So your contention, Daemon, is that there should be no line unless it is illegal? Twitter has no choice but to act as bystander while one of their member spouts racist rhetoric about the negros and wetbacks? Or is it that you just think the line should be drawn somewhere else, that lets people talk about grabbing their guns and assaulting state capitols? Parler had every opportunity to be proactive, AWS warned them and they passively responded by removing only the content that was uniquely pointed out by AWS.
Twitter is an end-point. Facebook is an end-point, to a fair degree the Apple Store and Google Play are "end-points" although that can be argued to an extent. And "end-points" they have basis to perform acts of content moderation so long as they are moderating that content in good faith.
However, in this case Amazon Web Services is
not an end-point, and as such their ability to curate content needs to be limited and constrained. If AWS is able to curate content on their customer's sites, then what's to stop Internet
Backbone Providers from starting to curate content going over "their wires" after all?
In some respects, this gets into a matter of Section 230 probably not being Granular enough. At present, the law makes no distinction between my home ISP, AT&T's backbone services, Amazon Web Services, or Facebook. They're all under that special immunity grant.
I'd think the party of Net Neutrality would not be the ones also simultaneously arguing for the ability of AWS to purge Parler from internet.
Also, do you make a distinction between companies with direct moderator control, e.g. Parler and Twitter, and those providing infrastructure services, e.g. Azure, AWS? I get your analogy, I'm just not sure I agree with it. I'd not be okay with Google Fiber being shut down at the Parler offices, for instance.
Infrastructure services need to stay away from content moderation if they're not the "end point." Admittedly there is some hazy territory in regards to AWS specifically when it comes to Joe Hobbyist having his own personal cloud server and his relationship to AWS vs Parler and their relationship with AWS. Trying to codify what those differences are becomes a legalistic mess however. For Joe Hobbyist, AWS is the end point, even if he decides to run an internet forum that others are using. While Parler was at sufficient scale that they clearly had crossed the line into being an Infrastructure service themselves.
And Google Fiber, like most home ISP providers, does have a TOS and AUP.
Here is the residential one for Google Fiber:
https://fiber.google.com/legal/accepteduse/residential/Two items right at the top of their delineated list:
"To violate or encourage the violation of the legal rights of others."
"For any unlawful, invasive, infringing, defamatory, or fraudulent purpose."
But then, the subscription to that infrastructure doesn't come with TOS and standards. The Amazon contract does. Shouldn't Parler have to abide by their contractual obligations?
As to the Amazon Contract dispute, without seeing the contract, it's very hard to call. But be honest here, Parler had already obtained millions of users in the week prior to being shut down. Amazon shut Parler down for
96violations of their TOS; violations carried our by Parler's end users, not Parler itself. Further, Amazon itself acknowledged that Parler was correcting the violations brought to its attention, Amazon's contention was "it wasn't resolved fast enough" as per their TOS. Which gets into the language of the contract as to requirements for resolution of complaints.
Although really Amazon is trying to make the case that those 96 example violations demonstrate "a pattern of abuse." Never mind that I'm sure a reasonably determined person could easily find
hundreds of example of Twitter being in violation of Amazon's Acceptable Use Policy -- Clearly Twitter has a pattern of abuse as well - via their end-users. Yet Twitter remains online.
Amazon’s lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine filed the company’s brief opposing the TRO Tuesday night. Citing scores of chilling posts by Parler users - including vivid threats of violence to politicians, social media executives, journalists, Amazon delivery drivers, even teachers – Amazon argued that it was Parler, not Amazon, that had breached their agreement. Amazon’s terms of service, the brief said, prohibit content that “violates the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others.” If its web services customers violate those terms, Amazon said, it has the right to suspend or terminate their accounts immediately.
So by your standards, this is illegal content just like porn. If Parler wanted to freewheel it, maybe they should have built out their own server farm rather than signing that contract with Amazon?
The thing is Amazon was behaving as an ISP offering "infrastructure services" so now replace Amazon with Sprint, AT&T, Rogers, and other major backbone service providers. Because their shiny new data center hosts "unacceptable content" they're shutting off their respective backbone connections to the Data Center. Same problem, just a different vendor.
