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Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

Parler chose to use AWS for their hosting. When you build your company on someone else's platform, you're explicitly giving them that market power.

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They needed 300-500 servers according to the CEO. There isn't much choice in the market when it comes to that kind of need, specially when you need to be hosted in the US because you're a political website. Imagine if they were hosted in Russia instead, they would have lost all their credibility.

Thousands of companies host 300-500 servers on a couple of racks in some data center in the Midwest.

There is not reason at all to have your content hosted in the US if you felt its legislators or IT providers aren't up to par to your idea of what free speech represents. Credibility? Yeah, seems that the crediblity issues weren't exactly about the hosting provider.

Look at their growth curve, they weren't planning from the beginning on that. I am sure they would have gone with their own DC if they did.

The legislative and judicial system didn't say anything about Parler, and that's the core of the problem. Big tech acted by themselves to appease the new king.

Which is both their right and prerogative. Fascists aren't a protected class.

In this Great country, everyone is a "protected class" unless a court determines otherwise. It is their "right" to kick anyone off because of their overly broad Terms and Conditions, but they have no right to label anyone as a criminal.

You have the notion of “protected class” backwards. Everyone in this country has the right to equal protection under the law, but private companies are allowed to discriminate except in cases of protected class.

AWS can say “we don’t want Parler as a customer” but they cannot say “we don’t serve black people on our platform” as race is a protected class while being Parler is not.

No one said AWS did something illegal. Any company can do anything given how Terms and Conditions are written. Doesn't make that immune from discussion tho on their ethical side.

Of course there is! There are at least hundreds of hosting companies that can provide that as a service, and of course they can just buy their own servers. Nobody is obliged to make it easy for them to run their site.

A 24 hour notice off AWS is more than just "not make it easy". It is a loud and clear political message.

It's not political. It's an immediate refusal of service to a client that is clearly causing commercial harm to AWS. They have no obligation to host Parler!

Are you seriously expecting anyone to believe booting Parler off from Google, Apple and Amazon all in the same day was not a political move?

Yes. It's a PR/business reputation move.

I think it’s a fairly transparent political move too - this is happening with the background of an ongoing investigation of these companies by congress.

Trump is a political leader, not a musical celebrity. Any moves that hinder his or his supporters speech (he had an account on Parler) is by default a political one, even if at the same time it is a "PR/business reputation move". In this case its big tech wanting to appease the new king on the hill.

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