Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
by xyst on Monday January 11, 2021 @02:35PM
(#25735021)
There was the case of PornHub/MindGeek and MC/Visa. PH was hosting a ton of videos which showed exposed minors (likely most of it was "revenge porn") and other unsavory content. It wasn't until Visa/MC decided to halt processing of all PH transactions that PH decided to haphazardly delete ALL non-partnered content on the platform.
This all happened in less than a week of Visa announcing it.
I think the outcome was "good" but the damage had already been done as these videos are likely residing on servers that are not owned or controlled by PH. Additionally, there's probably a shit ton of non-partnered content that was innocuous.
In just a matter of 10 days, a billion dollar corporation deleted a significant amount of their content without even having to step into a court room.
To be honest, it's kind of scary. What if you are just on the wrong side of a person at XYZ company? Maybe a cloud executive wants Y company to succeed because he or she has significant capital investment in it, and X competing company is about to roll out their product to the masses. Executive then writes up a scathing internal report by X company to ban them from using their products, or even worse "leaks" false information about X company to get them tied up in a public opinion battle.
This all happened in less than a week of Visa announcing it.
I think the outcome was "good" but the damage had already been done as these videos are likely residing on servers that are not owned or controlled by PH. Additionally, there's probably a shit ton of non-partnered content that was innocuous.
timeline:
* nyt publishes scathing article about PH and other sites on 2020-12-04 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...)
* MC and Visa announce to cut ties with PH on 2020-12-11 (https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/mastercard-and-visa...)
* On 2020-12-14 (~3 days later), PH then purges all unverified content (https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqjjy/pornhub-suspended-all...)
In just a matter of 10 days, a billion dollar corporation deleted a significant amount of their content without even having to step into a court room.
To be honest, it's kind of scary. What if you are just on the wrong side of a person at XYZ company? Maybe a cloud executive wants Y company to succeed because he or she has significant capital investment in it, and X competing company is about to roll out their product to the masses. Executive then writes up a scathing internal report by X company to ban them from using their products, or even worse "leaks" false information about X company to get them tied up in a public opinion battle.