According to two sources, Amazon.com plans to take a more proactive approach to determine which types of content material violate its cloud service policies, such as guidelines against selling violence and removing them, a move that is likely to reignite debate over how much power tech corporations should have to limit free speech.
Amazon will hire a small number of people in its Amazon Net Services (AWS) division in the coming months to gain experience and collaborate with outside researchers to look for potential dangers, according to one of many sources familiar with the situation. It has the potential to turn Amazon, the world’s largest cloud service provider with a 40% market share, into one of the most powerful arbiters of information permitted on the internet, according to experts.
As part of its acceptable use policy, AWS already bans its services from being used in a variety of ways, including illegal or fraudulent activity, inciting or threatening violence, or promoting child sexual exploitation and abuse. Amazon first asks customers to remove anything that violates company policies or to set up a mechanism to filter out inappropriate content. If Amazon is unable to reach a satisfactory agreement with the customer, the website may be shut down.
Amazon wants to establish a method for content material issues that it and other cloud providers are more frequently confronted with, such as figuring out when disinformation on a company’s website reaches a magnitude that necessitates AWS intervention, according to the supply. The new AWS team does not intend to comb through the massive amounts of content material that businesses store on the cloud, but rather will aim to stay ahead of future dangers, such as emerging extremist groups whose content material may find its way onto the cloud, according to the source.
