insurrection it’s, and they escalated to violence on their own.
> where the goal was to overturn the results of an election
If that was really the goal you'd think they would have gunned up a little more than they did. Instead, very few people were actually armed, so that seems rather disorganized for an actual coup.
> A lot of people supported BLMs pre-violence protests because they wanted police held accountable.
So protesting for police violence makes it OK to loot stores and burn cars that have nothing to do with it? How is that EVER ok? If you condemn violence you need to condemn violence no matter who instigates it, not only when it's very convenient for one to do so. because this is exactly what was happening 6 months ago, people cheer-leading the violence on Twitter if it was BLM related.
I do not think that it is very hard to determine when a protest becomes a riot, but I think that it is extremely difficult to determine who is guilty for transforming a protest into a riot.
I have no idea about what has really happened last year in USA, because the truth cannot be discovered just from video transmissions at TV or on the Internet.
Nevertheless, I have seen much more closely a large number of peaceful protests in other countries, which eventually became riots.
However it became clear later, that in most or in all cases, the transformation of the protests into riots was done by undercover police agents or secret service agents, who had infiltrated the protests and who had done this in order to discredit the protests so that their demands could be ignored and their organizers punished.
> These all occurred in large numbers during between the death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating efforts for those protests/riots?
They did closed accounts that called for violence. I have literally seen that. Both twitter and facebook. Not perfectly, but they did not refused to delete tweets or whole accounts.
There are dozens of accounts for groups in Portland that aren't specifically calling for violence because they use code words. Despite violence happening constantly for 5+ months at the events being organized...
I haven't actually seen any proof that the Capitol riot was anything other than a protest that got out of hand (like what was described every time there was violence and riots after BLM protests across the country). It only takes a few dozen agitators to get a mob mentality going.
Facebook suspended #WalkAway, a group of 500K people that joined to support leaving the Democrats because they were being alienated by their policies (their words, not mine). No threats, no violence. Straight up deleted the group with no recourse by the organizers. All Facebook said was that the page allegedly ran afoul of “hateful, threatening, or obscene” content, but no proof was actually given.
because they didn't call for a violent overthrow of the government but a peaceful jazz fest like they had 9 years prior. they are calling for an occupy wallstreet 2.0
> Fifty days — September 17th to November 3rd.
>
> Let us once again summon the sweet, revolutionary nonviolence that was our calling card in Zuccotti Park.
If your stated intent explicitly calls for ‘non-violence’, I expect this doesn’t violate ToS despite potential inferences from the sensational branding.
I never heard of this before so I don’t even know what happened on Sept. 17. Was it violent?
Parent was obviously referring to the 34 deaths, theft, forcing people to comply with the requests (raise your first or face the mob) and millions of damage in private property, due to the BLM rioting.
Still, it's not relevant because they weren't exercising freedom of speech, just incitement of violence. Same as the people at the Capitol.
The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid...
Did you read your Wikipedia list? We have a whole bunch of people shot by cops, a few looters shot by store owners, people shot in unrelated murders that happened near protests, people run over by cars that drove into crowds, some people shot when groups of armed racists started gunfights with groups of armed antiracists, etc.
This list does not at all support the thesis that organized BLM protests were intentionally violent.
* * *
Yeah, there was a time that a group of white BLM sympathizers heckled another white BLM sympathizer who was eating at a restaurant table on the sidewalk, and the heckling was caught on video. The people involved are obnoxious jerks (organizers and most others in the BLM movement also agree they are jerks).
Similar heckling by all sorts of groups of jerks happens all over the country on a regular basis. For example a bunch of MAGA folks were following and heckling Lindsay Graham at an airport a few days ago.
But you really think heckling at a restaurant should be compared to an armed mob breaking into the Capitol building, chanting for the Vice President's execution and for the overthrow of the US government, beating cops to death, ransacking offices, stealing sensitive national security materials, and literally shitting all over?
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,”
> Hawk Newsome has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (“BLM”) founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi — and is not the “president” of BLM or any of its chapters. Only BLM chapters who adhere to BLM’s principles and code of ethics are permitted to use the BLM name. The reason for this is simple: unaffiliated uses of BLM’s name are confusing to people who may wrongly associate the unsanctioned group and its views and actions with BLM. As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not entered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.
If you look hard enough you can find unaffiliated yahoos of every ideological persuasion and self-proclaimed identity (libertarians, stoics, Christians, vegans, Canadians, chess players, computer programmers, stamp collectors, minivan owners, ...) spouting militant nonsense. Such statements should be condemned (and have been by those nonviolently protesting police brutality), but cannot be taken as sweeping evidence that everyone with similar self-proclaimed ideology or identity is a supporter of hateful violence.
If you intend to apply this kind of standard, then surely every organization that calls itself "conservative" should be similarly held responsible for the actions of the MAGA insurrectionists, right?
Conservative groups still exist outside Parler. And they can and do coordinate there.
The same platforms were closing accounts calling for violence and preparing it during BLM protests. The difference is that while people on Parler claim that violent subgroups don't represent all Trump supporters, platforms that don't allow calls for violence are not good for them.
"Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it"
That's not "a problem", that's the only problem.
Of course hatred and bigotry and false scientific claims and calls to violence, etc., are negative and of course we wish they would vanish.
But a Ministry of Truth would be worse.
I am willing to build and maintain mental, emotional and psychological armor against very negative, harmful speech if it helps avoid erecting a Ministry of Truth.
But...we did that. And the answer arrived out through representative democracy thus far is:
(1) For matters where no legal liability, or only civil liability (except for sex trafficking, and copyright law which has its own special rules) would be involved, mostly leave it up to the free discretion of each online provider to determine and address unwelcome content.
(2) a whole bunch of crime-specific rules in criminal law, including (relevant to recent events) an absolute prohibition against knowingly providing any good or service (with narrow medical and religious exceptions) that will be used in “terrorism” offenses.
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free.
I think you should be free to say what you want and to think what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in that space.
Here are three examples:
(1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out?
(2) You start a social media company and somehow a large contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it on the site unless it is breaking a law?
(3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you want to be able to remove that?
Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line? If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return? Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their regulation.
Yes. Implicit in these "free speech" arguments is the idea that the government should be able to force private companies to publish user content that violates their policies. This is the sort of thing that the 1st Amendment is actually supposed to protect us from.
In all the above cases (person spouting epithets at your bar, social media users posting hate on your website) these are people with whom you have no contract. They are there at your permission, as long as they behave according to your standards.
When you rent space to someone, and they start using it in a way you don't like, maybe even specificially violating their lease, you can throw them out, but it becomes a legal process called eviction. You can't just put their stuff on the sidewalk and change the locks without going through that process. This is how the game is played when you get into that business.
Maybe that is the part that's missing with the AWS/Parler situation. AWS doesn't want them, but they leased space and services to them and there is a contract. Breach of contract is not something that either party to the contract can determine, because they both have conflicts of interest. If we had a judge review the contract, and approve the eviction, at least there would be a lot less basis to claim that are acting capriciously or out of bias.
Amazon is not a utility, they are a private company which leased Parler "space" in an unregulated industry. The contract that Parler agreed to has an Acceptable Use Policy which is very broad. If Parler believes AWS breached their contract, they can sue just like in anyone else in a contract disagreement.
Maybe in the long-term we'll look at hosting more like real-estate and it will have more laws and regulations about what the providers can and cannot do, but I doubt it and I'm willing to bet the trade offs that come with that are truly terrible. Imagine how many things wouldn't get off the ground if hosting contracting was even 1/3 of the real estate process.
More importantly, hosting isn't a monopoly. There's no government provided moat that justifies that level of regulation. The way I see it there are only two things that are in utilities in the internet space, ISPs (both consumer facing and interconnects) and DNS, and DNS is arguable.
Landlords are also private, and infinitely farther away from being a monopoly, but they are still not allowed to just throw people out because they don't like their politics. There's a process.
It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the electric company?
Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.
If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease to me.
A lease is just a contract. It can specify conditions for termination. Without reading the contract, it's impossible to know if it is being breached or not.
> If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside.
No, and I didn't suggest that.
> electric company
Regulated. The electric company is a regulated monopoly. Hosting companies aren't. If an ISP had banned traffic from Parler, that would be an issue, it is a regulated monopoly. If Amazon shuts them down, there's no issue, it is an unregulated service provider.
Im not sure this is a good metaphor. None of Apple, Amazon, or Google (no matter how hard they try) are social media companies. None of them are in direct competition with Parler, and shutting it down wont increase their market share one iota. None of the social media companies are banning people because of things they said on Parler, and I doubt that the pressure applied to Apple/Amazon/Google came from outside the companies, this is most likely the result of engineers working on the AWS team pressuring their bosses, and it snowballing.
Thought exercise: what if say, Twitter, wanted to put one of its competitors out of business, and decided to engage in mass creation of accounts/content on that competing platform with the intention of violating their ToS and getting the platform kicked off of their hosting provider. Is this a viable business strategy now? Heck, is this even illegal?
When Parler became a liability for any company associated with it, to their shock, it turned out no company wanted to be associated with it. In a world where people "vote with their wallets" companies like Amazon, Google and Apple would prefer to avoid giving people a reason to do just that.
I don't understand the shock and surprise. No US company is going to choose anything over their own bottom line. Certainly not for a site as small and niche and literally riddled with hate speech as Parler.
Parler and it's customers can say whatever they want to whoever they want. Can they force Amazon to take their money? Absolutely not. Should they be able to? No: forcing Amazon to host Parler would be a violation of Amazon's own right to free speech.[0]
From Parler's point-of-view it would be unfortunate if they tied themselves to AWS specific infrastructure. There's absolutely no way that they now have some kind of "right" to be hosted by Amazon. Also, it's just poor planning on their part.
Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability sway elections in democratic countries and help topple authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between #2 and #3.
>"Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored."
I have yet to see any evidence that the capitol protest was planned primarily on Parler. I have seen plenty of evidence that it was planned primarily on Facebook (that has since been deleted/hidden by Facebook). You'd think if the goal was to punish or curtail such events Facebook would be getting at least similar treatment as Parler.
Difference being that Facebook moderates content. This was the Apple complaint against Parler. Parler has publicly touted itself as the 4chan/8chan of social media apps. It is more that the culture of Parler is being rejected by the App Store gate keepers and not so much the vehicle enabling it.
Parler absolutely moderated content - many went on and posted something left leaning and had their content quickly removed. It was moderated by ideology instead of by any attempt at "decency" though.
it’s standard practice for many certain political forums, If you don’t espouse the same beliefs, you will get banned.
Their counter argument is that if you bring up conservative view points, the liberal echo chambers ban you. So they should be able to do it in their free speech spaces.
This also unfortunately hides the fact that hate speech, dog whistles, saying that COVID is a hoax, pushing for falsehoods and getting upset about not being able to do so, is why you get banned.
> This also unfortunately hides the fact that hate speech, dog whistles, saying that COVID is a hoax, pushing for falsehoods and getting upset about not being able to do so, is why you get banned.
I fail to see how this any different from any other social media site??
Again, NOTHING that Parler did is any different from any other social media platform that is a total cess pool of what you just described. The difference is, the speech was predominantly conservative in nature. Which leads me to believe the decisions to remove the app were purely a political decision - which is an incredibly dangerous precedent to start.
There are plenty of individuals claiming they were banned for posting left content or disagreeing with right wing content. Hard to know how much is trolling or not, but I think that's kind of the point. If it is the home of free speech, who is Parler to determine their intent?
> Still, there is a set of community guidelines and a user agreement, which prohibits deliberately obscene usernames, pornography, and threats to kill others. Meaning even Parler’s free speech absolutists have some vague rules for what they deem as too offensive. “When you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,” wrote Matze during a consequential exchange on his site, shattering the hopes of conservatives and libertarians everywhere who dream of a social media site with a completely laissez-faire ToS.
Because all of the people who defended Twitter from suppressing conservative voices told them if they don't like it, they can start their own network.
Which is exactly what they did.
Now THOSE people who told them to start their own network so they could do as they please, are up in arms because they didn't moderate their content enough for their liking?
While I like the highway analogy, it only works if the places where "free speech" are being conducted are US owned , public infrastructure.
A closer analogy would be private roads. If Amazon owned a series of private highways used solely for shipping goods, would we care if they stopped transporting items they didn't agree with on those Amazon owned highways?
Forgive me if I'm repeating a common refrain here, but the words we say on Twitter, Parler, Facebook, and even HN aren't "free", spoken in a public place. They're owned by Twitter, Parler, Facebook and HN. Those companies can choose to do whatever they want, for better or worse.
Honestly my road analogy was more about reflecting on the notion of limits on free speech in general. It was not meant to be compared to the specific issue of AWS & Twitter. It was meant to draw our attention to the fact that we wholeheartedly endorse many systems (e.g. roads) that absolutely facilitate immoral and criminal activity. And that's ok to do. Thus I claim that it's similarly ok to endorse absolutely free speech without limits, despite the immoral & illegal activity that it might incite.
Roads encourage bank-robbers. Honestly who would rob a bank if you could only flee on foot? It's ok though that it encourages and facilitates bank robbers. We should not close the roads because of it.
We need to be OK that certain things (free speech) can have huge negative effects and criminal elements.
Generally speaking, there's two ways to determine a truth, either from experimentation and results, or from first principles.
From the experimentation side of things, you have Canada, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (I'm probably missing some) where they impose restrictions on free speech while still having mostly free speech rights. You can even include the US as well, since it does have restrictions, they're just more relaxed, and seem to only be enforced if financial damage can be proven from libel.
Now very broadly looking at that list, it seems that countries that take a most speech is free (especially speech that criticizes the government and ruling class), but some speech is restricted (especially hate related speech, speech that imply violence to others, speech that targets minority groups, and diffamation and libel speech) seem to work pretty well in practice. At least, those countries have had stable social and economic environments, and seem to allow for good opportunity to its citizen and give them a good standard of living in general.
So from the experimentation side of "truth seeking", it seems to me I'm not seeing an argument for absolutely all speech should be free always no matter the circumstances or the intent of the speech.
Now, we don't have a good experiment example of "all speech goes" unfortunately. Maybe the US is the closest to it, and that seems to be causing quite a lot of social and economic instability for now at least. But I'd say it's too soon to conclude anything on that front.
The other approach to "truth seeking" would be from first principle. The theory around free speech comes from the liberal progressive thinkers of the enlightenment. So turning to them for first principle makes sense. From my research into it (and I welcome you do your own), there seem to be no winning theory around it. All agree that speech against government should be free, but how far to take other speech in other circumstances is not clear. Also debatable if the government should be free to criticize groups of citizens or not, because that can enable top down propaganda and repression, which free speech is trying to protect against. Most theory seem to recognize the "risks" with unrestricted free speech, but some believe that the benefits of free speech against authoritarianism and majority's rule is worth it, while others think it is possible to draw a line that protects against this and mitigates the risk of unrestricted free speech.
It seems some of the thinkers that are pro unrestricted free speech also assume the system provides people with an education that allows them to identify and rationalize fake and manipulative ideas and thoughts from legitimate ideas and thoughts.
So the first principle outlook also seems inconclusive in my opinion.
That personally leaves me to conclude that mostly free speech is good, and fully free speech might also be good but that's not yet been demonstrated to really know, with keeping in mind that this uncertainty about fully free speech could resolve in it being worse or better than mostly free speech.
> > If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher"
> I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that you've likely heard this from someone else -- perhaps even someone respected -- but it's just not true. The law says no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it. The law does distinguish between "interactive computer services" and "information content providers," but that is not, as some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying "platform" or "publisher." There is no "certification" or "decision" that a website needs to make to get 230 protections. It protects all websites and all users of websites when there is content posted on the sites by someone else.
> To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a "publisher." What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.
Edit: BTW, I'd suggest reading that whole article. Section 230 has been misrepresented by politicians and the media fairly regularly, and this piece does a nice job of laying out the current state of the law and its interpretation and application.
I didn't read the comment as an opinion. What they wrote is a common misunderstanding of section 230 that, these days, is being promulgated by defenders of Parler.
But right now, it doesn't matter if I disagree or not. US law makes it very clear what responsibilities and rights publishers have.
Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking.
They are also allowed to restrict whatever they like, whether it's constitutionally protected or not.
> Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking.
No, it doesn't.
It states that online systems with user generated content (and other users on such systems) aren't treated as publishers of what their users post, with some major exceptions related to civil liability related to sex trafficking and all criminal liability regardless of subject matter. Civil liability not deriving from status as a “publisher” is also not on its face, affected, though some courts have also applied 230, controversially, to immunize against notice-based civil liability that would apply to them as distributors, even if they aren't considered publishers.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
It also says other things that I neglected to state, most importantly, that section 230 does nothing to change criminal law, so it's also fair to call me out on that.
No, it doesn't say they won't be liable for user content, it says they won't be considered the publisher. There is liability for content that is tied to being a publisher, and there is liability that has other bases. On its face, 230 says nothing about liability on other bases (as noted in GP, some courts have also used it to provide immunity from liability as a distributor, but that is controversial and not stated in the text.)
230 does protect platforms from liability of what their user base posts. Having run forums and chat servers for a long time, I can attest to the experience of having to moderate content and having received legal complaints. There are two major factors that people are conflating in these discussions. There is the direct legal aspect of having illicit content. The platform is covered if they make an effort to remove illicit content AND they themselves are not encouraging the illegal behavior. So for example, if they have users that also have admin roles and make sub-forums that promote illegal behavior and they do not warn/ban the admins, they may eventually be outside the protection of section 230.
Then there is the acceptable use policy of the hosting provider(s). dns, server, cdn, app store This is entirely outside of 230. If the provider gets enough complaints, they may eventually see your site as a risk and may choose to terminate your account in order to protect the image of their business. They do not want their reputation tarnished as it will affect their profits. I think that is totally fair. If you want to run a site that may likely provoke emotional response from the public, then in my opinion it would be best to find a hosting provider that accepts the risk in a contract. The contract should state what is expected of you and what you expect of them and what happens if the contract is to be terminated, such as off-boarding timelines. Smaller startups are at higher risk as they provider has less to lose by booting them off their infrastructure.
Where I believe this issue has gone sideways is what the industry believes to be considered an appropriate method of moderation. The big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Apple are using automated systems to block or shadow-ban things they consider a risk to their company or their hosting providers. This leads to people fleeing those systems and going to the smaller startups that do not yet have these automated moderation and shadow-banning systems and that is what happened with Parler and a handful of other newer platforms that wanted to capture all the refuges of the big platforms. A similar thing is happening with that alternate to Youtube, but I can not remember what it is called. Bitchute?
Another potential problem that may confuse the 230 discussion could be that many powerful politicians and corporate leaders use the big platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They and big lobbyists and investors may have some influence over the behavior of these platforms and may be able to tell them to squash the sites that do not follow the automated version of banning and shadow-banning. Does that create echo chambers? Is that what is happening here? Not sure. If so, I predict it will push many people under ground and that is probably not great for agents that would like to keep an eye on certain people.
One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred on Parler, but rather tended to occur on FB. If you'd used Parler before it went down (I poked it months ago, before all this madness, and found it to be sorely lacking), you'd notice that it's a shoutcasting platform like Twitter, and is wholly unsuitable for any kind of event planning. At most, you could give messages saying to prepare for X at event Y, which is 'planning' of a sort, I suppose.
Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Violent threats and incitement to violence occur on these platforms all the time. Some of this content is moderated. Much of it is not.
> Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
Sure.
And that may indicate problems with those platforms. At a minimum, though, those platforms reacted against continued use by the same terrorists once it was unmistakably, publicly, concretely clear that they were a deadly serious threat.
I don’t think he said that. He said that many of those arrested were not active parler users, and that significantly more planing happened on Facebook and Twitter
He provides some cursory anecdotal evidence to that effect in the article, at least. My only addition is observing the nature of the platform itself as also making it an unlikely venue for that activity. But people have used platforms for entirely unsuitable purposes before...
You need a license to legally use the US highway system. It is patrolled by police who can stop you at any time and request your documents. You can have that license revoked for a variety of reasons.
The highway has a crapton of regulations around how you can use it. Speed limits, rules against drunk driving, driving only in 1 direction, requiring your lights be on (in some places during the daytime).
Nobody (almost) complains about limits on "free driving."
Would the highway not be better equated to the internet itself?
With AWS, Google Play store, iOS store as toll roads (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Gate Bridge etc...) and Parler, Facebook, HN etc... as car brands?
Manufacturers can be forced to take all of their cars off the road for repair. Take Toyota or Waze.
You might have an argument about iOS taking Parler off the store as an issue because you can't sideload, but you can directly install APKs onto Android. You can self-host Parler with physical servers. I guess I'm less bothered by this than a lot of folks cause one of my rules is basically "Be nice around other people's things and ask before you touch". AWS and the Android + iOS stores are other people's things. And Parler poked at a sore spot: being used to plan attacks
You can't post pirated content or child porn online - because you're either directly engaging in or enabling criminal behavior.
If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime.
And sure, this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it, and it's not the main value proposition of the platforms.
The problem with Parler is that this was always where it was headed. It was built to serve people who would use it for this, and a significant portion of the content created and consumed was about this.
There is also legitimate content available on Kick Ass Torrents. But the majority of the consumption is for things that are illegal in the US. So it gets the same treatment as Parler.
> If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime.
You are conflating Parler with it's users
> this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it
From the article:
> And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
You've made some good arguments throughout this thread, but this one in particular is disingenuous. You can't market yourself to people that were deplatformed specifically for inciting violence and then credibly mock surprise when those people begin inciting violence on your platform. By the time the limited number of moderators get around to deleting or hiding posts the damage is done, and everybody knows it.
1. You either are unaware of the meaning of the word "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than I do.
2. Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform?
3. Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"? This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.
> You either are unaware of the meaning of the word "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than I do.
I'm simply crediting you with the intelligence and experience to understand that what someone says publicly is not always in line with their actual goal. Therefore, by pretending that Parler's terms of service represent their actual intentions despite evidence to the contrary, I believe you are being disingenuous.
> Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform?
I have no idea. It doesn't matter. "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face!" is not a credible expression of surprise when you invite a bunch of leopards into your home and set them loose.
> Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"?
I don't think it's undermining the discussion to assume a certain level of conversational and contextual shorthand. "Everybody" does not mean literally every person on earth, it means "people with interest and experience in these matters". I apologise if English is your second language or similar - I'll try to be clearer in future.
> This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.
Not every user needs to have viewed content for that content to be damaging. However, the more people that see damaging content the more damaging it is. Most social media platforms expose more recent content to more users, so damaging content will do most of the potential damage within a short time. Therefore, platforms with actual intent to reduce damage will need to remove problematic users from that platform while also employing a highly effective moderation team to identify new damaging content as quickly as possible.
It stands to reason that a platform that only wanted to look like they were reducing damage could employ an ineffectual moderation team to remove content only after the majority of the damage was done. I suggest that's what happened here - it seems clear that large amounts of inciting content were available for long periods of time (hours/days).
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true.
I very much disagree. Hate speech is just one example. "Speech" designed to terrorize, threaten, and incite action should not be "free".
> Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable.
By this logic no one who is purposely inciting anything is even liable for the actions that they cause. "Leaders" will never face punishment, because they only say things, right?
The line (or at least one of the lines) comes when speech is no longer an expression, but an instruction. It may be a tough line to draw, but that doesn't mean that the line shouldn't exist somewhere.
"hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years to silence people. The only things that are dangerous are when people actually act or are explicit and then we deal with them. This isnt Minority Report. Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. The only restrictions are explicit threats (someone is literally saying they are going to kill someone and names said person) Today the interpretation has morphed into whatever is unpopular or is 3 steps away from being an actual threat.
> "hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years to silence people.
Americans have been struggling with hate speech and censorship for well over a century. The most obvious example is the censoring of the film The Birth of a Nation back in the late 1910s, but there are examples even further back in US history.
Our interpretation of "freedom of speech" (both philosophically and as protected by the First Amendment) isn't immutable and has changed since the Bill of Rights was adopted. Prior to the 1950s, the supreme court upheld the censorship of books and film for reasons that we now interpret as unconstitutional, and censorship remained the law in many states for decades after.
I would argue that our current expectation for "free speech" and this idea that it is "nearly absolute" is far more liberal than what we've seen through most of American history.
I'm not sure what you mean by this but Free Speech in America certainly did not start at absolute. Our constitution endorsed slavery and slaves had no freedom, including speech. The constitution only prevented the federal government from restricting speech. The Supreme court has both expanded or restricted free speech depending on the ruling.
You need to actually read up on the history of the Enlightenment and the philosophers who actually devised the notion of free speech and how they envisioned its use.
In no way does it even reflect the possibility of something like Parler being used to amplify the sort of messaging it does.
We have court opinions on what free speech means in this country and the supreme court has made the heavy decisions on that. Its not a distorted wish list of what each individual wants it to be.
Those court opinions all say it's absolutely fine under the First Amendment for a private business to refuse to do business with another business that it finds objectionable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Let's set aside the distinction between free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment vs. the broader free speech ideal that's foundational to our society, since it isn't even needed: as suggested by the objections from Germany, France, and Mexico noted by Greenwald, these corporations are effectively acting as the government, so the reasoning behind the First Amendment's existence directly applies here.
(This is not an endorsement of the delusional presidential behavior that created the leadership vacuum filled by the corporations.)
The irony of referencing Germany as an example when Germany has an explicit ban on speech that is anti-constitutional is pretty high here.
It would be government overreach to tell the platforms that they're required to host whatever speech is posted to them, not the other way around. As I've mentioned in other comments, there are more ways to communicate now than at any other time in history. Facebook and Twitter do not have monopolies on speech, nothing on the internet does.
The issue is that the corporations are acting as the government. As you noted, Germany restricts speech more than the US for obvious historical reasons. So the fact that even their government objects to this behavior is evidence against your position, not mine.
In your linked comment, all of these governments recognize (3) as a scenario that should be governed by laws (which vary between countries).
> In your linked comment, all of these governments recognize (3) as a scenario that should be governed by laws (which vary between countries).
So why not 2? When does 2 become 3?
> As you noted, Germany restricts speech more than the US for obvious historical reasons. So the fact that even their government objects to this behavior is evidence against your position, not mine.
The German and French government objects to the US not having laws that require this behavior and leaving it in the hands of private companies, sure, and I object to the US having censorship laws and would rather private entities be able to make the decision for themselves, the direction of MORE freedom of speech.
If this was primarily about "[objecting] to the US not having laws that require this behavior", their emphasis would not have been on the platforms being out of line.
> as suggested by the objections from Germany, France, and Mexico noted by Greenwald, these corporations are effectively acting as the government
To elaborate on the other user, Germany and France both ban holocaust denial and "hate speech", which would include much of the content on Parler. Mexico's speech laws are less clear, but if my reading is correct the constitution allows regulation of hate speech. And in practice, speech in Mexico isn't protected from the government or cartels.
So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US government to take a stronger stance on hate speech. This would, of course, require a constitutional amendment, at which point anything goes. Excluding that, what you see (and will continue to see) is corporations stepping in to ban hate speech because the government is restricted from doing so.
Did you actually read what Merkel or AMLO said? The first sentence of your second paragraph ("So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US government to take a stronger stance on hate speech.") can be immediately verified to be false in the sense that you are stating it (as justification for the platforms' behavior).
> Asked about Twitter's decision, Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said social media companies "bear great responsibility for political communication not being poisoned by hatred, by lies and by incitement to violence."
> He said it's right not to "stand back" when such content is posted, for example by flagging it, but qualified that the freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of "elementary significance."
> Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany’s example in how it handles online incitement. Rather than leaving it up to tech companies to make their own rules, German law compels these companies to remove possibly illegal material within 24 hours of being notified or face up to $60.8 million in fines.
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You mean verified to be correct as confirmed by her spokesperson who released the initial statement. (Seibert released the initial statement, as can be seen here[1])
So yes, the statement can be seen as saying two things
1. Twitter is too powerful and needs to be regulated
2. The US needs stronger regulations on hate speech.
"Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany’s example in how it handles online incitement. Rather than leaving it up to tech companies to make their own rules, German law compels these companies to remove possibly illegal material within 24 hours of being notified or face up to $60.8 million in fines.
""This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms," he told reporters in Berlin. "Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.""
I don't think this contradicts what I've said. One can conclude from this statement both that Merkel believes Twitter needs to be regulated, and that the US needs stronger speech regulation in general. (also I'll note that what Twitter did isn't actually illegal in Germany, there's no law that compels social media companies to host people)
The primary message from all of these governments is that the platforms are out of line.
Your original comment was in support of/elaborating on "It would be governmental overreach [to set the rules]." That original comment had an overly permissive rule in place of what I've bracketed, but that's beside the point since all of these governments are specifically objecting that the recent actions are problematically restrictive.
> The primary message from all of these governments is that the platforms are out of line.
Yes, and one reason for that, as stated by Merkel, is that the US doesn't have a democratic framework for managing hate speech. Because such a framework is illegal under the first amendment. And her statement suggests that the US adopt a more German framework for adjudicating such speech, so that corporations don't need to make their own rules.
Your claim is that Twitter is "effectively" acting as the government. That's not true under a significant amount of law and precedent. (There are cases where private entities are acting as a government, and importantly, trying to use government force to suppress speech, Marsh v. Alabama).
In fact, one could argue that by censoring speech, Twitter is explicitly not acting like the government, because Twitter is taking action the government cannot.
Hate speech was very much an issue even before 1947.
Libel laws alone put paid to your second sentence.
Free speech is not meant to be nearly absolute - it is not even meant to be largely absolute, copy right alone would be incompatible with such a strength of freedom.
None of what you just wrote is true actually and it is meant to be nearly absolute. Everything you just listed is a specific legal carve out. We start with absolute and insert very specific exceptions through court cases which are narrow. Copy right just happens to be one of them.
"hate speech" is not a recent term unless you mean that it was developed in the past century. In the united states, hate speech was determined as a limitation on the first amendment in 1942.
Can you point to the court case (court case that was not subsequently overruled)? The reason I dont believe this is that would be extremely arbitrary. If hate speech is in fact banned it likely has a very narrow and explicit definition in the ruling, most likely circling back to direct threats of harm.
Chaplinsky v New Hampshire found that a law forbidding abusive speech in public was Constitutional because the words in question "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."
We're so far down in the comments I forget who's arguing for what but I don't think that case is relevant.
That case gave rise to the "fighting words" doctrine or test which has (thus far) only been applied (successfully) to speech that is so vulgar or offensive as to provoke violence. A good representative example is the recent Twisted Tea smackdown video that made the rounds. If a police officer had swooped in and arrested the instigator before he got hit the arrest likely would have been kosher under the doctrine because the n-word is generally so vulgar you don't expect to be able to use it in that manner and not start a fight. Basically it's used to justify arresting someone for speech so inflammatory that even though you are not picking a fight someone is inevitably gonna pick a fight with you whether you want one or not.
I can't think of any case where it was used to prosecute someone for calling for "adjacent to violence" type behavior. I am unaware of any cases (that have not been overturned) where fighting words doctrine was used as a justification for suppressing political speech. If you know of any examples I'd be interested to read them.
There's sort of a catch to the way you're framing the question. Instances of speech that are forbidden are generally not considered political speech, even if there are political issues involved. For example, if I threaten the President because of his policies, there is obviously a political angle to that, but it is also a fairly uncontroversial felony.
For a concrete example of nominally political threatening speech that was found not to be protected, see Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists, where it was found that certain anti-abortion ads were not protected by the First Amendment because they reasonably caused the targeted doctors to fear for their safety. I don't believe they explicitly invoked the "fighting words" doctrine, but it relied on the same principle as Chaplinsky — that if speech has the effect of creating a real-life threat, the speech isn't necessarily protected by the First Amendment.
(To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the be-all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech," where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)
> that if speech has the effect of creating a real-life threat
>(To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the be-all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech," where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)
Yes, but those consequences must be imminent and unlawful.
The point of Chaplinsky isn't that it's a real life in the moment affront to civility so offensive that it's bound to cause a fight.
Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists is about specific threats, e.g. "I'm going to specifically kill you".
Both examples of non-protected speech are under totally different doctrines (I forget how far back the specific credible threat doctrine goes and what the real name for it is but it's really old, older than planned parenthood) that were more or less condensed into the "imminent lawless conduct" test established in (Brandenbyug).
It's going to be very hard for anything that is published in an asynchronous medium that isn't a direct call to lawless action by someone who can credibly get people to pull it off to fail the test because in order for the lawless action to happen people must do things that would be premeditated crimes on their own. There is no current US court doctrine for limiting free speech with regard to hate unless the content and situational details add up to something that fails the Brandenburg test.
v New Hampshire. I dont know much about this one (which is limited to a single state) but 1) it can be overturned by the supreme court, 2) if its an old ruling there may be an updated ruling 3) I have not seen the parameters that justify abusive speech, its probably quite specific.
By this logic you're saying that advocating and inciting genocide is just an "unpopular opinion" that deserves to be protected. You know, because it's not against a specific, named person.
Actually that would be a direct threat of harm which I specifically mentioned several times. So no, I'm actually not saying that. I'm not sure how its even possible you arrived at that conclusion.
If the primary use and purpose of highways was to commit crimes, and the people running them refused to do anything about it, then yes I'd question them or at least their management.
I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut, but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before that harm occurs.
With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms rather than causes.
For the analogy to work it's not even enough for the roads to be used to commit crimes. The roads would have to be continuously re-routing you from your intended destination and taking you down roadways filled with signs inciting violence, cult indoctrination, and lies about reality.
The algorithmic curation of all social media platforms that is intentionally built to assault users with the most distasteful, extreme lies (because it's good for engagement!) is the real problem in my view. If every social media platform stopped all algorithmic curation/recommendation and simply presented a chronological list of updates from people you follow (and did not recommend who to follow), then I think the bulk of the problem goes away.
I have no problem with free speech (even abhorrent speech). But I have a problem when a person's online experience is controlled by algorithms specifically designed to ratchet up the garbage and inundate people with hateful rhetoric.
It's pretty telling that "64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company’s algorithm recommended it to them" according to facebook's own research into divisiveness.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio...
With all the discussion about Section 230, could such opaque algorithmic curation constitute a form of editorial control, not unlike that of a publisher? Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw feed available to the user, or if they provide algorithmic curation, it's transparent to the user how information is prioritized? Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?
> Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw feed available to the use
That's not reforming 230, that's abolishing it and repudiating it's entire purpose. Enabling host action to suppress perceived-as-undesirable content without increasing host liability for content not removed was the purpose of 230.
> Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?
The distinction in 230 is crystal clear: to the extent content items are user-generated, the online service provider (land other users, even if they may have the power to promote, demote, or suppress the content are not publishers or speakers, period, the end.
The source (whether it is the user that is the source or the service provider for it's internally-generated, first-party content) is the publisher or speaker.
Wow. That is an amazing statistic- I find it hard to accept that the average person would be influenced by social media to that extent but that type of study result is undeniable.
I don't always go 85 in a 55 but when I do I get passed by a cop going 95.
Unequal enforcement is already very much a thing on the roads. Ever heard of a "fishing stop" or "driving while black". Getting cut less slack than a boring sedan and a work truck is one of the few things red Porche drivers and 30yo shitbox drivers have in common.
That's some sneaky language but this isn't a philosophical hypothetical. Parler hosted people calling for specific acts of violence and did hardly anything to moderate them. Those people were almost entirely right wing and you can see for yourself looking through the data dumps provided recently by a hacker or looking up articles about Parler.
If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we saw on Parler.
Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism. Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics.
U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and calling for violence around the country this summer. Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it but not the other?
There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as platforms under the assumption / intent that users create the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.
When it became undeniable that the traffic was connected to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly to cut it off. Parler did not.
Now, it's arguable that the other sites knowingly facilitating crime and just hoping to escape consequences because no one was going to make a big deal of it, and they only cut it off because the risk of that strategy increased after the Capitol attack. But while that may paint the past actions of the other firms in a worse light, it doesn't paint Parler’s actions before it was cutoff by other suppliers in a better one.
> When it became undeniable that the traffic was connected to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly to cut it off.
Remind me when the politicians who promoted the Antifa and BLM riots and actually set up funds so the protestors would be bailed out had their accounts "indefinitely suspended" for doing just what you're describing as the reason Parler got shut down.
Free Speech does have limits though. If you're incarcerated for a felony you can't vote, if you go to a mall and start yelling obscenities you can be removed, if you make youtube videos on how to create pipebombs the US President can kill you in a drone strike without a public trial.
The thing I think people miss when making the "this is an assault on free speech!" is that they think it's becoming a gray area, when in fact it has always been a gray area.
> I think the speech part should always be 100% free.
I don't think a claim like this is meaningful without a precise definition of "speech". And, consequently, I think you'll find any attempt to define which things are not "speech" ends up being functionality equivalent to dialing back from that theoretical 100%.
In general, you can't have 100% freedom over any finite resource. If there's only one dessert in the fridge, you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it.
If you presume that any meaningful "speech" has some non-zero audience size, then speakers are competing for the finite attention of other humans. You can't have perfect freedom for that.
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
IMO, this is literally a strawman argument. You're picking a very rare, extreme event and amplifying the importance of that event in an attempt to make an argument.
Following the implication of your argument (that we don't worry about a rare even on an otherwise good system), we shouldn't even bat an eye at Parler being removed.
It's by definition not a straw-man. He's not misconstruing the parent's point. He's making a comparing or extending it to another subject. It might be comically bad comparison but it's not a straw-man.
I believe that there are two common and non-negotiable principles for any kind of freedom to apply:
1. Abuses and crimes should always be persecuted. I have read lots of posts on Parler, and ALL grounds for violent speech, radicalisation and terrorism apply to lots of them. I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. Those who use this kind of language MUST be made accountable of their words, just like we'd make ISIS supporters accountable of their words. It's not that just because they're white and Christian dudes that look like us we can condone them a bit more. And if a platform refuses to limit this language, then the whole platform must be taken down.
2. Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you are NOT free to do that.
Parler has failed to guarantee both the non-negotiable freedoms when it comes to building a sustainable free speech framework, therefore it must be taken down. I really fail to see any contradiction in this.
And keep in mind that the anarco-liberalist vision of free speech is something that has arisen only in the past couple of decades. The founding fathers of the liberal school thought (including Popper and Hayek), those who had REALLY seen how things in Europe ended up when unlimited freedom of speech is guaranteed also to fascist jerks, were well-aware that unconstrained freedom with no framework to contain fundamentalism is a threat to a tolerant society. "Being intolerant with the intolerant is a civic duty for a tolerant society that wants to preserve its values" (Popper)
> Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you are NOT free to do that.
You just described investigative journalism.
Doxxing is not itself a violation of your rights, it’s just taboo when it’s done in the small.
Only when it’s done with the intent of causing illegal harm, such as “X lives here, go kick his ass”, would it be a violation.
I was obviously not talking about rightful investigative journalism. I meant things like EnemiesOfThePeople (former link: https://parler.com/profile/EnemiesOfThePeople), which leaked home addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of any politician who opposed Trump's effort to overturn the election. This has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with fascist ways of intimidating private citizens.
> I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions.
And I've read posts on HN saying we should hang and quarter Trump supporters; should HN be wiped from the face of the earth?
Took me about 30 seconds to find. But in general I will not do unpaid moderation work for ideological crusaders like dang. For example, I'm sure there will be a reallllly good excuse why this comment is actually okay. And I'll probably get flagged/moderated for good measure.
Oh, but for good measure...
"The radical right is a scourge ... They need to be repeatedly smacked down until normalcy is achieved."
And keep in mind that I'm just picking a random example from thousands of similar posts.
Radicalized Trump supporters were using Parler to share invites to "do a bloodbath out of Democrat voters", "burn them alive on the streets and throw them in wooden chips in front of their children", and you really have the courage to come here and say that WE are the violent ones for a whack-a-mole the Nazi joke?
From the bottom of my heart, fuck you, you filthy fascist.
I've got absolutely nothing against the old Republicans, I've got absolutely nothing against conservatives, I've got many, many conservative friends as well. But I've got A LOT against the violent scum of the earth represented by people like you who try to play the role of the eternal victim after inciting Civil War and gratuitous gruesome violence against the political enemy!
The complete quote: "If we have to play an constant game of Whack-a-Nazi, I vote we whack as many Nazis as we can."
That is a reference to the game Whack-A-Mole. Literally, that would mean hitting them with a soft foam hammer.
"Oh, but for good measure... "The radical right is a scourge ... They need to be repeatedly smacked down until normalcy is achieved.""
owlbynight's entire quote:
"Our political representatives are corrupt and generally represent whomever gives them the most money, namely large corporations.
"We, the people, are represented through our wallets now by the corporations that control our politicians because social media has unionized us. We're able to use online platforms to leverage companies into giving us what we want socially by threatening them when they step out of line. The companies that led to Parler shutting down were acting on public sentiment as a boon to their brands, thus ultimately reflecting the will of the people.
"It's kind of like a single payer system for social justice.
"It's weird end run back to representation but I'll take it for now. The radical right is a scourge that, unchecked, will lead to us having no rights at all. They need to be repeatedly smacked down until normalcy is achieved."
I could be wrong, but I'm also not reading that as a call for violence, much less "hang and quarter". It's not a particularly attractive metaphor, though.
See what I mean? There's always an excuse for leftist calls for violence; whereas right-wing calls for peace like Trump's recent tweets are akshually dogwhistles for violence. I'm disgusted.
It just jumps so easily to your mind how to defend, defend, defend leftist violence; you don't even consider yourself doing it. You too have trained yourself well as an ideological crusader.
You are correct. I admit, as a Democrat, that I want to hit all of those on the right with a medium-sized foam mallet thing. I am ashamed of the violence in my soul.
I've always refrained from calling Trump's supporters Nazis because I'm always prepared for the backfire of "oh, leftists are fascist because they don't let us do and say whatever we want bla bla".
But your comment clearly outlines that you consider them Nazis, that you have no problems with it, and that even if they are Nazis they should not be targeted for their hate and bigotry.
"We really need to whack Joe Biden before he becomes president!"
That's okay, right? Because it's just a children's game, right? Or is it interpreted differently depending on who the target is? Nazis, whacking them is just a game. Leftists, whacking them is srs bsns?
> Or is it interpreted differently depending on who the target is? Nazis, whacking them is just a game.
Did you read the full quote or not? The context matters not the targets (in this case a singular target changes the context). There is only one Joe Biden, so they way you are using it has a different context. If it was about whacking lib-trolls from your news group, that's different than specifying a person.
Maybe you aren't a native english speaker, but whack-a-mole is a common carnival game. That's the context in the quote YOU picked.
Can you show me where "whack-a-mole" is mentioned in the original comment? It's something that exists only in your mind to excuse a call for murder.
"Singular target changes the context". Okay, so "Man, Hitler sure was really good at playing whack-a-Jew, wasn't he?" This is okay by your "logic", right?
The context of the "whack Nazis" comment was the worst day of domestic terrorism and murder in American history. I don't think anyone was playing carnival games at the Capitol last week, but maybe we should go ask them? Maybe the whole thing was just a misunderstood carnival game!
I posted some examples in sibling comments, and the response was that leftist calls for violence are actually secret code about carnival games. So I'm not particularly inclined to post more.
And when it comes to doxxing of private individuals who simply opposed Trump's attempts to overturn the election, just search for EnemiesOfThePeople (it was also a very active account on Parler).
Nobody is proposing to remove the infrastructure itself.
It's a question of who gets to decide who gets to _use_ the infrastructure.
Imagine that you have a private company that manages all of the toll roads in a city. One day, this company decides that they no longer want John Smith to use their toll roads. John Smith is banned.
Maybe John is a terrible person. Criminal convictions, DUIs, whatever. Regardless of that, should a private company have unilateral right to ban a customer? With no recourse? No appeal, no accountability? There is no elected official to vote out of office if you don't like it. There's no appeals court to hear your claim. John is just banned. He now has to drive an extra 30 minutes every day because he can't use the high-speed toll roads to get to work.
Parler is problematic. For sure. And I'm a big believer in free speech, and that companies, in general, should be able to run their business however they want.
However, there are limits. A sandwich shop can't refuse to serve a customer because they are black, for instance. But cake shops can refuse to serve customers if they are gay, as we recently learned from supreme court cases.
I think that much of the issue here revolves around how much of a monopoly a company has. If my local sandwich shop doesn't want to serve me, because I'm a jerk, that's fine. I can just go to another shop down the street. I'm not that inconvenienced.
But these massive tech companies have enormous ecosystems. They dominate their industries, and are often the only really viable choice in their markets.
I see a constant stream of article about YouTubers that build a massive business with millions of followers, and then one day 'poof', Google kicks them off, and they have no recourse.
Or the guy on Facebook that spent $47 million dollars in advertising over the years, and one day Facebook kicks him off, banned for life. No recourse, no appeal, no explanation, even.
Apple and Google have absolute say over their app stores, and what is allowed. Companies can be ruined overnight because some algorithm tipped from the "ok" to "not ok" overnight.
From my perspective, your analogy fits for the internet backbone, but not for the fact pattern under discussion here. To stretch the analogy, I think AWS would be more like a really big network of private distribution centers where client businesses can drop off and pick up goods. I think those distribution centers would be well within their rights to refuse to serve clients who are trafficking "drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc".
If there were a US highway that was used primarily or disproportionately for crime, then the government would take some actions.
Examples of this in practice are the checkpoint around El Paso in West Texas that checks for all sorts of contraband. And the agriculture checkpoint on Highway 80 between California and Nevada.
In this analogy, Parler seems more like a single road used for lots of crime, while social media overall is the highway network that is more free.
I don’t want to nitpick, but i’ve been thru the checkpoint east of el paso many times. It’s deeply racist. Here is how every interaction i’ve had goes:
Checkpoint cop, looks at people in vehicle, sees they are all white, bored sounding asks “is everyone an american citizen?”
Driver: “no, some of us are american and some are canadian.”
There purpose is supposedly to check for illegal cross border activity in the US and yet a car full of canadians doesn’t even blip their radar because it’s not actually about nationality it’s about race.
Which is all to say that i believe your comment about that checkpoint being about contraband glosses over the real motivations. In the dozens of times i’ve been thru there all i’ve ever been asked about is citizenship, and it’s never mattered what the answer is because i am white.
There aren't millions of Canadian citizens crossing the US-Mexico border illegally every year. There aren't tens of millions of Canadian citizens living illegally in the US.
They are trying to stop the 99.999% of illegal aliens who are from Mexico and Central America from crossing the border, not the random Canadian who is basically guaranteed to be entering legally.
Because it’s a car full of white people, the border patrol and you assume that they’re “very likely to be entering legally”. There is a similar ratio of canadians legally and “illegally” living in the states as there are latinos living legally and “illegally”. But that aside, a car full of white people definitely gets treated differently at that checkpoint than a car full of latinos - and nobody EVER asked about “contraband” as originally suggested
A better analogy would be landlord-tenant. AWS was the landlord here. Although they should have the right to evict Tenants under certain circumstances, we might all be better off if these evictions were legal proceedings, and could be documented and challenged in court.
Crossing a state line on a federal highway to commit an illegal act is a federal crime. Parler was given the opportunity to police itself, and they defiantly said, no. What other choice do these companies have? They can't just leave it ignore it, considering there was legitimate concern for the safety of other humans lives.
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits
Convince me. I have a side project that's intended to foster free speech, but I disallow advocating harm toward identifiable humans, except through process of law. Should this limit really be removed?
We have free speech. That means I can speak freely, and not be compelled to repeat or amplify what you/they/govt want me to say.
Free speech is one thing, free amplification of speech at global scale is another
To the highway analogy: Yes, highways can be used for crimes. And there are restrictions on highways to prevent crime, enforced by everything including local police, county sheriffs, state police, border patrol, and national guard when necessary.
The Interstate highway system was built specifically for wartime transport of people and materials. One of the specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in 24 hours.
You can get away with small crimes on the highways.
However, if you try to wage your own war doing that, with significant numbers of your own fighters, you will be shut down pretty quickly.
Similarly, we have free speech.
I am also not required to amplify your speech. That would be compelled speech - your govt compelling me to speak what I do not want to say - just as bad as forbidding me to say what I want.
Similarly, nothing should require any hosting provider to carry the propaganda for someone else's war, when they do not want to be a part of the war (and make no mistake, what was being planned on Parler is nothing short of war). No hosting provider should be required to carry, or be prevented from carrying porn either.
Should the New York Times be required to carry David Duke's (fmr KKK Grand Wizard) screed on the benefits of racism, or should Fox be required to carry Bernie Sander's latest speech?
This is no different from the press since Guttenberg.
If you want free speech, speak
If you want free amplification at scale, build your own press or find a friendly one.
A bit more detail on what I've read, the banking was designed for 130 mph to be used by high-speed convoy troop transports.
I'd expect your usage description to be the norm, but to fight an on-continent war, I'd expect that they'd close the roads, and send through the convoys, and since 2899mi / 24h is 120.8 mph, it'd be doable.
The Cannonball Run is indeed approaching 24h seems to have just gotten to 25:39[1]! Of course, they have to deal with normal traffic out of NYC and into LA, and avoid cops the whole time. With the the cops clearing the roads and any street-legal car allowed, I'd bet under 17h would be the norm
Counterpoint: if tanks were the primary way to transport something obvious like a giant battle tank that were being used to kill people and attempt overthrow of the government. If the checkpoints setup couldn't catch enough of them to remove the danger, would you support shutdowns of the highway infrastructure until the checkpoints could stop them?
But do you believe in free association? Is it okay that per Parler's CEO, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail services have also cancelled on them?
But the US highway is policed (moderated), maybe too much (e.g. racial profiling in violation of a few constitutional amendments).
Whereas Parlor intentionally created a system where there was virtually no/super biased moderation, and bragged about it as a core feature.
It would be like if the various law enforcement that is tasked with keeping the drugs, trafficking etc you mention off the road, were instead staffed entirely by a group of a handful of these very same law breakers who obviously vote in their own illegal interests.
And additionally the creators of the highway spoke to the NyTimes bragging about their setup, maybe even telling the public about specific highway routes for these criminals travel.
> I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal,
So would you say, for instance, that we should be able to do an unlimited amount of discussion, planning, and coordination of an elected official's death. And it's only when one person takes a concrete action towards the plan that they should anyone be able to be arrested, and only that person? Because the rest is all protected speech?
Yes, this would certainly be naughty under current law, but perhaps not in a legal regime where "all speech is OK!" Note that the overt act need not be committed by the speaker, too.
There's even ambiguity about elements of this in current law. If one were to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government, and begin running training exercises to help people prepare to overthrow the government at some unspecified future date--- it is unclear whether this is protected by the First Amendment. SCOTUS mentioned -- but did not address -- this problem in Stewart v McCoy (2002):
... While the requirement that the consequence be “imminent” is justified with respect to mere advocacy, the same justification does not necessarily adhere to some speech that performs a teaching function. As our cases have long identified, the First Amendment does not prevent restrictions on speech that have “clear support in public danger.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 (1945). Long range planning of criminal enterprises–which may include oral advice, training exercises, and perhaps the preparation of written materials–involves speech that should not be glibly characterized as mere “advocacy” and certainly may create significant public danger. Our cases have not yet considered whether, and if so to what extent, the First Amendment protects such instructional speech. Our denial of certiorari in this case should not be taken as an endorsement of the reasoning of the Court of Appeals....
Not GP, but I would expect parts of the highway infrastructure where more crimes occur to be more closely monitored and controlled than others. I don't see how this is a black and white issue where you either should be in support or against the highway infrastructre.
And since you mention drug trafficking, Personally, I think 100% of drugs should be legal and we have been brainwashed by the governments and media about their effects. But I realize that it is currently very much not the case where I live, so I have to be aware that my actions might have consequences and know I'm going to have a hard time to convience others of my view, so I might have to compromise to get anywhere.
This should be in my opinion the main focus of democracy: to contiously tweak the system to what the current society agrees on in regards to living together instead of inisting on ideals. It just seems to me, that most democracies are not really fond of the idea of taking democracy actually seriosly.
“And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings.”
It is a bad analogy to compare Parler with a highway.
If Twitter is a highway, Parler is a tunnel operated by drug cartels.
What do you think about the Silk road? The onion website that operated strictly in Tor that was a marketplace used exclusively for crime? That is infrastructure too right? Should it be legal? Fuck no.
Stop defending a lost cause. They got shut down because they tried to stage a coup by kidnapping senators in the Capitol.
They failed, and it is a good thing that they failed, and it is a good thing they got censored. And it is great that more companies decide to do the same.
Shut them down, all of them. Enough is enough. Have you ever been assaulted by a Trumper while minding your own business, just for being a minority? I have. These news make me happy. Adios, amigos... Your movement will never attain anything again.
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc.
This is a good thought experiment actually. I think typical Americans support policing all roads and highways, especially where stretches of road are known to be frequented by bad actors. If private corporations owned highway infrastructure and unilaterally decided to shut down segments of road in order to stop those bad actors, it should raise a lot of questions.
I think this highlights the need for better legislation, not only to limit corporations ability to shut down services, but but to replace that with policing put in place by elected governance and based on laws that apply equally to everyone.
In your comparison it's about what CAN be done with the highway. For the comparison to hold true it's more like we let them knowingly drive there while we're 100% aware where they are at that moment. So we could have acted on it but didn't and watched them do it.
Threats, slander and misinformation where never part of free speech and never will be. Invoking "free speech" here is disingenuous.
To go back to your comparison, if Parler - or anything similar - was like the highway we wouldn't know about what was going on. But we do, and it's inciting violence so it's basic human decency to stop it. Even apart from anything that a government would say. I don't get it, why are we still talking about this on HN.
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
As we've learned from the now settled case law on Bittorrent trackers & co, it is not sufficient for your infrastructure to make it possible to support legal uses, it is necessary to show that that is the vast majority of its uses.
If there was a highway that was mostly used by drug cartels, blocking it would be a no brainer. That's not an adequate comparison. The problem is really that this is uncharted digital territory and, as always, our laws are too outdated to fit a digital world. Facebook/Twitter has enough money to flood a competitor social network with nazi spam, to bribe journalists to write about it and to push competition to destruction and still have hacker news and reddit applaud it. Not defending Parlor, but that is a very possible scenario.
This is a bad analogy. The highway is heavily policed to combat those things, and they're nowhere near a central use-case.
I'm sure it was a small minority of Parler's activity that was death threats or planning/encouraging/inciting violence, but it seems like it was intentionally a safe-haven for those activities.
The highway has criminal activity, but is not a safe haven for criminal activity. Parler appears to have been to an extent beyond what is generally considered acceptable.
I'm perfectly fine with Parler being an outlet for conspiracy theories and such. Many people made good money off of Parler, and Parler made good money grifting off of delusional folks. All legal. Crazy? Probably. But definitely within the realm of "free speech".
The line gets drawn when a platform is used as a base of coordination to overthrow a legitimately elected government and threaten violence against people. Not sure why that's so hard to grasp.
Traffickers, when using the highway, do not make HQs at major intersections and rest zones and do multiply at will there. And if they do, they got banned for some time.
I don't understand the comparison with US highway infrastructure. That infrastructure cannot be use to spread "crime" at rapid scale, leading to extreme degradation of society. The whole ISIS movement took advantage of lax enforcement and created a monster that will haunt was for decades. What's the equivalent for highway infrastructure ? Are drug dealers using it to spread addiction at rapid scale ?
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
They get closed fast when the shit hits the fan though. So, where does the analogy leave us ?
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure?
Are you equating social media with the US highway infrastructure? I have to disagree with you in that case. The Internet and ISPs are like the US highway infrastructure. Social media is like demanding your stuff be carried by a particular truck company.
If you want social media to be public infrastructure, maybe the government should start a social media company.
Unlike the US highway system, Parler was specifically set up to encourage - or at least provide a haven for - insidious planning and hatred. So I don't see how your argument is convincing.
Would you feel the same way if it had been Muslim terrorists in camo storming the Capitol, and they had organised on a Muslim site?
Because no matter how this is being spun, that is literally comparable to what happened last week.
There isn’t really anything related to free speech here. No one censored parler, let alone the government. Amazon and Apple didn’t even censor them, just refused to support their product because they failed to live up to the terms of service.
The only element of free speech ironically was that Parler was found to censor left-leaning and moderate messages in its forum.
Your comment could be so much better without the highway analogy. Now there are people expanding it, indulging in thoughts like "wouldn't the digital equivalent of Toyota be XYZ...".
I think comparisons suck, because people obviously come up with comparisons with the things that prove their point of view, while ignoring all other comparisons.
If the highway system was created purpose or was majorly used for traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc., and the people running/building/profiting from the highways support trafficing drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. then I would not support the highway infrastructure.
In europe, we long accepted that uncensored talk of hate speech which in practice is almost always racial hatred will lead to the eventual overthrow of democracies and therefore deserve to be censored.
Is preserving democracy worth putting limits on free speech? I'd argue absolutely. People are animals.
We have to consider the old adage about screaming "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Unfettered free speech would dictate we can all do that anytime we want because free speech has no limits.
Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action. That is where the line in free speech ends.
The notion that the purveyor of technologies used to distribute speech that are incitements to imminent lawless action has no legal obligation in regards to the consequences is akin to saying a theater owner has no obligation to make sure a person who's repeatedly screamed "Fire!" and caused a stampede that injures people isn't allowed in their theater doesn't hold up. And it has ground at all to stand on if the theater owner actively pursues them and promotes they can do that in their theater.
In this case, Parlor has essentially pursued and invited those who love to scream "Fire" and actively encourage them to use their service to do that. And in fact they used it to organize a mob and help plan a insurrection.
And it did not matter to them that lies were being spread to fan the flames of hate, or who or how many might lose their lives as a result.
Parlor is a prime example of the lowest form of capitalism. Little different than crack dealers. We cannot let them hide behind the noble goals of "Free Speech".
If there was a specific highway that was almost exclusively used by drug / human traffickers, and there was a mountain of evidence to prove that, it seems like we would really look into that road and add extra security or shut it down until we could get a plan together.
Not what I was referring to at all, but I see where you’re going.
I was just trying to make a point that this was removing a toxin from the app eco-system. Not a harmless player who did mostly good with a few “bad apples”
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true.
Then why are you posting that on a heavily-moderated discussion forum and not 8kun?
Well funny you mention 8kun specifically it is down at the time of your comment. I find HN to be a good balance of moderation and open discussion. Like all platforms it has it's biases but, people are relatively civil and open to discussion which is commendable in the current climate of online discussion.
The analogy of the highway system is apt. I never thought of it like that.
That being said the Supreme Court has weighed in on what kinds of speech are protected under “free speech” and which aren’t. Overt calls for violence and such are not protected.
A highway doesn’t scale in the same way a social media site does. I disagree that this is brainwashing. We just don’t know how to cope with the internet’s scale and the answer is not clear..
once you’ve lived in a totalitarian state, then you instantly agree with the comment “speech should always be 100% free”. It is just too important value to lose.
As someone who was born and lived in USSR it pains me so much to see to many Americans willing to give up or restrict free speech...
Let us be real. People who were using Parler were using it to plan violence. If not, no one is stopping them from using FB or Twitter or some other social network. There is no special love for Parlers rights except that it allows illegal activities not covered by free speech. People who are fighting this are using free speech as a blanket to do what they wish
Speech should have limits, but calling anything that took place on parler automatically 'hate speech' so contemptible that it ought to result in banning along with everything else on that site is ridiculous. There have been few instances of truly censorship-worthy speech over the past year, from either left or right.
28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans. [1]
If a significant chunk of the population hesitates to get vaccines then it has consequences for all of us, regardless of our beliefs. Lies and misinformation spread through social media should be kept in check by patrolling, just like our highways are patrolled.
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
The people responsible for those highways spend a lot of money preventing them being used for drug trafficking, blackmarket weapons etc. Parler actively refused to moderate right wing hate speech.
> Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored.
I have to ask, where then do you want the line to be drawn? How detailed does the plan have to be before it's nipped in the bud?
I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion
While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I wouldn’t say that the brainwashing has been on the part of the government. All of the efforts at limiting speech, at least recently, have come from private, left-leaning people and organizations. The general consensus seems to be that all speech that doesn’t endorse leftist political views is hate speech and should therefore be banned.
I went on Parler, which I had never heard of before last week, just to see what the big deal was. I saw nothing endorsing violence, planning attacks, conspiracy theories, or hate speech. I saw a modern looking Twitter clone with similar, mundane conversations. I suppose I didn’t see much leftist banter, but that was the only real difference between it and Twitter.
The idea that elite liberals with monopoly power colluded to strangle a site like this, simply because a percentage of its users likely voted a different way than they did, should be offensive to all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. It makes me fear for the future of democracy as a whole. Democracy cannot exist without the ability to debate.
AWS has terms of service that are legally allowed to be broad and ambiguous. Violation of these terms of service is grounds for removal from their platform. AWS has sole authority over the adjudication of such violations and they are under no obligation to inform the client as to the reason behind their decision.
If we want to limit the powers of these platforms, then Congress needs to pass laws limiting the scope of ToS and/or create a regulatory agency charged with adjudicating claims.
There's no analogs or moral arguments necessary. Just the legal ones. And Congress has failed to take any action to invoke legal authority over these platforms and their ToS. Thus, the government has minimal control here.
The argument is a poor one because it draws parallels between things that are not parallel. There is no indication that (A) it serves the public interest for the government to forcibly alter business decisions, nor that (B) there is an existing legal basis upon which to do so.
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
I've seen this kind of argument all too frequently in the last week. While I don't think the People Who Decide what is taken down to be infallible, I do think that we're all capable of making reasonable decisions here. Taking down a hate speech site obviously doesn't mean we need to delete the internet, or iPhones, or whatever else Parler users have in common with every other person who uses the internet.
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, or something that should be regulated.
I strongly disagree. Apps and websites being taken down is not something new at all, and what happened to Parler is only notable because it impacted more people.
There are many sites that are IMO righteously taken down. Our conversation should not be "should big tech control what we see online", but should be "where do we draw the line?".
FANGMULA holds tremendous power. No doubt about it. They can make or break any business very easily. This was known in theory and recently we saw this in practice. This doesn't mean that Parler cannot fight this out in court. They likely will. However, all SV companies have very deep pockets and can sustain a very lengthy legal challenge even if they're in the wrong. Small businesses just don't have that kind of cash to fight this out in court.
Some (non-US observers) would say that the incoming administration and SV companies have stifled civil liberties and free speech. In the past, this was the exact reason that US sanctioned (or at the very least criticized) several countries when they would ban certain groups for inflaming racial tensions, spreading hate speech and radicalizing people.
I am in no way a CCP supporter here but imagine if the CCP silenced a bunch of people because they did not agree with them, destroyed a platform where they gathered and then gloated about it, what would the US have to say? What would the world say?
I don't have all the facts here. However, there are accusations that Facebook, Google both facilitated planning of the Capitol riots. There are no consequences for these companies - yet. Just because they "moderate" their platform does not make them better than Parler. More importantly, Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter did not act while Trump supporters were actively spreading misinformation and lies. Trump has been indiscriminately lying and inflaming racial tensions for a long time on Twitter. Why wasn't he suspended before? Lots of Facebook groups, YouTube channel spread lies about many topics, why weren't they removed earlier?
These companies were emboldened when they saw that Trump is leaving office. They are acting opportunistically to drum up the new cycle. I could be totally wrong about this, but its a personal feeling.
It felt like a feeding frenzy starting with Twitter suspending Trump's handle and eventually banning his account permanently. Other companies had to jump in otherwise they would look weak and complicit.
I think Parler should've given a longer notice period to resolve whatever issues they had with moderation. 24 hours is very little notice for anybody to do anything meaningful.
Finally, I am shocked that not a single "civil liberties" supporter came out and criticized these tech companies for being Judges, Juries and Executioners.
These companies need to be treated like utilities because they are. They need to be regulated as such. The amount of monopolistic power that they have shown is unbelievable.
During the US-China trade war, China realized its dependence on US chips and software. The US government could effectively cripple Chinese companies. This was disconcerting in itself as there aren't effective alternatives for many tech related hardware and software.
However, the show of power post Jan 8th by these tech companies was several orders of magnitude worse than the trade war. Europe, Asia and rest of the world are watching and should take note of this event and build their own local competitors otherwise, SV and the US government can effectively control the whole world.
To be honest, I am glad they did. I am sick and tired of these people finding that there are loopholes in which they can hide their hate speech and fascist rhetoric.
I can understand why you might feel that way. At the same time, I think censorship on an infrastructure level sets a very strong precedent. I think infrastructure players should refrain completely from that kind of action.
I think we disagree on what censorship means. To me, censorship very clearly means an active effort to go out and eliminate a particular type of speech or a particular speaker. That means going out and finding that speech or speaker and shutting them down, everywhere.
In this instance, a platform decides, effectively "we refuse to host your ideas, go elsewhere." Facebook and Google and Twitter aren't going out of their way to scrub these people off the internet; they are just kicking them off their own platform.
You might consider this part of the "cancel culture", but it's not censorship.
I just don't think AWS should be considered core infrastructure. ISPs are definitely core infra, which is why I think net neutrality is so important. Domain name registrars and CC processors are a bit of a grey area for me, since those gate access to the internet and online financial services respectively, but there's plenty of precedent for blocking certain businesses from both of those services.
AWS is great the servers you run. Those can be anywhere on earth, including physically located at your business
Sorry, I don't think that is censorship. It is just the bar owner deciding he had enough about you insulting the patrons and kicked you out, but you can keep saying your shit. Just not in his bar.
At the end of the day if my buisness is hosting something the market does not like, my buisness will suffer. It becomes harder to retain and attract new customers and grow my buisness and interfers with my marketing messaging. We live in a capitalistic society this is how the free market works.
This power could be used to sensor you in the future. This power could be put in the hands of a group of people who thinks completely different from you.
Honestly, where on earth have you people been? Tech companies have been "censoring" all sorts of people they deem undesirable for years, why is it the literal terrorist white supremacists that caused everyone to sit up and notice?
That power has always existed, and could have always been used "by those who think completely different" from us. If they think that differently, then they wouldn't even think twice about using said power to censor.
In this case, Twitter et al. thought a LOT about what to do, as they did very little for 4 year's of Trump's presidency, and only decided to act after Trump incited a literal self-coup and insurrection with the goal of illegitimately keeping himself in power.
If in the future "those who think completely differently from me" are going to think liberal ideas are so dangerous to be removed, it won't matter what "standard" we set today. It seems even with the highest standard of "don't support open coups", you still think I will be judged the exact same.
Censorship is bad. But insurrections against legitimate governments are worse.
I do agree 100% with you. That's why I do think we need to decrease the power of the state and also the power of the corporations using a modern antitrust law. If they power continues to grow, we'll live in a totalitarian state, dictate by politicians and corporations together.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You can't post like this or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25022331, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
I simply don't care. Sure, there's slippery slope arguments and discussions to be had about who gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable speech.
Right now though there's a small group of people looking to cause harm and damage using tools that barely existed 10 years ago and our laws won't keep up. Antisemitism and racism have no place in the world and private companies have no business profiting from its proliferation. Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share their views? Crack on.
I will use my limited resources and time on this planet to cry for someone else.
It is possible to think that SV has too much power AND that they still have the right to deem what is acceptable on their own services.
You can be entitled to free speech without being entitled to a platform or an audience. Despite how much HN loves to bash on SV big tech, this isn't 1984 and there are plenty of other ways to spread hate if that's what you really want to support.
I'm growing really weary from all the slippery-slope/everything-is-being-censored/what-aboutism alarmist arguments.
There is quite a large spectrum between "any and all speech is acceptable, on the platform of your choosing" and "total censorship". Let's stop pretending its a binary choice.
It's not a slippery slope any more. We already fell off and it just happens that the immediate casualty is Parler. But real victims are not far behind (in fact, they already exist, they are just not important enough).
> Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share their views? Crack on.
No, they should not be doing that. It shouldn't even be legal for Silicon Valley to do that. I don't care that you describe the people being censored as having negative traits, that is your political opinion.
Why shouldn't it be legal? What right do you have to say to AWS "you have to host my website?"
I am a free speech absolutist but that doesn't mean you have a right to force others to endorse, host, or amplify your speech. Just that you shouldn't go to jail for it.
That's fine when there are alternatives. The fact that Parler isn't back online shows that there is an oligopoly in place. The point of the first amendment in the first place was to stop those with overwhelming political power preventing those they didn't like from speaking.
What this entire episode has shown is that capitalism's ability to offer alternatives is being stymied by network effects. In the USA that used to bring out the Anti-Trust big stick.
Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have breached legislation passed by the country and has been found guilty of that in a court of law after due process.
It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
AWS has alternatives in 1) Azure; 2) GCP; 3) Any number of smaller VPS providers; 4) self-hosted infrastructure; 5) co-location, which sometimes (often?) has different requirements compared to virtualization re: content.
> The fact that Parler isn't back online shows that there is an oligopoly in place.
It shows that they have mediocre-at-best technical talent in place, which isn't all that surprising given the content and target market.
> Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have breached legislation passed by the country and has been found guilty of that in a court of law after due process.
This may be what you want, but it's not reality so I wouldn't frame it as a definitive fact like this.
> It's not just free speech that is at issue here.
It's not a free speech issue at all. Free speech means you can't be jailed or persecuted by the government for your speech.
> It is innocent until proven guilty and due process.
You're conflating a misunderstanding of Constitutional rights with criminal law. Due process is 100% irrelevant.
> It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
Due process is inefficient and slow compared to letting unelected mega-corps determine what other businesses can exist and what speech can and can't be heard.
Imagine how awful a system with a 'burden-of-proof' and 'oversight' would be compared to just trusting the invisible hand of the market and profit motives determine the optimum course of action! Adam Smith proved that it would all work out fine anyway - there was a graph with some curves that proved it I think.
Now if only we had a way to merge all these mega-companies into one, bigger super-mega-corp. Imagine how much better that would be! Hopefully over time with market consolidation we can achieve anything.
I think the argument is that the fact these services represent a monopoly that means they shouldn't have absolute power on who gets to use their platform.
The world is better without Parler, and it will be better if the most vicious from that platform have trouble finding megaphones for their atrocious speech.
Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single entities - whether that's AWS, or Facebook, or even larger entities such as "Silicon Valley" that are grouped by ideology - that you may agree with today, but not tomorrow.
Ok, so the barrier to entry to building a business is now that I need to get all my customers to be aware of two domains, get all my customers to use Tor and to host my own DNS (presumably in a makeshift datacenter in my bedroom?).
Well the lesson here is that you shouldn't build your castles on other people's land. None of this is new. Sex sites have had this problem for decades. Cannabis companies can't use popular payment providers. If there's really a lucrative market on AWS for Extremists, then the market will provide.
On the contrary, people have generally been smart enough to not do business with companies that won't want to do business with them (for example, nobody is really sure where the various [\d]chans are hosted, and Pornhub self-hosts). There are any number of actually competent people on the left, the right and orthogonal to politics that aren't visibly getting denied "critical infrastructure" because they simply knew better than to use it in the first place; what we are really witnessing is rather entitled people realising they're not guaranteed a ready-made popular platform (whether for an individual's speech or for an app's deployment). The lack of guarantee of a platform itself is far from news.
The fact is, right wing is present on Twitter, Facebook, reddit just fine.
What is not present are their radical wings, which were kicked away just like leftist violent radicals. Difference is that at least so far, mainstream left is ok with those being kicked.
I think (hope) everyone would agree that antisemitism and racism have no place in the world. And it's easy not to care when you earnestly believe the ends justify the means.
But in practice, the risk is that these labels will be applied much more liberally by self-interested parties precisely because they are unquestionably bad and hard to refute. If power hungry forces have access to a weapon which can be used to shut down discourse with no due process, it will most assuredly be used and create undesirable outcomes.
IMO we should all take issue with the ability of a small oligopoly to take these actions without any legal due process or recourse. History shows us that this kind of power without restriction in the hands of very few will lead to abuses.
It's legitimate concern that we have passed new thresholds of power, that the power can be exercised, and there's not much anyone affected can do about it.
Furthermore, it's disturbing how much those in power think -- and act -- alike. Isn't it weird that nobody has really broken ranks here?
You will care when the other side is able to do the same thing to us. I'm not necessarily talking about racists either. This seems great until it's used against us.
For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN. The leftists I know (actual leftists, not the USA's conflation of centrist ideals with leftism) are all already very intimate with getting targeted and censored. Who is the "us" whose unfiltered work/speech/views have always been guaranteed a platform?
For that specific comment, "us" refers to people who do not like racists or anyone in support of storming our nation's capital. Can't say I like parler either. However, I will defend their right of free speech and expression.
> For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN.
You shouldn't rely on memory. It tends to fail everyone. Search engines are better
He's using hyperbole to make the argument an emotional one rather than using reason. I'm not sure if he even knows he's doing it or not, the tactic of hyperbole has become so prevalent in today's political discussions.
This is about morality, not legality (which is often perverted anyway).
Hate speech translates into hateful actions, case in point was on display in the US Capitol last week.
This is challenging territory but to frame this as a free speech issue without acknowledging that there are limits to such is not being entirely honest about the matter.
You do need a better argument, because you're changing the entire point of the platform.
One is speech - maybe hate, maybe political, maybe both - and one is distribution of illegal products of child abuse. They're not the same thing. They're not "equally odious" and honestly it's pretty gross you'd even pretend they are.
I think this is generally right. We tend to focus on the one side of the slippery slope which is "descent into an Orwellian dystopia", but the other side of the logical extreme is what, that no matter what private companies aren't allowed to remove and censor certain things on their forums?
Like you said, if there were an app where 90% of the conversation was about child pornography, no one would cry "1984" if it's removed by Apple. So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
>So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
It obviously is. It started with child pornography which most everyone can agree on banning, now you are suggesting we apply the same ban to political discussion. That's the definition of a slippery slope in action.
> The market decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
I don't think this means what you think it means, because it doesn't appear true.
The market usually means 'the free market' i.e. raw consumer demand - 'are people buying it?', 'vote with your wallet' e.t.c., By all accounts it looked like the market did want it - because they had a rapidly growing user base. Left to the free market, Parler would have continued.
The market does not mean the CEO's of other tech companies want nothing to do with it. It also does not mean that popular opinion is that it's bad.
And that’s to say nothing of the endless number of hypocrisies with Silicon Valley giants feigning opposition to violent rhetoric or political extremism. Amazon, for instance, is one of the CIA’s most profitable partners, with a $600 million contract to provide services to the agency, and it is constantly bidding for more. On Facebook and Twitter, one finds official accounts from the most repressive and violent regimes on earth, including Saudi Arabia, and pages devoted to propaganda on behalf of the Egyptian regime. Does anyone think these tech giants have a genuine concern about violence and extremism?
This is the single most powerful paragraph that shows the hypocrisy. However, you can't even talk about this openly anymore.
My Chinese peers are saying how much this reminds them of the Cultural Revolution.
If I had to guess I'd say they are not much afraid of the Saudi's (who only oppress people somewhere far away) but are afraid of a fascist take-over of the US, since they live here and have most of their money in the US banks.
I wonder if this apparent difference in standards is just standard globalism. Export dirty work to other countries so the homeland seems cleaner. Extract the best and brightest from elsewhere to maintain intellectual advantages. Arab Spring for thee but not for me.
Greenwald’s argument hinges on emotion, insinuation, invective, a completely unfounded premise, an absolute absence of evidence, and no consideration of alternative explanations: an overwhelmingly plausible ongoing law enforcement and national security operation, likely under sealed or classified indictments or warrants, in the face of ongoing deadly sedition lead by the President of the United States himself, including against the person of his own vice president and credible threats against the President-Elect and Inauguration.
Such an legal action is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to prove, and I cannot prove it. A key clue for me, however, is the defection not just of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Stripe, and other tech firms, but of Parler’s legal counsel, who would have to be an exceptionally stealth-mode startup to fit Greenwald’s, or other’s, “it’s the tech monopolists” narrative. I’ve tempered my degree of assurance and language (“plausible” rather than “probable”). Time will tell. But a keen and critical mind such as Grenwald’s should at least be weighing the possibility. He instead seems bent only on piking old sworn enemies, with less evidence or coherence than I offer.
This is the crux of Greenwald’s argument. It’s all he’s got:
On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.
I’m no friend of the tech monopolists myself. The power demonstrated here does concern me, greatly. I’ve long railed against Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, among other tech monopolists. Largely because as monopolies they are power loci acting through their occupation of a common resource, outside common control, and not serving the common weal. Hell: Facebook, Google (YouTube), Reddit, and Twitter played a massive role in creating the current fascist insurrection in the US, along with even more enthusiastic aid and comfort from traditional media, across the spectrum. Damage that will take decades to repair, if ever.
But, if my hypothesis is correct, the alternative explanation would bet he opposite of this: the state asserting power over and through monopolies in the common interest, in support of democratic principles, for the common weal. And that I can support.
I don’t know that this is the case. I find it curious that I seem to be the only voice suggesting it. Time should tell.
And after this is over, yes, Silicon Valley, in its metonymic sense standing for the US and global tech industry, has to face its monopoly problem, its free speech problem (in both sincere and insincere senses), its surveillance problem (capitalist, state, criminal, rogue actor), its censorship problem, its propaganda problem (mass and computational), its targeted manipulation adtech problem, its trust problem, its identity problem, its truth and disinformation problems, its tax avoidance problem, its political influence problem.
I was never a Parler user since I’m not a big fan of social media in general. Also, I’m not a mobile app developer/administrator so forgive me if I sound ignorant.
I’ve only read a few bits and pieces so I have a few questions.
1. Does getting booted off AWS actually mean the end of the service? Somebody sent me some quote about how the software was built to run on bare metal servers, so are they having difficulty getting servers at OVH/Linode/DO/whatever? I know that Amazon is HUGE but it’d be a trip (and HIGHLY worrisome) if they actually dictate who gets to be on the internet as a whole.
2. Again, never dealt with apps. I’ve 100% always dealt with clients using websites, packaged software, email, phone calls etc. Is user behavior and/or mobile browser design such that having a mobile-friendly interface (like mobile.twitter.com) that’s entirely under Parker’s control an untenable way to run the service?
Maybe I’m just old but I’ve grown up as a huge fan of bookmarks and still make heavy use of them today, even on mobile. I don’t install almost anything on my phone unless the app is a huge value add like VR/AR stuff or the Audubon bird guide that I can use offline.
I suppose my overall question is: Is this irreparable? If so, that’s pretty terrifying.
Lots of "Libertarians" with bad hyprocrisy in constantly bringing up "free speech." Yet the same people cheer for Christian Bakeries that refuse to serve gay couples.
And those people trying to claim these tech companies are "utilities" are insane. There is a 0% chance that any tech company is going to be declared a utility in the next several decades in the US and to think otherwise is totally absurd. So those arguments just hold no water.
The US is being destroyed by the Paradox of Tolerance and Putin/Xi could not be happier. What better possible outcome, short of an actual Civil War, could there be to prove to their people that Democracy is a flawed ideology?
You're perfectly free to drill your own oil, even if nobody in the oil industry will supply you.
At a certain point this kind of argument is farcical. If you can't at a minimum get racks in a datacenter, the bandwidth and power costs of running a site that large will destroy you.
Oh and DNS registrars are known for being picky about their customers too.
Fine, but even if we accept all that, Glenn's argument that this is "monopolistic" doesn't pass the laugh test.
Because in order for Parler to be unable to get racks in any datacenter, it'd be necessary for dozens or hundreds of different providers to all refuse access. That doesn't sound like a "monopoly" to anyone who has a dictionary or understands what "mono" means.
If the bandwidth and power costs destroy them? Then maybe they just don't have the resources to run their giant multi-million-user Nazi site, and they should go out of business, like all businesses that lack the resources to sustain operations.
> Fine, but even if we accept all that, Glenn's argument that this is "monopolistic" doesn't pass the laugh test.
Well, at least that it's an SV monopoly.
If the reason that so many businesses are cutting service and not just to Parler is that, in the wake of the Capitol attacks corporate counsel have taken note of the law on knowing material support to terrorists, which includes supplying essentially any service when you know of it's use in connection with a wide array of federal criminal offenses that are designated as “terrorism”, then there is a monopoly denying them service, and it’s the monopoly on legitimate force held by the US government.
A business that is impossible to get into without the "blessing" of the industry its in is the very dangerous circumstance that monopoly and cartel control of an industry creates. Glenn got the summary of the problem correct without getting the details right.
If Parler's business were illegal, the government could step in and shut them down and the service providers wouldn't need to do anything at all.
The other poster below you was quite right in that the US government is using its monopoly on force (and the threat of it) to effectively bully the service providers into denying them service. Illegal or otherwise (the judiciary/military version of "fuck around and find out"). Ideologically they just happen to be more than willing censors here.
Generally agreed. Another distinct possibility being that there's a legal / national security interest, no longer subject to Trump's obstruction, compelling action.
Greenwald is way out over his skis, with ample invective but thin ecidence.
And yes, some bit definitely seems to have flipped. Use ECC RAM and validate your hashes, peeps.
anti trust action is needed against a few big tech firms, but this article for some reason frightens me. I dont understand the perspective and there seem to be contradictory undercurrents. I dont use any social network apps except occasionally browsing my couple of dozen friends feeds on my private Instagram account. I know Insta is not good, but I dont feel particularly threatened by it, since no discussion is ocurring (on my feed), just pictures and videos of music and places people have been, meals they have cooked.
I don't really care if Amazon crushes Parler. I also don't find back-doors, infiltration and R&D relationships with the government alarming or surprising. What matters to me is whether the government itself is corrupt.
I am a globalist and I do hope for more, not less integration between trade blocs. I think it would be beneficial to avoid the supply chain panic that underlies the extreme pursuit of labor cost arbitrage, but not in pursuit of national, but rather regional, balance of power and trade.
Surveillance is not going away. We cannot fight it. What can be combated is the willingness to harm others and the tendency to view others as separate from ourselves and as a danger to our interests.
But these tech firms are not yet absolute monopolies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, all display in my opinion anti-competitive and in some cases anti-consumer behaviour, but I think a new framework is needed to quantify harm in tech antitrust regulation.
I think Facebook is the most egregious offender because, as I have hyperbolically stated before, have constructed what amounds to a genocide machine. So while they are not "anti-consumer" in terms of price, they are anti-peace and stability of the system which hurts all of us. They disrupt the political process and not in a fun way.
Greenwald seems to be inviting pretty draconian anti-trust action, which would certainly be a bit controversial because some libertarians might not like it - ideologically the founders of Parler might be among them. On the other hand he seems to be stroking Parler as being some kind of underdog that is less bad somehow than other social networks. In my view Parler is only different in scale.
Again, Greenwald makes me very uneasy in this article because he comes out hard against "monopoly" but whose side is he on? I feel weird that I agree on paper that antitrust action is needed, but his article feels bought and paid for in some way.
What bothers me about this article is that it tries to present a logical argument that tech monopolies are a problem, wrapped in a political rhetoric about how liberals are authoritarian. It starts off as an interesting perspective but ends up as inflammatory whataboutism that doesn't engage deeply with the issue.
This is a really interesting moment in history to think about censorship, platforms, speech, and monopoly. We can do a lot better than this article.
Multiple companies banding together is not a monopoly. This was a collective effort. You could call it a polyoploy but click-bait gonna click-bait.
They didn't kill Parker though, we did. We made if clear that we wouldn't do business with companies that supported the worst of us. They complied with our demands to force them out of the public sphere and I applaud them for it. As an ex Googler and generally anti FAANG, I don't have many fond words for them but I support this action. For the most part, I even approve of the timeline: let garbage peddling monsters be garbage peddling monsters until they do real damage and then cut them off.
"Yet American liberals swoon for this authoritarianism" you had me up to this point. Liberals don't swoon for this any more than they do for a mandatory curfew to curb coronavirus cases. The powers of SV are a lot and I would hope that out of the ashes of the last four years we get a) a more progressive Conservative party and b) a more diversified collection of service providers, to combat AWS, and the like.
All of these companies, for what it's worth, seems to only use their power when its socially acceptable. For instance, they continue to abide by restrictive Chinese laws for the benefit of money. I'm convinced they will submit to the will of the state in Poland as well, where freedom of speech appears to mean something entirely different.
> And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their adversaries.
The Biden Administration is getting stuffed with corporate executives and lobbyists of all kinds. If that alleged quote about fascism being the merger of corporate and state power, then congratulations, fascists! You won.
And if that quote is wrong, this situation is still bad, way worse than Trump.
Wow, just keep getting downvoted because I think we should be allowed to criticize and discuss big tech decisions on the biggest community for tech. Thanks!
Destroying Parler sets a bad precedent. Who's next? As people cheer for Parler's destruction, consider what happens if the pendulum swings the other way. This isn't even necessarily a free speech issue. Editorial control implies a lot.
All that the valley has done is demonstrate quite clearly they are now too powerful and need tighter regulation. Protections can now be removed.
This wasn't a great idea. But it likely felt good.
Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to, in the face of violence, sedition, and misinformation, care more about some vacuous notion of "free speech" than the health of our Democracy.
This guy used to have a ton of my respect, but honestly he seems like a complete joke recently.
I have a suggestion to keep these conversations from spiraling into pedantry: let's stop using the phrase "free speech" when referring to these companies (I'm going to use it a few more times here though, for illustration), and instead be descriptive and refer to "a group of people having their ideas and voices silenced at scale." Whether we agree with the people being silenced or not, that's what this is really about, right?
We don't need names to know what something is. A young scientist might think an elderly aboriginal person foolish because the elder has never heard of a "star", but that doesn't mean the elder hasn't seen the sun rise every day of their life.
My point is that we should not be discounting opinions because someone used the wrong word. We're smart enough to read between the lines and see the crux of what is bothering someone. Free speech, as an ideal, doesn't have to refer to any law, but to avoid spiraling into pedantry, I would suggest that we all be more descriptive during the course of these conversations.
Our political representatives are corrupt and generally represent whomever gives them the most money, namely large corporations.
We, the people, are represented through our wallets now by the corporations that control our politicians because social media has unionized us. We're able to use online platforms to leverage companies into giving us what we want socially by threatening them when they step out of line. The companies that led to Parler shutting down were acting on public sentiment as a boon to their brands, thus ultimately reflecting the will of the people.
It's kind of like a single payer system for social justice.
It's weird end run back to representation but I'll take it for now. The radical right is a scourge that, unchecked, will lead to us having no rights at all. They need to be repeatedly smacked down until normalcy is achieved.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=5