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Comment by coryfklein | Hacker News Reader

Hate speech is actually protected speech under the 1st Amendment, meaning you have every right as a US citizen to speak and publish hate. True threats, on the other hand, do not have the benefit of 1st Amendment protection. Then again, Parler claims that such speech is removed via moderation. Do we have evidence that Parler has chosen not to moderate such speech?

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Parler has to find a private company willing to accept money to build and maintain a soapbox for you to speak that hate from. AWS is not obligated to that. The speech is free, the soapbox is not (unless it is not privately owned). "Do we have evidence" - seems the answer is "yes", have you read the AWS letter?

Ah! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! From said letter:

> Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence.

> ...

> This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you.

And that sums up the whole point. Even if we succumb to the idea of Parler being protected by the 1st Amendment, some one must still be will to provide the infrastructure.

These companies have simply exercised their own rights. There could be an argument about monopolies, or their rights to censorship, but to say this is about 1st Amendment rights is rather distracting.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... has some damning things to say about Parler's moderation approach.

In the brief AWS references some messages and claims they are illegal but it is likely none would pass the Brandenburg test so all would be likely protected speech.

For example: “We need to act like our forefathers did Kill [Black and Jewish people] all Leave no victims or survivors.”

Is very similar to the speech that caused the Brandenburg case. AWS also claims the messages are harmful and thus violate their acceptable use policy and I think AWS has a much stronger argument here. However, AWS hasn’t really clarified what harmful means in their policy at least in terms of speech. Harmful can be interpreted quite widely and Parker could argue this interpretation doesn’t make sense and the implied interpretation is harmful illegal content. For example a AWS hosting a business competing against another business is harmful to that other business.

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