In Justice We Trust
Gender: Male
Location: Southern California
Rank: Admin
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:31 pm
Posts: 4200
Warning Friendly reminder to be cool. I'll let this exchange slide, but you both need to refrain from explicitly or implicitly accusing each other of... "parroting their preferred sources," shall we say?
I'll have more to say on the actual topic at hand in a moment; I only just got back from work and figured I should get the "be cool" reminder out ASAP.
Edit: Okay... While I do think the topic of how people with different political views choose which sources to trust is a discussion worth having, I'd like to set that matter aside for now and come back to it if there ends up being a disagreement over the relevant facts due to conflicting sources--and even then, we'd only need to address which sources we're willing to trust for the purposes of this discussion.
Going back to your response to my own post, DoMaya, I'd like to start with your claim of anti-competitive behavior and work from there rather than juggle multiple topics at once. Are you asserting that Amazon and the other tech giants have violated one or more laws against anti-competitive practices or would you rather just discuss what those laws should entail? My understanding is that Parler is suing Amazon over the latter's decision to stop hosting it and included allegations of anti-competitive behavior in its complaint, so as far as the letter of the law is concerned, I'm inclined to just wait and see what the courts decide rather than try to argue that what Amazon did was or wasn't legal. I can attempt to draw conclusions based on my own lay understanding of existing laws or the understanding of one or more certified experts on said laws, but what ultimately matters is what the courts decide, not what we or any experts we cite claim the law says. As such, unless you happen to be particularly well-versed in business law (for example, if you're a lawyer who specializes in that area of the law), I don't think there's much (if anything) to be gained from either of us debating whether or not the tech giants' actions violate any existing laws.
The spirit of the law strikes me as a more worthwhile topic here. I'm no fan of monopolies and oligopolies and am frankly all for the government forcing Amazon and the other big guys to split up into smaller companies even if there are technically obscure startups that prevent them from controlling the whole market (I'm not holding my breath, but it could happen now that Senator Sanders and other progressives have more clout in Congress). I think it goes without saying that regardless of the companies' reasons for showing Parler the door, their decision to do so does hurt Parler's business, thus benefiting its competitors. I'm not convinced that that on its own is sufficient to call the decision anti-competitive, though; if their goal was to drive Parler out of the social media market entirely, be it because they object to the politics of its userbase or because they want Twitter to have less competition, then yes, they absolutely engaged in anti-competitive behavior as far as I'm concerned, but the key is proving that that was their goal. From what I recall reading, the companies in question gave Parler's refusal to crack down on violent rhetoric as their reason for ceasing business with it. It's certainly possible that one or more of the companies lied about that, but once again, the key is proving it.
So... what would prove it to me?
The strongest proof in my eyes would be internal communications from those behind the decision to stop doing business with Parler. If, for example, there was correspondence from and/or a recording of whoever in Amazon decided to cut Parler off and they explicitly say in said correspondence and/or recording that they were cutting Parler off over its right-wing userbase and/or to stifle Twitter's competition, then that would be pretty damning evidence if its authenticity could be verified (though it would only apply to Amazon, not other companies). It's worth keeping in mind, though, that said individual simply speaking ill of Parler's userbase or acknowledging that Twitter benefits from the ban is not proof here; acknowledging the potential effects of an action does not prove that any particular one of those effects is the goal of said action. There are also issues of quote-mining to consider; I won't name names, but I know of at least one "news outlet" that is prone to selective editing and other dishonest methods, so depending on the source, I'm not guaranteed to take alleged internal communications at face value. I understand that Parler is suing Amazon over this whole mess, though, so if such communications exist, Amazon would have to turn them over to the court during the discovery process. A court accepting such communications into evidence would be pretty strong proof of their authenticity in my eyes.
If other clients have been let off the hook despite the same behavior, proof of it would certainly help Parler's case. If, for example, it could be proven Twitter had a serious problem with users making bellicose posts, uses the same service provider that cut Parler off, and like Parler refused to crack down on said posts, yet wasn't cut off over it, then that would certainly make it look as though the service provider in question was playing favorites. Unless I'm mistaken, no individual piece of evidence would prove this, but rather multiple connected pieces of evidence; there would have to be at the very least data on the content of the posts on Twitter, records of Twitter's moderation, and records of Twitter's business with the service provider in question. The data in particular could be a sticking point, depending on the data-gatherer's methodology; it's not unheard of for people with dishonest goals to deliberately use a methodology that skews the data in such a way that benefits their narrative, after all.
...[sigh] So I guess if we're to continue down this road, we'll need to figure out which sources we're both willing to trust or else we'll get nowhere as far as evidence or the lack thereof is concerned until any lawsuits relating to the matter are done. I leave it up to you to decide whether or not you want to continue with this part of the discussion or set it aside in favor of something else, DoMaya.