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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

It isn't censorship. No one is telling Parler they're not free to do what they want. AWS is telling Parler they don't want them as a customer. That is not censorship. Whether a business should be able to refuse a customer is an interesting question. People on the political right have historically believed they should (refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is often cited as a case of such freedom).

There is also an argument that AWS is now so big and important that they should be treated like a utility, and then refusing customers is something that they shouldn't necessarily be allowed to do. I'm not sure how I feel about that argument though.

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The day big tech companies learned that democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them, these kinds of actions started happening. If that doesn't concern you, I don't know what to tell you.

It is entirely telling what they could get away with under Republicans.

It's also the day there was an insurrection/invasion of the capitol to prevent the Democratic process. This was fueled by the unfettered calls to violence on Parler.

If you're going to pick the events of the day, it's best to mention both.

After a summer of riots, looting, and violence all across the country, fueled by calls to violence on Twitter and Facebook

What calls for violence, that weren't moderated? What organized looting? What riots that weren't instigated by police brutality? Did any of these try and overthrow the Democratic process?

Please provide examples or you're just providing false equivalencies and whataboutism.

Politicians, including the incoming VP, did encourage and even bailed out the rioters, and did nothing to curb the violence directed at innocent civilians.

Let me be clear, even if you believe police brutality is a real problem, there can be no justification for the torching of homes and livelihoods done last summer.

Escalating to violence at the capitol was wrong, but I have little sympathy for the politicians that did not use their influence to curb that massive harm done communities across the country by the riots.

The rioters that were bailed out, were they involved in said looting and violence? What were they guilty of? Do you have links to people who took part in criminal activities that were bailed out by the VP or other politicians?

Did the VP encourage and incite violence?

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/31/meet-the-rioting-crimin...

This information is not hard to find.

Two of the three listed people are for crimes unrelated to the protest.

The only one related to the protest has no body cam footage made available. It's currently an allegation and should be treated as such, especially given the protests revolve around police brutality and several events of police fabricating events (Breonna Taylor).

Regardless, you claim the VP encouraged rioters. Did she encourage them to commit violence? Did she or any of her close affiliates say to hang other members of government? Did they say there should be trial by combat?

This is a clear shifting of goalposts and false equivalencies between a (then senator) donating to a charity and a current president and his affiliates fomenting violence.

Did Kamala tell the rioters that they're special and she loves them after they stormed a government building with pipe bombs and zip ties?

> Regardless, you claim the VP encouraged rioters. Did she encourage them to commit violence? Did she or any of her close affiliates say to hang other members of government? Did they say there should be trial by combat?

She said the protests would not let up, and to "beware". It was not an explicit call for violence, but often politicians tread the line and this case was no different. You may say that she did not actually call for violence, and condemned the violence afterward. So did Trump.

> Did Kamala tell the rioters that they're special and she loves them after they stormed a government building with pipe bombs and zip ties?

He said that in a message for them to go home. Do you think that maybe telling people who are motivated to extreme actions (including violence) might be calmed by being told that they are loved? I think it might have that effect.

You're taking Kamala's comments out of context. She has, even at the time, disavowed rioting and looting, but encouraged peaceful protest. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fac...

With regards to Trump, you may consider his words as a way to quell the crowd, but only if you view them in isolation. He provided no condemnation of the act, most of his statement centered around reiterating his unproven conspiracy that caused the mob. He withheld support from the national guard as well.

To compare the two is highly disingenuous.

> You're taking Kamala's comments out of context. She has, even at the time, disavowed rioting and looting, but encouraged peaceful protest

Only after the protests had been raging for months. Nor did she call out the specific groups responsible for the violence.

And in any case, actions speak louder than words, and her bail efforts fall into that category. Now, you've questioned whether those bail funds went to the rioters. Let's be clear: the organization that she was donating to explicitly doesn't filter who they bail out based on the circumstances of the arrest. This was not an effort to merely help the peaceful protesters unlawfully arrested by authoritarian cops (which no doubt there was some of that) it was for everyone. There is no way rioters weren't included in that group. And it's clear that the politicians and celebrities who donated to that fund didn't care.

> To compare the two is highly disingenuous.

It is not at all. Democratic politicians and public figures have been providing cover for rampant criminal behavior for months. AOC brushes it off as "making people uncomfortable". Chris Cuomo of CNN asked "Where is it written that protests have to be polite or peaceful?" live on air. Joe Biden only really started condemning the violence after Don Lemon and others pointed out that the rioting was hurting the Democrats in the polls.

Which were moderated, or at least attempted to be moderated, by Twitter and Facebook.

Parler openly allowed the planning of this violent anti-democratic insurrection and has been deemed bad faith in their moderation.

Genuinely curious if you can source that in any substantial way?

Would also be curios if Facebook or Twitter was used in any way to plan or facilitate communication leading up to the event.

Facebook and Twitter provide accountable moderation. Parler doesn't and instead claims to assign moderation to random unaccountable users instead. This is according to their CEOs own interview earlier this week.

You can look at www.reddit.com/r/parlerwatch to see examples of extremism on Parler.

Thanks I’ll read in to it.

Doesn’t 230 protect websites from moderation because it would be completely untenable?

Some of the most extreme speech I’ve seen have been on Facebook and Twitter. However I don’t hold them responsible since they’re providing communication infrastructure.

I'd have to read up on the exact extents of 230, but it's largely related to lawsuits and does not preclude platform TOS from holding things to a higher code of conduct.

Additionally I believe that 230 doesn't apply to knowledgeable hosting of illegal content. So if inciting violence is a known element on a site, and the owners are aware, then I believe (not a lawyer) that they can't hide behind 230.

Also I do not believe 230 prevents lawsuits against hosting services necessarily. It may make tech companies liable for providing a platform to a service that is behind 230 but they themselves can't claim that.

With regards to Facebook and Twitter, they have significantly larger user bases and active moderation. So definitely not perfect but they can remove content that violates all the ToS they may be beholden to. Parler does not provide such a thing, and doubles down on not doing so. So a lot of content gets removed from FB/Twitter, and if stuff doesn't due to slipping through the cracks, they still abide when notified of transgressions.

Additionally, as noted elsewhere, parler does moderate by removing content that the community dissaproves of, but that is legally in the clear, white leaving up what is largely considered discussion of illegal activity. Therefore they are tacit in those conspiring events.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2021/01/05/how-the-...

So you decided to go with the both sides argument?

Which side had the president of the United States actively inciting riots?

there is only one side with a president. If you had asked differently, you couldnt be so biased anymore because many many democrat politicians were quite explicitly encouraging more riots and even harassment of politicians. While police stations were burned down. Meanwhile a bunch of Trump supporters casually walked into the senate laughing and smiling and giving thumbs up to the camera. If you cant see which one is worse, nobody can help you

Are you fucking kidding me?

They were chanting "Hang Pence", they had guns, they killed a police officer, they setup a fucking gallows. They were seeking hostages and a few guards and chair barricade were the only thing preventing them from stopping the certification process for the the first time in our countries history.

Are you really this disconnected from what is actually happening right now or do you have you head so far up your ass that you can't see the difference between civil rights protests and an armed coup at the capitol of the United States?

Neither Biden nor Trump actively incited riots. Though both were wishy washy about their respective riots, generally supporting "protestors" and giving generic statements disavowing violence.

None what happened over the summer violently broke into the second most important building in our country and disrupted one of the most important processes fundamental to our democracy, destroying the US's record for peaceful transfer of power.

If you don't see a qualitative difference between that and the few rioters over the summer, then I don't think there's really room for discussion here.

That's such an arbitrary line to draw, and a convenient one at that. I guess "Some rioters are more equal than others".

Not an arbitrary line. You seem to think I wouldn't support criminal charges for the rioters over the summer. I do. I think they should all be prosecuted for any crimes committed.

But there are lines to be drawn, and It's certainly not an arbitrary line when it's drawn between the severity of crimes & their impact on society & the foundation of our government.

Are you telling me you don't see a difference between rioters that disrupt the peaceful transfer of power between Presidents? Between the a rioters that burned down a Wendy's compared to rioters that planned to assassinate the Vice President?

Sure, prosecute everyone who breaks the law, destroys property, etc. But I have no idea how you can say there is not a significant difference, a clear line to be drawn, between the impact of the Capitol rioters and those over the Summer.

It's the equivalent of you saying that a thief breaking into the house next door is no different than a thief breaking into the second most important building in the country. The later has a much larger implication for society, undermines society at a deeper level.

To elevate that mob of miscreants and their raid to an insurrection or invasion will only give them more legitimacy and notoriety. They are criminals, period, who never had a chance to cause fundamental damage to the function of government (by their own actions, anyway). Don’t give them more power.

It's also right after Trump sent a mob to attack Congress.

I'm a LOT more concerned about the rise in hateful, violent rhetoric being bandied about by self-described 'patriots' who seem hell-bent on bulldozing their way into political power as soon at it became obvious that they could not win by legal means.

These people stormed the legislature of the US to attempt to install their cult leader as dictator. If that doesn't concern you, I don't know what to tell you.

And Parler will find another web host. If the daily stormer can find one, these clowns will. They're not disappearing.

Of course it's concerning, but it's also concerning how quick people are to dehumanize and call for censorship, putting a lot of energy into discussing endlessly just how evil or stupid or unreachable those other people are, rather than root causes [0]. The mainstream is whipping itself into hysteria just as much as QAnon does, and it really does seem like circus all around. Just for some perspective:

> The capitol has been the site of multiple bombings, shootings, assassination attempts, and stormings for centuries. Pretending its an unbespoiled sacred Church which has never been penetrated so vulgarly is just ahistorical.

-- https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/kt0xpm/in_1954_4...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s

edit: clicking a button doesn't constitute an argument. You can only ignore Chomsky, neither tie his shoelaces or address his points. Shame on you.

This is also because learning to live with each other is harder than just denouncing the other side. We need to help people understand that the root cause needs to be examined as you said.

This looking for the root cause usually works well in big companies - for example on the Toyota production line but in politics people tend to look for easy answers. Examples like the war on drugs, getting overly tough on crime or defunding the police altogether do nothing but exacerbate the underlying issues.

Apart from calling this out and trying to vote in people who can think deeper I'm not sure what else to do. Living in close nit community/larger families you need to learn accept people for who they are and that seems to be going out the window with the increased focus on the individual in modern western culture. There's no one size fix all unfortunately...

I’m equally concerned about the rise in left wing propaganda. Including extreme double speak and obvious gas lighting. Censorship and manipulation. Very clear online manipulation by bots and paid trolls. Extreme bias in news.

America has become a country of absolutely insane extremists in a relatively short time.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone willing to try to get things back on track. As an outsider looking in it feels like everyone’s IQ has dropped below room temperature.

It's amazing to see this downvoted within a minute of you posting it, probably by someone not even aware they are only underlining your point.

No, they are being downvoted because "don't storm the Capital chanting about hanging the vice president", and "don't use allegations of voter fraud as an excuse to violently oppose the installation of a duly elected government" are probably not Extremist Left Wing Propaganda.

You know I didn’t say that. And your response is exactly what I’m talking about.

You’re operating on stress, fear, and propaganda my friend. Find the truth, and bring your IQ back up.

It doesn't concern me at all. It didn't concern me in 2016 when all these companies helped Trump and his campaign, and when none of them banned him despite repeated violations of their T&Cs. Now that it serves the companies to act they're all starting to act. Companies are largely bipartisan. They do what they need to do to stay in business and maximize their profit. That means playing politics and shifting from one side to the other when the wind changes.

The time to be concerned would be if these companies choose politics over profits.

It concerns literally everyone that large tech companies are opportunistic and only start taking violent threats seriously the moment the bully in chief is out of office, but you have it the wrong way around.

This type of content should have never been tolerated to begin with, the only reason they're only starting to do something is because they don't fear political retribution any more.

AWS is nowhere near big enough to be treated as utility, there are heaps of alternatives, big cloud providers (Azure, GCP, Oracle), hundreds of smaller cloud hosts, then there is self-hosting. What should be treated as utility is tier 1 networks, and I haven't heard about Level 3 or AT&T refusing to carry someones traffic.

I'm tired of it being "[website] is censoring Y", when in reality it's "[website] is not giving free megaphone to Y". Posting on these websites is a service they provide, it's a platform allow you to use, and they have zero obligation to give it to you.

When you are the main defacto means of deploying web platforms it essentially does amount to cencorship. The irony of the comparison to twitter is that parlor IS trying to be a twitter competitor thus preventing twitter from falling into the same classification of being too big to be non competitive

Except that's not true. Just because they have around 50% (a bit less actually) doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of other options. Hell, you can literally host a website from your own computer from your own house.

If it was an ISP blocking, where more Americans have access to 1 or 2, then you'd have an argument, because it's also near impossible for people to spin off their own personal ISP. But there are hundreds if not thousand of hosting platforms online, and you can spin up your own pretty easily.

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