Parler sues Amazon (again), claims AWS ban sank a billion-dollar valuation | Hacker News Reader

Parler sues Amazon (again), claims AWS ban sank a billion-dollar valuation

arstechnica.com

35 pointspseudolus25 comments

If this ever succeeded, then you'll have crazier and crazier apps test the boundaries of platforms and sue for losing their fictitious valuation. Parler lost because it was poorly written, it's hard to keep trust when all your data is uploaded and your users go to jail for sharing that data with your platform.

If their billion dollar valuation were real, I'd think they would have been more responsible with their business and abided by the AWS terms.

What terms did they break?

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an AWS Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the calls for violence propagating across the social network violated its terms of service. Amazon said it was unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate calls for violence and hate speech would be effective.
“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms," the email reads. "It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the suspension.

From https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

Isn't there a lot of calls to violence on Twitter and Facebook? Why singling out Parler, they moderate calls to violence as best as they can too.

Maybe just because it's fun to pick on the new kid...

The difference is Facebook & Twitter take their content moderation (and it's overall impact on their business) very seriously.

From any angle you look at this, Parler failed at reasonably moderating their content. More so, at their own peril despite being warned by AWS about the violent content.

And by employing volunteer moderators, it reinforced the echo chamber effect, suppressing any views or opinions diverging from the mostly far-right user base.

If you can buy your own infra your safe, it's the old thing. Having your own castle your safe, need someone else's castle your not.

Pretty much this. The terms are there, IMO, to allow providers to cut relationships with anyone that draws negative press.

Parler got popular amongst Trump supporters and nothing draws negative press like Trump.

The fun thing is...why oh why depend on other castles like aws? Servers are cheap, independent Data-centers are here, and good system administrators (like myself..of course) are still a living species (although on the brink of extinction outside habitats like finance and insurance etc)

You are correct. It's probably much cheaper too.

True, but how many of us are willing to work for them?

Haha good point :)

Talent is neither cheap nor abundant.

OTOH, their volumes did not justify the complex environment they allegedly had and they should be very well within the skill set of the very average devops engineer. No large scale deployment expertise required.

I think Parler's going to have a tough time with litigation like this as a centralized platform. If they really cared about giving their consumers a place to exercise free speech, they would have made Parler a protocol with some sort of polished frontend. I don't really feel much remorse when it's two companies with private interests fighting one another.

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