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Parler, Web Hosts, and Masterpiece Cakes
Parler lost its rented server space with Amazon Web Services. Parler also found its phone apps booted off the Apple and Google app stores. This is not the “destruction” of Parler – not unless Parler was on such shaky ground that it cannot be rebuilt. This is certainly hamstringing it, but if this is a “death sentence”, then it is one that is easily overcome with cold hard cash (would that the Reaper were so easily fended off on more fleshly concerns). We need perspective here, and an honest reckoning of what happened, how, and why. We also need to yet again yank the plank from our own eye, for it was just a short while ago that we were adamantly defending another business for refusing paying clientele: I speak of none other than Masterpiece Cakes.
First, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way – understanding how Parler was built, and how it planned to make money for its creators (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it was all charity work) is key to understanding its demise. Web sites have to be located on computers. You can make a website on your laptop and share it with the rest of the internet if you want. Users just would need to know the numerical address in either IPV4 or IPV6 to find it. If you want to make it easier to find then you would have to register a domain name, and then map that domain name to your server address. Now suppose your little website got really popular because its topic was fun and lovable – let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your website was all about your pet bird. If you had just a residential internet connection, after a point your neighbors would start to complain that traffic to your laptop was killing their own connections. Plus, your laptop has limited processing power to keep serving page views out – and your addition of a little bird forum doubled traffic to the point where your laptop’s cooling fan failed from overuse. How do you fix these issues?
You scale up. You either pay your local ISP for a better connection that’s isolated from the neighborhood’s shared node, and has more bandwidth, or you take your overworked laptop somewhere that has a better hookup. And you replace the laptop with a server. Maybe several in a cluster that appear as one to outsiders (after all, you’ve got bird videos now too, and a bird podcast, and a bird supply store). You also need a moderator because you found your forum was being used to orchestrate illegal bird smuggling. Maybe, instead of spending all that money on equipment, you rent server space elsewhere – a web host who has an entire server farm just for this purpose- that way you can still run it from your home. But now, you no longer control your data – not fully. And it turns out the server host has some other rules in place too.
For one, this host says that he’s not going to accept liability for anything illegal with his clients’ websites, and he’s not going to act as relay (a forwarder) to porn sites, terrorist sites, animal cruelty, etc. Your moderator took care of the smuggling ring, but there’s a bird furry group that’s gotten weird, and (for reasons you cannot fathom) the image of Tweety Bird, once innocuous, has taken on a meme life of its own as a symbol for an unsavory political group. Your host notices that a lot of inbound traffic to your site is being relayed from some of these Tweety Bird groups, and warns you to deal with it or he’ll boot you.
The final straw was when several Bird Liberation Front affiliated members spent a long and seedy weekend warning about a coming war on Kentucky Fried Chicken and Tyson Chicken, and come Monday one of them shot two fast-food workers and tried to deep fry their shoes. The headlines wrote themselves: “Bird Brained Brawler, Egged On To Deep Fry Footwear.” Your host canceled your service. Do you have the (ahem) nest egg to now buy your own servers to get going again?
Unfair? Maybe, but you can hardly blame the web host for not wanting the liability or the publicity. Writ larger, this is Parler’s situation. They were built from the beginning on rented webspace through Amazon – they never controlled their own hardware. Worse for them, they relied heavily on creating a site that was primarily geared towards mobile access, through apps. Both their cloud host and the ecosystem for their apps come with all manner of terms and conditions under which they would do business.
Parler billed itself as being some sort of center for “free speech”, with hardly anything in the way of content moderation or dreaded “censorship”. From its launch, therefore, Parler was immediately peopled not just with users wanting to get away from the moral censoriousness of Twitter, but with all manner of other users – folks that would make Alex Jones look like the voice of cool reason. And such people did as such people do and began to trade in conspiracy theories – QAnon and more besides. Forbes noted over the weekend that the planning did, in fact, occur on Parler and other platforms. Parler had been warned repeatedly in the past months to deal with what AWS was seeing go across its servers, and had been warned by both Apple and Google that their app would be removed at some point. The storming of the Capitol, whose pre-planning was evident on Parler, was the last straw, making “at some point” into “right now”.
Parler made its choice not to moderate – I can tell you from my own time here as a moderator that moderation is necessary. Most users of Ricochet never saw the posts and members who would show up and start dropping racist and anti-semitic rants, or used their image libraries to stash pornography (Max has seen this), because they were eliminated quickly. You could deride that as “censorship” if you will – if you are determined to treat “censorship” as a universally dirty word.
But then again, wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes engaged in a different sort of “censorship”? Wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes honored for exercising their right not to serve clientele in ways found unconscionable? The persistent lunatic who kept suing Masterpiece at one time demanded a satanic cake with protruding sex toys. If we honor Masterpiece Cakes for refusing such clientele, why are Amazon, Apple, and Google condemned for refusing Parler’s business? For that is what they have done.
The lunatic who wanted the pornographic cakes in Colorado, we insisted, had every right to bake his own (quite literally) damned cake. By the same token, only money is hindering Parler from buying its own servers and internet connections, and firing it all back up again. As for the app stores? How long has Ricochet run without an app? And has anyone heard of jailbreaking IOS or sideloading apps on Android phones?
If Parler failed to examine the risks to its strategy when they started, that’s their problem. They wanted to become immediately as large as Twitter, but lacked the capital to do so. I’ve seen that sort of failure before in other businesses – we call it vaporware. Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon all started small, with narrowly defined markets and concepts, then grew from that base. They also learned on the way (and are still learning) through both failures and successes (anyone remember Google Circles?). Anyone hoping to unseat them should be prepared to do the same. Parler tried to jump in at the deep end without knowing how to swim, in a pool they didn’t own, while allowing others to dirty the pool. Now they’ve been thrown out. That’s business.
And nobody should be compelled to do business with them. Not unless you want Masterpiece Cakes to also bake pornographic cakes for a vengeful madman.
Published in Science & Technology
Not sure how firm is the ground on which the Parler suit against Amazon’s AWS must be fought:
It is filed in the federal court for the Western District of Washington State. That is a court, to which all judicial appointments in the past couple of decades have been made by Democrat governors with the blessings of the state’s two Democrat senators, including that stellar intellect Patty Murray.
Then, too, it was recently reported that Amazon had just surpassed Boeing (!) as the state’s largest employer.
So good luck with that, Parler.
True – but Masterpiece Cakes was under no legal or moral obligation to recommend a competitor. It was, of course, a courtesy that they did so, but if a customer comes to me demanding a product I do not make, I may or may not make recommendations on alternative suppliers, depending on what the customer wants, and the relationships with my competitors. I am under no obligation to do so.
Well, yes, build your own server cluster, and then grow it organically.
Setting aside all the policy issues, Parler tried to “go big” right out of the gate without knowing what in heck they were doing.
And greed. Don’t forget greed.
Going to go out on a limb here to say that IF Parler is able to regroup and re-up, whether with their own servers, or someone else’s servers somewhere else in the world, or with their own, or with a sugar daddy’s money, they’ll suddenly find themselves extremely popular and deem this entire experience very beneficial from an “all publicity is good publicity” POV. The fact is, I’m cynical enough to think this way (blame twenty-five years in IT management and a few recent life experiences for this), and I’m not sure I believe anyone’s story in this matter excepting @skipsul’s, who’s presented a cogent and very understandable picture of what’s actually going on from a social networking and customer/host perspective.
I expect the next 7-14 days will tell the tale. If Parler can’t ‘get it up’ in that timeframe, folks will start looking for a new solution. And there will probably be one.
We really do live in ‘interesting times.’ I’d probably have been more thrilled about that three or four decades ago than I am at this point in my life, when I’m just trying to stay warm, watch the sand in my hourglass run its course, and keep the wolf from the door.
Fine post.
Changing the culture is another battle.
And when the ISPs decide not to do business with you? Build your own internet?
Limits but does not eliminate, and there are other conflicting laws like DMCA in play too, anti racketeering and conspiracy laws, and so forth.
Facebook and Twitter certainly never moderated the very, very mainstream conspiracy theories of the left–Russian collusion and “Bush lied about WMD.”
I think the coming social credit wars will result in Skipsul not being granted access to a phone. Free association and all.
Get back to me when you are no longer allowed to use banking services, anywhere.
Here is a test case: is InfoWars still accessible? Alex Jones’s little hell hole isn’t even the worst of what goes about on the fringe Right. InfoWars is still up, so I think it safe to say Parler will most likely go live again soon.
But:
To steal from what a friend said on another forum: “Parler could have (theoretically) operated ethically and this wouldn’t have happened. Or it may have happened anyway. “
There are already many other types of content that no US ISP will allow:
There is credible evidence going back to December that Parler users were conspiring to riot in DC on 1/6. There are credible allegations that Parler was allowing other stuff to circulate. Parler made an active decision not to police that.
Well, presumably that will be a non issue. I mean, if cannot contact you, then I won’t. And you won’t be troubled by me either.
I reiterate my calling Twitter a sewer.
Yeah, that’s a real problem.
They have that right. From the classical liberal view, they should have it. The only interesting question is how they should (not may) exercise it.
Okay, you don’t agree that the “ought” question is relevant. Why not? Your answer is that Parler deserves to be banned for exactly the reasons AWS claims they are banning them.
That’s possible. But it’s naive to take the word of Big Tech on that. They are selective about whom they attack. Antifa’s websites are still going strong, as Andy Ngo helpfully reminds us.
The proper takeaway is that Big Tech are villains. They claim to be open, neutral platforms for free speech, but they are putting their thumbs on the scale. That’s lame.
Right. I don’t care about Parler, per se, either. Although an alternative to Twitter that is actually objective sounds pretty good. I’d tolerate a little sewer, as you put it, for that.
I wrote my own comment instead.
I get that you’re trying to say, “I’m making this point, not that point.” Fine. But it’s not out of bounds to say that your point misses a larger point, and to raise the question of whether you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Which I believe you are. Namely, whether AWS “may” terminate Parler.
It is already happening to gun manufacturers.
Oh and the Masterpiece Cake decision was not about selling them a cake, they could buy any cake in the store. The decision was about making the guy write the message on the cake that they wanted.
No one is asking AWS to generate content for Parler. They are asking AWS to act like the common carrier they already are.
Common carriers don’t get to pick which legal load they will take, they have to take and deliver it.
Repeal 230 and let the libel lawsuits fly.
I agree with this. In my opinion, they are publishers, not publicly owned town squares. And I think there are too many social media sites to consider any one of them a monopoly.
Fair point.
But Parler still has the same card Ricochet has – make the site itself mobile-friendly so you don’t need an app. That way it is platform and hardware independent.
AWS is not a common carrier. There is no such term defined for web hosts.
But this is a common argument coming from the Left with Net Neutrality, and Net Neutrality has massive issues of its own.
Not entirely true. They can place limits on safety, delivery area, and how loads are packaged. They can also refuse to serve clients who have bundled illegal goods with legal ones.
And when InfoWars goes down? Run the experiment backwards. What limiting principle exists that differentiates refusing to host Parler on a particular web hosting service versus refusing to let them connect to the broader network? I’m not seeing one.
If you want FBI agents on Parler investigating potential revolutionaries go for it. I don’t want every private entity being responsible for enforcing the law; that leads to an East German police state.
If it is a monopoly, it absolutely should.
A monopoly is when the government prohibits competitors. That is not the case with social media. No government has prohibited a competitor to amazon, apple, facebook, twitter and instagram.
True
They are subject to the FTC and its mandate to regulate business practices.
From the ruling where the FTC retained its ability to regulate AT&T business practices in 2018.
Look, I’m on your side man, but don’t force me to defend the FTC.
That’s so untrue it’s funny.
I see nothing wrong with an online platform equivalent to phone service, by which only criminal behavior merits exclusion (and then only by due process of law). Free expression is better served by a combination of platforms and publishers than by competing publishers alone.
These tech companies do not object to claims of conspiracy, hate speech, incitement, or even organization of illicit activities when originating from fellow leftists.
They indulged the Russian collusion narrative long after it was disproven (to say the least). They regularly host promotion of hatred against Republicans, conservatives, Christians generally as well as specifically. And their services facilitated rioting throughout 2020 that resulted in arson, vandalism, and assaults on police.
It’s a defensible position from a strict free market libertarian point of view. I don’t think it works out in practical reality.
Nope, incomplete answer.
See the breakup of AT&T
Pffffftttttt.
I probably agree, but does it matter when they all act in concert? And could they be a danger even if they aren’t a monopoly by some technical definition?
Yeah, I don’t like them either.