From an optics point of view, if it looked like they were handling all users the same way, there'd be so much less of a problem here. But right now, it is like selective law enforcement -- action will be taken if we don't like you, much more than whether you are deemed to be complying with the terms of service.
What they could've done is consistently enforced their rules all the way along, to people of all political persuasions.
Is there evidence that there are other AWS customers with easily discoverable content that incites violence, which AWS is not working to have removed due to their terms of service?
People rioting under the guise of "antifa" killed innocent people in Portland. They even bombed a court house. There's videos of "antifa" who tried to molotov police but accidentally self-immolated instead. It's a meme that the media will call these "peaceful protests".
As someone who has no dog in the race, and hates violence -- is this "fake news"?? Do these rabid maga idiots actually have a point?
If these protests were organized using FB or Twitter then why aren't they also removed from the app stores?
FB profited from radicalizing people using "engagement metrics" and machine learning at a massive scale just to sell ads. Now they want to wash their hands clean?
These billionaires weren't democratically elected and they shouldn't be shaping our democracy.
If there was a social network whose primary objective was to promote these actions, then sure.
As it happens, these actions are not coordinated en masse, are neither promoted nor supported by even the vast majority of people who are supposedly aligned ideologically with is perpetrators, and are not organized in spaces mostly devoted to that purpose.
Is this responsive to my comment? I am asking whether there are examples of posts of the kind that Amazon asked Parler to take down (clear incitement to violence / glorification of terrorism), which another service hosted on AWS has refused to take down when made aware of them? I don't know whether there are or aren't, which is why I'm asking. Your comment does not answer this question.
> You're continuing to demonstrate that if I answer your questions it has no bearing on your ideology.
Again, how am I demonstrating that? I honestly can't see anyway that you have any idea what I think, from my comments in this thread, without just completely making up a projection out of whole cloth.
> Now you want to know if Twitter has an active account with AWS. I could answer that. But does it matter?
It does seem to matter, when the question is "should AWS stop hosting Twitter because of the way in which they moderate their content?". AWS can't do that if Twitter is not hosted on AWS... So I fail to see how it doesn't matter.
To answer what I think your original question was, filling in assumptions for my (still unanswered...) questions: if Twitter is hosted on AWS, and if AWS notifies them of content they are hosting with AWS that violates the AWS terms, and Twitter refuses to remove that content, then yes, I believe AWS is within their rights to suspend Twitter's account.
I was actually in Seattle while similar protests occured, and seeing things myself, I can say that the media did mis-portray things greatly. 99% of the protestors were completely peaceful and tens of thousands of people rallied to protest day over day all peacefully. I was surprised the media coverage didn't really cover those much, it chose to focus on like the single instance of a car lit on fire at 3am and those very minor instances, sometimes the media photoshopped images too, where they'd like superimpose a person holding a weapon in front of the photo of the car on fire and things like that. And I mean all media, left-wing, right-wing, small media, big media, like they all did this, which I was very surprised about.
I felt pretty safe for the most part, when people weren't protesting I'd still go and have coffee and order croissant at my favourite places in the area that was "occupied".
Things got scary when "anti-protester" started showing up, and suddenly everyone felt like people would show up with guns so protesters felt they needed guns too, and then there was this weird tension of like why we all have guns?
I was really surprised personally at the intensity of the police response, especially in the beginning, and to me it felt like the police really escalated tensions early on which is what led to protesters starting to bring fireworks and umbrellas to protect themselves from police "croud control". Like if a single person in the croud threw a single bottle that was enough for the police to just start pepper spraying and tear gazing everyone. I always wondered why the police doesn't just go after that person that threw a bottle or broke a window, I'm not sure what justified all this collateral damage from them. There were kids and moms and even handicapped people at a lot of those protests.
Most striking is the way the police organises around protesters, even though the protests are peaceful, they flank the croud, and really position themselves like the police and protesters are about to have a Braveheart style face off. I don't understand why the police doesn't spread themselves through the croud and instead help keep the protest peaceful by deterring the few people who are there to cause raucous. They should focus on the people disrupting the protests, help protect others from them, and arrest those.
I was just really surprised by that, because if there was a parade, the police would do what I'm describing, but for a protest it seems they treat the protesters like a huge threat and that makes the whole thing really tense and makes people feel like the police is actually against them. It didn't help that the protesters were there to protest police brutality and they were welcomed by more police brutality and confrontation.
What I really want people to focus on here is this fact, I'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously, and when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars are lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people celebrate the victory to the street or morn the loss of our hockey team!
Now in Seattle, you had 60000!! Yes I said Sixty Thousand!!! PEOPLE marching an entire day completely peacefully without a single broken window or fire: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thousands-march-in... when the population of the whole city is 600000. That means 1 in 10 people participated in this protest, and there were not even minor raucous! That's the most peaceful assembly of such a large number of people I've ever seen in my life.
In Montreal, you have 1k people in the street it doesn't matter why and there's more raucous then that.
And these protests, they didn't just happen once, day over day thousands of people over and over again, and everytime only a handful of incidents, mostly in the late evening or at night. Just do the math, 60k people, if 100 of them broke windows, threw rocks and lit some things on fire that would be 0.16% of the protestors. It be enough for the media to have footage ad-nauseam and publish 100 article about the "riots" and for police to bring out the tear gas. But it also means that 99.84% of the protestors were peaceful. Honestly, if it was for me, I think I'd call these the most peaceful protest I've ever seen, I think they should be given an award for how peaceful these were given the amount of people and the circumstances of how tense the topic was and how they were received by the authorities.
Disclosure: I'm just a bystander here, I didn't participate in the protests myself, I only observed and watched from the sidelines, and I knew people who did and heard from them. So take my info for what it is.
> What I really want people to focus on here is this fact, I'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously, and when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars are lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people celebrate the victory to the street or morn the loss of our hockey team!
Happens in almost every city I've ever lived in. I've seen far more violence at a Los Angeles Lakers or San Francisco Giants riots after they win a championship than at my local BLM protests.
I find the phrase “incite violence” to be a deceptive term to use.
A threat of violence is a very defined term. Both legally and in common understanding.
“Incites violence” is vague and takes the responsibility away from the one conducting violence, and places it on somebody else who may or may not have been promoting violence. It’s usage is not defined legally or in common usage.
“Barney is the worst dinosaur” could be “inciting violence” if somebody attacked the purple children’s mascot.
Should we have to mute ourselves because crazy people might use our words as justification for their madness?
Should others censor my opinions because in their opinion, a third party might use my words for justification for their madness?
The usage I’m seeing does not fit the below defined criteria:
The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND
The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”
I personally believe the posts Amazon asked to have taken down meet the Brandenburg test, but note that Amazon is not beholden to apply the legal test, though I do believe it is a good starting point. Another reason to take things down is "glorification of terrorism", which I believe also applies to some of the posts.
What they could've done is consistently enforced their rules all the way along, to people of all political persuasions.