[sterlind]

Link to the Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

Apparently Amazon sent them 98 examples of posts directly inciting violence, Parler replied with a proposal to manually moderate such posts with volunteers, and most of the posts Amazon gave as examples were still up (including some urging for systematic assassination or blowing up AWS data centers.)

[MisterBiggs]

All of those posts barely have any interaction or views so it doesn't seem like they are actually that big of an issue. Every social network has people saying crazy things.

[jtsiskin]

At first I very much agreed with you, all these posts have < 10 'likes', so it seems pretty unfair, as I'm sure you could find the same content on Twitter or Facebook.

However reading the exact complaint made me change my mind; they specifically provided them with content which they found to be inciting violence, and Parler took no action on them. If they actually wanted to remove them, at the bare minimum they could have at least removed the ones directly sent to them from their hosting provider. They also have no plan to moderate content themselves. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc all have report buttons which then trigger an employee to review the reported content, and Parler needed to at least say they had plans to do the same.

[sterlind]

exactly! Parler could have a report button with options like "Incitement to violence", "child porn", "other." Send the "other" reports to their manual jury system and have the rest reviewed for legality by staff. they've chosen not to, so they can go burn.

[sterlind]

the damning thing for Parler though is that they didn't remove those posts - which I remind you are illegal because they unambiguously incite violence - after AWS reported them. there is no excuse for Parler not to have removed those posts. they chose to ride or die with their jury moderation system, and died.

this isn't a 1A issue. incitement to violence is not protected by 1A - that's been settled by the Supreme Court. that's why I have no sympathy for Parler's plight. also note that they're not protected by section 230 - these posts are a criminal offense, akin to not removing child porn.

[Closi]

I know there is a subtlety here and I might be being pedantic, but I don't think it's illegal to host illegal speech.

And I don't think there is a legal obligation to censor other people's illegal speech.

And if it was, the buzzfeed article is presumably illegal too for hosting the same speech?

[oceanplexian]

If I could find 98 examples of users calling for violence on Twitter would you advocate for Twitter being de-platformed? Why or why not?

[r00fus]

Twitter has a program. At that point, it's about the upstream provider having some CYA on process and Twitter's ability to follow through.

Parler's response was a casual finger back to Amazon, and the response was a swift boot.

[Server6]

If Twitter wasn't willing to at least attempt to moderate then yes. What's going on here isn't new. Web hosting services have been dropping hate speech platforms and forums since the internet began.

The real problem is that is seems like the hate speech/Qanon wing of the right side of the political spectrum has the loudest voice and it's ruining it for actual conservatives.

[mgkimsal]

Perhaps if Parler had suggested they use mTurk to moderate, AWS might have given them a bit longer? What position would that have put Amazon in, if the moderation was being done via their service, but the end result of the moderation was still 'unacceptable'?