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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 when culture is the basis of Democrat persecution through corporate proxies.
You’re not, you’re defending equal application of the law in a new Jim Crow era.
Ricochet isn’t safe.
Epstein was strongly on the side of the baker because there were many other bakeries nearby. Probably other reasons too and I’m oversimplifying it, but I recall this distinctly. I’m no scholar- this isn’t my career field do I often rely on what appear to be strong arguments made by others.
@skipsul Based on what I’ve read and my own arguments with others, to me the strongest case for removing 230 protection is that right now the status quo is for there to be persistent government interference in the free market, protecting platforms. Essentially- right now they are technically platforms, but we should be classifying Twitter and Facebook and Google as publishers and not platforms because they are determining what material you read on their platform. They are essentially no different than the New York Times, except they aren’t liable for their speech so they have an inherent advantage over the NYT right now. The government is picking winners and losers because big-tech can act as a publisher while getting platform protections.
Make them pick a lane- they can be publishers like CNN and ban anyone they want. Or they can be platforms and have those protections they currently have, and now cannot ban speech. You are de-regulating and removing crony capitalism, while protecting freedom of association. Edited for clarification.
To your question, perhaps, as has been said, Parler’s fate is more related to being in this controversial space and not prepared and capable of handling the adversity. Twitter has grown through a longer period and likely has independent capability so that they can indulge Leftists doing what those on Parler are accused of without punishment while they, Twitter, ban conservative speech outright and arbitrary.
True, but Ricochet is neither a platform nor a utility, neither monopoly nor part of a Trust, either legally or de-facto; hypocrisy is their prerogative.
1.) Don’t they control about 95% of the global market share?
2.) I thought they already had done so.
Criminal conspiracy is a manufactured crime useful for law enforcement. I doubt the average business entrepreneur has sufficient expertise to venture there and that is usually the only offense that possible falls into the subject here.
Actually it is a bad analogy to compare the to NYT since 230 applies to users not the company’s speech. Regardless, Twitter is acting as a de-facto publisher by allowing some speech and excluding other speech.
Just to avoid misunderstandings, that was Aaron you were quoting.
Financial choke points were an Obama innovation that Republicans (and Trump) should have killed with fire. But they’re the stupid party. Blocking companies and people from financial services for political reasons is still evil.
This is probably the most despicable statement I have ever seen on Ricochet, following on what has gone before.
In the years I’ve been on Twitter I’ve blocked only one person. That was a few days ago when a NT person was chortling with David French over the attack on Parler. I let him call me a Nazi and white supremacist and whatever crap he could come up with, and I returned the compliment in more than equal measure. He accused people of being on Parler of being racists or whatever. But the last straw was when he took his NT extremism to the extent of rejoicing in the shutdown of free speech by Parler’s competitors, and I blocked him. My Twitter feeds have been far less poisonous since then.
Here on Ricochet I’ve put up with the likes of Gary Robbins. What he does is bad for our country, but I never thought he should be kicked off. I didn’t mind putting up with any of the other the people who have left or were kicked off of Ricochet, at least not to the extent that I thought they needed to go or I would go. We have arrogant anal openings here who despise Donald Trump. But this is different. If this is what Ricochet has descended to, then I don’t want to be associated with it.
What nonsense. Marci wondered if Parler had violated the ToC of AWS et al. I said they had been warned months ago that they were.
Pointing out something that was in the news is somehow despicable?
You think your earlier rape analogy was somehow appropriate? Now that was tasteless.
This is also foundational to understanding Parler’s main mistake – they were aiming to imitate Twitter but this time it’ll be different! No censorship!
Except censorship was not really Twitter’s problem.
Uneven and opaque regulation of content is Twitter’s problem – claiming to be neutral then lurching from one ex post facto justification to another.
Parler has misunderstood the issue, and so their remedy is faulty.
Absolutely. You’re not required to use *.root-servers.net.
I don’t think I agree with you there. I’m leaning towards the solution being a system where it’s impossible to censor anything. That leads to all kinds of unsavory behavior, but I might be willing to pay that price.
Let me give you the longer reply:
Have you looked seriously at the tenets of the far Right? You think Christianity has any place there? At best it is totalitarian will to power BS wearing a Jesus skin suit.
I will not be bullied into defending totalitarian excrement on the Right simply because it stands in opposition to the Left.
I will not be bullied into defending QAnon creepers and their fantasies just because Antifa and BLM have equally poisonous and toxic fantasies of their own.
Moreover, with regards to Parler specifically, you are misleading – they were taken down specifically for not policing the QAnon and anti-semitic crap that was festering, and because the people who stormed the Capital last week used Parler to plot the storming.
For years I have defended the Right against the charge that we were all secretly totalitarian thugs, but this crap, and Trump’s horrible behavior since November have undone it all. I will not defend it because it is somehow “our side”.
I will not defend it because it is immoral.
I will not defend paranoid fascists just because they are not communists.
I will not defend a bunch of creeps who are going to come after Christians no matter who survives the bloodbath – the loonies out there are acting in A spirit, but what spirit that is is not Christ.
And I certainly won’t ally with anyone who threatens like you have.
The gates of hell will not prevail. They didn’t in Nazi Germany, they didn’t under the Turks, they aren’t now under the Chicoms.
We have had something close to that now for the last 25 years, since the internet exploded into being. Our society is more divided than ever. Groups who before could be safely marginalized, but now are but a few keystrokes away from anyone with a weak mind. People are more connected, and yet more polarized and isolated and lonelier than ever, seeking out these fringe groups just so they have some sense of fellowship, even if that fellowship is destroying them and alienating them from everyone else.
Is that worth the price?
Oh, and lest anyone think Parler was somehow as pure as the driven snow about “censorship”.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like.shtml
I know who’s coming for me. I know who’s coming for my job, my home, my community, my church, and my kids. I know who my enemies are. And I’m not crawling out of the foxhole because the guy next to me chews his toenails.
It’s big of you to protect the week minded from ideas.
And I’m not going into foxhole with that guy.
When you surrender to a totalitarian mindset, that it is an all against all total war, you will be consumed by it.
Ideas have power. You ever deal with someone with a conspiracy obsession? I’ve known several – one obsessed over chemtrails, another fretted about Zionists. And they were convinced that they knew the real truth – it was right there on the internet. One ruined his life obsessing over secret zionists – he hanged himself finally in despair.
Ideas have consequences, especially if they are allowed to take root.
Section 230 gives a platform immunity for the actions of the users. It does not give users immunity.
The goal of rewriting 230 is to remove the immunity when the platform decides to becomes a publisher.
On the other other hand, from FOX Business:
Nah, they used Facebook, not Parler.
I thought Christians weren’t supposed to beat false witnesses against their neighbor.
Check Forbes – Parler.
Spare me the sanctimony.
If true, and there was no other emergency escape clause, AWS is going to get sued.
When did this become the conversation here? The fascism in this country is in the grip of the Big Techs and the Democrats, no question about that. I don’t know any of the people you are referring to on the far Right and I don’t know anyone who violated the Capitol? I do know that expression has been thwarted here on Ricochet for political views so for sure speech suppression is in vogue.
Look at Cliff’s comment.
Speech suppression on Ricochet didn’t start today.