But effectively that is the case. If major providers like AWS and Google ban domain fronting, it is effectively dead - nobody needs domain fronting when you have three domains, three domains can be banned the same way as one.
AWS and Google could throw their considerable weight on the side of anti-censorship and openness. They instead chose - as businesses frequently do - to play along with oppressive dictatorial regimes so it won't cost them a couple of bucks extra. That is pretty sad.
Russia had no problem whatsoever blocking both Amazon and Google when it was blocking Telegram a couple weeks ago. What makes you think this would be any different? In other words, why is Signal being able to operate more important than all of the other people who pay AWS and Google for services?
AWS and Google are companies. It's not their job to push for societal changes really. In fact, I hope they don't push for those. I'd prefer them to steer clear of pushing for any higher objectives, that's best left to governments and lawmakers.
Maybe we should consider AWS differently than Google or FB?
"to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices." - https://www.amazon.jobs/working/working-amazon
"Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them." - https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx
Its interesting how these mission statements present vastly different goals.
At what point is something a public utility? If everyone abandons their servers for cloud providers you are at the whim of the corporate political stance of where your machine is hosted..
> It's not their job to push for societal changes really.
Somehow dozens of companies are discussing pushing for societal changes every day. Just recently a bunch of companies discussed severing ties with NRA (which didn't hurt a single living soul) and stopping selling firearms (which would not, indeed, lead to any societal change but at least the declared goal, even if unattainable, is to do exactly that). In another topic, there's a link on political manifesto by SO leadership. Social activism is everywhere in the business world. But when it's about something that may save somebody's life in Iran but cost some $$ to the company, it's suddenly "not their job". Nope, you can't do both. If companies avoided social activism altogether and were completely neutral and apolitical - I could accept that. They are not and haven't been for a long time. You can't just turn on one place and say "we do social activism everywhere but not where it can offend Iran". Or, you can, but that would be, as I said, cowardly and disgusting.
Also there's recent story of Google removing shopping results containing "gun" which went hilariously wrong (yes, you couldn't search for Burgundy for a while :) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16474102
AWS and Google could throw their considerable weight on the side of anti-censorship and openness. They instead chose - as businesses frequently do - to play along with oppressive dictatorial regimes so it won't cost them a couple of bucks extra. That is pretty sad.