Hacker News Reader

Comment by yanderekko | Hacker News Reader

>You can't "slippery slope" when the quoted email makes it pretty clear that Amazon has outlined specific and clear problems that Parler has refused to address

Sure you can. Even if some of the circumstances will be different, it seems pretty obvious that this did not happen because of the simple facts in evidence regarding Parler, but because of the broader context that a lot of people were beginning to try to pressure Amazon to drop Parler. One could easily envision how this could also be successful in future cancellation campaigns - if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers. Do we really think this isn't going to happen absent a riot? We already have the rhetorical justification: "This is just private actors showing you the door."

View on HN

Again, you cannot claim a slippery slope when Amazon has made clear, and explicit asks of Parler that they have /refused/ to engage with.

Parler does not want to moderate their platform of violent rhetoric, because their customer base is there to engage in violent rhetoric. If you think Parler should have the right to allow their users to continue to threaten violence to people, well, that's still not a slippery slope, because there is no precedent being set here other than "Amazon will not allow unmoderated calls for violence on their platform."

Amazon always will, and always has, had the ability to terminate users for just about any reason. This is not them doing that, since they've provided a clear solution for Parler which is "stop allowing your users to make violent threats", and they've provided apparently an abundance of examples. Examples which Parler has not taken action against.

For that to happen, you first have to be in violation of your contract like Parler was. They were in violation of the AWS AUP.

For many services with millions of users, if you keep your head down, it can take them quite a while to notice you're in violation of your contract... but yes, if you make a bunch of people angry, one of those people is going to notice you're on AWS, pull up the AWS AUP that's published right on their website, see that you're in violation and report you.

This should be obvious to everyone. The AUP is not a confidential agreement.. and everyone can see where your server is hosted.

> In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the calls for violence propagating across Parler violated its terms of service and that Amazon is unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate such things will be effective.

The article seems to suggest that it's calls for violence that have violated its ToS (presumably agreed upon at time of hosting or earlier).

> it seems pretty obvious that this did not happen because of the simple facts in evidence regarding Parler, but because of the broader context that a lot of people were beginning to try to pressure Amazon to drop Parler.

So I don't see how what you say is indeed obvious, since Amazon's relationship to Parler suffice to explain the termination, absent any public sentiment or pressure.

Perhaps your argument would be bolstered if you can provide an example of a service with similar volume of calls to violence that has not yet been booted off.

Yes, if you get too many people mad at you, you're going to have a bad time no matter how just your cause. In some cases we've decided as a society to protect people who might get a lot of anger directed at them through no fault of their own, like because of their race or sexuality. I doubt we're going to extend those protections to include people who incite violence, but maybe we can extend them in other ways as appropriate to make sure people aren't undeservedly deplatformed.

> if a company makes a mob outraged and the company isn't going to reform on its own, then one can naturally escalate the deplatforming effort by going after any company-related apps or service providers.

That's capitalism in action. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reply on news.ycombinator.com