"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."
Is this true?
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.
But this is a complaint, so I can't just assume that any of these things are actually true and that's why I want to reserve judgement until we hear how all the evidence plays out in court.
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
AWS doesn't make any claims to providing universal service and like most (if not all) service providers they can terminate service for a variety of reasons.
I have no inside information but it was probably a combination of some of the following factors.
1. Compliance with the AWS acceptable usage policy. AWS says that Parler didn't comply with the AUP. All the facts won't come out unless this lawsuit goes to trial and that seems unlikely. Parler's CEO doesn't seem to think moderation is important so it's easy to believe that they didn't put a lot of effort in it. It's also possible that they can't afford to comply with the AUP but that isn't Amazon's problem.
2. Cancel culture. It was only a matter of time before AWS started getting bad PR for having Parler as a client. Petitions for dropping them were already circulating internally and externally. It's easy to say that you shouldn't drop clients in response to pressure but there is a point at which doing so is a rational decision.
3. Liability. Parler was allegedly used for planning illegal activities. If another significant attack occurs then a class-action lawsuit will pursue both Parler and AWS for contributing to the attack - this happened with the September 11th attack. The costs of defending or settling this lawsuit could easily run into the millions.
Hypothetically, how would you be able to prove that point without providing examples?