The logic is that "your own boxes" is just another layer in the stack of places private companies can deny doing business with you. Did you manufacture those boxes yourself, from the silicon up? If you didn't, you better hope you don't get blacklisted by parts suppliers.
>You cannot change your race by "doing it yourself".
The analogy is: if she didn't like being denied because of her race, she should have started her own busline.
Of course, we have laws in place that say you can't deny someone service based on race. That's great, and solves that problem.
So tell me what law Parler broke? Has it been proven in court? Or did a private company decide that on their own? Why should they have that power?
I mean, I'm not naive; I understand what Parler is/was trying to do, and it's gross. But the process shouldn't be arbitrary, at the whims of liability protected pseudo-monopolies.
> The analogy is: if she didn't like being denied because of her race, she should have started her own busline.
Right. The above is not summarizing the reason why our society has a problem with the events that occurred. The problem is why Rose Parks was denied service. It has nothing to do with her ability to start her own bus line. Does that make sense? Again, the analogy is completely missing the point.
> So tell me what law Parler broke?
I have no idea nor the inclination to investigate. They don't need to break a law for another business to cut ties. This happens all. the. time. Your problem seems to be a case of "this instance is different than the rest". If you have a problem with antitrust behavior, argue that. You aren't going anywhere with this line of logic.
Nobody is moving goalposts. The point is that there's always another layer of service providers that can cancel you, some of which are monopolists. If you think that's fine, or "just business", good for you. I do not.
>What is your point?
People shouldn't be able to put you out of business because they have more power and don't like you.
>Does that make sense? Again, the analogy is completely missing the point.
You're overthinking things. For the third time: "If you don't like it, build your own competitor" -- oft-repeated-- is a ridiculous statement in most cases. No one is going to build their own App Store, Play Store, Facebook..or yes, bus line.
I'm glad you can poke holes in an off-hand analogy though. It was never intended to be a literal 1-1 translation, with Parler filling the role of Rosa Parks.
>They don't need to break a law for another business to cut ties.
This is news. Thanks.
(edited to remove much sarcasm)
That is fundamental axiom of free-market capitalism. How do you think it is supposed to work? I'm trying to imagine a system where competition doesn't exist... oh wait. It's called "Communism".
> People shouldn't be able to put you out of business because they have more power and don't like you.
You must be young. "I have a bridge to sell you". In 15 years you'll better-understand how the world works and your idealism now will feel rather foolish in retrospect. I'll leave it at that.
> some of which are monopolists
I think this is actually what you are meaning to argue against. Just poorly. There is nothing wrong with a company deciding that the profit they derive from selling me widgets eclipses the losses they realize elsewhere, and to therefore end the relationship. This literally happens constantly. I could give you an example last month where we had to end a relationship with a client because they are a competitor to a bigger (more profitable) client who didn't like us serving both. It happens. I promise.
What it seems like you are actually railing against is anti-competitive behavior which is protected against in antitrust law. Monopolies are not against the law so long as they don't engage in certain market-making behaviors[0]. That is, behaviors that make "building your own competitor" impossible (i.e. undermining the fundamental axiom of FMC). This isn't a case of anti-competitive behavior. This is the market deciding that the financial/political cost of associating their business with an entity is greater than the profits they gain. It's business. Parler, in this moment, simply doesn't have a sustainable business model. The best thing they could do is to turn the narrative, lean in, and applaud AWS for exercising its freedom. But they are young too...
And for what it's worth I wasn't "poking holes" in your analogy. I was tearing it down entirely. It doesn't hold at all - even a little bit. To believe otherwise is to misunderstand the very foundations on which the civil rights movement was based, and some respects, liberal democracy altogether.
[0] Amazon is currently in court fighting the government in this respect. So is Facebook.
I haven't seen amazon claim that Parler broke the law. They have a TOS policy that forbids the hosting of illegal content.
> Has it been proven in court?
If a AWS customer is hosting child porn, does AWS take it down as soon as they're aware of the content, or do they wait for a court ruling?
> Or did a private company decide that on their own? Why should they have that power?
It's not power. You have a responsibility to exercise your judgement, and avoid participating in criminal acts. If you knowingly participate and profit until there's a trial in court, then you're an accessory. Section 230 has some exemptions -- you aren't protected if you maintain illegal content.
What happened on 1/6 was an armed crowd breached the capitol building. A plain reading indicates that this is an act of war, and AWS has enough legal problems without opening themselves to charges of aiding an enemy of the state in an act of treason.
This isn't "power" it's a matter of legal responsibility.
If Amazon is saying Parler hosted "illegal content" then they are saying they broke the law. How can it be any other way?
>If a AWS customer is hosting child porn, does AWS take it down as soon as they're aware of the content, or do they wait for a court ruling?
Child porn is illegal, hate speech (and in lots of places, "incitement") is not. In fact, in many jurisdictions the latter are protected speech. There is no moral equivalence here. Society's rules are clear on child porn. They are less clear on what constitutes incitement. That should be evident if you're following these events.
>It's not power.
"ALCU Counsel Warns of Unchecked Power of Twitter, Facebook After Trump Suspension"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aclu-counsel-warns-o...
Because I'm not clear on the specific exemptions for section 230. I can't say one way or another whether Parler itself broke the law.
> That's kind of the point here. Society's rules are clear on child porn. They are less clear on what constitutes incitement. That should be evident if you're following these events.
Did people openly plan an armed attack on the capitol building? Yes.
Did people follow through on aforementioned plans? Yes. Violence was incited. Having read quite a few relevant posts on Parler, I'm reasonably sure that their users broke the law.
There is a lot of gray area between voicing frustration and incitement, but this is not one of those cases.
Isn't "imminent lawless action" the limit of free speech? it seems clear after January 6th that a part of what was promoted on Parler was both imminent and lawless.
Assuming the people planning on Parler were some of the same people who stormed the Capitol then yes, absolutely. With the benefit of hindsight, this was incitement, potentially criminal.
Now the tricky part: from Parler's perspective, content that at one minute is "free speech" is suddenly illegal, or at the very least ToS breaking, in a matter of hours. Were they given a reasonable amount of time to remove the content (and what good would that even do, after the fact)? Did Amazon make Parler a political target, and arbitrarily apply a rule to them that they did not apply to other customers (Twitter)? Likely, imho. Does any of it even matter if "businesses can do what they want"?
Curious to know what the process other than market forces should be. Government? Paaah.. they can't even protect kids in schools being shot, control the pandemic or even distribute vaccine in any competent manner. (lots of other examples also come to mind!)
If the president calls for the boycott of Goodyear [0], isn't it also fair for Goodyear to not sell to any of Trumps companies? (Too lazy to look at other boycott tweets)
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/20/finance-2...
Parler had 24 hours to migrate from AWS.
Or let me put it like this: What is the appropriate number of machines and amount of time? And why?
If you want to draw a line, support it please!
Parler had no idea AWS would just yank them from service at 24 hours notice - I don't think there is any precedent for this from an AWS perspective. So this is the challenge they had if they wanted to move to physical infra after being given notice - 500 servers in 24 hours.
(As a side note, setting up physical infra at the scale of growth Parler was having wouldn't have been practically possible - they had a giant and rapid spike across the last month or so. It also wouldn't have been financially wise, considering they probably don't have the capital and the traffic spike was probably a temporary surge. Plus if you buy physical infra and then your apps get removed by the other cloud providers, that changes your traffic profile again... Parler really had both their hands tied behind their backs to fight this thing).
I certainly wouldn't choose to continue serving a client if I thought doing so was costing me money.
As an aside, I actually would continue serving a client if I had sold them a service, they were paying for it at the agreed price and keeping on top of invoices, and if me reneging would cause them to go out of business. And then if I had to end it, I would give them as much notice as I could practically provide (particularly if they were willing to profitably pay during the notice period).
I wouldn’t personally do business with you if I thought you would instantly back out of an agreement that you had already profited on with almost zero notice. AWS is no charity here, Parler were paying them for servers.
Are you trying to say it's unfair? I just don't see it that way. If Amazon violated the terms of their agreement then fine, let it be litigated. But if Parler can't get back up quick enough in the mean time that's on them. That's how business works. I know. I conduct it. It's not personal.
And oligopolies pose antitrust issues.
Antitrust is more concerned with anti-competitive behaviors: pricing-fixing, group boycotts[0], buying a competitor with the express purpose of removing competition, etc. Amazon and Parler are not in the same market - they are not competing for anything. Antitrust is not going to be a fruitful legal avenue.
If Amazon were somehow influencing Parler's ability to "do it themselves" (e.g. preventing a seller from providing them with boxes), then yes, there may be some legal standing.
[0] Look this one up. It's not what you are thinking.
I used to work for a company that didn't make 300K a quarter and we managed our own boxes. Yes our scale and problem domain was about an order of magnitude smaller, but it wasn't trivially small (optimization was still a relevant problem for us). What did people do 15 years ago before all of these could platforms did all the work for you? Do that. It's really not that hard!
The analogy above is ridiculous. The problem isn't that Rosa Parks couldn't start her own bus line (though at the time this was probably not feasible for more reasons than just money). The problem is that she was denied service because of her race. You cannot change your race by "doing it yourself".
If SpaceX denies me the opportunity to fly their shuttle do I have to build my own spacecraft to get to space? Yes... I do. I'm sure we could come up with all sorts of other fun examples!