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> Can you point to where in AWS TOS this is defined?

It's laid out in the court documents.

https://deadline.com/2021/01/amazon-court-filing-parler-for-...

> We need to agree first that this is a subjective decision on AWS part, regardless of which side of the aisle we fall on.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here? We need to agree that Amazon's Terms of Service are subjective? Or are we going to start digging into the rabbit hole of definitions of words like "Harm"?

As with any legal discussion, ultimately the courts decide. But the fact that the court didn't see a need to give Parler the injunctive relief they sought says a bunch.

> I implore you to step out of the political lens for this argument.

I haven't said anything political. I said Parler is in Breech with Amazon. Obviously that's up to a judge to decide, but early signs suggest the judge doesn't favor Parler. If the judge thought Parler was likely to succeed in this case, they'd have given them the injuction they sought.

> You don't have to search too hard to find such content on twitter and FB as well.

You can certainly find threats and hate speech on Twitter and Facebook, but many many people have been banned and many posts have been blocked for such speech.

Parler was created because of the moderating people were facing on Twitter and Facebook. If Twitter and Facebook didn't block this kind of content Parler would not exist.

> Let me ask you for a minute to pretend you are right wing, and you start that recipe making app -- you will not be at peace even though current app is just fine.

Depends. Is it a recipe app that allows users to make death threats to each other? This is literally what we're talking about here, death threats, rape threats, discussing kidnapping people.



let me step back 1 more time...

forget court cases, Parler - what its doing etc.

-- lets focus on tech perspective

take a tech CTO, who looks at AWS TOS. Do you find any terms that provide details on the moderation needed? There can be any number of apps and business models -- so when his company gets such a notice, what can be done?

there was also the case of a baker who disagreed to serve gay people with their wedding cakes, and amazon TOS also has rules against discrimination. This case went to courts etc but lets say this guy has his site on AWS. In a similar vein, AWS could also dump this guy right?

So far, one looked as AWS as infrastructure just like your electric, phone or gas company - going forward, there will be a re-think here.

Basically my point is that whatever is not in your control can be taken away from you. And in these days of SaaS and Cloud computing, pretty much most of it is not in your control.

This is a huge risk, and new business models will emerge to help mitigate this risk


Apologies for a second reply.

> forget court cases, Parler - what its doing etc.

So we'll just pretend we can rewind to back prior to the Capitol riot & clown show. Got it.

> So far, one looked as AWS as infrastructure just like your electric, phone or gas company - going forward, there will be a re-think here.

If we "forget about Parler", why would a tech CTO think any differently this week than they did the prior week?

Take away Parler and all of your hypothetical CTO's concerns about Amazon melt away.


my friend, how will they melt away? It just was'nt imagined.

If we step back to 2018 - No BLM, no capitol riots -- no one would even imagine a AWS pulling the plug.

As a startup, it used to be a no-brainer to start on AWS first.

The advice given then was not get entired by AWS goodies that locks one to the platform, but one never thought much of using EC2

What i started arguing for was that there will be an interface on top of EC2, that would enable one to provision just as fast on Azure, Google or on bare metal.

In this case, one can still get on AWS, and if you have a problem, be able to transition to your own server as fast as you can.

this is obviously not in AWS or Google's interest, so needs to be a community driven open source effort, with the entrenched players constantly trying to break their APIs where possible.


> If we step back to 2018 - No BLM, no capitol riots -- no one would even imagine a AWS pulling the plug.

There has always been content which you cannot host on Amazon. Prior to Parler, Amazon booted Wikileaks, Amazon also doesn't host pornography, there are other carve-outs as well.

You are highly indexed on this one event, but it's not unique or particularly eye opening. 8chan suffered a similar fate for exactly the same reason as Parler.

If your business relies on hosting certain types of content, your options are greatly limited (and have been for almost from the start). This kind of speech is more toxic than pornography and it's treated as such. Business owners are capable of making this kind of distinction, or they can hire legal to help with it.


i have been twitter, FB, parler and 8chan. For some reason, never checked out gab.

have you been on all of this?

I sincerely can tell you that parler is no worse than twitter. 8chan - different story.

hence, unfair comparison - that it is hate speech (which even though 1A protects it, we can agree that there is a line that could be crossed - lets not argue about that line here) my contention is that in parler (or a future app's case) -- it may not be hate speech, but 'speech we hate' -- since that definition is made by same entities.

I want to know if you are just following what you heard from media, or first-hand.


> This is a huge risk, and new business models will emerge to help mitigate this risk

There is always a risk when you build your business on a platform then blatantly ignore the contract you sign. Most businesses will mitigate this risk by actually reading and following the terms of contracts they enter into.

The business model you are referring to is called having a legal department. Most businesses do.




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