Yeah, when it happened, I posited to a friend that I thought it was most likely a web scrape of some kind based on donk_enby’s characterization of it. (Of course, she could have been less than forthcoming and just not detailing the extent of what she did, but her posts seemed credible.)
Apparently post of the argument is that since AWS didn’t suspend the Twitter account/feed, it was clearly discrimination.
AWS response: we don’t host Twitter so of course we didn’t suspend them.
I think the “duh” is implied there.
“we don’t host twitter” — well…
Oh dear, someone at AWS will be in trouble for lying if the migration has been completed and this statement is untrue:
Parler’s Complaint is replete with insinuations that AWS had equal grounds to suspend
Twitter’s account and thus discriminated against Parler. For example, Parler cites the hashtag
“#hangmikepence,” which briefly trended on Twitter. Mot. ¶ 4. But AWS does not host
Twitter’s feed, so of course it could not have suspended access to Twitter’s content.
NB: I don’t know if this is a nuance of web hosting (hosting feed vs timeline) or if it’s a timing thing (the announcement is from about 3 weeks before all of this)- I just found it funny that Parler used an argument that appears to be not true, and in theory could have been discovered with some homework.
Which, by the way, is perfectly legal.
What you do with the results thereafter might not be legal, but the scraping is peachy. Some sites will try to restrict scraping through various means, most of which can be gotten around by things like cycling through proxies, adding artificial delays, etc. Those means are also perfectly legal.
As for the AWS being a core piece of the internet infrastructure, if AWS went down tomorrow, a lot of sites would be temporarily down, but the internet itself would keep humming along just fine, and did in fact for a large number of years before AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and all of the other cloud providers existed. The sites that went down would simply need to move them to another provider. If their content were so vile that they couldn’t find a provider (pretty hard to do with Epik in the game), there are still an insane number of options, including hosting in their own offices. I might be confusing him with Shodan, but I was pretty sure that Sam_Stone worked in IT. If so, perhaps he should ask one of his better informed colleagues about data centers. I can hook up a preconfigured rack of servers (that I fully own and Amazon can’t touch) in a data center the same day, as long as they have someone on site to connect me to power and tell me where to roll the rack (they like to control that part in most data centers). If I get real busy (more than Parler, for instance), then I can roll in another rack. If I’m worried about a tornado or power issues taking down my servers, I can even have redundant servers co-located somewhere else entirely. That is how things worked for years and still works for a large number of companies. It would appear that the far right is far more lacking in technical capabilities than in megaphones.
To be fair, without knowing what they are storing on AWS it might be valid as it might be a case where the content lies elsewhere. It could be that the framework of the timeline (i.e. userID → tweetID, repeat) lives in AWS, but the content somewhere else. Without that info (and I don’t work for Twitter, so I don’t have it), it’s hard to say if “#hangmikepence” would actually be on an AWS server in this case.
Not sure if this was linked yet, but this is a great interview with the CEO of Parler from the NYT opinion section, from January 7. This guy sounds as douchey as you think he might.
(Actually his voice sounds a lot like Bill Gates)
Probably roughly as truthful a statement as the average truthiness of all the postings collectively.
ProPublica has compiled a shitload of videos from Jan. 6th obtained out of the Parler scrape (uploaded by the terrorists), arranged in chronolgical order and marked for “around DC”, “near the Capitol” and “inside the Capitol”.
You cant make this shit up. A violent insurrection vs the United States and they take selfies and videos of them doing it.
The Onion might as well start doing cat videos.
“I wasnt there”
Here is your own video showing you were there.
“I wasnt violent”
Here is you yelling “Kill Pence”
“I didnt mean it”
here is you saying, “I really mean it!”
and so forth.
Holds up box reading “Swedish Made Killing Pence: I really mean it, baby!”
Judge says “nah.”
Would like to note that LinkedIn seems to be the latest Parler-lite. Over the past two weeks Trumpism (which was always strong in the field of middle managers, ‘consultants’, and struggling small business owners which make up the LI audience) has just exploded. What was once the most boring of Social Media experiences is quickly becoming the most antagonistic of SM experiences.
All they need now is to add some BD experiences and they’ll really be onto something! 
Maybe it’s time to rethink this brave new world where people can be fired for their political beliefs? Because as you said, guess who many businessmen supported? Especially small business, which is where most jobs are created. What happens when they start playing by the left’s rules? If you think LinkedIn is annoying now, wait until you can’t get a job because the employers jn your area don’t like your politics.
Sure. There is a difference between “Hey I voted for trump”- which is their absolute right, and no one should be penalized for that. But then, based on that, to be fair, no one shoudl support a “Christian” business just for mentioning that either, right?
Vs “hey i support white supremacists” or worse "I supported the attempted violent overthrow of the US Government". And yeah, if you are that level of racist or seditionist, you should be fired.
If you are still a trumpist after Jan 6th, then you are either a oblivious idiot or a seditionist. Fire them. He attempted the violent overthrow of the US Government. That is sedition and a crime.
It’s called “the market’s power to regulate companies who step out of the mainstream of moral or social views” , Sam. You may have heard of some of the people who claim to be in favor of that.
Like the guy in that linked post from 2014, who opined
And it’s funny how you imagine that leftists don’t already know exactly what it’s like to be discriminated against because employers don’t like their politics.