Amazon right to stop hosting Parler
WHEN THIS IS OVER, THERE WILL BE A RECKONING.
— MATT GURNEY
There are a couple of ways to look at what freedom of speech means: people must not be silenced, or the state must not use its power to silence people. The Parler social media platform is focused on the former, a sloppy overgeneralization of a beautiful principle. Meanwhile Amazon Web Services, which is being sued by Parler for suspending Parler’s account, is focused on the more nuanced latter, the heart of the bedrock liberty.
Parler was taken to task by Amazon Web Services this week in court filings that detail the death threats and violent content that got the platform kicked off AWS.
“The only good democrat is a dead one,” reads one screenshot of a Parler post included in AWS’S response to Parler’s lawsuit.
Another Parler post shared by AWS with the court says, “I do approve of actual violence towards Antifa and BLM.” The same user also writes, “Kill’em ALL!”
Parler’s defence, as articulated Sunday in a statement by its CEO John Matze, is weak: “Parler is not a surveillance app, so we can’t just write a few algorithms that will quickly locate 100% of objectionable content, especially during periods of rapid growth and the seemingly coordinated malicious attacks that accompany that growth.”
Matze insists his company’s efforts to remove content that threatens or incites violence have been effective, and that Parler is committed to saving civil discourse. His argument is at odds with the facts presented by AWS in its legal briefs and in a statement by its spokesperson, who told ABC News, “We made our concerns known to Parler over a number of weeks and during that time we saw a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to our suspension of their services Sunday evening.”
“It is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others,” the AWS spokesperson said, “and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service.”
More back and forth will follow. It does not take sophisticated legal reasoning to see, however, that Parler has not been following AWS’S rules, and that being associated with Parler has been a huge embarrassment for AWS, not to mention possibly mixing the web host up in illegal and dangerous activity. In choosing to cut Parler loose indefinitely, AWS is making the sort of decision private entities make all the time: doing what is best for its business and reputation. Having the government use its power, through the courts, to force AWS to host content it finds objectionable would be the real violation of liberty.
This would be true even if Parler had been making the good faith effort it claims it has to keep the posts it publishes safe and free of racial slurs and blatant insurrection. It is AWS’S prerogative as a company to choose which customers it will serve and which it will not. While government should not — and legally may not — treat a person differently based on her viewpoint, private people and businesses have every right to do so; indeed, society would be a massively muddled mess if they did not.
However, the truth is that Parler has not in fact made a good faith effort to rid itself of content that threatens and incites illegal actions. For one, samples from a purported leaked list of Parler users with moderation privileges published on Github shows that a good many of the people Parler was counting on to objectively monitor its content were explicitly extremist partisans. For another, the content speaks for itself.
“(T)his case,” AWS’S brief says, “is about Parler’s demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of (AWS) content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens.”
Again, it does not take an in-depth understanding of u.s. law to see what happened to Parler. The platform knowingly entered a voluntary contract with AWS which said that AWS could suspend or terminate Parler’s account if Parler allowed the posting of illegal, harmful, or offensive content. Parler repeatedly allowed the posting of prohibited content. So, AWS suspended Parler’s account.
Has AWS silenced Parler? Sure. Is that a violation of freedom of speech? No. Putting someone in jail because of what they say is a free-expression problem. Choosing not to do business with them for the same reason is not.