I’ve stopped using Amazon after AWS started political censorship. Actually, saves you a lot of money: much less impulse buying. It appears a lot of my impulse buying was caused by my trust in Amazon return policy :)

that is not political censorship, it is illegal for US businesses to do business with Russia because of sanctions. The sanctions themselves are political, but not following them is not a choice for US businesses.

Only when it's not. It's legal for AWS to have business with Russian entities. It's illegal to have business with occupied territories (LNR/DPR in particular).

It's like You know. I have not suffered enough according to those sanctions. Lost a flat of my mother in my homeland. And now loss Amazon/IMBD accounts. Seems that I will be loosing my Google account soon.

My trigger was not Russia, it was de-platforming of Parler. I kinda care more about my life in the US and consider political de-platforming an extremely dangerous development. A “trigger” caused by my “living experience” as my son interprets it (but I think it’s more logical than that).

The way I see it, Parler wasn't deplatformed.

Parler could have rented a building, bought servers, racked and stacked those servers, networked them and gotten connectivity to the world. They didn't, they leased servers as a service from others, and then got burned when those services decided they were uncomfortable with the vitriolic anonymous speech being hosted on their hardware.

Had they truly built their own platform, no one could have taken from them. (It'd be lots harder anyhow)

Right, but the point remains: AWS kicked Parler off of their platform. It's fine to be of the opinion that AWS was in the right to do this, but your comment seems entirely contradictory: Your first sentence claims they weren't deplatformed, the rest of your comment explains how Parler should have built their own platform from the ground up after getting kicked off of AWS's platform.

And if their office building evicted them, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still buy some land and build their own office; it was their own fault for leasing office space as a service and getting burned. And if their ISP cut their access, they still wouldn't have been deplatformed because they could still start their own ISP; had they truly built their own platform, no ISP could have taken that from them. And if the power plant wouldn't give them electricity- okay I'll stop.

I don't think a power plant can refuse, and an ISP shouldn't be allowed to refuse.

And I don't think it's that hard to get office space with a real contract?

I'd broadly agree with you.

There is a discussion to be had about what services should be available under common carrier or common carrier like terms, and what should not.

I'd argue that at least in the internet sphere, at least DNS, Access (either ISP or peering), and probably payments of some measure should be. I don't think PAAS systems ought to be, you can do without them, nor do I think hosted services (email, simple hosting, whatever) should be either.

We have an issue online where unfettered anonymous free speech is largely untenable in the current regulatory environment, I think that should be changed.

I also hold the view that unfettered anonymous free speech is broadly unworkable because it removes the feedback loop between speech and response to it - but that's a separate issue for society to work out, and shouldn't really be up to big corporations to fix (often poorly) on their own.

Anonymous speech is an essential facet of free speech- maybe the most important. Getting rid of anonymity means removing the voice of the trans woman stuck in a conservative town or in the year 2000- or the Satanist, the Muslim, the ex-con, the furry, or the BDSM enthusiast. It means making corporate whistleblowers put their livelihood on the line. It means telling John Fryer, the (at the time) anonymous gay psychiatrist who spoke out in 1972 against their treatment of gay people, to sit down and shut up. It means stopping the author of African Slavery in America (probably Thomas Paine, but left anonymous) from speaking out against slavery in 1775.

In another vein, Scott Alexander needed (partial) anonymity not to speak truth to power but to keep his patients from finding him, finding a disagreement, and treating him as an enemy. Even if it were just him in that situation, you'd be robbing me of books worth of philosophy, politics, and science- stuff that has made me a better person and a better thinker.

And you'd be removing me from this conversation, because I have friends and family across the political spectrum who I would prefer not to offend, and I have heterodox views that would upset the right with leftness and the left with rightness. Perhaps you think I should be prevented from speaking openly, but you certainly can't say it's because I am avoiding feedback- I'm seeking feedback for positions I would otherwise quietly go on believing.

What is the value added that would justify taking away the rights of so many powerless? Of suppressing any ideas that are not already mainstream?

I dont think you can or should get rid of anonymous free speech, but I that because of the nature of their platforms - the platforms publishing it have a right, if not obligation to exert editorial control.

I'm also fairly heterodox in my views (and queer on top of that) but when you have a random dude on a couch who can reach an audience of millions at the press of a button, the math changes - algorithmic amplification of hate, wingnuttery, etc - is a serious problem for the stability of democracy.

The issue isnt anonymous speech persay, that always has existed and should - it just used to cost something before, you had to have money for a printer, convince the printer to print your screed, distribute it widely enough to have an impact. Those costs lessened the impact, and reduced the societal risks.

Elsewhere on here, I proposed a federated karma system that extends the idea of community reputation (a norm in closed communities, like HN, Furry, etc) as a transparent replacement for direct editorial control, while still persisting anonymity.

I guess it's one of those things where I'm seeing a different reality from everyone else, but the notion that uncensored speech is the source of our present strife is one that I don't accept. I witnessed this series of events:

1. Early 2000s created a bunch of social media websites with free speech (then meaning protection from Christian-right censorship, which was the concern at the time) as a premise. These were fine places. There were occasional nutjobs and constant arguments, but people were generally comfortable participating. I argued with racists one day, communists the next, fascists, nazis. I developed a deeper understanding of my own beliefs on those issues. I argued against but was eventually convinced by drug legalization, trans rights, abortion rights- the list is long and embarrassing.

2. These websites saw an opportunity for growth, accelerated maybe by Facebook's IPO, but starting somewhere around the late 00s. The nutjobs and arguments were a turn-off to a potentially larger user base. So they drew a line in the sand, clefting the population into the would-be-censored and the would-not-be. The would-bes had to go express themselves somewhere else. If I wanted to argue with fringe people, I had to go into their echo chamber. It was not the place for me.

3. Opinions that were common on both sides in the 90s became opinions of the right only, and then became forbidden. The line in the sand moved leftwards. Little effort was made to convince anyone that these changes were good (I agree they were); mockery and 'educate yourself, bigot' became the norm. Extremism grew rapidly in both the de jure right-leaning spaces and the de facto left-leaning spaces, because the two groups had entered into feedback loops. Remaining holdouts were forced to move because expressing correlated viewpoints was now faux pas, and they faced guilt by association.

4. Sometime around 2015, people collectively decided that everything needed to be political all the time. This was a moral imperative. My apolitical communities were overrun by propagandists of one side or another (mostly the left, but I was on Reddit so that biases things). As Trump's campaign wore on, people concluded that the issue was not enough censorship, and added more.

5. The situation worsened, and COVID made 'misinformation' the new pro-censorship buzzword. More censorship was clearly the answer. Lab-leak theorists were suppressed and the Hunter Biden story was censored weeks before the election. Any remaining general public trust in the institutions responsible and their allies faded further. Election doubts festered the same way everything else had and we wound up with Jan 6.

6. More censorship?

7. Profit

That's just my personal experience, and I recognize that others see things differently. On top of that, fascism gained power a number of times through the 1900s, which was pre-internet, and often did so in censorious environments like Weimar Germany. Things like climate change denial and anti-vax both predate mainstream social media. All-in-all, blaming the lack of internet censorship for our polarization and extremism today falls very flat for me.

Setting all of that aside, it does not make sense to me that we should restrict human rights because some corporate algorithm amplifies hateful or extreme speech. Rewrite the damn algorithm.

I do like your federated karma system, and I have also thought about things like opt-in moderation (to enable opposing voices to occupy the same space comfortably) or a small limit on comments per user per day (to prevent things like 1% of twitter users write 80% of tweets, and encourage higher effort contributions). I don't think these solutions violate free speech, and they may produce better outcomes than 'don't censor'. But 'don't censor' would be a great start.

> I guess it's one of those things where I'm seeing a different reality from everyone else, but the notion that uncensored speech is the source of our present strife is one that I don't accept. I witnessed this series of events:

> 1. Early 2000s created a bunch of social media websites with free speech (then meaning protection from Christian-right censorship, which was the concern at the time) as a premise. These were fine places. There were occasional nutjobs and constant arguments, but people were generally comfortable participating. I argued with racists one day, communists the next, fascists, nazis. I developed a deeper understanding of my own beliefs on those issues. I argued against but was eventually convinced by drug legalization, trans rights, abortion rights- the list is long and embarrassing.

I started out towards the center, and remain towards the center, but because I'm not particularly lefty or conservative, I tend to hold a whole lot of heterodox opinions which makes the left consider me a conservative, and the right a lefty. I've had some look in convincing people to change their views though because of those heterodox views. I even wrote a substack about it.

> 2. These websites saw an opportunity for growth, accelerated maybe by Facebook's IPO, but starting somewhere around the late 00s. The nutjobs and arguments were a turn-off to a potentially larger user base. So they drew a line in the sand, clefting the population into the would-be-censored and the would-not-be. The would-bes had to go express themselves somewhere else. If I wanted to argue with fringe people, I had to go into their echo chamber. It was not the place for me.

See, I dont see it that way, it was the rise of algorithmic promotion of posts, and the need to monetize with advertising that caused the issue - they got embarrassed by racists or crazy ass shit going viral. The issue for me wasn't the censorship, it was that they algorithmically game the system to lift engagement every higher.

> 3. Opinions that were common on both sides in the 90s became opinions of the right only, and then became forbidden. The line in the sand moved leftwards. Little effort was made to convince anyone that these changes were good (I agree they were); mockery and 'educate yourself, bigot' became the norm. Extremism grew rapidly in both the de jure right-leaning spaces and the de facto left-leaning spaces, because the two groups had entered into feedback loops. Remaining holdouts were forced to move because expressing correlated viewpoints was now faux pas, and they faced guilt by association.

Right leaning spaces moved significantly further right as an anti-establishment backlash was unleashed. The lefties did move left, but not anywhere near as far left as the right have moved right. (and I had conservatives telling in in 2012 that dems had moved far far left over the last 8 years - and I couldn't see it, I did eventually start to see it around 2018, when I detected a drift left.)

> 4. Sometime around 2015, people collectively decided that everything needed to be political all the time. This was a moral imperative. My apolitical communities were overrun by propagandists of one side or another (mostly the left, but I was on Reddit so that biases things). As Trump's campaign wore on, people concluded that the issue was not enough censorship, and added more.

There was this point in 2012-2013 when I realized that everyone was angry all the time about basically everything all the time.

I didnt see the censorship start to crop up until 2018, 2019, most of it was silencing things that.. even by my free speech oriented perspective, was intended to incite violence. I will argue firmly as a centrist that the right's rhetoric by this point was firmly violent.

> 5. The situation worsened, and COVID made 'misinformation' the new pro-censorship buzzword. More censorship was clearly the answer. Lab-leak theorists were suppressed and the Hunter Biden story was censored weeks before the election. Any remaining general public trust in the institutions responsible and their allies faded further. Election doubts festered the same way everything else had and we wound up with Jan 6.

Thats the issue with censorship - its a coarse tool, you want the stolen election and QAnon to go away, but need to lint out news from.. weasel words and outright lying.

> 6. More censorship?

> 7. Profit

> That's just my personal experience, and I recognize that others see things differently. On top of that, fascism gained power a number of times through the 1900s, which was pre-internet, and often did so in censorious environments like Weimar Germany. Things like climate change denial and anti-vax both predate mainstream social media. All-in-all, blaming the lack of internet censorship for our polarization and extremism today falls very flat for me.

> Setting all of that aside, it does not make sense to me that we should restrict human rights because some corporate algorithm amplifies hateful or extreme speech. Rewrite the damn algorithm.

I think the answer is to force companies to only show items without algo enhancement, timeline only. That will give them a reason to try to filter out low value content.

>I do like your federated karma system, and I have also thought about things like opt-in moderation (to enable opposing voices to occupy the same space comfortably) or a small limit on comments per user per day (to prevent things like 1% of twitter users write 80% of tweets, and encourage higher effort contributions). I don't think these solutions violate free speech, and they may produce better outcomes than 'don't censor'. But 'don't censor' would be a great start.

Here is the thread that launched that conversation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33231563#33234583

I think everyone should be able to basically say whatever they want, but until you have credibility as a poster, and where your long term and short term Karma are not showing a low number, you should be able to post and be seen widely, to me there is nothing more dangerous than a random dude sitting on a couch who now has an audience of millions.

My point is that all of those things would be deplatforming even though they could replace the platform themselves for more independence, which means the argument doesn't hold. Regardless of whether Amazon deplatformed, the distinction is not based on whether Parler could have built their own servers.

It depends on what your definition of "deplatforming" is but if it's so broad to count a twitter ban then "deplatforming" isn't very dangerous in general.

When they decided to terminate Parler not even giving them time to move hosts, that wasn't political censorship?

There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. A *private* entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company because of that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. More people and businesses should be willing to refuse business to entities that seek to harass, abuse, or promote violence to another group of people. What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here.

>A private entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company

You mean like how OP decided not to do business with Amazon?

Your logic is flawed on many levels, and I will be glad to parse the errors after I have my breakfast and nothing more important emerges. Just one point for now:

> What you’re worried about is governmental action and is not equivalent here.

My kids tried to point me in the same direction. I’ve just pointed them to the router and said: I am a private citizen paying for Internet connection in this house. In 24 hours this router will be configured to drop all connections to Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. Prepare yourself.

Boy, how worried they were. Never seen any person more worried in my life. See, they use Facebook for studies and Amazon for buying textbooks, so why I am so cruel?

I said: exactly my point. I was not that cruel though, but probably I should have.

> I said: exactly my point.

They're both not government action, but they're very different kinds. There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity".

Along similar lines, I am deeply upset with the level of power that payment processors have/use around censorship. But I don't care too much what AWS does.

>There's a huge difference between "I will not assist this entity" and "I will stop other people from assisting this entity".

On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself.

On other hand - my kids faced much less obstacles than Parler:

1. They are adults, they could have purchased their own internet connection.

2. They are Russians, they know how to use VPN. Theoretically .

They are just busy people, they could have coped, but would have some extra unnecessary troubles to overcome. And just a possibility of these small extra troubles caused a lot of worrying. (Parler failed to cope, they were too reliant on Amazon services or something, so unprofessional).

> On one hand - exactly! This is why I hate that Amazon stops me from using Parler, instead of not using it itself.

You have twisted what I said past the breaking point. Amazon didn't stop anyone else from hosting or accessing Parler. They only refused to assist it themselves.

> they know how to use VPN.

Oh if VPN is allowed then it's significantly less of a problem. But you're still blocking it on the main network in a way that goes significantly beyond what Amazon did.

Infrastructure should not block. I don't feel like AWS is monopolistic enough to count as infrastructure.

>They only refused to assist it themselves.

How is taking money from me is assisting me? Amazon was not financing Parler, no providing it any discount, afaik. Me - I was assisting my kids by providing them Internet for free. Want Facebook? Pay for it yourselves.

>But you're still blocking it on the main network in a way that goes significantly beyond what Amazon did.

What is the "main network"? What I was blocking exactly? Call a provider, schedule an appointment, buy a WiFi switch... Yes, you could have missed an assignment or two, but nothing was blocked.

Exactly like Parler - it eventually coped and moved, just missed that "laptop story" bandwagon.

>I don't feel like AWS is monopolistic enough to count as infrastructure.

I think it is, I think it is. Even more worrying (to me) - Amazon participated in a coordinated shutdown of Parler on app stores and hosting sites. That was definitely an abuse of my money they "assisted" me by taking it, so they are not getting it anymore. An attitude recommended to everybody.

> How is taking money from me is assisting me? Amazon was not financing Parler, no providing it any discount, afaik.

Getting paid to provide a service is still providing a service. If you don't like the word "assist" then whatever pick your own word. There's so many server providers that I don't think any of them should be obligated to do business. But ISPs and payment processors should be obligated, in my opinion.

> Me - I was assisting my kids by providing them Internet for free. Want Facebook? Pay for it yourselves.

> What is the "main network"? What I was blocking exactly? Call a provider, schedule an appointment, buy a WiFi switch... Yes, you could have missed an assignment or two, but nothing was blocked.

This part is a bit complicated when we're talking about all adults, but normally the head of household is in charge of the utilities and other people aren't expected to get their own. So that makes it the main network. If you want to filter the network in this situation, it's not unjustified, but you're definitely standing in between the two parties rather than refusing to interact yourself.

> Even more worrying (to me) - Amazon participated in a coordinated shutdown of Parler on app stores and hosting sites.

The app store takedowns are significantly less appropriate than Amazon's shutdown given their monopoly power.

This is an incredibly weak analogy because parents regularly limit access to sites for their children and it’s seen as a healthy treatment of the internet. I must say I’m completely lost on what you were intending to get across

> There were extremists on the site making calls to violence.

Extremists on Twitter often make calls to violence too. Why do we let Twitter stay online and just ban those individuals instead of kicking Twitter offline?

“We” didn’t take parler offline. AWS did, surely after some pressure. In addition to this, Twitter should and is held accountable by society. You can’t possibly have missed the entire debate on its moderation. Of course, twitter also does more to Moderate the content on its site than Parler did which is what got it booted off AWS. Few services want to be associated with radical ideologues spreading violence.

> There were extremists on the site making calls to violence.

Amazon sees fit to sell innumerable books by extremists which call to violence. Particularly, but not only, many famous religious texts and political manifestos.

On one hand I agree fully with this. On the other hand, if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations then we might as well start setting a precedent of holding large corporations to the same standards as government.

>if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations

Railroad period in California politics. About 187x or so.

The (only) transcontinental railroad is completed. The owners, Stanford (yes, that Stanford) and Co see the enormous economic power in their hands. They can set tariffs as they please. If a farm is owned by a relative or a loyal person - shipping oranges to Chicago is extremely profitable. A "bad" person gets a prohibiting tariff. So, only a loyal person can be elected at any post. Only a loyal person can own a (profitable) newspaper.

This continues for a couple dozen years, then there is a popular revolt and no railroad-connected person can ever be elected anywhere. And the first anti-monopoly laws are introduced. Suddenly a private business can't set private tariffs as it's pleased.

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."

-- Having said that, the post you agree with is flawed on much simpler basis. The constitution protects us from government censorship. Protection from private censorship (and yes, it's a censorship) is placed in our own private hands. So to say "nothing to worry about" is extremely counter-productive. Exactly because there is no other recourse except the private action of stopping dealing with a business that engages is censorship.

So.

1. There were bad people on the site, whom other people (you included) wanted to shut up. The site refused to do so. This speaks to the quality of the site, no? They refused to censor something while there was a strong push to censor it - that means they will probably not censor you, when your opinion will differ from the opinion of powerful people. That means that a person should rather support the site that does not censor opinions the person does not agree with.

Unless the person hopes to always agree with the opinions of the powerful people even when the powerful opinions change.

2. The logic of the federal constitution prohibiting only Congress to pass censorship laws, as far as I get it was: if a business indulges in censorship, customers can drop it and go to its competition. That's exactly what I am doing - defending the American way of life one less purchase on Amazon at a time. Suggestion not to worry is rather strange in the context: the federal constitution puts the task of stopping censorship in private businesses on private citizens, me (and you) included.

3. Actually, I live in California and California constitution protects my right of speech from private censorship too! It even works - if a private business is a shopping mall, eg. But it does not work for Google or Facebook. Because people do not think it's important. That means a piece of paper, even if it is named "constitution" can't protect the rights declared in it - if people stop thinking these rights are important. Why shouldn't I be worried - I have a "living experience" in a country with the right of free speech in the constitution only.

A clarification. 4. There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Actually, at the moment of the de-platforming it was about "Russian propaganda". Some factual information was labelled "foreign propaganda" and censored. Again, I have and enormous "living experience" in the country with a permanent ban on "foreign propaganda".

A puzzle. 5. that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic.

My English is not that good but a dictionary tells me that:

cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

prob·lem·at·ic /ˌpräbləˈmadik/ adjective constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty.

To consider this neither a censorship nor problematic you should change dictionaries first (probably you all are tired of my mentioning my "living experience", but yes, I have that one too).

1. First of all I didn’t care about Parler, it was a dump doomed to fail. Second this point is purely opinion. Third, your notion of what free speech is in this country is flawed. calls to commit violence and/or riot are not protected free speech under the constitution

2. I don’t care if you choose not to do business with AWS. My comment is on your opinions on whether what AWS did were legitimate.

3. Explain? How is a mall restricting you? Stores will kick you out for being loud and obstructive. It happens all the time without legal repercussion. Actually the government does protect the rights of Facebook, Google, etc to host content by users that are calls to violence, harm, abuse, etc. there are many examples of this. The constitution will never tell a company it has to do business with an entity that hosts that content though. That’s what’s crazy about the duality of free market ideologues. They want business to have free reign but then hate when they exercise it? I’m having a hard time trying to grasp what you’re getting at here, actually.

My point about censorship is in juxtaposition to government censorship which is what society should be worried about. If a business doesn’t want to do business with people who break the law that’s entirely up to them.

> 3. Explain? How is a mall restricting you?

That is California law because of the Pruneyard decision. Read it if you want an explanation.

Thank you for directing me to that.

Must say, I see no correlation between the right to protest in a private establishment (that permits public access, a stipulation of the ruling) and the right to make calls to violence (which does not exist)

No, that is not political censorship.

cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

thanks for the dictionary definition, Professor Placid

Better than your ass-pulled definition, Professor Dekhn.

The treasury has no business banning books. It has nothing to do with sanctions. It's purely political. Whatever happened to all the people shouting that "Republicans are banning books"? Banning books is okay, but only if it's for the right now?

> It appears a lot of my impulse buying was caused by my trust in Amazon return policy :)

Better to get it cheaper and less counterfeit/crappy the first time. Since delivery time from Amazon for non-Prime people has slowed to a crawl, it's a good motivator to discover best-in-class ecommerce sites rather than the mediocre-at-everything-but-sometimes-the-mediocre-thing-arrives-the-same-day-you-order-it site.

Sites that aren't paying the price of Amazon marketing, or charging an Amazon premium, so usually the prices are better. You might find that you usually use Amazon 95% of the time for just a few classes of product, and you're better served buying those from three other sites and leaving the last 5% of spontaneous purchases for which you don't have a good source with Amazon.

I've stopped using Amazon for years, but didn't know they did this?

> AWS started political censorship

One gets the impression that the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing in big corporations like this. They have probably never had to call their own tech support.

It is easy to see how this could happen. AWS Sanctions compliance team: ok, the government says we need to shut down Russian accounts, so we will lock any account using a Russian payment method. False positives can just call tech support to prove that they are not hits and have the offending payment method replaced.

Meanwhile over in support: Boss: remember it is corporate policy that a CSR may not make any changes to billing information for a customer’s account after the stolen cards incident.

It's not Russian accounts. It's Ukraine account. My mother's home is located in occupied territory. Now Amazon consider that I'm affiliated with LNR.

Russian accounts are not banned. If anyone interested.