<story><title>Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55615214</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jlkuester7</author><text>&amp;gt; not everything is a slippery slope&lt;p&gt;From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things).  Now Parlor gets &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence.  The bar for getting &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; is already moving down and honestly any company that is hosting user-driven content needs to have a plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar. Part of that plan should be projected scenarios about how low the bar will go....&lt;p&gt;Part of what is really dicey here too is that the result of getting this calculation wrong is basically annihilation for your service (unless you think you can operate without &amp;quot;every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers&amp;quot;).  The stakes are really high!&lt;p&gt;(Edited to fix my &amp;#x27;raise-the-bar&amp;#x27; analogy)</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>&amp;gt; What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)?&lt;p&gt;For now, don&amp;#x27;t attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of.&lt;p&gt;I get the concern you&amp;#x27;re expressing, but not everything is a slippery slope. This went so far beyond a &amp;quot;popular social issue of the day&amp;quot;, as you admitted in your comment. IMO it&amp;#x27;s worth saving this outrage &amp;amp; concern for if and when something that is more genuinely a popular social issue causes AWS to take down sites. There were surely lots candidates for that earlier this year with a lot of the other protests that went on, were there any instances of sites taken down then? (I&amp;#x27;m genuinely asking btw, I didn&amp;#x27;t hear of any but if there were then I think that is a much more appropriate place to start this conversation from. Certainly people have been fired from their jobs due to cancel culture but I don&amp;#x27;t know of anyone being shut off of all tech platforms).</text></item><item><author>zmb_</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight.&lt;p&gt;Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this to happen. However, now that the precedent is set, I would expect the bar to be lowered going forward. That creates risks that need to somehow be mitigated (and reflected in valuations).&lt;p&gt;Even for businesses that are not in such politically charged areas, I can easily imagine getting inadvertently tangled up in some popular issue and having vendors become targets of online activist (whether it&amp;#x27;s your own vendors, or whether you are a vendor to a target).&lt;p&gt;What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? Try to reduce dependence on cloud providers and vendors by building more in-house? How far would you have to go, since a colo or an ISP can drop you just as AWS can?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hinkley</author><text>The result of doing nothing is that in 15 years, the US becomes Germany, pre-WW2.&lt;p&gt;You can think of it as vendors getting &amp;#x27;canceled&amp;#x27; for progressively less severe offenses.&lt;p&gt;Or.&lt;p&gt;You can think of it as people waking up to offenses that have been allowed to go unchallenged for way too fucking long. People &amp;#x27;waking up&amp;#x27; or no longer keeping their heads down being the result of the current administration transitioning to a Lame Duck status.&lt;p&gt;The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. Yes, you should absolutely be actively paying attention. No static rule will  allow you, or me, or that guy over there to go back to not paying attention.</text></comment>
<story><title>Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55615214</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jlkuester7</author><text>&amp;gt; not everything is a slippery slope&lt;p&gt;From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things).  Now Parlor gets &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence.  The bar for getting &amp;quot;canceled&amp;quot; is already moving down and honestly any company that is hosting user-driven content needs to have a plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar. Part of that plan should be projected scenarios about how low the bar will go....&lt;p&gt;Part of what is really dicey here too is that the result of getting this calculation wrong is basically annihilation for your service (unless you think you can operate without &amp;quot;every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers&amp;quot;).  The stakes are really high!&lt;p&gt;(Edited to fix my &amp;#x27;raise-the-bar&amp;#x27; analogy)</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>&amp;gt; What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)?&lt;p&gt;For now, don&amp;#x27;t attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of.&lt;p&gt;I get the concern you&amp;#x27;re expressing, but not everything is a slippery slope. This went so far beyond a &amp;quot;popular social issue of the day&amp;quot;, as you admitted in your comment. IMO it&amp;#x27;s worth saving this outrage &amp;amp; concern for if and when something that is more genuinely a popular social issue causes AWS to take down sites. There were surely lots candidates for that earlier this year with a lot of the other protests that went on, were there any instances of sites taken down then? (I&amp;#x27;m genuinely asking btw, I didn&amp;#x27;t hear of any but if there were then I think that is a much more appropriate place to start this conversation from. Certainly people have been fired from their jobs due to cancel culture but I don&amp;#x27;t know of anyone being shut off of all tech platforms).</text></item><item><author>zmb_</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight.&lt;p&gt;Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this to happen. However, now that the precedent is set, I would expect the bar to be lowered going forward. That creates risks that need to somehow be mitigated (and reflected in valuations).&lt;p&gt;Even for businesses that are not in such politically charged areas, I can easily imagine getting inadvertently tangled up in some popular issue and having vendors become targets of online activist (whether it&amp;#x27;s your own vendors, or whether you are a vendor to a target).&lt;p&gt;What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? Try to reduce dependence on cloud providers and vendors by building more in-house? How far would you have to go, since a colo or an ISP can drop you just as AWS can?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Daishiman</author><text>No, parlor wasn&amp;#x27;t even doing a &amp;quot;good enough job&amp;quot;. It wasn&amp;#x27;t doing _anything_. It&amp;#x27;s financial backers supported everything with regards to its users going into a violent frenzy.&lt;p&gt;There really is nothing contentious here, unless you feel that if you know that a group is organizing in your platform with the intent of staging a coup then you&amp;#x27;re in your right to just let them go about it.</text></comment>