[cs-szazz]

Serious question, it seems AWS is by no means a monopoly on web hosting (Google, Azure, Digital Ocean, Linode, the list goes on). It seems to be they're well within their rights as a company to not host Parler, and Parler can try to go somewhere else. If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection of Parler than the hosting companies? It doesn't seem like they should be obligated to host, since that's as slippery a slope as not hosting is. Perhaps this is a decision where not everyone will ever be happy, and that's just how it's going to be?

[readams]

You can ask the question of whether you think in general that marginalized voices should be allowed to exist. Obviously, you don't like these particular people (and neither do I) so you don't see any problem with eradicating their voice. If Amazon were just one provider and there were other options it might even then still be OK. But it's not just a choice of Amazon. Any provider hosting them will be subject to the cancel mob.

Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do business with Jews. Anyone who does business with them are subject to reprisal and boycott by their vendors, friends, and neighbors. The Jews themselves of course are fired from their jobs if anyone finds out they're a Jew. In practice the Jews cannot do business and must live a marginalized existence or hide who they are. So it's not enough to say "well it's a private business they can do what they want" when you would not consider this valid in other contexts.

And of course all this is ignoring the question of whether any of this is likely to be successful in the end or if it will further justify reprisals and enrage anyone subject to this mob justice. Certainly all the tech companies banding together to silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the narrative the far right is pushing.

[tylerhou]

> Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do business with Jews.

This is a false equivalency.

Race, religion, etc. are protected classes. It's impossible for people to change their race, and our society has agreed that we shouldn't force people to change their religion.

Political beliefs are not protected classes. When your political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, then private companies have a right to kick you off.

> Certainly all the tech companies banding together to silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the narrative the far right is pushing.

In my opinion, the far right is already too far gone — they are already conspiracy theorists. Any contradictory information will be used as evidence to show that the conspiracy is much wider and bigger than one could have imagined — adding to the weight of the theory. There is no reasoning with them unless someone they truly believe (read: Trump) dismisses the theory convincingly.

[readams]

Protected classes were defined in the law only because we decided they should be. Nothing says it can't include more or fewer things as the winds of opinion blow in a different direction. A religion isn't really much different from other belief systems after all.

This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking to the way current law happens to be and inferring from that what the right thing to do is. For example, it is not against the first amendment for Amazon to ban Republicans. This does not mean it would be a good thing for Amazon to ban Republicans. Similarly I'm sure, if you tried, you could come up with all kinds of unjust laws that punish things that should not be punished (I certainly can think of many).

[tylerhou]

> This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking to the way current law happens to be and inferring from that what the right thing to do is.

I understand this, and the understanding is implicit in the way I phrased: "our society has agreed that we shouldn't force people to change their religion." It's also worth noting that "religion" here usually refers to practices and beliefs that don't infringe on other people's rights. To evaluate whether these practices infringe on someone's rights, one should take into account their protected classes: i.e. you're not allowed to discriminate against a person's skin color even if your religion says that you should.

Our society has also agreed that certain beliefs are reprehensible and deserve no place in society: both major political sides think that advocating for violence is unacceptable, and therefore both the Democrats and the (centrist) Republicans cannot claim that private companies who refuse to host a platform that allows calls for violence are unjustly discriminating — if the politicians want to be logically consistent. (This is what I meant by "When your political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, then private companies have a right to kick you off.") This is a positive statement, not a normative statement.

Normatively, alt-right beliefs should not be given the same protections as religions because they infringe on other people's rights. For example, repeated, false allegations of voter fraud indirectly infringe on people's right to vote because they effect court cases that call for legitimate voters to be disenfranchised.

[hire_charts]

Amazon is not banning Republicans. Amazon is dropping a risky client after having more than reasonable doubts about that client's ability to operate in good faith. Republican views are not being censored. The fact that this site happens to cater to a lot of "Republicans" who feel marginalized by public discourse is merely a very telling correlation between a political view and a tendency towards violent tendencies and conspiratorial beliefs.

[kingdomcome50]

A religion is similar to politics only in that they are both beliefs. Your argument is essentially that any belief could/should be protected. I don't think you mean that, so I urge you to try to come up with a more coherent formulation.

I would start by exploring the differences between what it means to hold a religious belief vs a political one. Maybe start by comparing how each of the above has changed, or the associations thereof with their respective ideals over, say, the last 1000 years. Maybe then proceed to identify from where a religious belief manifests vs a political belief. Finally, you could look towards the kinds of answers of which each respective belief offers explanatory power (i.e. What kinds of questions does religion answer vs politics?). We could probably even take this a step further and look at the history of each as well no? Political leanings have existed at least as long as religious beliefs. At one time these were likely the same! So what is it about the history of politics and religion that has lead us to the the kinds of separation we have reached today?

I have confidence you can come up with many kinds of differences. Good luck!

[cs-szazz]

Yeah it's certainly a slippery slope, 100% agree.

In your example it's probably slightly different because religion is a protected class, while political leanings aren't.

I think what's particularly interesting is you substitute "right wing" with "Jews" like you did, and you start to wonder if Amazon crossed the line. But then change "Jew" to "terrorist", and you think Amazon might be in the right. Clearly we can't protect ALL groups, that'd be silly.

[kats]

Just pointing out that Parler was the #1 most downloaded app on the Android app store for some amount of time. (Around the #1 or #2 spot for a couple months? At least a few weeks.)

[lotsofpulp]

> If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection of Parler than the hosting companies?

Yes. The funny thing is that it happened to people who foam at the mouth about the rights of private businesses to do what they want and decry government intervention.

[DickingAround]

Agreed. This kind of situation is perfect for separating the true freedom loving (i.e. "you do what you want with what you own") from the conservatives (i.e. "you do what we want you to do"). Those who like freedom says "that's fine, it's their call" or even "I won't do business with them anymore because I disagree with this call", but the conservatives say that "it's wrong and the gov should intervene".

[khawkins]

You're conflating different groups of people because you don't understand the nuances of the different groups at play. These are not the same groups in the slightest.

[dagmx]

How are they not when they support the same group of politicians?

[khawkins]

Since when do people only vote for people they completely agree with and not the "better of two evils"? If the choices are the party that actively wants to censor you and the party that doesn't want to pass legislation to protect you from censorship, the choice is obvious.

[dagmx]

You're the one claiming they're not the same group in the slightest. How do you quantify that?

Surely if they're voting for the same people, some of them must share the same beliefs. Unless you're saying all Parler users are completely distinct from all non-Parler conservatives?

[khawkins]

You're the one who said these people are the same group, the onus is on you to provide evidence of your claim. But it should be self-evident that tech giants maintain a near oligopoly of social media discourse and people aren't going to "foam at the mouth" to support their own ideological destruction.

[6sup6]

I would put my money that if Parler goes to any of the web hosting services you listed, they will still be deplatformed.

[cs-szazz]

Yeah definitely, but Amazon can always say "Go host on GCP". Then Google Cloud can say "Go host on Azure". Then Microsoft says "Go host on Digital Ocean", and repeat until you run out of hosts.

Is it like a game of hot potato where the last hosting company has to host them? Because it seems there are alternatives to each individually, and it's only when they all say no that there are issues for Parler. And to me that feels like a Parler problem, not an AWS problem.