AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

http://e.customeriomail.com/e/c/eyJlbWFpbF9pZCI6ImRnT1I5d0tSOXdJQ0FBRjItNktITG9nMzJHMVJUMVpMMjM4PSIsImhyZWYiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jb3VydGxpc3RlbmVyLmNvbS9yZWNhcC9nb3YudXNjb3VydHMud2F3ZC4yOTQ2NjQvZ292LnVzY291cnRzLndhd2QuMjk0NjY0LjEwLjBfMS5wZGY_dXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPSU1QlRJLUFNLUxFQURTJTVEK1RoZStJblx1MDAyNnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTEwMDI5NTlcdTAwMjZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsXHUwMDI2dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1jaW9cdTAwMjZ1dG1fdGVybT0xMDAwMzAxIiwicG9zaXRpb24iOjN9/a172f75edf7a67b53384dbdfe1e18c87ed799b438fb36dcbd364e9e32719d53a

by imraj96 • 6 years ago

40 92 6 years ago

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newacct5834• 6 years ago

Editorialized title. Link is to the response Amazon filed yesterday to Parler's law suit.

That said, yeah. I don't know why people are screaming so hard about censorship when the simple truth is that this was an attempt to retroactively apply moderation to a community that had verifiably gotten out of control, at a moment where it was clear that many of these threats were real and not just rhetoric.

gfodor10• 6 years ago

There are two things that can be true at the same time:

- Amazon was within its legal and ethical rights to do this, and ought to win any court cases, etc.

- The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it.

tshaddox• 6 years ago

Is there a feasible plan to obtain better power structures in the same time scales that these people are literally plotting to overthrow governments, murder political opponents, etc.?

res0nat0r• 6 years ago

The check and balance is working just fine in this case. Parler kept allowing people to post death threats, they didn't remove it because that's the entire reason their platform exists, and AWS enforced their TOS and stopped hosting them. They're free to go elsewhere.

_jal• 6 years ago

On your second point, there will always be power structures. You can't not have them, when considering realistic arrangements made of humans.

So now what?

Is the complaint really that the gatekeepers are different than they were 30 or 100 years ago?

Or that there is no realistic alternative that could have acted, citing some authority you find more agreeable, in an effective timeframe?

JamesBarney7• 6 years ago

- The aggregate situation of de-platforming of individuals and entire platforms from the Internet by a few unilateral decisions by corporations reveals a power structure we ought to not want (it has always been there, but now it's undeniably shown itself willing and able to exercise its power when needed) since it will inevitably be abused given incentives and the lack of checks and balances on it.

When it's more than five separate organizations that all independently decide to deplatform is it still a unilateral decision? I also doubt these decisions were made unilaterally in the companies themselves.

In this specific circumstance do we need to regulate these businesses to keep them from removing content related to organizing a violent insurrection?

No one even removed this content until these groups literally stormed the capital chanting about hanging members of congress. I don't see the problem.

jonstewart• 6 years ago

If my “editorialized” you mean “edited,” yes. But it’s not opinionated, it’s stated as fact in the filing with specific details backing it up.

dqv• 6 years ago

It's editorialized. The non-editorialized title of this post would be "Parler, LLC v. Amazon Web Services, Inc."

tehjoker2• 6 years ago

I'm not totally sure what to think, but aren't many violent acts planned on Facebook and Twitter? Wasn't the insurrection at the capitol? Yet, the big boys aren't paying the price, it's the competitor that suddenly got popular that wasn't able to be influenced by politicos.

brandmeyer• 6 years ago

it's the competitor that suddenly got popular.

You're omitting a key detail. This competitor was getting popular specifically because of their promise not to remove such violent content, while Facebook and Twitter were steadily ramping up efforts to remove it from their platforms.

michaelmcdonald• 6 years ago

The difference: FB is alerted to those posts, they (eventually) take them down / close the communities. Parler was straight up telling AWS to piss off.

jcranmer• 6 years ago

Twitter definitely made moves to crack down on this stuff (after all, that's why Parler thinks it was poised to gain a lot of traffic). Parler complains about the "Hang Mike Pence" hashtag, but omits the fact that Twitter in fact did kill the hashtag.

Parler's sin was basically to attempt no moderation whatsoever, and even after it was clear that several individuals intended to make good on their threats (see the invasion of the Capitol), did not seem to be willing to make any serious attempts to moderate content. See ¶6 of https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... for some discussion.

(Note that the executive's name in that declaration is redacted because (s)he is legitimately concerned for violence should their name be made available to the public.)

newacct5834• 6 years ago

but aren't many violent acts planned on Facebook and Twitter?

Shouldn't anyone who plans a violent act on Facebook or Twitter (or Reddit, or HN, or wherever) be banned?

Note that both of those sites are ALSO in the process of desperately cleaning up their violent sub-communities. There's a somewhat humorous running gag right now of conservative thought leaders suddenly complaining that their follower counts are going down.

And as far as Parler specifically: it didn't "suddently get popular" in a vacuum. Parler absolutely was functioning as a kind of "ban evasion mechanism for Twitter". People who got tossed from Twitter (generally, yes, for violent rhetoric) would find a home there, and bring there followers. There was very little organic growth, it was effectively all cannibalized from Twitter.

NoOneNew• 6 years ago

According to this, both Twitter and Facebook use aws: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws

There have been a lot of livestreams and general calls of hate and violence on those social media sites from all political spectrums. Where are their bans? That's why theres an uproar.

New York Times, A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Pretty sure that can be considered violence. I think I feel that way due to the genocide part. Where's Facebook's ban? Oh wait, that's right, big tech is it's own good ol'boys club.

Maken• 6 years ago

Facebook and Twitter have evident moderation (if maybe insufficient) working on removing or flagging such calls to violence. The argument of this case is not about whether there were user messages calling for execution of public figures, it's about whether Parler did anything about it.

gfodor10• 6 years ago

The argument is Facebook and Twitter are doing a better job of moderating, and Parler isn't or is outright not moderating their content.

This may well be true. But the point is now we're arguing a very subjective standard, and the determiners of those standards aren't a judge or jury, but a few CEOs. The standard of "when is it justified to refuse to host an entire platform based upon the nature of how they moderate their worst content" is an incredibly complex question, with no objective answer, and how these company's answer it has a profound effect on freedom of speech, since deplatforming a site like Parler doesn't just censor the speech of those who ought to be censored (by any standard), but everyone else on the platform.

It's fairly obvious where this will lead, but I doubt we will correct it before it causes immense harm (not necessarily directly, but due to the blowback that will come from censorship without due process and tit-for-tat escalation.)

fxleach• 6 years ago

Twitter and Facebook both use their own data centers, with Twitter only recently (mid December 2020) announcing that they will be migrating to use some AWS. They also try to manage their content moderation as best they can and have policies and practices in place to remove content that violates their standards. Parler relies solely on AWS and has 0 content moderation. There are stark differences.

dgellow6• 6 years ago

So, I'm not arguing one way or another, I just want to try out the following for the sake of discussion as I haven't seen it elsewhere: if we consider Amazon to be an infrastructure provider, and that by doing this they have a duty of neutrality, instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation. If they find something considered bad enough to take the platform down, they would ask Amazon to take it offline. An argument for this is that it gives elected or at least government-related people some overview over the process instead of giving full power to private companies (which will backfire against the good people if normalized).

Please tell me why that would be bad, I'm interested to know.

newacct5834• 6 years ago

instead of shutting down Parler directly the approach would be to send a complain to a relevant federal authority (not sure which one that would be, maybe the FBI? please correct me) and let them do their investigation.

It has been suggested by many people that in fact the causality goes the other way. The reason for the near-simultaneous action against Parler from Twilio, Google, Apple and Amazon seems likely to have been a strong suggestion from Federal law enforcement about an imminent threat.

There's no evidence for that per se, but certainly the threat seems imminent.

vel0city3• 6 years ago

I expect common carriers to have a duty to neutrality and defer to at least some government agency with oversight before deciding to pull the plug.

There is one rail line to carry grain in and out of a community. That rail line is a common carrier. It shouldn't be able to arbitrarily decide whose cargo to carry or not.

There is realistically only one ISP at my home. That should be a common carrier. They shouldn't be able to arbitrarily choose which IP addresses I can connect to or not, or what ports I can choose to talk on. I realistically have no choice on who to choose for that, so there's no market for alternative providers for me.

AWS is not a common carrier. If you get dropped from AWS there's still Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM/Softlayer, Hertzner, Digital Ocean, Linode, Hostgator, Dreamhost, and so many other smaller cloud/VPS providers out there. And that's assuming you're for some reason entirely unable to roll your own hardware and move your app into a colo, of which there are literally hundreds of providers in the US alone. There is lots of competition in the cloud hosting industry, and if you widen it to the hosting industry in general its extremely wide.

49para• 6 years ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

Not sure why people insist on posting comments like those identified. If you were publicly identified as making those comments, you would definitely be at risk of losing friends/jobs etc.

But that said, Parler isn't alone in their issue with inappropriate comments.

shakezula• 6 years ago

But they would seem to be alone in their refusal to moderate them.

kmfrk• 6 years ago

Resolved URL because something in my adblocker keeps me from being forwarded, UTM tags removed:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

Mods can add a [.pdf] in title, perhaps. :)

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

Yes please change this URL!

nromiun2• 6 years ago

I am not on Twitter, but wasn't #HangMikePence trending a few days ago? Isn't it a bit hypocritical when one of the biggest social network is allowed to do the same thing?

arenaninja2• 6 years ago

It was a hashtag about a video of the DC rioters chanting it. Context matters, and in this context it wasn't hypocritical at all

Source: not on twitter but am familiar with the video

nromiun2• 6 years ago

It seems like there were some death threats on Twitter as well. Most of them were removed so I can't find any direct source.

When the rioters could not find and fulfil their ill-formed dreams in the real life, they took to Twitter to express their wish to hang Mike Pence, and soon the phrase started trending on Twitter. [0]

0. https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-blocks-phrase-hang-mik...

finikytou3• 6 years ago

I dont understand your point... Couldn't people watch this video and think that they were right? Hence twitter was doing exactly the same thing than parler. It is not because you are under the impression that twitter is a democrat tool that people not thinking like you are using the platform to commit crime, promote violence, learn how to be violent and racist

yoav• 6 years ago

Ya but they deleted that trend and those tweets and users violated the guidelines and were warned, suspended, etc.

Parler refused to do anything about it and built their whole business on being a safe space for people wanting to incite and plan violence. That’s the difference.

api• 6 years ago

I've come down to a "both things are true" position on this.

Parler is absolutely guilty of violating TOS because as near as I can tell the entire purpose of Parler was to facilitate this kind of discussion.

That being said, there is a double standard at work as well. The fascist movement we're discussing here probably would not exist were it not for the YouTube recommendation algorithm, which in an effort to keep people on the site has a powerful "rabbit hole" effect. Twitter has also been full of propaganda for years, and only recently have they put forth much effort to do anything about it... because they were making money off the attention it brought to the platform. Nothing happens to these companies because they are bigger, have more money, and own their own infrastructure.

kordlessagain• 6 years ago

Being hypocritical requires an individual to be in that state, but here you mention a vague group being in that state, which isn't a thing.

yashap2• 6 years ago

Amazon’s main argument seems to be that they’ve been asking Parler to remove overt calls to violence since mid/late November, but Parler have refused. While Twitter does moderate this sort of thing, especially when asked to do so. I believe Twitter has been deleting #KillMikePence Tweets that are actually calling for violence, but haven’t been moderating Tweets that aren’t overt threats, like “OMG #KillMikePence was trending on Twitter”, or “Capitol rioters were chanting #KillMikePence” type Tweets.

If that’s all true, then to me it seems reasonable. I’d liken it to DCMA Takedowns - if you respond to them in a timely manner, and your site’s primary purpose isn’t sharing copyrighted content, you’re fine. You’re in trouble though if you refuse to take down the copyrighted content, despite receiving DCMA Takedowns.

gfodor10• 6 years ago

DMCA takedowns are defined by the legal system. The system you are describing here is completely defined by these companies. They are in their right to do so, but we ought to ask the question if we should introduce a legal structure like the DMCA to standardize it from a legal standpoint. This would cut both ways: if they de-platformed people complying with the standard, they would be in the wrong. As it is right now, AWS can just arbitrarily decide the standard. The only incentive they have to make it a reasonable one is public outcry, which is not the kind of backstop you want when it comes to possibly harming fundamental freedoms.

jtbayly• 6 years ago

I can immediately find BLM and antifa calls for violence like this on Twitter and FB.

I can also report them and it might be removed fairly quickly. How? Remember all those articles about the practical slave labor camps of content reviewers with psychological problems that everybody was horrified by? And how we said we needed to stop doing that? Yeah, Parler doesn't have those slave camps.

And by the way, do you know how long it took for FB and Twitter to get to semi-decent moderation?

FTA: “During one of the calls, Parler’s CEO reported that Parler had a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violated its community standards and remained on its service.”

Parler might have refused on some of them, but the above is obviously a big part of the issue. Plus, if some people are willing to justify Twitter leaving up the "hang Mike Pence" stuff, then surely there will be some disagreement about what exactly should be removed on Parler based on context, yes?

JamesBarney7• 6 years ago

This was addressed in the document. The basic answer is AWS doesn't host Twitter(so it's not hypocritical), and Twitter blocked this phrase.

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

This was a finely worded, AWS does not host Twitter Feeds, but they are in contract to host Twitter timelines...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+ti...

LatteLazy4• 6 years ago

It seemed to my unaided eye that the only reasonable point in the lawsuit from Parler was that they were given 30ish hours notice and the contract required 30 days.

AWS have addressed that point.

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

Is it really a suspension and not a termination?

LatteLazy4• 6 years ago

If its a 30 day suspension, and they give notice to terminate at the same time, its both?

rcostin2k2• 6 years ago

Leaving aside the discution regarding the monopoly position of AMAZON (or other technology companies), I wonder if the PARLER situation would not have been the same if it had gone to any other company offering the same services and used a pre-ownership platform. If they had developed their own stack, wouldn't their flexibility have been greater?

up2isomorphism2• 6 years ago

AWS should have no responsibilities on what is on the platform and it is also not taking all the responsibilities, so it should not pretend taking one.

That is totally legal process's role. Anyone hope a A decide what B should do for C is just not understanding the dynamics in human society.

finikytou3• 6 years ago

I struggle to understand how it is not a way to remove a competitor and move the spotlight from those companies doing a good deed vs the black duck being parler.

Twitter let ISIS terrorists post beadings and murders on its platform. A simple search on any racial keyword will show plenty of hatred that is everywhere on its platform. Facebook, not even talking about what they do, the way they use data, advertise, and leave content that is racist/dangerous.

And now that parler jumps in without the $ of twitter and facebook and the process/software that took years for a FB to be able delete violent content then we censor them from the outside?

How about we censor google for doing business with china and promoting censorship? Id say that is a good enough argument for the US governement to nationalize google and remove them from their monopoly.

detaro• 6 years ago

not a way to remove a competitor

Competitor to what? Amazon isn't particularly relevant in the social media space. (Goodreads and IMDB are the most social sites they run afaik, and that's a bit far fetched)

finikytou3• 6 years ago

competitor as a technology company and as a platform. amazon just wanted to participate to something "good" so that they look like the good guys... How about them destroying small businesses and coming out of covid as one of the only marketplace on earth that made billions out of people misery and despair? Id rank that way higher than a bunch of conspiracy theorist on a shady and bad twitter-clone.

I wonder if they'd do same when the CCP is hosting stuff on their server such as list of people or software that directly help to put people into jail.

There is a tendency within tech to think there are bad guys and good guys. I see 0 difference between palantir/parler and amazon,fb,google. Or yes there is. the scale of the later is way scarier and way more dangerous for us. aaron schwartz sad death anniversary was 2 days ago and yet we never learn, we don't understand that this is just showing how dangerous those platforms can be for the people.

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

Twitter signed a large deal with AWS to host some of Twitters service...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Aws+to+deliver+Twitter+contract+ti...

up2isomorphism2• 6 years ago

All AWS/GCP/Azure is tell you guys: build you damn infrastructure, learn how to install software and configure you routes.

If this is not clear, I do not know what is.

stickfigure• 6 years ago

It's worth pointing out the offensive content cited in the document:

* “Fry’em up. The whole fkn crew. #pelosi #aoc #thesquad #soros #gates #chuckschumer #hrc #obama #adamschiff #blm #antifa we are coming for you and you will know it.”

* “#JackDorsey ... you will die a bloody death alongside Mark Suckerturd [Zuckerberg].... It has been decided and plans are being put in place. Remember the photographs inside your home while you slept? Yes, that close. You will die a sudden death!”

* “We are going to fight in a civil War on Jan.20th, Form MILITIAS now and acquire targets.”

* “On January 20th we need to start systematicly [sic] assassinating [sic] #liberal leaders, liberal activists, #blm leaders and supporters, members of the #nba #nfl #mlb #nhl #mainstreammedia anchors and correspondents and #antifa. I already have a news worthy event planned.”

* “Shoot the police that protect these shitbag senators right in the head then make the senator grovel a bit before capping they ass.”

* “After the firing squads are done with the politicians the teachers are next.”

* “Death to @zuckerberg @realjeffbezos @jackdorsey @pichai.”

* “White people need to ignite their racial identity and rain down suffering and death like a hurricane upon zionists.”

* “Put a target on these motherless trash [Antifa] they aren’t human taking one out would be like stepping on a roach no different.”

* “We need to act like our forefathers did Kill [Black and Jewish people] all Leave no victims or survivors.”

* “We are coming with our list we know where you live we know who you are and we are coming for you and it starts on the 6th civil war... Lol if you will think it’s a joke... Enjoy your last few days you have.”

* “This bitch [Stacey Abrams] will be good target practice for our beginners.”

* “This cu* [United States Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao] should be... hung for betraying their country.”

* “Hang this mofo [Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger] today.”

* “HANG THAt N*** ASAP”

It's indefensible.

LatteLazy4• 6 years ago

Wait, what did the NBA and NHL do?

orwin• 6 years ago

They support racial equity, a lot of NBA and NFL player (don't know about NHL) supported their communities during Covid + BLM and paid bail/lawyer money in some states so people get their right to vote back. NBA stars were particularly active during the first lockdown.

dgellow6• 6 years ago

For sure, that's horrible. But the hot question is: is Amazon the entity who should decide to shut it down?

I would personally prefer to have that decision be taken by a governmental agency or anything else managed by an elected person. Now, I'm not a US citizen, and I have zero trust in the current US administration, but in a "normal" context I would want to have at least some governmental overview of the shutdown process instead of delegating the full power to a private corporation.

Edit: In a "Trump" context, I really don't know... Really sad to see this country dying slowly.

jfengel2• 6 years ago

Here's another hot question: if it were your computer, would you like a government agency telling you if you should leave it up or take it down?

JamesBarney7• 6 years ago

I think Amazon the entity is exactly the right person to decide who their customers are and what their contractual obligations are to those customers.

If I ran a SaaS I definitely wouldn't want to submit a form to some government entity and wait 3 months for some bureaucrat to decide whether or not I can stop serving a customer that I am contractually allowed to stop serving.

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

What is indefensible, letting users post this garbage, letting it linger too long, or not removing it?

neilsense3• 6 years ago

I can find thousands of the same thing on Twitter from right and left people. When does Twitter get cancelled.

cozuya4• 6 years ago

No you can't.

filleokus• 6 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but I got really surprised when it was "revealed" that Parler was using AWS.

Creating a public forum marketed towards "free speech" seems to me to fall into roughly the same category as a torrent tracker or other file sharing service. Not exactly illegal (maybe), but definitely not something that the cloud providers want to be associated with.

In Sweden we have Flashback.org, an old school PHPBB/vBulletin-looking forum with a very strong free speech stance (attracting all kind of people, including those you can imagine being enticed by those rules). It's of course not hosted on any cloud plattform, or using services from any big hip tech company.

Honestly it seems like a strange misstake for them to do, if you are dealing in one of these gray areas, you should probably find some hosting provider / ISP actually interested in hosting you and just do it yourself.

JamesBarney7• 6 years ago

I had the same thoughts. Just from an operational standpoint if your selling point is "we'll host the content one one else will" you should probably be self hosting or at the very least renting a rack from someone who is contractually obligated not to pull the plug on you.

noWeigh2• 6 years ago

So “Big Tech” is in the spotlight for suppressing speech explicitly.

Meanwhile, traditional media implicitly aligns minds to defend Democrat/Republican duopoly, who in turn protect American aristocratic power, lest those poor billionaires suffer humiliating figurative death.

I do not really see the “I was hear first so I won for life.” as fostering open debate.

newacct5834• 6 years ago

Why is this topic flagged, when so (so) many on the same subject that didn't present evidence of Parler's crimes hit the front page?

edbob• 6 years ago

I don't know why some topics are flagged while others aren't, but Parler didn't commit any crimes.

Balgair• 6 years ago

HN typically doesn't like it when threads devolve, and users will then flag the thread as such.

hnburnsy6• 6 years ago

Lots of weird stuff in there, Amazon says Parler is suspended, but not terminated, but then says it will preserve data and help with migration. Which is it? Does Parler have a path to removing the suspension?

Additionally, Amazon says Parler does moderate and remove content, but not with a sense of urgency. How does Amazon define this sense of urgency? Parler was suspended because it wasn't quick enough to remove posts all while trying to manage 12 million users, 2.3 million DAU, and have explosive growth. Is a backlog of 26000 reports really a large number?

AWS repeatedly warned Parler about posts urging murder

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