ACLU on Parler

I think we can confidently say that number is above zero and to even propose that it is zero throws enormous doubt on these opinions.

Was Parler the primary breeding ground for these seditious activities? Unclear. Did it play a role as did the Facebook groups? Almost certainly.

Similarly, the claim that Parler was a "platform for free speech" has also gone unchallenged. Since the data breach it's come to light that new users were shadowbanned by default until approved by moderators; whether that approval hinged on posting right-wing groupthink or not, that should give one pause before parroting the claim.

https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506

Arrested in connection feels like a weird goalpost. There have been a few dozen arrests, but obviously there were many more people involved. Why do I care only about the specific subset of people who have been arrested so far?

> Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler"

Has that really been the claim? My understanding is that Parler had no intention of moderating the insurrection, as Facebook, Twitter, etc have started doing.

In fact, that is exactly what Apple did, as an example: Apple gave them a chance to moderate, Parler did not comply, so Apple removed them.

> Virtually every conversation that has taken place on HN has asserted that the "insurrection was planned on Parler",

No, it hasn't.

> and that claim went largely unchallenged.

On the contrary virtually every conversation on the issue on HN that has even mentioned Parler has prominently included claims that Parler was less significant than other social media platforms in the planning.

Read the responses to that. Rather immediately debunked. Greenwald is a contrarian that did not do his research.

ACLU has never let their personal political views affect their principles. As an example, ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh [1] when the state seized his medical records in a drug probe.

[1] https://www.foxnews.com/story/aclu-comes-to-rush-limbaughs-d...

I'm very happy to see the ACLU take a stand on principles that are no doubt in conflict with those of people who have been increasing their donations since the election of Trump. That's the real sign of integrity IMO.

ICE spends $100m on AWS: fine

Slightly worse Twitter app: axed on short notice

What is the strategy of the woke AWS employees pushing for these removals?

Yeah, me too. AWS is a whole lot closer to "essential public infrastructure" than, say, Twitter or Facebook. (Or Zendesk or Twilio or any of the myriad service providers that Parler happened to use.)

Where does it end?

Can the local utility provider that serves Parler's physical office decided to "deplatform" them and revoke their access to electricity?

Can the small handful of Tier 1 transit providers (which together make up "the Internet" as we know it) decide to deplatform a network by refusing to peer with it? [What if they extend that depeering to include any other networks (Tier 2 etc.) which refuse to stop peering with the target network?]

Sure, that's just a hypothetical right now, but then again last week "AWS decides to terminate you" was one of those hypothetical but very unlikely risks. How far is this witch hunt going to go?

[Sadly, given recent discourse here, I feel compelled to state that I strongly disagree with the content posted on Parler, which was indeed some truly awful stuff.]

The post isn't about Twitter.

The former Malaysian prime minister was in fact permanently suspended by Twitter for that post, and that tweet deleted and made unavailable. (https://twitter.com/chedetofficial/status/132176558753033830...)

So, no hypocrisy at all.

There are literally antitrust suits against Facebook and Google currently, so at least some part of the Justice department believes these tech companies are monopolies, as does a sizeable, bipartisan part of Congress.

Networked services intrinsically reward monopolization/centralization, due to Metcalfe's Law [0]: users are more concerned with going where other users are, than the merits of the service itself. (A curious exception: Uber and Lyft, presumably because drivers can easily use both simultaneously.)

Facebook, for example, does not represent a monopoly, defined as a social media company generally; but they arguably have ~99% market share within their social niche (with some FOSS clones as a rounding error, and Twitter/Instagram/etc occupying different niches). Contrast with Netflix, which is more disruptable without social network effects, as we've seen with the proliferation of streaming services in the last 5 years.

I don't know what the threshold should be to regulate social media as utilities (mandating transparency, interoperability, and due process), but as such platforms become our de-facto political and conversational commons, I don't think we should allow those spaces to be entirely controlled by private capital, let alone manipulated by Blind Idiot God algorithms, which happily hijack our limbic systems for a quick CPM buck.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law