Vaping is, I think, fairly harmful. But it is absolutely clear that the government should step in and say no to these companies who are in the business of deciding which other companies are allowed to exist.

This isn't just about "other companies" though - that's what is so crazy to me about this. We've reached a point where the idea of creating and providing software is almost exclusively thought of through the lens of capitalism. That's so dystopian.

I notice it in other areas too like verbiage such as "business logic" or "product owners"

AWS doesn’t have the power to wipe people out that don’t tie their stack to them. Parler could’ve avoided this, it’s not AWS fault that Parler could t move.

I’m curious how many AWS houses could move to private hosting in that short of a timeframe.

It looks like none could, because AWS requires some very AWS-specific code ?

But then they decided to be hosted by AWS willingly, and it's not like they haven't been warned about issues with it. "They made their bed…"

This also reminds me of the situation with youtube-dl's very valuable information stored in GitHub's issues.

How AWS-specific your code needs to be depends on which AWS services you're using and how you use them. An EC2 instance is just a Linux system, as is a Lightsail system.

Other systems like MinIO and Ceph have S3 interfaces for object storage, so the code could be kept. Operationally you'd need to retrieve it from Amazon S3 and re-store it. RDS is an export, transfer, and import away from being loaded into a normal database server, but that can take quite a bit of time.

Getting geo-sensitive DNS and implicit testing of backends out of Route 53 isn't so simple. Getting stuff out of Lambda and onto a commodity platform isn't quick and easy. If you have data in Glacier there's a substantial lead time to recover your first byte.

Depends how much prep they did beforehand. Lots of businesses have contingency plans for negative situations including needing to leave AWS, and they're far less likely to get booted. I’m not sure why they didn’t just start with Epik; they already host Gab and won’t give a crap about what Parler does.

FWIW the Parler CEO claimed 12 hours, an obvious falsehood, and that’s now being used against him in his lawsuit against AWS.

Most probably couldn't. But most will likely never have to think of that. Parler's inherent value proposition increased this risk and they were foolish not to consider and plan for that.

Risk management is part of the job. Businesses that don't do it properly will often fail. Sometimes this is an unfortunate thing, sometimes it's a happy accident.

Is there evidence that these people were incited on Parler instead of Twitter or Facebook?

Parler set themselves up for this by not going with their own servers but wimping out and using a cloud provider. Get a high speed line and host it yourself straight up. Save money too.

I'm guessing Rebekah Mercer didn't give them enough money to build their own datacenter.

Then the left would have gone after whichever hosting provider they did use. And it obviously doesn't help with smartphone apps getting banned.

>Ironically, this also feels like a false equivalency to me. I don't believe Parler was putting Amazon/AWS at risk in terms of legal liability (I'm pretty sure in the US you can only sue a hosting provider for material they host if it is copyrighted material and they don't take it down when they receive notices. A Google search didn't turn up anything else.) They also weren't at risk of bringing AWS down.

You seriously don't think with the amount of publicity Parler was getting, that AWS' reputation was going to be hurt? When my Dad is talking about Parler and AWS it has become a PR nightmare...

>I often hear the argument "Private company, they can do what they want" but at what point does a private company become so powerful that we really do need the government to step in?

If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly. But it turns out AWS doesn't have anything approaching a monopoly in hosting, so it would be absurd for the government to step in. There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there.

What you're seeing is that nobody agrees with the hate speech Parler is selling, and nobody wants to host it. That is the free market at work.

>Vaping isn't illegal. It isn't hateful. It also isn't inherently harmful. People used those apps for legitimate reasons. Some of them used iPhone sensors through APIs that aren't available for websites/web apps. And Apple just decided "Nope, you don't get to exist anymore".

So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones that don't require Apple or Google's app store. If you want the government to dictate who companies do business with, you aren't for capitalism or free market, that's all there is to it. Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.

>If the private company is "so powerful the government needs to step in" then it should be through breaking up a monopoly.

I definitely agree that the government does need to break up some large tech companies. But I don't agree that that should be the only form of regulation. I think the government should regulate technology companies in several ways. Here are some no brainers:

ISPs - Net neutrality required. No data caps allowed. Device manufacturers - Right to repair. Can't lock down the device the way that gaming consoles and mobile phones (and TVs, etc...) often do. Cloud providers - Greater privacy protections like they have in Europe.

>There are literally THOUSANDS of other hosting providers out there.

You're glossing over the other infrastructure examples I named. We're talking about a cumulative effect here. It makes me uncomfortable that key parts of the internet's infrastructure are controlled by private companies with little to no regulation on what they can do. And I feel like it's getting worse every year.

>So don't buy an iPhone? Buy any number of android phones

Not everybody gets to choose what phone they have. Maybe they got their phone handed down to them or donated to them and can't afford to buy a new one. For a lot of people, their phone might be their only computer. Also, vaping was just one example. Apple routinely blocks apps and only backpedals if the app creator has enough clout. They tried to do it with the open source blogging platform WordPress a few months ago.

If there were regulation in place that Apple could maintain their own app store, but couldn't block or make it difficult for regular users to install other apps then nobody to choose. Same thing with like a gaming console - buy a gaming console and you could install Linux and use it as a general purpose machine without having to break some encryption scheme.

It's clear that maintaining an operating system/platform is an expensive endeavor - and maybe it just isn't feasible for more than those two operating systems to exist. That's where regulation comes in. There need to be ground rules especially when the barrier to competition is so high.

>Parler isn't a protected class, vaping isn't a protected class, nobody should be forced to do business with them if they don't want to.

So companies should be able to do whatever they want as long as they're not discriminatory/racist about it?

> ISPs - Net neutrality required.

Gee...I wonder why we don't have that.

> So companies should be able to do whatever they want as long as they're not discriminatory/racist about it?

Yes, that's actually how the law works. This isn't exactly news to anyone.

>Yes, that's actually how the law works.

I am really trying to understand your perspective on this, because it's so obviously not true. Companies are regulated by the government and limited with what they can do in a lot of different ways.

Net neutrality is a form of regulation that I am advocating for - and it sounds like you're in support of it too which would seem to contradict this.

I was looking at some of your other comments on this subject and saw you posted this one day ago:

>Maybe Cloudflare et al should also be required by law to serve everyone regardless of content.

You're advocating for regulation of tech companies here too.

Let me clarify. I support net neutrality. Including DDOS protection in that is to ensure that you can't be taken offline even if every hosting provider in the world hates your guts and you have to self-host (as might be the case for a lot of the people and organizations being banned these days). And I'm not an expert on DDOS mitigation, so it might be that you don't have to require even them to serve everyone.

I was pointing out the irony that net neutrality was repealed under this same administration.

I am yet to be convinced that "neutrality" or a requirement to provide service regardless of content should be enforced by any government regulation above the network layer.

Companies IRL have the right to discriminate against their customers based on their speech. If I walk into your bar and start insulting other patrons it's totally legal for you to kick me out. And in fact if you fail to do that, your other patrons might leave and never come back.

I don't see why that shouldn't extend online. Except at the network layer. Because if you don't have that, you can't have any speech online. Which is also unjust.

I think this is self-consistent. Feel free to tell me if there are any holes in it.

First of all, this is a great reply and yes it does clarify your viewpoint. I really value that it's possible to have discussions like this on the internet.

>I am yet to be convinced that "neutrality" or a requirement to provide service regardless of content should be enforced by any government regulation above the network layer.

I agree with you. I wouldn't be in favor of a government regulation at the level of social media that would prevent specific services like Facebook or Twitter from banning things. But the bigger problem for me is that we've all just decided that it's okay for really fundamental things about the web to be controlled by private companies.

The web was designed to be an open system and it's slowly being more closed in. There's still areas of openness, but they get smaller every year. And every time there's a new layer of restriction added there's always someone to point out that you still can do x y and z, it's just 10-20% harder than it used to be.

When apps for phones came out it was "Well, you can always just make a web app. They have no control over that." but consumers are less likely to use a web app and you don't have the same access to the device.

Now it's "Just move to a different hosting company!" which is disingenuous for several reasons. First, any company they move to is going to get pressured to drop them in the same way. Secondly, even if they did find a new hosting company that was okay with them, the pressure would just get applied to a different point (like Cloudflare.) You can roll your own hosting system but it's prohibitively expensive for most people especially if the site has a lot of traffic, DDoS and regular hacking attempts. The fact that web hosting beyond the basics is complex and hard is the reason that cloud services exist and are so popular these days to begin with.

So yeah, I think we're basically on the same page. I don't see this getting better. But I still think it's worth pointing out.

>The web was designed to be an open system and it's slowly being more closed in. There's still areas of openness, but they get smaller every year. And every time there's a new layer of restriction added there's always someone to point out that you still can do x y and z, it's just 10-20% harder than it used to be.

I agree with the tone of your post, but it's not the web that's open (every website is created/owned/controlled by someone), it's the Internet as a whole that needs to be open.

>When apps for phones came out it was "Well, you can always just make a web app. They have no control over that." but consumers are less likely to use a web app and you don't have the same access to the device.

I understand your frustration, but while we have freedom of speech and freedom of association, etc.

And while you certainly have a right to start your own business, you don't have the right to force others to make it easy for you.

Again, I understand your frustration, but what you're arguing for just doesn't make sense.

Why should other companies be forced to change their business practices to make your life/business easier?

That's a rhetorical question of course, but you don't have to treat it as one if you don't want to.

As I keep saying: you probably have fewer options for takeout than you do for hosting.

I mostly agree for AWS, but are you seriously claiming that Apple/Google smartphone duopoly isn't an issue ?

If even Epic Games / Fortnite had to cave in…