Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc
courtlistener.com
courtlistener.com
> Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start.
> For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler.
> The article will be up shortly.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293
I would be more interested in hearing if all these prominent figures in the Capitol protests were active across multiple (or all) social media platforms, which often seems to be the case. If that is true, then it makes for an even stronger argument that Parler has been singled out.
Glenn has done great work in the past for which he should be commended, but these days he's a contrarian in search of hot takes. It's just how the Twitter / Patreon journalist economy operates. He will throw a huge hissy fit about the mainstream media but then happily go on Fox News with Tucker.
But having said that, it's clear lately he puts politics / optics first and then dives into an issue.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/several-well-know...
> Tarrio does not appear to have been present during the insurrection.
> This is almost certainly false. For example, see the arrest of the leader of the Proud Boys (for events prior to Capitol, but played active role on Parler encouraging proud boys violence that day):
And this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/technology/capitol-twitte...:
> Those alternative social media sites were rife with Trump supporters organizing and communicating on Wednesday. On Parler, one trending hashtag was #stormthecapitol. Many Trump supporters on the sites also appeared to believe a false rumor that Antifa, a left-wing movement, was responsible for committing violence at the protests.
> “WAKE UP AMERICA, IT’S ANTIFA and BLM operatives who are committing the violence, NOT TRUMP SUPPORTERS!,” said one Parler account member called @Trumpfans100, offering no evidence for the claims.
Even though Greenwald is wrong, he's not totally wrong. I think he's correct that the "majority" of the planning happened on Facebook, but that was kind of a funnel to Parler. My understanding is that was mostly for seemingly legit stuff, event for protests, was done on Facebook. Those pages then linked to Parler, where more extreme planning took place, out-of-reach from Facebook's policies.
You seem to be talking about Enrique Tarrio, the latino leader of the "Proud Boys" who was arrested when he stepped off his plane, for the crime of burning a blm symbol in DC the month before.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/proud-boys-leader-arres...
But you also seem to be trying to correlate that to this event. I don't know how they are related to Parler, can you explain?
Glenn Greenwald also chose to make the fake Giuliani/Hunter Biden laptop story the hill on which he wished to die upon, related to his resignation from the Intercept, so whatever credibility he had remaining has long since departed.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=greenwald...
The same kind of people now openly railing against GG are the same kind of people who will do everything they can to not acknowledge Ray McGovern because his professional and personal past make him a harder target on the topic. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me to see plenty of them try the same charater assasination on him, but it's an obvious marker of complete rejection of truth in favor of tribalisms.
Disgusting seeing so many turn on GG et al so quickly. Ya'll should be ashamed of yourselves.
He believed a story with little evidence and his journalistic integrity became questionable.
In his own words:
“I don’t think that the emails — so far — reveal a huge scandal. They so far just establish standard sleaze and DC corruption. The huge scandal to me is the blatant rank-closing and cone of silence — a prohibition — erected by journalists around this story to defend Biden,”
“Is there a single journalist willing to say with a straight face they believe the emails relating to the Bidens are either fabricated or otherwise fraudulently altered, but the Bidens just aren’t saying so?,”
“When you report a huge archive, there’s no way to prove the negative that none of it is altered. You investigate & confirm as much as you can, then use your journalistic judgment. The only way you get confirmation is when the subjects of the reporting don’t deny the authenticity,”
“You know the subjects of the reporting will immediately claim they’re fake if the are. Of course they will: that would kill the reporting!”
“There’s a reason the Bidens aren’t claiming they’re fake,”
> While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000?re...
What was fake about it?
AFAIK no factual claim has been refuted and some have been robustly proved (e.g. the gmail sent emails that have been published pass DKIM validation).
If you want to say the timing of it was a transparent attempt at political manipulation, I'd fully agree.
> So as I blogged before, the emails contained DKIM information, which the original reporters could and should have verified. So I eventually got a copy of the email and run DKIM verification on it. It passed:
https://twitter.com/erratarob/status/1322007153415200768
I think he's pretty active (and well-respected) on HN.
You can also download all the uncensored photos on many leak websites. The photos are clearly Hunter Biden in many sexually explicit positions (although none of them appear to be underage as was suggested by some).
I think there is a prima fascia case against Hunter for his ties to Burisma and his appointment being purely for political clout and a power move; a move that should be investigated for possible direct security risks to the American government and the American people.
For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting.
The complaint alleges there are deeper ties:
Less than a month ago, AWS announced with a press release a new multi-year deal with Twitter. AWS will “provide global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.” Twitter Selects AWS as Strategic Provider to Serve Timelines, Press Center, Amazon, (Dec. 15, 2020), https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det....
I should stress that some partisan democrats have also been just as wrong, but Greenwald is just making it up to downplay what did actually happen.
To anyone who hasn't, please go and read the Wiki article on it - it's very detailed and clears up a lot of frankly worrying narratives I see on this website that are frankly a little disappointing considering the average reader is usually quite fastidious with technology.
That could be true, I don't know, but Parler was certainly hosting some violent real-time threats: https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347190280492089344
This isn't hard. The majority of people arrested had Parler accounts -- it's everywhere.
I think a more interesting (and neutral) approach for Greenwald to take would be to show that all of these prominent figures were most likely active on ALL social media platforms, yet only Parler has been singled out.
I can't find evidence of this. Could you share your evidence?
Greenwald did significant research here and said he found no active users from those arrested:
Google “baked alaska parler”. It’s literally on the first page of results.
What Glenn is saying is technically true, but also complete garbage. It's meant to fool people who can't do the minimum levels of research.
https://www.insider.com/washington-dc-protest-livestream-bak...
Also what does it matter if Jan 6 was not planned on parler? Jan 17th and inauguration shenanigans were being planned there until the site got yanked.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/man-who-died-capitol-riot-par...
Do you want to bet on what percentage of them own Smart Phones? I would wager 100%.
Sympathy for white supremacy within law enforcement is its own thorny issue, but we certainly shouldn’t let it deter us from taking action against places we know domestic terrorists plan their attacks.
Conspiracy theories aside Parler wasn’t removed in relation to involvement with the capital invasion. They got booted off for poor moderation - repeatedly not being willing to do anything about illegal/hate content and the increase in number of complaints.
I don’t think Amazon or Apple (and to a lesser extent Google) can be viewed as competitors to Parler in any material way.
https://twitter.com/azforeman/status/1348648808390008832/pho...
If he didn't bother to look at a famous person like the "QAnon Shaman", why does the rest of this claim stand to scrutiny?
[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarian...
The guy lost all credibility pushing that fake bullshit story so far he lost his job at his own news org.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-quits-the-inte...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/09/poli...
Update: replaced link with a more relevant one
2). AWS can terminate an account immediately if they deem you in violation of their policies instead of a suspension - as was the case with Parler. It's all in the AWS customer agreement, which Parler agreed to.
The free speech / censorship argument doesn't seem to fly.
The Lin Wood post on Parler (https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347190280492089344) and dozens of other posts with screenshots on that thread are clearly targeted threats of political violence and have never constituted free speech:
> common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Sedition, incitement and public security all seem to apply here to the content Parler was hoping to keep publicly accessible.
But as far as other platforms go, like Twitter, they made Kathy Griffen delete her direct threats against Trump: https://www.waynedupree.com/2020/05/kathy-griffin-twitter-pu...
So, I'm not sure they have enough examples of other platforms allowing this level of violent content to remain public for long.
I think given these events companies should reassess the risk of using these cloud services and the potential for disruption of their businesses going forward.
No one needs Facebook, Twitter, or Parler to survive.
Absolutely! If the horror stories of companies losing access to their accounts due to automated processes going haywire haven't convinced us that "cloud risk" is real, perhaps this incident with Parler will focus our minds to this possibility.
> 4. AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter. 5. Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in combination with Defendant Twitter
> 15. Less than a month ago, AWS announced with a press release a new multi-year deal with Twitter. AWS will “provide global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.” Twitter Selects AWS as Strategic Provider to Serve Timelines, Press Center, Amazon, (Dec. 15, 2020), https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det....
Why AWS would help Twitter is unclear to me, though.
I imagine the legal argument will be based on AWS providing the services & hosting for Twitter. Which would be a clear and fair argument.
At least take the time to note the name of the company, before weighing in with your opinions.
[None of this confusion would arise, if you Yanks spelled 'Parlour' properly]
They make the case that Amazon is because they provide hosting for Parlers larger competitors.
They can consider themselves very lucky and capable if it can be done within a week, but I think it'll take longer.
They also claim no other cloud provider has accepted their business because AWS, by leaking its email to Parler to Buzzfeed (which showed lots of violence threats on Parler) before even sending it to Parler, had tarnished its reputation (i.e. it was trying to manipulate popular opinion by leaking the worst posts they found - and Parler claims the same content could be easily found on Twitter at the same time - I don't know as I don't see this shit in my stream but everyone has very different streams based on their preferences, so it's plausible I think).
This looks like a dirty game they're playing, and to be honest, it's hard to say for sure that AWS and Twitter are completely clean in this... AWS is probably betting Parler will get enough hate so that other customers who may have controversial businesses running on AWS will not consider moving elsewhere (or al least preparing to do so at short notice)... which to me, kind of shows that Parler may have a point in this argument... On the other hand, Parler had very disturbing content (I did manage to have a peek just before they went offline) which I think goes well beyond the acceptable level, but for AWS to "kill" them, as they claim AWS is trying to do, seems quite heavy handed.
> We may terminate this Agreement for any reason by providing you at least 30 days’ advance notice.
and
> Either party may terminate this Agreement for cause if the other party is in material breach of this Agreement and the material breach remains uncured for a period of 30 days from receipt of notice by the other party.
The latter obviosuly applies here. Am I missing something?
> 6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you if we determine:
> (a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party, (ii) could adversely impact our systems, the Service Offerings or the systems or Content of any other AWS customer, (iii) could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability, or (iv) could be fraudulent;
> Disputes will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify. The Federal Arbitration Act and federal arbitration law apply to this Agreement.
I don't know, they do have some of the greatest hits from those lawsuits:
* Let's ask the court to prevent things that have already happened (it wants to restrain AWS from cutting off service to Parler, but it filed the suit after that happened).
* File exhibits that are atrociously unusable (the PDF of the service agreement clearly cuts out several lines of text, although I think this was unintentional).
* Provide a single paragraph of argument to address the single claim that actually gives your claim federal jurisdiction at all.
* Clearly incapable of reading contract plain text (in this case). The contract claims are likely to fail since AWS has a right to terminate it unilaterally (which they don't address in their filing all), but it's moot anyways because binding arbitration clause means the court has no right to hear it.
* Evidence for their claim boils down to "there's no other possible reason anyone would want to shut us down than CONSPIRACY!"
* Urgency is requested, but there's no motions to actually grant urgent relief (e.g., an emergency filing or motion for expedited relief).
* Plaintiff fails to spell its own name correctly in a few cases (admittedly, only one here).
I personally think it’s ridiculous to argue that the baker’s right to free expression is involved in this. But then again we have people boycott service providers for their choices of customers all the time.
There is all kinds of Untested legal claims about these click wrapped ToS "contracts" we all "sign" with out reading by clicking a check box on a sign up form.
Parler isn't being dropped by private companies because a user said something mean on their service. They're being dropped by AWS, Apple, Google etc because they allow, even encourages its users to conspire to commit violence and assassinate public officials.
The main reasons its users went to Parler in the first place is because they weren't allowed to do that on twitter and reddit.
1- This action (dropping Parler) is within the actions established in our ToS. 2- Parler's very goal is to attract these sort of demographics and similar actions have been taken in the past (Stormfront comes to mind)
The only chance this has is if Parler has language in their contract requiring that 30-day notice of service termination. My guess is that they don't. They also spend a LOT of time in this filing pointing out that AWS is a very big share of the market (the court won't care) and that they host Twitter (the court will again, not care) in an effort to say that AWS was worried the shift to Parler from Twitter would financially hurt Twitter and then AWS (which doesn't make sense, since AWS is hosting both so 6 million people shifting just means one check gets smaller and the other larger).
This is the quality of legal filings I've begun to expect surrounding these issues. "They're bad, and it's pretty obvious to everyone, duh!" doesn't actually hold up in court though...
To be fair, that does look more like a mistake--the HTML-to-PDF conversion appears to truncate a decent amount of text per page.
Ooh, just noticed, the contract also has this gem:
> Disputes will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify.
Which tosses out any claims of contract violation because you agreed to arbitrate it first!
The thing is, Trump never ever called for riots. You have to read between the lines and ignore his history of being anti-riots and go for a bad faith interreption to even consider him having called for what happened.
Flipside,
How many celebrities were calling for the death of the maga hat kit? They got away with it.
Iranian's Khamanei has outright called for jews to be exterminated. Various other middle eastern leaders have called for gays to be killed. They are outright double standards.
Regardless, it was very clear Trump was to be banned. At the end of the day it's very interesting how all these tech companies came together to ban not trump but vast array of their supporters. So far the known count for Twitter is >200,000 trump supporters.
At all 200,000 inciting violence? Does the USA really have that many people looking to overthrow the government?
>They're being dropped by AWS, Apple, Google etc because they allow, even encourages its users to conspire to commit violence and assassinate public officials.
So the entire platform is to be removed because of some content. More specifically, if someone wants to destroy a platform, they need only have bots spam comments and therefore the platform goes offline?
>The main reasons its users went to Parler in the first place is because they weren't allowed to do that on twitter and reddit.
No, that's not accurate at all. there were millions of users on parler. Many of which weren't even american nor care what was going on.
This is at best a rationalization for shutting down the platform.
How is Parler "encouraging its users to conspire to commit violence"?
Is this true?
E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pe...
Expecting any potential competitor to instantly achieve perfect moderation seems like a perfect way to entrench FB, Twitter and others as the de-facto public square.
> Mr. Matze pointed to the fact that Twitter had recently promoted the phrase “Hang Mike Pence” as a trending topic. (The majority of the discussion on Twitter was about rioters chanting the phrase about the vice president on Wednesday.) “I have seen no evidence Apple is going after them,” Mr. Matze said. “This would appear to be an unfair double standard as every other social media site has the same issues, arguably on a worse scale.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...
However, I remember when J.K. Rowling gave her opinion on transgender issues, RIP JK Rowling was trendin gtopic for hours, and she received a lot of hate and threats on Twitter. Not only that, a lot of people started replying to her tweets with dick pics, which was dangeours because she was in the middle of an activity with children (they could see those replies).
So yeah, definitely Twitter chooses what to moderate and what not.
That’s why this whole Parker debacle is hypocritical.
Secondly, at risk of stating the obvious: Parler has self-selected its audience to consist of proportionally many more extremists, they still exist on twitter but not even close to as prevalently on Parler (not least because many extremists on Twitter are going to be on the left, where the dialogue is harder to police because it's much less obvious where the violence starts)
Edit: also fuck everyone related to Parler. Read in detail: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
6. Threats of Violence, Advocacy of Imminent Lawless Action, Threats to Dox, Bribery or Criminal Solicitation
So-called “fighting words” are not a violation of our Guidelines.2
6.1 However, reported parleys, comments, or messages sent using our service will be deemed a violation of these Guidelines if they contain:
6.1.1 a “serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to aparticular individual or group of individuals,” with either the intent or reckless disregard as to whether the communication will “place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.”
6.1.2 an explicit or implicit encouragement to use violence, or to commit a lawless action,such that: (a) the Parleyer intends his or her speech to result in the use of violence orlawless action, and (b) the imminent use of violence or lawless action is the likelyresult of the parley, comment, or message
6.1.3 a threat to dox anyone for any reason.
6.1.4 an offer to give or receive money, or other goods or services, in exchange for (a) afavor from any public official, or (b) the commission of any illegal action by anyone
We'll have to watch this play out in court, later.
Edit: I love how I’m being downvoted when quite frankly there are enough screenshots out there and on /r/ParlerWatch of their shit show of moderation. You’re deluded if you think there’s a moderation policy other than ignorance by design.
Tweets from Ayatollah Khomeini talking about how Israel is a cancer[1] that needs to be violently eradicated[2] apparently don't run afoul of the "Glorification of Violence" policy. OTOH Trump's 2 tweets, which were tame in comparison, were bannable.
[1]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784
[2]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263742339891298304
Hypothetically, how would you be able to prove that point without providing examples?
Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?
Although I agree that 4chan is problematic sometimes, many people that just put blame on it don't actually use it.
I remember when Netflix's Cuties was released, 4chan prohibited posting any image/video from the show
They are trying to. The problem was that they were cut off by all of their services providers with next to no warning.
Their posting style also helps. They talk about absurd things, in absurd ways. They look insane, they don't even try to make things reasonable. That makes many people underestimate them, because they seem far too loony to do anything significant. It also makes deplatforming them unappealing. Where are these people going to go if 4chan stops existing? No one wants to see this on their Facebook feed.
In short, 4chan acts like they're too incompetent to do anything.
Parler is full of people who are coherent enough to actually stage some kind of a violent, semi-coordinated attack.
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-... [3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48293817
2. 4chan is extremely simple - there is a max of content, content is anonymous, and old content decays and is removed. There are no notifications, replies, searches, etc.
There is a bunch of awful content hosted on AWS, but it's generally only when you reach some scale and become a threat to those in silicon valley that you can expect to be shut off.
Parler is not a protected class, their users posts are not protected speech. The only leg they will have to stand on is the terms of their AWS contract, which AWS will likely have had lawyers craft with steel vault level protections to shield the company from liability in cases like this. It would be shocking if Parler wins this injunction (and based on time sensitivity, we'll probably find out later today) but even if they do long term they're going to have to build/buy new server structure.
If this were true then Rap music would be illegal.
- AWS was especially mean to us
- AWS is hypocritical, look how bad twitter is
- We were singled out for political reasons
- This will kill us
All of which might be true, but none of which is illegal. The main (only?) real legal complaint here seems to amount to "AWS banned us to prop up Twitter in an anticompetitive way that's illegal under antitrust laws." That seems incredibly weak to anyone who's been following this story at all.
The charitable interpretation of AWS's actions would be that they banned Parler for refusing to moderate effectively. The less charitable version is that AWS doesn't care about Parler, but caved to public and internal pressure to ban them. In no reasonable interpretation did AWS do it because they just love Twitter so much. I don't see this suit going anywhere.
> AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided.
From section 6.1 on Suspension:
We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you if we determine ... (a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party
From section 7.2 on Termination:
We may also terminate this Agreement immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have the right to suspend under Section 6
The Anti-Trust argument seems like the strongest here but that's pretty notoriously difficult to succeed with. I guess not too far from the App Store cases going on right now.
The AWS agreement is here: https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
TLDR: Content promoting violence - clearly more than mere threats given the actions of several users on Jan. 6 - is against the AWS agreement and services can be terminated immediately upon notice.
(ii) By Us. We may also terminate this Agreement
immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have
the right to suspend under Section 6, (B) if our
relationship with a third-party partner who provides
software or other technology we use to provide the Service
Offerings expires, terminates or requires us to change the
way we provide the software or other technology as part of
the Services, or (C) in order to comply with the law or
requests of governmental entities.
(a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings
(i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any
third party, (ii) could adversely impact our systems, the
Service Offerings or the systems or Content of any other
AWS customer, (iii) could subject us, our affiliates, or
any third party to liability, or (iv) could be fraudulent;
This will likely be be the source of the debate. It's not directly said, but I would assume AWS is suspending service until it ultimately terminates the account. So it'll be contested if the time that it's suspended, but services still somewhat being rendered, constitutes a termination.
Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in combination with Defendant Twitter. AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided. Finally, AWS is committing intentional interference with prospective economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near future.
I don't know if they can hold that true that people will be signing up per "skyrocket" metaphor. They can use past data, but cannot use unknown future data.
They can show that it was the #1 most downloaded app on Apple's app store and make a reasonable inference from that.
>AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter.
>5. Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in combination with Defendant Twitter. AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided. Finally, AWS is committing intentional interference with prospective economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near future.
Remember, these are unchallenged claims from Parler.
I think the only interesting bit here is the 30h vs 30 day notice period. The cynic in me is interested to see the contract: if there was a 30 day notice in it, I imagine Parler could have gotten an emergency injunction to stay online. Unless there isn't or parler preferred to be "taken" off line for PR reasons?
Sorry if that view is a bit conspiracy-theory-esque...
If you knowingly were to provide meeting rooms for people plotting a coup or violence, I think you'd still be on the hook for something much greater than breach of contract, which is a civil claim.
> 7.2 Termination.
> (a) Termination for Convenience. You may terminate this Agreement for any reason by providing us notice and closing your account for all Services for which we provide an account closing mechanism. We may terminate this Agreement for any reason by providing you at least 30 days’ advance notice.
> (b) Termination for Cause.
> (i) By Either Party. Either party may terminate this Agreement for cause if the other party is in material breach of this Agreement and the material breach remains uncured for a period of 30 days from receipt of notice by the other party. No later than the Termination Date, you will close your account.
> (ii) By Us. We may also terminate this Agreement immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have the right to suspend under Section 6, (B) if our relationship with a third-party partner who provides software or other technology we use to provide the Service Offerings expires, terminates or requires us to change the way we provide the software or other technology as part of the Services, or (C) in order to comply with the law or requests of governmental entities.
(ii) (A) does not include the "breach of contract remains uncured for 30 days" stipulation; when Amazon has the right to suspend under Section 6 they may also terminate the agreement immediately.
Their "right to suspend under Section 6" includes:
> (a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party, (ii) could adversely impact our systems, the Service Offerings or the systems or Content of any other AWS customer, (iii) could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability, or (iv) could be fraudulent;
> (b) you are, or any End User is, in breach of this Agreement;
Under (a), I could certainly see Amazon make an argument that Parler's use of the service offings poses a security risk to third parties. Not an electronic one necessarily, but I would think "a bunch of people threatening to hang the vice president" would qualify.
And under (b), Parler's end users being in breach of the agreement, they have plenty of a case as well. See Section 4: Your Responsibilities in the link above (I'm not going to excerpt all of it), but it includes these lines:
> you are responsible for all activities that occur under your account, regardless of whether the activities are authorized by you or undertaken by you, your employees or a third party (including your contractors, agents or End Users)
> You will ensure that Your Content and your and End Users’ use of Your Content or the Service Offerings will not violate any of the Policies or any applicable law. You are solely responsible for the development, content, operation, maintenance, and use of Your Content.
> You will ensure that all End Users comply with your obligations under this Agreement and that the terms of your agreement with each End User are consistent with this Agreement. If you become aware of any violation of your obligations under this Agreement caused by an End User, you will immediately suspend access to Your Content and the Service Offerings by such End User.
Not a lawyer, but I don't think that's a clear-cut "Amazon violated the contract" win for Parler
But terminating Parler with such short notice that they had no chance of moving to an alternative without major disruption of their business. Well. That is deliberate destruction.
Without knowing anything about US civil law, I would expect Parler to have a strong case.
But the entire text seems really biased and borderline crazy (all that stuff about monopoly/antitrust - since when is AWS even close to a monopoly?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they elided that the contract also allowed for early terminaiton if certain terms were being violated.
Count 1 is a claim against the Sherman Antitrust Act. By their own citation (see claim 31), they need to allege specific facts that would conclude (1) the existence of a conspiracy, (2) intention on the part of the co-conspirators to restrain trade, and (3) actual injury to competition.
There's no facts that allege (2). Actually, I suspect they also need to list Twitter as a defendant to properly claim (1) as well, since it's Twitter that has the alleged monopoly, and the one for whom the alleged conspiracy to restrain trade exists.
Their facts probably don't even amount to alleging (1). They basically say "AWS also provides services to Twitter" (okay that's not a conspiracy by itself) and "Twitter also had an issue with the #HangMikePence hashtag" (omitting the fact that Twitter did kill the hashtag)--which still doesn't allege a conspiracy.
I'm sure some actual lawyers will shortly comment on whatever other gross procedural filings this lawsuit has (https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134870050647095296... suggests there's quite a few).
This has been going on for 12 years. More evidence that both sides use Twitter for violence:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/violent...
Now the Western elite (on both sides, mind you -- whether it's against BLM or the Proud Boys) are doing their best pikachu face.
Mob-style tyrannical democracy for thee, but not for me.
I might drop everything and start building data center myself if that’s the case
This article seems like it should be on HN, but the stuff in the comments made me want to flag it (I didn't). Fortunately it seems the good discussion is coming out on top over time, and the worst comments do get down voted & flagged pretty quickly. But, as you said, there is a lot of repetitive back-and-forth here which has already been done over the past few days.
Has this become an anti-trust issue (assuming there is a way to tie it to the Sherman Act) based on monopoly power? Google and Apple have 99.83% market share, owning both the platforms and distribution? Is it time to break these up?
/s
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
I would hold my breath for Sherman (Anti-trust) Act being applied. (Especially, as there is the whole people stormed Congress elephant in the room.) But in summary, the perception I get is that this is a strictly business to business lawsuit, contracts were signed etc.
I am curious if some Washington knowledgeable in the area lawyer can provide any insight and their point of view.
P.S. Of course this is just the point of view of one-side and we can not say anything concrete until this is litigated.
N.B. I am not a lawyer, not familiar and not licensed to practice in Washington.
1) Parler banning some of its own users for trolling.
2) Their own employer/company banning people that use it to distribute child porn.
3) A utility company disconnecting users that continuously disrupt its electrical grid.
Of course you'd be fine with 1, 2 because neither your company nor Parler are common carriers, as defined by law, and have no obligation to provide their service to anyone. Guess what - AWS is not a common carrier either. But even a common carrier such as the electric company can terminate users that purposefully violate its terms of service.
At the end of the day, we all know this. We know that private services have no First Amendment obligation. And yet, thread after thread, its all the same fake outrage that's masking a much simple emotion - "I hate it when my guys lose".
The internet did function prior to cloud computing existing and surprise, running a rack full of NUCs can give you a lot of capacity to run a glorified message board.
Ianal, so I can’t judge the merits of this legal case. To be honest I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.
Personally, I am surprised at the opposite. That a company cannot find lawyers to defend their position or process payments from their customers without due process is horrible.
The fact that you were not surprised by it is quite worrisome. I don’t mean that as a personal attack on you, but more as an observation of what has become acceptable or at least ordinary in a society.
I can't help but feel that by the time anything comes of this, the primary goal of AWS and a lot of other companies involved in the recent bans will have already been accomplished; smothering an escalation of the current situation until after the 20th.
It feels like we are witnessing a sort of immune response from these companies triggered to protect them from an existential threat to their business. Set off by Wednesdays events. Instability is bad for business.
I don't know whether it is DNS censorship as well or just poorly configured TTL caching on some DNS servers, but if you have a link to video.parler.com and it doesn't resolve anymore, you can replace video.parler.com with the actual IP address of the server 8.240.251.252 8.240.147.124 8.240.248.252 they are still online though the DNS is beginning to fail globally.
Trying j.gtld-servers.net.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-8.awsdns-01.com.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-715.awsdns-25.net.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1170.awsdns-18.org.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1848.awsdns-39.co.uk.Well, that's not cool nor fair.
https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
> 6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you...
I'd bet they cite this as the reason:
> could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
Like this should would have been shut down weeks in advance in Germany.
Have we learned nothing from history?
I can't believe people are fighting to give racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists a platform to organize and plot violent acts behind the disguise of free speech.
There's a reason it got shut down by everyone.
Get your head out of your ass.
I've always found it pretty obnoxious that you can only encourage content you want not discourage content you don't want. HN seems to have a good system.
Shouldn't platforms allow free speech but give the community the tools to discourage destructive speech?
While I get what they're trying to say, this is a really odd metaphor for them to use.
but customers like you are probably why AWS is taking the position they are. They don't want to risk other customers just to keep parler. That actually sounds like something a profit motivated company would do.... no conspiracies required.
edit: should probably note, customers/advertisers have boycotted companies before for having a whiff of scandal around them..
Get your own servers -> datacenter won't host them
Get your own datacenters -> no bandwidth providers will connect you
Make your own ISP/bandwidth provider -> nobody will peer with you
I suppose there are also TOR hidden services and the like, although that's difficult to scale and maintain full anonymity.
We may very well see a "soft secession" as we have left providers and right providers and then we began to geographically locate ourselves around these providers.
Yes, I do, because otherwise I'm gonna be on a blacklisted IP range because every spammer in the world signed up for the "you've got 30 days to do whatever you like every time you create a new account with a stolen credit card" hosting provider.
If/when this lawsuit gets publicity, my guess is a lot of C-suite executives are gonna be looking over their shoulders and evaluating how screwed they'd be if their current cloud provider decided to deplatform them.
Amazon's probably counting on the fact that 99% of its customers' business doesn't have anything to do with politics, and therefore they'll write off the threat. But the counterpoint is that cancel culture has become so pervasive into people's personal lives that who knows what might happen.
If an executive shows up to a Trump-rally or posts a politically incorrect meme on his personal time, it's not outside the scope of possibility that AWS/GCP could demand that the company fire the person or else have their account terminated. The zeigeist is increasingly moving to the ideology that "silence is violence". Are companies, like Coinbase, that espouse political neutrality next?
Any company can now find itself on the wrong end of a cancel culture mob. If said mob has controls over your cloud providers TOS, then that's a major business risk.
Do you really think there are “a lot” of companies which host user content, refuse to moderate it, and refuse to deal with complaints forwarded by their service provider? Most C-level people are going to look at this and say “that's why we follow our contracts” or “I'm glad we don't have to worry about legal action against a rogue customer potentially impacting any infrastructure we share with them”.
Good job Big Tech. Now we have a million unpatchable devices.
everyone can also cherry pick out instances where moderation has failed or things have fallen through the cracks. parler's entire MO has been to breed this kind of environment for growth.
removing one of the DIRECT causes to an attack on our foundational institutions is completely warranted IMO. save the slippery slope argument for something else, please.
Parler is blowing it in the third paragraph:
> Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was “Hang Mike Pence.” But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account.
The distinction, of course, is that the it was trending because the tweets were discussing the videos of violent Trump supporters chanting "Hang Mike Pence", and not calling for violence, as was widely occurring on Parler. That weak sauce isn't going to go far in court.
P4 is speculation on Amazon's motives. Parler would need some good evidence to show this claim is true.
P5 seems the strongest. If their contract really says 30-days notice (given the disingenuous p3, I wouldn't assume that), Amazon could be forced to replatform them for a while and have some damages.
You're right, they need their own metal / backend / hardware.
Of course... that would be a problem when Visa / Chase / Paypal / Stipe / Square all refuse to run their payments.
So maybe while they're building their own metal, they should build their own banking system too.
Parler's entire business model was centered around Trump holding onto power, by any means necessary. This isn't a "free speech" issue. Don't promote violence, and don't try to incite insurrection and you'll be fine.
Twitter is full of pedos and rape videos and that's totally ok too? This is pathetic.
That said, antitrust battles against Big Tech will dominate the next four years of economic policy, and rightfully so. GAFA is too big, too powerful, too manipulative, and needs to be brought to heel by every legal means necessary. The US government should also move to immediately outlaw targeted algorithmic advertising, which would make a huge impact on Big Tech's sectarian violence cashcow. (And yes, that's what this absolutely is. Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.)
I will note that whatever antitrust beefs people have with Big Tech, Twitter isn't really in that league. Twitter's market cap is something like 4% of Google's and 6% of Facebook's. I think conflating the two issues here is unhelpful.
I don't know that sympathy has anything to do with the merits of their case.[1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jun/27/aclu-assist-kkk-...
*edit--formatting
That is an interesting proposition, but I wonder what would fill the void created. I believe advertising does not increase consumption per-se, but that it redistributes it among a different set of product and services, so who would be the winners and losers of such an effort?
Almost zero chance this happens, imo. Big tech spent _heavily_ on Democrats (98% of contributions [0]) and the Democrats have complete control for the next 4 years.
an awfully prescient allocation of funds.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/tech-billionaire-2020-electi...
Twitter, Facebook and Google’s social services (gmail and YouTube) are at their heights or just behind them. The cycle for when tech companies are devoured is coming to them. I’d wager something like PeerTube will take a big part of the void YT will leave behind, as the market for censorship-resistant video will grow along the growth of forbidden opinions. Centrally planned government interventions without fail do fail.
Has it ever been? Probably the best known use of the word in many countries is The Troubles.
Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech. Even if they win this one, the writing is on the wall for them.
EDIT: This is not as true as I thought. Interesting information below!
Google Apple Facebook Amazon for those unaware
funny acronym too, because of 'making a gaffe' can kinda be, making a GAFA.
I agree with you that there definitely will be a new relationship between gov and tech in the next 4 years.
Quoting from the case pdf file:
"Strangely, the article with the letter was posted before Parler itself received the letter in an email, received at 7:19 pm PST, over an hour after the BuzzFeed article went online, meaning AWS leaked the letter to BuzzFeed before sending it to Parler. See Exhibit A."
Today it’s Parler, tomorrow it’s whatever political ideology Big Tech finds inconvenient.
The violence is the issue, not the ideology.
The facts are pretty simple here. Parler had illegal content on their servers and refused to moderate it effectively. Companies asked them to fix their moderation issue and they refused, this is the consequence.
They aren't being kicked off because they said "I like Trump" they are being kicked off for inciting violence and hosting content that called for some truly horrendous acts.
In FTA it says AWS generally gives 30 days per their contract with Parler, but I mean in general, if there is a general precedent. Even if Parler wanted to do the right thing here, they were pretty much banned everywhere immediately.
On month to month services, 30 days is normal for almost any reason. But abuse and related ToS violations don't ever get 30 days.
https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
I think he's going to have a REAL tough time convincing a court that Twitter doesn't moderate content given that his justification for starting Parler was Twitter being too aggressive in moderating...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...
*Offensive probably is the wrong term - content that violates the AWS TOS like calls for violence.
In the USA, there's a government body which can make a preliminary judgment on this, it's called the courts. Why shouldn't Amazon be compelled to get a preliminary opinion from a judge on whether this is illegal or not. Based on that decision they can preemptively remove the content and let the defendant "appeal" (probably incorrect legal term) the decision. If the court rules it's not illegal, then there should be no risk of legal liability to continuing to provide the service.
If things are parler are as bad as people are making it out to be (i haven't been following it closely) then this should be a trivial step that legitimizes the decision.
Parler could very well make more money suing Amazon than anything else.
This was a huge moment for Parler, and AMZN may have grounded them.
There's a difference between 'we don't want to do business with you' ... and 'we will make you dependent on us, but the we'll drop you like a rock and put you out of business'.
as a business you choose to take risks relying on other vendors. we're all dependent on any business and they could drop us at any time, but that's the risk we take for convenience or what not. we make the calculation the risk is low.
if you know there's a growing base of extremism on your site and you have a precedent like gab, why wouldn't you potentially prepare for it?