skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I assume that's what people want!

Having been on the 'Net since before the Eternal September, I haven't been able to quite understand this drive to purge "things I don't like" from public forums.

If grandma is really lovely, but has some bad habits from her youth or a different time or something -- then don't mark her post as "racist".

I don't believe, either, that people are incapable of learning. If she spews hateful invective and then doesn't get happy-birthday wishes, she'll learn! Sheesh.

Remember, your K-means Clustering will be public; its easy to see where you stand, and why you got there! If people in your preferred group prefer to not see people spouting the N-word, you might want to consider reforming your habits and beliefs, if you want to remain a functioning part of that group!

The problem is not moderation: it's the belief in a consequence-free existence.

Restore evidence-based reality == restore civilized society.

But, there are a lot of people who don't like that idea.
I'm surprised Parler didn't see this coming a mile off. Sure you can pretend to live in your own reality bubble, but you've got to realistic about decisions like "host our site on someone else's computer".
I don't really believe a single thing that comes out of Josh Hawley's mouth.

But if I did, that doesn't point to any kind of "collusion" over Parler, since those hearings occurred months ago.
yes, but they also deserve the criticism that comes with the action. it was the right action, but done way too late, and in a way that now looks vengeful and petty.
The one in Christchurch NZ was streamed by the shooter.
You're saying people in power having the ability to censor free speech is free speech in itself? Uh, ok. Interesting.
Isn't "being on life support" nearly the opposite of "set to skyrocket" from a service perspective?
At this time, it's becoming clear that the GOP establishment is in favor of de facto one-party rule. They are seeking to overturn the results of a democratic election, and many of them are encouraging voter disenfranchisement and even stochastic terrorism to retain their grip on power.
They changed it "to address the Violent Attack at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021". Check the link again.
And in doing so, they would be forming a centralized information cartel. And the opportunities for abuse of such systems is now more than apparent. They have effectively booted a Twitter competitor off the internet, working in concert. If that's not legal cause for antitrust action, then antitrust is no longer a thing.
> Child porn is illegal, hate speech (and in lots of places, "incitement") is not.

Isn't "imminent lawless action" the limit of free speech? it seems clear after January 6th that a part of what was promoted on Parler was both imminent and lawless.
Whether you like him or not, Zuckerberg has gotten in a lot of trouble over the years for resisting censorship pressure. His actions suggest it’s something he values
The corporate party (ie mainstream D's and R's + MSM + BigTech) seems completely desperate.

Perhaps its just the quality of blackmail the CCP has on them....
This is a pretty weasely argument from Glenn. Many of the people who invaded the Capitol weren’t arrested, period.

Sympathy for white supremacy within law enforcement is its own thorny issue, but we certainly shouldn’t let it deter us from taking action against places we know domestic terrorists plan their attacks.
It's weird how inconsistent they are about it

Tweets from Ayatollah Khomeini talking about how Israel is a cancer[1] that needs to be violently eradicated[2] apparently don't run afoul of the "Glorification of Violence" policy. OTOH Trump's 2 tweets, which were tame in comparison, were bannable.

[1]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784

[2]: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263742339891298304
I would love to see Amazon drop Twitter and other large clients, and vice versa

I might drop everything and start building data center myself if that’s the case
You can still sideload apps on android can you not? So you're really talking about Apple.
The German government maintains a blacklist of websites not suitable for minors. We can use this blacklist when setting up web access for children to block at least the worst websites (mainly porn). The last time I checked, 4Chan was not on that list.
There are a billion places to rent a server these days. I don't feel bad for them at all and I do not see an issue here.

The only issue I see frankly is that it took people this fucking long to wake up and stop playing the Trump game.
We could rebuild social media on the same principles as the World Wide Web, where it's not run by any single group at all. (I'd argue that's actually what we had back in the days of the "blogosphere".)
Dave Troy made this thread on twitter telling why this is not so simple.

https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1348219824506368000
I used to feel that the stigma should follow you but I’ve changed my mind because I do not believe that stigma works, is overly punitive, and forces people back into crime.

Now I believe that if you pay your debt to society, you should be square with the house and your punishment should stop including any ex-judicial punishment like denying people work they are otherwise qualified for. I think reasonable exceptions can be made for sensitive jobs involving money handling or children.
> Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web.

Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they register a domain without using a private corporation?

Basically, I'm asking how you can realistically "self host" without going through a private corporation that might decide to cut you off at some level in the stack?
I would. He showed the screenshot and Zuckerberg didn't deny it. At any rate, I wouldn't consider Zuckerberg a trustworthy source these days.
You are confused, Centra is an internal Facebook tool for monitoring users. They separately discussed a tool for coordination on hashtags that is not Centra.
https://www.arlingtoncardinal.com/2020/11/facebook-centra-su...
Something I rarely see brought up in these articles is the difficulty of defining "data" and who would own it. If I buy something on Amazon to be shipped to me from a third party seller, which part of that transaction is data that belongs to me? To Amazon? The the third party?

The article ventures a short list: "websites visited, credit card purchases, workout routines, music streamed", but I don't see how that could ever be turned into a coherent definition. A "credit card purchase" likely involves a dozen distinct parties with their own individual role and view of the event.
In seeing all of these complaints about the cloud providers getting too big, owning the internet etc, have folks forgotten how to run their own equipment or what renting a dedicated server is?

The internet did function prior to cloud computing existing and surprise, running a rack full of NUCs can give you a lot of capacity to run a glorified message board.
This Glen Greebwald who "quit" in protest to his false Hunter Biden witch hunt?

The guy lost all credibility pushing that fake bullshit story so far he lost his job at his own news org.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-quits-the-inte...
This is quite clearly yet another lawsuit without merit just to grab headlines, and will be dropped or dismissed before it gets to trial. What's sad is that we are giving them the attention they want.
Doesn't this basically boil down to the model we currently have, but decentralized, or am I misunderstanding?
Worth nothing that Amazon's Acceptable Use Policy also bars any service that could harm Amazon's own reputation. The bar isn't as high as illegal activity.
Parler was given 24 hours to come up with and implement a moderation policy. They might as well have received no time at all.

Edit: it turns out Parler actually did have policies and moderation against violent content

And what use is having a moderation policy when it isn’t getting implemented anyways? KSA can still post on Twitter. Hardcore pornography will continue to exist on Reddit. Users will continue to insinuate violence on Facebook.
Unless something debilitates the CCP first, this isn't going to happen soon. Maybe when Xi Jinping retires.
> Sectarian violence is not just a term for non-Western countries.

Has it ever been? Probably the best known use of the word in many countries is The Troubles.
Yep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
Parler had the same "political ideology" the week before the violence. No one cared about their ideology. Once specific violent acts occured, and calls went un-addressed on Parler for more violence, people started to care.

The violence is the issue, not the ideology.
I have serious issues with China. But I also think that there are lessons to learn from many different models.

The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.
This is the hell I have come to live and be trapped in partially as a result of the pandemic. Those things are pure evil manifest.
> Power-only cables really are not a thing for USB-C. You need at least the configuration channel in order to negotiate charging voltage and maximum current.

Ouch. USB-C is even more fucked up than I thought… How does that even works with USB wall chargers?

> Nor have I seen a public USB-C outlet, for that matter

There are plenty of USB-A outlet everywhere (airport, trains, hotels, etc.), and most recent Android phones have only an USB-C port…
Thank you! I struggled to find an appropriate word there. I was originally thinking of Democrats who supported Bloomberg, but 'oligarchical' and 'oligarchic' seemed clunky. Then I committed the worst sin of letting my words choose my meaning, and switched to 'corporatists'... oops. Yes, let's go ahead an make it 'corporatocrats' and 'corporatocracy'
Immediately termination is pretty much the industry standard.
> The guy in the fur hat was arrested and had a Parler.

I can't find evidence of this. Could you share your evidence?

Greenwald did significant research here and said he found no active users from those arrested:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293
And his claim was refuted in mere minutes. An extremely disingenuous argument on his behalf.

Glenn has done great work in the past for which he should be commended, but these days he's a contrarian in search of hot takes. It's just how the Twitter / Patreon journalist economy operates. He will throw a huge hissy fit about the mainstream media but then happily go on Fox News with Tucker.
> Local authorities should be able to collect up all Mcdonalds packaging and hand it back to them.

Yes, with a bill for the cost of collection and at some point (after repeated failures?), a fine to motivate a course correction.
Many of the questions here are of the form “Can a private business drop a customer?” And the answer is a resounding YES and has nothing to do with constitutional free speech. A company refusing to provide service to a customer is NOT constitutional free speech censorship.
They use AWS for their DNS, so of course it's failing...

Trying j.gtld-servers.net.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-8.awsdns-01.com.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-715.awsdns-25.net.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1170.awsdns-18.org.
parler.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1848.awsdns-39.co.uk.
No ToS is valid until a Judge says it is valid

There is all kinds of Untested legal claims about these click wrapped ToS "contracts" we all "sign" with out reading by clicking a check box on a sign up form.
> My understanding is that Parler's terms of service already included a prohibition against illegal activities.

Also FCC broadcast standards for obscene material, making it more restrictive than Twitter on at least some topics.
In this case Parler already had a policy in place that banned posts calling for violence / anything else the breaks US law as well as report buttons in place to report it (Reddit and Twitter use similar systems), but there has been enough gaslighting in the media that voted "yes" in this poll never even bothered to look at their ToS prior to voting.

You can post ANYTHING YOU WANT that's awful on Reddit or Twitter, then immediately screenshot it before it can be reported / cleaned by mods and scream "They allow hate speeeeech!" like they've done to Parler.

The companies made a choice based on their political views, not based on public safety / ToS violations and THAT is why have centralized duopolies on social media is so dangerous in the USA.
A very happy customer here. The software is great, but the support is even better.

Very proud to support a solo founder.

If you’re running a SaaS and want to get more testimonials from your customers this has been a game changer for us - it’s simple and effective.
I don't get why he just doesn't have a twitter-like daily news feed on the white house website.

Honestly I hate Trump but I think they've gone a bit too far. They should just filter individual tweets if needed (like they have). It comes across as divisive and heavy handed.
Are they more powerful than the big oil companies?
the big 3 financial companies?
the military industrial complex?
By the way didn't Elon Musk support the "reopen America"
crowd? Exposing your millions of followers to unscientific misinformation and downplaying covid risk so as to keep your gigafactories open and enrich yourself further? Sounds totally fine.
No. It's corporate collusion in an obvious act of sabotage, and it and sets up an anti-trust situation.
> just not enough of the things that Amazon wanted.

One of the major allegations in the lawsuit is that the company took down everything that Amazon wanted, and that a few days ago Amazon apparently replied that they were "okay" when the materials they asked were taken down.

Seems like this will be one of the facts to establish in the suit, however it's part of the body of evidence to support the idea that 1) the suspension was a termination and 2) the termination was unwarranted which in my opinion as a complete lay person seems less sure of proving.
My chromebook is in dev mode, so I can use chromebrew and just install npm.
But I just use and do not create npm packages, so I don't know if theres a limitation there.

(in theory I could boot a full linux in embedded VM, but that is too ressource intensive for my taste)

In general, ChromeOS sucks, but the driver and firmware is really optimated, which means fast sleep/wakeup and long batterie life and with my basic tools running I am quite happy, even though my control over the system is much restrained compared to my manjaro laptop for example.
OMG UTF8! Next I suppose someone will show me how to disable those !@#%ing colour control codes that always make my text blink? I don't want colour. I don't want syntax highlighting. I just want my old-school terminal. Mind you I'll probably have to sacrifice my cherished 8x15bold font (still installable after all these years) if I really want to go UTF8.
It's an interesting idea. It did not make good thumbnails for my blog posts. I would not have used any of what it generated.

If it did generate images I liked, I would be interested in using it, but I'd prefer to use it as part of a build step rather than adhoc per blog post.
Misunderstanding about the inner workings of China isn't the CCP's fault, at least not at this level.

The discourse about China, misunderstandings about how the Chinese systems functions, and lack of even a basic interest in getting a realistic view of China are rampant. The average view of China in the US is so cartoonish it's quite ridiculous. If you talk to an educated, middle-class Chinese audience about the US people generally have actually a surprising amount of understanding of the basic structure of government, values and so on. You go to a very educated audience in the US or other Western nations and it's still embarrassing. And it's actually a huge problem for the West that both government and citizens do not engage China seriously.
Unreservedly yes:

a) Parler is hardly being “kicked off the entire internet.” They are being severely ostracized and being denied service by major online companies. This would happen to me in my city’s various bars if I developed a reputation as a violent drunk - it is not a violation of any fundamental liberties. Regardless, the idea that Parler can’t exist without AWS is ridiculous - what is true is that maybe you shouldn’t use AWS to run a business that makes money hosting Nazi propaganda! In general people should be aware of the risks of offsourcing to the cloud... especially when your business model is odious and immoral.

b) Parler is not some innocent social media service that got overrun with Nazis. While its leadership is secretive, it is heavily financed and owned by major conservative activists, and a great deal of its marketing is towards disaffected far-right Twitter users.

c) Again and again and again: nobody has ever complained about YouTube banning pornography. It is not because we’re moral scolds who want to make porn illegal - it is because pornography is a shady business with shady people and YouTube has every right to not want to get involved with it. It would be a violation of the first amendment to force YouTube to host porn. Likewise it would be unconstitutional to force Twitter to restore access to @realDonaldTrump. The exact same applies to AWS or the Google App store and hosting Nazis on Parler.

This grotesque perversion of “free speech” being used to shield people from the consequences of hate speech is one of the more worrying ideological developments in recent years.
Yeah it's certainly a slippery slope, 100% agree.

In your example it's probably slightly different because religion is a protected class, while political leanings aren't.

I think what's particularly interesting is you substitute "right wing" with "Jews" like you did, and you start to wonder if Amazon crossed the line. But then change "Jew" to "terrorist", and you think Amazon might be in the right. Clearly we can't protect ALL groups, that'd be silly.
Centra* (according to Hawley [0]) and there appears to be absolutely no proof this exists other than the word of a senator that pushed a false narrative that this election was stolen, his name is mud.

[0] https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-reveals-existence-coord...
Cloudflare Services for Gab.com (2018)
ADL has had some really interesting statistical analysis of gab (which cloudflare provides services too) illustrating just how weak their processes is around content management. Any cloudflare statements on gab.com?
This feels like a shoddy contract dispute just thrown in. I think it's a pretty immediately dead end and they probably know this. The contract is available to all here: https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
The difference is that Parler was a disruptive platform, 4chan isn't.

There is a bunch of awful content hosted on AWS, but it's generally only when you reach some scale and become a threat to those in silicon valley that you can expect to be shut off.
> For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting.

The complaint alleges there are deeper ties:

Less than a month ago, AWS announced with a press release a new multi-year deal with Twitter. AWS will “provide global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.” Twitter Selects AWS as Strategic Provider to Serve Timelines, Press Center, Amazon, (Dec. 15, 2020), https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det....
That's a shame, because Greenwald and other contrarian writers have been the only ones consistently right the last few years with regards to Russiagate and other "emotional" headline issues.
Amazon isn't dumb. There are obvious outs for scenarios like this.

https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/

> 6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you...

I'd bet they cite this as the reason:

> could subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability
I grew up believing that the US was unique in that we unequivocally allow free speech.

I realize that recent events are a different sort of animal, but it's a bit surreal having other countries lecture us on the importance of freedom of speech. Even if they may be justified in doing so.
> For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings

what do you think the difference between AWS' terms of service, and the terms of service of a data center will be?

the last data center contract i signed had most of the same stuff, they just had to return my hardware if they were kicking me out.
I don't think so. Maybe if competitors use AWS? Tough to imagine this won't get thrown out though.
What's you're describing is exactly what Gab did. Then the cancel crowd went after their payment providers and upstream internet providers.

Even if you own your own datacenter, you still need peering and a way to accept payment.
The walled garden app stores are a problem, and it's a problem Progressive Web Apps can solve -- Google and Apple should be required to make PWAs easier to use and more accessible for non technical people. But it is possible to use Parler's PWA, and it's been a bit hilarious watching folks try to explain to each other how to use it.

But there are plenty of other places for Parler to host, register domains, etc. There are at least dozens of hosting companies that can do cloud hosting at the scale they need (which isn't exactly huge despite the hype), there are hundreds more that could be used in tandem to cover their needs. Either Parler's inability to handle these moves is a result of them being incapable or unwilling to take slightly more effort in hosting than launching Amazon or Google server instances with a click, or there's an unprecedented amount of unity in companies against Parler. The Gab is still up, Pirate Bay is still up, 8Chan still finds its way onto the internet.

The internet is still decentralized. It's the super easy hosting part of the internet that is centralized. It's the hosting that's big enough they don't notice or have any questions about what they're hosting. Parler ran out of hosting companies they could quietly hide inside without someone noticing what they're doing, and in order to find hosting again, they'll have to have an actual conversation with a vendor that sees what Parler is doing and is OK with being a part of it.