Is PornHub Still Available?

Here's what ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner told me, in full, on Parler going dark because of AWS. pic.twitter.com/aIELab0kze

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) January 11, 2021

 Somebody is still hosting Red State:

Top trending post on Red State right now, written by a former soldier. In the comments, the author dismisses photos, video of violence as either Photoshopped or antifa plants. Also writes, "You cannot keep poking the dog with a stick and expect him not to bite you." pic.twitter.com/fjXIbQeitB

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) January 11, 2021

And Ben Shapiro is still on Twitter. So either Simon & Scuster has an obligation to publish Hawley’s book, or we’re fine and there is still a "diversity of voices" available to the American public.

They’re saying they want Amazon to tell people where the line is drawn - to make clearly defined and consistently applied policies. The absence of that is concerning, since it gives them arbitrary internet-granting powers.

— The Oxford Comma Commie (@TheOxfordCommie) January 11, 2021

The problem here is, AWS is not a governmental entity, and it if decides that "line" has to be drawn at inciting insurrection and advocating the murder of public officials, and they decide that without having written that out explicitly in their Terms of Service, I'm actually okay with that. I'd go so far as to say "That has to be said?" Do AWS Terms of Service explicitly ban child pornography, or just generally "illegal activities"?  Because I'm pretty sure nobody would squawk if AWS refused to host child porn sites.

We can, as a nation, decide the internet is a public interest, like rivers, and declare all should have free passage there provided they don't create hazards to navigation.  But we haven't done that, and AWS is free to refuse service to whomever they choose.  If they get too arbitrary about that we can pass a "Civil Rights Act" for the internet, requiring service to all comers as that law did for businesses open to the public (I'm honestly fuzzy on the particulars of civil rights law.  I think private clubs can exclude members as they choose, although race is a pernicious category under the law and excluding on grounds of race may be a rule courts would decline to uphold.  But a men's only club?).  The fact is, we have no such law, so far as I know.  And again, if AWS terms of service allow for declining to host sites deemed to be promoting illegal activities, it seems to me sedition, insurrection, and advocating the death of public officeholders would lead that list, whether specified by AWS or not.  Especially with this going on:

wow y'all we really have to do something about these violent BLM folkshttps://t.co/IsHWVQasio

— MoreUnstableHat (@Popehat) January 11, 2021

“He said, ‘Hey, I need my digital soldiers to show up on January 6,’” Mr. Sweet says of the president. “And we all did.” https://t.co/abCpGj1rrc

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) January 11, 2021

The internet is not a public street (thinking of the Skokie/KKK case from decades back). If we want to make it so, we need legislation to do that. In the meantime:

Golly what if, when you call for the murder of your fellow citizens, fellow citizens can react to you and abuse the First Amendment by criticizing or shunning you? That would be totalitarian censorship! #stopcancelculture pic.twitter.com/b9S2Gm1GQn

— MoreUnstableHat (@Popehat) January 11, 2021

And:

As we think about all the "how dare people ask payment processors/web hosting services/app stores to stop working with the people who plotted an armed insurrection," just a reminder that this was a month ago: pic.twitter.com/C0EBW2Vjfq

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 11, 2021