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Twitter permanently bans Trump (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter timschochet
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shader
Footballguy
These are good questions. I do think that hosting services are very much like electricity in the modern world. None of us are privy to the contract between Parler and AWS, but I imagine Parler isn't too happy about it.
I guess my issue is I feel bad for Parler in a sense, because they are being made out to be the villain in all of this. I have CNN going on my tv on mute much of the day. Parler is on there all the time and is being made out to be this nefarious business, when in reality the culprits (if you want to blame the social media companies) are facebook and twitter, as THAT is where the event was primarily organized.
I think there is a good opportunity here to force some change on these social media companies, and instead it just seems like they are going after parler, as if that is going to solve anything.
shader
Footballguy
Well that depends on the contract, doesn't it? And sure there are other options, but none of them are quick. It's not like flipping a switch and going from cloud-hosted to on-premise, especially for companies that started up in the cloud.
I guarantee this move is eye-opening to a lot of AWS customers, and I'm personally shocked they made the decision.
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Anarchy99
Footballguy
Next you'll suggest I talk to my wife instead of texting her all the time . . . even when we are both home. Talking went out of style a long time ago.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
Hosting webservices is not the same thing as providing electricity. Just about anyone can set up and run their own webservices infrastructure (assuming you can afford the network connection and hardware). Using AWS as part of your architecture is a choice, not an unavoidable necessity.
Mile High
Footballguy
The President or any politician could right now without any help from Twitter or Facebook talk to the people.
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I am curious what these changes are - and how these changes would help, and how they would be implemented. Maybe better for its own thread, but I am interested in the details.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
It's not eye opening to me in any way. When architecting our systems, we always recognize the risk inherent in farming out commodity infrastructure. More often than not we decide against it, mainly for security reasons, but things like this are also possibilities that you need to account for when formulating your architecture and business plan. AWS is not a utility.
shader
Footballguy
It's not the same. But if you lose either one, your business is severely impacted either way.
And to be fair, in a sense losing your hosting webservices would be worse for Parler than their corporate office losing electricity, as at least their app would still be up if their electricity went down.
The General
Footballguy
For sure. Much more power in AWS.
How this would be regulated gets to the core of capitalism. I guess some other company can now come into to service this area if the money is there is the pure capitalism answer, but how many companies are able to do thi? I am def am out of my depth in this area.
shader
Footballguy
I have no idea, but I think that removing the algorithms (that haven't been around forever) that try to entice users into going down their personal rabbit holes would be a start.
Would QANON have even started without those? I question that. These social media companies are all designed in a way to learn what you like, and feed you info based on that. Twitter is the least egregious of all of these. Youtube is a train-wreck that causes normal people to radicalize themselves based on a never-ending stream of videos that google feels they need to see.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
As a capitalist, I'm proud of the fact that private companies dealt with Trump in a few hours while Congress took the weekend off to watch football.
jm192
Footballguy
But Social media is how information is disseminated now. Most people see things on Facebook/Twitter. There's a reason news outlets use social media.
Time will tell if it was the right decision for AWS. But, my experience in these situations is that business make decisions based primarily on the financial implications.
Maybe this is Bezos flexing his muscles towards Trump, when he knows Trump is currently impotent to stop it - but I would guess this is a simple financial calculus that never reached the level of Bezos.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
The mitigation strategies are very different in the two cases. If the electricity provider cuts your electricity, you have a much smaller set of options for replacement at a much higher cost of entry. If you lose AWS you have a wide array of options at a much smaller cost of entry. I'm not saying the cost is trivial, but replacing energy generation and delivery capabilities are a very different set of considerations than building out your own server farm.
The General
Footballguy
Most do, right? I don't know of any other politician's Tweets or social media that really matters. Maybe AOC?
I know they all have them but they are filled with ad's and generic platitudes.
shader
Footballguy
I'd bet Bezos made the call, but I obviously have no way of knowing that, just a guess.
SWC
Bromigo
man if you are twitter this honestly could not have worked out better trump is on twitters tail big time and then he goes all benedict arnold so they can kick him off and amreica says yeah that makes sense and he loses all support and anything he says about big tech looks like hes being a crybaby and then as a cherry on top parler gets shut down and as part of that basically everything about its users is stolen and the parler crowd now has to worry about every horrible thing they ever said on the internet being directly attributed to them and thier drivers license verified names which i had to think probably stifles any movement to the next parler thing that pops up brohans thats a pretty good run if your name is john q twitter that is all i am sayin take that to the bank bromigos
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AAABatteries
Footballguy
I tend to agree with you but I'm willing to hear arguments either way. I think the best answer is that Parler meet their TOS and I doubt this is an issue. But what about next time? I mean, Bezos and Trump are in a public feud of sorts already. What if Bezos tells any MAGA company to take off and you have 24 hours? Granted, it's not always good to jump to hypotheticals but this one interests me because 1. I use AWS every day and 2. I do see it as somewhat different than Twitter even if I'm too dumb to articulate why.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Not a bad move - some pretty good games this weekend. Congrats on the Bills win!
AAABatteries
Footballguy
jm192
Footballguy
Extremely difficult.
I think Trump earned the ban. I think Capitalism says Twitter/Amazon/Google can do as they see fit.
But they've developed these massive/unique platforms with the ability to influence what information can be consumed. If they're using that for political purposes--should that be allowed?
Maybe Trump's just insane and this normalizes after he's gone?
Assuming that to be true - perhaps a valuable lesson to be learned byTrump, and his family.
Its one thing to attack a private business when you have the power, quite a different thing when you have no power. And, in politics, in the US, power will always shift hands.
That might explain Trump's desperate bid to hold onto power - understanding what was coming - from businesses and creditors alike.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
I'll reiterate - why I find the discussion compelling, I don't feel sorry for Parler at all. The gambled with a pretty lousy business model and got burned.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Mile High
Footballguy
Social media should be a repeater of the information not the source. Politicians should speak in front of people who can question what they are saying.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Yeah, but now imagine your entire setup is on AWS and they just cut you off at the knees. Your data, your code, your email, everything. Granted, maybe some companies plan for such an event but I can't imagine it's many.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
I mean, just imagine if you are GroovusWorks making widgets and your entire setup is on AWS. And you post a MAGA rally pic on your Instagram in your shirt with Trump flying on an eagle with a bazooka on his shoulder. And you start trending on Instagram and Bezos sees it and says "Screw GroovusWorks" and tells them to ban you immediately. And you are all like "Hey, we’re losing all our damn money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain’t gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip! And my wife ain’t gonna f… my wife ain’t gonna make love to me if I got no money!"
Now what?
Now what?
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The General
Footballguy
The way I see it is the specific apps can have their rules of conduct, ban as they see fit. People then decide if they want to be a part of this service.
The AWS stuff seems almost more like approaching a utility.
I’m pretty much an idiot when it comes to this area so I may be way overestimating the control, power and how it is concentrated.
Parler, the social media app popular among Trump supporters, is suing Amazon after it was dropped from the tech giant’s web hosting platform, reports say.
It has accused Amazon of breaking anti-trust laws and is asking a federal judge to order its reinstatement on Amazon Web Services cloud computing service.
I am going to guess no breach of contract, if they are skipping the easy claim, and jumping straight to anti-trust.
It has accused Amazon of breaking anti-trust laws and is asking a federal judge to order its reinstatement on Amazon Web Services cloud computing service.
I am going to guess no breach of contract, if they are skipping the easy claim, and jumping straight to anti-trust.
GoBirds
Footballguy
Now what? If you ever said MAGA they want to see you suffer for eternity, many of the Left would love this. That’s what.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
Then whoever created the business plan, created the architecture, did risk analysis and mitigation planning, did contract analysis/negotiation, and approved all of that should have their positions with their respective organizations reexamined. This circumstance isn't some unforeseeable surprise - it's an obvious consideration when outsourcing your infrastructure.
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AAABatteries
Footballguy
Interesting - setting aside my GroovusWorks example (I really only used that to get the Trading Places quote in) I guess I'm not sure I can completely get behind this. Sure, you could say this is foreseen and you wouldn't be wrong but that's in theory. In practice, I can't imagine very many companies do this. It's expensive to either have redundancy or plan for it. And if you use actual AWS services then you are pretty much fubared completely if they drop you. There's no easy porting over to Azure services. I would doubt seriously that even 5% of companies factor this in.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
That's on those companies, not AWS. When you rent your house and invite an undesirable element over to hang out, don't be surprised when your landlord decides its not worth having you as a renter anymore.
Rich Conway
Footballguy
I suspect it's quite a bit higher than 5% overall. Of larger companies, it's much higher, well above 50%. And I can guarantee that their IT consultants are practically begging them to add redundancy on at least an annual basis. It's not like this is a new concept. I have personally been giving Why Business Continuity Is Needed presentations for more than 20 years.
The General
Footballguy
IT FBG's Not sure if this is easily answerable.
How many companies out there can provide the services that AWS does?
How many companies out there can provide the services that AWS does?
AAABatteries
Footballguy
So they are doing redundancy with another provider like Azure or Google? I work for a fairly large company (understatement) and we aren't really doing that.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Kind of hard to answer - nobody else can provide all the services because AWS has some of their own services that are unique to them. If you are strictly talking about servers then I don't know the answer but there's some other big ones like Microsoft (Azure), Google. And those other big ones also provide their own unique services. Some are compatible cross clouds but not all. For example, I can use Amazon Redshift for database services and that could theoretically get moved to an Azure service but it's not completely straightforward or fast to do.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
Somewhat depends on which service you're talking about - setting up a server farm with basic webservices is a less daunting proposition than creating inhouse AI and complex data analysis capabilities. Ultimately the answer is all of them can if they are willing to direct internal resources towards their development.
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The General
Footballguy
@Gr00vus @AAABatteries
Was reading you guys on the previous page. AWS doing this does seem to be quite a bit more murky, complex than Twitter choosing to ban an individual.
Was reading you guys on the previous page. AWS doing this does seem to be quite a bit more murky, complex than Twitter choosing to ban an individual.
Rich Conway
Footballguy
You didn't say this specifically, but I'll assume you meant to include the italics I added above.
There aren't hundreds, but there are certainly more than a handful. Without the italicized qualifier I added, the answer is hundreds.
The General
Footballguy
AAABatteries
Footballguy
IMO, yes. I will let Groovus answer but I think he and I agree that this is still a situation where a company is doing what they think is in their best interest and it isn't a first amendment issue. Where I'm coming from is the idea of the latitude these infrastructure service providers should be allowed to have to just cut off their customers. I think it's unreasonable to expect all companies to plan for such an event. How to "fix" that issue, I don't know. But it does give an unusual level of power over somebody's business to use those services. And as Groovus and others point out - they don't have to choose that. There's other options for them. My GroovusWorks example was mostly tongue in cheek but I think it's a somewhat valid example. You are at the mercy of these service providers - if they cut you off you could lose your business and if you are a small mom & pop it could mean even worse for you.
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Rich Conway
Footballguy
All companies should have a comprehensive BC plan. Redundancy doesn't necessarily have to be active/active or even immediate. Obviously, one's BC plan should take into account the impact of downtime, whether brief or extended. My local bar and grill has a website with online ordering. If that goes down? Really not that big a deal, and they aren't willing to spend large sums on it. The impact to Parler is obviously much more serious, and they should have ensured that their eggs weren't all in the same basket.
I'll go back to something I mentioned earlier. Are we to believe that Parler's contract allowed Amazon to terminate AWS services without warning and without cause? If so, maybe Parler's general counsel needs to be on the hook for that. If not, and Amazon violated the terms of that contract, then I'm all for Parler suing Amazon for loss of revenue and more.
The General
Footballguy
I tend to agree with my limited knowledge here.
So much more of an issue here to be discussed than Twitter bouncing an individual.
Gr00vus
Footballguy
Right. And as a result it's incumbent on the service user to make sure they can either handle the consequences of the default service contract or negotiate a custom contract that provides protection. Absent that kind of legally binding agreement, it's on the user to deal with the risk they're accepting. Perhaps this incident will result in people taking a more careful look at the situation they've put themselves in when building their businesses on top of AWS and adjust accordingly.
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Zow
Footballguy
If everybody would just be reasonable, rational, and fair about 90% of us would be out of work.
The above said, I'm not terribly concerned with my profession's job security.
The General
Footballguy
Stompin' Tom Connors
Footballguy
I'd be interested in this take as well. IANAL, but I can't see how Parler is going to deliver a burden of proof around anticompetition charges based on AWS removing Parler based on ToS violations.
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