The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders.
I'm not worried about some moustache-twirling plot where tech companies effectively become the illuminati. I'm only slightly worried about politicians using the threat of regulation (e.g. revoking Section 230) to leverage companies into prohibiting things they don't like, or content favorable to opponents. I don't think many politicians would do this - the risk that this manipulation gets discovered and publicized is probably too great.
What I'm most worried about is good-intentioned censorship that further divides and alienates large sections of our society. These bans play directly into the narrative that leftist tech companies are excluding and pushing out conservative voices, and it's having the opposite effect of what is intended. For instance, suppressing allegations of fraud is likely having the opposite effect: it's triggering a reaction along the lines of, "well clearly there's something afoot, otherwise why would these companies be deliberately shutting down talk of fraud?". Who here has ever held a view and was banned from a forum, or told to stop by the forum's authorities, (electronic or otherwise) for that view? Did it make you change said view, or did it make you even more entrenched and suspicious of the authority that issued the ban? That's what I'm most worried about: companies ostracizing certain groups or topics with the intention of curbing extremism, but to the effect of fostering ever greater extremism.
As the owner of a company, I am more and more afraid to be dependant on Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. because everyday on HN there is a new example proving that they can destroy your business if you are not aligned with their view, their interest or someone in their evaluation team.
I use electricity, water, phone, etc. and I have never been afraid to be cut off by these companies as long as I pay the bills and respect the law.
PS: I am referring to none political cases (especially with app stores) that have been happening the last years.
>PS: I am referring to none political cases (especially with app stores) that have been happening the last years.
It's just plain reliability to worry about your single points of failure. You can be the most unobjectionable, vanilla and milquetoast organization. It's still desirable to avoid the situation where a single irreplaceable vendor can bottleneck you.
I think there has been a bit of hesitation to acknowledge it when there's so little friction to getting on desirable platforms. The risk doesn't feel as real.
I think there are actually two issues here: the incidence of violence and use of a "Content Killswitch". By a content killswitch, I mean that concerted action by 3 companies to basicaly scrub the entire internet of source materia in 24-48 hours and leave only articles giving their spin on the events.
I remember the same thing happened when that stupid "Plandemic" movie came out earlier last year. Even while I had no sympathy at all for the point of view in the movie, I at least wanted to view it to make up my own mind and discuss its flaws with the family members who had recommended it to me. But it was almost impossible to find, and that was only within a day or so of it going viral.
While I have no sympathy for the viewpoint censored in both cases, the ability to kill content this broadly and quickly is an extremely powerful tool. All you have to do is imagine if your particular political boogeyman with their finger on that button.
I think this argument works better as a question about decentralization: those three companies didn’t “scrub the entire Internet” — they simply chose not to provide free hosting and promotion for it on their own servers. If the authors had registered plandemic.com they’d be easy to find, but then they’d have to pay out of pocket for hosting.
I think this is something a lot of us older people forget: if you experienced the internet back when there were thousands of hosting companies and people ran their own servers for everything, this seems weird since there was always another place for anyone substantially less odious than stormfr*nt. After the 2010s, though, an awful lot of people got out of that way of thinking and there are now entire businesses which only have Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube accounts. I find these “victims” detestable but it definitely doesn’t make me happy that Facebook, Google, and Apple have a huge degree of control over what the average internet user sees even if there are tons of sites which they don’t control.
The fact that this has never happened before except when literal incitement of violence was being carried out (google for screenshots) and not being stopped, shows there's no reason to worry this will happen to you.
I am very concerned about the ease and speed with which they have been deplatformed. I am not a big fan of Parler, but I am a very big fan of free speech, and if the various actors who have driven them out of business can act this quickly in this well-coordinated, what else could they decide to censor?
The issue is that these platforms have grown to monopolistic or duopolistic size, NOT that a private company has the right to sever a business relationship.
It wasn't quickly. Parler has been around for two years, and the kind of material that got them finally kicked out of places has been there from near the beginning. Parler's lack of moderation of user content has been in violation of Apple and Google's rules for all that time.
I bet if someone had started a service similar to Parler but non-political, where people posted massive amounts of death threats and hate speech but directed at people for non-political reasons and that service utterly failed to moderate, Apple and Google and the rest would not have given them two years. They would have been gone in a week.
When several vendors drop the same customer at the same time, and there are no state attorneys general bringing legal actions (and thus no grounds to assert illegal activity), then it seems like conspiracy to destroy a business, and a likely cause of action for tortious interference and possibly a RICO violation.
When the hills are on fire, it's not a conspiracy when everyone starts fighting fire to protect their homes. One of the pernicious aspects of conspiracy theories is that, when pressed for evidence or presented with evidence contrary to their beliefs, those arguing for the conspiracy fall back to another level of conspiracy.
How far should this go? Should banks refuse to service employees? Grocery stores? Gas stations? They are private businesses, they have no reason to tolerate people who are thinking the wrong way.
Didn't he just post yesterday that there were many vendors lined up offering to host them after AWS kicked them out, and they would rewrite the app and be up and running in a week?
I think both could be true. Yesterday it was just aws, and maybe they had a hosting provider lined up. But then today it became every vendor that they work with which is another level of problem, like having to build their own sms system.
There’s something very ironic about Parler—-which kicks users off its platform for espousing liberal ideology—-whining about being kicked off other platforms.
From their own TOS:
> "Parler may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason or no reason“
Speculation: A coordinated action including of legal services strongly suggests to me that the vendors themselves have pressure applied, most likely being an ongoing federal law enforcement/security operation. The smell of this goes beyond the business community suddenly deciding Parler is an utterly dispicable organisation.
This also raises the question of what heat is now being applied to Parler's backers, notably billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer.
See from November 15, 2020, "Conservatives Flock To Mercer-Funded Parler, Claim Censorship On Facebook And Twitter"
And yet they are still online (edit: looks like they'll be online with AWS until 1159 PCT, my mistake)
I am pretty sure that coordinated withdrawal of services like this would amount to Tortious Interference wouldn't it?
Given Parler/Foxx's pentant for exaggeration and playing the victim I'm a little incredulous to be honest.
I don't like censorship or support it. Parler should stay, for all its issues. But that doesn't mean they're the victim of some giant conspiracy either.
I mean you can't run a site with no censorship where people are openly plotting the violent takeover of the us government and/or violent events. It is just a liability issue.
This isn't some kind of censorship issue, that just isn't legal and never has been legal.
Parler is broken by design and it was predictable that it would get to this point, one way or another.
The platform would have had to be designed as decentralised system in first place, since (especially for things like this) it's the only way to survive in the long run.
Yea all of this had already happened to gab with gab pivoting to activitypub a year or so ago to get around App Store bans. That the CEO didn’t plan for this is really a failure of leadership at Parler.
I read this as: every vendor was pretty quiet until the final outcome becaome known and it was safe to "bravely come forward with the decision" that will benifit said vendors in discussions with the current political powers
I believe that in AWS's statement they said that they would help them retain their data. I'm sure it just means that after midnight their S3 and RDS services are going read only until they're done taking their data out. Maybe make a final backup of their databases and put it in a bucket.
I'd be a bit more disturbed if AWS was going to remove read access after midnight.
Private companies just want to act in their best interest. Call it what you will, no one wants to be associated with them; and as such they get removed.
[+] [-] manfredo|5 years ago|reply
I'm not worried about some moustache-twirling plot where tech companies effectively become the illuminati. I'm only slightly worried about politicians using the threat of regulation (e.g. revoking Section 230) to leverage companies into prohibiting things they don't like, or content favorable to opponents. I don't think many politicians would do this - the risk that this manipulation gets discovered and publicized is probably too great.
What I'm most worried about is good-intentioned censorship that further divides and alienates large sections of our society. These bans play directly into the narrative that leftist tech companies are excluding and pushing out conservative voices, and it's having the opposite effect of what is intended. For instance, suppressing allegations of fraud is likely having the opposite effect: it's triggering a reaction along the lines of, "well clearly there's something afoot, otherwise why would these companies be deliberately shutting down talk of fraud?". Who here has ever held a view and was banned from a forum, or told to stop by the forum's authorities, (electronic or otherwise) for that view? Did it make you change said view, or did it make you even more entrenched and suspicious of the authority that issued the ban? That's what I'm most worried about: companies ostracizing certain groups or topics with the intention of curbing extremism, but to the effect of fostering ever greater extremism.
[+] [-] IdontRememberIt|5 years ago|reply
I use electricity, water, phone, etc. and I have never been afraid to be cut off by these companies as long as I pay the bills and respect the law.
PS: I am referring to none political cases (especially with app stores) that have been happening the last years.
[+] [-] DlSGUSTING|5 years ago|reply
People act like this is just being done because people have the wrong politics, but it's a far more pervasive problem than they realise
[+] [-] phoobahr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finnthehuman|5 years ago|reply
It's just plain reliability to worry about your single points of failure. You can be the most unobjectionable, vanilla and milquetoast organization. It's still desirable to avoid the situation where a single irreplaceable vendor can bottleneck you.
I think there has been a bit of hesitation to acknowledge it when there's so little friction to getting on desirable platforms. The risk doesn't feel as real.
[+] [-] jlos|5 years ago|reply
I remember the same thing happened when that stupid "Plandemic" movie came out earlier last year. Even while I had no sympathy at all for the point of view in the movie, I at least wanted to view it to make up my own mind and discuss its flaws with the family members who had recommended it to me. But it was almost impossible to find, and that was only within a day or so of it going viral.
While I have no sympathy for the viewpoint censored in both cases, the ability to kill content this broadly and quickly is an extremely powerful tool. All you have to do is imagine if your particular political boogeyman with their finger on that button.
[+] [-] acdha|5 years ago|reply
I think this is something a lot of us older people forget: if you experienced the internet back when there were thousands of hosting companies and people ran their own servers for everything, this seems weird since there was always another place for anyone substantially less odious than stormfr*nt. After the 2010s, though, an awful lot of people got out of that way of thinking and there are now entire businesses which only have Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube accounts. I find these “victims” detestable but it definitely doesn’t make me happy that Facebook, Google, and Apple have a huge degree of control over what the average internet user sees even if there are tons of sites which they don’t control.
[+] [-] aliakhtar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chopin24|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mcherm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danhak|5 years ago|reply
It’s an antitrust issue, not a free speech issue.
[+] [-] tzs|5 years ago|reply
I bet if someone had started a service similar to Parler but non-political, where people posted massive amounts of death threats and hate speech but directed at people for non-political reasons and that service utterly failed to moderate, Apple and Google and the rest would not have given them two years. They would have been gone in a week.
[+] [-] artembugara|5 years ago|reply
That’s what I call “serverless infrastructure”
[+] [-] My7thAccount|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] skynet-9000|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grzm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] influx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idunno246|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrlala|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] danhak|5 years ago|reply
From their own TOS:
> "Parler may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason or no reason“
[+] [-] QuizzicalCarbon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
This also raises the question of what heat is now being applied to Parler's backers, notably billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer.
See from November 15, 2020, "Conservatives Flock To Mercer-Funded Parler, Claim Censorship On Facebook And Twitter"
https://text.npr.org/934833214
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145
Meet Rebekah Mercer, the deep-pocketed co-founder of Parler, a controversial conservative social network
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/i...
[+] [-] DenisM|5 years ago|reply
But the precise timing is suspicious. I dunno.
[+] [-] joenathanone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|5 years ago|reply
I am pretty sure that coordinated withdrawal of services like this would amount to Tortious Interference wouldn't it?
Given Parler/Foxx's pentant for exaggeration and playing the victim I'm a little incredulous to be honest.
I don't like censorship or support it. Parler should stay, for all its issues. But that doesn't mean they're the victim of some giant conspiracy either.
[+] [-] gameswithgo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JuliusMars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfisch|5 years ago|reply
This isn't some kind of censorship issue, that just isn't legal and never has been legal.
[+] [-] mrusme|5 years ago|reply
The platform would have had to be designed as decentralised system in first place, since (especially for things like this) it's the only way to survive in the long run.
[+] [-] ripply|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitriid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nashashmi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slrainka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sys_64738|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christiansakai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gvv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dazoot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JCharante|5 years ago|reply
I'd be a bit more disturbed if AWS was going to remove read access after midnight.
[+] [-] trianglem|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] j8hn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wobblyasp|5 years ago|reply
Amazon, Google, Facebook, et.al. owe Parler exactly nothing.
[+] [-] mrlala|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rsynnott|5 years ago|reply