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Websites like 4chan, 8kun, Stormfront, etc have been pushed out of mainstream hosting providers since forever. This isn't new. What is new is venture funded hate sites. This is big money trying to make a buck on selling ads to the most radical. Literally anyone who's watched the rise and fall of these free speech zones on the internet knew that relying on infrastructure provided by companies like Amazon was beyond stupid.
You can put whatever you want on the Internet, there's lots of hosting companies around the world that are willing to help. Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing to do you with.
This is precisely my point! Who gets to decide what's reasonable discourse?
I personally don't think the whole rank and file of establishment press jumping over each other to get in line behind the US state and starting two truly godawful wars is reasonable.
If I was in charge of distributing news to people in the early 2000s, I'd have simply disallowed all of it and made sure people only heard opinions about how the USA is the world's leading terror state. How would you like it if I did that? Luckily, you'll never have to find out because I don't have the power Amazon et al now have.
> Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing to do you with.
This is a deflection. I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even dream of.
Cheer it on at your own risk!
If it escalates to violence it's not reasonable, that's it. It gets muddy around state sponsored violence but the assumption is that we already have controls around that. I think that's a reasonable line to draw. If I go on Twitter and make specific threats to other users I believe that Twitter is within reason to prevent me from using their platform.
> I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even dream of.
I agree with most of what you're saying. We as a society have handed over what I believe to be the vast majority of our day to day communication to a handful of companies that have no motive in mind other than profit. Social media has been shaping our society for the worse in way less overt ways for the last 15 years by driving eyeballs to controversial posts/topics to keep up engagement.
I'm not pretending to have the answers, what I'm trying to point out is the phenomenon of big companies avoiding hosting questionable content is not new. What is new is the ubiquity of social media in our lives and politics.
I think we're better without it personally.
I know you think "facilitating a violent mob" applies more to Parler than the New York Times piece...but I'm going to disagree. Parler was anything but 'reasonable', but The New York Times (or individuals thereof) creating propaganda to lead a nation to war...can be described as facilitating a violent mob.
Now, in practice, it might be more accurate to call these markets oligopolies (certainly cloud infrastructure is more this), but this still leaves a few companies with dramatic power over important parts of society.
And monopoly is a problem for the government to solve; these companies aren't 'evil' (any more than most others at least, except in virtue of their size), and the lasting solution is not to try and shame them or call them out here or claim victimhood (as the right has done) - though exercising voice can work as a short term tactic sometimes.
Where would the authority come from to force Amazon to support a message board they believe is for the purpose of inciting and organizing violent insurrection?
Why shouldn’t Amazon be able to make judgements about who it’s safe to do business with? Why should Parler’s decisions about who to do business with override Amazon’s?
Suppose Amazon did something Parler didn’t like, and as a result Parler decided to move to a different provider... should Parler be forced to stay with Amazon after all?
But if you look at this situation and don't see problems that are expanding beyond the ability of laissez faire contracts to account for (I'll be specific: it's the concentrated accumulation of communicative and cultural capital to a tiny number of minimally publicly accountable, opaque, private, exceedingly deep-pocketed firms), you're burying your head in the sand.
The first amendment does not prevent businesses from terminating a relationship.
edit: my opinions are my views and dont represent anyone elses
based (presumably, but I'm not a constitutional scholar) on the 14th amendment's section 3:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
These corporations are societally expected to uphold a cultural respect for free speech and the rights granted in the First Amendment, but there is no legal basis to compel them to allow speech or activity they do not approve of.
Extrajudicial behavior such as terrorizing a legislature is harmful to these corporations’ profitable predictability. Operators would be in violation of their fiduciary duties to allow such a direct threat to their bottom line to continue, let alone grow.
In other words, money cares more about itself than anyone’s feelings.
I agree. Those are the facts, for sure.
> money cares more about itself than anyone’s feelings.
No argument.
> terrorizing a legislature is harmful to these corporations’ profitable predictability
Strongly agree. This explains AWS's economic motivation. It's not that they just care so much about democracy and rule of law, though a liberal (read: Democrat loyal) employee culture there is probably also a source of pressure pushing them toward the move. In this case the stars align: liberal employees want it, and they can have it because it aligns perfectly with AWS's economic incentives.
I think where we part ways is in thinking this is good for society. My problem with it is not that it violates any laws, but that it amounts to an incredible concentration of power in the realm of cultural production.
Is this, legally, a free speech issue on its own? No, and I support Amazon’s right to “nope” out of anything they want.
But in the current context of the rush to also prevent open Trump support in other areas like payment processing, and the way the media is hellbent on trying to inextricably link Trump support with terrorism, it should be apparent that there’s a larger effort in play here, that feels highly politically motivated.
What bothers me at this point isn’t whether Amazon has the legal right to do this (they do).
What bothers me somewhat is that there is a clear chilling effect that is intended across the board for a huge portion of the country.
What bothers me even more, is that so many intelligent, well intentioned people are practically giddy about it.
We don’t all have to agree politically in any capacity, but I would at least hope we would have enough empathy to judge this in the context in which any reasonable person would see this on the other side, and be willing to advocate, at the very least, that we do this carefully and with respect for our fellow neighbors. Instead, I see absolute celebration about what can very fairly be seen (whether rightly or wrongly) as an attempt to ostracize millions of Americans.
It literally makes the problem that the people supporting this are CLAIMING they are trying to solve worse. I think it works wonderfully for the problem they are ACTUALLY solving, which is to cement an image of normal members of the political opposition as radicals on the verge of terrorism.
I spoke to my brother last night.
In an utterly predictable fashion, the Parler shutdown has made him worse. It turns out that when multiple global corporations collude to halt the communications of people who think they are being persecuted by a colluding body of global corporations, it makes their movement stronger. Who would have thought?
A great point. I have yet to hear any response at all to this problem from the pro-censorship camp, much less a convincing one.
Every attempt to solve the problem creates more problems.
In the past, I would be able to help talk people through their conspiracy theories to come to a logical conclusion that what they were hearing was too big, too harmful, or otherwise incapable of accomplishing anything to actually be true.
That approach is becoming harder the bigger this becomes.
Trump's opposition is going to be giddy about Trump's downfall and Parler's removal, the same way Trump's supporters were giddy when Trump won. It is not reasonable to expect the mass of political partisans on Facebook and Twitter to adhere to a code of civility.
If your principles are altered by the behavior of strangers on Twitter, they aren't really principles, right?
Sure. But seeing how many of these “giddy” people are blue checkmarks at real news organizations makes folks antsy about conservative news outlets (including mainstream ones) coming under attack as a response to the the Capitol Hill riot.
So given that, the only reasonable conclusion I can come up with this that this is essentially an enemy force living in our country - thousands of terrorists and perhaps millions of terrorist sympathizers. Our only goal at this point is to deny them aid, support, and the tools to organize effectively.
Like it or not, we have entered into an era of asymmetric warfare with what amounts to a terroristic cult in the United States.
This is exactly part of the problem: The hyper-dramatic reaction to a mob of political extremists that forcibly took over a public government building that occurred when the mob was right-wing, and when the building was the DC Capitol, that didn't at all occur when entire neighborhoods, court houses, police precincts, and Federal Courthouses had the exact same occurrence, with a minimal reaction from the press.
My brother isn't mentally ill, anymore than the people dressed in black shooting green lasers in the eyes of Federal officers guarding the Federal Courthouse in Portland are mentally ill. If anyone had bothered to focus on the dangerous radicalization when it was people who they happen to agree with politically, maybe we'd be a bit further ahead on countering it. Instead, we waited until it was people on the other side of the spectrum to notice how dangerous the echo chambers have become, and will label these people members of a cult, without acknowledging the absolute nut jobs on our own side. I was in Portland over the summer, and the crowds around the courthouse were mirror images of the crowds around the capitol. The amount of derangement on display was equivalent. Instead of MAGA gear, it was all black bloc gear, but that's about the only difference.
You are clearly a part of this sectarian viewpoint, because I'm sure you're going to tell me numerous reasons why ONLY these people are terrorists, and not the people who occupied several city blocks of Seattle with assault rifles for months over the summer (with no permission from the residents). I view them all as lunatic, dangerous terrorists, whether they have a MAGA hat or BLM shirt on, provided they are engaging in destruction of property or violence.
To me, it boils down to something simple? There are apparently two groups of people who will lie to you about whether it’s raining outside right now. One group just tried to overthrow the government, so I’m obviously hoping they lose. But that doesn’t make me thrilled about the other group using this as an opportunity to press their advantage and further dominate media outlets.
Trump has moved himself outside of the system of American democracy and to this day refuses to acknowledge a democratic election result[1]. So yes, actively supporting him at this point is supporting an end to American democracy, pretty objectively. Linking the overthrow of the democratic order with terrorism, just after a mob entered the capitol and successfully interrupted the democratic order for multiple hours, doesn't feel a huge leap.
Being conservative isn't linked with terrorism. Being libertarian isn't linked with terrorism. Supporting somebody who rejects democracy is linked with terrorism. It's seems pretty clear cut to me.
[1] He said that a new administration will enter office but never that it does so rightfully based on a legitimate election.
No. "Rejecting democracy," a position held by myriad political currents, each of which probably means something different by the term, is basically a run-of-the-mill ideological position. (It's not one that I hold personally, in case anyone is thinking about downvoting for "extremism.")
You know what's linked with terrorism?
Terrorist acts. That is: sporadic acts of intense, spectacular violence and devastation designed to rock and destabilize some existing political order. Usually but not always from "below" (sometimes it's literally from above, like from a B-52).
I'm concerned pretty deeply, but very, very far from being terrorized by the pathetic spectacle at the Capitol. One reason for that is I don't take the extremely hyperbolic US press as literally as so many seem to.
Terrorism is subjective relative to the system in power. And I said "linked to" not "is". Having the opinion isn't terrorism. But giving money or vocal support to people who then invite others to or themselves try to violently overthrow a form of government is - from the subjective perspective of people in the current system - closely linked to terrorism. If they had succeeded in installing Trump as the continued leader in a post-democratic US, it wouldn't have been terrorism. Because they would've been judged under the new system of government. But they didn't succeed so far. So from the perspective of a post-Trump democratic government, it was terrorism. Terrorism doesn't mean every single person is scared afterwards, so your personal feelings towards it aren't the defining factor.