I am a "Parler User." I have an account and until it was taken down I used to check it every few days. Don't make assumptions about a person's politics from the mere existence of software on their device.
There's nothing wrong with Parler users or anyone else per-se.
There is, however, a problem with violent insurrectionists.
It's unfortunate that a small group of people planned and executed a violent attack on the seat of US government, although unfortunate is nowhere near a strong enough term for their acts.
I don't know you, but if you don't participate in violent acts to support your political agenda and respect the rule of law, I have no problem with you.
Assuming that's true, even if (and I don't know one way or another about that) I vehemently disagree with your policy perspectives, I will defend your right to hold and advocate for those perspectives. Because that's what a free society is all about.
On the other hand, those that believe it's okay to use violence, lies and intimidation to achieve their political goals have no place in a free society and should be shunned, ridiculed, and if they perpetrate acts of violence, punished.
I'd posit that anyone who believes in our constitutional system of government and the rule of law would agree with all of the above.
In the 1770s George Washington and ilk were insurrectionists. Now we look at them as revolutionaries. Do people who fight for change only become revolutionary when it’s an argument you agree with? Are you an insurrectionist if you fight the government to the death (literally) for what you believe in?
Obvious disclaimer: I don’t hold a candle to this fight in either direction but can empathize with both sides
They don't. The terms are synonymous.
>Obvious disclaimer: I don’t hold a candle to this fight in either direction but can empathize with both sides
Why is that obvious?
And as to the idea that you can "empathize with both sides," Who do you think those "sides" are?
They are most certainly not those of the two major political parties in the US.
They are not even those who consider themselves "conservative" or "liberal."
In reality, one side supports our constitutional form of government and the rule of law. The other side despises the rule of law and seeks to use violence, intimidation and lies to destabilize my home in an attempt to seize power.
The former are 98%+ of my countrymen (many of us disagree about a great many things, but not about our constitutional republic and the rule of law), and the latter are a tiny minority who wishes to impose their will on everyone else.
If you see things differently, I'd love to hear your arguments.
A reasonable question in the abstract, but in this case the distinction is rather simple: 1776 was people revolting against a king to create a democracy. What we saw this month was quite the opposite - trying to undo democracy (i.e. negate the results of popular vote).
For contrast, black people were claiming police abuse decades ago and the country turned a cheek towards it. Police abuse increased until technology put the power back in our hands. It’s very hard to look at where the protestors are coming from but it is very easy to dismiss it because of status quo.
Just a warning, and my downvotes are proving my point. No one wants to talk about it, they want to sweep ideas they don’t agree with under the rug. Just like my police encounters in the late 90s.
I’m sure at one point in your life you have said “my vote doesn’t matter, the president will be picked regardless of my input”. That’s what these people are upset about, and the solution seems about as attainable as politicians cracking down on abusive cops in the 1990s
Your downvotes aren't proving a point. Trump's and his supporters' complaints about the election were given extensive public airing but none of them have been sustainable under closer scrutiny, and many claims about procedure, constitutional law and so forth have ben flat wrong. I don't understand how you can claim Trump supporters don't feel listened to when there has been a non-stop barrage of accusations from them over the last 2 months. Why don't they listen to the opinions that come out of the courts?
Would you agree at this point in time the two events are similar? A bogey man messing with the election that was only proven after the fact? I don’t care about trump losing and you should not either. You should be concerned that a lot of people think there is election fraud and as such the American government has a duty to investigate. Democracy?
For comparison I go on Fox News web site from time to time largely out of morbid fascination, but I don’t consider myself part of their audience because I don’t find any of it actually valuable or useful. And I say that as a self identified conservative, albeit a British one.
It's usually pretty good on general news and opinion, but it's pretty right wing and regularly publishes manipulated statistics and disinformation on climate change and EU issues. So it's like Fox on some specific topics.
The leading left wing paper is the Guardian (Sometimes referred to as the Gauniad due to it having pretty poor proofreading back in the day). It's way too leftie for me on opinion, it's grown a bit of a woke tendency, but is good on science and international news.
On TV, I'd say Sky News isn't _that_ far off Fox. Extremely selective on their guests and very partisan in their correspondents.
I think all of those are reasonable takes except for on Corbyn. The Guardian didn't dislike Corbyn due to a lack of Leftyness, but because for all the fact I disagree with them politically, I can at least recognise that they have some standards and integrity.
Corbyn wasn't exactly a Left Trump, but not all that far off with the antisemitism, and sucking up to the fascist theocrats in Iran and Hezbollah, naked opportunism, etc. I wish more people on the right in the US had stood up for their principles in that way over the last 4 years.
Sorry, no.
When I look at the Parler situation, I think most likely poor management/decisions were the greatest contributing factor to their current predicament.
The management probably didn't think they had a hate-speech problem until it was too late. As such, they didn't have the systems in place to deal with it, and the systems they were going to put in place were going to be tempory (as highlighted by Apple's response to their app modernisation plan).
You can filter down from there, but even if you mistakenly think that fifty percent of Parler users just liked the idea of free speech platforms enough that they used a site frequented by the neo-nazis despite all that, it's likely that only the violent insurrectionists happened to be the ones in the crowd, and then in the capitol building, posting things to Parler as they went.
Like, having a panel of 5 human moderators "vote" on every piece of flagged content? As if that could even scale. It was never their intent to moderate in the first place, but rather to pull large segments of our political system into the very position we're now seeing -- namely, open conflict.
It does seem that the userbase overall skewed far right.
This kind of by its own nature drags a platform in a specific direction based on where it started. It had a starting culture of being the alternative platform for conservative voices, and so over time that moderation technique would just push it further in that direction.