[jfengel]

Saying "whatever reason Amazon gave" is a pretty good reason to downvote it. Amazon gave reasons. If you can cite them, then you can disagree with them. But to simply wave those reasons away as "whatever" is intended to convey "that was obviously legal content being shut down for purely ideological reasons", and that is simply not the case.

The "reason Amazon gave" was "content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens", with examples given in:

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

So it's a bad example of something being dismissed for ideological reasons, and a bad example of something whose reasons can be assumed when the answer was easily available.

That's an excellent reason to downvote something. It's simply not accurate.

[clarge1120]

“whatever reason Amazon gave” was dismissive, but also accurate. They gave a reason. The poster dismissed it and the comment was downvoted for the dismissal.

Each action was ideological.

[jodrellblank]

You don't know why it was downvoted; the comment just wasn't very helpful at explaining or clear (I didn't downvote). If the reason was "unpaid bill" that would come under "whatever reason" but would that be relevant to policing anything?

Without knowing what reason Amazon gave that leaves me to go look it up; I do, and see various news site quotes including "District Judge Barbara Rothstein sided with Amazon, which argued that Parler would not take down posts threatening public safety." quote on npr.org, and "Amazon told Parler it would boot the company from its web-hosting service [...] because of repeated violations of Amazon's rules" on NYTimes.com, I try to find an official looking source of exactly what reasons Amazon gave and get to the filing for the lawsuit/legal case between Parler and Amazon[1] which includes on page 3 "17. During this same time period, AWS claims that it received reports that Parler was failing to moderate posts that encouraged and incited violence, in violation of the terms of the CSA and AWS’s Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”). Exec. 2 Decl., ¶ 4; Ex. C (AUP). The AUP proscribes, among other things, “illegal, harmful, or offensive”". It's not clear here whether Amazon is claiming it was illegal or not, or whether it actually was illegal or not.

I google "inciting violence illegal usa" and get to a Cornell Law School[2] page on 18 U.S. Code § 2101 - Riots - saying, abridged, "whoever uses a facility of interstate commerce including but not limited to telegraph, telephone, radio, to incite a riot or promote or organize a riot, or aid or abet any person rioting or commiting any act of violence furthering a riot, shall be fined or imprisoned". Still not clear whether Parler was actually breaking the law or whether Amazon was alledging that they were, or whether this has been decided, or what exact reason Amazon gave.

I know there are arguments about whether hosts are or aren't responsible for content on them, or are just blind transmission systems, but I don't know which way it falls in which scenarios.

It reads more like a complaint about Parler being taken down than a helpful explanation, and could be more clearly and directly said "(policing legal content) means a company removing things against their content policies, even if the things are legal" in as much space and effort.

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

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2101

[jimmydorry]

Assuming the best from the GP, I think they might have meant "whatever" in the sense that AWS enforced their terms of service by enforcing something that they don't hold their other customers to. As you said, this could be for ideological or PR reasons.

The "whatever" being any cause they could justify their actions with.

[jfengel]

Thank you; you have done a good job of steel-manning the OP. I appreciate that.

The way it was written, it doesn't surprise me that people didn't read it that way, and downvoted. It comes against a background of people loudly claiming to be oppressed for ideological reasons and failing to support that claim or acknowledging that a serious act of violence has just occurred by people professing the same ideological reasons. At the very least, I felt it was worth pointing out how it reads, so that they might consider it without requiring others to specifically seek an assumption-of-the-best.