Whereas AWS can plausibly claim that they don't want to host illegal content, what can Twilio say for themselves here? From Twilios perspective, providing Twilio's core product to Parler isn't any different than serving them to other platforms. They have no responsibility or liability. The lack of moderation on Parler is irrelevant when Twilio isn't involved with moving that data.
For a Saas platform to abruptly cut-up a contract, immediately breaking the authentication mechanism for the site on the other end of the contract, which directly results in a serious data breach for thousands of users (the majority of which have done nothing wrong), because your employees and leadership don't like their politics, doesn't sound like something that a publicly traded company should engage in.
edit: especially once it became obvious that AWS was going to bring the site down just a few hours later. They had a clear route to make their ideological stand and cause no damage by merely waiting 12 hours more.
If there's a drunk guy trying to start fights in your restaurant, you boot him out the door immediately for being a safety hazard and overall reflecting poorly on your business. I don't think any reasonable patrons will see that and think "Wow, they just kicked that guy out because they didn't like what he was saying, it could happen to me too, better get out of here".
It's a similar (digital) situation here. Parler is (was?) actively refusing to moderate their platform to prevent a literal insurrection.
You don't actually have to fail open. That was a decision on parlers' end, they could have decided to fail closed just the same. A service outage on Twilio would have had the same effect.
If we had a responsible administration we'd probably be seeing takedown requests from DHS over national security grounds. This isn't just a speech issue, it's safety. There's a void of government guidance on how to deal with this in a measured way, so deplatforming is the easiest and safest option. They can't force Parler to moderate their content and they can't let themselves be party to fomenting insurrection.
> especially once it became obvious that AWS was going to bring the site down just a few hours later. They had a clear route to make their ideological stand and cause no damage by merely waiting 12 hours more.
AWS cutting them off probably made it even more urgent. Like the pr department likely wouldn't be happy with the company supporting parlor til the very end...
Whereas AWS can plausibly claim that they don't want to host illegal content, what can Twilio say for themselves here? From Twilios perspective, providing Twilio's core product to Parler isn't any different than serving them to other platforms. They have no responsibility or liability. The lack of moderation on Parler is irrelevant when Twilio isn't involved with moving that data.
For a Saas platform to abruptly cut-up a contract, immediately breaking the authentication mechanism for the site on the other end of the contract, which directly results in a serious data breach for thousands of users (the majority of which have done nothing wrong), because your employees and leadership don't like their politics, doesn't sound like something that a publicly traded company should engage in.
edit: especially once it became obvious that AWS was going to bring the site down just a few hours later. They had a clear route to make their ideological stand and cause no damage by merely waiting 12 hours more.