Parlor has been removed from Google Play
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Nothing wrong here at all. As Eric Weinstein put it, something went terribly wrong at big tech.
Now everyone is surprised to see when big tech says enough is enough.
Where else would these people draw the line if not here?
Platforms ban bad actors all the time. Anyone taking advantage of a service against its TOS or against the country it is bound to is not welcome.
you can’t shout fire in a crowded theatre and you also can’t use hate speech which can incite riots or cause violence.
i think people forget this too.
This is their platform and they said enough is enough post the attempted coup.
You can think just as much for yourself as you could before.
Serious truth bending for political capital, which has been the DC establishment playbook the entire trump admin.
No, it wasn't legally incitement. It was absolutely stoked by him.
Exactly in the same speech: he repeated his claims that the election was stolen.
Half the country is mad as hell, because there's 3k+ signed affidavits, 140 congressmen, at least two majority of state congresses, reports from data scientists, cctv footage, voting machine forensic reports in MI and AZ, and a lot of dismissal by courts based on standing not merits. It's unprecedented and it's straight up totalitarian to say "no mention of election fraud is allowed"
I don’t know whether you are intentionally repeating claims you know to be untrue or haven’t looked at the details but you should ask yourself what it tells us when the President’s own lawyers keep dropping these cases. They wouldn’t do that if there was any merit to the case – and they’re certainly not out of money. The claims just aren’t true and they know it - once the fundraising dries up they’ll move on to something else.
it is now clear we must all defend our democracy. we can’t take it for granted.
??
Unless folks are willing to have some kind of real ID verification to access these services.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-...
Not to mention that the decisions to ban Trump certainly wasn’t taken overnight and he was given a very long leash.
Regardless I’m sure the motives here are not philosophical but mostly profit motivated.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Also, really puts a dent into the anti-free speech argument that "you can go to another platform" argument.
I do love watching all these "tech/social media is evil" crowd here suddenly praising tech/social media and wanting them to have even more control over our lives.
Social media is so evil that we need them to control our lives even more. Wonderful logic that.
I certainly am not advocating that social media companies should have even more control over our lives. I would like them to have less, which presumably happens either because (a) we stop using social media (at least in the current sense) and/or (b) more options for "social media" platforms emerge.
Since (a) is unlikely in the near term, that probably means (b). I don't how Twitter banning anyone (including POTUS) from their platform does anything but encourage that.
I also don't see how "large corporations that have used psychological manipulation and network effects to become really popular must be consider public utilities, despite no law to that effect" really lines up with free speech. Do you believe that the NY Times should be required to print my op-ed's in their online version? How about my comments on their articles?
Actually I described you to the tee.
> I certainly am not advocating that social media companies should have even more control over our lives
So you are against censorship or for it?
> Since (a) is unlikely in the near term, that probably means (b). I don't how Twitter banning anyone (including POTUS) from their platform does anything but encourage that.
Except that if tech companies collude together to prevent that. Fine, you say go make your own twitter. They do and then it gets banned from google play/apple store/etc. And down the line it goes. That's my point.
> I also don't see how "large corporations that have used psychological manipulation and network effects to become really popular must be consider public utilities, despite no law to that effect" really lines up with free speech.
Who or what are you quoting? You just plucked a quote out of the ether. That's very dishonest and disingenuous. You almost write like a journalist.
> Do you believe that the NY Times should be required to print my op-ed's in their online version?
Of course not. But then again, they are not a platform, they are publishers. But you already knew that.
If you can show collusion, please do. Meanwhile, WTF is with the "app store" concept in the first place? You're complaining that it isn't fair that Apple and Google can block apps from their platforms, even though that's what they've actually done since the arrival of smartphones? Free software advocates (look me up) have been warning about this since day one of the app store. There's nothing new here, other than the dispute of the day involves people's ability to type whatever they want in messages to some platform rather than some other feature that Apple/Google think doesn't fit with their intended platform ecosystems.
I wasn't quoting anyone. The double-quotes were an alternative to using hyphens to create a run-on phrase that attempted to describe how I see some people talking about these corporations.
If I understand your last line correctly, you believe there is some category called "platform" which needs to be treated differently. Are you calling for new laws to define what a platform is? If I create my own "dwitter", will your new laws allow me to have to any say over what people can post to it?
after the capitol building riot where multiple people died, it’s clear that this falls into the “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theatre” bucket.
Being an absolutist about this means being okay with violence based on those lies, just as we saw in Myanmar.
It funny to me that the standard example of speech that shouldn't be protected is the only one that's required to be protected by building codes.
I presume you mean that the limitations on speech take the form of punishments after the fact for saying "fire" when there wasn't one. I agree this is sensible.
But I think it's an important point that we can't (and shouldn't, and don't) ban people entirely from shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, because if they're right, it's important to know.
I think it's worth discussing this more fleshed-out example, because it shows that in order to limit speech without shutting down useful information, you need to have some sort of trusted fact-finding apparatus to punish false alarms, which then become an important locus of power.
After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship. [0]
Every time this stupid meme reemerges, it serves only to identify people who have no idea what they're talking about.
[0] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
Helps that one of the Biden team was once part of Twitter ;)
Though keep in mind (at least with FB) is that many-most Liberal states joined in the lawsuits; eg California joined against Facebook:
https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/Oregon-joins-multi-state-l...
Every platform has them. They get reported and removed.
Fortunately we don't have to use company stores. I use Gab in the Web browser.
Can you post three Parlor links that supposedly contain "calls to violence" here?
Multiple leftists calls to violence posted on reddit: https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/06/29/reddit-ignores...
I'll ask again, since you didn't even follow the instructions: post three links from Parlor that show calls for inciting violence. I'll wait.
But for some reason, I have this feeling that that's not the case. If you're pro-safetyism, you're anti-truth, anti-facts, pro-illogic, and are against wrongthink.
But I think my point is clear: there are oodles of places you can write and post whatever you want. Even here on HN, you can say a great deal of stuff that others will consider wrong without being "censored".
I'm certainly against "wrongthink" which is just a stupid re-use of a literary trick currently being massively over-referenced online in response to various events today. There's wrong, there's false, there's stupid. There isn't any wrongthink in my conception of the world.
Awesome, so we agree there are oodles of places BLM and leftists can protest that are not high traffic roads, freeways, main streets, federal courthouses, etc. They can protest in the Mojave desert, they won't be censored there.
>I'm certainly against "wrongthink" ... There's wrong, there's false, there's stupid. There isn't any wrongthink in my conception of the world.
Awesome, so we both agree with the objective fact that Blacks commit more violent crimes per capita than any other race. That's a fact, that's neither wrong, false, nor stupid.
And sure, your second paragraph states a fact. But facts are fairly useless without context, and as David Byrne sang 3 decades ago (and no doubt many others wrote in centuries before that) "facts all come with points of view". A fact by itself is just a fact, and in many contexts (particularly if the fact is an observation about human behavior/society), not very interesting. The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it?
There's no conflation, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square.
>But facts are fairly useless without context
False.
>The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it?
Nothing. That mere fact will most likely get [flagged] and [dead]ed within the next 24 hours specifically because it is "wrongthink". If you don't agree with my above post being flagged and deaded due to being an inconvenient fact, then we are actually in agreeance.
I've argued against this POV here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648997
That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square. It just doesn't happen because a bunch of people think it already has. New legislation to make social media a public utility? I'd support appropriately constructed forms of that. But de facto isn't de juris, and for now these are private corporations running their own private messaging systems.
And spoonjim and ghaff kicked your teeth in.
>That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square.
Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be allowed to distribute your pamphlets in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston, you can exercise your free speech on the top of a mountain in Colorado."
To which you said: >Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery.
This applies to a random mountain in Colorado as well. Discovery is difficult, but after people discover it, they're free to go back ad much as they want.
>But de facto isn't de juris
That's literally how "town square" is defined, de facto, not de jure. You're literally arguing for our position without realizing it.
Even if you posit the top of Mt. Washington rather than a peak in the as-yet undiscovered (by northern Europeans) Rockies, the difference remains unchanged in more or less every essential way.
And actually, "town square" isn't defined at all, de facto or de jure. In the USA, there's essentially no standing right to speak in a public place. You can't be stopped based on what you say, but you can routinely be stopped from speaking at all.
This is, perversely, one of the things that makes London's Hyde Park Corner so unique: there is an accepted policy (not law) that you can't be stopped from speaking there unless engaged in incitement. This fallacy of "the public square" is just that - a fallacy. Since independence (and certainly before it), there was no freedom to speak in a public space without being blessed by some authority.
It was only the printing press that was really "free speech" , in the sense that you could print anything and make it available and the 1st amendment could not prevent access to it.
And btw, "kicked your teeth in" as a description of that thread exchange seems like a great reason to avoid further interaction with you. ghaff was supporting my POV, and spoonjim's comment was downvoted (and incidentally wrong). Even if they had both disagreed with me and presented a cogent argument supporting their positions, "kicking teeth in" is a particularly violent metaphor that I prefer to see left unused.
Which is relevant, since Parlor and other small sites may not have servers on the country due to the big corporation squashing them.
>even if it was, remained several thousand miles of arduous cross-country travel from the entire population of the newly emerging state.
Exactly like how there's no promises now that small blogs will be indexed, will be cancelled with AMP, may outright be banned by ISPs and CDNs, etc.
>People would almost certainly die en route to hear your pontifications.
Packets would almost certainly "die" en route as well due to what's laid out above.
>There's zero comparison with a browser address bar.
Wrong, it's really apt. Thanks for fleshing it out actually.
So bring it forward now like I originally stated: BLM and other leftists can protest in areas that are not high traffic roads, freeways, main streets, federal courthouses, etc. They can protest in the Mojave desert, they won't be censored there. The can all drive there easily, by no means dangerous. Probably safer than the "town square" in many of the Democrat ran cities.
>And btw, "kicked your teeth in" as a description of that thread exchange seems like a great reason to avoid further interaction with you.
You admit defeat and don't have a response, that's fine.
>spoonjim's comment was downvoted
Can't have any wrongthink now can we.
>and incidentally wrong
No it wasn't, it was 100% right, and you didn't have a response.
Is it censorship then?
I don’t know enough about ICANN but I think they only way they could do anything to a single site would be to lean on the registrar.
and my comment if anyone wants to discuss
I'm pulling for a "hacker" resurgence. I think reddit and big tech made our generation too agreeable.
On topic: comp.lang.c.moderated was created for a reason.
this isn’t a well established limit to free speech in this country in case you’ve forgotten from hs
Personally, I don't believe (though I have no evidence in this regard) there was any coordination here. Companies like Twitter and Facebook have been profiting from disinformation and hate speech for years, and Trump is neither the start nor the end of it. They should have banned him and others much earlier, but just didn't feel like the trouble of standing for basic ethics and human rights was worth that sweet stock. Now they can ban the man not only without hurting their bottom line, but also with a nice PR boost all along. And as soon as one makes the first step, the other tech-herd follows. No coordination, just VP herd mentality.
Is it just at a certain size the product developer no longer has a right to make a product that they are proud of?
That "pride in craft" is how I see it. For many products the content is the product, more so than the actual software features. For Twitter, the product experience is changed more by the presence of Trump than it would be by an Edit button (probably). For Google Play, the experience is defined by which apps are in the store.
These platforms put their thumb on the scales in all sorts of ways. For example they will recruit and cut special deals to bring people on board. For example, Twitter had that NFL deal at one point where you could watch games live.
As a product owner, the motivation to build something I'm proud of is at least as motivating as the desire to make money. And if some person or organization insisted on using my product in a way that was abhorrent to me, to the point that it cut into my pride in the craftsmanship of my product experience, then absolutely I'd toss them out.
The principle is "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." No matter what my TOS says, there's always a 30 day update clause which means that's how long it would take me to change terms and refuse service. So this really is an underlying principle for services regardless of their TOS or community guidelines.
Then the idea that I could throw someone off of my own product and then get yelled at about it--well it confuses me. Prior to seeing the discussions on HN, my expectation would be that throwing someone off of the platform is the equivalent of removing a feature and thus it might come at the cost of some customers. And that's just the constant calculus of any product changes.
Is it that "private platforms have to protect free speech people" have never considered this? Or that there's a reason that the pride of the product owner doesn't factor in?
Compare: "Do I not have the right to live in a country I am proud of, a country without n****s, k***s or g***s?"
No, you don't have the right to make yourself proud in an arbitrary way. You can just put the label "proud" on anything you want that you can't get, so this is already an accepted limitation. There's nothing special about "a product."
It's basically a property issue. Here's how someone on Twitter explained it (this made sense to me):
"Trump can say what he wishes, and so can Jack Dorsey, each with their own property.
Trump has no right to shout from Dorsey's platform any more than Dorsey has the right to shout from the balcony of Trump tower."
Twitter has also urinated all over the spirit of the law.
Down with Twitter and its monstrous intolerance.
>A Florida right of reply law (referring to print media) was overturned by Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), while a FCC policy (referring to broadcast media) was affirmed in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969).
The FCC policy was completely overturned in 1987. It's called the Fairness Doctrine. Some people believe that ending it was a mistake, but it was ended.
I don't think anyone's saying they don't have the legal right to do what they're doing. But there's such a thing as moral right, and the existence of fairness doctrine and right of reply shows that a moral right to fair access and representation is not a niche view.
> Reporters argued that they, not the FCC, should make decisions about balancing the fairness of stories. They believed that the fairness doctrine had a chilling effect by deterring them from tackling controversial issues rather than worrying about whether they could meet the FCC’s fairness standards.
> By the 1980s, the fairness doctrine was losing clout. The deregulatory nature of the Reagan administration and the technological advances that were rendering scarcity arguments moot combined to pressure the FCC to abandon the doctrine. In 1987 the FCC formally abolished it.
(from https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/955/fairness-doctri...)
The fairness doctrine only ever applied to broadcast media, it never applied to cable or print media, which FB and Twitter are conceptually much closer to. Nobody ever (seriously) argued that a book publisher should be required to print rebuttals to a recent title. Nobody ever (seriously) argued that cable media had to follow the same pre-1987 FCC guidelines.
So, yes, I would say that attempting to apply a policy (and note: policy, not law) that was abandoned more than 30 years ago to internet messaging systems is a niche view.
To be quite forthright - maybe they should have! I mean, I for one will argue that. I don't have evidence how much support that view has, sadly. But it seems to me that there should be a line drawn between an editorial service and a utility service, and a utility service should not be permitted to act in an editorial fashion. (In other words, I am a GPL liberal rather than BSD liberal.)
We're going The Full Orwell, so I guess I had better be about loving me some Big Brother.
Let us do victory laps in the name of tolerance and diversity in all but thought.
This message may mean nothing until some innocuous pursuit of yours has a fatwah pronounced against it, and suddenly Niemöller[1] becomes personal.
The 'Rona had been a pretext to empty the jails, I thought.
> The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate
> the US held 21.0% of the world's prisoners in 2015, even though the US represented only around 4.4 percent of the world's population in 2015
> The U.S. incarceration rate peaked in 2008 when about 1 in 100 US adults was behind bars. This incarceration rate exceeded the average incarceration levels in the Soviet Union during the existence of the Gulag system
> one out of every 27 children in the United States having an incarcerated parent
> Critics have lambasted the United States for incarcerating a large number of non-violent and victimless offenders; half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-violent offenses