The United States Government decided it was fair, in many administrative and legal venues, across the country. Many Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even under intense and illegal pressure from the President and his cadre.

This platform was used to coordinate an insurrection against the United States Government, and refused to act against those doing so.

The severity of insurrection in US legal code is such that the military may be deployed domestically, and those service members who abetted it are guilty of an offense whose primary punishment in the UCMJ is death.

This isn't just another political issue. The most existential issue facing the state is the integrity of the Constitution.

> The United States Government decided it was fair, in many administrative and legal venues, across the country. Many Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even under intense and illegal pressure from the President and his cadre.

So if the Russian government and Russian courts decide their election was fair and just, should Amazon shut down any websites which counter that viewpoint?

Because that's the precedent we are presumably setting.

> The severity of insurrection in US legal code is such that the military may be deployed domestically, and those service members who abetted it are guilty of an offense whose primary punishment in the UCMJ is death.

Yep, same in Russia for questioning election. You get sent to gulag. Or in China - what do you mean you are talking about Taiwan being it's own independent country in a group chat?

> This platform was used to coordinate an insurrection against the United States Government, and refused to act against those doing so.

Most of the coordination actually happened on Facebook, not Parler. None of those arrested so far had a Parler account.

We're setting the precedent that supporting White Supremacist insurrection against the United States will get punished the same way each time.

Russia doesn't have democracy, and Amazon isn't a Russian company, so I hardly understand your analogy.

Why would you compare what Russia does to political prisoners with the military's discipline in the United States?

This may be news to you, but military service members are subject to an independent justice system with different protections, different laws, and different penalties.

You're arguing that US corporations should be restricted from taking action to suppress insurrection on the basis of having your head in the sand. The US should be in a state of emergency now, and it's obvious to me that it's solely because a white supremacist has replaced the civilian leadership of our government with those complicit in this act.

You're free to ignore what has happened, or believe in an alternate reality. Some of us would be guilty of violating our oaths were we to do the same.

well stated

Despite being headquartered in USA, aws is a global company and these questions about the future is common sense. Not everything is about American politics, people around the world are used to violence happening on your soil, it's just another news.

> the point is who decides if the democratic election was fair?

That one is easy: it was approximately 60 different courts of law that laughed the "evidence" of fraud out of the room

It's not that easy. If we're talking about an election in Venezuela, the courts would also laugh accusations of election rigging out of the room.

To be clear, I fully side with the U.S. courts here. What I'm saying though is governments and officials lie, you can't always just trust the official story.

If parler were used for inciting civil disorder in Venezuela over the election result and the government comes to AWS and says shut them down, what do they do?

Now suddenly they're the arbitrators of what is true in the world.

I don't want to get too hypothetical here, because I think this time it was pretty black and white.

100% agree - And the problem is that this isn't a 'hypothetical' situation.

Amazon and these large players will absolutely be asked by governments around the world to intervene in similar situations. Sometimes the fraud will be false, but sometimes it will be real - that's the world. Is it now Amazon's job to be the world election supervisor and arbiter of truth and shut down dissenting speech?

And can we trust these companies to act as neutral arbiters of the truth? (As an aside, the answer is absolutely not. See: Google Maps and Crimea / Ukraine / Russia)

Except Amazon aren’t determining what is true for the world, they’re determining it for themselves based on their assessment of the evidence and control only their own actions? This is true of everyone. To impute a stupid decision-making algorithm to AWS and then point out that it’s stupid does not a great argument against AWS’ actual process make.

Except these companies are defining truth in the world.

You said individuals make their own assessment based on the “evidence” - the problem here is that these companies serve up the “evidence”, so if these companies decide to only show you the “correct” evidence then that’s where they begin to define “truth”.

For an example, see Google Maps and Crimea in Ukraine vs Russia.

They certainly have a lot of sway, there—“history is written by the victors”, etc—but that we are having this discussion in the first place seems proof positive that said sway doesn’t prevent people from holding informed, contrary opinions.

> who decides if the democratic election was fair?

The several states, of which all 50 had certified their votes well in advance of January 6th. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the votes being counted were even cast in public.

Just as an example, was the 2016 election 'fair' in your eyes?

There were claims that Russians hacked the election, voting machine issues, voter fraud and suppression. Democratic leaders objected to the legitimacy of the election results. There were even protestors who interrupted the electoral vote counting [1].

Did the big tech companies miss a chance to censor those peddling theories of an unfair election in 2016? Or do we have a moving definition of what constitutes a fair election and is allowable for questioning depending on which side won?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508562183/biden-to-democrats-...

> Just as an example, was the 2016 election 'fair' in your eyes?

Yes, of course. I wasn't happy about it, but I was aghast that so many people voted for a con man, not convinced that it couldn't possibly be true that more people (in the right places, at least) wanted him than the second-worst political candidate I've ever seen run for President.

Also, by the time the certification comes around, the actual voters, all 538 of them, have publicly voted, so not only did I think the election was fair, but by then I knew it was 100% legal.

IMO big tech doesn't really do much censoring until pushed into a corner, now or in the past; they're more about the money than the politics. The Russians (along with a few other players, no doubt) absolutely fuck with our elections, but they do it the old fashioned way -- by spreading propaganda on social media and convincing American citizens to believe in conspiracy theories, and turn against their fellow citizens, etc.

FWIW, no Democrats stormed the Capitol in 2017. The losing candidate conceded, and relatively quickly at that. After losing by a lower margin than Trump in 2020, while beating him by millions of votes nationwide.

There isn't really a good way to spin it. Trump supporters storming the Capitol is bad, but it's actually a fairly distant second place to what the sitting President is doing.

The platform being used for organizing potential mass murder of targeted groups. If the screenshots are correct of what I have seen then AWS had no choice. They would have been liable if something really bad happened and was made aware of this before it happened. Parler has no monitoring of this activity and that is why everyone shut them down once it was exposed.

Note that in the past AWS has been more than open to hosting platforms organizing potential mass murder of targeted groups, to the point of issuing a lawsuit after a competitor was chosen to host the platform. [1]

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/amaz...

I look forward to AWS removing itself from this lawsuit now it has worked out it is fully anti-violence.

Surely it’s ethics aren’t just swayed by money and political pressure?!