I don’t hear a peep from people about AWS banning Bitcoin miners. They’re providing proof of what kind of content exists on their servers. It’s the same with child porn and other criminal content.

People offended by AWS’s stance, please help explain the differences in aforementioned violations.

The only odd part of all of this is why now? AWS should have banned them during formation. They tolerated it because of Trump being in power. This is the only cowardly hypocritical thing I see with the recent bans. All of a sudden cat is acting like a Lion in the cave after the Lion has left.

The heck are you talking about? Bitcoin isn't illegal. And AWS actually have numerous reporting obligations surrounding the use of instances for illegal activity and content if they become aware of it. Which in the case of Parler they're explicitly and overtly aware.

> The heck are you talking about? Bitcoin isn't illegal.

That's the point. Booting Parler off of AWS isn't illegal either. You know, conservative principles of free enterprise and all. AWS isn't government that will protect free speech.

The person you responded to is largely correct, despite your aggressive tone.

While AWS will act on anything that's reported, they are well known to do absolutely nothing in addition to that to stop the rampant usage of their platform to spread child pornography, unlike FB and other platforms which invest heavily in stopping the spread of child abuse material.

Amazon AWS really don't care about what goes on their platform unless it becomes a potential PR issue.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/09/us/internet-c...

So you'd be fine with platforms purging anything critical of them?

I guess in theory I wouldn't have an issue with that, but in practice a lot most of the time there isn't really an alternative.

> So you'd be fine with platforms purging anything critical of them?

That is a completely absurd false equivalence. The decision to host content that could get their entire company shut down by the US government is not anything close to the same as the decision to host content that is critical of their company.

But yes, if they wanted to make that decision, it would be completely within their rights. It would be a dumb decision, as it would turn away a huge number of their customers, but it would be within their rights. (Comparatively, the decision to turn away violent hate speech will deter very few of their customers on a global scale)

>That is a completely absurd false equivalence.

Except it's not an equivalence at all. I'm simply saying (and evidently correctly at that), that your justification would also apply to this other situation.

> It would be a dumb decision, as it would turn away a huge number of their customers, but it would be within their rights.

Well, that's where I totally disagree. The vast, vast majority of customers wouldn't be in violation of it, so they have nothing to gain from switching and morality is at best an afterthought.

Note that someone approving of one particular action by AWS does not imply that person approves of all actual or hypothetical actions that AWS might take. That’s absurd.

Except that's not at all what I said. I actually chose that example because I think the vast majority of people wouldn't approve it.

They're arguing that this action is fine because they own the platform, so they can kick off whoever they want to. Do they accept that this also includes justifying kicking off people generally thought of as good?

You’re repeating the same absurdity I outlined. There’s a big difference between saying “that company is free to make that decision” and “I approve of that decision by that company.” Approving of one decision does not imply being bound to approve of all future decisions of that company.

No, you just seem to think for some reason that "justifying kicking off people generally thought of as good" means approving of this action.

They're not saying that kicking off people critical of them is good (i.e. something they personally approve of), but they're saying that it's reasonable.

So you're just splitting hairs over the difference between "approve" and "find reasonable" until someone gives up and agrees with you?

I can't tell if you're trolling. They literally even themselves responded saying that while they wouldn't approve, they think it's something the company should be allowed to do. If you can't understand the difference, that's on you.

And I can't tell if you're trolling, for the exact same reasons you gave. They gave a reply that should satisfy your question, and you drilled down again because it didn't use your exact words.

Do you not understand how comment threads works? I didn't drill down on the original person (because while I disagree with them, they're willing to accept the logical conclusions of their justification), but on someone who insisted that my statement was absurd, even after I repeatedly tried clarifying it.

What a waste of time.

I really had to go and dig to figure out what you were even talking about here. The "original person" was a separate sibling to this thread. Do you know how threads work? Because that was not part of this conversation.

I am not going to read everything you ever type in order to have the context to understand you.

There are legitimate business concerns:

1. What if it turns out that Facebook Groups were utilized in the effort by some in the mob to capture members of Congress in the Capitol and hang the Vice President, and that some of this was explicit ahead of time? This isn't theoretical -- keep in mind that the group planning to kidnap Gov. Whitmer organized on Facebook. Did Facebook play a role in promoting people to join that group? This creates not just PR problems, but also hiring problems. Who wants to write the algorithm that recommended a hate group and play a role in radicalizing people to violence?

2. A key moment from the Congressional hearings into tech companies was when Jack Dorsey, asked if the cure for bad speech is more speech, replied: "All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech. What we saw and what the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment, and misleading information that would cause offline harm, and they would leave our service because of it." It's hard to fault these companies for wanting growth, and kicking people out can actually encourage that growth!

3. Young people are often the most profitable audiences. And many of the key creators for those audiences are also young. It's a serious problem for YouTube if their brand becomes Rudy Giuliani instead of [whatever makeup vlogger is popular right now]. This is similar to point (2), but slightly different. Even a smaller audience can be more profitable.

To the "no alternative" point, I'm sympathetic to anti-monopoly efforts. Mostly for my own left-wing reasons: https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/imagining-a-democrati...

But also, these efforts should be broader than just the technology companies: http://concentrationcrisis.openmarketsinstitute.org

That said, even if you took these actions, it'd be hard for any company that wasn't taking moderation seriously among people planning violent overthrows of government. (Which I think is a good thing. Companies should care if armed insurrections are openly being plotted on the merits, not just for business reasons.)

I don't doubt that these companies are acting in their own best interest, if I was in their position I probably would have done the same (well, actually I probably would have done it a whole lot earlier), but that doesn't mean that it's great that corporations have this power. Hell, the fact that these companies are likely actually just doing all this because it's better for their bottom line makes me actually _less_ trusting of them.

Hate speech is definitely an issue, but I want the government, who are democratically elected and (should) serve the people, to take care of it.

Anti-monopoly efforts are nice, but the required scale of them seems incredibly unrealistic for anything that isn't far off into the future. Especially because it seems likely that for internet companies other countries would simply step in (unless you put up some china like internet firewall...).

I personally don't want government to mandate speech policies on private companies and think people should be allowed to join websites that enforce values they like and agree with. My woodworking forum should be allowed to have a "no politics" rule. A Christian dating site should be allowed to ban atheists, like me. A social media app should be allowed to ban hate speech -- I don't want government making it illegal for there to be communities without hate speech.

Unless you're suggesting government should just ban hate speech? I don't favor that, either, but maybe I should ask for clarity here.

For 'normal' companies this definitely would be absurd, but I think a good amount of these incredibly large companies should essentially be regulated as a public utility.

>Unless you're suggesting government should just ban hate speech?

For 'published' speech that is, essentially like libel. I know that censorship laws can be dangerous, but it realistically just strikes me as the lesser evil. You evidently can't just let that stuff openly fester, but I simply can't imagine a situation where the government would suppress 'good' speech but a company with equal power wouldn't.

I suppose you used the same logic with arab spring, hong kong, belarus... They are literally doing/did an insurrection and even killed their leader in some cases (Gaddafi).

You're comparing Gaddafi, who was a dictator committing genocide against his own people -- including with chemical weapons -- to the election of Joe Biden?

You've lost it...

Read up on Section 230 and why it was passed, the whole point of it is that what you're arguing is unworkable and massively stifling innovation. ISPs aren't responsible for what it's users do.

The funny thing is that Section 230 was added to _encourage_ moderation as part of the Communications Decency Act.

The historical context is that prior to 230, imperfect moderation would be used as proof that a service could moderate but chose not to. This created an incentive to architecturally design systems in a way that made moderation impossible (or at least strongly encouraged services to pretend moderation was impossible). So Congress enacted Section 230, so partial moderation wouldn't be turned against you.

Kind of funny in this context. But attempts at moderation, even bad ones, are very much in line with the history of the bill. And of course, we're talking about AWS's private right to associate with whom they want, not government action. 230 doesn't really enter into it except as a metaphor of sorts.

ISPs are not legally responsible under under the communications decency act. That doesn't make them completely immune to legal consequences. For example, Section 230 definitely doesn't supercede an NSL.

Invoking it also doesn't let you reclaim a DoD contract you lost, or restore public opinion of your company.

(also, protip for trying to convince anybody of anything: don't start out with an assumption that the person you're talking to is ignorant. Replying with "read up on..." is always insulting)

IANAL, but ...

Section 230 says that ISPs are not treated as the publisher or speaker of what their users publish or say. That does not mean that prosecutors cannot try to find companies criminally responsible for allowing users to post illegal content on their platforms, especially if they have knowledge of such content. See Backpage. And even if the companies win, the battle itself is quite damaging.

Furthermore, Section 230 says nothing about how the court of public opinion will treat the provider. These companies are thinking about more than just the legal repercussions. If their business suffers because people do not want to do work with companies that support this kind of content, then all the Section 230 protections in the world will not bring in revenue.

Parler is removing illegal content and encouragement of violence, they've just been unable to completely do so due to massive growth. They're not like Backpage at all in that regard (and that verdict was harmful regardless). All the violent parleys Amazon mentioned are from nobodies and they have barely any upvotes.

You're right with the second paragraph though, in the US de-facto monopolistic companies are allowed to discriminate their customers regardless of public interest. Visa and Mastercard is allowed to ban Wikileaks from receiving any donations at all (thank God for cryptocurrencies) since they posted info about war crimes and Amazon is allowed to ban social networks that doesn't fact check.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be that way. Public interests needs some protection, even though companies are the suppliers.

This also opens up a really simple attack vector for taking down a competitor.

A recipe: 1) Create a bunch of accounts on your competitor's platform. 2) Post awful things using those accounts. 3) Screenshot them as proof that said competitor isn't taking moderation seriously. Make sure to do this before the posts are flagged/downvoted. 4) Send screenshots to all of the vendors that supply services to your competitor.

Voila, competition problem solved.

To put it on even footing with the current Parler scenario, add this one:

5) Hire a mob and storm the capital of the United States in an act of sedition, linking the planning and encouraging of the attack to your competitor's platform.

Or, 6) Hire a mob and storm the Federal Courthouse building in Portland?

I don't blame Twitter, the company for what happened in Portland this summer, which is sort of the entire point of Section 230 protections. I don't like Twitter or Parler or Gab or Facebook for what they've done to civil discourse, but that doesn't mean I think any of them should get their hosting yanked for it.

In fact, it will almost certainly make things worse. All of the attacks on 4chan and 8chan over the years only served to make them more popular - it's like people have amnesia about the Streisand effect.