[meekmockmook]

I have seen so many violent threats and incitements on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram over the last 5 years that Parler could possibly make the case that they've been singled out, but I doubt it. They're just too unsympathetic of a plaintiff, imho.

That said, antitrust battles against Big Tech will dominate the next four years of economic policy, and rightfully so. GAFA is too big, too powerful, too manipulative, and needs to be brought to heel by every legal means necessary. The US government should also move to immediately outlaw targeted algorithmic advertising, which would make a huge impact on Big Tech's sectarian violence cashcow. (And yes, that's what this absolutely is. Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.)

[wpietri]

Twitter and Facebook have extensive systems for keeping the various horrors in check. They are not as good as I think they should be. But they're miles better than what Parler had, which was more of a fig leaf. (Full disclosure, I use to run an anti-abuse engineering team at Twitter. Now I'm at the ADL building the Online Hate Index.)

I will note that whatever antitrust beefs people have with Big Tech, Twitter isn't really in that league. Twitter's market cap is something like 4% of Google's and 6% of Facebook's. I think conflating the two issues here is unhelpful.

[cudgy]

“Twitter and Facebook have extensive systems for keeping the various horrors in check. They are not as good as I think they should be. But they're miles better than what Parler had, which was more of a fig leaf.”

If Twitter and Facebook (being multibillion dollar companies with a decade or more to build these algorithms) haven’t solve this problem yet, how can any upstart possibly compete with them? They’d be shut down as soon as users started posting content on their fledgling services.

[wpietri]

My NDAs constrain me from saying as much as much as I'd like, but it's a mistake to think that the key to fighting abuse is "algorithms". The heart of it is always human judgment. It starts at the executive level to set policy. That policy needs to be carefully socialized to users. The user need ways to report problems. And then you need trained staff to judge the reported content.

Algorithms can help, of course. But the problem is mainly a human one.

[cudgy]

Humans are incredibly biased in making judgements like this. How do you “train” a person to enforce a standard that goes against their inherent biases?

Seems like the more objective the process can be shifted (by moving away from human decisions), the more effective/fair the process becomes.

Anyway, it sounds like you may work in this space, and, therefore, might have further insight, which I am very interested in hearing about.

It is definitely an Achilles Heel for social media platforms.

[wpietri]

Unfortunately, there is no real objectivity here. Machine learning systems are fed large numbers of human judgments, are tuned based on human judgment, and then are deployed when other humans think them ready.

The way you get reasonable consistency, whether it's humans or machines, is by establishing clear standards, using them for training, and then continuously monitoring results. It's not perfect, of course. But nothing is.

[cy_hauser]

Being smaller they can and should user human moderation. Twitter and Facebook have problems because of the huge number of posts. Parler is still small enough that then _can_ moderate.

[cudgy]

Good point, but it is not scalable.

“Five million people were active on Parler on Monday, which Mr. Matze wrote was an 8-fold increase in user engagement from the previous week.”

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/10/parler-says-i...

This doesn’t seem like a problem that could be solved with more human eyeballs.

[buzzerbetrayed]

Facebook is in a way better position financially to use human moderators than something like Parler is. Sure, Parler has orders of magnitude less volume. They also have orders of magnitude less money. Facebook can afford to hire 1,000 human moderators for every 1 human moderator Parler hires.

This whole "Parler can be better than Facebook because they are smaller" argument is just as illogical as it sounds.

[cy_hauser]

Where are you getting Parler can be better? Better than facebook at what?

Also, you don't thin smaller groups, companies, whatevers are easier to control?

[dkirill]

Doesn't make sense to me. Twitter&FB have more users but they also have much more resources than Parler.

[summerlight]

Parler didn't even try to remove a very narrow, specific set of posts referred by AWS. I think if they did that, AWS probably had much harder time to justify booting Parler off from their platform.

[tanseydavid]

How does Twitter's market cap relative to Google or Facebook have anything at all to do with Antitrust law?

[wpietri]

Antitrust law is about constraining companies with excess market power, especially ones that use it in anticompetitive ways. That's a legitimate concern for companies like Google and Facebook, who dominate their markets. Twitter's popular, but as far as market power goes, it's far too small to dominate social networking.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I will admit that I dislike the projects you are working on since nebulous 'hate speech' has been undermining US foundations of free speech, but I appreciate the level headed argument.

[wpietri]

Thanks!

It depends on what one thinks the foundations of free speech are. For a long time, hate speech has been used to suppress particular groups. In practice, if people with social power can scare disfavored groups into staying quiet, free speech is harmed. Harmed more, in my opinion, than by hate speech restrictions.

In practice, any platform has to choose between hosting abusers and hosting their targets. They will only get one or the other. Given that choice, I would rather boot the abusers. To me the goal of free speech in a democracy is about a maximally informed populace so we make optimal decisions. To the extent that any group wants to convey information, they can do it without abuse. But allowing abuse, especially that targeted at particular groups, limits speech more deeply.

[partiallypro]

I still really doubt anything will come of tech being broken up. Democrats, which are usually for anti-Monopoly & pro-regulation, now get so much money/favor from Big Tech it will be near impossible to sway them. While Republicans are generally against regulation to begin with. You bring the two together and there isn't much political will, imo.

[atypicaluser]

> They're [Parler] just too unsympathetic of a plaintiff, imho.

I don't know that sympathy has anything to do with the merits of their case.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jun/27/aclu-assist-kkk-...

*edit--formatting

[curiouscatUSA]

These cases apply to what governments can do. AWS is a privately held subsidiary of a publicly traded company.

The 1st Amendment does not protect all free speech. It simply bans the US government from passing laws that limit free speech.

for AWS, it will come down to whether they’ve defined situations where they can end their agreement / contract (MSA/EULA) with Parler. Btw, that’s the argument Parler is making that they had an agreement with AWS and not they’re in breech. The feee speech comment is weaker than arguing a binding contract exists.

Of course, it sounds like they have the default MSA with AWS. So, likely has terms very much in AWS’s favor. Also, I’d say they probably have some type of clause related to activities that could hurt AWS’s brand equity as be grounds for early termination.

Bottom line: as the cases referenced show, the government cannot limit free speech with laws - 1st Amendment (read full text). Private/public companies can do whatever is in their contracts that customers agree with at sign up.

[axlee]

> The US government should also move to immediately outlaw targeted algorithmic advertising, which would make a huge impact on Big Tech's sectarian violence cashcow.

That is an interesting proposition, but I wonder what would fill the void created. I believe advertising does not increase consumption per-se, but that it redistributes it among a different set of product and services, so who would be the winners and losers of such an effort?

[meekrohprocess]

What's wrong with targeting ads based on subject matter?

TV channels and magazines know how this works. If the page is about fashion, sell ad space to clothing companies. If the page is about travel, sell it to hospitality companies and tourism boards. If the page is about politics or finance, sell it to people making catheters and stair lifts.

It's much less creepy than trying to spy on everybody who reads the page, and then looking for an ad that fits your warped understanding of their preferences.

[simonbarker87]

My cofounder and I used to manage a £100k/year ad budget and we did TV, news papers, radio and Facebook. The level of engagement and ROI on Facebook was insane compared to the others specifically because we could tweak and cohort up the audience so specifically - we even commented how terrifyingly powerful it was and that it was a good job we were only selling a home efficiency central heating product because in “the wrong hands” it could clearly be devastating - you just don’t get that level of granularity with more mass media outlets, even when you break it down by readership/demographic

[tomatotomato37]

How much of that was useful engagement though? One of the hot topics a week ago was ad fraud being so prevalent on Facebook and Google that it caused Uber to shift their whole strategy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858

[simonbarker87]

Our sales numbers, the only metric that mattered to the kind of business we ran was 10x even the best of the other methods

[jamie_ca]

Ads based on the subject matter isn't the problem. "Targeted algorithmic advertising" in this context is building a profile of the viewer, and running ads based on that profile.

At its simplest, it's the ad network deciding that you were recently seen visting toyota.com, so it'll show you 4 ads over the next hour for Toyota vehicles, to help cement that association. At its worst, it builds up an individualized profile over the course of months from thousands of websites (with google ads everywhere, you bet!) and allow advertisers to practically target viewers based on a psych profile.

[simonbarker87]

Ah yes, re-targeting is where the real conversion comes. The brand/message with the biggest budget is suddenly everywhere you look

[manigandham]

It doesnt work as well as targeted ads. Why would hundreds of billions in ad spend willingly choose a lesser option?

[COGlory]

Is there evidence for this?

[manigandham]

Google and Facebook being two of the most valuable companies along with hundreds of billions of dollars and petabytes per hour.

What kind of evidence are you looking for exactly?

[COGlory]

That it works better. I'm wondering because of this submission the other day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858

[czzr]

If it’s the only option that exists, why wouldn’t they?

[Hammershaft]

> I believe advertising does not increase consumption per-se, but that it redistributes it among a different set of product and services, so who would be the winners and losers of such an effort?

Why do you believe this?

[yellowpencil]

> antitrust battles against Big Tech will dominate the next four years of economic policy

Almost zero chance this happens, imo. Big tech spent _heavily_ on Democrats (98% of contributions [0]) and the Democrats have complete control for the next 4 years.

an awfully prescient allocation of funds.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/tech-billionaire-2020-electi...

[senkora]

Nit: Congressional elections are held every two years, so complete control may disappear in 2022.

If you’re implicitly depending on the presidential veto to block Republican attempts if they take control of congress, then yeah that’s fair.

[binaryblitz]

Will be interesting to see what happens to the GOP over the next two years. I'm thinking there could be a split.

[jeofken]

I’d argue not to use law to dismantle big tech companies even if I disagree with their banning.

Twitter, Facebook and Google’s social services (gmail and YouTube) are at their heights or just behind them. The cycle for when tech companies are devoured is coming to them. I’d wager something like PeerTube will take a big part of the void YT will leave behind, as the market for censorship-resistant video will grow along the growth of forbidden opinions. Centrally planned government interventions without fail do fail.

[erik_seaberg]

They aren’t past their peaks, they just demonstrated their power for all the incoming politicians. “Nice campaign you got here, be a shame if something happened to it.”

[jeofken]

Well, they also created a huge market for alternative social networks, and made sure at least 70 mil people will be interested in that market.

Markets and prices are like a force of nature.

[overscore]

> Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.

Has it ever been? Probably the best known use of the word in many countries is The Troubles.

[gerikson]

Also, arguably, the Balkans.

[meekmockmook]

You're 100 percent right.. i just think it's turned into a buzzword for "foreigners fighting amongst themselves" since the War on Terror began.

[greesil]

Yeah but these threats were actually carried out. Not the first time for Parler either, as I recall.

[AmericanChopper]

A terror attack was literally live streamed on Facebook.

[etchalon]

Wasn't Facebook racing to take down the video?

[webXL]

Which one and why is live streaming (aka what TV news occasionally does) bad?

[chefkoch]

The one in Christchurch NZ was streamed by the shooter.

[whymauri]

Christchurch shooting in New Zealand. It was stomach churning, don't watch it.

[webXL]

I won't. I'm just trying to determine what this has to do with showing the content. Authorities could have benefitted by seeing the stream, so this isn't a clearcut issue. Do you remember live 9/11 coverage? Were you telling people not to watch that?

It's the incitement that we should be concerned about, and balancing restrictions with peaceful freedom of expression.

[meekmockmook]

I mean, I watched as people on Twitter and Facebook Live coordinated to torch one of my favorites neighborhoods in L.A. this summer. I saw looters tweet about breaking into a drug store in Sherman Oaks. You can't say it's just talk there. The damage to Melrose and DTLA had to have been in the tens of millions, if not more.

[greesil]

Perhaps shutting down all social media would be a net gain for society. I will miss my "buy nothing" group though.

[lenkite]

And the fellows that organise this and boast about it on Twitter will never, ever get banned.

[dang]

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and it's the line across which we start banning accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), regardless of which politics they're battling for. This is because it destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation on a wide range of topics.

[lenkite]

I will be very glad to stick to following the rules and limiting myself to technology discussions.

Could you please ban these topics then ? After all, this thread is a political discussion and imbalanced or biased statements naturally invite responses to correct them.

[dang]

That's not an option—it's not that easy. I've explained why this is so many times, most recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25723581. If you check out that post and the ones it links to, you'll find thorough explanations. If you read some of those and still have a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is. Just please make sure that you've familiarized yourself with the material and understand the constraints we're subject to. If it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already answered many times why that won't work.

The bottom line is that a certain amount of political discussion is inevitable here, and users (all of us, on all sides) need to learn the skills of doing that while remaining within the site rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's definitely doable, as many HN commenters demonstrate every day.

[ookblah]

did you report them? was there any follow-up action? i'm not condoning it but it's unreasonable to expect them to be able to ban IN REAL TIME stuff like this if they aren't already observing specific people.

not to mention one of the instigators of this entire thing has been the president of the united states. his actions have consequences that are 100x order of magnitude than your rioter on the street.

[meekmockmook]

Of course I reported them. Nothing happened. Twitter was totally supportive of everything that happened in June. They even put up billboards bragging about how their platform helped protests grow. During a pandemic.

[burke]

A salient difference is that Big Tech will at least pay lip service to the idea of moderation, when push comes to shove.

Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech. Even if they win this one, the writing is on the wall for them.

EDIT: This is not as true as I thought. Interesting information below!

[Miner49er]

> Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech.

They claim they are for free speech, but they aren't even close. They remove all kinds of things, just not enough of the things that Amazon wanted.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle...

[shakezula]

Yeah, the idea that Parler was some free-speech bastion is nonsense. They were explicit and judicious with their use of the ban hammer to remove wrongthink from their platform - they just didn't consider the crazy and often extremely violent threats on their platform as wrongthink.

[whymauri]

No 'obscene usernames' is actually hilarious to me. The bastion of free speech won't even allow users to choose their own handles.

[dkirill]

What does decent language requirement have to do with free speech?

[meekmockmook]

"Remember what the MPAA says; Horrific, Deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words"

[throwaway19937]

I've always liked this interpretation of MPAA ratings.

“If a man is pictured chopping off a woman’s breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman’s breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?” — Sally Struthers

[SV_BubbleTime]

I'm confused as to how some people here are simultaneously digging on Parler for speech they "allowed", and then also that "they weren't really free speech".

What is it you wanted them to do? I think it's pretty reasonable to not have "See me on Parler @ParlerLovesNaziPussy" as that content that Parler could not control outside of their platform.

Restricting usernames seems like a prudent move, even for a free speech platform.

[KallDrexx]

People aren't digging on parlor for speech they allowed while criticizing them for not being free speech.

They are criticizing them because they heavily advertised to people that they should go to parlor claiming that it was meant to fight for free speech because Twitter and other platforms were restricting free speech. Except Parler itself was restricting free speech on it's own and thus people are rightfully pointing out the hypocrisy. It shows that Parler wasn't in favor of free speech, it was in favor of "our side".

[thinkingemote]

> just not enough of the things that Amazon wanted.

One of the major allegations in the lawsuit is that the company took down everything that Amazon wanted, and that a few days ago Amazon apparently replied that they were "okay" when the materials they asked were taken down.

Seems like this will be one of the facts to establish in the suit, however it's part of the body of evidence to support the idea that 1) the suspension was a termination and 2) the termination was unwarranted which in my opinion as a complete lay person seems less sure of proving.

[User23]

> Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech. Even if they win this one, the writing is on the wall for them.

Absolutely untrue. Parler isn’t a free speech site. Gab on the other hand is and even they moderate. Their policy is to only allow first amendment protected speech, but that excludes quite a bit.

[newhouseb]

I believe "absolutely unmoderated" speech isn't technically correct here. As I understand it, Parler does have a form of moderation wherein a "jury" of 5 people evaluate flagged content within a 24 hour window of being flagged. If 4 vote for removal, content is removed. [1]

Naturally, if such a platform is dominated by extremists then extreme speech will remain effectively unmoderated (I can't speak to the fraction of the [former?] Parler userbase that is/was made up of violent instigators).

[1] Kara Swisher's interview with the Parler CEO on the Sway podcast (I haven't actually used Parler beyond taking a look once out of curiosity)

[ipsi]

Which is particularly interesting, since users were apparently shadow-banned until the mods decided their posts were acceptable. Source: https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506

[djsumdog]

> Big Tech will at least pay lip service to the idea of moderation

You are not really watching if you think that is what is happening. They are controlling the narrative. They are promoting some topics and pushing down other. Facebook deleted WalkAway, a group that had full moderation, did not allow any posts which called for violence, and which was pure political speech. Reddit is deleting each and every sub that goes against what their management believes; over 2000 have been banned last year only.

They are not paying lip service. They are directing narrative. They are banning things they don't like. They are deciding which scientific exports are orthodox and which are banned. They are controlling language. They are controlling thought. If you don't think that's happening, then they are controlling your thoughts as well.

This is the most dangerous time for us to be in and this will not end well. Censorship is the tool of cowards. Censorship is the tool of authoritarians. We are literally watching Big Tech and Big Media openly rewrite history. We are in 1984 + Fahrenheit 451 and half of us have bought so far into this narrative of protectionism we do not see it at all.

[themacguffinman]

But...that's what moderation is. Promoting some topics and pushing down others. Deleting certain groups which repeatedly break policies (which, by the way, are not limited to posts that call for violence). Deciding what is "orthodox" and what is not. This is common, even on this site. When a HN mod deletes a flagged thread because it doesn't follow the rules, are we all plunged into 1984 + Fahrenheit 451? When a comment is deleted and someone is baned even though they didn't literally call for violence, have they seized control of our thoughts?

The way I see it, Amazon (or Facebook etc) didn't censor Parler in the unilateral and totalitarian way you allude to. At some level, every company has to have the freedom to choose who they do business with, every person has to have the freedom to choose who they associate with. Amazon just said "no, I won't sell you AWS anymore". They didn't threaten Parler, Amazon does not have the power or authority to threaten Parler; They didn't and can't prevent Parler from choosing another provider. What's happening here is that Parler knows that no one else will voluntarily do business with them either.

Almost everyone in the industry has turned their back to Parler on their own. That cannot be censorship in the same way the lonely kid who no one wants to play with cannot be described as being censored in any meaningful sense of the word. Honestly I find it a worrying trend to be sure, but to portray individual free actions as censorship is to make the concept of censorship meaningless; It conflates the real dangers of authoritarian censorship with ordinary choices & biases that we take for granted every day.

[metiscus]

I believe that companies are largely on their own team, neither right nor left. How long before labor begins to be de-platformed for unionization efforts in the big tech companies? I know that there are already allegations that Amazon is acting in an extremely anti-labor way. Will the current argument of "platforms have a right to choose what content they will allow on their service" (which is a common argument for what is going on, among others) also apply in the case that pro-unionization groups are removed? These organisms will do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from what they perceive as threats, both external (political) and internal (labor).

[djsumdog]

> I believe that companies are largely on their own team, neither right nor left

Wat? Dude, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook's moderation policies are clearly left to far-left. They've done no blanket banning for calls to violence from the left. None of these people have had their pages, accounts or posts censored:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eQzLcO5qhY

and they clearly called for the types of violence we saw in 2017 and every year since up to and including now:

https://youtu.be/BXR3d22BhHs

edit: but yes, your point about labour is spot on. I can see that happening next for sure.

[metiscus]

Right now the winds are prevailing from that direction, yes. Were the opposition to have a single party government I suspect things would be different. Currently anti-trust legislation looms over them and they are gravitating towards the graces of those in power as well as removing accounts that legitimately do advocate violence (albeit not as evenhandedly as they should).

[cy_hauser]

> and which was pure political speech.

I'm okay with this. We've had Republican/Conservative vs. Democrat/Liberal in every other form of media that I can remember. What's wrong with that split with "Social Media" or with hosting providers (think publishers), etc.

The problems seems to be that conservatives thought these services should be neutral but the services themselves have not thought otherwise. It will sort itself out over the next five to ten years.

[whycombagator]

> GAFA

Google Apple Facebook Amazon for those unaware

[ketamine__]

Parler is being singled out because instead of hiring moderators as full-time employees like all the other companies you mention they decided to go the volunteer route that is less efficient. If Parler held themselves to a higher standard they wouldn't exist because most of its user base would complain about censorship go somewhere else.

[wsinks]

Low energy comment here, but I haven't seen GAFA as an acronym yet (and it makes sense because Netflix no longer has the same power it used to).

funny acronym too, because of 'making a gaffe' can kinda be, making a GAFA.

I agree with you that there definitely will be a new relationship between gov and tech in the next 4 years.

[techbio]

Lower-energy comment here to concur on first-time seeing that acronym, but also to iterate with the thought-network of: "GAFTA"

[webXL]

They already had plenty of enemies on the left. Now they got a ton more on the right. Elon Musk was just tweeting about the hatred headed their way. Time to check my investments.

[danaos]

By the way didn't Elon Musk support the "reopen America" crowd? Exposing your millions of followers to unscientific misinformation and downplaying covid risk so as to keep your gigafactories open and enrich yourself further? Sounds totally fine.

[pishpash]

Left or right? No no, it's got nothing to do with that. They're in trouble because they've now got enemies in power. Did you notice things only move when those in power are threatened?

[webXL]

I didn't notice much 2009-2017.

[meekmockmook]

Yeah, the idea of GAFA as left wing is ludicrous. Sure, they plaster the internet with those ugly flat art cartoons of diverse people working together, (Corporate Memphis, I've learned the style is called) but they are anti-union, anti-competitive, and dedicated to growth at all cost, even if it means sectarian violence and loss of faith in democratic norms

[olliej]

The core difference is every other platform at least attempts to moderate and remove violent content, whereas Parker is created explicitly to publish that content.

[idk_bro_idk]

What reason is there to think the incoming Biden/Harris regime will look to break up these big tech companies?

[VyperCard]

Idk, we talk again once it’s done

[gameswithgo]

It is weird to me that we people seem to be saying "These 4 companies need to be broken up". They are already 4 companies. It seems different than say, the Bell breakup, which was one company.

[matz1]

Maybe not broken up but the point is something need to be done to reduce the power of these company. They are simply too powerful.

Maybe some policy to make it easy for some new company/startup to disturb/compete ?

[gameswithgo]

Are they more powerful than the big oil companies? the big 3 financial companies? the military industrial complex?

[matz1]

Maybe or maybe not but nonetheless something need to be done to fix this silencing issue.

[djsumdog]

So because we already have big corrurpt megacorps in other industries, it's okay to have the same in Big Tech?

Big Tech and Media is not where we make our stand because all the other evil mega-corps are doing it too?

[meekmockmook]

My hot take? I think they are, yes. Information is literally everything.

[Uehreka]

Well yeah: There can be 4 monopolies, monopolizing 4 different things.

[throwaway894345]

The parent said they were too powerful and needed to be brought to heel; not that they were monopolies which needed to be broken up. I think this point has a lot of merit.

Circa 2017, liberals were arguing adamantly that Russia tampered with the presidential election by exploiting the curation algorithms that these companies employ--if we can believe that these algorithms are powerful enough that they can swing an election, why should we entrust that power to a handful of companies with tightly aligned interests (irrespective of whether or not they can secure their algorithms from outside tampering)? Why should we be content with this kind of hyper corporate oligarchy? To own the cons?

Note that "breaking the companies up" isn't the only way to bring them to heel. With respect to social networks, one interesting approach would be to decouple one's social network from the specific platform through which one accesses their social network by requiring social media companies to use open protocols that upstarts can equally implement. This would increase competition, including allowing non-ad-based platforms (with all of the inherent ethical issues associated with that business model) to compete with these companies. It would also prevent these companies from shutting down alternative interfaces that circumvent their tracking. Most importantly, the competition would weaken them to the point that they're still profitable but not a threat to our democracy.

I haven't considered this possibility well enough to say with any confidence that it's a particularly good solution, but it seems interesting and appealing from this distance.

[camhart]

Technically its 3 companies. Facebook owns instagram.

[tremon]

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon.

[zo1]

Would we want to add Microsoft to the list now that we've removed Netflix?

[djsumdog]

Do you remember the court testimony where Zuckerburge avoided the entire question about if they collude with other companies to make these decisions on the backend?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXuk-WSDDRw

Apple may have banned Parler and then Google just decided to go with it, followed by AWS. However, it may also be equally valid they colluded via private channels to make this happen. BOTH ARE EQUALLY POSSIBLE.

Discovery in this kind of lawsuit may lead to the answers. If they did collude, that is a strong argument for anti-trust. Just because they're 4 different companies doesn't negate the fact they control over 80% to 90% of the American market for hosting, non-SMS text communication and mobile access.

It honestly doesn't matter what you believe about Parler's user contributions. That's the entire point of Section 230. From what I've seen they do make a good faith attempt to delete all illegal posts with direct calls to violence. Section 230 doesn't prevent Google/Apple/Amazon from being forced to have them as customers.

You are protected if you're a minority and a business refuses to give you service based on that status. Opinions and viewpoints aren't protected, and maybe they should be.

If you in any way praise this legal yet blatant corporate censorship because it fits your views, you will be next. We are not on a slippery slope. We are in a god damn free fall. If you don't see it, they will come for you next and no one will be there to speak for you.

[gameswithgo]

I've been on the internet since it started and every forum I've been on has removed users and or posts for a wide range of reasons. Including just being rude, as hackernews does. So I don't really see this as any kind of "free fall". It is just the usual way of things.

[djsumdog]

It's not the usual way of things. They're not removing a few individually flagged post. FB is erasing massive numbers of communities, many just because they lean right. Reddit deleting over 2,000+ subreddits in the past year is just business as usual?

No, that's fucking targeted attacks against opinions they do not like. This is absolutely not business as usual. Everything about this is massive and it's morally reprehensible. It may not be illegal, but it's fucking wrong and insane.

It also shows that Big Tech is afraid. They're afraid and they're cowards. Regulating speech and language and blanket censorship are tools of authoritarians, not of people who believe in democracy and liberty.

Show me a single nation where censorship lead to a more free and open State.

[chefkoch]

>Just because they're 4 different companies doesn't negate the fact they control over 80% to 90% of the American market for hosting, non-SMS text communication and mobile access.

Citation please.

[djsumdog]

It was a ride range to indicate how large it is and meant to illustrate a point. You're asking for a fact is really just a way to say "I don't like your opinion so I'm going to challenge something that's obviously intended as a hyperbole" to discredit your statement in some arbitrary way.

Alright, AWS may not own 80% of the market, but let's be fair; it's fucking massive. On top of that Cloudflair has taken down websites before. DigitalOcean and DreamHost have removed people's hosting with less than 24 hours notice[0]. NameCheap and GoDaddy have both revoked peoples domains with less than 24 hours notice[1].

Initial searches seem to show AWS owns 50% of the market by themselves. You add in DO, Azure and GCE and that number quickly climbs[2].

[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

[1]: https://twitter.com/GoDaddy/status/896935462622957573

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/08/02/amazon-...

Edit: Also the lawsuit itself also claims AWS has 1/3 of the hosting market.