BREAKING: Amazon is kicking Parler off AWS, its web hosting service, which will take them offline until it finds a new host

[MarcATL]

I was born in the USSR and have lived for some time under a totalitarian communist regime with one party and only one government media. Then I lived in Russia for a long time and saw how Putin has usurped power from the very beginning. And at first, his steps were to take control of all more or less significant media in Russia. It looks like something like this is happening in the US right now.
But in Russia this was not enough, and Putin has changed many rules in the electoral system, for example, canceled the election of governors. So guys be careful.

Lemme guess, the FIRST thing Putin did was ATTACK the media, right?

 

[Crepitus]

Not exactly true - overall the social media giants have suspended/banned the accounts of a number of groups over the past few years. Right now, at this moment, it is certain Trump extremists who have openly called for and supported an attempted violent insurgency, and planned it on social media platforms. Should they have been left alone so they can have a re-do with more arms and competency? How is it any different than any other terrorist group?

This is a thoughtful post, IMO, and it is THE question right now.

I do not yet know what side I'm on. I guess one issue is, how much of the body politic wants a revolution. It is not a terrorist group, after all, if it's a majority. It might be the winning side; in fact, in my heart I hope so.

Though I am aware that war is never so much fun as it looks like it will be beforehand.

I'm on the side of our democratic institutions - we've up held them for more than two centuries and they've seen us through even worse times. To discard them now...well, I don't know what to say. Too many people today (imo, and including myself) lack the farsightedness, education, and self-restraint that the people who developed our Constitution had. To enact a revolution over losing an election, based on false conspiracy theories would be the worst reason for a revolution. Do you trust anyone to create a better Constitution? I don't.

Then grant people the freedom of speech in the constitution and stop trying to present alternative thought as evil to justify your inability to control your emotions.

You have freedom of speech. What you don't have is the freedom to shout it from someone else's front porch.

Good analogy. Cult45 won't get it.

Sadly, I believe you are correct.

 

[iceberg]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

 

[colfax_m]

If I say "Hmmm, that election looked shady"
They'll unperson me.

They won’t. But perhaps if you say “hmm, the election looked shady, let’s hang Mike Pence for not overturning it” they’ll probably not want you posting.

Oh, and since when is personhood dependent on social media? You losers need to get a life.

 

[Coyote]

You're right everyone on parler is not posting illegal activity and Apple gave them the chance to moderate and clean things up and they didn't.

The POINT of Parler is free speech without censorship, which is what you mean by moderation. I'm okay with free speech --- even if by Muslims, BLMs, antifa's ----- and Trumpists. I'd draw the line at live-streaming crimes, but not much more.

Consider, people: the really important thing about free speech is that then you know what people are actually thinking. We haven't had much free speech for too long, and so all the polls are worthless: people won't say what they think under the oppressive conditions we have been suffering. So then no one knows what people think and things like the Battle of Capitol Hill come out of nowhere, seemingly.

That is a good point.

BUT - the insurrection and attack on Capital Hill did not seemingly come out of nowhere. It was all out there. Security anticipated it and knew about it. Everyone was anticipating and worrying about violence. The ball got dropped either accidentally or deliberately somewhere starting right from traffic control.

 

[Viacheslav]

Lemme guess, the FIRST thing Putin did was ATTACK the media, right?

In general, yes, because independent TV channels showed unpleasant facts against Putin and lowered his rating.

 

[Coyote]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

 

[Circe]

You have freedom of speech. What you don't have is the freedom to shout it from someone else's front porch.

Good analogy. Cult45 won't get it.

Sadly, I believe you are correct.

The metaphor is elegant, but I believe inappropriate.

Facebook and Twitter both set up as sites where people could talk freely in real time. They both have BILLIONS of participants, and people being what we are, the free speech on these platforms has started wars all over the globe. This is just another one, you know: consider Egypt, Ukraine, etc., earlier.

One can see they are disconcerted, but they did set up their front porch as a public speechifying site!
Then suddenly they pull that back and say, no, no, this is not what we meant at all, you can only trade recipes on our sites, nothing more controversial than that! That's what Ravelry did: the women's knitting site. They restricted posts to NO TRUMP EVER. Leftism and knitting only. Oooooookaaay, but that's not free speech. I agree Twitter and Facebook can do that, but they'll lose customers in the millions: I read this morning that Twitter this very week HAS lost millions.

I suspect the concerted action against Parler by Apple, Amazon, and Google is partly an effort to stop the instant collapse of the two big social media companies. People are angry about being squelched and want free speech. They will go to the front porch that offers that.

 

[iceberg]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

You disagreed, did you not?

Wasn't weird at all.

 

[iceberg]

You're right everyone on parler is not posting illegal activity and Apple gave them the chance to moderate and clean things up and they didn't.

The POINT of Parler is free speech without censorship, which is what you mean by moderation. I'm okay with free speech --- even if by Muslims, BLMs, antifa's ----- and Trumpists. I'd draw the line at live-streaming crimes, but not much more.

Consider, people: the really important thing about free speech is that then you know what people are actually thinking. We haven't had much free speech for too long, and so all the polls are worthless: people won't say what they think under the oppressive conditions we have been suffering. So then no one knows what people think and things like the Battle of Capitol Hill come out of nowhere, seemingly.

That is a good point.

BUT - the insurrection and attack on Capital Hill did not seemingly come out of nowhere. It was all out there. Security anticipated it and knew about it. Everyone was anticipating and worrying about violence. The ball got dropped either accidentally or deliberately somewhere starting right from traffic control.

Yet the police still let them in.

Many times.

 

[OldLady]

The thing about a huge sudden new improvement in human communication is that it turns out what people really want to talk about is how much they hate each other and want to kill each other. This is normal. At least, maybe some of you don't like that, but -- yeah, it's totally normal for the human species.

The human species having evolved a brain have decided killing each other isn't such a good idea. And our democracy has decided that it is not going to be overthrown without a fight.

Our Democracy is all about freedom of speech. Even speech you don't like.

Which side is attacking that?

Sorry, i agree that this insurgency needs to be shut down, if it isn't too late. It is an authoritarian movement and I don't care how you prettify it with words like freedom and patriotism. At its heart, it wants to take over, with violence, the rule of our government by installing a man who lost the election.

They're not playin, and neither are we.

Your side can scream like a 15 year old that has had his phone taken away for a month, but it doesn't matter. Call me any name you want, say any damned fool thing you can think of about China and Stalin. We've been warning you for 4 years that Trump is an authoritarian and everyone said 'pshaw, YOU are.'

Toldja.

 

[OldLady]

I was born in the USSR and have lived for some time under a totalitarian communist regime with one party and only one government media. Then I lived in Russia for a long time and saw how Putin has usurped power from the very beginning. And at first, his steps were to take control of all more or less significant media in Russia. It looks like something like this is happening in the US right now.
But in Russia this was not enough, and Putin has changed many rules in the electoral system, for example, canceled the election of governors. So guys be careful.

Lemme guess, the FIRST thing Putin did was ATTACK the media, right?

Exactly.

 

[Crepitus]

You have freedom of speech. What you don't have is the freedom to shout it from someone else's front porch.

Good analogy. Cult45 won't get it.

Sadly, I believe you are correct.

The metaphor is elegant, but I believe inappropriate.

Facebook and Twitter both set up as sites where people could talk freely in real time. They both have BILLIONS of participants, and people being what we are, the free speech on these platforms has started wars all over the globe. This is just another one, you know: consider Egypt, Ukraine, etc., earlier.

One can see they are disconcerted, but they did set up their front porch as a public speechifying site!
Then suddenly they pull that back and say, no, no, this is not what we meant at all, you can only trade recipes on our sites, nothing more controversial than that! That's what Ravelry did: the women's knitting site. They restricted posts to NO TRUMP EVER. Leftism and knitting only. Oooooookaaay, but that's not free speech. I agree Twitter and Facebook can do that, but they'll lose customers in the millions: I read this morning that Twitter this very week HAS lost millions.

I suspect the concerted action against Parler by Apple, Amazon, and Google is partly an effort to stop the instant collapse of the two big social media companies. People are angry about being squelched and want free speech. They will go to the front porch that offers that.

Complain as much as you want, it's still their front porch.

 

[Circe]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

It's a fair argument in general, but your Eat'n'Park isn't setting itself up as the only entertainment site in the whole world. There are, in fact, strip joints that compete with, well, your performance (!! Are we really having this conversation?? ) so people who want that sort of thing, hopefully not many, can go -------- oh, never mind the logic, the thing is, Facebook and Twitter did set up as free speech sites, then radically took that back and now the Big Tech companies have banned together to suppress any alternative to their much-censored sites! Darn, that doesn't work, not for me and I bet for a lot of people. I think that free speech will find a way. And that Facebook and Twitter are endangering their corporate existence.

 

[iceberg]

The thing about a huge sudden new improvement in human communication is that it turns out what people really want to talk about is how much they hate each other and want to kill each other. This is normal. At least, maybe some of you don't like that, but -- yeah, it's totally normal for the human species.

The human species having evolved a brain have decided killing each other isn't such a good idea. And our democracy has decided that it is not going to be overthrown without a fight.

Our Democracy is all about freedom of speech. Even speech you don't like.

Which side is attacking that?

Sorry, i agree that this insurgency needs to be shut down, if it isn't too late. It is an authoritarian movement and I don't care how you prettify it with words like freedom and patriotism. At its heart, it wants to take over, with violence, the rule of our government by installing a man who lost the election.

They're not playin, and neither are we.

Your side can scream like a 15 year old that has had his phone taken away for a month, but it doesn't matter. Call me any name you want, say any damned fool thing you can think of about China and Stalin. We've been warning you for 4 years that Trump is an authoritarian and everyone said 'pshaw, YOU are.'

Toldja.

I don't believe I'm screaming. Just disagreeing.

And I sure don't believe I have called you any names.

You justify taking away rights from someone without due process, tell me again how that is "democracy"

 

[Coyote]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

You disagreed, did you not?

Wasn't weird at all.

Good grief man! Your ability to dodge and deflect and avoid addressing a post or question is ...well...worthy of accolade! Well done.

 

[iceberg]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

You disagreed, did you not?

Wasn't weird at all.

Good grief man! Your ability to dodge and deflect and avoid addressing a post or question is ...well...worthy of accolade! Well done.

Nowhere near your ability, however.
You call me a troll and run away all the time.

My point was we discussed it and you disagreed. No sense in rehashing it is there?

 

[OldLady]

You're right everyone on parler is not posting illegal activity and Apple gave them the chance to moderate and clean things up and they didn't.

The POINT of Parler is free speech without censorship, which is what you mean by moderation. I'm okay with free speech --- even if by Muslims, BLMs, antifa's ----- and Trumpists. I'd draw the line at live-streaming crimes, but not much more.

Consider, people: the really important thing about free speech is that then you know what people are actually thinking. We haven't had much free speech for too long, and so all the polls are worthless: people won't say what they think under the oppressive conditions we have been suffering. So then no one knows what people think and things like the Battle of Capitol Hill come out of nowhere, seemingly.

That is a good point.

BUT - the insurrection and attack on Capital Hill did not seemingly come out of nowhere. It was all out there. Security anticipated it and knew about it. Everyone was anticipating and worrying about violence. The ball got dropped either accidentally or deliberately somewhere starting right from traffic control.

Yet the police still let them in.

Many times.

The Capitol police were hopelessly outnumbered. A good number of them were inside protecting the lives of the Congress people and those guarding the outside were facing how many? I don't know what makes you pretend the police invited them in willingly. They didn't.

 

[Coyote]

I guess since you lived in Russia you don't understand that business and government aren't the same thing here in the United States.

Amazon isn't the government. So the government doesn't have anything to do with what Amazon has done.

There is, of course, a difference, but the trend is common, for example, when the elections of governors were canceled in Russia, Putin said that it was for the sake of fighting terrorism. When they started regulating the Internet and banned some sites like Linkedin, they used similar reasons terrorism, pedophiles, personal data protection.

Amazon probably did it to not be held responsible for allowing parler to be on their platform with all the treason, terrorism and conspiring to overthrow our legally elected government and kill our Vice President.

I thought that this decision should be made by the court, and not just a private company.

If you live here in America you need to understand that private business isn't the government.

Formally, the same is true in Russia, but they "quite accidentally" follow the Kremlin's agenda.

This is what I told Coyote that a court or our legal system determines who is acting inappropriately. Not "private" companies.

She of course disagreed.

Weird thing to say. So private property owners can't determine who is and isn't allowed or who does or does not violate their rules.

I mentioned this before and I will again.

If I decide to strip and dance naked on the tables at my local Eat'n'Park, the owners would not be allowed to have me escorted off the premises or make the determination that I was acting inappropriately.

If someone was vandalizing my property, I would not be allowed to show them a gun and tell them to get off the premises.

If a restaurant has a sign saying "no shirt, no shoes, no service" they would not be allowed to make the determination that my shirtless shoeless self will not be served and will be asked to leave.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Or maybe not.

It's a fair argument in general, but your Eat'n'Park isn't setting itself up as the only entertainment site in the whole world. There are, in fact, strip joints that compete with, well, your performance (!! Are we really having this conversation?? ) so people who want that sort of thing, hopefully not many, can go -------- oh, never mind the logic, the thing is, Facebook and Twitter did set up as free speech sites, then radically took that back and now the Big Tech companies have banned together to suppress any alternative to their much-censored sites! Darn, that doesn't work, not for me and I bet for a lot of people. I think that free speech will find a way. And that Facebook and Twitter are endangering their corporate existence.

But this is where I think you need to separate the issues.

Private companies have every right to set their own rules for conduct.

IF, in fact, there is evidence that competition is being deliberately squashed or they are banding together to eliminate it, then it needs to be seriously investigated under anti-trust laws. In fact, I so think we have been seriously lax on enforcing anti-trust laws for decades now.


...oh and I promise I won't dance nekkid on USMB to test the theory

 

[iceberg]

You're right everyone on parler is not posting illegal activity and Apple gave them the chance to moderate and clean things up and they didn't.

The POINT of Parler is free speech without censorship, which is what you mean by moderation. I'm okay with free speech --- even if by Muslims, BLMs, antifa's ----- and Trumpists. I'd draw the line at live-streaming crimes, but not much more.

Consider, people: the really important thing about free speech is that then you know what people are actually thinking. We haven't had much free speech for too long, and so all the polls are worthless: people won't say what they think under the oppressive conditions we have been suffering. So then no one knows what people think and things like the Battle of Capitol Hill come out of nowhere, seemingly.

That is a good point.

BUT - the insurrection and attack on Capital Hill did not seemingly come out of nowhere. It was all out there. Security anticipated it and knew about it. Everyone was anticipating and worrying about violence. The ball got dropped either accidentally or deliberately somewhere starting right from traffic control.

Yet the police still let them in.

Many times.

The Capitol police were hopelessly outnumbered. A good number of them were inside protecting the lives of the Congress people and those guarding the outside were facing how many? I don't know what makes you pretend the police invited them in willingly. They didn't.

You not seen videos of them moving barricades to let them in then opening the door for them?

Maybe because I saw it and read up on it not using pre approved sources.