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If you look at their suit against Amazon, linked in the article but here too: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

Parler notes 3 times AWS complained about specific messages and Parler removed all of them within 24 hours each time, some within a few hours and each time AWS noted they were satisfied.

"Parler had no moderation!" and "Parler wouldn't moderate!" are clearly untrue. If the complaint is "not enough moderation" that could be legit.

Regardless of your feeling on Parler, we NEED our legal system, contracts, and contract enforcement to be based on facts.

Sounds like the issue was AWS had to keep complaining, effectively using them as their moderation review, rather than doing it themselves

Parler's CEO was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her podcast a couple days ago, and if what he said is true, AWS is not being truthful. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but Parler is asking to release all the correspondence between the two companies, and AWS will not consent. It could very well just be standard legal best practice (since there is a lawsuit in progress), but it does give Parler some credibility. As soon as there is evidence I will re-evaluate where I can stand (not that it matters of course, but to me personally it does :-)

Among the big mistruths from AWS alleged by Parler, Parler does do moderation. They have a company principle of not surveilling every single thing their users do and vacuuming up data on them (which I would think most on HN would praise).

They have a group of about 600 moderators that review and take down reported posts. Over the last couple months given the in flux of new users and violent content, they did develop some machine learning tools that would identify potential violent posts and send them to a moderator for pre-approval. AWS told them that wasn't good enough. So Parler said, "how about we just use AWS Rekognition, your own product?" To which AWS said, "no, not good enough." I wonder, what is "good enough" to AWS? They clearly don't apply the same standard to Twitter.

He also talked about how just a week prior the AWS rep was doing the standard AWS rep thing of, "we love you, what can we do to get you deeper into AWS ecosystem?" Per Parler's CEO, Amazon had previously been satisfied but suddenly after the capitol riot, nothing would satisfy them.

It's remarkable to me how much disinformation there is out there over this. Although after the CentOS disinformation fiasco, I shouldn't be all that surprised.

I hope they release all of the correspondence soon so we can know who is telling the truth. It is a matter of great consequence in my opinion.

> Parler's CEO was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her podcast a couple days ago, and if what he said is true, AWS is not being truthful. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but Parler is asking to release all the correspondence between the two companies, and AWS will not consent. It could very well just be standard legal best practice (since there is a lawsuit in progress), but it does give Parler some credibility. As soon as there is evidence I will re-evaluate where I can stand (not that it matters of course, but to me personally it does :-)

I don't think this adds to Parler's credibility. I'd say it's consistent with their self-portrayal as the innocent victim of a liberal conspiracy.

Parler's moderators were fine with content like https://i.redd.it/om90nwadqca61.png - it's not surprising that Apple, AWS, and Google found it unacceptable.

Making these emails public (even in a censored form) could expose AWS employees to doxxing, harassment, and worse. An email system administrator, for example, could use the text of an emails to identify which AWS employees corresponded with Parler.

> as the innocent victim of a liberal conspiracy

It's fair to say that tech is majority liberal and it'd be simply dumb to contradict liberal orthodoxy to say unconscious bias doesn't exist.

So it's certainly fair to say that tech has an unconscious liberal bias and their actions are going to be harmful towards conservatives.

I was referring to the comments by Parler's CEO that Amazon, Apple, Google and others banning them or ending service within a narrow window was the result of collusion.

I think it's a combination of avoiding liability and Parler's failing to comply with moderation policies.

"X exists on Parler" and "Parler's moderators were fine with X" are completely different statements and the first does not imply the second.

To make such a claim, I assume you have a quote or Like (whatever the Parler equivalent was) from a moderator supporting it. Care to share it?

It's possible that Parler's moderators liked that comment but that seems unlikely; I'm sure some people are already going through their dataset looking for such things. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the left is creating/has created blacklists based on Parler accounts and postings.

My claim is that Parler's moderators and/or management is fine with such content existing on Parler - Amazon, Apple, and Google are not. Twitter has its own issues but comments like that aren't going to last 2 days.

I understood your claim. I hoped it was based on facts vs what you imagine others think. Thanks for clarifying.

> "Parler had no moderation!" and "Parler wouldn't moderate!" are clearly untrue. If the complaint is "not enough moderation" that could be legit.

Has anyone been saying otherwise? I've always heard it reported that violent/bigoted posts stayed up too long, thus leading to the platform being awash in them. Not that there's literally zero moderation, but just too little.

Parler's own marketing works against their reputation here, since they liked to talk up being a 'free speech app', which implies a more 'anything goes' attitude towards moderation.

> Parler notes 3 times AWS complained about specific messages and Parler removed all of them within 24 hours each time, some within a few hours and each time AWS noted they were satisfied.

I mean c'mon man, that's just not great reasoning. Of course they're going to quickly remove the things AWS specifically points out to them. The real issue is how quick they are to remove rule-breaking content in general.

A better test would be AWS employees or whoever noting rule-breaking content themselves, then seeing how long it takes Parler to remove them. Or simply seeing how common rule-breaking content is to start with.

But the standards being promoted here, Twitter and Facebook itself would clearly fail at. None of them claim to have instant perfectly precise moderation and most of them got planet-scale when they had basically no company-driven moderation at all, just user flags. The double standards here are plain to see :(

This isn't a double standard; it's just the natural tendency of rules, regulations, and market requirements to become stricter over time. It's quite common for early entrants to a market to get away with behavior that late arrivals are accountable for.

Facebook and Twitter probably couldn't be introduced today with the level of moderation they had at the time.

The bicycle is a nontechnical example of this phenomenon. You couldn't bring it to market today because of liability concerns and safety laws.

Having robust moderation tools doesn't necessarily mean moderation there works well. You actually need enough people with the right policies using said tools.

According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through.

I don't necessarily think using volunteer mods is always a bad idea. But you have to be aware of the biases of your demographic, and in this case that means users who are likely to be tolerant of calls for violence, as long as they're targeted at 'bad people' (read: people with different political views).

> According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through.

You also have to keep in mind that this was at a period of time when they were experiencing significant growth, and companies get behind when that happens as a rule. So they were permanently booted over what it would be completely reasonable to expect was a temporary problem.

The article makes it clear that they weren't permanently booted.

> Asked by Wallace whether Apple’s booting of Parler, which had become popular among Trump loyalists as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, would only serve to drive the app’s users “underground,” Cook responded, “Well, we’ve only suspended them, Chris. And so, if they get their moderation together, they would be back on there.”

It would be nice if people commenting on an article actually read it.

If we still had journalists, the most obvious follow up question is, "what are the moderation standards you've set that they need to meet, after which you will allow them back in?"

I think most people (fairly in my opinion) see that as PR/legal talk and that the bar (much like AWS) is set so high that they'll never make it (nor could Twitter/Facebook/etc).

If they want to go beyond PR/legal empty talk, they could provide a specific written standard. We could then evaluate it on its merits and compare it to other platforms to see if it's being evenly applied.

This is a perfectly fair suggestion, though I'm not sure what this would actually look like in practice.

"No more than 20 bigotry/incitement to violence points per user per day"?

Yeah it would be hard to define, no doubt, although with Apple's limitless resources and huge power, I think they need to at least try. The current subjective whims are clearly not good enough and they've gotten so powerful that human judgment isn't acceptable. I would say the same about Twitter/Facebook/Youtube/etc.

I suspect the hardest part would be defining it in such a way as to disallow Parler but still allow Twitter et al. Which, kind of proves the point of people who are suggesting Parler is being held to a different standard than the others.

IIWM (which of course it is not) I would start with something like, "Platform has a system in place to provide early detection of explicitly violent content at a rate of at least ${x}%. Platform has a system in place to allow users to report content in violation of the platform, and review of reports is completed within ${y} hours."

Of course what is "violent" is subjective too. To some people talking about hanging a person is not violent, while to others calling someone by the wrong pronouns is violence. A common standard would indeed be hard, but I think it is important.

In principle, I have no problem with that. Transparency is good, and it can lead to better business behavior without more ham-fisted regulations that simply force businesses to do what the government wants. It's the "nutrition facts label" strategy.

But I really think a better solution is just allowing more app stores or third party app installation. Let people choose who they want curating their content. Apple can still enforce their own store policies like they want, and if enough consumers revolt, they have somewhere else to go.

Agree completely. Competition is the real solution. Apple surely won't do it by choice, but maybe the recent antitrust action will force their hand and this will all be moot.

> The article makes it clear that they weren't permanently booted.

Should I say permanently destroyed? Certainly permanently damaged, whether past the point of even surviving remains to be seen.

And Twitter is any different? It’s overflowing with simplistic racist drivel and ridiculous calls for violence. All of social media is the problem - it spreads viral antisocial ideas faster than they can be countered, let’s like-minded sociopaths connect with similarly deluded people faster than their friends can check them, and has in many ways broken free speech. Parler was just the most recent and obvious symptom. How many researchers from Facebook and Twitter have quit their jobs to say it before we believe it?

Also, IIRC there was an interview where the CEO talked about how he was banning "left wing trolls"[1], not to mention they obviously don't allow pornographic images (which are not, in the large, illegal).

Parler is about free speech the same way Fox News is fair and balanced. They say that because that's what their target demographic wants to hear, not because there's any truth to the statement.

[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...

OnlyFans is a bigger threat to society than 10,000 Parlers.

what do you mean by this?

He means to say OnlyFans contributes directly to the fraying of America’s moral fibers.

If that is what the OP was inferring:

Personally, I think America is overly concerned with "moral integrity". Maybe it's due to the high Christian population.

I think many European countries that are very sexually open such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark are doing just fine. I also think that OnlyFans is an important service that gives sex workers the power to work for themselves in their own homes as opposed to having to make a living through less safe options. Customers get more personalized content and sex workers get a higher percentage of their payments while avoiding potentially physically or emotionally abusive situations - seems like a win-win to me.

An America without concern for moral integrity would be a hellish place. People already lament about how American capitalism crushes souls and promotes rampant inequality, imagine if the last bits of moral obligation were to be removed.

And “doing just fine” is still debatable.

The more "moral America" of the past used to include beating up and arresting gay people at bars for the crime of being gay.

Good riddance, I say.

You have peaked my curiosity please explain? I have not used either app.

And how long until my edgey, morally bankrupt idea gets banned because a few rich people decided to act as their own hired politician to do “what’s right” for us?

This is a slippery slope, we used it to silence a sitting president.. these same companies won’t hesitate to silence you

Apple has had minimum standards since the app store was made, so...since over a decade ago?

> This is a slippery slope, we used it to silence a sitting president..

Maybe if he didn't want to get banned from a platform, he should've avoided constantly lying and breaking the rules of said platform?

Like, you're literally suggesting "the president should be above the rules".

Nope. I am able to open my eyes and see that in the future this situation may be well exist again but under a different context. And we will point back to today as an example of why we should allow it.

PS if he was breaking rules of the platform for so long why ban him only after they know he lost the election? Seems to go along with my “powerful people make the rules” complaint.

Because he went further than just lying, and was also inciting violence.

Personally, I feel like they should've just banned him to begin with for all the lying, but being a private business, they have the right to decide who gets to speak on their own platform.

> PS if he was breaking rules of the platform for so long why ban him only after they know he lost the election? Seems to go along with my “powerful people make the rules” complaint.

If you ban him before the election and he wins, then he has 4 years to retaliate against you.

Homophobic politicians are a bigger threat to society than 10,000 OnlyFans.

Let’s ban homophobic politicians from the App Store then. And AWS. And Twitter. Don’t worry we aren’t restricting their free speech, they can say whatever they want in the public square...

Correct. If Apple and Google want to do that, maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with the principle of free speech.

Not sure what this means but Tim must had not been on Twitter last year. There was a moment that went on for 4+ months of wild endless violence against federal agents.

We live in a conspiracy theory with neoliberal corporate racketeers proclaiming they’re saving us from the ill affects of their own corporate communication platforms for not the public but for woke leftists that vote for Democratic party establishment figures.

Not Bernie, that guy’s a socialist and a threat to my 401k.

Good thing they were shut down. Lots and lots of wrongthink being expressed on that network.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Just build your own internet, financial system, and government, goy.

The internet is open. You can peer with whomever you like, that isn’t the problem. Pickup a few million $$$, peer with equinox and you have unfettered access to the internet. Fintech, use crypto. Don’t want government, then move to Christmas Island.

It’s not impossible, thepiratebay is still accessible years after being banned. Instead of parroting 4chan memes maybe start investing in companies that align with your viewpoints

Until Google or a backbone provider BGP announce that they own your IP ranges. And then add your site to SafeBrowsing. And then your domain provider suspends your domain. Sure.

HN has been kind of absurd to watch on this topic over the past few years. At first it was, "if you don't like Twitter's policies build your own Twitter". So people did. Now it's literally build your own internet and smartphone ecosystem. I wonder if those people ever go back and re-visit their old positions to re-evaluate if it was reasonable.

For anyone who doesn't know:

Wiki: In modern Hebrew and Yiddish goy (/ ɡɔɪ /, Hebrew: גוי ‎, regular plural goyim / ˈɡɔɪ.ɪm /, גוים ‎ or גויים ‎) is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew. Through Yiddish, the word has been adopted into English (often pluralised as goys) also to mean gentile, sometimes with a pejorative sense.

1984 is about government censorship and psychological control.

Exactly. And Apple is in bed with the government. And many of us carry around Apple branded microphones (or telescreens I should say?) in our pocket. And Apple allows indirect government backdoors (unencrypted iCloud "backups", etc).

> until enough of their post get approved for rightthink

People keep posting this bullshit tweet but it's not getting any less bullshit. From my previous reply [1]:

> Based on the screenshot you linked to, their "moderation" categories are "spam", "ads", "impersonation", "defamation", "nudity", "pornography", "illegal", "terrorism", "trademark" and "threat".

> Can you please explain how they use that to "ensure ideological conformity in their posts"?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomp&next=25731453