According to Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit, they were warned for months about their content.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...
There is a handy summary of this on Ars Technica as well. That article also says Parler was relying on volunteer moderation to clear their backlog of over 26000 posts.
You wrote that Amazon warned Parler about their content, but that's not what your link shows. It shows that Amazon asked a question about policies regarding specific posts, and Parler answered with their policies.
Also note that it wasn't removed. I'm not even going to repeat that post here, but absolutely no platform would keep this online if reported, so "very similar terms of service to other content companies" as someone up this thread claimed isn't exactly true.
https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/read-amazons-letter-to-...
Or they were completely hands off? Which is it? Goalpost one or two?
The timing seems more likely due to a major public event than a backroom coordination.
But the platforms aren’t being honest about this – they’re claiming that it was about terms of use violations. I’m saying “stop pretending like this argument from the platform makes any sense and let’s have a real discussion about the ramifications of banning groups from a platform when they become political unpopular.”
And the real world violence significantly raised the stakes - both legal and practical.
I'm curious what kind of posts would definitely fall into this distinction. I see plenty of really distasteful, vile comments show up on Twitter. And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. So the area between those seems to me like it would be pretty narrow.
My impression of Parler is more that they only deleted illegal speech of a particularly egregious nature, e.g. child porn.
Not so for better or worse. Multiple people have been banned from Twitter for calling a human rights litigation troll (and Twitter troll) a man (he is male).
https://nationalpost.com/news/free-speech-activist-lindsay-s...
https://mobile.twitter.com/bindelj/status/118726943929891225...
Calling a male troll “he” is definitely not illegal, yet you can be banned from Twitter for it. It’s not an incitement to violence, it’s not even borderline. Meanwhile that troll can ridicule one of the women in question for having a reproductive abnormality, so go figure. There’s a lot Twitter will ban you for that’s not remotely illegal, the gap is wide.
Before we had all this mess with real identities on the internet, nobody cared about your genitals when you wanted to be addressed with "he/him" or "she/her", they just did it. I wonder how we lost that.
He also engaged in other behaviour so vile I won’t repeat it here https://www.womenarehuman.com/male-transgender-trans-activis...
Do you still think anyone who refuses to pretend-along with this predator/troll and echo his self-image back to him should be banned from Twitter? And do you think the speech is illegal?
Sure, but in the USA it's actually really hard to incite violence in the eyes of the law. For example, when it comes to USA laws, Trump almost definitely did not incite violence. But lots of people would disagree with the statement that he didn't incite violence.
But the statement was "inciting violence is illegal". Which involves the law. That's a different question.
And an impeachment trial is not an Article III court. Nor is it intended to be. It is inherently a political proceeding and not a criminal trial. As such, ethics and morals are certainly at issue and the rules of Article III courts are not relevant.
Nor did the founders intend[0][1] them to be criminal trials. Which is why someone who is impeached and convicted is not immune from criminal prosecution in an Article III court.
Here's a lawyer's video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwqAInN9HWI
Impeachment may be shaped like legal process, and the final act may be called a “trial” and supervised by the Cheif Justice, but its a political process, and the difficulty of proving things “in a court of law” is pretty much irrelevant except to the extent that comparisons to a court of law may be provide political rationalizations for actions in the impeachment or trial process.
(IIRC, one version of the bill of impeachment had a second article related to Abuse of Power with regard to the Georgia election call, but that was eliminated in favor of making the issues regarding the call part of the context for the insurrection charge, rather than a separate charge.)
Proving criminal liability is not required[0] in an impeachment trial.
"President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so."
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolutio...
According to the Ars piece, Amazon claims that Parler users were planning violent attacks openly on the site.
That may or may not be true. I guess we'll just have to wait until the archive[0] is fully released.
If it is true, that might be incitement, but it's definitely conspiracy. And since folks died, it's quite possible that at least some folks could be charged with Felony Murder (discussion here[1]).
But we obviously won't know until we can get our greasy little paws on all those messages, photos and videos.
[0] https://threatpost.com/parler-archive-amazon-suspension/1629...
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/felony-murder-and-storming-capit...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
That’s a filter bubble style of moderation and poor compared to Facebook/Twitter’s efforts for moderation.
The CEO also made it sound like they ignore context and instead only respond to direct threats of violence, allowing vague remarks on platform.
> In January 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that Parler had increased its moderation team to 600 people, and began paying them. They also had begun hiring full-time employees to moderate the service.
It may be that Parler did too little too late, but I find it concerning that most mainstream news outlets are failing to report this.
Chance's are, they're probably not paying people to ban political content, since they can get their users to do that for free.
Later you say: "My intel may be false"
It's just curious to tell people to not spread false information and then admit you may be spreading false information.
Source? That’s the exact opposite of everything I’ve seen, including the CEO’s own public messages.
But having based its entire marketing around its terms of service being unlike other providers, with a particular emphasis on its greater level of tolerance for certain forms of political extremism, with predictable consequences for the community, it's obviously not in a position to use the "but we're no different from Twitter" defence
Note that "free speech" in the US is far from absolute. And there is some speech that, if Parler (or anyone else) doesn't remove it, they can be subject to criminal (e.g., child porn, setting up drug deals, etc.) and/or civil (copyright violations) litigation.
As such, anyone who claims they don't moderate is probably lying, unless they want to go to jail, get sued into oblivion or both.
as per articles linked below, you are wrong:
"Amazon's filing included copies of emails it sent to Parler in mid-November"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...
You have not provided any evidence to back up your claims, however.
Sounds like you answered your own question. Tech companies were lenient on hosting a questionable community, until members of that community tried to overthrow the government. For all the moderation the Parler admins allegedly did, it was an open secret that it was the hang out spot for right-wing extremists. Yet Parler was allowed to stay afloat until it became clear that doing so became an issue of national security. The riots happened. The cause and effect here are pretty clear. The Parler community did this to itself.
...
> it is not a neutral source of information
Why not?
Scenario. WhatsApp groups begin to be used as gathering places. Open secret. Bomb or explosion or storming of a government building ensures. Question: is it a question of national security to investigate and pressure to censor or eliminate the platform, and if not why not?
Scenario. The bomby extremist-y people on Parler make up .05% of user base. 99.95, while being mostly right-wing, aren't bomby or national security-threatlike. Question: is the tradeoff of punishing the platform by making it disappear, worth it as the only alternative platform to Twitter (which is relied upon by government, health authorities and journalists as the one true place)?
I have no problem with arguments in favor of censorship. I DO have acid reflux when I see the lack of nuance, the strong confidence and wording like "pretty clear."
No, censorship is never pretty clear and always warrants skepticism and conversation.
Arguing as of the two were equal two is lacking even basic attempt at nuance.
Parler was created because that content was booted from twitter, reddit and public facebook discussion. Literally. So acting like Twitter is the same is unfair despite Twitter deficiciencies.
> because anyone who cares an iota about fairness and censorship would prioritize the comparison.
Anyone who cares about fairness and censorship would first look at Parler moderation, then at Twitters one and only then made comparison. Not even looking at Parler and then claiming that "it is totally same and unbiased because that would confirm my pre-existing bias" is opposite of fair and opposite of nuanced.