Parler Tricks: Making Software Disappear
puri.sm
puri.sm
Also, not totally related this this article, but I also don't understand why Parler didn't have a backup DR plan. All of the major cloud platforms have outages. What is stopping them from renting a few racks, or cages of racks, in a datacenter with multiple Tier1 peers? Sounds like they didn't plan very well honestly.
Only if you're willing to hit Russian servers...
I'm not scared of the Russians. The whole thing feels like a lukewarm, microwaved version of the Cold War, and frankly, it's more Hollywood than it is real. "Russian hackers!!!" could be anyone who has a $2/mo Russian proxy address; you can get yourself a /32 of Russian IPv6 space for peanuts; there's no way to know where anyone's really operating from. Unless you think the MaxMinds GeoIP database is somehow irrefutable evidence of state actions....
When your cellular connection becomes an app...
When your contact list is removed or hidden...
When your text app is locked...
When your ISP kills your account...
When your webhost provider deletes your site and/or content...
When they selectively track your location and post it to political groups they support...
When your car GPS stops navigating.
When your car won't start to support a suggested lockdown they support...
When your cable channel drops all "opposing" news media...
How much of Orwell's 1984 do you want?
https://twitter.com/twilio/status/1348719143172927491?s=20
Twilio said the Parler platform was in violation of the acceptable use policy (not just the use of Twilio services), and was told by Parler that they had already disabled Twilio.
At a base level comparing a government telling you which fictional truths to believe to a private company providing a technology service is difficult.
You mean "private company deciding what is right and wrong"?
With that said, they are only doing what they know the masses want. So in a way, they're just doing the people's bidding. If Google thought the majority wanted Parler and hate speech, they'd certainly have kept it up.
I actually did think it was cool! However, if there were any right wing folks there, naturally they kept quiet.
Also, there are a huge number of conservatives and moderates using Facebook. The main point I’m trying to make is that it is misguided to believe that these companies do not have their very own conscience / worldview / quite strongly held political values.
The 1984 comparisons are apt. We already see them unpersoning people and employing memory holes.
They censored the president under phony pretenses. They've censored Senator Hawley's book. They censored other government officials from even uttering the name "Eric Ciaramella", even though he was certainly not a whistleblower and even if so, not legally entitled to such a level of privacy.
But to be more accurate, they're censoring non-liberals. This is evidenced by the fact that actual dictatorial regimes with many many violent deaths on their hands are allowed access to those avenues of communication without a fraction of the editorial control than was the President of the USA.
Other politicians, who have the "D" by their name (the government equivalent of a blue checkmark apparently) are allowed to spread hoaxes and lies for years and call for harassment and violence towards their political enemies, and big tech allows it to stand. Because they agree with it.
One only need to see the Googlers crying in the hallways after Hillary's defeat in 2016 to know why. They got their feelings hurt and vowed to never let it happen again, by any means necessary. And they are people with significant means to control what you may or may not say in the digital public square, if they don't simply decide to unperson you entirely.
I'm not sure if you've actually ready the story or you just like the quote, but it's actually not about government censorship, it's about TV replacing books. Even a short Google search will help you out there.
Um, that was my point
slowhand09 spoke of this being Orwellian, but as you point and jf22 point out, these actions are done by private actors, not government
So read that Bradbury quote again, in the context of private companies burning books or deplatforming private citizen speech
"It didn't come from the Government down... Technology, mass exploitation and minority [referring to interests not races] pressure carried the trick"
The most likely reason for that is that the companies owners were fake people who wanted to profile a particular segment of the society, or they were poorly advised by the IT guys.
Would an alarm clock on browser be more easy to use, ergonomic and more private in a web page ?
I was reflecting on the issue with music steaming giants, so I had the idea to have the musicians form a cooperative and create their own service where all the money goes to the creators. The first issue I see is Apple and Google will not allow your app in the Store without paying them a big tax and using web page for music steaming would for sure use a lot more battery and it will not have access to the nice native APIs so good luck competing with the giants.
Many of the things you can do in a native app are not possible with web APIs. That isn’t going to change because the companies writing web specs have a strategic interest in reserving access to coveted operating system features and APIs for their native app platforms, e.g. push notifications, fast graphics, media capture. Local storage is also being crippled under the guise of privacy - Safari now deletes local data after 7 days unless you add the website to your home screen.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
But in general, I think "buy our product if you want to try to overthrow democracy" is just in general, a bad business strategy.
FB tries to moderate the violent comments, Parler did not.
But its clear the reason they're treated different is because Parler took a black and white stance and FB is a value judgement and much harder to criticize.
Parler is just very explicit about this intention, where as Facebook wants you to believe something different but actually only behaves differently as little as needs to maintain the illusion.
In this case, I respect Parler slightly more because at least they're upfront about it. Both are scum and both should go, but at least one is honest about their intentions.
Parler also happens to cater to a common enemy with no political ties or PR appeal, where as Facebook gives you the illusion of being the good guy, all while making money off the same people Parler wants to cater to.
To me, it looks like they selectively moderate the views that give them bad press (ISIS) and enjoy the massive engagement that comes from the conflict.
I'm well aware that the MAGA thing was well beyond a vandalizing mob. But that wasn't an organized coup either.
If you let this become an "existential risk" that overrides all other concerns, you'll find yourself agreeing to some things a previous iteration of yourself would find unpalatable. Worse yet, you may come to regret it in 10 or 20 years.
What are your requirements for an "organized coup?" It seems to me that Parler hosted a bunch of discussion (one might call "organization") about how exactly to storm the capitol (and also refused to remove that discussion when Google/Apple/Amazon asked them to).
Usually a coup d’etat interrupts TV broadcasts immediately. Was there a plan at all?
Edit: the insurrection didn’t even have snipers to try and kill retreating congressbeings. I don’t think it even qualifies as a terrorist act. The gravity of the situation (an election that’s really within a statistical margin of error - if the goal was to ascertain the preferences of a plurality) makes it more than mere vandalism, but emotions are running way too high here.
The political climate may make the “terrorism” label stick. But there was nothing to it remotely resembling a coup.
On the other hand, intent is usually a factor in determining a crime. If someone attempts to murder another person, they still commit the crime of attempted murder, regardless whether the murder was actually successful. So I'm not really convinced by the argument: "it wasn't a coup because it wasn't successful/sophisticated."
Wikipedia defines a coup as
> [The] removal of an existing government from power, usually through violent means. Typically, it is an illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power by a political faction, the military, or a dictator. Many scholars consider a coup d'état successful when the usurpers seize and hold power for at least seven days.[1] A coup attempt may refer to a coup in the works or an unsuccessful coup.[1]."
The storm on the capitol fits Wikipedia's definition of an attempted coup:
1. It was an (admittedly incompetent) attempt at removing the existing government from power. (Capitol stormers wanted to force Pence to "declare" Trump as president, as well as capture or kill senators and representatives.)
2. The capitol storm was violent. Five people died, including a police officer.
3. The capitol storm was illegal and unconstitutional. Many stormers have been charged with crimes by the federal government.
4. The stormers wanted to seize power on behalf of the far-right/MAGA political faction.
It's also worth noting that Wikipedia's definition has not changed since the Jan. 6th events [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
If Pence had somehow used ritual features of the rulebook and declared the electoral college invalid, then this would have been a coup (or "self-coup") by the Republican Party. Pence would only have done this if (besides an inclination to "kill democracy") he had secured the allegiance of a number of institutions and set in place the actual conditions for a functioning Trump dictatorship.
Coups are frequently preceded by mass demonstrations clamoring for something radical to be done. But these are not "the seizure of power by a political faction"; they're (1) a symptom of the generalized social dysfunction under which a coup is even thinkable and (2) a legitimizing excuse that new rulers-to-be can invoke to minimize general opposition to their claim to power. The seizure of power takes place elsewhere. Sometimes this is even gradual -- in preparation for a coup, loyalists are put in charge of major institutions, particularly security ones: National Guard, branches of the military, intelligence agencies and so on.
What you had was a protest. An ugly one too; not all protests are "mostly nonviolent".
Agreed, but that's not my claim. My claim is: these people thought that they could seize power by attacking this particular meaning (however absurd that belief might be). This is documented by posts stating their intent on social media, as well as their actions within the capitol. They also acted on their belief and committed a criminal act. So morally speaking, they had the necessary mens rea and actus reus to be guilty of the crime of an attempted coup.
I completely agree with your statement that this attempted coup was inept and therefore ineffective. I also agree that attempt did not share the characteristics of a historically effective coup. However, I disagree with your contention that a skilled implementation of a coup is necessary for an "attempted coup." Skill in an act is sufficient, but not necessary for an "attempt" of the act.
1. Prevent the certification of the election for a few weeks, allowing Trump to be voted into power by the house delegations.
2. Murder a bunch of elected officials.
For democracy to work it would be nice if people were using facts rather than fiction to base their worldview on. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
~ Karl Popper
Parler wasn't intolerant. Parler wasn't advocating for Twitter to be taken offline.
Based on his heart tweet, Jack sure was happy when Parler was removed from the App Store. Jack is the intolerant one.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
Straw man. It's true because it's true, not because of who said it.
> "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
"This statement is false." "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
Karl Popper was wrong, and here's why.
Speech and actions are different. Society can tolerate any kind of speech, because they're words. They don't cause direct harm. And the indirect harm, i.e. violence or firing people or refusing to serve them as a result of their race or religion, can be prohibited, while still allowing the speech.
This position is rejected by many today on the basis of mental health concerns. For example, LBGT activists claim that anti-LGBT speech is inherently harmful because it leads to higher suicide rates and higher incidence of depression among their community.
Popper lived in a time when many far left or far right parties had well organized, sometimes massive militant wings ready to bash skulls of their opponents (think SA). He believed in restricting speech when the intolerant were on a clear path to triumph by violence, not by engaging in an argument.
But AS A LAST RESORT and in limited scope only. This is a part of Popper's philosophy of liberalism. Violence is used as a last resort only.
When you look at the case of Parler, if it was really used to coordinate the attack on the Capitol, and the digital giants decided to take it offline for that afternoon and in the proximity of the rally only (say, 100 km radius), or in a similar restricted way, it could definitely be argued that they used force as a last resort against the possibility of democracy losing control in a certain place and time.
But eternal worldwide permaban of an entire platform clearly exceeds the "last resort" test. It does not even try to be narrowly tailored to the threat, even though the giants have all the ability to do so. It is a blanket, global act meant to constrain speech of millions for actions of hundreds.
Now we can debate whether the giants should have the right to do so or not, but I think that regardless of this question, by swinging the hammer so heavily and so wide they proved that they aren't really fans of Popper-like liberalism at all. Whatever they did isn't covered by Popper's argument against intolerance as a whole.
https://fee.org/articles/why-the-paradox-of-tolerance-is-no-...
This is false; there is no metaphysical difference between "speech" and "action"; I'd check out the work of Fred Schauer or more recently Susan Brison on this point. There are many examples (see citation) of speech having the ability to directly harm without any other action, from psychological harms to contextual harms. Indeed, in many segregationist policies, it wasn't the segregation that made it ugly, it was the effects of the contents of the law which provided denigration through authority.
"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me" is empirically untenable[0], and like actions, speech can cause negative involuntary reactions. It also seems unfair to place the burden of "hardening" one's ability to feel this pain on the people whom the words are targeted at.
[0] http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindb...
The Google and Apple duopoly may be something that requires regulatory action but I don't see how a store should be forced to sell or distribute any product from a company whose conduct they find objectionable.
"Code is law" -Lawrence Lessig
But if you're looking for a government law, how about any of the ones that allow people who create alternate app stores via jailbreaks to be prosecuted.
Circumventing digital rights management to violate copyright protection is illegal, but that wouldn't be relevant to the Parler situation.
Companies have argued that it violates DMCA 1201 because you could plausibly use the other app store to install pirated apps or something like that.
They're trying to have it both ways, of course, so they tolerate a couple of small irrelevant stores in order to claim that there are competitors even though they still have >95% of the market. But now explain why Amazon or Microsoft doesn't make their own app store for iOS. Or just sell a mod officially supported by one of these large companies that allows any arbitrary store to be installed on one of their competitors' platforms.
> Circumventing digital rights management to violate copyright protection is illegal, but that wouldn't be relevant to the Parler situation.
It is if it's the reason they can't just distribute through a different app store.
> This is a loophole that deserves to be closed.
How is it a loophole? It's freedom of association, which is protected by the First Amendment.
Let's use the classic example -- raising prices.
Suppose you have a market with two companies. If they get together in a room and conspire to fix prices, that's illegal.
So here's what they do instead. First, one of them raises prices. They know that isn't going to end well for them unless the other one does it, because otherwise they'll lose business to the other one which now has a lower price. If the other one doesn't promptly respond by raising prices too, they'll have to lower them again. So that action is really an invitation to coordinate in raising prices.
Because they both know that. It's obvious that the one can't profitably raise prices unless the other one does. So now the other company has a choice. Option one, leave prices where they are, causing their competitor to have to lower them again before their own company actually gains any significant market share as a result of the lower prices. Option two, raise prices to match, and now they both make more money.
Option two is better for both companies. They both make more money and the only risk is that the higher margins attract a third competitor who comes in to undercut them. If that isn't likely or can be made unlikely through some exclusionary mechanism then they both get to raise prices to the monopoly price.
It's exactly the same thing as the price fixing conspiracy except that they never said it out loud. It's a loophole.
And it's also the difference here:
> isn’t collusion anymore than when someone joins Parler/Gab because it’s the “hip new thing”.
The users are too diffuse for the coordination mechanism to operate, and without it they don't have market power. At the point when each site has a proportionate share of the users, no individual user has any reason to use a given site other than because they like it better, and their individual choice doesn't affect the collective outcome enough to justify making it strategically.
Basically, it only applies to concentrated markets.
I think this restrictions is caused by their walled-garden approach. If we forced interoperability, the situation would immediately improve.
People have been developing for Windows and excluding Linux for decades. Demanding that people develop for your very niche desired use case is just going to be unreasonable a huge amount of the time.
I don't think that my bank (SBanken) would agree that its app (which is very good by the way) is serving a niche use case but they nonetheless only provide it for unrooted Android and IPhone.
Do you have evidence that Apple, Google, and Amazon actually coordinated (e.g. met and agreed on a common plan)? I think it's more likely that they made similar judgements based on the same information.
Plenty of activities are legal, but censured by cultural norms. Prohibiting your users from participating in a discussion, because you don't like their political views should at least be recognized as a shitty thing to do. That doesn't mean there's a simple legal solution. But at the very least the users, from any part of the political spectrum, should be pissed off that the overlords in Mountain View have decided that certain ideas are too dangerous for their little brains.
Framing this as purely based on political views is disingenuous at best. No one is getting banned because they don't like the tax rate, or because of their view on universal healthcare.
Exactly right. Nothing would have happened to Parler if its userbase wasn't substantially affiliated with a mob that literally attacked the democratic process because they didn't like the result.
I'm sure someone's thinking that the correct response to that is have the government police forces battle with the mob until it changes its mind of its own accord, rather than have (non-government) society take action against the root causes of the mob, like Parler. However, that's undesirable for reasons that should be obvious.
Not to mention entirely ignorant of the very notion of our government being ostensibly "by the people, of the people, for the people" - i.e. the government itself being a representation of society. So if society itself is broadly rejecting some viewpoint on its own, then it's kind of pointless for the government to get involved.
People adopted app stores for security and stability- not political content moderation. The fact that they've decided to reinvent themselves as editorialists is as outrageous as if my mailman decided to tear out pages from my magazine subscriptions, if my cable company decided to black out specific television shows, or if the carmaker decided to censor radio stations it didn't like.
I think the way the world is today is that the smart phone as a product is like this magazine or tv channel and the mobile network is the underlying common neutral infra. And the apps are like the news items or articles or serial programs in this analogy.
It doesn't have to be as black and white as that. The law could restrict their moderating powers to only removing malicious apps (defined by a reasonable heuristic); much as you may dislike the content, most badthink social networks are not also hacking your phone at the same time.
Ultimately, I don't care; I support their right to free speech as much as I support anyone else's. It's for the law enforcement that has jurisdiction over them to decide what they want to do with what is posted.
Duopoly: We are private company! Lawless oppression second to none! All other company have inferior oppression! Stop discussion of Tienanmen! Cancel political opponents!
Purism: Hey, you there, customers, maybe that lot is headed down a road you don't want to travel and you should come over here.
Q: What law is at work in the identified problem?
A: What law is at work in the proposed solution?
I probably disagree with just about everything ever said on Parler but it's difficult not to point out this absolutely reeks.
[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/twitter-w...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/capitol-riot-a-rocket-ship-f...
EDIT - I can't tell if the downvotes are people mistakenly believing I'm defending Parler or because they believe that $Big_Tech is free of blame.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -H. L. Mencken
But choosing not to associate with Nazis isn't oppressing them.
The alternative is to not use iOS-based devices, which seems like a pretty good idea all around from a transparency avenue (and like I've said before on this site, like the broken record I am: transparency is a dependency of trust). That's exactly Librem's argument, and it's a compelling one: you have no control over the device or visibility into the software running on it, so how can you trust it to be operating for your benefit instead of that of some third party?
Even Android devices typically allow sideloading, and quite a few even support custom ROMs. That is: even devices with software maintained by a literal ad company are more transparent - and therefore more trustworthy, even if only marginally - than any iPhone or iPad.
The question is what sort of nazis these people are or wish to be. Are they passive but ignorant supporters, or do they want to make an army to kill tens of millions based on their race? The term is too broad
On my dads side most of his family was killed by the nazis and while he was only 4 when the war started he remembers Minsk burning and the horrors that followed, especially towards the end as he was older. My paternal grandfather (also Jewish), fought in wwii starting from day 3 of the invasion of ussr all the way until nazis got pushed out of Poland (and a miracle of survival since most of red army in Belarus was wiped out quickly).
As you can imagine, I am no friend of the Nazis.
At the same time I’m now a US citizen, and one thing I internalized about my adopted homeland is that America is this weird place where everyone can have a voice. It doesn’t mean we need to amplify all voices, such as nazi voices, but I do think that it is very important to allow meaningful expression of all sides, even when it is despicable and uncomfortable.
Only when nothing is taboo can people truly speak their mind and change narrative. When things are not hidden in subcontext but rather spoken out openly.
I do not mourn loss of nazi voices, but I am worried about it being ok to silence anyone. Especially at infrastructure/carrier level. I believe that if one doesn’t like platform rules they should move/make their own, but if the very infra of internet prevents you, that’s really bad. You can’t say “don’t like our rules then make your own internet.” This goes beyond simply not amplifying the voices (such as the justified Twitter/fb bans), and into total suppression.
Slippery slope arguments, while sometimes valid, usually require more leg work to persuade than a vague sentiment.
Parler became a hot potato, and whoever is the last one holding it receives a full-court press from all sides.
have you ever been grateful you received a notification on your phone when a message arrived that was of great interest to you? Does your web browser do that, or do your apps do that?
you are smarter than the obtuse you are pretending to be to make your argument.
On Android, both web apps and native apps do that. iOS only allows Safari that conveniently does not implement web push notifications, thus keeping a very wide spectrum of apps away from the open web and inside their app garden.
For years people have griped over this "fragmentation".
Google, Apple, and others are much too powerful. I cannot deny that. Something really needs done. However, they made the right move. It's not "censorship", and yes you do have options if you're the type that wants garbage like Parler.
You what? Download an .apk from anywhere (browser, email, usb, whatever) and click on it. Android will literally guide you directly to the "unknown sources" toggle. Then install your apk.
There's a point where free speech crosses the "clear and present danger" threshold.
I consider this a feature, not a bug.
So if users could more easily sideload apps or if there were more app stores, then Apple and Google wouldn't be the sole arbiters of what apps can be on people's phones.
However there is also the obligatory xkcd:https://xkcd.com/1357/
Everyday Nazis, more like.
(I work for Purism on a technical position)
This can already be done with Android. Good for them for making another alternative, but they're really overstating their case here.
That's the point. You're choosing a phone, not among all Android phones at random (or worse, all smartphones at random, which by virtue of including iOS worsens your odds).
Even Android phones made by Google are usable with a DNS block on google.com (as long as you manually sideload OS updates), removing Google's remote root.
Why?
Perhaps only a few people value this? Or perhaps it hasn't yet been marketed properly?
Android is already caught up with iOS in lockdown features and in some ways already surpassed. This is a very strange argument for PureOS, which requires apps to request permissions at install time (like earlier versions of Android), and many apps in Flathub just ask for all permissions. I hope PureOS improves this situation because it will also make my desktop better in addition to providing more mobile choices, but to claim they are better than Android already at this simply has no basis in reality.
> newer defaults are pointing in the direction of further restricting sideloading.
Google itself has said that sideloading will become better in upcoming versions of Android. This is something that I am looking forward to because I develop apps for my own devices that I want to manage the deployment of myself without being restricted to the basic deployment capabilities of the Play Store. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...