I realize you're not being literal about all the comments centered around violence on Parler. Or maybe you are?
Are you saying most of the comments there are violent or a good number of them?
There are two questions here - impact and optics. You are asking the former, but it’s likely the latter that caused trouble.
A smaller platform with larger percentage of offensive messages will look worse than a larger platform with a small percentage even if the total impact of the large platform is 100 time more.
It's too late to stop the violence that's already happened. That's cheap and I don't like it but it's true sadly. There are real questions to be asked why the FBI weren't all over this from day 1. They need to be asked because it's (literally) their job to prevent this.
Im just suggesting really that we make the system work as it's meant to: FBI investigates, people plotting violence are intercepted before they commit it. Even if they are right wing nuts.
Im also pretty convinced parler isn't "responsible" in the sense that if it didn't exist there wouldn't have been violence (that doesn't excuse them for profiting off it). It would have been coordinate on r/TheDonald or via Facebook or twitter or wherever. Parler wasn't even a thing for most of the last 4 years and this has been brewing at least that long in my opinion. That's actually why I would like the idea of prevention. Banning parler gives us all an excuse to go back to sleep till next time and then (again) say "how did this happen?".
Thanks for listing to my rant!
Apparently at least one prominent group made public weeks ago that violence was planned at the Capitol. Specific violence to place members of congress under "citizens arrest". I expect to see congressional hearings about this. It's really hard to fathom they were unprepared if the planning was done right out in the open.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/capitol-siege-was-...
Everyone thought "the next time I'll do something, someone else will catch this in some other office".
I get why, its political and touches on censorship and people rightly hesitate to use power (not the law enforcement side, that's their job). Plus you're making money from ads next to pages of QAnon or Stopthesteal or whatever other BS is there.
But that's just my opinion. As you say, we should have a real investigation with witnesses and experts and actual factz. Congresd is the right place for that to happen imho
I hope something actually comes of this. It would be shameful for it to be buried because its hard and no one wants to be less able to mobalise theirside...