News: 1610562335

Larry will have to hurry up and buy TikTok or we may never see Donald Dance the Macarena.

Tik Tok already banned Trump.

How's THAT for irony? :)

Pornhub too...

Thank the gods

The protestors used facebook to arrange their little get-together, not parler.

Evidence says otherwise. Do try and keep up.

"prepare a law making it illegal for tech platforms to ban users without a local judge's permission."

I didn't see that last caveat in the linked page. To me it read as though service providers could nuke an account if they believed the user violated polish law...and in such case the user could appeal with the administration if they believed that to not be the case. There wasn't even mention of a judge or court, only that the service provider could be found liable after the appeal process.

Oh NOW they want corporate regulation.

Iranian politicians saying nasty things about Israel, or indeed US politicians blaming Iran for 9/11 is one thing.

If Iran was using Twitter to coordinate a specific attack on a specific Israeli target - that is a bit different.

>If Iran was using Twitter to coordinate a specific attack on a specific Israeli target - that is a bit different.

@khamenei_ir:

"Millions attending Martyrs Soleimani & Abu Mahdi’s funerals in Iraq & Iran was the 1st severe slap to the US. But the worse one is overcoming the hegemony of Arrogance & expelling the US from the region. Of course, revenge will be taken on those who ordered it & the murderers.

Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time."

^^^

Twitter: no problemo

@realDonaldTrump

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

^^^

Twitter: banned, Glorification of Violence

Name checks out.

Hint: Trump was not banned for any one specific post.

He was banned for his cumulative asshattery.

Before you ask, yes I think the asshats in Tehran should also be banned from so-called "social" media. As should all other career politicians, world-wide. They are all, every fucking one of them, a bunch of self-serving liars anyway, so no great loss.

>... no great loss.

Twitter's market cap disagrees.

What does twitter's market cap have to do with kicking all career politicians off so-called "social" media, world wide? The GreatUnwashed will forget the liars were ever online at all within a week or s ... OHHH! Look! A new cute kitty video!

"The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

>Hint: Trump was not banned for any one specific post.

>He was banned for his cumulative asshattery.

Mate just check out Supreme Ayatolla's entertaining twitter feed. This chap (well, technically his PR/SMM guy) is wishing death to Israel, insults Jews and glorifies jihad for 11 years so far, and Twitter does not see a problem with that. I am careful to not send direct links or they will ban me here, just check for yourself ;)

I understand this is all pure politics, US big tech and social media hate Trump (well, apparently for a reason) and he 'hates them back' so it was a great chance for them to bite him as he falls. But they do not seem to understand global consequences.

On one hand, there will be paranoia about the US interfering with national sovereignty though American tech companies. Governments are very sensitive about that, you know. It means, there will be further restrictions to the Internet freedoms worldwide and while I do not care how heavily Facebook & Co are regulated (they deserve that), there will be collateral damage to general Internet freedoms, more government tracking etc.

On the other hand, a strong precedent and example is set for other governments how to silence protests. Someone planning a protest meeting? A helpful private company will ban them, this is not censorship, they are planning violence and violating T&Cs. Facebook & friends will be forced by foreign governments to ban protests groups now, mind my words, and they will have nothing to say or risk being accused of conspiring to incite violence.

Big tech companies just opened a Pandora box, they cannot pretend to be neutral now, they will be forced to censor, ban and cooperate after what they did. I do not care about what happens in the US but what they did is likely going to influence my world, and the whole world, and I am unhappy about that.

And yet one more example that running in the Cloud is like building on sand.

Surely there will be similar laws in other countries shortly. Sovereign countries have long been suspicious about the US corporations interfering in the elections and politics, and they are given a very, very good example now.

They are just throwing their money away trying to sue Amazon, even if they did have a case (which is doubtful) Amazon can just do what all these big megacorps do and appeal it until Parler run out of money to pay for lawyers. I suspect Parler is now a dead platform anyway, even if it is able to get itself back online within a few weeks, most will have moved off it on to something else.

As for Poland preparing to make it illegal to ban users without a judges permission, way to go Poland you have essentially killed any hosts based in Poland and given away all your hosting business to companies not based in Poland that don't have to obey such as stupid law

"you have essentially killed any hosts based in Poland"

I have already had one call from a client asking me to preemptively add all of Poland to their custom black hole list over this. They think the country will quickly become a spam/troll haven. I advised that they take a "wait and see" position for now, but if they insist I'll happily do as they ask.

If you're on social media, you don't know where the mute and block buttons are, and you have thin skin, Poland is the least of your problems.

You're looking at it from a very myopic point of view.

The client in this case has upwards of 45,000 seats. Care to calculate how much time (money) would be wasted cumulatively by all those people over the space of a year without blacklists? The numbers are far higher than you might think.

Thin skin? Far from it. Pragmatic would be a better word.

There are restaurants and clubs where you can't enter if you don't dress as they want. If I make loud noises in a library I'm shown the door. Nor I can't enter a church and swear at them they're a bunch of clueless talibans without being carried away. I had a discussion in a church because I entered it wearing a hat and someone there complained I should have removed it. Women were refused to enter because their bodies weren't covered enough, instead. You can be expelled by political parties if you say what they don't like. And you can tell a tenant to leave your property if they break the contract.

Twitter is not the only place were politicians can tell lie, and I always wonder why elected officials should use a tool owned by a private company to deliver information of public interest, instead their own official channels. Other people can use they own tools to fill the interweb with their rants. Nobody forbids Trump to buy a computer, connect it to the internet, and set up his "Trumpet" site, where people can trump each other.

The idea everybody should use a single channel owned by a private company scares me more than the same company decides someone is not welcome. After all, that's the meaning of "private". Twitter & C. were given too much power by lazy journalists who found it's far easier to wait for news to appear in their apps - already formatted into short texts - instead of having to search for them, and spin doctors immediately took great advantage of it.

So maybe the issue is not being expelled by Twitter, but thinking Twitterworld is a pillar of the real world?

The issue with Twitter is that it is almost a de facto monopoly. It is certainly the site with the largest number of users where you can post specific messages for millions of people to read. Facebook is similarly a near de facto monopoly for another sort of communication. Until a few days ago, I had no idea Parler even existed.

Zuckerberg has in the past gone on record as stating that private companies should not decide what to ban and what to allow, and that the politicians should advise and pass legislation. American politicos have declined, I suspect as they believe that it would be too difficult technically, and too embarrassing politically to be seen to be 'tampering' with an amendment to he constitution.

I have to say that I agree with Zuckerberg in this instance, society as a whole should decide on what free speech means, implement laws, and the private companies that provide the platforms should be able to suspend or on extreme cases remove accounts where there are frequent extreme violations, such as incitement to commit criminal offences, or applauding those who have committed them.

I doubt the current problems will do much to improve the situation regarding policing the social media providers.

The issue with Twitter is that it is almost a de facto monopoly. It is certainly the site with the largest number of users where you can post specific messages for millions of people to read

So their success should render them unable to operate their platform as they see fit? At what point do you think Twitter became a "de facto" monopoly? Shouldn't someone have told them, so they could halt new user signups at that point to avoid going over the line where you believe that others should be able to make their decisions on who to allow and who to ban for them?

There are more than a few alternative social networks beyond Twitter and Facebook. You are demanding the broad potential reach of Twitter without having to abide by their rules.

Hi, DS999

My post was about regulation by politicians implementing what society thinks, in general, should be free speech. I don't see where you get the idea that Facebook and Twitter becoming near monopolies should render them "unable to operate their platform as they see fit" in my post. Indeed I support Zuckerberg in his request that politicians decide and enact legislation to cover what they can do, rather than leave it to individual companies to make up the rules as they go along. Surely you agree that all competitors in the social media market should follow the same rules on free speech? (I don't know what the head of Twitter has said on this matter, sorry).

As far as I know there is no law in the USA preventing a company becoming a monopoly by producing a more appealing product than anyone else. Specific legislation was enacted to break up Standard Oil, and AT&T as their de facto monopolies were considered to be detrimental to the US economy / society. We will have to wait and see what happens about the big tech companies .

There may well be many alternatives to both Facebook and Twitter (and Parler for that matter), but how many have even one tenth of their users, and how many have most people actually heard of?

And, what does "You are demanding the broad potential reach of Twitter without having to abide by their rules." mean? I did not demand anything in my post.

I confess to big somewhat confused by your responset.

All the best.

Actually, monopolies generally do acquire more regulation and obligations than companies in a competitive market place. Hence, Trump (being a monopoly on being President) was not allowed to block followers.

The issue is a little different than that though and if you read the lawsuit rather than El Reg's "collusion" commentary. AWS signed a bigger deal with Twitter which generated a conflict of interest. Twitter shoots itself in the Left foot by censoring its own users and users start fleeing the platform. Then it shoots itself in the right foot by banning Trump and to protect its larger customer, AWS breaches its contract with Parler not over content it can point to which breaches TOS, but because it thinks it might not be able to comply with the TOS in the future.

To use the nightclub analogy, Parler got kicked not for failing to meet the dress code, but because AWS said it might come back later wearing flip-flops.

In security, we talk about the pillars of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. We've seen Azure kick Gab and AWS kick Parler. None of the cloud platforms can be considered "secure", which is obvious to IT security people, because if you don't secure the hardware, you haven't got a secure system.

This was the second major demo of why not to use cloud services.

> So their success should render them unable to operate their platform as they see fit?

Yes, if they are seen to abuse that monopoly or wield a level of power or influence that is contrary to the public good. It doesn't even have to be that they are deliberately interfering in the dialogue, just that the public good is significantly and adversely affected. I would argue that we are long past that point.

Many people have suggested that many of these social media sites are contributing to the polarising of public opinion by shunting users to articles/videos/opinion that reflects their own. YouTube (and perhaps even Netflix to a certain extent) are particularly bad in this regard, offering up echo chambers rather than a diverse range of opinions.

There may be evidence of undue influence from Facebook and Twitter et al, but it hardly matters since their own algorithms are fostering that environment by giving people more of what they want rather than what they actually need.

Yes, the issue is people think they need to use Twitter because everybody else use Twitter. This is the dangerous short-circuit. In the (recent) past nobody ever thought everybody should watch the same TV, listen to the same radio, or read the same newspaper, all of them fed by a singe news agency - but in the worst authoritarian counties.

As soon as the internet became full of lusers who found their phone could now access that strange world, that exactly happened. They believed the needed only some source of wisdom, driven by fashion. Instead of accessing a myriad of sources, they decided to flock to a single one like lemmings, or moths towards a bright light (where predators wait for them).

That's utterly stupid and we are now seeing the effects of that. Now people believe "Twitto, ergo sum", and everybody is scared of not being any longer.

Once we thought the Internet as a broad space where to find different sources and create new ones. Now a few company turned it into a few fiefdoms with the help of many digital illiterates, including the so called "digital natives" - who are just raised to be like Orwell's sheep.

"the politicians should advise and pass legislation"

I'm not sure if US has specific statute law about conspiracy to commit acts of violence but Common Law will usually do that itself - and the US inherited that from us.

That should be all AWS or any other service provider should need to compel them to throw off any customer who seems to be allowing that to happen, otherwise they'd be apt to find themselves in the dock with the customer and the users responsible.

Parler are most probably dead now. Was there collusion about de-platforming them? Most probably. There have been previous examples of this happening. Did they deserve it? Not sure - History will be the judge, I suppose.

One thing which is almost certain: They (as other have said) will not win against Amazon. Not because they are in the right or wrong, but because of who is the richest. Nothing changes.

Multiple people reaching the same conclusion at the same time is not collusion.

Here is one example of Parler's free speech:

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

This violated AWS's terms and conditions (T&Cs) and Parler was unable or unwilling to take down the content. Gizmodo has more from Amazon's official filing at https://gizmodo.com/amazon-court-filing-includes-chilling-death-threats-pub-1846048394

All social networks have T&Cs that users have to abide by. Everyone reading this is subject to ElReg's including "5.3 You will not post or otherwise disseminate on the Website any material which is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libellous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate (“Offensive Material”)." You may disagree with my views but if you threaten my life ElReg can, will, and is justified in taking action.

Violations can be punished and some social networks have chosen to do so.

Free speech has been used as an argument for any number of things, from child pornography to Isis beheading videos. These weren't successful arguments because free speech was never intended to be unlimited.