How The Amazon Web Hosting Crackdown Threatens Patreon, Substack, And You

[mystery-ak]

  How The Amazon Web Hosting Crackdown Threatens Patreon, Substack, And You

If servers like Amazon Web Services will shut you down, that inherently threatens the economic independence of anyone who dares have different ideas than their speech monitors.

By Joy Pullmann
September 7, 2021

Last week, Reuters reported based on two anonymous sources that Amazon Web Services, which controls 40 percent of web hosting in the world, “plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies.”

“Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said. It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world’s most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.”

Amazon declined to comment to Reuters for the story, then after the article published sent a statement insisting the report was “wrong,” claiming, “‘AWS Trust & Safety has no plans to change its policies or processes, and the team has always existed.'”

“We’ve always reserved the right to police who is allowed to speak on our internet” is not a very comforting response to an article alleging a coming content crackdown. In addition, to this post-publication claim from Amazon, “A Reuters spokesperson said the news agency stands by its reporting.”

more
https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/07/how-the-amazon-web-hosting-crackdown-threatens-patreon-substack-and-you/

[Kamaji]

Time to break Amazon up - well past time, in fact.

[mystery-ak]

@Cyber Liberty @BassWrangler

bump

[BassWrangler]

Time to break Amazon up - well past time, in fact.

Yes, this is Orwellian

[The_Reader_David]

Breaking up Amazon will simply result in lots of pieces that censor on behalf of the Left.  The only way too fix this is to force all webhosting companies to act as common-carrier utilities without any say over what is hosted on their servers, or at least to have published objectively described and apolitical content limitations (e.g. no nudity in pictures, and yes that means famous the photo of the naked girl crying on the road in Vietnam can't be hosted, or a short list of words which may not be used either in plain text or in "Leet" variations) which must be enforced uniformly and without favor.  If it's illegal they should report it to law enforcement, but beyond that they should have to take your money and provide you with server space.

[catfish1957]

Yes, this is Orwellian

Agree.....  As a TBR tech guru I gotta ask......., is there a way the masses can coalesce in a manner to destroy Big Tech?

[Cyber Liberty]

@Cyber Liberty @BassWrangler

bump

Fortunately AWS tipped their hand when they banned Plandemic..  We almost went there and then they pulled that stunt.  It took them right off the table.

@mystery-ak

[BassWrangler]

Agree.....  As a TBR tech guru I gotta ask......., is there a way the masses can coalesce in a manner to destroy Big Tech?

The right doesn't seem as good at organizing mass boycotts and protests as the left is. Probably because we are by nature individualists, whereas the left is largely a bunch of group-thinking sheep.

I am afraid there will be no safe harbor from the totalitarian left - big tech or otherwise. I don't believe the "parallel economy" is practical, at least not while the states are all under the same federal  government. We will eventually have to fight back if we want to retain our freedoms.

Ironically, the experience with the host we moved to initially to avoid censorship has played a big part in that conclusion. There is such a huge base of past works that makes up our tech infrastructure. It's just not feasible to replace it all. That host is just the tip of the iceberg, and they can't even pull off the basics. Even if they had been perfect, all it would take is for the big internet backbone providers to blacklist them and they'd be out of business the next day. And that's exactly what would happen if their customers like Parler ever became a credible threat to leftist censorship.

I know as conservatives the thought of using government power is foreign to us. We just want to be left alone to live our lives. But that dog won't hunt anymore. We will need to pass laws that make it illegal to apply economic discrimination based on political speech or beliefs. We need to tie these people up in courts until we win or they settle. We have to use the left's weapons against them, or we will lose. The days of the "Marquess of Queensberry Rules" are over, and it needs to be a no holds barred fight from here on out. That means going on the offensive, not just reactionary, defensive moves after the horse has left the barn.