That would only be a reasonable analogy if the Christian baker refused to bake the cake, then called the other bakers and got them to refuse to bake the cake, then grocery stores refused to sell baking supplies to the gay couple, then Visa snd Mastercard canceled their accounts.
When Twitter and facebook started banning speech on the right, people on the left responded to complaints with, 'wahhh! It’s not the government, so it’s not a violation of free speech. If you don’t like Twitter’s service, start your own."
Then Parler did exactly that, spending millions to do so, and now finds itself without a cloud provider, payment provider, authentication provider… And if they decided to spend a billion dollars and build those services on their own, Google can still shut them down any time it wants to - and probably will.
All this was done because they apparently found 80 or so messages on Parler calling for violence. At the same time, “Hang Mike Pence” was trending on Twitter.
The cancellation of the AWS contract is way over the line. AWS isn’t social media. It’s not a public space. it is a core piece of the internet’s infrastructure. There is no reason why it should be protected by section 230, and Parler is suing them for antitrust and violation of their contract, which requires 30 days’s notice of cancellation. Parler is suing for treble damages.
And if it turns out there was coordination between all these services to shut down Parler, they are engaging in racketeering and restraint of trade, and likely in violation of the Sherman antitrust act.
what steps did Twitter take to respond to that? because that is part of what Apple and Google are saying: that they won’t provide the app because Parler won’t provide an automated moderation program, unlike Twitter.
AWS is not a core piece of internet infrastructure. There are numerous large server farms out there. Tellingly, none of them want to do business with Parler (according to their CEO). Nobody has an obligation to provide a server farm to, or do any business with, a company that facilitates domestic terrorism. The very idea that this would be controversial shows just how far the right has fallen. There is no bottom seemingly.
This right here is false. They didn’t ban speech on the right. They banned threats to democracy and calls for violence. They banned the accounts of people who threatened democracy and called for violence.
You can spend all day advocating for a weaker central government, calling for abortion restrictions or making it illegal, pushing for lower taxes and a weaker social safety net, calling for lower regulations and elimination of trade barriers, advocating for public funding of religious schools or elimination of public schools, calling for a stronger army, you name it.
What you can’t do, on the right or the left, is call for the murder of your opponents or the overthrow of the country.
My best guess as to the next gathering place of the middle managers, small business owners, and other MAGATY members of the petit bourgeois to plot sedition and treason is LinkedIn. Just a hunch.
The crazy thing is that the political right seem to think that these threats should not be banned, because apparently they are part of their platform now. This is what is confusing them.
I know! Twitter says they are banning hate speech, anti-Semitism, and racist posts and Republicans get all up in arms about it. I guess one person’s hate speech is another person’s ticket to the Senate or something.