Parler Taken Down. Your Thoughts?

[eTox]

What are your thoughts on this, TFLF members?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

What are your thoughts on this

I don't know -- I have to wait for Fuhrer Zuckerberg and Comrade Dorsey to tell me what to think.

Once they tell me the official thoughts I should have, Ill let ya know.

 

[CareCPA]

Serious question: if you're a tech company, is it that hard to spin up your own hosting for your website? Could they not have done that instead of being subject to the terms of AWS?

 

[Fox]

I’d like to think it’s a large step too far and there will be a backlash - maybe not stateside but elsewhere. Or at least I hope.

Clearly in the USA they can do whatever they want right now but globally I think that quite a few governments are going to be rethinking things.

I already see Merkel and a few other European heads of state thinking WTF. Uganda shut them down when they tried to do the same there this week.

A few problems are apples control over what apps exist on their devices and the lack of viable competitors. But I think if they keep pulling this stuff it won’t be long till someone else figures out a way.

I am hopeful for Signal. The founder is the guy who created WhatsApp before it was sold to FB and after Zuckerberg bought it he parted ways over FBs privacy/ad policies. Hopefully if something can take down WhatsApp it will encourage others into the space.

One way I see this playing out is the solution coming from outside the US. If other countries start limiting/banning fb/Twitter and co it will allow a real competitor to emerge. I think the solution coming from within the states is very slim - they got everything under control and will squeeze anyone new out.

* if you haven’t heard what Uganda did about Twitter blocking some government accounts recently it’s a funny story. They basically decided to then turn off fb and Twitter for the whole election.

 

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[Fox]

Serious question: if you're a tech company, is it that hard to spin up your own hosting for your website? Could they not have done that instead of being subject to the terms of AWS?

I believe less than 24 hours notice and also they wiped the severs/emails to really do as much damage as possible.

Maybe with a few weeks months or months notice but they blindsided them massively.

What’s crazy is the pretext for this was “it was used for the capital hill riots”. The thing is though that FB/Twitter was actually the main platforms used my the protestors. Not debating the protest itself but that Parlor was the one app at fault is highly misleading.

 

[The-J]

Without stating my political opinion, I will say this:

No business is immune to the political landscape. If what you're doing is politically unpopular, that's part of the inherent risk of the business.

Also: FOSS (free/open source software) is the way to freedom. Build your communities outside of the eye of governments. Use end-to-end encrypted messaging software NOT backed by major corporations (which have the ability to silence people just like governments can). Use software without government backdoors. I haven't gone "full Stallman" yet (nor do I think it's reasonable in all cases) but I do my best to use as much FOSS as possible.

Even though I do not support what these people say, nor do I support the actions of the rioters, I support their right to say it because I want the right to say what might be politically unpopular. Freedom of speech is a 2 way street: just because I might be on one "side of the fence" doesn't mean that I'm safe!

"Then they came after me."

 

[BizyDad]

Serious question: if you're a tech company, is it that hard to spin up your own hosting for your website? Could they not have done that instead of being subject to the terms of AWS?

First off, I wonder how much of this is the CEO playing politics with the situation.

A small business with little traffic? Sure. I could host my site on a raspberry pi (and have as a fun test). But when your site (app) requires many concurrent requests, for example if influencers push a signups and thousands of people sign up within a few minutes, you need a scalable solution that can handle spikes in traffic such as this over a distributed network of servers. AWS is generally thought of as the best place for this.

Otherwise you have to buy more server capacity than you need, and the cost balloons. Or, you can skimp, and in busy times, the user experience at best lags, at worst crashes.

Still, you have a point and I shared Pirate Bay's founder's reaction to this in the rant thread. Here it is:

View attachment 36365

Think about that for a second, because to me it embodies the can do spirit of the entrepreneur, combined with a healthy dose of "who says I can't"?

The article is a quick read. Pirate Bay Founder Thinks Parler’s Inability to Stay Online Is ‘Embarrassing’ - VICE

Here's the highlight: "Over the years, Kolmisoppi and The Pirate Bay crew explored no limit of strategies to keep its servers operational and out of the reach of law enforcement and the entertainment industry, even when that meant hiding them in caves and submarines, or even using low-orbit drones to redirect users to hidden regional servers hosting torrent indexes and trackers."

Talk about creative problem solving...

I believe less than 24 hours notice and also they wiped the severs/emails to really do as much damage as possible.

I don't believe this is accurate.

Hacktivists preserved 99% of the public content using the Parler API, most of this was accomplished after the site was taken down. Side note, this included supposedly deleted posts.

Initially, Parler said they'd be back up in a week, which suggests they have access to their data.

 

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[EVMaso]

The Western Politics/Tech/Media complex is now officially a thing. I mean, it was a thing before, but it has now unashamedly revealed just what it can do - take down a sitting president. No one thing should have that much power.

For the record I'm from Canada and I don't care for Trump or US politics that much, but I support anything that takes power and control away from this complex.

 

[ragnarcallan]

This is too far from AWS. Parler didn't do anything illegal. They merely created another platform for people to join and communicate on. It is clear that the big tech monopoly feel under threat and have seen an opportunity to try and destroy some of the competition. All this does is sends out a message to the rest of the world: Don't do anything we disagree with or challenge us

I'm sure AWS have tons of very, very bad stuff on their servers that they haven't bothered removing...

 

[Kak]

They shouldn't have had a politically opposite vendor as a single point of failure, not only a single point of failure, but the biggest failure. Though they are having trouble domestically finding a host company, there are plenty of foreign data centers that would happily take their money... And they are a big customer to have as well. I would imagine a Mexican or Russian data center not giving a shit, nor should they.

Personally, while I don't think Donald Trump and big government was worth this fight, I liked parler for the lack of rules. That was the point of parler. That 100% should be allowed. People should be allowed to say whatever the hell they want. Policing thought is ridiculous.

I anticipate they find some other host and they are back online. It shouldn't be that difficult.

There is also the option of hosting something physically yourself... While economies of scale are needed to make that an efficient use of money, it is something a sage free speech platform might consider at some point.

 

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[Hadrian]

My quick thoughts: While I despise Trump and everything he stands for I do worry about curtailing free speech as it’s a slippery slope.

Of far more importance though was the removal of one of the billionaire Oligarchs from the chessboard yesterday. These operate at a tier above Trump or Biden and this particular Oligarch did more damage to freedom, knowledge and democracy in the USA than Hitlers fascists or Stalin’s communists combined!

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Malcolm X

 

[socaldude]

Implied in our constitution(which was sold out) is that citizens need the truth to make independent decisions to make democracy work. So while these big tech companies claim to be protecting “democracy” they are by their acts of censorship and manipulation “anti-democracy” plain and simple.

It just exposes just how “sold out” our country and our constitution is to these monopolistic media companies as well to other entities.

Its even scarier how people find this funny and don’t even care. As long as it’s consistent with their socialization.

Welcome to the dark ages reminiscent of the USSR. No rights, no privacy and oh yeah lots of hyper-stagflation.

Don’t be fooled by what we were taught in school. This country has been sold out to international bankers and globalist shill politicians. Scary how people think this is “American.”

I for one am not gonna just stand here and watch these deep state idiots steal what the founding fathers set up for future generations.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Could they not have done that instead of being subject to the terms of AWS?

Yea, what a dumb move from the Parler people.

You know you're a target, but you set up shop in your enemy's backyard?

If you want to voice grievances or fight against the big-tech monoliths, you'd think you'd be smart enough to not use their assets.

 

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[SEBASTlAN]

AWS screwed up.

On the bright side, it may have sparked a new category of hosting.

 

[GoodluckChuck]

I think they (the corporations that want to be part of the new world order once the central banks own everything) are trying to invite violent retaliation from the disaffected preferably with guns so that it's easier to justify the incoming onslaught against the 2nd amendment. 1st amendment, check. On to the next one.

P.s. ignore flyers you receive asking you to March on your capital on the 20th, armed. It stinks of entrapment.

 

[AFMKelvin]

Apparently Parler was running both on wordpress and AWS. That's how they were able to "hack" them through a basic wordpress login. It seems idiots were running that company or someone who did it as a hobby project and didn't really care about it.

All throughout the 2010's free speech has been under attack. I'm glad these companies showed their hands and both sides of the political spectrum now see what Sillicon Valley thinks about free speech. Whoever makes an open source, decentralized, blockchain social media will slowly kill the ones currently dominating the landscape.

 

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[AFMKelvin]

I think they (the corporations that want to be part of the new world order once the central banks own everything) are trying to invite violent retaliation from the disaffected preferably with guns so that it's easier to justify the incoming onslaught against the 2nd amendment. 1st amendment, check. On to the next one.

P.s. ignore flyers you receive asking you to March on your capital on the 20th, armed. It stinks of entrapment.

If the 1st and 2nd amendment get drastically changed wouldn't that just be the end of America? What's stopping them from altering the other 8?

 

[GoodluckChuck]

If the 1st and 2nd amendment get drastically changed wouldn't that just be the end of America? What's stopping them from altering the other 8?

I'm not sure anything is stopping the guv once the citizens don't have guns. That's the whole point of the 2nd amendment.

With the way people of the world are becoming debt slaves to banks I would say it's possible america as we knew it is already over. Soon most ppl will be suckling from the guvs teat. They are making sure it happens quickly before people realize what's going on.

That's what it looks like from my screen anyway...

 

[JohnForte]

Serious question: if you're a tech company, is it that hard to spin up your own hosting for your website? Could they not have done that instead of being subject to the terms of AWS?

It depends you have to also realize they were also using scylladb which pull their license, they also used email server companies to do transactional emails, and I am sure they were using other things as well.

If I was parler, they should have used docker which I can tell they weren't since they have to "rebuild". With Kubernetes, I can have servers across many different hosting companies IE: AWS, azure, digital ocean. That would have been better than nothing.

If you want to buy servers that is also an option, but again I think their tech team was weak in this area and used the easy ways of AWS. AWS is basically a datacenter in a box.

 

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[James Klymus]

My thoughts are that censorship doesn't work. Trying to tear down you enemies only makes them dig their heels in deeper and eventually come back stronger.

The people being censored, and the people like me who are nobodies watching all of this take place, we don't all just say "Welp, guess we lost". It makes people more and more mad when this happens, as well as more and more innovative about how their ideas can be heard.

So these people being censored have to go somewhere. When you censor something, you create a vacuum, and something needs to fill it. You already see this with alt tech platforms.

I would predict that all the big tech names (FB Google YT Insta) will all lose marketshare.

I try not to be black pilled, but this is some dangerous and scary stuff. Nothing we haven't seen through out human history, but still scary to see its new incarnation.

 

[Raoul Duke]

"OUR opinion, is the ONLY thing, that matters. Now fall in line."

 

[j0elsuf]

Nothing we haven't seen through out human history, but still scary to see its new incarnation.

Once you see that this is part of a cycle, you get a little more comfortable.

I for one am against all censorship. My social/political beliefs are even more pronounced than Anarcho Capitalists such as Adam Kokesh or Doug Casey in that no kind of governing or law enforcing body should exist and the only real law that should exist are laws that prevent murder. All other laws should be negotiable.

For example, it shouldn't be against the law for me to grope a chick in public, but it shouldn't be against the law for said chick to stab me through the neck as a response either.

Most everything should be legal and if it were, we wouldn't so much heinous stuff going on.

Speech should be the exact same way: Anyone should be able to say whatever they want to whoever they want without any restrictions. However, this is not only a two way street, it's a multi-way street.

So yeah, the Proud Boy white supremacist stormfronter a**hole should be able to say literally whatever they want. The BLM SJDub AntiFA Bernie bro/babe should be able to say whatever they want without any fear of their message being removed or regulated in any way.

However, anyone who disagrees should be able to go after them any way they choose, even if that includes violence/doxxing/hacking/whatever.

However, this would make most people uncomfortable and understandably so.

Most of us prefer security over free reign every single time. It's human nature. We're just seeing it being more and more explicit now. But it's been there before.

Combine that with our natural tendency to be tribal, you get a population who wants law and order for their kind and no one else.

This is nothing new and there is going to be a time where things come to a head.

I mean, is this a cause for a bloody revolution?

I'm not the one to ask, since an absolute anarchist like myself thinks that just the existence of any kind of government or authority is cause for a bloody revolution.

So to me this is all business as usual: Our elder statesmen's never-ending quest to take away our freedom for the illusion of security. This is nothing I haven't been talking about since I was in high school over 20 years ago.

I for one don't have it in me to start a bloody revolution over this since I have a better idea of what it would entail than most. The sacrifices that you'll need to make are sacrifices that very, very few are willing to accept.

That's what I think about all this.

 

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[Timmy C]

Not surprised.

Decentralization just speed up 5 years.

 

[WJK]

What are your thoughts on this, TFLF members?

It is scary... but, I think that Big Tech is completely overplaying its hand through doing this. They are shooting themselves in the foot. And it wasn't just Twitter. It was the whole industry marching in tin-soldier-tandem -- canceling them, one after another.

I have a different take on this process though. Parler could have never paid for this type of global notoriety. Big Tech started with Trump and then went on to the people and businesses around him. It was a classic mean girl's move to bully the new kid on the block, along with his family. I think that the ones who are running these tech companies just don't understand human nature. People are turning on them in droves. Their move against Trump and Parler may spawn their greatest competition... and it may even create their downfall.

 

[WestCoast]

The last thing I want is other people having power over what I say and do.
While I respect the rights of companies to do what they want..... now it seems corporations can just control what people say.


So, what is everyone doing about it?

Me?

- I refuse to shop at Amazon. Haven't for 10 years. Screw them.

- I stopped using Google last month (DuckDuckGo works fine)

- I am in the process of dumping Gmail (switched to ProtonMail)

- I am moving from WhatsApp (to Signal and Telegram).

- I have never used social media, but, if I did, I would be bailing on Facebook/Twitter as fast as possible.

I am looking deeply into if there is a better company than Apple to keep giving my tech dollars to.
This will be the hardest one for me, but, I'm not impressed by them here.
How are they any better than the others now?



So, my question is, aside from all of us complaining online. What are we, as individuals and business owners, doing to take our money elsewhere?

 

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[RealDreams]

I think that the ones who are running these tech companies just don't understand human nature.

If Zuckerberg created a virtual platform where 3 billion people reside, I wouldn't be so confident in saying he doesn't understand human nature. He mindfucked half the population and "thanks" to him and other people society's structure is completely F*cked.

 

[RealDreams]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1348079223701794819

View: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1348079223701794819


This is just one of the hundreds of examples that Facebook and Co. are trying to do anything to rule the world. They want control over the masses.

I hope the stupidity of people is not so big to make this an ultimate reality, since it all depends on the PEOPLE. Facebook is not forcing anyone, but it's coercing everyone. It's simple mental manipulation, which goes unnoticed 95% of the time.

And guess what, all these social media apps only serve to make you even dumber, so they are actually hitting two birds with one shot. I see they are being really efficient.

 

[Bekit]

Of far more importance though was the removal of one of the billionaire Oligarchs from the chessboard yesterday. These operate at a tier above Trump or Biden and this particular Oligarch did more damage to freedom, knowledge and democracy in the USA than Hitlers fascists or Stalin’s communists combined!

In curious. Who was this and how did they get taken off the chessboard?

 

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[lowtek]

Not surprised.

Decentralization just speed up 5 years.

you follow the wall street playboys?

My $0.02

There are a number of decentralized options out there that are worth looking at. I'm going to do some basic research and start a thread on this.

I agree with @Timmy C in that the future is decentralized. The cat is out of the bag with cryptocurrency entering the mainstream consciousness. It's only a matter of time before the politically disaffected withdraw their consent from the system and start using self hosted / decentralized options to deal with the current slide into fascism.

 

[George Appiah]

But when your site (app) requires many concurrent requests, for example if influencers push a signups and thousands of people sign up within a few minutes, you need a scalable solution that can handle spikes in traffic such as this over a distributed network of servers. AWS is generally thought of as the best place for this.

Otherwise you have to buy more server capacity than you need, and the cost balloons

All of which we used to do even when servers and colo were 100x more expensive.