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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 m

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.

chris_wot 6y ago
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.
- proc0 6y ago
  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.
  - pertymcpert 6y ago
    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.
    - proc0 6y ago
      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.
      - pertymcpert 6y ago
        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.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    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.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      The left wants to deplatform the right to crush them and destroy them. You see people brag about this all the time. This was about harming and destroying right wing communities. What happened was they waited until a good opportunity where they could do maximum harm - when people were kicked from twitter and many many people tried to install Parler. It would have been amazing for Parler, propel Parler to a multi-billion dollar company. If Amazon had not maliciously caused huge monetary damages and irreparable harm.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - pavlov 6y ago
        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.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      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.
  - tw04 6y ago
    They had 7 weeks to clean up their act. I'm not sure that qualifies as "oops too slow". https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...
    - proc0 6y ago
      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.
      - chalst 6y ago
        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.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      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.
      - chris_wot 6y ago
        I don't recall Google search organizing any marches on the Capitol.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    The profits from Parler are a rounding error on Amazon's balance sheet. AWS is self serve. Anyone can sign up. So, yes, it is unexpected unless you imagine Bezos is negotiating with Parler's CEO.
  - ageofwant 6y ago
    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.
    - proc0 6y ago
      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.
  - chalst 6y ago
    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.
dcntrlized90 6y ago
It’s against US law to provide communication services and/or equipment to terrorists Legislators and LEO are beginning to call this domestic terrorism The writing is on the wall then; tech companies are not going to provide communication services
wrtingonWall 6y ago
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-slams-capitol-rioters-domestic-terrorists-don-t-dare-call-n1253335 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-slams-cap... Perhaps tech companies simply see the writing on the wall
tw04 6y ago
>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. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > 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.
  - tfehring 6y ago
    > 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.
ashtonkem 6y ago
> Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement. How did they manage to write that with a straight face?
nobody9999 6y ago
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-warned-parler-for-months-about-more-than-100-violent-threats/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

chris_wot 6y ago

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.

proc0 6y ago
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.
- pertymcpert 6y ago
  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.
  - proc0 6y ago
    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.
    - pertymcpert 6y ago
      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.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  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.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    The left wants to deplatform the right to crush them and destroy them. You see people brag about this all the time. This was about harming and destroying right wing communities. What happened was they waited until a good opportunity where they could do maximum harm - when people were kicked from twitter and many many people tried to install Parler. It would have been amazing for Parler, propel Parler to a multi-billion dollar company. If Amazon had not maliciously caused huge monetary damages and irreparable harm.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pavlov 6y ago
      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.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    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.
- tw04 6y ago
  They had 7 weeks to clean up their act. I'm not sure that qualifies as "oops too slow". https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...
  - proc0 6y ago
    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.
    - chalst 6y ago
      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.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    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.
    - chris_wot 6y ago
      I don't recall Google search organizing any marches on the Capitol.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  The profits from Parler are a rounding error on Amazon's balance sheet. AWS is self serve. Anyone can sign up. So, yes, it is unexpected unless you imagine Bezos is negotiating with Parler's CEO.
- ageofwant 6y ago
  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.
  - proc0 6y ago
    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.
- chalst 6y ago
  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.

dcntrlized90 6y ago

It’s against US law to provide communication services and/or equipment to terrorists Legislators and LEO are beginning to call this domestic terrorism The writing is on the wall then; tech companies are not going to provide communication services

wrtingonWall 6y ago

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-slams-capitol-rioters-domestic-terrorists-don-t-dare-call-n1253335 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-slams-cap... Perhaps tech companies simply see the writing on the wall

tw04 6y ago

>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. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-parler-aws https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> 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.
- tfehring 6y ago
  > 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.

ashtonkem 6y ago

> Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement. How did they manage to write that with a straight face?

nobody9999 6y ago

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-warned-parler-for-months-about-more-than-100-violent-threats/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...