skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It doesn't quite have to work like that, necessarily. Your instance could provide higher-quality tools for users to moderate their own feeds. Or there could be different degrees of opt-in to the site-wide moderation. Or the moderation could be community driven.

I think there is actually a lot of room for experimentation around how we interact online, and moderation is one of the most important areas. We need to think harder, rather than retreating to one of the two default positions.
I find the particularly libertarian mindset of the hackernews audience really fascinating here. If a group of neo nazis were organizing an attack on people in a hotel room, wouldn’t the hotel be allowed to kick them out? Or the same situation with a landlord and their tenants?

People keep bringing up ideology. This isn’t really about ideology, this is about violence. Parler was being used to organize violence.
There is video of a mass of rioters chanting it as they stormed the Capitol!
We should just allow white people to say the N-word so everyone can be happy again
Parler got deplatformed more for a refusal to moderate than an inability to moderate.

They explicitly chose to retain the content
Conflating this issue with censorship is a false equivalence. This should purely be viewed through the lens of freedom of association.
For hosting illegal content, their TOS says service may be terminated 2 days after notice. That's what happened.
Why wouldn't you expect an honest answer?
Do you remember the court testimony where Zuckerburge avoided the entire question about if they collude with other companies to make these decisions on the backend?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXuk-WSDDRw

Apple may have banned Parler and then Google just decided to go with it, followed by AWS. However, it may also be equally valid they colluded via private channels to make this happen. BOTH ARE EQUALLY POSSIBLE.

Discovery in this kind of lawsuit may lead to the answers. If they did collude, that is a strong argument for anti-trust. Just because they're 4 different companies doesn't negate the fact they control over 80% to 90% of the American market for hosting, non-SMS text communication and mobile access.

It honestly doesn't matter what you believe about Parler's user contributions. That's the entire point of Section 230. From what I've seen they do make a good faith attempt to delete all illegal posts with direct calls to violence. Section 230 doesn't prevent Google/Apple/Amazon from being forced to have them as customers.

You are protected if you're a minority and a business refuses to give you service based on that status. Opinions and viewpoints aren't protected, and maybe they should be.

If you in any way praise this legal yet blatant corporate censorship because it fits your views, you will be next. We are not on a slippery slope. We are in a god damn free fall. If you don't see it, they will come for you next and no one will be there to speak for you.
RON/CRDT and Big Tech Data Ownership
Please stop pretending this was motivated only by "political ideology".

The facts are pretty simple here. Parler had illegal content on their servers and refused to moderate it effectively. Companies asked them to fix their moderation issue and they refused, this is the consequence.

They aren't being kicked off because they said "I like Trump" they are being kicked off for inciting violence and hosting content that called for some truly horrendous acts.
I don't think that argument would be useful. The terms of the contract between Parler and AWS are not modified by the interactions AWS has with other customers.
Yes, with caveats. You do not have the right to scream "fire" in a crowded theater. Continuing to incite insurrectionists seems to be screaming "fire". But should a private company be the judge of what is this line?

Not sure if that is the current interpretation of "with caveats" means
These companies are ultimately in the business of staying in business. A governmental overthrow is bad for business so its stopped. It all makes sense and seems good. The only concern is if the government goes off the rails. But thats on the people of the nation.

All seems to be working properly.
In some ways, yes. For example, Parler could self-host instead of relying on cloud offerings. For something controversial that will likely face legal challenges, this seems like the only reasonable way to do things (see: wikileaks, sci-hub etc.)
I still really doubt anything will come of tech being broken up. Democrats, which are usually for anti-Monopoly & pro-regulation, now get so much money/favor from Big Tech it will be near impossible to sway them. While Republicans are generally against regulation to begin with. You bring the two together and there isn't much political will, imo.
Great points. It definitely could use clearer steps and instructions. Thanks much for your feedback.
I love Cobra Kai, and the 3rd season was the first time I have seen a movie reference for this problem, which I think is a change in the good direction.

At the same time even with non-violent crimes I make a huge distinction between stealing and marijuana use. I wouldn't want to trust my code base to anybody who has stolen anything in his life, as the downside for stealing the whole codebase is enormous.

Regarding marijuana, who cares, it doesn't hurt anybody (except the passive smoking issues).
> Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech.

They claim they are for free speech, but they aren't even close. They remove all kinds of things, just not enough of the things that Amazon wanted.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle...
Further illustration of why Twitter's trending algorithm is so ridiculous. Half the time, when a phrase is trending, most of the tweets returned are along the lines of "Why is 'foo' trending?"
I hacked and open-sourced a similar Python project last year to programmatically generate images based on templates by using a headless Google Chrome, allowing for the full gamut of CSS tricks: https://github.com/minimaxir/imgmaker

It's currently being used in production where I work to generate some social media thumbnails which would otherwise be difficult to do using conventional Python image libraries.
No, with caveats.

Apple and Google, fine. That’s distribution. They have a lot of distribution power, but that’s an antitrust question.

AWS pulling the plug is infrastructure being yanked, and that’s more concerning. It takes Parler off the web. That’s closer to silencing than removing an amplifier.

Nobody should be forced to provide services to the likes of Parler. But cutting them off with hours’ notice is excessive.
> Parler is founded on the idea of absolutely unmoderated speech. Even if they win this one, the writing is on the wall for them.

Absolutely untrue. Parler isn’t a free speech site. Gab on the other hand is and even they moderate. Their policy is to only allow first amendment protected speech, but that excludes quite a bit.
And Twitter hosts leaders of terroristic regimes. It remains unbanned. What, exactly, is your point?
Parler refused to even try to moderate posts and users calling for violence.

This isn't about ideology, except in cases where an ideology is calling for violence.
> AWS is also breaching it contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before
terminating service

Well, that's not cool nor fair.
How Don't Quit Learning to Code
I'm really scared to trust Greenwald on anything political at the moment.

For a start, the silencing competitors argument doesn't really work with AWS because they just do hosting.
The question is whether that's legal, or anticompetitive
I want to share this tid-bit. When I studied portfolio management, I had to learn not just how to talk to people about their risk tolerances, but how to ascertain whether they knew their own tolerances. The concept was called "calibration" - or - how well is someone able to know that they are wrong/don't know something. Basically, "high calibration" is the opposite of Dunning-Kruger in my mind.

The text cited a study that measured calibration by profession. The highest calibrated profession was meteorologists. It makes sense if you think about it: I prognosticate rain tomorrow, tomorrow comes and it's sunny - I am forced to confront the fact that my prognosis was wrong. So not only is there a way to know who's better and who's worse, but also constant reminder that "I can be wrong despite my best work"

The lowest calibration profession was doctors. Which also makes sense. Imagine I am a doctor and I miss an early sign of a disease. The patient dies 5 years later - I may not even know, and even if I do, very unlikely am I confronted with the specific point in time 5 years prior where I made the wrong call.

So the thing that matters with expertise is - how often is the person getting feedback. In the article they cite chess as having "real experts" - of course. Because a chess player gets feedback on how good they are every time they win or lose a match.

On the flip side, how often is someone in a very soft field getting feedback? What's the way for an "expert" in say Gender Studies, to wake up in the morning and be confronted with "the thing I did yesterday didn't work?"

The other thing about experts is they are optimizing for a single thing. Eg ask your compliance person at work if you can do something, the answer is "NO" because they are optimizing for not being sued, but in reality that's not the only concern. Or in the pandemic, ask the economist if we should lock down - they'll say no because they understand the financial consequences. Ask a medical person and they'll say yes because they are focused solely on the number of sick people. In reality the world is complex and there are tradeoffs.

Related, experts are often concerned with high-impact issues which may be different from individual issues. EG: in the USA, by default, kids get the Hep B vaccine on their first day of life. On country level this makes sense because there are a lot of mothers out there who have Hep B and don't know it. But when my wife was giving birth, we knew to opt out despite the recommendation because we understood that the experts are optimizing for a thing that doesn't relate to us.
The C and C++ specs are full of UB though, more like a "minimum common denominator" for compiler devs than a strict spec that users can rely on. It's way too easy to write spec-abiding code that behaves differently with different compilers/architectures/optimizations.

Specs are definitely a good thing to have, but often they're just brandished as a bullet point without looking at the details: how good is the spec, what does it add over the existing tests/CI/RFCs/proofs, etc.
Since the previous comment where you said this is dead, I'll repeat my response here: Amazon presented Parler with a list of violent posts that they had reported to Parler and that Parler had refused to remove. The whole letter Amazon sent to Parler was reported out by Buzzfeed, including screenshots of the violent posts that Parler did not remove.
Unless they have a different agreement from the standard User Agreement, AWS Custom Agreement[0] 7.2(b)(ii) states that:

(ii) By Us. We may also terminate this Agreement
immediately upon notice to you (A) for cause if we have
the right to suspend under Section 6, (B) if our
relationship with a third-party partner who provides
software or other technology we use to provide the Service
Offerings expires, terminates or requires us to change the
way we provide the software or other technology as part of
the Services, or (C) in order to comply with the law or
requests of governmental entities.

Upon examining 6 of that document:

(a) your or an End User’s use of the Service Offerings
(i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any
third party, (ii) could adversely impact our systems, the
Service Offerings or the systems or Content of any other
AWS customer, (iii) could subject us, our affiliates, or
any third party to liability, or (iv) could be fraudulent;

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/
I believe companies should have a right to have a terms of service and to act on those terms of service. They do it every day. Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. If Google took the step to block them with Chrome then I think I would have issue with that.
I saw a discussion a while back between Musk and Ma. I think you do a disservice to Musk to compare them. He really didn't seem able to keep up.
I didn't notice much 2009-2017.
> Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?

Although I agree that 4chan is problematic sometimes, many people that just put blame on it don't actually use it.

I remember when Netflix's Cuties was released, 4chan prohibited posting any image/video from the show
If you're within the mainstream of political debate, you have no problem existing on mainstream social networks.
Sadly, NYC and other places have had to throw out the vaccines because they're not allowed to give it to non-first responders. How stupid...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/nyregion/new-york-vaccine...
Or true.
May be, but those are few and far between. The full/coordinated effort is now on wiping out as much of the right leaning folks/orgs as possible, taking advantage of the uproar over the Jan 6 event.
The guy in the fur hat was arrested and had a Parler.

This isn't hard. The majority of people arrested had Parler accounts -- it's everywhere.
Freedom Speeches™ is only for the in-group.
I'd say that experts are mostly knowledgeable, experienced, and broadly respected within their scientific domain. I don't see how intelligence or wisdom are important factors - other than for the fact that most accomplished scientists are probably rather intelligent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24667729

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24621036

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25032052

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24864002
> "In one Tweet, Trump asserted that his supporters would “not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way,” and in another, noted he would not be attending the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, suggesting the event “would be a ‘safe’ target, as he will not be attending,” Twitter added."

Odd, I wonder what the actual Tweet said. Did he really say that verbatim or are they reading between the lines? Yeesh!

Edit: Oh, looks like that is the reasoning of Twitter for the banning of his account.
SR-71 Blackbird's ground speed check story
No.

If Parler was deemed illegal (eg: it was ruled by law that it's facilitating terrorism), then YES.

If they are violating Amazon Terms of Service / Apple's Terms of Service, then YES (TOS is a bit of a grey area, but assuming that things are clear enough, those should be enforced). One can argue about a monopolic market position, at which case it's the role of the Government to solve the issue and regulate (in a theoretically speaking, well functioning capitalistic framework).
> we will make you dependent on us

How on Earth did Amazon "make" Parler rely on Amazon exclusively?
Defund the police wasn't a universal mantra for the entire BLM movement and protests. That was seized upon by some who wanted to paint the entire summer of protests as monolithic. Many protestors simply wanted the police to stop killing and abusing minorities.

In my opinion, anti-establishment types are anarchists or revolutionaries who want to overthrow the existing government, not change it.
They are in twitter as long as they don't step the line. Try to misgender someone in twitter to see what happens. The idea of misgender comes from a very specific political tribe in certain western countries.
Where did I say that? You made the claim, I questioned it.
Neither suffered any consequences.
They are all private companies. They are free to choose who to do business with. If Parler broke the ToS, then there's even more reason for Amazon/Apple/Google to cut ties.
They don't really have to add anything to HTML. I just put it that way to express the idea of the "Like" button being a page element available anywhere on the web, rather than only inside a walled garden.

What is really required is a database protocol for tracking Likes, or "a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content."

But they have that! I didn't know about ActivityPub until I read mxuribe's comment above. That's a good start.

As mxuribe says, "having an existing standard doesn't mean that the Facebooks's of the world will choose to adopt it." I would expect FB to resist it. But if the backlash and dissatisfaction with FB grows, a protocol like ActivityPub is a necessary enabler for something new to happen. By allowing multiple providers to share content in a federated model, the protocol could grow organically without requiring one big new player to migrate all the FB users to a new monopoly.

Once it starts to happen, FB customers could be bridged into the new federated universe with translators that mirror content from FB into the new ecosystem.
Websites with accounts all have TOS because they need some legal recourse to boot you from their platform. The TOS lays out what you are allowed to do on the site (in addition to other things). That’s not changing no matter what you (or I) wish would happen without a massive change in how the legal system works in America.
Maybe not broken up but the point is something need to be done to reduce the power of these company. They are simply too powerful.

Maybe some policy to make it easy for some new company/startup to disturb/compete ?
That was their policy on paper. In practice, it was not enforced.
Didn't Twitter catch this & remove it from trending fairly quickly? Seems like an example of what AWS is claiming Parler _isn't_ doing.
did you report them? was there any follow-up action? i'm not condoning it but it's unreasonable to expect them to be able to ban IN REAL TIME stuff like this if they aren't already observing specific people.

not to mention one of the instigators of this entire thing has been the president of the united states. his actions have consequences that are 100x order of magnitude than your rioter on the street.
Yeah, the idea of GAFA as left wing is ludicrous. Sure, they plaster the internet with those ugly flat art cartoons of diverse people working together, (Corporate Memphis, I've learned the style is called) but they are anti-union, anti-competitive, and dedicated to growth at all cost, even if it means sectarian violence and loss of faith in democratic norms
I don't think a legal business can survive this kind of incident (becoming a pariah in the eyes of FAANG.) There isn't a point in being resilient against being dropped by one service if they all drop you in unison. If you try to take payments you will be dropped by all of the payment processors. If you try to run bare metal and are dropped by cloudflare you will be DDOS'd to death. If you go p2p you'll need to be able to ship native apps which will be dropped from the app stores or denied a certificate. Side-loading is already dead in iOS and things are moving that way for other major operating systems including desktop.

If you are an illegal business there are a multitude of ways of working around many of these issues (using fake identities with hosting companies and other services, making money via shady malware riddled ad services, money laundering, etc...)

Until recently I thought that p2p/crypto/etc was the solution but since you cannot do true p2p in the browser and must ship native code, at the end of the day you will still need the blessing of Apple/Google/Microsoft and agree to their TOS to exist. Of course this is perfect storm that happens rarely but it's still chilling to watch it unfold despite how contemptible the target is.
While this is true, on the internet at least I haven't seen leftists sites like revleft or crimethinc get denied access to hosters, yet.

But yes, you're right that the left is the source of private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine how severe the crackdown on the left would be.
They could, but ultimately, this is not a violent crime.

How does it benefit the greater good to treat this a different, and I assume, more severe, crime than simple burglary of an unoccupied building?
An interesting argument brought up in another thread was making this assessment based on whether we collectively agree and accept that AWS is some kind of "common carrier" / utility.

If that were the case, then of course the answer would be "no" AWS can't just cut off service, just like Verizon can't just drop calls if they think you're discussing political issues Verizon disagrees with over the phone.

I personally don't this AWS is a utility / common carrier (I can go and buy a server and serve a website all on my own for the entire internet to access). Therefore, I don't think the government should require AWS to provide services to clients that they believe are violating their TOS.

AWS has a very clear Acceptable Use policy: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/

This snippet can be found above the fold (not hidden in a long TOS) in their acceptable use policy:

> Illegal, Harmful or Fraudulent Activities. Any activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation, including disseminating, promoting or facilitating child pornography, offering or disseminating fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions, make-money-fast schemes, ponzi and pyramid schemes, phishing, or pharming.

If nothing else, by AWS hosting Parler they were risking their reputation, which alone is enough to terminate service by the standards set in their AUP.
As annoying as it is, especially when docks/hubs come into play, part of me feels like having one solution that at least semi-works for maybe 80-90% of use cases is worth having to debug silly issues sometimes.

Have a feeling we'll end up with an xkcd standards [0] situation if someone comes along with a competing protocol.

[0] https://xkcd.com/927/
That's just their word - I would want to see the exact reason they were banned. Perhaps they were playing the internet troll game of "see how quickly I can get banned for Twitter points". Some amount of context seems fair surely?

Also the Parler system is that you essentially are sandboxed for a short period of time when you first join - if you get tonnes of negative responses you get removed. So the fact they got removed in the first 24 hours makes sense.

So: No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous.
Companies can follow their terms of service, but under some circumstances they must act in good faith. If Parler can show that Amazon deliberately applied its terms of service in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, then arguably it could build a case for tortious interference in the business relationship between Parler and its advertisers.
One way some federated, decentralized communications platforms in development try to solve this problem by ensuring that there's a small charge of some kind to interact -- for example by putting a cryptocurrency into the platform and requiring all interactions to bear some kind of cryptocurrency cost. I'm not sure that this is actually tenable in the long term given that none of them have really been sucessful, I'm not sure if it's going to work out.
Shouldn't you be the one researching the argument you're supporting?
Title misled me to expect a novel encryption algorithm inspired by gliders/CAs. It's actually an glider-based implementation of the one-time pad. Having played around in GOL for a significant amount of time, I find it impressive but not very interesting compared to the Tetris implementation[1].

[1]: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...