> "We blocked the phrase and other variations of it from trending," a Twitter spokesperson said. "We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. This means that at times, we may prevent certain content from trending. As per our Help Center, there are rules for trends — if we identify accounts that violate these rules, we’ll take enforcement action."

E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...

False equivocation. This did happen but Twitter promptly banned this and variants [1]. Parler is failing / refusing to moderate.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...

Also false equivocation. Twitter failed/refused to moderate content for years throughout their meteoric growth, and only now are they barely getting a handle on it - and even then they seem to apply the rules in an uneven fashion.

Expecting any potential competitor to instantly achieve perfect moderation seems like a perfect way to entrench FB, Twitter and others as the de-facto public square.

Parler is not simply failing to "instantly achieve perfect moderation," and, I personally believe it is disingenuous to speculate the fact. The service's core principals include strict limits to moderation.

Amazon cited a long string of specific violent posts that they themselves reported to Parler and that Parler didn't remove.

So, Parler perjured themselves in the linked complaint when they stated that every example cited by amazon was removed?

For reference, this is Parler's claim:

> AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove content that encouraged violence was false—because over the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to its attention and more. Yet AWS sought to defame Parler nonetheless. And because of AWS false claims, leaked to the public, Parler has not only lost current and future customers, but Parler has also been unable to find an alternative web hosting company. In short, AWS false claims have made Parler a pariah.

My take will depend on the timeline: If Amazon indeed asked Parler to remove the content weeks ago (as stated in the letter), but Parler only did so "over the last few days" (ie after the shit had hit the fan?), then, I'd argue Amazon does have a point...

It appears so. Is this surprising?

Did they also perjure themselves when they stated the Amazon letter was published in buzzfeed before being provided to them?

I don't know, but again: does that matter? Is Amazon obliged to keep their communications with Parler private? Certainly Amazon's customers don't adhere to that norm.

The controversy here seems very simple. When Amazon alerted Parler to specific violent posts, did Parler immediately remove them, or did it wait to remove them until shit blew up? I don't know that I need to care whether or when Amazon alerted BuzzFeed. Amazon says it's removing Parler because of Parler's behavior, not because of something Buzzfeed reported.

According to NYT, many of the tweets were discussing the fact that demonstrators were shouting the phrase. The tweets themselves allegedly were not directly inciting violence.

> Mr. Matze pointed to the fact that Twitter had recently promoted the phrase “Hang Mike Pence” as a trending topic. (The majority of the discussion on Twitter was about rioters chanting the phrase about the vice president on Wednesday.) “I have seen no evidence Apple is going after them,” Mr. Matze said. “This would appear to be an unfair double standard as every other social media site has the same issues, arguably on a worse scale.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...

Yeah I see weird trending things a lot on Twitter then go to see what happening and it's people talking about the weird Trend they saw.

It is true. The difference is Twitter took action and removed offending posts, and removed it from the trending list.

It's worth noting that the "Hang Mike Pence" tweets were a reference to what the rioters were chanting when they stormed the Capitol.

Also referencing the L. Lin Wood parler https://twitter.com/parlertakes/status/1347050705110986753?s...

So much for Greenwald's case.

Further illustration of why Twitter's trending algorithm is so ridiculous. Half the time, when a phrase is trending, most of the tweets returned are along the lines of "Why is 'foo' trending?"

I can affirm that at least part of the "hang mike pence" discussion on twitter it was a shocked discussion of the threats, not threats.

There is video of a mass of rioters chanting it as they stormed the Capitol!

By the other comments, it seems was true but Twtiter moderated it quickly.

However, I remember when J.K. Rowling gave her opinion on transgender issues, RIP JK Rowling was trendin gtopic for hours, and she received a lot of hate and threats on Twitter. Not only that, a lot of people started replying to her tweets with dick pics, which was dangeours because she was in the middle of an activity with children (they could see those replies).

So yeah, definitely Twitter chooses what to moderate and what not.

I strongly disagree with Rowling's bizarre obsession but she faced months of death threats while Twitter looked the other way.

She was receiving death threats on Twitter and Twitter was not taking action against those users? Do you have any sources for that?

Do you have any sources for Twitter not taking actions against users that sent death threats to JK Rowling?

Yes, they are all still online, even the verified accounts.

Death threats from the right people that’s the difference. Twitter supports those people, so they can stay.

That’s why this whole Parker debacle is hypocritical.

Firstly, it was but (apart from being discussion of the phrase rather than actually planning to kill him) it was swiftly taken down .

Secondly, at risk of stating the obvious: Parler has self-selected its audience to consist of proportionally many more extremists, they still exist on twitter but not even close to as prevalently on Parler (not least because many extremists on Twitter are going to be on the left, where the dialogue is harder to police because it's much less obvious where the violence starts)

Didn't Twitter catch this & remove it from trending fairly quickly? Seems like an example of what AWS is claiming Parler _isn't_ doing.

Most were probably referring to the videos of MAGA terrorists chanting "Hang Mike Pence"

If you google it, it depends on the bias of the sources. One side is saying twitter let it trend. But twitter also removed the hashtag once it started trending. Unsurprisingly, this goes unmentioned on sources claiming it was "allowed" to trend.

By their own admission Parler does not have the moderation tools that Twitter have. The fact the content ever existed isn't what is at dispute.

Twitter has a moderation policy and applied it. Parler didn’t and didn’t apply anything.

Edit: also fuck everyone related to Parler. Read in detail: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

This just isn't true. We can argue whether or not Parler was not moderating correctly - but to imply they did not have a policy against violence is not true:

6. Threats of Violence, Advocacy of Imminent Lawless Action, Threats to Dox, Bribery or Criminal Solicitation

So-called “fighting words” are not a violation of our Guidelines.2

6.1 However, reported parleys, comments, or messages sent using our service will be deemed a violation of these Guidelines if they contain:

6.1.1 a “serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to aparticular individual or group of individuals,” with either the intent or reckless disregard as to whether the communication will “place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.”

6.1.2 an explicit or implicit encouragement to use violence, or to commit a lawless action,such that: (a) the Parleyer intends his or her speech to result in the use of violence orlawless action, and (b) the imminent use of violence or lawless action is the likelyresult of the parley, comment, or message

6.1.3 a threat to dox anyone for any reason.

6.1.4 an offer to give or receive money, or other goods or services, in exchange for (a) afavor from any public official, or (b) the commission of any illegal action by anyone

Since the previous comment where you said this is dead, I'll repeat my response here: Amazon presented Parler with a list of violent posts that they had reported to Parler and that Parler had refused to remove. The whole letter Amazon sent to Parler was reported out by Buzzfeed, including screenshots of the violent posts that Parler did not remove.

Parler's complaint references here says that they did remove them and also that the article referenced was leaked before it was sent to Parler.

We'll have to watch this play out in court, later.

I don't know whether that's true or false but I also don't know why it matters. Absent a confidentiality clause AWS is free to publish whatever they want. Certainly, people routinely publish their private communications with AWS.

I may be misreading things, but it sounds to me like they published the list of things to remove and Parler removed them after notification, but they're using the publication to try to make it look like they were notified before they actually were.

But this is a complaint, so I can't just assume that any of these things are actually true and that's why I want to reserve judgement until we hear how all the evidence plays out in court.

I think we agree: the material timing information here "when did AWS alert Parler to violent material" and "when did Parler remove that violent material".

Yes, I agree with that.

Are you sure about that? I almost sure I read somewhere that Parler has a policy that prohibits incitement of violence.

The policy means nothing if it isn't applied and a lot of what happened on Wednesday (and way worse) was planned in the open on Parler. Parler's moderation also principally consisted from what I've heard of community 'jury of peers' where a reported post was shown to ~5 other users who decided if it was a violation which is incredibly insufficient and basically guarantees the policy will not be enforced.

It wasn't applied instantly? Was there some specific deadline they did not meet? Because Twitter does not remove bad things instantly either.

There's been reporting that Amazon sent them some specific... Parlers (?) (IDK what the Tweet equivalent is over there) they said violated their contract or something and they weren't taken down. It's not about the speed either it's that their moderation system was completely half-assed. Keep in mind the kind of talk and planning that lead to Wednesday has been happening over there since the election and similar "hang the traitors" talk has been going on much longer basically since the site started.

That was their policy on paper. In practice, it was not enforced.

It let all of these active discussions and organisation proceed knowingly. The policy does not exist.

Edit: I love how I’m being downvoted when quite frankly there are enough screenshots out there and on /r/ParlerWatch of their shit show of moderation. You’re deluded if you think there’s a moderation policy other than ignorance by design.

It's weird how inconsistent they are about it

Tweets from Ayatollah Khomeini talking about how Israel is a cancer[1] that needs to be violently eradicated[2] apparently don't run afoul of the "Glorification of Violence" policy. OTOH Trump's 2 tweets, which were tame in comparison, were bannable.

[1]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784

[2]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263742339891298304

Banning Ayatollah Khomeini from Twitter would probably cause an international incident. He might declare a fatwa[0] against Twitter, the US, or both. If none of these events happen, there's still a risk of Islamic terrorists attacking Twitter's offices. I'd probably leave his account in place too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa

This makes sense on a personal level, but it highlights the hypocrisy of AWS decision

What is hypocritical about AWS's decision to terminate Parler?

AWS doesn't make any claims to providing universal service and like most (if not all) service providers they can terminate service for a variety of reasons.

I have no inside information but it was probably a combination of some of the following factors.

1. Compliance with the AWS acceptable usage policy. AWS says that Parler didn't comply with the AUP. All the facts won't come out unless this lawsuit goes to trial and that seems unlikely. Parler's CEO doesn't seem to think moderation is important so it's easy to believe that they didn't put a lot of effort in it. It's also possible that they can't afford to comply with the AUP but that isn't Amazon's problem.

2. Cancel culture. It was only a matter of time before AWS started getting bad PR for having Parler as a client. Petitions for dropping them were already circulating internally and externally. It's easy to say that you shouldn't drop clients in response to pressure but there is a point at which doing so is a rational decision.

3. Liability. Parler was allegedly used for planning illegal activities. If another significant attack occurs then a class-action lawsuit will pursue both Parler and AWS for contributing to the attack - this happened with the September 11th attack. The costs of defending or settling this lawsuit could easily run into the millions.

Don’t try defending it with whataboutism...

If the complaint in the lawsuit is that the policy on websites with unmoderated violent content isn't applied equally, is it really "whataboutism" to point out that the policy isn't applied equally?

Hypothetically, how would you be able to prove that point without providing examples?