FWIW, I think alternatives to Twitter, like Parler and Mastodon, are a good idea, but Parler acts like they have a fair takedown process when it's evident that it is not working particularly well.
It's like, before the_donald was banned: at least there was a grownup in the room reining it in some and it could be seen. But if you wholesale kick out the extremists, they make their own happy place where there's nothing to slow them down at all.
(And then, in turn, you end up playing wack-a-mole with those cesspools, asking Apple/Google to deplatform them, etc.)
There's people in my town who are like this. The "oppression" even fuels their narrative.
Better to keep them in the mainstream discussion, respond with ridicule, and use moderation to squash the overtly dangerous stuff, IMO.
And ridicule doesn't work, clearly. Vanity may work for less-devoted people, but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL, or break through the power of numbers in that social sphere.
There's enough people believing this that they're guaranteed to come into existence if you deny them access to mainstream platforms.
> but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL
You can't interrupt the in-real-life contacts by any means (short of despotic ones).
But there's a certain number of people that will stop polluting an online space if they're being laughed at. But when you force them to create their own echo chamber even the more timid and susceptible to social pressure will be unbothered.
Then you go after the echo chamber.
When the_donald left reddit, it became impossible for them to get their propaganda seen on the front page of reddit and seen by people who might join them. People won't casually stumble into a cesspool of lies and BS. Now they have to know it exists and actively seek it out.
I just googled "the donald" and they aren't even on the first page. Seems like deplatforming kind of worked....
If it worked, why is the same radicalized set of viewpoints seemingly growing in vitality?
Sort of like how doomsday cults get more fervent with each incorrectly predicted apocalypse. The cult gets smaller, but those that remain are the true believers.