[Brazelton] Parler [2018-2021]

figmentPez

Staff member
I can't fully celebrate this. As much as I'm glad Parler is having a tough time, it's still not a good thing for Amazon to have a near-monopoly on web services. I can be glib and say "Well, they can still set up their own web servers!" but it's not really clear that they can. I mean, they can buy servers, but not servers, at least not on the level that Amazon provides.

Right now I wish I knew more of the history of Hearst and Pullitzer, and the printing press in general. At any time in history was the ability to mass print ideas as limited as the ability to host large websites is now?

I don't want Parler to have a platform, because it's made by white supremacists for white supremacists... but I really don't like the centralized structure of how the web generally works these days. Giant companies have actively worked against tech like RSS, and anything else that gives people power to control their media feeds, in order to maximize ad revenue, but it really has been at a cost of communicating at their whim.
 
Right now I wish I knew more of the history of Hearst and Pullitzer, and the printing press in general. At any time in history was the ability to mass print ideas as limited as the ability to host large websites is now?
There used to be rules governing how much media one entity could own in a single market or over all. Not anymore. Now the Disneys, the Clear Channels, the Sinclairs, and the Nexstars of the world own nearly everything.
 
Amazon is a huge player in the server market, but they do NOT have a monopoly. Oracle and IBM run their own services too, for example. At worst this is an oligopoly, but either way getting shut out by Amazon does not automatically mean exiled from the internet.

If Parler can’t get back onto the web, it will be because they are so toxic no one wants to host them. And that’s their problem, not a failure of the market or free speech.
 
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I don't think Oracle or IBM (who, last I looked, was part of a Chinese conglomerate?) will want to host anything involving Trump.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
They'll have to provide the entire infrastructure and payment processing, too. No one's willing to do business with them anymore.
Payment processing, two-factor authentication, captcha, DoS protection, and probably stuff I don't even know about. They need a lot of pieces, and Amazon is one of the few who hold all of them.
 
web hosting, database hosting, server patches---there's a whole lot of manpower they're gonna have to hire for, and it ain't gonna be cheap as spinning up an AWS instance, that's for sure.
 
Sweet Enola Gay! You know the NSA has been exploiting that.
If this was a platform used by Antifa, BLM, the communists, Women's Rights, or a similar domestic terrorist organization, no doubt they would.
Since Parler is a good and free platform for patriots, I don't see how the NSA could've done anything with that info.
 


Parler Users Breached Deep Inside U.S. Capitol Building, GPS Data Shows

A lot of stupid people doing stupid things.

But... how many smarter people were among them? How many foreign agents used this as an opportunity? How many truly dangerous people were there, who knew enough to leave their phone at home?
This. I've seen so many statements about this along the lines of "wow, imagine if someone competent had attempted all of this" and I can't help but wonder how many competent people are in there keeping their heads down because they're, you know...competent.
 
Maybe we should.give them Parler back, all the assholes I know have decided it's time to drop their racist shit all over my Facebook feed.
 
News the first: parler may have found a new hosting service.

News the second: turns out, it may be merely an AWS reseller.

Oops.
 
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