Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

If we can't discuss and address it and other sensitive things like it that are evil and are approved-speech by tech then we're doomed as a society, and I'd say we're no better than actual racists, oppressors and slavers from days past.

Moves like this by tech companies only makes it worse and more difficult to discuss this.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but these recent steps taken by tech are incredibly disturbing.

It's naive to think that like-minded people won't find an online place to rally, and then eventually rally in person when they feel necessary or are incited ton do so - in this case the ongoing coup attempt is based on lies. It's a futile effort to try to suppress them, they will just gather elsewhere and the deplatforming will be a justification in their mind that they're being persecuted, as the digital/speech will inevitably manifest into the physical where the confrontation can't be avoided.

I do see the deplatforming akin to parents attempting to teach a child their behaviour isn't acceptable, the problem is these children aren't understanding that - and they're adults now without anyone reasonable that they look up to or listen to as a good role model; they've listened to Trump et al who are pushing the false narrative of election fraud, so they will feel justified in violent actions.

Such limitations in the case of the first amendment are pretty well captured here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Credible threats of violence and incitement register with exceptionally strong precedent. Fighting words and threatening the President-Elect of the United States are two such categories of unprotected speech with, again, exceptionally strong precedent.

Anyone claiming their freedom of speech is being violated in this scenario by pushing fighting words and specific threats may be failing to understand:

1. that such freedoms don't extend as protection from being barred by private property and enterprise, and

2. that even if they did, their words are exempt... again, with strong law and case law.

I do agree that there's value in exploring registering social media and communications platforms as utilities. I don't yet know the implications of such.

And on another note (and borrowing from an earlier comment of mine), I do wonder how many of the Parler removals that have taken place used Wednesday as the justification but in reality were done for FOSTA/SESTA cover, which ironically is a law passed within the last few years.

How do you feel about #killallmen on Twitter?

Now, free speech _can_ also be used to spread lies and incite violence, and maybe banning Trump before he had a chance to spread unsubstantiated claims about election fraud would have prevented this recent chaos, but it seems to me that doing it afterwards will increase the chances of violent conflict, at least in the near term. Moreover, the possibility that he might have eventually conceded or placated his supporters is now nil. So, as a consequentialist, I'm dubious of the notion that banning him can be justified on ethical grounds.

I don't know much about Parler - it sounds like the key people there were real assholes and possibly criminals. There are any number of reasons that might apply for getting rid of it. Parler might not be the limiting case that decides our rule.

- Freedom of speech is of extremely high importance for any free society and should not be taken for granted

- Removing it in any capacity should be done with extreme care and free of any bias one way or another, with a lot of thought put into any future consequences

- Speech without a platform isn't speech at all

- Private companies' interest should have little, if any, control over the ability of the public to speak

- Just because a private company is legally allowed to do something, doesn't mean they should

- The marketability of speech (for financially or politically) should have no bearing on whether it's allowed or good

I don't know if all of this is being upheld. I think a lot of interests are at play here. I have no easy answers or even recommendations other than that everyone think about what objective barometers they really think makes speech allowable or not.

(Edit: list rendered real bad)

Internet became liberal minefield swamp and you haven't done anything about it besides blaming.

Build the venues to reach people. Invest in media that speak your language.

Counter all fake news with strong and convincing media you control.

Do it before their "peaceful protestors" will burn the rest of our cities.

You feel this way because you agree with their political views. But that's not how free speech works. What if these platforms banned Joe Biden, because they correctly pointed out that he has used his right to free speech before to destroy millions of lives by unleashing a mass incarceration bill, which to this very day disproportionately affects certain racial groups based upon "immutable characteristics of their person" [1]?. Or if they had canceled him over what appear to be highly credible allegations of sexual assault [2]? Would you feel the same way?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcpO329xTGI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA_Wt22f6gs

Look at Ted Kaczynski, a terrorist with some very strange ideas. Although he had freedom of speech, he had no means to get his ideas out in front of more people. He had to resort to extreme measures, like a bombing campaign to blackmail newspapers into printing his manifesto.

If he was active today, he’d just post it on YouTube and gather millions of views. If YouTube gets squeamish about the violence, move to Parler.

It was easy to guarantee freedom of speech to everyone when people like Ted no means of actually broadcasting their ideas without being gatekeeped by newspaper editors.

Our world is different now. It saddens me to say this but maybe our principles have to adapt too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

I've been suggesting this since before all this went down: many left of center folks don't actually believe in free speech; only "correct" speech.

What makes me really nervous is historically, leftist governments have much higher body counts than right wing governments. These types of governments have the commonality that they tightly control speech and thought.

This is all personal as a relative in my wife's side of the family spent half his life in the gulag for having the audacity to suggest Stalin was not a good guy to his drinking buddies (who turns out are the ones that reported him).

If you're on the left (or right), please do some soul searching on this topic. Also consider that it might not be your guy/gal/party who decides what speech is appropriate (and it's a constantly moving target). And in the age of the internet archive, anything you've written in the past is/will be open season. That's pretty scary, at least for me.

IMO, nobody gets it 100% right 100% of the time, but the USA model isn’t the perfect or only solution.

Legislation has a place in limiting the power and reach of social media, which would naturally diffuse the kind of problems people have with big tech.

Are you for shutting down the New York Times, then? The violence they’ve facilitated dwarfs that of the recent events.

Edit: in case you doubt me, here’s a pretty damning article:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq...

Then rebuke them, don't try and silence them. First off, you won't silence them, you'll just drive them to another platform or underground and in fact, likely give them even more credence (similar to the Streisand effect) - big tech just created a bunch of martyrs and "forbidden speech" and we all know how well it goes when things are "forbidden", it just attracts more people who want to be martyrs as well.

It sounds very easy when you speak in the abstract.

I could tell you a dozen examples where you can argue for both sides, and what your conclusion will be will depend on what the media says and whether or not you like the person they "persecute" and vilify.

AOC said "Are you all ready to make a ruckus? Are you all ready to fight for our rights?". "Oh no, those are fighting words, they incite violence". Would you like ban her from all platforms?

What happens to people without a party? A recent trend on the progressive left was the #ForceTheVote to ask the AOC, squad and the progressive wing of the party to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi's speakership in exchange for a vote on M4All (the thing they've run on, "but now is not the time"). Should they all be banned because they want to "force" the vote?

"Hold your representatives feet to the fire"? Do I want to literally do that and burn them alive? Or I want to keep them accountable?

"Heads on pikes"? Do I want to behead them, or I want them to lose their position and I want them to get fired?

What if I get frustrated at a party, and I say "the gloves are off" and decide to run against them? "Oh no, he said 'gloves are off', he wants to be beat up the congressman/congresswoman. Silence him!". What if I say, "I'm going to destroy them". Obviously, I was speaking in the political sense, but if enough people on cable say the opposite, you'll never believe me.

The point is that there are usually hundreds of ways to frame something. If you didn't hear the context, and you only see the 5 seconds soundbite, you'll believe it's justified. You also won't look into it, because "why would you protect an aggressor? the clip was clear, he/she threatened people with violence".

FYI: I brought examples from the left so that people understand that almost every person who has given an energetic speech can be framed as "violent" and in the future can be shut down (if the power dynamics change). I used American examples, as the two-party system is simpler as a multiparty system and most people are familiar with the things that happen in the US. The same would be true in other countries, though.

I think prohibited speech should be addressed through post-fact punitive measures, not through blanket premptive actions.

Even if someone does say prohibited things, it does not necessarily follow that all that say ought to be prohibited. So no-platforming is morally and ethically problematic.

Freedom of speech with limits is an oxymoron.

Section 230 protections doesn't apply here either. It does protect against civil suits, but only for good faith attempts at removing illegal content. It's fair to question whether Parler has done a good enough job in that regard. If not, then the appropriate parties should sue Parler to force it to clean up it's act. But there is nothing inherently illegal about Parler, so there is no reason why these platforms deserve protection for thwarting the many perfectly legitimate users on the platform.

This. I have started to believe that although free speech is very important, it is only possible to have full free speech in a society where there is not too much hostility between groups. Otherwise it has become too easy to manipulate people, both in your own group and in groups that you are opposed to.

Sometimes you have to silence people to let everyone else have their rights. And that’s what is happening here.

Trump supporters don’t support free speech or freedom of expression as a concept to be applied to everyone. They just want to have free speech themselves and for everyone else to shut up.

Often said, yet it somehow very often excludes religion, which is not immutable, and very often includes simple matters such as intelligence, which is immutable.

I find that more often than not, when a man speaks of such “immutable" traits, what he really means is “whatever the culture I grew up in arbitrarily treats much like an ethnicity, a tribe, something to owe fealty to” — religion is that in many cultures, but intelligence is not.

And I stress how cultural it is: it is often noted that in Japan religion is not treated as such a tribe, culturally, and that Japanese persons often find it curious how residents of other cultures can owe a lifelong fealty to a single religion rather than experiencing elements of multiple religions as it be suitable.

One could argue that such things are so associated with immutability merely because they are treated as a fealty in their respective cultures, a lifelong allegiance, and that switching sides is considered such a betrayal, that they are culturally made immutable, even though there is obviously no reason why religion or political affiliation should be.

My “right to free speech” should not limit your “right to religion” or your “right to political association”, and in this case “your right to safety”.

While South Africa has a lot of improvement to do, the understanding that rights need to be self-limiting in order to remain sustainable is a very good starting point in a constitutional democracy.

When it becomes very cheap to violate the law and remains expensive to enforce the law, obviously we see a lot of lawbreaking ensue. The solution ought not to be to sweep away the First Amendment, but to do a combination of things that:

1. Makes it feasible to enforce the law on internet speech when and where it applies 2. Go enforce that law

The First Amendment exists in a context of assumed liability for publishers. This may have been more practical when there aren't that many publishers. When there are $billions of publishers, the deterrent impact of liability fear just isn't there. Regulation is also an alternative to making law enforcement more practical and affordable. If you don't want to expend the resources prosecuting every violation of the law, you have to take some proactive steps to manage the environment to reduce potential violations. This is why you have the FCC regulating content on broadcast media, for example.

Just like every freedom, it must be limited by others' freedoms. As the saying goes "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose." So it is with speech. You should be able to speak your mind, but if that speech causes someone else harm, then that person's right not to be harmed must be weighed against your right to speak.

Maybe we shouldn't allow private entities like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, etc decide where those boundaries are. I don't think capitalism is a good fit in this case.

Businesses have free speech rights in addition to individuals.

Let's take a shop owner as an example. This particular shop owner does not support Trump. They have a community notice board on their shop where people can post things.

Of course they are not going to let a Trump supporter post a MAGA sign on that board. It's their business, they can decide whats allowed there and what isn't. Forcing them to display a MAGA sign would be essentially "forced speech" which would also violate their rights.

That doesn't prevent anyone from making MAGA signs or posting them in other places, so the free speech of those people wasn't violated in any way by the shop owner refusing to display their signs.

Therefore I think Amazon, Apple, Google and the other companies shouldn't be forced to convey messages on their platforms they don't agree with, otherwise it's violating their rights.

It’s a perfectly reasonable position, and IMO the correct one.

But speech has always been limited: incitement to violence, criminal conspiracy, libel, blasphemy (in many places), “public exposure of private facts” (damaging other people’s legitimately private life), revealing classified material ... and so on.

I think what people fail to distinguish is the free exchange of ideas - what totalitarian countries suppress - and the right to say whatever you like even it it’s to do deliberate harm for selfish ends.

The paradox of tolerance shows us that to have freedom we can actually use there must be limits on what we are free to do.

Organising and inciting an insurrection to overturn an election - what effect does that have on the speech and political rights of those who spoke for months to win the votes of the newly elected President? To respect the freedom of those people shouldn’t we restrict the speech of the former, when it is shown to have become dangerous?

Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance[1]:

> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Scenario: US is at war abroad. Government officials, military, and pro-war political wing is using social networks to rally the nation, urge continued fighting, etc.

Tech companies' leadership, being pacifist and against war, decide to deplatform the war party all together. Attempts to establish alternative means of mass communication by pro-war party (and the government!) are blocked as even Cloud Providers ban them.

My conclusion (ymmv) running above in my head: national security trumps private property considerations, and those suggesting private capital operating mass communication networks and system, can behave as they please are wrong.

[p.s. What happens to Pentagon and JEDI and MS cloud, if Microsoft leadership turns pacifists in middle of a war? "Private company" can do as it pleases? The premise is ludicrous when state interests are concerned.]

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Deplatforming a sitting POTUS before constitutional means (impeachment|25th) have legally removed him from office is technically an element of a coup. Two basic things happen in coups: control of mass media, and military brass ignoring chain of command.

For the record, IMHO, there is no way FANGs would dare this if they did not have a greenlight from Pentagon and the Alphabet soup agencies.

i think if the line is delineated legally, explicitly, clearly that this restriction adds freedoms to those who would be restricted were free speech absolute and the screams of the intolerant drowned out their pleas for survival.

i think the perception this does not qualify as free speech because it is not absolutely free in a libertarian sense (i can say literally whatever sequence of things i can imagine, i can transmit literally any sequence of bits, i can portray literally anything in film/video games) is a strange and mostly american one.

to be clear: i agree free speech is important and am not particularly arguing against it in the american context here either—one thing that i think is better in sum in american is the high degree of press freedom due to america’s extremely high legal standard for libel. i just wanted to comment on the sociological phenomenon i see where there is “free speech” and “this other thing where it is free speech as most other places would recognize it”.

this is just one of the things makes america peculiar, in a special sense. blessing and a curse, and in total i think the lumps are worth the rest of the pudding.

Does anyone?

I know people say they do, but they also reject the direct consequences of it, so obviously don’t mean it or don’t understand it.

For that reason, a P2P Twitter-type platform where accounts couldn't be removed would be potentially very dangerous.

I would rather try to deal with free speech by looking at personalisation and filter bubbles, perhaps mandating some kind of diversity gets baked into algorithms, which seems to lie at the root of the issue (that and economic inequality).

Which Amazon, Facebook and Twitter also do "in abundance". I can give a list of links which show direct violations of their violence policy, discriminating religion, people et all and it has been happening for years and yet no action as been taken. But does it matter if I give you such a list? It doesn't matter. Why? Because it is taken for granted that all venomous stuff that you find online is coming from the Right Wing/Alt Right/Trumpists etc. There is nothing that Left can do wrong.

Since this is the notion that I find most left liberals employ there is no way to come to a common ground in such scenarios. Unless you are willing to accept that there is venom on the left wing too there is no way I will agree to your point. If you feel Parler harbors hate in abundance you will be shocked to see the kind of hate I have found on Amazon, Twitter and Facebook spewed by the left. If you want to address the issue you should take a holistic approach of condemning it in all platforms and not single out one platform. Only then I can take your argument seriously. But the question is: Can you do it?

But the society should determine those limits. We are completely within our right to do so. If we don't want people stomping around claiming and ethnic group is subhuman and should be exterminated, society has the right to determine that. We choose our representatives, they make a law, and then that speech is no longer protected.

Now, the people who would be subjected to that limit are going to fight tooth and nail to defend it. They will espouse all manner of fallacy, especially the slippery slope that the US will become China or North Korea or Russia. These are intentional tactics to obfuscate the power of the majority for their nefarious schemes.

However, if the majority decides it wants to ban, say, all non-Christian speech, then other rights kick in: such as the right to practice any religion freely.

The Bill of Rights is a fairly astute document not just in its content but its malleability (hello prohibition & slavery & suffrage), because the Constitution was missing a lot of important things. Let's not underestimate it, nor let others do so.

I fully 100% support the ability of Facebook, Twitter, etc to ban accounts. They have every legal and moral right to do so. Rembember that freedom of association is also a thing.

At the same time, I recognize that sufficently powerful corporations are practically just another form of government. Does it really make practical difference to you if a government says "you can't say that", vs a monopolist/trust/cartel saying the same thing?

But that only points out the fact that, for example, Facebook should not exist in its current form. That fact that that it is basically the only significant player in its niche points to a spectacular market failure, one likely compounded by unlawful monopolistic practices by Facebook.

There should instead be multiple viable competing services in such spaces. If it takes alienating decent sized chunks of the population to eventually get a viable competitor, then so be it. And no Parler is certainly not that viable competitor. But if Facebook's actions piss of enough people who are not extremists, then a true competitor might actually start to emerge.

The same applies to Apple/Amazon/Google.

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After thought:

Seriously who is the #2 competitor to Facebook's main service? There really does not seem to be any significant competitor in the English speaking world. While on the other hand, Amazon for example has fairly clear competitors for most of its products, at least in the US. Walmart/EBay competes with the shopping, GCP/Azure compete with AWS, YouTube Gaming competes with Twitch, multiple streaming services compete with the video and music offerings, etc. Apple likewise has competitors for pretty much all of their offerings. Even Google has competition on most of their products.

By discriminate, do you mean "disparage" or simply "make a distinction between"? Or something else?

In either case, it seems like quite a low threshold, it seems like it would mean you condone a social network that bans people that say "I don't like white people" or "women can't drive"?

If these groups want to not be deplatformed every few years, they ought to moderate the content. That seems to be all Apple is asking for here - just moderate out the illegal content and you can come back.

That only seems hard to do for conservative groups - everyone else seems to at least try to moderate, even if they do it unevenly or not quickly enough, they try. These deplatformed companies and actors don't ever seem to even try to moderate.

I don't feel bad for them, personally.

Americans drop a loser like a brick. Taking Parler off the app stores seriously de-legitimizes their cause and their celebrity. If you read Apple's language [1] its very clear Apple believes Parler is operating in extremely bad faith, that they either lack the ability to moderate or are only doing so as a temporary token gesture. This means Parler's user demographic will become more and more full of fringe radical elements that scare off the silent majority less radical crowd.

[1]: "Your response also references a moderation plan “for the time being,” which does not meet the ongoing requirements in Guideline 1.2 – Safety – User Generated content"