Ya why would AWS have any reason to stop providing service to a customer who didn’t follow their terms of service and took pride in a festering a community of terrorists who are now making credible threats to attack aws and recently tried to overthrow the US government in a violent coup.
The mental gymnastics of the people defending Parler on here are wild. If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
Please make your substantive points without posting in the flamewar style. We're trying to avoid the latter here because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious, thoughtful conversation about interesting things.
When accounts build up a track record of flamewar, snark, political/ideological battle, and other things that break the site guidelines, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise this place will be engulfed by hellfire and then become scorched earth. Those things may be exciting and/or activating for a while, but they're not interesting.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful. You can still express your views in that spirit, as many other HN users have been showing.
I was initially troubled by the booting of Parler, but I've come around to seeing AWS's position as similar to the payment processors who don't want to deal with porn sites. Doing business with some clients creates risks. Traditional players don't want to deal with risky clients, but there are specialized services who are willing to take them. However, they are more expensive for the same nominal service (because of the risks.) While the payment processors are dealing with frequent charge-backs, the risks I'd see in hosting Parler are more about liability and litigation.
There are clearly hosting providers (like Epik) who would be willing to take them on as clients from the start. If you read AWS's acceptable use policy, and then read the Parler's TOS, it is clear AWS was a terrible match as a hosting provider. By my read, AWS doesn't want to deal with anything that can be construed as "harmful" where Parler only forbade directly illegal behavior. (And it is apparent they barely felt a responsibility to moderate even to that level.) This was never going to work. Jan 6 brought things to a head, but as I see it, this business relationship was doomed from the start.
Completely not true. ISIS, Hamas, and other Wahhabistic groups still maintain a very large presence on these platforms. A little closer to home, riots and looting were planned in real time on Twitter. It's admittedly a very hard problem to solve.
In 2018 Twitter banned over 1 million ISIS linked accounts. Prior to that they banned hundreds of thousands. Without much of a peep from the free speech fundamentalists.
Back in 2014, ~50K accounts were posting support for ISIS. Parlor got one day's notice. How much notice did twitter get before the liberal consensus was to remove it from the Internet for inciting hate?
Not true. AWS has been working with Parler for "several weeks" [0] to help it comply with their TOS. Not only did they fail to remove the posts Amazon provided, the calls for violence on their platform got worse during that time.
If you're really going to go down this line of argument - do you think it's incorrect to say that AWS banned Parler because the Parler team can still 'use' AWS through twitter?
I'm not sure what the point of this nitpicking is. The context of this conversation is someone asking for an example of ISIS using AWS, in a conversation about the capitol hill rioters "using" AWS. And my response is that they indeed use it in the same way. Now, if you want to argue that this doesn't in fact constitute "using", then the capitol hill rioters didn't use AWS either, and AWS isn't responsible for them.
I think we have different reads of the root comment of this thread. Yoav[1] was talking about the contract between AWS and Parler as corporate entities. I'm not sure how you made the leap from organizational relationships to individuals using services implemented on AWS.
That's why I asked about members of Parler still being able to "use" AWS through other AWS-hosted services. I don't get what you're driving at.
> AWS isn't responsible for them.
Again, I'm not sure I understand what point this is responding to. No one is claiming AWS is responsible for the capital hill folks. They are claiming that Parler bears some responsibility and did so in such a way that violated AWS' policies. So AWS banned them.
I do not know if Twitter uses AWS now but it looks like they will be, I believe that Parler mentioned it in the lawsuit it filed.
'Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN, Amazon Web Services announced Tuesday that Twitter Inc. would be using its cloud services to support its delivery of users' timeliness.'
This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist" and denied basic rights like expression and put on no-fly lists. Anti-government rhetoric is routinely suppressed, fire-walled, and forced out. Are you sure that is what you want?
And then when you take up arms and commit sedition you get to act all surprised that actions have consequences. The people who invaded the US Capitol building ARE TERRORISTS. Pure and simple. They should be put on no-fly lists and denied basic rights like the right to exist outside of a small cell (after they are tried and convicted for their crimes.)
This is what it feels like to live in a country which tries to uphold the rule of law. Sorry if it inconveniences you, but not sorry.
I absolutely agree that those who advocated for violent acts should be investigated and punished. Go after those authors on Parler. But shutting down an entire platform, which is used by lots of other people who are NOT violent, on the basis of some violent posts? You can find far worse content on Facebook, are you going to advocate shutting down the whole platform?
Facebook and Twitter do not have the violent posts solved by any measure. But at the very least they make the gestures and put money towards trying to fix it.
Parler has been vocal that they have no plans solving it. If they had at least showed some vague plan to resolve it, they would have earned some sympathy.
Did you see the images of these so called terrorists? They have committed an illegal act by trespassing on government property but to call them seditious terrorists is a bit too far fetched. They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.
I'm not American, but what I saw on my TV last week was an outgoing President organising an armed mob outside the seat of Government and inciting them to disrupt the democratic transition of power. There were people inside the building that were clearly intending to take hostages.
There was a gallows out the front.
In any other nation on earth, this was an attempted coup. Just because it failed doesn't mean that those involved didn't have intent.
Well, it was a very incompetent coup. If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters. He shouldn't have said "now go home". It's a very half-hearted coup on the part of the president.
Note well: I am far from saying that Trump is innocent. He absolutely should have known that his words would incite violence. In the most charitable light possible, he's still clueless about the effect his words would have. (I could kind of see his intent being to use the mob to pressure Congress, so that they would be inclined to see it Trump's way. He may have intended the mob surrounding the Capitol, but not the breach... in a very charitable interpretation. Even in that interpretation, though, he still very dangerously misjudged the effects of his words.)
And Trump may well be guilty of more than that. He may well be guilty of attempting a coup to remain in power, and just not have had any idea of how to do it right. (I prefer that rogues be incompetent...)
The Armed Forces [1], Capitol Police [2], and other law enforcement agencies around the country are investigating the participation of their members. It's going to take a while to sort everything out, but I'm betting it's more sinister than it appears give the gallows, flex cuffs, the former AF officers in tacticool gear, and the general rhetoric.
> If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters.
There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.
> He shouldn't have said "now go home".
I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?
Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone attempting an actual coup.
But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...
> They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.
Clowns who beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher, planted pipe bombs, and roamed the capitol with sidearms and zip ties to take hostages.
Not denying that part of the group became violent. They should absolutely charged with whatever crimes they committed. But a lot of the reaction to them is a coordinated theatre by the left to make it seem much much worse that it was. Part of the strategy to make things seem worse then they are is to use words like sedition, insurrection etc
They didn't "become" violent. It was an organized attempt to prevent the lawfully elected head of state from being certified and overthrow American democracy using violence.
Even the least violent among them committed a felony by entering the Capitol building. That someone else broke the window they entered doesn't make their entry any less illegal.
Inserrectionists who stormed the capitol to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves
> to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves
There's no contradiction there, despite your efforts to portray one.
People often take glee in and celebrate violence even as they commit it against others.
The german language has even given us a word for it: schadenfreude.
Thanks to the lies from the politicians and media personalities they follow, primarily the president, many of these people also fantastically believed that they were overturning a fraudulent election, and were therefore celebrating what they thought was an imminent success in that objective.
Some of my favorites are the little old lady carrying a little American flag, the people walking in a line between the roped off areas and the folks cleaning up after a couple of trash cans got overturned.
Seemed incredibly tame compared to the riots that went on over the summer that had massive amounts of looting and had buildings burnt to the ground.
I dunno. I think once you build a gallows, hang a noose on it,
and start chanting about hanging someone as you push against barricaded doors where that person is sheltering, tame is no longer is quite the right word.
This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist"
There's a big difference between criticizing the government and storming the capitol.
Talk all you want. Engage in constructive debate. Run for office. Change laws through the system. All of those things are OK in the United States.
Dragging a police officer down the stairs and beating him with a flag pole is not OK in the United States.
There is a qualitative difference between concretely planning an attack and the things you describe. I am taking the platform's statements at face value, but what I understand is that they observed concrete, specific planning to coordinate a physical attack on US democratic institutions. In that sense, this is not about free speech at all. The actions taken were done with intent of preventing violence, not speech.
Okay, sure, China is scary _but Parler was literally doing those things_. This was not some overreaction, this is not ostracizing mere disagreeing philosophies, this is not like Trump calling the media the enemy of the people. They literally were plotting kidnapping, murder, and sedition. This is an appropriate response.
I can show you screenshots of tweets that are as bad or worse. The difference is that Twitter actually has built up, over time, the ability to moderate fairly well.
The value of Twitter isn't really that you can post and view small snippets of text. It's that they've developed technology that allows them to effectively moderate.
Any poorly moderated site eventually becomes associated with the right.
Agreed. One Parler, one could search for terms like "execute" or "hang" and get thousands of results. It was a vile place. The owners of the site have chosen to die on the hill of protecting that as "free speech".
> If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
This is the accusation without evidence that I'm talking about. It's not an accusation against random parler users, but an accusation against those of us who do not think that AWS should decide what's allowed on the internet.
That anything is justified as long as it's done in the same of anti-fascism is indeed a coherent principle, though not exactly one with a noble history. The official name of the Berlin Wall was Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart[1].
>>Not even an attempt to formulate any coherent principle, just acccusations of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism, without any evidence whatsoever.
The US Capitol got breached and looted by deranged insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021. There was a guy walking with a Confederate flag inside the building. And they were all supported and incited by many prominent conservative figures, including current politicians. Including the President himself.
What other evidence do you need that these people have been acting on bad faith, hypocrisy and racism?
Come on now. The President and prominent republicans and their allies fanned enough flames by claiming election was stolen. Its not one speech or one instance, its the collective narrative thats been going around since the time it was clear that Trump is going to be on the losing side.
If I convince you falsely and knowingly that someone has tortured and murdered your child and I tell you "we can't let that happen, the courts won't do anything, we have to fight much harder, he's at this restaurant right now, you should go" and you go and kill or maim that person, am I not responsible in your mind?
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder. …
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. … And I actually — I just spoke to Mike. I said: ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.’”
“I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of the U.S. Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Josh Hawley. … Senators have stepped up. We want to thank them. I actually think, though, it takes, again, more courage not to step up, and I think a lot of those people are going to find that out. And you better start looking at your leadership, because your leadership has led you down the tubes.”
“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. …
“You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen. These are the facts that you won’t hear from the fake news media. It’s all part of the suppression effort. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. …
“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
---
This is incitement, pure and simple. I mean, look at this shit:
"We will never give up. We will never concede."
"You will have an illegitimate president... and we can't let that happen."
"...if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
What else do you need? Are you looking for instances where Trump told the crowd to attack and breach the Capitol before you're convinced that he's guilty?
None of those sound all that inflammatory. Mostly just political rhetoric.
"We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong." -- In context, he is saying: "Cheer for the Republicans in congress, maybe not so much for the ones who aren't backing me because they aren't showing strength" -- nothing about that seems like it is incitement.
Yet somehow Democrats saying worse things is applauded.
Compare that to where actual violence is implied:
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere."
- Maxine Waters
"Go to the Hill today. Please, get up in the face of some congresspeople." - Cory Booker
"We owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose." - Nancy Pelosi
That's exactly what I'm looking for: evidence that he told the crowd to attack and breach the Capitol. Because there isn't any and yet that's what he's being accused of in the media. You are of course welcome to read these words and interpret them any way you see fit but I don't see any incitement or calls for violence here. Neither would a court.
"fighting" is often used in a political context, we have people on both sides of congress saying it publicly as recently as 2020. This is constitutionally-protected political speech.
Your case would be much stronger had Trump not explicitly said people should go "peacefully".
> If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
This is the accusation of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism that I'm talking about. It's not an accusation against random parler users, but an accusation against those of us who do not think that AWS should decide what's allowed on the internet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25745908
The mental gymnastics of the people defending Parler on here are wild. If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-christian extremists none of y’all would be insisting on Apple or Amazon’s requirement to do business with them and be complicit.