Parler App delisted from Google Play; Apple threatening same within 24h
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Someone brought an interesting perspective in another thread and I can't shake it off. The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're *ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right.
We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it. Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways? Wouldn't you do the same?
(The same limitations will likely occur at the original platforms as populations leave)
“Alternative truths” which have been disseminated widely and used to storm a capital (where there were deaths). It could have been way worse. Being involved in online organization of something like that probably isn’t great for your brand.
Politics has a problem on both sides were business gets more ear than people.
They don’t debate and they know they’re right. What’s the point in keeping them?
What's way more worrying to me is that they aren't listening to the people that try to understand their perspectives, but keep them grounded in reality. It seems to have become an 'either you are with us, or against us'-situation for a huge number of people, sadly.
There is literally nothing of value to be gained.
But I don't see how Facebook taking down the group is the fault of the Left at large (or in the US). I don't know many serious Leftists who are fond of Facebook, not to mention feel the company represents them.
I don't mean to rationalize its removal. It sounds like a project that should exist, one that serves as a mirror for introspection.
This isn't something new or that "the left" only does. In much the same way we see lgbtq groups closed because the algorithm or human moderator believes queerness == explicit sexual content rather than "a bunch of other humans"
So what’s the problem?
Politics isn't.
This is a very simple concept, yet I find myself having to explain it to a lot of people.
Election officials and reputable news sources have repeatedly stated why there is no reason to believe the election was stolen. There is no assumption about who is right, only repeated proof.
Without a platform to spread disinformation, there would have been just a few dozen people who believed otherwise, and the raid on the Capitol would not have happened.
Are people online actually open to talking?
I get they write messages, and a lot of messages. But it strikes me no one ever actually changes their mind. They just yell at each other till they move on to another hill to yell from.
It's all so tiring, it's like when I used to watch some friends do prep for school debates. They're just practicing arguing, the topic itself is secondary to the argument.
I'm probably too cynical, but I also know every time I try to have a real discussion online, it ends badly.
The problem comes once they have changed - getting them to change back, or to change again seems almost impossible.
Well, 25% of the time.
The best way to stop violent extremists.
That's a nice idea, until someone thinks "doesn't work out" includes "I don't get the electoral result that I wanted".
The real problem is that there's an epistemic crisis whereby people have lost trust in long-lived and functioning institutions, and that has been fuelled by conspiracy theorists, some of which have been given credence by the sitting president (e.g., Alex Jones).
https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/electoral-college-vo...
https://mobile.twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048...
The mainstream media refuses to take seriously issues raised by libertarians/paleoconservatives like getting rid of qualified immunity. I don’t see Cato Institute people trying to stage a coup.
The mainstream media compared Bernie’s victories to Hitler’s conquest of Germany and said on live TV that they worried if he won there’d be executions in Central Park. Bernie Sanders didn’t incite a riot and then call the rioters “good, special people.”
This is such a bizarre false equivalence, like claiming I should weigh equally the opinion of my doctor and a patient at an insane asylum.
By now, there seem to be a lot of fragments that used to be part of "the left" but were alienated or pushed out over disagreements about gender issues.
The discussion if feminism should a) create equal chances or b) also correct past wrongs by inverse discrimination has been around for a long time. But only recently has it become so divisive.
And science is not an American institution... if one distrust the science of every major nation then what’s left? If one distrusts all reporting outlets and international signals for COVID or climate change, then what’s left?
The web may be full of misinformation, but in some ways it’s also a golden age for education.
Trump supporters are not hapless victims by any standard of the imagination. The plain fact is that they (and in particular their leader) have lost legitimacy and credibility and are refusing to accept the fact. And I have to say that to a large extent this loss has something to do with many of them (and in particular their leader) being assholes for the last 5 years.
I mean, do you think scientists need to give flat earthers more latitude?
Because you are on the same boat with them. If they overturn the boat, you'll fall into the water.
I do not say that it is easy to be concerned, it is hard, because it leaves mind in the state of uncertainty: there are no known ways to tackle the problem. There are different ways to deal with it, but all simple ways (like throw them all over the board) are not acceptable and probably wouldn't work (some tried and it didn't turn well). These simple ways could bring mind into the state of peace: everything is decided, no uncertainty, they are the bad guys, we are the good ones, but what is more important to you: the peace of mind or a thinking process constantly seeking for ways to tackle a problem?
People mostly choose peace of mind, because they have other problems to worry about. I do not blame them, anxiety is a thing that makes life worse. But as for me, people might be better if they learned how to live with uncertainty without having to worry about the part of uncertainty that is out of their control.
Do you think we would have heard no unfounded accusations of fraud? No challenges in court? No protests and riots? After the year we've had?
And if, on January 6, as Congress was meeting to confirm the Electoral College vote for Trump, a riotous mob had stormed the Capitol and disrupted proceedings for a few hours, would it have been reported the same way? Would left-wing activist social media accounts be getting deplatformed?
It didn't happen. Might not have. But if it did, would you be calling it a coup? Would you be so disturbed about the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power?
I'm not defending what happened. I'm asking, if it were reversed, how would you feel. Be honest.
Also it’s called a coup because the president in power incited a mob to attack congress. Your hypothetical is missing that part.
What's happening is that people who copy-paste/reshare conspiracy theories without even bothering to read the wikipedia/snopes article first are being rightly downvoted.
I think of Trump's fan base seems more like a religious minority than a political group. And like any religious group debate really isn't the answer to fantastical beliefs.
Step 2: Pressure those platforms to ban legal speech.
(Unintended but predictable consequence: People move to less censored platforms.)
Step 3: Pressure the mobile OS duopoly to ban the less censored platforms.
^-- You are here.
Step 4: Ban mobile providers from supporting internet connections on unapproved mobile devices.
Step 5: Ban general purpose computing devices.
The insurrection we saw in DC was planned, in the open, on Parler. That is hardly legal speech and no company is obligated to host it if they don’t want to.
Until you can provide me with some actual proof Apple or Google were pressured by anything but the written law to remove this crap from their stores, say, a threatening phone call from a certain ranking Congressperson or judge or member of the executive branch, I’ll call this hysterics.
Today I read the mayor of Portland was attacked whilst he was dining. The "mostly peaceful protesters" have burned his apartment building, attempted to take over police stations and court houses, and decapitated models of the mayor. He supports them anyway - it's so crazy it's impossible to believe, really. What is going on in the USA?
If FB/Twitter had cracked down on the BLM organisers putting together nightly attacks on the police, at least nobody could say they were being inconsistent now. Instead they put banners up on random developer docs sites saying they support BLM. Blatant double standards.
How about a tweet from a member of Congress?
Wait, direct threats of violence and child porn are legal speech now?
Because that's what you'll find on Parler.
Edit: for the sake of accuracy, Parler is unquestionably rife with threats of violence that they refuse to remove. Go visit /R/parlerwatch and despair.
They do, however, remove CP from the site if it's reported by users, but as of 2020-12-02 they admit they lack any automated systems for detecting and removing it at scale.
Well, in case it wasn't clear, I'll try more words and hope this helps:
Parler has knowingly allowed content to exist on their site that violates both the Google ToS and the law.
This content isn't "naughty". It is very much illegal, and includes direct threats and incitement to violence among many other things. This includes, for example, calls to murder politicians, the police, etc.
Parler has further affirmatively stated they will not remove that material despite having the ability to do so. In this way Parler distinguishes itself from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and so forth.
That is, of course, their choice. However, a failure to moderate this kind of material violates Google's ToS.
It is therefore also Google's and Apple's choice to enforce their ToS and remove the Parler app from their store.
In no way does this represent censorship (neither Google nor Apple are in any way obligated to distribute third party software), nor does the offending content represent legal speech.
> Because that's what you'll find on Parler.
No article I've read substantiates the presence of child pornography.
Source?
If your husband's friend really did see illegal material just scrolling the discover page, there will be mainstream media confirmation of an arrest soon.
> Wernick elaborated after this story published, confirming that Parler has no system for detecting child pornography before it is viewed and potentially reported by users.
However I absolutely admit your point: rather than affirmative statement of the presence of CP on the site, the issue is they've not built systems for finding and removing it.
They have a manual human moderation pool for removing illegal content. But they are very slow, it took over 12 hours for them to remove a spambot.
Article about the porn stuff: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/7/parler-rebut...
I keep wading into these threads defending Parler because they are nothing like 4chan, 8kun, or Gab. They do have moderation, they do remove illegal content, they just suck at it.
What's your point? By equivalence, you should be calling for hackernews to be shut down, right? By equivalence, you shouldn't be posting here.
But I worry that you are right. Visa and MasterCard have already been non politically neutral.
And where will the left stop? Even if we talk about actual nazis, should they have internet connections? Electricity? The right to property? It’s not like the left seem to be satisfied with anything they achieve, they always want more.
And first it’s actual nazis, then it’s qanon, then it’s lockdown sceptics, then it’s??
If you're going to group millions of people together and judge them by their extremes, you might want to try applying the same logic to "the right" and see if you are happy with the slippery slope you construct.
However on the left the people pushing for this are as mainstream as Nancy pelosi, so I’m not sure what term to use. “Pro censorship left”?
A coup takes control of government by force. You become the state.
With respect to those who were injured and died, this merely gave the state a bloody nose.
First of all, Pearl Harbor wasn’t a coup. It was an act of war. Both involve violence, yes, but trying to draw a line between them is just nonsense.
As far as not being “hyperbolic”: an armed mob overran the capital in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and got very close to getting their hands onto the chain of succession. Men with guns and flex cuffs wandered the building with maps and checking unmarked offices for members of congress. Five lay dead, and multiple pipe bombs had to be defused. The federal government remained paralyzed for hours, as someone in the chain of command refused authorization to send in the guard, and the Pentagon refused to pick up the phone. They built a gallows outside, and looked sure as hell like they were going to lynch Mike Pence.
If you think I’m being hyperbolic here, the issue is your lack of perspective and not me being worked up.
Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check
You don't think this was a coordinated effort? President Trump (and several of his allies) has been stoking this flame for _weeks_ explicitly and to the day. He gave a speech the morning of the attack, explicitly pointing them to the Capitol.
He seems to have also, behind the scenes, disuaded the usual defense mechanisms that would have prevented this from being even as effictive as it was. I'd expect much more information will be coming out about that as this is investigated further. I'm not seeing how you're saying this wasn't coordinated though.
He thought he could at least intimidate his political enemies, and convince his allies and those on the fence to _at least_ make a bigger mess of the transfer of power.
For his entire presidency, Trump has really been good at chaos and bad at planning. He regularly failed to do things that were either within his powers or easily doable because he just didn’t follow the process right (DACA, muslim ban), or because he couldn’t work with others (wall, relief checks), or because he just didn’t have the patience to follow through (TikTok sale). When things require organization skill, he falls apart. His two biggest moves have been shit posting on twitter, and shit posting while undermining his own ongoing negotiations. He is incapable of actually doing the work, any work.
Actually doing a coup via the military requires skill and planning. There are a lot of people in the chain who can say no, or drag their feet to delay illegal orders. A smarter autocrat would’ve laid the groundwork to purge the ranks of non-faithful, done his best to bribe rank and file members, or worked to create a plausible story that required military presence in the capital. Instead he vetoed their pay bill because he was angry at Twitter, after he pardoned war criminals and called them all suckers. He is simply not a strategic thinker at all.
Whipping up his rabid fans so that they plan something on his behalf in whatever fetid swamps they’ve been banished to online? Now that he can do, because it only requires some tweets that he thinks of in the moment.
That he was able to get so far with such amateurish work is a sign that the republic is very, very sick. Hopefully we can fix our underlying issues before a smarter autocrat has a go at it, because if that happens we’re probably doomed.
It didn't work. But they all thought it would. Unless this is the most method-acting troll I've ever seen, those who barged into the chambers with zip-tie restraints and tasers truly believed they were there to facilitate the overthrow of the legislature and keep their leader in power.
It was an attempted coup, and a failed one.
The Capitol breach is not comparable to a junta raiding a presidential palace. It was more like the lone nutjob, except there were a few more nutjobs. And a bunch of LARPers and miscellaneous morons tagging along to riot because the protestors outnumbered the cops.
When I see a term like "coup" being bandied about inconsistent with its conventional usage, it looks to me like a rhetorical play rather than an honest analysis of what happened. "Sedition" carries all of the same gravity and probably is more accurate.
Edit: I found a good piece on Quartz that argues this point better: https://qz.com/1953602/is-america-experiencing-a-coup/
Quantity matters. A single fence jumper is different than a thousand. One person is a nutball, a thousand is a mob.
Proximity also matters. We now know that the mob came dangerously close to members of Congress. In at least two instances they came within feet of members, or within seconds of passing through barricades that were not yet erected.
This is like your hypothetical fence jumper making it into the Lincoln Bedroom with a few hundred of his closest friends. Given that they literally beat at least two cops to death and erected gallows, there is no doubt that they intended the worst for Congress.
> The Capitol breach is not comparable to a junta raiding a presidential palace. It was more like the lone nutjob, except there were a few more nutjobs. And a bunch of LARPers and miscellaneous morons tagging along to riot because the protestors outnumbered the cops.
You are building up an incorrectly narrow vision on what a coup actually looks like, then using that to declare this to be a non-coup. You are absolutely correct that this looks nothing like a Junta raiding the presidential palace, but that is far from the only form that historical coups have taken. More than once countries have been toppled by a mob seizing the legislature while the military stands around without an idea of what to do. Arguably that is exactly what happened during the August 10th insurrection in Paris, which toppled a constitutional monarchy and led to the Terror.
That's fair enough. Living in the present, we usually have a blind spot about how present events relate to others in history. It's likely that some peasant revolts throughout history were just as stupid and chaotic as this one.
However, the events on Wednesday were particularly complicated. There were many factions and ideologies present. There were MAGAs, QAnons, "Federalists", neo-Nazis, COVID-deniers, Blue Lives Matter supporters, Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys, Moms for Trump. There was but one shared allegiance—Trump.
There were five separate raids into the building, each as unorganized and chaotic as the next. Not a single rioter inside the Capitol was seen brandishing a firearm (I did see a few outside the Capitol though, via live streams). Many of the rioters were destroying things, but even more were marching through the hallways and rotunda "saying their peace" (from interviews I saw later, many thought they were still legitimately protesting). While there were a few dozen paramilitary types among the mob—or to stop the "coup", as they see it—their intentions were closer to fantasy fulfillment than a coup. One of the "zip tie guys" was there with his mom.
There was a lack of organization, little actual violence, no realistic attempt to seize anything, let alone a realistic chance to seize power in the first place. Throwing "attempted" in front of "coup" does not change the fruitlessness of the proceedings. In hindsight, I don't think even the worst case scenario would have changed much.
Regardless of the criteria we use to determine this case, I argue that it's not clear cut, and the use of "coup" and "terrorism"—as many outlets have—to describe the whole affair, especially before the dust has settled, seems like an overreach. And it's exactly the kind of thing that Trump supporters are constantly accusing the "mainstream media" of perpetuating. That's why it's an uprising, revolt, insurrection, seditious riot. All of these terms are accurate enough for now.
But it's also something more than "plain" sedition. Not only was it a group of nutjobs with little chance of success, but they were organized and/or encouraged by the outgoing President himself, and were aided by the anemic security that was also coordinated by the President (via recent appointments to the Pentagon, decision to discourage or deny National Guard assistance, etc.)
That tie to Trump, along with the intentionally weak security, adds another dimension to this.
EDIT: I read your link after the reply above. Thanks, it captures the nuance pretty well.
They came with weapons, human restraints (flex cuffs), and were calling out politicians they disagree with and explicitly looking for them.
The intention of several seems to have been to _at least_ take hostages if not worse. What would you call the threatening, kidnapping and possible murder of your political rivals for the express purpose of keeping your side in power? If that's not a coup I don't know what is. That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try.
It can’t be any clearer than it is now without more bloodshed and still people don’t want to believe it.
This is an autocratic movement. The legislature is an impediment to that. Maybe they envision a principate to give it the veneer of authenticity that an outright autocracy would not. That worked for the Roman Empire for ~250 years, people bought that it was still a Republic when it's plain to history it was ruled by an emperor during this time.
Of course had it succeeded, no matter how it had, Trump would have accepted it happily. He doesn't care about the Constitution or even the veneer of legitimacy. He just wants to win. Doesn't matter how.
What other reason do you think they had for storming congress?
The entire government.
In this case, that was the goal. Keep the losing presidential candidate in power.
It specifically refers to the overthrow of a government. Trashing a single courthouse comes nowhere close to that.
The goal is power. Taking power from your political enemy and securing it for yourself.
The word coup by itself has a broader definition, but is usually used as a compliment. Such as "Heather just closed a $30mm deal with Acme Corp. Her entire sales team scored a coup with that sales pitch"
But when used in the context of gun-toting insurrectionists? "Coup" is shorthand for the full phrase. Coup d'état.
Arguably some of the stuff happening with the autonomous zone wasn’t a coup attempt, it was an attempt at secession. A stupid and doomed attempt, I’ll agree, but a different thing altogether.
There is a plausible path from taking over Congress while they’re certifying the electoral college and declaring the next president and power. I’ll admit that it’s not a likely outcome, but it’s plausible. It wouldn’t be the first time a government has been toppled by a mob taking over the legislature, ask France. If they’d succeeded they would have re-installed Trump contrary to the will of the voters, the rule of law, and the constitution. Hence, coup attempt.
https://ktvz.com/news/crime-courts/2020/07/24/fires-set-insi...
Yes, a lot of them wanted to go protest. But it’s a clear straw man to say “not everyone there was in on the coup attempt”. Sure, a bunch of idiots wanted to stand around and hold up dumb signs because they got conned into the Q nonsense, but a lot of them also wanted to push their way in and lynch Mike Pence in order to get what they wanted. They even built gallows, which is not something you do if you’re just there to protest.
Again, this was all planned out in the open. The told each other to bring zip ties and maps of the capital building. They talked about blowing the building up with a Ryder van like the Turner Diaries (someone did plant pipe bombs), and discussed how they were going to kill congress members to get their way. They even printed “MAGA Civil War” shirts.
And even though they behaved like an unruly mob, they did manage to overrun the capital and came within feet of grabbing members of congress; the lady who was shot had breached the final barrier to where members of congress were holed up. What was clearly missing here was not intent or will, but coordination. And that sure is scary.
(As an aside, plenty of historical coups have been accomplished by coordinating a mob just enough to take over the legislature by force. Ask the French).
And that’s before we get into the really awkward questions, like “why did the pentagon repeatedly deny Larry Hogan authorization to send in the guard after the building had been overrun?” Why was the initial protest organized by republican AGs? Why wasn’t the capital police prepared for a protest that had been announced by the president himself? Perhaps some of that was more opportunistic, trump doesn’t really seem like the planning type to me, but it sure is awkward if your basic premise is that this was just a protest gone awry.
My theory is that the companies are getting some tough calls from Nancy Pelosi- along the lines of you stop supporting violence right now or we will deal with you unfavorably later.
This week has really shown me what people mean when they say workers in tech have power. ~300 cosigners of the employee petition at Twitter helped remove Trump's ability to spread propaganda to nearly 90M followers. That's amazing and something I frankly thought would never happen. Without that internal pressure, Trump would still have his bully pulpit and zero Republicans would be coming forward to talk openly about a post-Trump future for the party like we saw Murkowski do today.
PS you don't need to downvote this, just wait for the mod action. But for veracity, search for it on the first 3 pages. It's not there. And then compare its time of posting and score with entries that are there
If you want to market to cosmopolitan, affluent, educated and diverse urban consumers, which everyone does, associating yourself with Trump isn't exactly a winning strategy
I'm a disheartened leftist today, and I don't think it's appropriate to remove these apps and the accounts of these groups.
Platforms get pressure to remove individuals all the time. We've been trying for YEARS to get net neutrality written into law for ISPs, and I don't think it's too much of a leap to make for speech on Twitter.
The individual posters they suppress come and go - today it's the Trump family, tomorrow, who could it be? Last summer, it was BLM.
The problem is that tech platforms have no financial incentive to not amplify inciting speech. They economically benefit from people staying enraged and in their bubbles. This is platforms shirking responsibility, and perpetuating the system that allowed Trumpism to thrive. Deplatforming Trump will not stamp out white supremacy, and it won't improve the frustration of material conditions that are felt by working class people both left and right. If Twitter wanted to really make a difference in the world, they would stop selling user data and stop selling ads that earn them profit.
Right wing going forward will not be going away. In fact, it will grow and the staunchness will become more hardline.