Hacker News Reader

Comment by idrios | Hacker News Reader

Tbf, I don't think Parler ever saw itself as extremist. Obviously it was used by extremists, but as I've seen mentioned in other threads lately: When you create an alternative platform from the mainstream, the people who join it are either idealists, or are the people who were banned from the mainstream platforms. And if you don't have the resources to moderate those extremists (or foolishly choose not to), the extremists take over.

View on HN

I do not know if it was the original intention of the founders, but you can't ignore that the people who are/were funding it are influential far-right figures.

Are they though? Maybe I just lack some knowledge but it seems there's a trend where these definitions are shifting so that right become far right, and sometimes even people who would have been left are suddenly being called right.

That said I don't know much about these particular people.

Strange I have the feeling it's quite the opposite. The "progressive" democrats would just be center-right in my country (Germany).

They seem to be comfortably in the progressive group in terms on their politics, if not always their rhetorics which sometimes seems calculated to appeal to center or right wing voters. But you can pretty much completely disregard what anyone in politics says and just go by what they do.

When you say "far-right" I think you mean "moderate conservative."

The Mercers??! Rebecca Mercer?

Ideologically far right doesn't mean 'racists take over capitol hill'.

AOC could be considered fairly 'far left' she's not exactly a radical.

To the OP's point, I think Parler was trying to legit be an alternative where they didn't have Jack Dorsey in charge, but I'm doubtful if they were actually looking for the holocaust denying crowd.

I suggest probably their comfort zone would have been 'Fox News'.

Ok, so to you, it seems obvious and accepted that Rebecca Mercer is far-right.

However, traditionally, the terms "far-right" and "far-left" have been reserved for people who believe violent government coup is a legitimate means to an end.

And lately, people have taken to calling more moderate conservatives "far-right" and "nazis" as a way to delegitimize their opinions, and make them sound beyond-the-pale.

If by "moderate conservative" you mean the type of people who also fund a site like Breitbart. I think we're pretty safe in calling them "far-right".

I'm sorry if this comes across sounding harsh, as I don't know you at all, but your comment sounds like the opinion of someone in a lefty filter bubble.

Where I'm from, "far-left" and "far-right" means "people who think violence is a legitimate means to enact their ideology."

So that includes Nazis, the KKK, and communist revolutionaries. It does not include Rebecca Mercer or Breitbart.

Check out this data: [1]. Breitbart is only a smidge more conservative than Fox News, and Fox News is the #1 watched cable news channel in the country. That is called "mainstream." Presumably, the "far-right" would be "far" beyond the mainstream.

[1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2...

The CEO literally was personally banning anyone who posted anything left-wing, and yet claims that he's for "free speech". It's laughable.

If he wasn't cynically cashing in, then he's not a very deep thinker either.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...

They literally welcomed pro-saudi comment farms to their service as well:

“The nationalist movement of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made it known that big tech is censoring them at rates we have never experienced in the United States,” Parler wrote in a post on its own account on the site. “Let us welcome them as we all fight for our rights together.”

Reminder: Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, ordered the assassination of a US journalist not that long ago. So, in a sense, Parler is really the social network of choice for dictators and extremists.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-saudi-politics/un...

Parler is also financially backed by the Mercer family, who are conservative mega-donors and right wing political activists.

https://www.reuters.com/article/parler-funding-mercer/social...

Saudi watanjies joining the fray? That's a complete tragicomedy now.

Twitter is also the service of choice of US Presidents who order drone strikes against innocents abroad.

"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong." - Scott Alexander [0]

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

Took me a while to get around to reading & finishing this, but this is a phenomenal article that could have exactly predicted what happened with Parler, and describes the current polarization in the US far better than I could. Thank you for sharing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com