Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

This is troubling. I understand the 1st amendment argument, but isn't this more an anti-trust case? If a baker won't bake you a cake because you're gay there are dozens of other bakeries nearby that will, regardless of the merits or lackthereof of choosing not to bake a cake in that situation. If your service provider kicks you off their platform they've destroyed your entire business. I understand if they won't allow certain businesses to sign up, or if they give them a reasonable amount of time to transition to another provider, but revoking existing services with very little warning seems extreme.

View on HN

They don't allow companies like Perler to signup. What Perler used AWS for is prohibited by the TOS and AUP that Perler agreed to. It just took a while for AWS to notice and enforce the legal agreement that Perler agreed to abide by. Perler lied right from the beginning (because they had no intention of abiding by their agreement) to get AWS to provide service they would never have provided had Perler been honest from the start.

Also the cake issue is different because discriminating based on sexual orientation was prohibited by the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. Colorado (the state I live in) has every right to pass laws to govern it's citizens. What happened to state's rights?

To me these are very clear: You either believe contracts and laws can be enforced, or you don't.

In this world, service providers should create TOS that are as complicated as possible so that practically every company is violating them. The terms can then be applied "as needed".

You mean like the laws in this (US) country?

Colorado lost the cake lawsuit. If anything that makes my claim stronger.

> Colorado lost the cake lawsuit. If anything that makes my claim stronger.

But not much (though not doing much to make it stronger is still not making it weaker), because it didn’t lose it on the kinds of grounds people on either side wanted the case decided on for a decisive win, but because based on the details of the proceedings in his case the Court found specific animus against Phillips’ religious views in the handling of the particular case by State officials.

Yes, that is true. Although as you hinted at, the Supreme Court didn't really want to rule on the issue that people were interested in (how to balance freedom of association with protected classes). They've punted on other similarly contentious issues as well (e.g. when NYC mooted a 2nd amendment case by changing its laws went the case when to the Supreme Court).

This is actually a widespread and common business situation. I used to work for a company that made a specialized component, and a customer called us up one day and said: "We have to knock 1 cent off the cost of your component, or WalMart will drop our brand from all of their stores." More broadly, a lot of businesses are at the mercy of a single big customer or supplier. Texas Instruments could discontinue the chip that I use in my product, sending my side business into a tailspin. I had to buy a lifetime supply of another part when it was slated for obsolescence.

Components are a bit different in that they are marketed as "obsolete for new designs", etc. and anyone making a physical product knows to plan for the eventuality that a supplier will be unreliable or that a part will be discontinued. This situation is not analogous since access to AWS is ongoing.

Indeed, and I could have prepared myself for the situation in any number of ways, including monitoring my components status, designing around the dependency, and so forth. I think. Not all suppliers make it easy to discover the status of components.

Do you think that a sole source relationship carries an implied contract of continued service? Should that be a regulation? I don't think I'd like that.

As I understand it, AWS didn't force Parler to sole-source their computing infrastructure. And Parler claimed that they had prepared for such an eventuality.

I don't know if it would apply to the current situation with Parler, as my understanding is that they did agree to terms of service, and that the dispute with AWS over their content moderation didn't come up all of a sudden.

I think it is reasonable to discontinue service if you don't like a customer.[0] But what if AWS's utility provider said we aren't going to power your datacenters because we like Parler? That seems wrong to me. I think it's reasonable to allow companies to terminate service but they should give a reasonable time frame (e.g. 3-6 months) to migrate to a new platform.

[0]: Certainly I think this in cases where you have a personal relationship with the customer/client, e.g. as a lawyer. It is less clear in the case where the service provided requires no real customer interaction as in AWS, where the services are all provided transparently, with no knowledge of who the customer is. But I don't want to get hung up on this issue.

In this case Amazon would likely apply pressure to the utility company's regulator, if such discretion was allowed to the monopoly provider under their current arrangements.

That pressure would likely be successful.

But even if a datacenter is removed from one jurisdiction, Amazon is perfectly able to handle that loss immediately.

And if all the bakers in town refuse to bake you a cake, should you be able to force one to?

Seriously, when there are dozens of options and none of them want your business, shouldn't that give you pause?

If all the insurance agencies refuse to insure your ship because they think it will sink, wouldn't it be prudent to double check your blueprints/construction ?

It's not that none of the other options want their business (though I have no doubt that Google and probably Microsoft would also exclude them). It's that you can't just switch platforms within days, while you could go order another cake since there's almost no time commitment to requesting a cake.

That is a mistake of getting a very ad-hoc contract and then doing something that creates a lot of risk of negative consequences (i.e. supporting the overthrow of a democracy).

Honestly, this feels to me like just the best sort of stuff that private companies, and a world that relies on them does: Everyone likes but doesn't need those services. There's a lot of companies competing and the offering is great. If someone is such a pain in the butt that no one wants to do business with them, they have a hard time but still can if they want to go it alone and build it all themselves.

These are light "highlights how well it works" stories to me.

> i.e. supporting the overthrow of a democracy

Do you have evidence that Parler was involved in the storming of the Capitol building? Glenn Greenwald says it was not involved.

> Everyone likes but doesn't need those services

Well the employees of the company sure need them if they want to pay their mortgages, buy food, etc.

Given 70TB of parler data was leaked, I'm sure people can find out one way or another if they are so inclined.

while that maybe true - it happens fairly often, usually with no warning at all. If anything, parler got preferential treatment by getting notice BEFORE getting terminated. Most just get "your account has been locked/terminated/etc" emails after the fact. There's bunches of horror stories on HN about it...

I don't think the fact that it's happened to others has any bearing on its rightness or wrongness.

> And if all the bakers in town refuse to bake you a cake, should you be able to force one to?

Yes.

edit: Well, they could also close all of their bakeries. I'm willing to allow them that option.

The same argument applies if you wanted to commission a cake celebrating the holocaust.

The distinction must be that anyone (any race, any sexual orientation, etc. etc.) should be able to buy anything "off the shelf" (e.g. a plain cake or wedding cake). But no one should be forced to write/design/create something which they don't want to.

My bakery should be allowed to refuse to bake a cake celebrating the holocaust.

> The distinction must be that anyone (any race, any sexual orientation, etc. etc.) should be able to buy anything "off the shelf" (e.g. a plain cake or wedding cake). But no one should be forced to write/design/create something which they don't want to.

I agree with this distinction (no compelled creative labor), but note that this leaves stuff like file hosting, DNS services and data centers squarely on the "off the shelf" side. And you would still be forced to bake a cake for an out-and-loud Nazi. Just not decorate it with an artful "1488 blaze it".

In your opinion, should bakeries be allowed to refuse to make a custom wedding cake for the wedding of a gay couple? (e.g. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

But there are a dozen other bakeries in this situation. None of which will bake them a cake. No bakery is going to make anyone a cyanide cake and no reasonable person would expect them to be legally required to do so.

I doubt that is true. I'm sure some will take Parler's business. They just can't do it immediately because it's hard to switch from one platform to another.

I wonder if big corporations that sign deals with AWS in the future will write this into their contracts? ("Amazon agrees that, if they want to terminate our service for any reason, they will give us 6 months' notice so we can replatform our site.")

Exactly, it's a 1st amendment issue because it's a monopoly (or mutual anti-competitive practices) issue. So you're entirely correct. If the big tech companies weren't engaging in anti-competitive practices, then the censoring would not be a big deal. But because there really is only one Facebook and little to no competition, and they're colluding in the same prejudice, then yes, it's a lack of freedom of speech.

I'm all for the "they're a private company, they should do what they want" argument, if they (Twitter and Facebook) weren't the only nationally agreed upon means of communication and socializing during a nationwide lock-down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com