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Comment by demygale | Hacker News Reader

Parler has a moderation policy and they don’t apply it. Content that promotes illegal activity is not protected free speech and is also prohibited by Parler’s policies. They selectively applied that moderation after they became popular with MAGA.

Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?

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> Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?

Although I agree that 4chan is problematic sometimes, many people that just put blame on it don't actually use it.

I remember when Netflix's Cuties was released, 4chan prohibited posting any image/video from the show

The German government maintains a blacklist of websites not suitable for minors. We can use this blacklist when setting up web access for children to block at least the worst websites (mainly porn). The last time I checked, 4Chan was not on that list.

if the goal of that list is to block porn, 4chan should totally be blocked, since there are boards for porn there.

> Also, 4chan exists why can’t Parler find a host?

They are trying to. The problem was that they were cut off by all of their services providers with next to no warning.

4chan lacks any kind of organization whatsoever. It's hard to say that 4chan is any particular thing because it's so amorphous and liable to switch to something else new. That makes it hard for most people to see them as potentially dangerous.

Their posting style also helps. They talk about absurd things, in absurd ways. They look insane, they don't even try to make things reasonable. That makes many people underestimate them, because they seem far too loony to do anything significant. It also makes deplatforming them unappealing. Where are these people going to go if 4chan stops existing? No one wants to see this on their Facebook feed.

In short, 4chan acts like they're too incompetent to do anything.

Parler is full of people who are coherent enough to actually stage some kind of a violent, semi-coordinated attack.

4chan is regularly censored and banned (not sure about hosting specifically, I only browse maybe once a month), and threads aren't available forever. It's a different kettle of fish to running a social network - you'd struggle to organise much of anything like this on 4chan.

Yet 4chan has succeeded in may organized tasks. They played capture the flag with Shia LaBeouf [1], fixed votes for NYTs person of the year [2], and made the OK hand signal into a White Power symbol [3]. Sure these aren't super involved, but it's a bit dismissive to say they aren't capable of organized efforts.

[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-... [3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48293817

Organise anything like this.

The difference between the Capitol thing and the stuff 4chan gets up to is that the protests like this require a critical mass of not only people but belief - the former is possible on 4chan, but the latter needs some kind of consistent identity to rally around.

I guess you're right in that I am trivializing the organization of a this level of violent protest. Thanks for highlighting that :)

(smiley face for sincerity, no sarcasm or wit intended)

1. 4chan has active and responsive moderation for all content. Illegal content is removed quickly.

2. 4chan is extremely simple - there is a max of content, content is anonymous, and old content decays and is removed. There are no notifications, replies, searches, etc.

Isnt 4chan self hosted? i remember reading blog posts about m00t's server migrations which was actually him strapping a server in the back seat of his car and driving cross country. but that was a while ago, maybe before cloud hosting became the norm.

Was 4chan actually found to be culpable in organizing an illegal activity, or was that 8chan?

the latter, if you're talking about the new zealand shootings.

Afaik their entire stack is built using AWS services.

The difference is that Parler was a disruptive platform, 4chan isn't.

There is a bunch of awful content hosted on AWS, but it's generally only when you reach some scale and become a threat to those in silicon valley that you can expect to be shut off.

Why is Parler disruptive?

It was in the sense that it was a new platform that had high profile people like Ted Cruz on it with millions of followers more than he had on Twitter.

No one cares about 4chan because it has no real political influence. Parler was perhaps the first alternative platform in a long time to have actual political influence.

Because AWS decided it was. It's really that basic. I think gay people should be able to get wedding cakes from literally any baker as a protected class, but the law disagrees with me. The end, unless new laws are passed.

Parler is not a protected class, their users posts are not protected speech. The only leg they will have to stand on is the terms of their AWS contract, which AWS will likely have had lawyers craft with steel vault level protections to shield the company from liability in cases like this. It would be shocking if Parler wins this injunction (and based on time sensitivity, we'll probably find out later today) but even if they do long term they're going to have to build/buy new server structure.

"Content that promotes illegal activity is not protected free speech"

If this were true then Rap music would be illegal.

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