Amazon To Remove More Content That Violates Rules From Cloud Service (reuters.com) 187
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon.com plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal, according to two sources, a move likely to renew debate about how much power tech companies should have to restrict free speech. Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said. It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world's most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.
AWS already prohibits its services from being used in a variety of ways, such as illegal or fraudulent activity, to incite or threaten violence or promote child sexual exploitation and abuse, according to its acceptable use policy. Amazon first requests customers remove content violating its policies or have a system to moderate content. If Amazon cannot reach an acceptable agreement with the customer, it may take down the website. Amazon aims to develop an approach toward content issues that it and other cloud providers are more frequently confronting, such as determining when misinformation on a company's website reaches a scale that requires AWS action, the source said. The new team within AWS does not plan to sift through the vast amounts of content that companies host on the cloud, but will aim to get ahead of future threats, such as emerging extremist groups whose content could make it onto the AWS cloud, the source added.
AWS already prohibits its services from being used in a variety of ways, such as illegal or fraudulent activity, to incite or threaten violence or promote child sexual exploitation and abuse, according to its acceptable use policy. Amazon first requests customers remove content violating its policies or have a system to moderate content. If Amazon cannot reach an acceptable agreement with the customer, it may take down the website. Amazon aims to develop an approach toward content issues that it and other cloud providers are more frequently confronting, such as determining when misinformation on a company's website reaches a scale that requires AWS action, the source said. The new team within AWS does not plan to sift through the vast amounts of content that companies host on the cloud, but will aim to get ahead of future threats, such as emerging extremist groups whose content could make it onto the AWS cloud, the source added.
Another Big Data company decides on content (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do these companies take it upon themselves to police the content they host? Today they censor terrorism, call to violence, etc. Tomorrow they'll take down sites promoting abortion, furry porn or political speech they don't like. This is a slippery slope.
And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online. They may not like it, but they are now a public forum, and as such they should not get to decide what is said or not said on the public forum. The law should. It's high time cloud companies be reclassified as common carriers.
Not slippery. Are you good or bad for business? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do these companies take it upon themselves to police the content they host? Today they censor terrorism, call to violence, etc. Tomorrow they'll take down sites promoting abortion, furry porn or political speech they don't like. This is a slippery slope.
And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online. They may not like it, but they are now a public forum, and as such they should not get to decide what is said or not said on the public forum. The law should. It's high time cloud companies be reclassified as common carriers.
It's really not slippery at all. Amazon doesn't care about red or blue, only green. Terrorism and violence are bad. I'm not sure why that's controversial to you. If you hang out with groups constantly skirting the boundaries of terrorism and violence, then you really should consider the company you keep.
...and that sucks...because it has lots of good uses for community organizations, playgroups for my kids, neighborhood stuff, etc. While AWS is not social media, they're linked to a business I have alternatives to. If Amazon developed a reputation for running a platform for right wing terrorists, everyone left of Ben Shapiro would make less purchases there. As it is, I can barely stand the site and mostly shop at his competitors. They have real money to lose.
However, the logic is simple. There's really no slippery slope. You're either good for business or you're not. No one you complain about is a government agency. None of them are a charity. They do what makes them money, and perhaps you're bad for business. It's like all those parties you probably don't get invited to. People invite people to parties they want to be around. If you're an asshole who can do nothing but make up imaginary rants about liberals, then no one wants to be around you...at a party or online. Even if they agree with you, the constant alarm and "sky is falling" rhetoric is a downer, it's tiring. Even if I agreed with someone 100%, I would avoid them if all they did was rant about politics. I liked facebook when it was vacation, pet, and baby photos of friends. Now, having grown up in a red, rural county in the midwest, half my feed during the election was pretty toxic posts from distant lonely relative and losers I went to high school with spewing toxic racist, sexist rants...and not even borderline stuff woke folks whine about...unambiguous racism and maliciously hateful sexism...stuff I guarantee most conservatives would say is just too far.
As a customer, I'm not fond of terrorism or threats of violence or simple things like rampant racism or completely baseless lies about election fraud or vaccines. It's bad for business. It makes social media not fun and thus I never go on unless I have to.
Jeff Bezos doesn't care about your beliefs or mine. He doesn't care about Red or Blue state issues. His love is running a sub-par movie studio, and flying in penis rockets. If you're running afoul of censors, it's because the majority find your views repellent and your bad for business. Just like no one invites the biggest asshole they know to their party, AWS kicks off those who ruin the party. There's no fairness, nor no need. Let a business run themselves like a rational business. Let them figure out what makes money and what doesn't. Sorry, right wing terrorism and hate platforms are not profitable. It may be your passion, but most of us find it gross and we want to be off whatever platform people routinely wish death to AOC, Tlaib, Omar, or Pelosi on. Money talks, nothing more, nothing less.
Re:Not slippery. Are you good or bad for business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jeff Bezos doesn't care about your beliefs or mine. He doesn't care about Red or Blue state issues.
You really think Jeff Bezos doesn't care about political parties?
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Only so far as it made him money. The goal of amazon is to make money. You only take sides if it helps you make money. That is what people who cry about this don't seem to understand. They looked at the numbers and decided it was in their best monetary interests to do this. There's no board meeting where they are like "How can I stick it to the republicans?".
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> No one you complain about is a government agency.
According to what we've been seeing about Russian trolls interfering in US elections, some of the worst traffic is indeed from government agencies.
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I'm going to pose a little question to you, but first a disclaimer: I don't do that nor I wish to, what I'm going to ask you. ;)
Tell me... do you know how many people around the world is this second spewing toxic racist, sexist rants around the world without you even knowing? Does that bother you? What I'm trying to point out is all this looking for something to complain about, proactively, We in Europe just mind our own business... or that's what I'd like to think, at least.
Good post. I'm not trying to put
Are you doing it in my feed? (Score:2)
Tell me... do you know how many people around the world is this second spewing toxic racist, sexist rants around the world without you even knowing? Does that bother you? What I'm trying to point out is all this looking for something to complain about, proactively, We in Europe just mind our own business... or that's what I'd like to think, at least.
When it's being pushed into my feed because I had to log in to facebook to get to the page for my kid's school event, it is my business. Or, more precisely, it is a cause for me to not give business to a website I used to enjoy long ago. AWS has many competitors, most of which undercut them on cost and a few can match their scale.
Parler and other platforms that have tolerated people using their platform to plan a violent attack create a risk for big, profitable companies, like CocaCola or BMW. If I we
Re:Not slippery. Are you good or bad for business? (Score:5, Insightful)
He probably didn't care because the rocket fulfills some sort of design criteria, and that was what really mattered.
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Sounds like they value free speech a bit more. As a business, it is their right to decide who they associate with. Freedom of association is the core tenet of free speech. There are multiple cloud vendors out there, the market could even tolerate a few more. The answer is for people who feel that amazon does not cater to them is simply to not do business with them. If there are enough of those people they should probably start their own cloud provider. There is enough room for quite a few more.
I have no pro
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I have no problem with a business deciding what messages it's platform carries. The argument that we should force them to carry our messages is a much slippier slope and very anti-free speech.
Exactly. Free speecher's seem to be getting to the point that they demand an end to perjury, because if you want to lie in a court of law, that is your free speech in action, and the government cannot arrest you for lying, because you have that right under free speech.
It gets to be a real slippery slope when they demand an end to private property laws in order to spew whatever they want on or in other people's property.
The whole thing is silly. What gives people the right to spew anything they want, whi
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Exactly. Free speecher's seem to be getting to the point that they demand an end to perjury, because if you want to lie in a court of law, that is your free speech in action, and the government cannot arrest you for lying, because you have that right under free speech.
By this logic verbally ordering a hit is also your free speech in action. The government cannot arrest you for murder, because you have that right under free speech.
None of this is what free speech is actually about. Whether it is slander or ordering a hit you are engaging in action where speaking is merely the means by which the action is carried out. This has nothing to do with actual free speech.
It gets to be a real slippery slope when they demand an end to private property laws in order to spew whatever they want on or in other people's property.
The whole thing is silly. What gives people the right to spew anything they want, while simultaneously restricting other citizens from reacting to that?
Government imposes restrictions (e.g. regulatory, safety and anti-discrimination) on people who run busines
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Exactly. Free speecher's seem to be getting to the point that they demand an end to perjury, because if you want to lie in a court of law, that is your free speech in action, and the government cannot arrest you for lying, because you have that right under free speech.
By this logic verbally ordering a hit is also your free speech in action. The government cannot arrest you for murder, because you have that right under free speech.
None of this is what free speech is actually about. Whether it is slander or ordering a hit you are engaging in action where speaking is merely the means by which the action is carried out. This has nothing to do with actual free speech.
I certainly agree - But many people believe that anything they would ever say is free speech. And some of the cases are strange. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/P... [umkc.edu]
We live in a world where a lawyer, one Sidney Powell, is using as a defense in her case against Dominion Voting - No reasonable person would believe what she said. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com] In a motion to dismiss a complaint by the large US and Canadian voting machine company Dominion, lawyers for Sidney Powell argued that elaborate con
Forced speech isn't free speech (Score:2)
If someone forced you to change your handle to "Kill the Jews", would you see a free speech issue in that?
Suppose a group of people were trying to make you put signs with Nazi slogans in your front yard. Does that relate to your freedom of speech?
How about a requirement to swear your loyalty to president Trump before you can register to vote?
It seems to me that freedom of speech means the freedom to choose what you say - and what you don't. Perhaps forced speech is an affront to free speech.
Perhaps forcin
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Suppose a group of people were trying to make you put signs with Nazi slogans in your front yard. Does that relate to your freedom of speech?
How about a requirement to swear your loyalty to president Trump before you can register to vote?
It seems to me that freedom of speech means the freedom to choose what you say - and what you don't. Perhaps forced speech is an affront to free speech.
I fail to understand what this has to do with the issue at hand.
People purchasing CPU time and bandwidth from Amazon are not forcing Amazon to say or not say a damn thing any more than purchasing water or electricity from the local electric utility is forcing the utility companies to speak.
The actual issue is whether or not businesses should have the right to discriminate to say no you may not buy water, food, power, bandwidth or conduct financial transactions because we don't like you or what you have to s
Post Nazi stuff on the grocery store bulletin boar (Score:2)
> you may not buy water, food, power, bandwidth or conduct financial transactions
That's not even remotely similar in any way, because when you go grocery shopping for food you aren't asking the grocery store to host your messaging, to put your signs on the store. You're asking AWS to host, to run, Nazi sites.
If you want to make an analogy to other businesses, the appropriate analogy would be if you wanted to post "kill the Jews" on the community bulletin board at the grocery store, and you want to prohi
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That's not even remotely similar in any way, because when you go grocery shopping for food you aren't asking the grocery store to host your messaging, to put your signs on the store.
So where are these signs? If I go to Amazons website or Amazons store where are they displayed? If this is the same as walking into a grocery store and seeing signs then surely there should be signs visible somewhere for me or any member of the public to view...right?
You're asking AWS to host, to run, Nazi sites.
What Amazon is doing is renting computer resources and bandwidth to the public. It is not running your site it is renting you the infrastructure for you to run your site.
If you want to make an analogy to other businesses, the appropriate analogy would be if you wanted to post "kill the Jews" on the community bulletin board at the grocery store, and you want to prohibit the store from taking that down.
Where on Amazons website or store is this bulletin board located? How
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My personal belief is in exchange for the right to conduct business with the public you should lose much of your right to sit in judgement of others and deny goods and services to people you dislike or disagree with most especially when you are involved in providing commodities and infrastructure services.
That's nice. You go on tilting at windmills. Someone has to keep shivering lances on their steel posts.
The US Supreme Court disagrees with you. Masterpiece Bakery won their lawsuit. Private businesses conducting business with the public lose practically no rights. Amazon's policies are a direct response to that ruling and they're on very firm legal ground at this point. There's no way in hell the Trump Supreme Court reverses that decision in your lifetime. 'Conservatives' got exactly what they asked
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The US Supreme Court disagrees with you.
I'm not interpreting law or making any related claims. Even if the law granted businesses to do whatever they please regardless of the consequences it still wouldn't be relevant to my remarks.
Masterpiece Bakery won their lawsuit.
This lawsuit was not about withholding commodities and basic infrastructure from people you don't like or agree with.
It was about an anti-discrimination law and performing a custom creative work against the religious beliefs of the person carrying out the work. The bakery offered to sell them anything for sale to the
Owning a newspaper gives you influence (Score:2)
Jeff Bezos doesn't care about your beliefs or mine. He doesn't care about Red or Blue state issues.
Seriously? What a lie. He owns the Washington Post, which he basically made into his personal blog.
He doesn't give a shit about Red vs Blue...only Amazon's interests and when people start questioning your labor practices or pondering if you're a monopoly, it's super-handy to have a personal blog in the form of a popular and respected newspaper. So either he has a liberal agenda and is a true believer, even though he's never publicly indicated any strong political beliefs...or he took a page from Rupert Murdoch's playbook and figured he could make a profit running a news outlet and advancing his many bus
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Yes, one of the most fascinating things I've observed about Slashdot over the years is how many people don't appreciate that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy. It only becomes true if there's evidence it's true
Homosexuals:
2010 - All we want is the same rights. We want to get married.
2020 - We demand to be treated as a protected class and that you bake our cake.
Transexuals:
2010 - Don't erase us.
2020 - Use our preferred pronouns or we'll get you fired.
1) If you think it's a problem that you're willing to be vocal about, where were you when extremist Islamic preachers were being censored?
Incitement to violence is a valid reason to censor someone. It's illegal. It's the whole reason the left impeached Trump about Jan 6. Remember? What we're talking about is cancel culture like Chase cancelling Michael Flynn's credit card because of politics
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Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, to name just four, have grown so powerful that they can literally define the human condition and political thought by censoring and promoting various things.
This is no different than when I grew up with only 5 TV stations (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and an independent). It only *seems* that they are in control.
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I hate to say anything that can be construed as a defense of Amazon, but I think they did crack down on the spammers recently. Don't see that it did any good, since the same scamming spammers appear to have moved over to Facebook, but at least I feel like I have to give Amazon some credit for trying. The old E for effort? (Unless the scammers moved their spam because they got "better terms" from Facebook. (I'm quite convinced the big data companies must be getting some profit to continue supporting the emai
Re:Another Big Data company decides on content (Score:4, Insightful)
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It should be their right to block liberal speech if they decide that is a message they do not want to carry. AWS is not a utility and was not paid for with public tax dollars like a utility. Their costs are not limited by the government and I'm fairly sure no one on earth thinks you NEED a cloud service provider. The limits on corporate speech are no different than personal speech in that they should only be restricted when it is needed for the public good. I simply can't see how AWS, facebook, or twitter i
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It should be their right to block liberal speech if they decide that is a message they do not want to carry...I simply can't see how AWS, facebook, or twitter is NEEDED for the public good.
The problem is that if everyone in the stack gets the same ability to block speech they don't like, there's no ability to publish on the internet.
AWS wants to prevent a particular speech. And, so do Facebook and Twitter. No problem. Use different hosting.
DigitalOcean says "not on our VPS". GoDaddy says "Not on our shared hosting." Google says "Not in our index".
So, we've got to self-host. Okay, that's fine.
Cloudflare says "Not with our CDN". HiVelocity says "not in our datacenter". The Apache Foundation say
You scenario leads to a different conclusion (Score:2)
You said:
AWS wants to prevent a particular speech. And, so do Facebook and Twitter. No problem. Use different hosting.
DigitalOcean says "not on our VPS". GoDaddy says "Not on our shared hosting." Google says "Not in our index".
So, we've got to self-host. Okay, that's fine.
Cloudflare says "Not with our CDN". HiVelocity says "not in our datacenter". The Apache Foundation says "not with our web server". Dell says "Not on our Poweredge servers". Fortigate says "Not with our firewalls". Level3 and Comcast say "n
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You said:
And Digital Ocean and GoDaddy and every webbhost all agree
It's bonkers really. This asshole is too lazy to type "first amendment webhost" into google and find Dreamhost. It's like he believes his free speech is being infringed because he's too lazy and stupid to speak.
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The problem isn't that Amazon is censoring (although that is bad). The real problem is there aren't many alternatives. We shouldn't all conglomerate on one or three major providers of a service, although it's understandable why we do (you'd have to be insane to commit yourself to Oracle's cloud).
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And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online.
This is nonsense. There are thousands of hosting companies out there, Amazon is hardly the only option here.
Sites like 8chan and The Daily Stormer are still up, clearly it's far from impossible to find hosting for even the most extreme and illegal content. On top of that you have the dark web.
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They're committing a balancing act, to avoid liability and avoid losing customers for hosting such content. Balancing on that slippery slope is very dangerous indeed, and dangerous to the bottom line with potential lawsuits and cancel culture threatening your business.
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Yeah, this is yet another reminder that "the cloud" is really just someone else's computer.
If you're hosting any material that could be considered even remotely controversial to liberal minded people like Jeff Bezos, you're better off self-hosting it.
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And Slashdot is "someone else's computer". At some point one realizes the silliness of supposedly such sage advice, because no matter how much "build your own" you'll eventually have to touch "someone else" for what you're offering to be any use. And at that point they can exert all the control the law allows and we're right back were we started. Complaining that society doesn't allow us to do whatever we want.
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And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online. They may not like it, but they are now a public forum, and as such they should not get to decide what is said or not said on the public forum. The law should. It's high time cloud companies be reclassified as common carriers.
Well, you're going to get a big pushback on that.
The problem with especially this case, is there is nothing prohibiting people from storing files on their own computer, or moving them to another cloud service, or even creating their own cloud.
I can create a cloud service easily, and the idea that in doing so, I am now a public utility or forum is just messed up.
There are many places where you can go to tell people that oral spermacide cures Covid-19, or that Hillary Clinton runs Pizzagate, or to org
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Well, you're going to get a big pushback on that.
Immaterial. If they want to host others' files, they will have to agree to not discriminate against legal content. Otherwise, they keep only their own their content. We have no problem passing all sorts of laws requiring other businesses to not discriminate. Hospitals must treat the indigent. You cannot refuse to sell your house to a black couple. Colorado can bankrupt businesses with fines for refusing to bake gay wedding cakes. Telephone companies must provide service irrespective of your politics.
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And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online.
Does Slashdot count as an "alternative"? Does moderation count as "policing"? In what universe has a society never exerted it's influence on it's members? Seems the "freedom" crowd lives in a world that never existed.
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Why do these companies take it upon themselves to police the content they host?
Because the world is not better when every public service turns into Voat or 4chan.
And no, the "private network, private rules" don't apply: those companies have grown so massive that there are fewer and fewer alternatives for censored voices to be heard online.
Yes they do. Size isn't part of the definition of being private. And if you think that *they* can censor you online then you frankly have no understanding of how the internet works. You know the internet full of child pornography, endless media piracy, fraud, scams, people selling drugs and illegal services, all of which people with far more power than Amazon or Google have ever had have tried to "censor".
It's not like they didn't warn you (Score:5, Insightful)
Once Amazon pulled this on one person, it was inevitable it would extend to more accounts - there is no way I'd risk any content on an Amazon platform at this point, because over time the expanse of the content they are willing to pull will creep outward as more and more content becomes ideologically impure enough it cannot be allowed to be seen.
Their only ideology is money (Score:2, Interesting)
the content they are willing to pull will creep outward as more and more content becomes ideologically impure enough it cannot be allowed to be seen.
They only care about money. They don't care about your views or mine. I guess your buddies are a bad business decision.
Many companies with left leaning boards advertise on Fox News. They pull their ads when there's outcry over calling schools shootings false flag operations and saying grieving parents are crisis actors...or whatever heinous thing flies on Fox news...then slowly the put them right back on. Why? The companies think it's good for business. Fox News has found a way to be good for busin
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An odd statement to make, as Amazon terminated a paying customer, that was growing in size. What about Amazon's action in any way make you conclude they care about money....
Cost-benefit analysis. If Amazon projects that they'll earn $X through their relationship with said paying customer, but lose $1.5X in other business due to reputational damage from being associated with that paying customer, they'll terminate that customer relationship. Of course they need to factor in other business that they might lose from customers being spooked by the idea of Amazon terminating their relationship, but then maybe they'll gain business from those who appreciate Amazon taking a stand on
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Yep, if I go into the coffee shop every day and buy a cup of coffee, but I smell of shit, I'm loud, and I yell at the other customers. The coffee shop might decide my cup of coffee isn't worth losing 10 cups of coffee, even if I'm talking about coming twice a day.
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Amazon terminated a paying customer because said customer was the proverbial turd in the swimming pool.
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There are more cloud competitors and hosting providers than cell phone companies.
Hell https://www.guru99.com/cloud-c... [guru99.com] there are 25 right there.
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This has always been the case.
Back in the day webspace first came from universities for most people, and maybe their employer. Then as consumer internet access took off ISPs offered it, and then services like Geocities made it easier to build pages. All along people were reliant on others to host their content.
Nowadays it's much easier to host your own stuff, to rent a VPS or put your own hardware in some datacentre. There are also service providers who either don't care or who specialize in hosting controv
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there is no way I'd risk any content on an Amazon platform at this point
Oh? Are you that concerned that you yourself may actually be an abusive shit? The rules are quite clear. You're not "risking" anything unless you are saying outright that you intend to break them.
Rather than try and find someone who suits your world view, why not develop your infrastructure in a way that makes it transferable. Amazon offers this, as does any cloud provider.
What makes censorship bad is WHO does it (Score:5, Insightful)
There's absolutely nothing wrong with suppressing information. We all do it each and every waking moment, when we decide what to pay attention to throughout our day.
The difference between good and bad censorship is who gets to decide what information is suppressed. If we do it to ourselves, it's always good. If someone else does it for us, it can be good if we know about it and consent to it, but it will always -- always! -- be bad if we're censored without being told.
Censorship of spam, for example, is good. We know about it, we ask for it, we consent to it. Also, we can review it, and tune the filter when it makes a false positive.
Censorship of information, especially opinions, without our knowledge or consent is never good.
Note how all the people who champion suppressing opinions in the name of not hurting others are just blindly assuming that their version of the information is "the" correct one. But the truth is not a simple thing. It is rarely, if ever, found solely in one person's point of view. You may be thinking you're not hurting someone with your censorship, but you certainly and easily could be.
Re: What makes censorship bad is WHO does it (Score:2)
The necessity of information censorship is a function of education. The more educated a countries citizens are the less there is a need for citizenship.
If you let a story that drinking bleach will cure AIDS in a country like Africa, you might be surprised how many people die from drinking bleach. Since a governments responsibility is to its people, then the responsibility is to suppress this story, though in fairness a better approach may be acknowledging such a myth.
Likewise there is telling the whole trut
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The necessity of information censorship is a function of education. The more educated a countries citizens are the less there is a need for citizenship.
Assuming you meant "censorship":
Yep. This.
eg. Let's take an informal vote on whether this (randomly chosen) web site should be kicked off the 'net or not:
https://explore.globalhealing.... [globalhealing.com]
Let's hear the arguments for allowing that web site to exist...?
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I vote yes.
But mostly because I think that the gene pool is in dire need of a good gulp of chlorine, and the best way to do that is to make the dimwits drink it themselves.
Re: What makes censorship bad is WHO does it (Score:2)
'I live in China"
Found the authoritarian dickweasel.
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If you believe that everyone in a country conforms to a stereotype that you made up yourself, you may not like what likeminded people think of people saying "I live in the USA".
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You're assuming these bleach drinkers are getting a balanced dose of news input.
They're NOT
If Fox tells them to *drink bleach. They aren't also going to look up CNN for a different opinion. And then weigh up the merits of both sides. They are going to drink that bleach and tell all their friends to drink bleach too. The only other input they are getting is all their friends, who also watch Fox, who are also telling them to drink bleach.
*Take Ivermectin
Take hydroxychloroquine
etc.
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I'm betting on radium water as the next cure. They already busted the tv evangelists for selling colloidal silver to the rubes.
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Even if their education system is not great it is still much better than most of Africa.
I wouldn't take that claim at face value...
The information level in American is rather mediocre.
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You might want to elaborate your argument, because what he said does make a lot of sense.
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it will always -- always! -- be bad if we're censored without being told.
Not true. Some ideas are wrong and detrimental to the world.
Not everybody is capable of making informed decisions so it's better if the ideas don't get free airtime.
I'm not even aiming at the ignorant masses when I say that, eg. there's lots of people who decide where the tax dollars go who need to have a few ideas censored without them ever being told.
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with suppressing information. We all do it each and every waking moment, when we decide what to pay attention to throughout our day.
As individual decision - absolutely. Now, when YOU start suppressing information OTHERS get to see you are exercising power over them. Even if benevolent, it is still a dictatorship.
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Censorship of spam, for example, is good. We know about it, we ask for it, we consent to it. Also, we can review it, and tune the filter when it makes a false positive.
Censorship of information, especially opinions, without our knowledge or consent is never good.
My opinion is that you should really be looking into and using COVID-ese. The revolutionary new drug that I have no (official) connection with that will definitely completely eliminate this pandemic if you would just push for FDA approval of on our behalf and either buy at the low price of $100 USD per dose or push for insurance companies to cover. Please note, this is not spam. It is information and opinion. You therefore may not censor it.
Absolutism is fun!
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Note how all the people who champion suppressing opinions in the name of not hurting others are just blindly assuming that their version of the information is "the" correct one.
I'm like at least 80% sure my opinion that I shouldn't be murdered is the correct one, so I'll happily adhere to it blindly.
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It doesn't matter who said what. What matters is what after the distortion arrive at the ears of those that want to hear it. What's a fact is that people drink bleach [forbes.com] and that snake oil peddlers sell it [wionews.com] as a miracle cure.
It does not matter what someone says. What matters is how the recipient understands it. And apparently those idiots understood "drink bleach to cure it".
Re:What makes censorship bad is WHO does it (Score:4, Informative)
He actually said injecting disinfectant. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?
"So it'd be interesting to check that."
Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."
TrapezoidSpace (Score:2)
So when can we see the SquareSpace for alt-speech?
If SquareSpace was available when Anne Frank was alive, could there have been a JewTracker website for individuals to report Jews and/or people who were helping to hide people who were suspected to be Jewish?
I mean it's all for the free market, right? Or should there be limits set?
Simply not a first amendment issue (Score:2)
It would be nice if people could get their heads around the *fact* that if/when a privately or publicly held company removes user contentfor any reasonit does *not* violate the first amendment. Period.
It is very simple: the first amendment applies it *government* actions restricting free speech.
Anyone who argues that Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc are violating their first amendment rights is being willfully ignorantand it’s pretty much a red flag that the rest of their rant is likely dubiously ground
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...that's the way it's being 'gamed' by the Elites.
It's a pity many people can't see what's going on here.
Which is it? (Score:2)
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You're either a neutral service provider (e.g. Telephone, internet, hosting, etc. ) Or you're an editor. Having it both ways is a problem.
No it's not. No newspaper or TV station in the world gives up the right to censor posts from the public just because they paid a journalist to write a story and paid an editor to edit that story. Being both is incredibly common, easily understood, and functioning exactly as desired.
You are setting up a false dichotomy. Stop wasting your time and ours with your muddy thinking.
Like they did with Wikileaks? (Score:2)
Biden made a call and Amazon cut off Wikileaks hosting.
So this is about controlling information. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Remember (Score:2)
When you rely on the cloud, somebody else is in charge of your data, and what happens to it is subject to the current popular political narrative.
I feel real sorry for those being born today, because likely everything will be forced to be on the cloud, local storage of anything will be outlawed (p1RaCy!, "think of the children", OMG! Terrorism!...and all that rot). Even better, these kids will live their entire lives in a nanny state, with people always watching them and telling them what to do, all the tim
Re: I'm From the Silicon Valley... (Score:2)
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While I abhor their anti-free speech stance, the libertarian ethos in me supports their right to manage their property as they see fit.
Corporate tyranny and government tyranny are two sides of the same coin.
Re: I'm From the Silicon Valley... (Score:2)
network neutrality may force them to host it (Score:2)
network neutrality may force them to host it
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Yes, but the alternative is legislation on peoples property that forces them to conduct business with people they disagree with
Like forcing a bakery to bake a cake for a gay wedding?
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Re: I'm From the Silicon Valley... (Score:2)
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No. Because AT&T took public access funds, enfranchisement benefits from municipalities for rights of way, and government money to build out its network with the premise that all residents would be served.
Did you accidentally think this was AT&T, and not Amazon?
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Why do you think AWS is the same as publically funded and government-approved monopolies? AWS is a business with multiple competent competitors today. The gas company has a regional monopoly and laid most of that infrastructure with tax money.
if not for the Rural Electrification Act some area (Score:2)
if not for the Rural Electrification Act some areas may not even have power lines
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Oh puh-LEASE. Republicans are being run ragged trying to prevent an investigation into the attempted insurrection. You really should be paying a lot more attention to what they're trying to keep from you than this fantasy anti-Democrat crap you're happily lapping up.
Trigger happy cop (Score:2, Insightful)
Members of the party of "law and order" beat a cop with the pole from an American flag. https://www.nbcwashington.com/... [nbcwashington.com]
The damage and security expenses is already $30 million. https://www.npr.org/sections/i... [npr.org]
As for fearing antifa, they aren't even a real group. The FBI says so https://apnews.com/article/don... [apnews.com]
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We don't, actually, have any idea, who the perpetrator were — and what's their party-affiliation, if any. But we do know — from the video you posted — that there were only 3-5 of them. Yet, over 500 people have been arrested [usatoday.com] already over that one day's events.
On contrast, the far more destructive rioting in Minneapolis [nytimes.com], for example, resulted in only a few prosecutions — and the media laments even th [nytimes.com]
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without consequences, complaints or criticism?
Consequences for ME of course. If I don't like what those companies do, THEY should have consequences.
Welcome to the thought pattern of the muh freedumbs crowd. I want rights. But the responsibility that comes with them is for someone else.
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Why won't Mitch, Kevin, and Don force these private companies to let me say whatever I want on their private platforms...without consequences, complaints or criticism?"
Which is the least conservative idea I've ever heard. I thought conservatives were all about the government being hands off and letting businesses operate as they see fit? Oh wait it's not going in their favor? Government please do something!
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Larry Ellison needs a new yacht?
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Most of the ones I have the misfortune of interacting with seem to believe that the magic year is 1950. When women stayed in the kitchen and men went to work and drank all day. Oh, and making fun of people for different colored skin was just what you did. And if somebody seemed to be gay, you beat them the fuck up and "straightened them out."
None of that sounds great to me, but apparently I just don't get it.
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Re: Cute widdle MAGAATs! (Score:2)
It's funny because the only reason that Jim Crow laws were valid in the first place was because a bunch of pro-government busybodies launched a court case that rendered the 14th amendment effectively null and void until SCOTUS started doing an end run around their previous shit decision with incorporation of the BoR.
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You know the glorious 1950s. Where your wife did what she was told and you could smack her around a bit if she got mouthy.
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Archie Bunker indeed not that he smacked his wife around.
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Re: Cute widdle MAGAATs! (Score:2)
The current Republicans are the racist fuckers.
That's all well and good but it's white libs (okay - and plenty of blacks) who blatantly reveal their beliefs, which are that minorities are inherently flawed and that whites are "privileged" for being the way they are.
The Republican side of the [uni-party system] certainly serves to benefit the sociopathic bankers and industrialists but the Democratic Party has never stopped being the Plantation Party.
Re: Cute widdle MAGAATs! (Score:3)
I can see why you'd believe that. After all, everybody who isn't in your political tribe is racist, right?
Let's be specific so I can join you in condemning racism. Can you name three Republicans (limit to President, Congress, or Senate) that have either explicitly allied for Americans to be treated differently by race or have proposed bills to that effect? Of course direct quotes would be necessary. Let's also limit this to the past five years to encompass orange man's term.
It should be easy enough. Certain
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BLM murdered 30 people last year? Can you provide the nearly 30 names?
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BLM murdered 30 people last year? Can you provide the nearly 30 names?
Yes, but only if you assume that (a) anyone who died even vaguely near a BLM protest was murdered by a member of BLM, even if that person e.g. was a protestor shot by a cop and (b) add on a bunch just for good measure.
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You're too dumb to read your own link. They're counting the people that Kyle Rittenhouse shot as part of that 25. I didn't know he was a BLM member. Also people shot by cops or run over by vehicles. So you want to try again?
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Also boogey man stuff. I bet they didn't think of THAT.