Alternative social media platform Parler goes dark as Amazon suspends service

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Evie Fordham | FOXBusiness


https://i.imgur.com/AjcOC7ol.jpg

Alternative social media platform Parler went down early Monday following Amazon Web Services' decision to suspend Parler from its cloud hosting service after Wednesday's U.S. Capitol riot.

CEO John Matze told "Sunday Morning Futures" that the site will try to "get back online as quickly as possible," after writing on the platform that the site may be down for up to a week.

Google suspended Parler from its app store Friday due to a failure to moderate "egregious content" posted by users related to the violent siege on Capitol Hill last week.

Parler is facing criticism over Wednesday’s riot that saw supporters of President Trump storm into the U.S. Capitol, attack police, vandalize the building and steal items from inside.

Screenshots taken from Parler and shared on other social media platforms appear to show Parler users openly discussing plans for violence at the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, including bringing weapons and imagining how they would wield them against their political opponents.

Amazon says the move was made for violating Amazon Web Services' terms of services by failing to effectively deal with a steady increase in violent content, according to an email by an AWS Trust and Safety team to Parler, seen by Reuters.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the letter was authentic.

“We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business. However, Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this in a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies,” Matze added.

Like Google, Apple suspended Parler from its App Store even as it surged to the No. 1 spot in the free apps section earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, Gab, another upstart social media platform, extended a welcome to Matze and Parler users while the site is down.

"We welcome John Matze, Dan Bongino and everyone on Parler to speak freely on Gab while they work to get the platform back online," Gab wrote on its official Twitter account.

[FBD]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/52/85/8c5285c31c06c53ac4e2406cadfb340e.jpg

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Joshua Klein - Breitbart


https://i.imgur.com/S6DQW8s.jpg

On Friday, the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Firefox web browser, shared a list of additional actions intended to alter the “dangerous dynamics” of the internet, claiming that “the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms” is not enough.
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“This week we saw the culmination of a four-year disinformation campaign orchestrated by the President,” Mozilla wrote. “We have to acknowledge how the internet was misused to get here.”

The attached article, penned by Mozilla chairwoman Mitchell Baker and which appears on the Mozilla Foundation site’s blog, claims that “rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality.”

After criticizing the president’s “reprehensible” actions, the article then calls for more “solutions.”

“We need solutions that don’t start after untold damage has been done,” the essay continues. “Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms.”

According to the essay, additional “precise and specific actions” that platforms should commit to include the following:


Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.
Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.
Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

The article concludes by calling for the building of a “better” internet.

Ironically, the Mozilla Foundation’s website states it “works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all.”

On Friday, in an unprecedented step, Twitter suspended President Trump’s official account, along with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch, which have indefinitely suspended the president’s access on those platforms.

As a result, there has been much backlash.

“Big tech & social media platforms want to act like media orgs but don’t want to be held accountable with the rest of media,” wrote Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson. “Speech should be free whether you agree or not.”

“We are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what’s left is only there for a chosen few,” wrote President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. “This is absolute insanity!”

“Silencing speech is dangerous. It’s un-American. Sadly, this isn’t a new tactic of the Left. They’ve worked to silence opposing voices for years,” wrote U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We cannot let them silence 75M Americans. This isn’t the CCP.”

Also on Friday, Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), released a statement condemning Facebook and Twitter’s decision to suspend the president’s account, warning against “unchecked power” and the precedent it sets for other activists.

In addition, many have taken to alternative platforms to express their views.

On Saturday, Gab.com, the free speech friendly social network, said traffic has increased by more than 750 percent in the past few days, following the blacklisting of the president from most mainstream tech platforms.

In 2019, Mozilla banned Gab’s Dissenter extension — intended to “bring a free speech comment system to every site on the Internet” — from their browsers’ extension stores.

Meanwhile, Apple has removed social media platform Parler from its App Store, claiming the platform has not adequately implemented moderation policies that crack down on free speech.

Google banned Parler from its Android app store on Friday.
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“Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech from the internet,” said Parler CEO John Matze in a statement. “There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on Amazon’s proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.”

“We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies,” continued Matze.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

It is crazy this amount of removal of speech is being allowed

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FinePerfumedGentoopenguin-size_restricted.gif

[FBD]

It is crazy this amount is removal of speech is being allowed

We'll all have a nice collective sigh of relief after the fact that this glimpse of the brick wall at the back of the theater is no longer on our timeline

[lost in melb.]

It's not a game anymore.

(from Parler)


https://i.ibb.co/f8vt5SP/screen-shot-2021-01-08-at-6-20-30-pm.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGvedbU0AIydWi?format=jpg&name=medium


https://youtu.be/OW718KRYDtU

[Teh One Who Knocks]

It's not a game anymore.

And you don't think that kind of stuff is all over Twitter, except from the left? You can't be that naïve.

[lost in melb.]

And you don't think that kind of stuff is all over Twitter, except from the left? You can't be that naïve.

Parler doesn't censor enough. Big tech doesn't want responsibility

[FBD]

Parler doesn't censor enough. Big tech doesn't want responsibility

Big tech doesnt have the lawful authority to censor except for actually illegal stuff.

Except there plenty, from pedos talking about fucking kids to antifa or celebrities talking about killing trump or conservatives.

Hardcore double standards on display.

[FBD]

https://i.imgur.com/snGETmg.png
https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provider-blocks-facebook-and-twitter/293-867cc22b-fb90-4142-a296-8d800d2a03fb?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

[DemonGeminiX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU0tGrj_2M4

[lost in melb.]

Parler suing Amazon. The good thing is we will now get an accurate gauge of what was being censored and what wasn't etc. We are all just armchair observers.

If violence at the capital and poor censorship can be linked though it's game over. Whataboutisms don't apply when it comes to Congress people safety

[DemonGeminiX]

Free speech is free speech. I know you guys across the ponds believe in reasonable restrictions that goes far beyond what we believe would be reasonable, but to us, free speech means you've got to take the good, the bad, and the fucking horrific all in the same boat. You don't have to like what people say, you don't even have to listen to them if you don't want to, but you have to respect that they have a right to say whatever fucked up thing pops up in their head.

The problem with these companies is that they serve the world, so yeah, they're taking their cues from y'all's ideology, but they're American-based companies that use our tax dollars for their growth and continued existence, so they should be required to treat speech on their platform the same way our government is required to treat speech. Any entity that takes our tax dollars should be required to respect our Constitutional rights.

Ok, so the courts said that they could regulate it on their platform. Fine. Somebody went out and created a similar but different platform and chose to regulate it a little less than the older guys, because it seems the older guys are being a little biased to one side of the aisle. Now everybody's taking them down because they're allowing speech that doesn't agree with the older guys. Not cool.

And before y'all jump all over me saying they're allowing horrible speech on their platforms, consider this: Iran's Supreme leader is on twitter. Venezuela's Maduro's on twitter. They're about as bad as bad can get when it comes to human rights abuses, terrorizing people, etc etc etc... and yet twitter allows them to stick around. This has absolutely nothing to do with limiting speech in the interest of public safety. It has everything to do with squashing conservative speech, and using the crazies as an excuse to do it. It's painfully obvious that they're openly picking sides, and it's painfully obvious why they're doing it now: with a Dem President on the way, and both Houses of Congress going blue, nobody's going to do jack shit about it. It only benefits the Democrats, and the Republicans won't be able to do anything about it.

And the divisions grow deeper and deeper...

[lost in melb.]

Yeah, but people died.


This has absolutely nothing to do with limiting speech in the interest of public safety.


More stuff was planned

[lost in melb.]

Amazon's issue might be about income. People will blacklist Amazon if they retain Parler

[lost in melb.]

https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466/amp

@donk_enby said she believes Twitter has been relying too much on its automated moderation tools, which have led to dubious suspensions of users not actually violating of its rules. This has the effect of “driving people to toxic echo chambers like Parler,” she said.

[lost in melb.]

So Twitter overcompensates...Parler in trying to be more methodical probably misses too much

[DemonGeminiX]

Yeah, but people died.



More stuff was planned

True justice is punishing the person responsible for the death he or she caused, not the messaging service that person used to find out where to commit his or her crime.

Again, you do not punish an entire population for the crimes of one person or several.

[FBD]

Yeah, but people died.Let's toss Bedrock Foundationals that people died for, because someone died. :ok: Makes a crap ton of sense


Amazon's issue might be about income. People will blacklist Amazon if they retain ParlerPeople will blacklist Amazon :lol: I suggest you start proofreading before you hit that Post Quick Reply button


https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466/amp

@donk_enby said she believes Twitter has been relying too much on its automated moderation tools, which have led to dubious suspensions of users not actually violating of its rules. This has the effect of “driving people to toxic echo chambers like Parler,” she said.
Someone programmed the tools!!! Dubious my left nut, the programming did what it was told to do!!!

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Hank Berrien - The Daily Wire


https://i.imgur.com/XIGIkxWl.jpg

On Monday, the social media site Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon, claiming that Amazon’s suspension of Parler violated antitrust laws and breached the contract between the two entities.

As Parler went dark Monday morning, CEO John Matze told Fox News that the site would try to “get back online as quickly as possible” but warned that the platform could be down for as long as a week.

Reuters reported, “Amazon suspended Parler from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit for violating AWS’s terms of services by failing to effectively deal with a steady increase in violent content, according to an email by an AWS Trust and Safety team to Parler, seen by Reuters. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the letter was authentic.”

Amazon said Parler presented a “very real risk to public safety.”

The lawsuit filed by Parler starts by asserting, “Last Month, Defendant Amazon Web Services, Inc. (‘AWS’) and the popular social media platform Twitter signed a multi-year deal so that AWS could support the daily delivery of millions of tweets. AWS currently provides that same service to Parler, a conservative microblogging alternative and competitor to Twitter.”

After noting that Twitter’s permanent ban on President Trump from its platform had catalyzed conservative users to move to Parler and that as a result “Parler became the number one free app downloaded from Apple’s App Store,” the lawsuit notes AWS’ announcement that it would suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59 PM PST.

“AWS was not confident Parler could properly police its platform regarding content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit points out, “However, Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account.”

The lawsuit claims that “AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter. Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in combination with Defendant Twitter. AWS is also breaching its contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided. Finally, AWS is committing intentional interference with prospective economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near future.”

The lawsuit asks for a temporary restraining order against Amazon to stop it from “shutting down Parler’s account at the end of today.”

“Doing so is the equivalent of pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support,” the suit reads. “It will kill Parler’s business—at the very time it is set to skyrocket.”

“The Apple and Google app stores — essentially the only places for Americans to download mobile apps — stopped carrying Parler over the weekend,” The Hill reported.

[DemonGeminiX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpuIbWAi1GM

[lost in melb.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpuIbWAi1GM

I gave it 2 minutes. Yep, Corps are pulling the plug left right and centre. It's for their bottom line. People will boycott products and services that are related to people that support Trump. It's called the free market. I'm sure parler can go and find another company that supports it since it's done nothing wrong yeah?

[lost in melb.]

True justice is punishing the person responsible for the death he or she caused, not the messaging service that person used to find out where to commit his or her crime.

Again, you do not punish an entire population for the crimes of one person or several.

The law may not see it that way. Is Twitter not able to look after it's bottom line?

Parlet hasn't been banned. Amazon doesn't want to lose market share when people start boycotting it through it's association with parler

[FBD]

Its amazing how some people hold every single view the TV MSM CIA want them to hold, even when it changes, they change right along with it like the beat never skipped never skipped

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Amazon's issue might be about income. People will blacklist Amazon if they retain Parler

:serious:

[DemonGeminiX]

The law may not see it that way. Is Twitter not able to look after it's bottom line?

Parlet hasn't been banned. Amazon doesn't want to lose market share when people start boycotting it through it's association with parler

The law should be based on true justice and not on politics.

[lost in melb.]

The law should be based on true justice and not on politics.

I don't know why I said law. Whatever...


Point is who is going to be out of pocket for 'justice'

[Teh One Who Knocks]

https://i.imgur.com/2XbuAO8.png

[DemonGeminiX]

Amazon's not going to lose market share. Bezos is effectively in every single person's life now. He's the evil empire that we used to joke Disney and Walmart was. He'd probably get more people on his side if he took a stand against the booing crowd and kept Parler up and running.

[lost in melb.]

Well it's done. Truth be told I'm not for censoring Trump long-term, but there seems to be the possibility of violence leading up to the inauguration. Somebody needs to take responsibility for that. I think there's a limit to the "punish individuals" approach.

why don't you guys ever talk about what a loose cannon Trump is? A couple of tweets and he could ignite the whole thing. You know that. Too risky

[DemonGeminiX]

Well it's done. Truth be told I'm not for censoring Trump long-term, but there seems to be the possibility of violence leading up to the inauguration. Somebody needs to take responsibility for that. I think there's a limit to the "punish individuals" approach.

why don't you guys ever talk about what a loose cannon Trump is? A couple of tweets and he couldn't ignore the whole thing. You know that. Too risky

If Trump's a loose cannon, then the Democrats are just as complicit for all the horseshit that they've been peddling for the past 4 years. And if not just as complicit, then more so.

[FBD]

why don't you guys ever talk about what a loose cannon Trump is? A couple of tweets and he couldn't ignore the whole thing. You know that. Too risky

We already went over that a few months back wherein a bunch of us told you that by and large, we approve of Trump's actions. Some have jumped on the bandwagon to criticize about the electoral vote and making excuses for why he should have ahead of time knew that antifa was going to cause trouble, but that's just being bandwagoneers.

I dont see Trump as a loose cannon at all, I see him as someone who will call balls & strikes and call a spade a spade and puts the country first like a real president should. Taunting guilty parties and assorted enemies whose lives and wellbeing are predicated upon their dutifully character assassinating him for the globohomos is not being a loose cannon.

[lost in melb.]

If Trump's a loose cannon, then the Democrats are just as complicit for all the horseshit that they've been peddling for the past 4 years. And if not just as complicit, then more so.

Whataboutism whatever :hand:

Your boy went too far for too long. Let's see how much damage the nutters he has unleashed are gonna do

[DemonGeminiX]

Whataboutism whatever :hand:

Your boy went too far for too long. Let's see how much damage the nutters he has unleashed are gonna do

He didn't unleash anything. He called for a peaceful protest outside of the Capitol. What Trump supporters did was up to them. He didn't go too far. Try giving this one the full 5 minutes:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByLqvi86Ft4

Watch the whole thing.

[FBD]

Try ramming a meat thermometer in your ear.

how it will be read :dance:

[FBD]

https://i.imgur.com/5I5WrHa.png

Leftists "win" by lying, fraud, terror, and going after the children. (and not just in the pedo sense)

[PorkChopSandwiches]

wow

[FBD]

PBS just fired the guy

[PorkChopSandwiches]

That's surprising

[KevinD]

If, and I say IF, there were violence on inauguration day, I would fully understand it. Not condone it, but understand.
Those who say "violence is never the answer" are weak fools, hiding behind skirts. I generally keep my mouth shut, except perhaps hereand almost always turn the other cheek. Most like myself do. I'm 52. For at least 35 of those years, I've watched the liberal party, the crooked politicians ( on both sides mind you) slowly but surely tear this country apart. I for one, have just about had enough. The only reason yall aren't seeing my mug on the evenews is that I don't believe most of the seriously ignorant fools in this country are worth my blood.

[lost in melb.]

If, and I say IF, there were violence on inauguration day, I would fully understand it. Not condone it, but understand.
Those who say "violence is never the answer" are weak fools, hiding behind skirts. I generally keep my mouth shut, except perhaps hereand almost always turn the other cheek. Most like myself do. I'm 52. For at least 35 of those years, I've watched the liberal party, the crooked politicians ( on both sides mind you) slowly but surely tear this country apart. I for one, have just about had enough. The only reason yall aren't seeing my mug on the evenews is that I don't believe most of the seriously ignorant fools in this country are worth my blood.

You're angry but not crazy.

I can understand why you wouldn't bother (forcibly) ripping apart the system if there's nothing decent to replace it with.

[KevinD]

Let's just say I'm T the point where the whistle on the pressure cooker has stopped rattling and started screaming...


In all honesty, I wouldn't take up arms at this point, even if I truly thought it necessary. I don't believe (sadly) that things have gotten bad enough in this country for the majority folks to truly understand. I have traveled to many places and countries and still believe this are overall pretty darned good here, comparatively speaking. It just angers me severely to see our elected officials totally ignore our laws, the sheer blatant disregard for equality. By that I mean the crooks silencing others for "doing" what they themselves do.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Brian Fung, CNN Business


https://i.imgur.com/LoMvohd.png

(CNN Business) Amazon Web Services filed its response to Parler's lawsuit on Tuesday, blaming the social media platform favored by the far-right for filing a "meritless claim" against the cloud computing giant and citing a liability shield often maligned by President Donald Trump: Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.

AWS's legal brief argues that it is Parler, not Amazon (AMZN), that breached the terms of its contract and that Parler's removal from AWS's hosting platform was a "last resort."

"This case is about Parler's demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of Amazon Web Services ('AWS') content that threatens the public safety," Amazon wrote, "such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens."

The response highlights more than a dozen examples that Amazon said it reported to Parler, including calls for a civil war and the deaths of Democratic lawmakers; tech company CEOs including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey; members of professional sports leagues; former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; and US Capitol Police, among others.

Parler didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon denied that it interfered in Parler's relationship with its users, and claimed that Parler's antitrust allegations do not meet the basic threshold required for a Sherman Act claim. Parler had alleged Amazon was engaged in a conspiracy to eliminate a competitor from the marketplace; Amazon said Parler's suit fails to define a relevant market or specify how competition was harmed.

Amazon also leans on Section 230, the law that has been heavily criticized by President Donald Trump and that grants tech platforms immunity for their content moderation efforts.

"That is precisely what AWS did here: removed access to content it considered 'excessively violent' and 'harassing,'" the brief said.

The litigation could thus become a high-profile test of the law that has come under scrutiny by both Democrats and Republicans.

[FBD]

Once this is resolved, Big Tech's finances are going to crumble as fast as Parler's security did once their ddos protection etc was gone

[FBD]

https://i.imgur.com/P5lBt6e.png

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By GILAD EDELMAN - Wired


https://i.imgur.com/4NQoFaBl.jpg

THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be Parler’s time to shine.

Launched in 2018, the social media platform billed itself as a free-speech paradise, a haven for conservative users who believe Big Tech is out to silence them. Given that posture, Trump getting kicked off Facebook and Twitter last week after inciting a deadly riot at the US Capitol was incredible free publicity. What better proof that the fix was in against conservatives than shutting down the president of the United States of America? (Set aside the fact that Trump would likely have been banned long ago if he weren’t the president.) Conservative influencers like Dan Bongino encouraged their fans to ditch Twitter and follow them to Parler. (Bongino has an ownership stake in the company.) Even as reports swirled that the platform had played a role in fomenting last week’s assault on the Capitol, Parler surged to become the top free app in Apple’s App Store. One had to wonder: Could it turn into a durable conservative alternative to the dominant platforms? Only time would tell.

Wait, scratch that—Big Tech told, and the answer was no. Over the weekend, Apple and Google told Parler that they were banning its mobile app from their app stores, and Amazon Web Services said it would stop hosting Parler’s website. The companies pointed to the continued presence of user posts encouraging or inciting violence. As a result, Parler has, for the moment, ceased to exist. Even if it migrates to a new host, it won’t be able to return to the App Store or Google Play unless it abandons its identity as a platform whose content policies are as permissive as the First Amendment.

This is not the first time providers of internet infrastructure have pulled their services from social network scofflaws. Several companies, including PayPal and GoDaddy, abandoned Gab after it emerged that the perpetrator of the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh had used the network to broadcast his intentions. Apple pulled Tumblr from the App Store in 2018 because it was failing to screen out child sex abuse material. (The app was restored a few weeks later, after Tumblr announced it was banning all adult content too.) Perhaps most notably, the website security company Cloudflare, following a great deal of soul-searching by its free-speech libertarian CEO, Matthew Prince, pulled its services from the white supremacist Daily Stormer website after the Charlottesville rally, and from the shooter-manifesto-hosting message board 8chan after the El Paso shooting.

The Parler situation, however, opens a new front in the online speech wars, as the debate over moderation migrates from an oligopoly of social media platforms to the oligopoly of companies that make those platforms available to the public. (In the case of Google, those oligopolies overlap.) Never before have three of the most dominant Silicon Valley corporations—all of them subjects of Congress’s massive antitrust investigation—simultaneously banned a social media platform because they don’t approve of its policies around user speech. They have, in effect, decided that they get to moderate the moderators. And that raises a number of difficult questions.

“It’s a very unusual step for those companies to say, ‘Because we are the gatekeepers of the store, we are now going to look at everything that’s sold in our store and check to see if they are good citizens’” regarding user posts, said Alex Alben, a lecturer in internet law at UCLA and the former chief privacy officer of Washington state. “That’s a pretty big jump.”

In letters sent to Parler about their decisions, Amazon, Apple, and Google all cited the social media company’s lack of a workable system to keep violent content off its platform. “The processes Parler has put in place to moderate or prevent the spread of dangerous and illegal content have proved insufficient,” wrote Apple. “Specifically, we have continued to find direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action.”

You can see why these companies wouldn’t want to expose app store customers to a social media platform whose moderation system has failed to prevent the spread of harmful material. But then you’ve got to wonder what’s keeping them from banning the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The past few years of social media history have been nothing if not a relentless cycle of platforms failing to live up to their claims about how well they police themselves. Facebook was used to facilitate ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and with its vastly larger user base was almost certainly a greater vector of “Stop the steal” disinformation than Parler. Journalists and academics have credibly accused YouTube of driving right-wing radicalization. Twitter was long notorious for permitting heaps of sexist and racist abuse.

These three companies have, to varying degrees, imposed stricter policies over the past year due to the coronavirus pandemic and the election. But it remains easy to find content that seems to violate the letter of the rules. Even days before the attack on the Capitol, journalists found groups on Facebook and Twitter calling for revolution. Amazon’s letter to Parler notes that the company flagged 98 examples “of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence.” It’s hard to imagine that Facebook, with its bigger user base, doesn’t eclipse that number.

All of which makes the decision to ban Parler seem somewhat capricious.

“I think the public perception is that all those scary people who gathered on Capitol Hill, they met up and continue to meet up on Parler, whereas Facebook and Twitter are doing something about it,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on online harms. “And so Parler is the lowest hanging fruit.”

To be clear, there are big differences between Parler, whose entire raison d’être is to provide a space of almost completely uninhibited expression, and the mainstream platforms, which now boast of their efforts to combat certain types of misinformation and their sophisticated AI moderation tools. Parler did have a few, minimal rules, including against fraud, doxing, and threats of violence. But the company’s stated mission was to create an online platform where content is governed by the principles of the First Amendment. “Parler doesn’t have a hate speech policy,” Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s COO, told me last week, before the Capitol riot. “Hate speech has no definition, OK? It’s not a legal term.”

Wernick is right. The First Amendment—which, I feel compelled to remind you, applies to the government, not private companies—protects a lot of material that most people don’t want to see on social media. It allows pornography. It allows glorification of violence. It allows explicit racism. And so, therefore, does Parler.

By tracking the First Amendment, however, Parler’s policies were incompatible on their face with those of Apple, Google, and Amazon, even aside from the matter of enforcement. Google and Apple, for example, both explicitly prohibit apps in their stores from allowing hate speech.

Perhaps Parler’s biggest problem was that it provided much more latitude for the type of material that the big platforms define as threatening violence. That’s because, under First Amendment doctrine, the government can only criminalize very narrow categories of speech, such as so-called “true threats”—roughly, language explicitly intended to make an individual or group fear for their life or safety. Arguing that people should rise up in arms, or that a politician or celebrity should be shot, wouldn’t meet the criteria for incitement or true threat. Believe it or not, that sort of speech is legally protected. (It can still earn you an inquisitive knock on the door from the Secret Service. I don’t recommend it.) Parler’s community guidelines mirrored that standard.

It seems obvious that social media platforms should have the right to police content more tightly than the government does. Users don’t want to be bombarded by racist or sexist comments, and most advertisers don’t want their brand showing up next to neo-Nazi videos. But it also seems at least reasonable that a platform should be able to do what Parler did—that is, to incorporate the First Amendment as its content policy. The idea that private companies should be free to set their own rules rests on another premise: that consumers who don’t like those rules can take their business elsewhere. For users to be able to take their business to Parler, Parler must be able to take its business somewhere other than Apple and Google. That option is now foreclosed.

Not that Parler has been wholly banished from existence. Once it finds a new host, users will be able to access the desktop and mobile sites. Without a mobile app, however, a social network is not going to thrive in 2021. (Technically, there are ways to download apps that are banned from the app stores, but it’s something few people go to the trouble of doing.) I’m not saying Parler was poised to take the world by storm. It had a clunky user experience and a self-limiting sales pitch. But Amazon, Apple, and Google pulled the plug on the experiment before it even had a chance to fail.

This all points to a question best answered by Congress and regulators: At what point down the “stack”—the chain of hardware and software between technology providers at the bottom and end users at the top—does a service becomes a utility, to which government must set some rules of access?

Very few people, for example, would be comfortable letting cell phone carriers prohibit offensive content in private phone calls or text messages. An app store is higher in the stack than a carrier or ISP, but lower than a Facebook or YouTube. It’s a position whose power to set the bounds of discourse has been overshadowed by the power wielded by the social media platforms themselves. Now that the companies have anointed themselves as meta-moderators, however, they have invited a new wave of scrutiny. What exactly is the standard for “adequate” content moderation systems, as Apple put it in its letter to Parler? Is it just whatever Facebook and Twitter have decided to implement? And why should Google, which owns YouTube, or Amazon, which competes against social media platforms for advertising dollars, get to decide whose moderation is up to snuff?

Citron cautioned that deplatforming Parler could even backfire by pushing dangerous conversations into places where they’re harder to monitor. “It’s worse to lose insight into these various plots that are happening right now,” she said. “In the next 10 days we have to prepare ourselves for serious physical violence.”

Of course, Amazon, Apple, and Google—and Facebook and Twitter before them—insist that the actions they’ve taken over the past week were necessary precisely to head off further Trump-inspired violence. By confronting Trump and his most deluded followers, Big Tech may have curried some much-needed favor from a Democratic Party that has been calling to rein in its power. At the same time, in doing so, it has put that power on display like never before.

[DemonGeminiX]

... Trump getting kicked off Facebook and Twitter last week after inciting a deadly riot...

I stopped reading at this point.

[lost in melb.]

Parler data breach will reveal its role in US Capitol riots

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/01/parler-data-breach-will-reveal-its-role-in-us-capitol-riots/

A hacker has claimed to have scraped millions of posts, videos and photos from right-wing social network Parler to be used as potential evidence for convicting the domestic terrorists involved in the breach of the US Capitol building.

The embattled platform was forced offline this week after it emerged that it was used to plan and coordinate the attack.

A hacker and internet archivist going by the name @donk_enby scraped the social network for its data in an attempt to preserve every post related to the breach prior to its closure over the weekend.

Parler was forced offline after Amazon Web Services refused to host Parler for its role in the Capitol breach, shutting down its server provision for the platform, after which Apple and Google also removed it from their respective app stores.

Some of the content scraped by @donk_enby was data that had been deleted and included private posts.

The metadata on the videos was also retained, which includes information such as when it was made and the precise location it was taken. Most web services tend to scrub this data from media such as this during upload, but Parler apparently did not take this step.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Paul Bois - The Daily Wire


https://i.imgur.com/j2nZiGQl.jpg

Now that the social media platform Parler has gone dark after Amazon, Apple and other service providers cut them off for their failure to prohibit violent speech, the site’s CEO John Matze says it may never return.

“It could be never,” Matze told Reuters. “We don’t know yet.”

Matze later told Reuters after they published the article that he is optimistic the site will find a home somewhere.

“I am an optimist. It may take days, it may take weeks but Parler will return and when we do we will be stronger,” he added.

Though Matze claimed that Amazon shut Parler out overnight and without warning, Amazon claims the site already had a tumultuous relationship with the company going back to summer.

Amazon cut off the social media platform, which styles itself as a “free-speech” space and is favored by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, from its servers this weekend for failing to effectively moderate violent content.

In the interview, Matze said its relationship with Amazon appeared to deteriorate overnight and without much warning, an assessment that Amazon disputes in legal filings.

As late as this summer, Amazon invited Parler to join an initiative to connect it with potential investors, Matze said, which was independently confirmed by a source who characterized the offer as standard for startup customers.

Amazon later ended the program and did not secure funding for Parler, the source said. Matze said the company did not need more funding at the time.

By November, however, Amazon had received reports that Parler hosted threatening content in what it says breached the companies’ agreement, according to an Amazon legal filing. Amazon flagged over 100 examples to a Parler executive, such as content exhorting people to “Form MILITIAS now and acquire targets,” the filing said.

In the lawsuit filed by Parler against Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), the company claimed that Amazon specifically de-platformed Parler as an act of political silencing, noting that Twitter was known to have equally violent content on its site.

“AWS was not confident Parler could properly police its platform regarding content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the lawsuit stated. “However, Friday night one of the top trending tweets on Twitter was ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ But AWS has no plans nor has it made any threats to suspend Twitter’s account.”

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus,” the lawsuit continued. “It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter. Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in combination with Defendant Twitter. AWS is also breaching its contract with Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually provided. Finally, AWS is committing intentional interference with prospective economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near future.”

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Brian Flood | Fox News


EXCLUSIVE -- Parler chief executive officer John Matze is "confident" that his social media platform will be back online in the near future after his team was able to launch a static website and recover the company’s data over the weekend in a series of positive developments.

"I’m confident that by the end of the month, we’ll be back up," Matze told Fox News during a telephone interview on Sunday night.

Parler registered its domain with host sharing website Epik last week, following Amazon Web Services' decision to shut Parler down for failure to moderate "egregious content" related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The move was a tiny-yet-important step that helped Matze realize his aggressive timeframe for Parler’s eventual return is realistic.

"Every day it changes wildly, but I feel confident now," Matze said. "We’re making significant progress. When you go into Parler.com it doesn’t go into the void now, it hits a server, and it returns just one piece of information"

Parler had been down since Amazon Web Services cut it off, but now fan of the popular social media platform are at least able to hear from Matze himself.

"Hey is this thing on?" Matze wrote in the first update when the static page was laucnhed. "Now seems like the right time to remind you all — both lovers and haters — why we started this platform. We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media. Our aim has always been to provide a nonpartisan public square where individuals can enjoy and exercise their rights to both. We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. We will not let civil discourse perish!"

Matze called being able to post the message a "big milestone" despite appearing to be a simple static website, as the ability to inform the public firsthand is vital to a company that is under constant attack from its critics.

"We’re going to be putting periodic updates there," Matze said "We’re going to try to get an update out every day… so that people can stay up to date with the site."

Parler is suing Amazon for its decision to sever ties, claiming the move is "motivated by political animus" and is both a breach of contract and an antitrust violation. Amazon had nothing to do with Parler resurfacing online, as Matze’s team got the page up independently.

However, Matze did manage to recover Parler’s data from Amazon on Friday, a key step into eventually relaunching – and another major step in the right direction.

"Now we can actually rebuild Parler," Matze said. "It’s critically important."

Matze explained that recent headlines indicating Parler might "never" return that surfaced last week were the result of a lengthy Reuters interview when the then-frustrated CEO answered, "It could be never… we don’t know yet," when asked about a timeframe for the return of the platform. While Matze did suggest the site could be done forever, he says it was simply a pessimistic moment that the mainstream media ran with.

The progress has changed Matze’s tone over the past 72 hours.

The Parler CEO was upbeat and positive on Sunday, eager to explain that his staffers have stood by him throughout the chaos of the past two weeks.

"Despite all of this, we haven’t even had one employee quit," Matze said. "Not one, even with them being harassed and threatened, no one has quit… we’ve got such a strong team, this has just made them believe in us more."

While a nonpartisan company, Parler has become a refuge for supporters of President Trump, and others, who have been either kicked off Facebook and Twitter or have those social networks in protest. Now that Trump has been removed from Twitter and Parler is under a harsh spotlight, Matze hopes to keep Parler’s vendors anonymous going forward so they don’t come under fire from the liberal activists seeking to silence the social media platform.

[RBP]

Parler data breach will reveal its role in US Capitol riots

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/01/parler-data-breach-will-reveal-its-role-in-us-capitol-riots/

A hacker has claimed to have scraped millions of posts, videos and photos from right-wing social network Parler to be used as potential evidence for convicting the domestic terrorists involved in the breach of the US Capitol building.

The embattled platform was forced offline this week after it emerged that it was used to plan and coordinate the attack.

A hacker and internet archivist going by the name @donk_enby scraped the social network for its data in an attempt to preserve every post related to the breach prior to its closure over the weekend.

Parler was forced offline after Amazon Web Services refused to host Parler for its role in the Capitol breach, shutting down its server provision for the platform, after which Apple and Google also removed it from their respective app stores.

Some of the content scraped by @donk_enby was data that had been deleted and included private posts.

The metadata on the videos was also retained, which includes information such as when it was made and the precise location it was taken. Most web services tend to scrub this data from media such as this during upload, but Parler apparently did not take this step.

"right wing social network" you say? Anyone ever seen the media call Twitter a left wing social network?

[DemonGeminiX]

Parler announces it's back online with new hosting service

The social media platform has been offline for more than a month

After more than a month offline, the social media platform Parler relaunched using a new web hosting service, the company announced on Monday.

Parler, which has more than 20 million users and was first launched in August 2018, is currently back online for current users and will be available for new users starting next week, the company said.

“Parler’s new platform is built on robust, sustainable, independent technology,” a news release said.

Last month, Amazon Web Services decided to suspend the upstart social media platform for failure to moderate "egregious content" related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The move took the site offline, until Parler could find another hosting service.

Apple and Google previously suspended Parler from its app stores, as liberals and many media pundits championed the move to de-platform the social media app.

"We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to FOX Business. "Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues."

"We’re aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.," a Google spokesperson wrote in a statement last month. "In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app’s listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues."

Parler faced criticism over the riot that saw supporters of former President Trump storm into the U.S. Capitol, attack police, vandalize the building and steal items from inside.

Screenshots taken from Parler and shared on other social media platforms appear to show Parler users openly discussing plans for violence at the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, including bringing weapons and imagining how they would wield them against their political opponents.

Parler’s Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff told “Fox & Friends Weekend” the day after Apple suspended Parler from its App Store that even as it surged to the No. 1 spot in the free apps section earlier in the day, that the company was “clearly being singled out.”

“I believe we were treated unfairly,” she added.

Parler’s interim CEO, Mark Meckler, issued a statement following Monday’s development saying, “Parler was built to offer a social media platform that protects free speech and values privacy and civil discourse.”

“When Parler was taken offline in January by those who desire to silence tens of millions of Americans, our team came together, determined to keep our promise to our highly engaged community that we would return stronger than ever,” he continued.

“We’re thrilled to welcome everyone back.”

Meckler then stressed that “Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay.”

“We will thrive as the premier social media platform dedicated to free speech, privacy and civil dialogue,” he continued.

Earlier this month Parler terminated former CEO John Matze. On Monday, the company said “Parler’s Executive Committee is conducting a thorough search for a permanent CEO to lead Parler as it continues to grow and expand its reach and impact.”

The social media app that was widely embraced by Trump supporters because it favored free speech, was expected to relaunch before the beginning of February but things were delayed. A Parler insider told Fox News the delay was caused by new branding and changes occurring within the company for the sake of stability.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/parler-back-online-on-new-platform