[maskil]

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.

[tw04]

>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-p...

[AnthonyMouse]

> 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.

[nicoffeine]

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.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Twitter and Facebook regularly ban people for violating their TOS with inappropriate content. Parler did not.

https://www.newsweek.com/parler-ted-cruz-approved-free-speec...

> 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.

[nicoffeine]

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.

[tekknik]

> 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.

[AnthonyMouse]

> 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.

[MrMan]

I have speculated here that these moves were prompted by disclosures from law enforcement

[spaginal]

They aren’t risking market share loss to competitors because they are ganging up together to kill their competitors.

[chalst]

Parler is not a competitor to any of Amazon, Apple or Google, the three companies involved.

[tekknik]

Yet they host the competitors and give them a distinct advantage. How am I supposed to get the Parler app now that it’s banned?

[tfehring]

> 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.

[toolz]

The lawsuit parler filed states they deleted every piece of content (and more) that AWS brought to their attention. Moderation is hard.

[nobody9999]

>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."

So not so much.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

[ketamine__]

Try banning users. Try having moderators that aren't volunteers.

[toolz]

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.

[fooey]

Amazon doesn't host Facebook or Twitter, but they did host Parler.

Amazon told Parler they had to remove some very specific content or they would be sever their service, and Parler refused.

Amazon's letter terminating Parler calls out refusal to moderate content, not their inability to moderate content.

[impulser_]

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.

[JamesBarney]

AWS doesn't host the feed.

> But AWS does not host Twitter’s feed, so of course it could not have suspended access to Twitter’s content

Quote from a legal document AWS filed.

[staticassertion]

> 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.

[engineer_22]

I believe the argument is: AWS has the right (under current law), but that exercising this right is not always in the public's best interest.

How do we (the people) ensure good behavior?

[staticassertion]

We pretty rarely find good ways to ensure good behavior, at best finding makeshift incentive structures to encourage it.

It is very likely that those incentive structures are exactly what led to this decision, and are working more or less as intended.

[rualca]

> 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.

[cestith]

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.

[saghm]

> This is meaningless without comparing it to how many instances of hate speech or calls for violence exist on competing sites like Twitter

Is Twitter hosted on AWS? I thought they had their own servers, but I could be wrong

[AnthonyMouse]

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.

[afavour]

> 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.

[cestith]

Twitter is not party to two-party contracts between some other two parties. This point is easy to understand and difficult to dispute.

[toolz]

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.

[tw04]

>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.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

[toolz]

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.

[heyoni]

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.

[toolz]

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.

[staticassertion]

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.

[thu2111]

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.

[cestith]

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.

[ketamine__]

An aside, why are Parler users such thugs?

[AnthonyMouse]

I see you've never used Twitter.

[raxxorrax]

You can find egregious example of such utterance on any online platform, that includes Amazon reviews.

I suspect people going after Parler have other motivations due to political reasons.

[ashtonkem]

> Parler's policy forbids hate speech and incitement.

How did they manage to write that with a straight face?

[wrtingonWall]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-slams-cap...

Perhaps tech companies simply see the writing on the wall

[nobody9999]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...

[chris_wot]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[ketamine__]

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.

[chris_wot]

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.

[raxxorrax]

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.

[chalst]

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.

[ageofwant]

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]

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.

[tw04]

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...

[thu2111]

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]

I don't recall Google search organizing any marches on the Capitol.

[thu2111]

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.

[proc0]

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]

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.