At this point we are heading towards a complete mitosis of our information channels based on political ideology.
I don't think we're going to get a "red" phone. Seems more likely that we'll just see people get Parler on Android through channels other than the Play Store.
>What then?
There's a lot of additional attack vectors. We've already seen Amazon move to boot Parler off its web infrastructure. If that fails to kill the platform, we'll likely see attacks on anything related to its financing, or things like CloudFlare protection. If that fails I could see progressives abandoning net neutrality to lean on ISPs to block traffic.
In reality I don't think we'll get all the way there, but we'll get close enough that a stable "red social media" ecosystem will emerge that's out of reach of cancellation. In the long run this may work out worse for everyone.
[0]: https://news.gab.com/2021/01/09/gabs-statement-on-apple-and-...
Turns out the net's administrators interpret some signal as damage and also route around it.
Hey, if only the FCC rule that ISPs should be obligated to permit all legal content and applications without discrimination was still in place.
Who are the idiots that got rid of that?
This will force people into camps and the camps will not see each other creating a massively re-enforcing echo chamber that will further inflame things.
That said, while I do vigorously support free political speech -even disagreeable political speech (if you don't then it's "speech I agree with"), unfortunately, you have people who don't know where to draw the line and cross into vile threats and other heinous crime.
It's a case of why we can't have nice things. A few people ruin it for the many.
But yeah, this is going to be disastrous for us. However, the social media companies and the regular media made this bed and they are happy swines right now.
I hope other countries wise up to especially social media platforms (be they from the US, China, Russia, etc) and build their own to avoid having large countries influence how smaller countries should conduct themselves.
That is basically, a few corporations are setting the tone of discussion for all people except China, North Korea and Iran (who, in retrospect, "wisely" banned them). That's not a good thing.
They are the culture barons and they are not shy about using their power to steer things.
Honestly it's already happened in my view, even when conservatives were not being purged wholesale from these platforms by administrators they were already being purged from user-moderated communities on these platforms. This is largely about people who already don't engage with conservatives wanting to leverage whatever power they can in order to disrupt the ability to communicate and associate with one another online. The pretext is of course stopping violence, but even a lot of people on the left see the rank hypocrisy of this hand-wringing given the kind of rhetoric that the left has been producing over the past several years.
Maybe you could more accurately say this is about the "right wing"? Actual dyed-in-the-wool conservatives seem to want nothing to do with Trump or Qanon or any of this stuff, which seems to have little to nothing to do with conservative values.
I see a lot of conservatives turning towards Biden and Harris, who to me appear to be actually very conservative. Harris is a literal cop, and Biden's platform is basically "let's get back to normal". I'm not a fan, but I understand why conservatives would like them.
Discourse has always had limits of decency, and when that cannot be ensured - the very tool or network becomes a national security concern. Conservatives aren’t the issue - it’s the batshit crazy terrorists that aren’t contained.
That said other speech that may contain lies and deceit, etc, should be protected free speech. Because, as we know, facts change. Just like Vitamin D & Covid. Oh, now it's okay. Before it was a lie.
Apparently I was spreading misinformation because WHO said masks don’t help the general public.
Do you have any evidence of this? There were lots of people advocating masks on r/Coronavirus since January. I've never heard of a site-ban for conduct that doesn't violate Reddit's TOS.
“Why is it that Leftist terroristic threats are given a greater level of leeway versus Rightist threats?”
has a companion question which is equally pertinent:
“Why is it that Rightist violence is met with restrained law enforcement responses versus the heavy handed responses during occasions of Leftist violence?”
I would expect the same, but substitute "worse" for "better". Trumpism lives on conflict and trolling. There's nobody to troll on Parler. It's affective politics as much as ideological: they may believe awful things, but they're mostly out to have a good time. Parler is like a video game with all the cheat codes on; it will entertain them at first, but they'll get bored quickly.
What they'll do next I'm not sure, but the whole political success of Trumpism was based on turnout, which was based on enthusiasm. Facebook and Twitter are enthusiasm-generating machines, and cutting Trump supporters off is not much different than cutting off a bar patron who's clearly had seven too many. They might make new social networks, but they won't be as good, and that's enough.
We did, but when we challenged their fundamental assumptions about the world or proposed alternatives in earnest reasoned debate and discourse they called us “cucks” and what can you do at that point?
Yes, there are people who have been left-behind and find themselves economically disadvantaged by the changing world (e.g. The rust-belt) - but that’s not the basis of “Trumpism” - Reactionary right-wing politics draws on that group but it isn’t the cause nor basis for it. Remember that Trump isn’t really that popular amongst actually poor people - he’s popular with people who grew up in an environment that promoted what we now call /toxic individualism/. And America has a long tradition of it.
That's not true at all for most Trump supporters. If you have trouble finding answers to your questions I can give them to you. I won't call you a cuck and will engage in a proper debate. Even though I don't subscribe to all of Trump's policies I'm a right winger and a conservative. Another point to note: I don't subscribe to all of Trump's policies because the right wing in America is different from right wing in my country in many respects. But there is sufficient overlap to be able to say I can agree to many of the conservative points in US politics as well. So if you have questions regarding my ideology fire away and I'll try my best to answer.
I've heard plenty of reasoned arguments against those things. Here's the problem: they weren't given by Trump supporters. They came from moderates, or in some cases, from Marxists.
Trumpism isn't just opposition to what Fox News says the Democratic Party supports. It's the belief structure that convinces people that "open borders" is even on the table in modern politics at all (it isn't). If you think that "open borders" is more likely in the next two decades than the country being destroyed by an asteroid impact, you're already in the disinformation hole.
When I was much younger - like, 8-9-10yo, PC games were hard for me: younger age, smaller-mind. I’d use my limited time on my 28.8 dialup to get cheat codes and burn hours of my life having fun in the single-player skirmish/instant-action-mode (as opposed to campaign/story mode - this was before always-on internet and built-in matchmaking, ofc) - and I never got bored of it. I didn’t get tired of winning. Not that “winning” was the objective, but just blowing stuff up in Streets-of-SimCity or spamming the easter-egg nuke-troopers in Age of Empires was enough to entertain me.
I didn’t stop cheating at single-player PC games until after I was old enough to understand how to actually play the game and started to appreciate the challenge and enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming that challenge.
As a comparison - I see similarities with the types of people on Parler: there’s no appreciation of /the system/ - just a desire to be-on-top, stay-on-top, and have fun blowing shit up. They either don’t enjoy “the game” or they’re unable to play it, so they’ve invented their own game. Hence, the “like playing chess with a pigeon” idiom: shitting on the chessboard is more fun for them than playing by the rules.
Funny considering of course that republicans abandoned net neutrality years ago.. Now maybe they will support it?
Trump is just the most ugly manifestation of this attack on non-right wing media and platforms: he threatened to veto an unrelated military spending bill unless Congress repealed Section 230 in hopes of heaping a DMCA-like level of liability onto Twitter et al. The actual result would be the neutering of the Internet for everyone: no comment sections if discussion was not the major feature, heavy moderation of anything that might offend anyone.
No it won't, because that platform already exists: Twitter. I follow lots of conservatives on Twitter who have no need to ditch the platform, because they actually are decent humans who don't promote racism, unhinged conspiracy theories, violence and sedition. All of those things are now confirmed as losing strategies for the party; businesses doubling down on a losing strategy will fail. This idea, that a certain person's particular brand of bad faith trolling represents all of republicanism, is senseless and divisive and it needs to stop. Retreating into a bubble with this attitude is going to be even more destructive for the republican party and make it even more vulnerable to getting hoodwinked by these bullshit salesmen. (Disclaimer: I don't personally belong to any political parties)
I never liked them and it's the main reason for I don't buy anything Apple. Android has sideloading, let's hope Google won't take it away from us.
If walled gardens go away there will be at least one good consequence in what happened on January 6. Everything else looks bad for both sides. A blog post was posted to HN about one month ago, somebody from Sri Lanka writing about what happened there after the losing party contested the result of an election. The point was that Americans were blind to the consequences of destroying the legitimacy of the electoral process. It is easy to see now that he was right and there is a lot of space open for further escalations. I don't live in the USA but what happens in the USA comes to all the Western World, more sooner than later.
Edit. The post is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25171844 and I see now that it was flagged after I read it. Maybe we can see that it was prescient enough not to be flagged again now.
Even more polarization in society; both groups talking only to themselves, zero dialogue between the groups and no chance to hear an opposing opinion (you had that one with twitter). i hope this won't be the prelude to a more serious rift occuring in the real world.
Because only Trump supporters really visit that site, no one called it out despite the Jan 6th events being organised by millions right in the open.
If reddit didn’t ban TD, this wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have become this radicalised.
Please explain why you think reddit has no fault in this, when their moderation decisions has directly led to the largest radical right-wing community on the internet.
Reddit could have contained TD. It chose to say “not my problem”?, and let them make an even more radical website.
The good news is no one will get hurt! :)
No one should give in to the violent, hateful, irrational and seditious mob of Trump supporting Fascist thugs that are increasingly making up more and more of the right wing. They need to be crushed politically and shoved back into their basements. Capitulating to these Fascist thugs even in the slightest has shown that it will only lead to them being emboldened and pushing further and further into Authoritarianism. They don't care about Democracy or Rule of Law, only forcing their views on the rest of society violently!
Maybe the FBI should have as much knowledge about where the treasonous Trump supporters are meeting up as you do.
As it has happened here.
I have a word with right wing friends. For years and years you supported removal Palestinian activists from Twitter or any other platform. I think you understand what it feels.
It just shows you are fucking imbecile and/or ignorant. Keep censoring people, I am eager to see how that is going to work for you.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/google-su...
This is about going after anyone they think they should ban in order to keep the Democrats happy.
This is not about Trump for the technology companies. It's about bending the knee enough towards the Democrats to ensure that they retain as much of their freedom as possible. They are sacrificing others' freedoms in order to hopefully secure they own - although I think this is a Faustian bargain.
Not just information channels. This is probably going to go well beyond just news: next, businesses. The orthodoxy does not know boundaries.
Red-caps, on the other hand...
Perhaps there is a situation where a society says "no further" and is correct to actively shun a political stance. In fact, that's been true in the US for decades... It's real hard to be a KKK chapter without pulling a lot of FBI scrutiny.
Just remember that we live in a world where a subset of people genuinely believed Obama is a Stalinist. Once you define whatever is beyond the pale, people will just shove everything they don’t like into that bucket.
But these times do come. Congress was attacked. Threats need to be identified, and quickly.
Should society have said “no further?”
Strong ideologies generate enthusiasm, build momentum, evolve the existing social mores to be compatible with the tenets of the ideology, which ultimately starve the losing ideologies of adherents.
If it's a marketplace of ideas, the current situation is equivalent to monopolies stamping on startups to prevent them from ever becoming competitors. An actual marketplace of ideas would work without censorship in the first place, like it used to. Note that most minorities right now who obtained civil rights would never have been able to claim them had they be silenced from the get go.
The fundamental problem is that truth and lies don't operate on the same playing field. If we can make an assumption that the game is being played fairly within the marketplace of ideas (people are being reasonable and accepting rational arguments), then the marketplace works as intended. If certain actors are subverting that system by design, then you cannot have an unmoderated idea-sphere, unfortunately. Studying some Nazi and Communist propaganda techniques should certainly convince you of that (and how effective they are when applied against a gullible populace).
There is no good solution to this, unfortunately. Once a radical movement takes over the idea-sphere moderation and certain censorship is sadly inevitable & needed. Something akin to Denazification in post WWII Germany (which specifically and forcefully suppressed any Nazi ideology from the mainstream)
Is credible threats of violence, especially towards elected officials, a "political ideology" that deserves protection and promotion?
You make it out as if this is an attact on Republicans or conservatists. It's not. It's an attack on extremists who are posting credible threads of extreme harm and violence on others. Is banning ISIS from platforms enough of a "slippery slope" that would prevent the ban?
There is everything wrong with enabling a platform which actively supports violence.
You could say exactly the same for Twitter (remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Of no you don't, because it was censored there), or even Google which clearly de-prioritizes search results based on their ideologies.
I'm sure there's legitimate, law-abiding users of all of these things that get caught in the crossfire... but if the platforms will not impose a minimal amount of moderation one shouldn't be surprised that others will want to deny them services and business relationships.
Even if not, why is Apple or any other organization obligated to host them?
People organize violence on twitter almost every single day.
They’re a pre-series A startup with a very small staff. If people don’t report things, it’s not feasible to expect that they’ll all be actioned. Instead of reporting the post, activists with an agenda thought it better to cherry pick them and attack platforms. A more honest test would have been to report the content and see if they acted on it. But let’s not kid ourselves, this campaign was disingenuous from the beginning. The real goal is to shut down a perceived enemy in the culture war.
If it were organized on Telegram would you ban Telegram? If it was organized by phone would you ban phones? This is just silly.
These platforms are at this moment currently being used to mass hype up an increasingly armed and paranoid segment of the population hyped up on years of cult-like propoganda, conspiracy, and dehumanizing of their imagined enemies. It was a stroke of luck they did not take out Congress the other day, I'm sure some will try again.
If you want a clue where this ends up unabated and exploited, I encourage you to look into the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
You lost your wager. Majority of Parler users are not. If you dig enough, you can find shit - just as easy as on Twitter or Facebook, which hosts hundreds of violent groups and thousands of stupid comments which can be interpreted as advocating violence, though in 99.9% of cases it's just people being stupid on the internet - but majority of the users aren't that. It's just regular people who happen to be to the right of Jack Dorsey politically.
You even quoted “either” and cropped off “or”.
Even a completely galaxy brain position on speech that promotes private platforms which must allow completely unmoderated content actively promoting and organizing violence... hanging out with the people doing that is tacit endorsement.
> Participating without challenging that is giving it a veneer of legitimacy
That's bullshit, and moreover, this is asinine and dangerous bullshit. Any idiot can write anything on a public site, and there's no moderation team in the world that can police everything with 100% accuracy. Facebook and Twitter, despite millions spent on moderation, are full of hateful content and host hundreds of violent groups. Twitter used to host Hamas and Hezbollah until 2019. Does it mean every single Twitter user until 2019 were sheltering terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah? This is just idiotic. Of course no user can know who else writes what on a large public service, and no user owes to anyone to police the content of large public service. It makes as much sense as demanding me to police the speech of everyone in my city or move out. Only my city has a million people and twitter has hundreds of millions - so it's more like either you police the speech of everyone in your country or you must emigrate. Or you are responsible for everything anybody ever said within your country. As I said, utterly asinine, idiotic and dangerous. I am not talking about specialized forums that are explicitly declared as belonging to particular movement - like Stormfront - I am talking about generic platform that is open to anybody and hosts millions.
> and lending plausible deniability to a platform clearly designed for them.
This is example of circular logic. You declare that Parler is platform for specific kind of bad people, and when you're pointed out that vast majority of the users aren't those people you claim the platform is "clearly designed" for a tiny minority and all the vast majority is just "gives plausible deniability" to them. It's like claiming the whole USA is built to enable the Zodiac Killer, and everything all the people do is just giving him veneer of legitimacy and that's the point of whole USA existing. That's how you are sounding.
> they’re tolerated and implicitly welcome
It is telling that you said "implicitly". That means you have no proof they are, but pretend to read minds of Parler users and administrators. Too bad it is explicitly knows internet telepathy does not work. On Parler, all the speech that does not violate the law is tolerated (even though it is not endorsed, or agreed with, of course). As it should be on every free platform. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's called "free speech", and once it was a value of America. Not anymore, of course.
Where is the data please, instead of wild guesses?
What even is a "lie?" Someone disgruntled that is an USA citizen? That is not an USA Citizen?
It's like everyone forgot Politicans jobs are to play the wind, say the right words, garner support and always stay in the limelight of what society thinks they "represent."
I've been reading old newspaper articles/time magazines from the 1940s-70's and it's amazing how different the world itself, from media really represents and how these companies all join together on a message such as this.
No it would not, since they are not doing it by means of the law. They do not need to force them by law, because key figures in Twitter and prominent leftist politicians belong to the same party and work for the same common goal - elimination of any possibility of dissenting from the partisan platform in any public space, and strict uni-party control of all speech on the internet (at least within the United States).
> Why haven't these "censored" politicians won any lawsuits to get un-censored, then
Because Twitter is a private company not covered by First Amendment, duh...
I like the implication that ~half the country is just blanket "unethical" and doesn't deserve to speak.
You're welcome.
I'm pretty okay with the Abe Lincoln angle, but the yoga article is ridiculously fringe thinking that nobody could possibly take seriously.
One day I'd say the idea that AWS is booting people for disagreement with their political stances is a "ridiculously fringe thinking". Or that monuments to Lincoln and Washington (and also Cervantes and Frederick Douglass, why not) will be destroyed as racist is a "ridiculously fringe thinking" and would laugh at anyone suggesting this. Today it is our ridiculous reality.
Pretty much everyone was racist 120 years ago. Less, even, but, still 120 years ago is a safe buffer. I don't think building monuments to people who ordered the massacre of natives in the name of manifest destiny is a great idea, just as I don't think having monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest is a great idea, either.
America's fetishization of its dead rulers is really second only to ancient Rome, a culture where they literally proclaimed their dead rulers to be gods. Lincoln, Washington, and Cervantes were racist, because the times they lived in were racist. We can do better, and uncritical reverence doesn't help us do that.
It looks like you just are OK to suppress any point of view that you don't like. And not OK with freedom of speech. Fortunately for you - and unfortunately for everybody for whom it's still valuable - US is no longer a country where freedom of speech exists. I am not OK with this, and I think we are entering a period in American history which will be looked by descendants with deep shame and disgust, and this is due to people like you. Welcome to your 1984, and hope you never utter an unpopular thought.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/15/how-israel-marginalizes...
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/israel-discriminatory-la...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/one-more-racis...
> Israeli law explicitly says that only Jews have the right to national self determination
That's a lie, the law doesn't say that. The law says Jews have the right to national self-determination in their national state - Israel. It doesn't say it is the only case possible of national self-determination, neither could it - how would Israel possibly make law for all other nations in existence?! Just as Japanese have it in Japan, Koreans - in Korea, Swiss - in Switzerland, and Mongolians - in Mongolia, Jews have their national state in Israel. That doesn't mean a Jew in Mongolia or Korean in Switzerland do not have human rights - but it does mean Korea would have Korean and not Mongolian as state language, and that people of Japanese descent may have easier time to get Japanese citizenship than people of French descent. Presenting this completely common occurrence as something exceptional and a proof of "racism" - all the while many other countries around it literally run violent ethnic and religious cleansing, murder their own citizens for "blasphemy" or being gay or wearing wrong dress - with absolutely no complaint from the likes of you, and singling out Israel for exclusion for completely routine and accepted practices among many nations... I can't really decide if it's Antisemitism or plain idiocy, neither do I care. It just another proof that censorious hate for free speech, and willful ignorance often walk hand in hand. You are literally ok to destroy everybody who you think - scratch that, who your feed on twitter, prepared for you by your betters, told you - are "bad", without even trying to understand. And then you pretend you're some kind of enlightened being...
I don't think alex jones should be cut off from the internet or his home ISP, but I don't think twitter, facebook, youtube, google or anyone else has an obligation to broadcast him if they choose not to for example.
And progressives have redefined these words to encompass basically every single political belief of ~half the country. Say something semantically meaningful.
Why do you think we have a Military? Why do you think we have a criminal system? Why do you think we have Justice and Courts?
The whole creation of the United States was unethical because every citizen was of the British Crown and were traitors.
Or, are you not aware of your history and that this de platforming is only making the other side message much more stronger.
It really is eye-widening how many people fail to see the consequence of removing a service, and how it hinders intelligence, counter intelligence and general observation.
This is the point that supporters of de-platforming fail to recognise. They preach "Build your own platform" yet they still persist to de-platform until the target cannot be de-platformed off the internet.
After all their efforts, Gab is still alive since they are self-hosted and once Parler is taken off of AWS, they will open more Gab accounts.
I can only see that it will either lead to Gab receiving a wave of new users from Parler or these ex-Parler users will start creating encrypted group chats on Telegram or Signal which also cannot be taken down.
"Unethical" is a post-hoc rationalization; what we're seeing now goes much deeper than that.
If Apple were forced to allow alternative app stores this wouldn't be an issue. Note that they don't have to advertise or host these stores, merely not actively design their products and TOS to prohibit them.
But then of course they'd risk losing out on some of that sweet, sweet 30% cut.
I see this concern pointing not at stronger protections for speech, but stronger anti-trust enforcement.
Consider what this looks - and feels - like from their perspective.
I’m actively watching people I grew up with who have never been involved in politics at all become increasingly aware of this push. Do you think they’re going to be open to liberalism when this is their first interaction with it as an ideology?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by...
It seems ludicrous to suggest that millions of conservatives across the US are fascists. It isn't productive nor does it offer any solutions for people to communicate, resolve their differences, and coexist.
Not all conservatives are Trump supporters.
What would you call that?
That's an opinion and a generalization of tens of millions of people.
Example: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/2020-election-results-almost...
So if we were going by polls, it’s clearly complete bullshit.
But polls aren’t evidence. There is no evidence. If there were, it would have been presented, and Trump would be on his way to his second term.
Here is a poll:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/capitol-siege-majority-americans-t...
Does this make it true that Trump should resign?
Opinion polls are not evidence of truth.
You don’t choose who is extremist, you ban the abusive content. Extremists the mostly post that are functionally banned - that’s what Twitter does. You don’t get to report “this person is abusive” just tweets that have to be abusive on their own.
Why not say "hey, get out of our party! you're not welcome here. we are against the extremist views you hold, and you're making it harder for us as a party to gather and share our ideas"?
This isn't a new thing though? People have always sought out information channels that reinforce their own views. Twitter/FB/Youtube were already infamous for presenting entirely different streams of content to left and right wing audiences. When they were less popular it was Fox vs MSNBC/CNN etc. and before that the newspaper you read.
The issue we're seeing now is that people are being attacked by a torrent of information. You're much more likely to be radicalised if every 5 minutes you get a tweet notification about the latest "deep state paedophilia ring"; compared to receiving a monthly newsletter that can be analysed and picked apart in the interim period.
"Build your own services if you like free speech so much" was never a honest proposition. It was a "shut up" proposition - because when, to the surprise of the censors, it was built and was successful, they took all possible measures to destroy it. They were never for "we will have our own and you can have our own" - it always was "we will control everything and you will shut up and do what you told".
Whatever are your political leanings and whatever you think of Trump or Parler - if this thing - total and absolute control of a handful of corporations over what can be spoken on the internet, and their willingness to ruthlessly exercise this control to suppress any non-censorious companies - if this thing is not scaring you, you're delusional. You probably think you will never commit wrongthink so it doesn't apply to you. Read some history, it never worked this way, it won't work this way this time either. Censorship, allowed to run free, always gets worse.
Amazon is not a state utility.
Amazon is not the internet.
Amazon has the right to fire a customer.
If Parler built their product without considering vendor dependencies that is on them.
Frankly your argument is hyperbolic and is better suited for reddit than a forum that actually understands what it takes to build a service like Parler.
While unrelated to this issue, Parler's ux and service as a whole was awful. They were collecting and storing tons of personal information and were funded by the Mercer's.
Apple, Google, and Amazon are doing Parler users a favor.
> If Parler built their product without considering vendor dependencies that is on them.
"You fucked up. You trusted us". (C)
Parler was operating under naive assumptions that Amazon does not ban services for partisan political reasons. It was reasonable assumption in America pre-2021, but now it's clearly a different America. Where to participate in the internet, you have to pass ideological purity test. I can predict what happens next: Parler would be blocked by the majority of CDNs, payment processors and hosting/DNS providers. And you'll be saying "well, they are idiots for relying on the existing internet without considering the dependencies. They should have just built their own internet, their own banking system and their own payment system."
> While unrelated to this issue, Parler's ux and service as a whole was awful.
If it's unrelated, why mention it? To create an impression services with bad UX (which is not true btw, especially compared to Facebook whose UX is atrocious) deserve to be silenced?
> Apple, Google, and Amazon are doing Parler users a favor.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
You are defending a group of people that has shown they are intolerant, violent, and unrepentant.
Nobody is saying they can't sit around and drink beers at home at talk about burning down the capitol, they are just saying you can't do it on their infrastructure.
This is no different than when everyone was banning ISIS a few years ago. These groups are self radicalized and have lost the right to protected speech.
> This is no different than when everyone was banning ISIS a few years ago.
There's a huge difference between American citizens protesting and ISIS. There's also a huge difference between the service that allows people some of whom support the same politician that some of the protestors to speak and ISIS. Declaring that any service that allows people who support the same politician as anybody who commits a crime to be the same as ISIS would make everybody in the US ISIS - e.g. James T. Hodgkinson supported Sanders, so any service that allows any Sanders supporter to speak now ISIS? Bullshit.
A terrorist is anyone who perpetuates violence in order to achieve a political goal, and it is pretty clear that was the case when they attempted to stop the certification process.
As far as victims of terrorism are concerned, I think this officers family would be "gravely insulted" by how far you have managed to shove your head up your own ass.
https://teddit.net/r/PublicFreakout/comments/kucaz0/the_mome...
You are either ignorant of what is happening or attempting to discount the reality of it. Either way you are part of the problem and I look forward to a day when sycophants like you are held accountable for your role in bringing us to the brink of fascism.
Is avoiding liability for organizing violence a ‘partisan political reason’?
I don't think you will find any sympathy for neo-fascists here.
Parler is taking Apple to court over this, which will be hilarious to watch.
Liability comes in many forms.
When apple blocks an app for nebulous reasons (such as the hey.com debacle), that's annoying. When google blocks an app because the authors are running a bitcoin miner or other scam, then everybody rejoices. When the microsoft phone blocks an app because it lets you screenshare to machines running linux or apple's OS, people reach for the phone to call their lawyer or representative to start proceedings on anti-trust. When the linux phone blocks an app because they are legally obligated to do this, as a judge has informed them they are compelled to do so because the app is a marketplace for murder contracts, I think most people rejoice as well.
There is no absolute rule to make sense of that. It's what society, preferably, but not neccessarily codified in law, is going to stand for. It's not an easy rule. "Prevent companies from banning anything for any reason" means you end up with marketplaces for murder and viruses/miners/user-hostile stuff. And no cheating by allowing google to paste big warnings on an app download. Who decides what text is in that warning, and who decides which user-hostile stuff warrants this banner? Apple? We're right back to where we started.
If outlawing censorship is not feasible (or it is, but you're going to have to tell me how, because the obvious route leads to far greater problems), then the only other option I can think of is to break up these companies. Ensure there are many.
This also does not work. One of the better examples of this, is the internet itself: You'd think _anyone_ can host _whatever_ they want, and unless it is clearly deeply criminal, you can find somebody to host it for you. In countries with creative laws if you must.
Except, that's just not how it works. There are about 8 major CDNs on the planet. If they all decide they want nothing to do with you, it is very hard to host stuff. 8kun and co run into this problem from time to time. At least one of these CDNs is acutely aware of the grave responsibility and blogs about their struggles with it. Do you allow a hate-spewing platform inciting crimes, or do you become judge jury and executioner on speech?
Perhaps 8 is enough, but 2 is not enough. So, if the plan is to split up these companies, how many phone platforms are legally required? How much can they work together? Should the US codify into law that it is illegal to buy an iPhone if apple's marketshare exceeds 50% (as iOS is the most popular platform in the US, just naming as an example). Should a country find social networks and start handing out fines if too many within it use the same marketplace?
I get the concern, but without more detail, you're engaging in something I find rather problematic: Pointing at an incredibly complicated problem, making a pithy statement about how bad that is, but then not naming a solution to this problem, and insinuating the solution is easy (maybe I'm imagining it, but the drama of your conclusion, whilst perhaps warranted, sure does sound like a "somebody should DO something" kinda claim. It disregards the complex nature of trying to address the issue).
So, let me turn it around: Okay. Yes, this is a bit scary, I agree.
What do we do about it?
This is not a bad thing. The people who are really dedicated will still have a place to gather and communicate, but pedestrians and kids will have a lower chance of getting tricked into giving their time, money, and maybe even their lives to amoral scammers.
Underneath all of this seems to be this assumption that Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey etc. are benevolent, and won't betray you. Putting aside whether that's right, it's incredibly short-sighted. Jack Dorsey owns 2% of Twitter's stock. Twitter is owned by index funds - they have control, not Jack. You don't want private equity dictating what kind of propaganda you're allowed to see.
I don’t trust anyone to “not betray me.” I trust that if Twitter makes unpopular moderation decisions, they will lose in the marketplace. But if they make popular decisions, they will succeed in the marketplace, even if those decisions piss some people off. This is the basis for all platform moderation, including here on HN, or even something as simple as a grocery store asking a shouting customer to leave.
Look, I'm not trying to argue this "wasn't a special case". I'm saying, it doesn't matter. If you want a president silenced, have congress vote on it, not Vanguard and Goldman Sachs.
You're giving private equity the power to unilaterally decide what they deem "threatening", and I expect them to abuse that power. Like, obviously they'll abuse it, it's private equity. Why on earth wouldn't they?