There's obviously a difference between the broad understanding OP is talking about, and the low-level physics that goes into a computer.

Also, one could say that there's a stark difference between saying people who do not understand how misinformation works on a platform should not use that platform, and for example saying people who don't understand toasters shouldn't use toasters.

For the record, I don't understand the low level physics of toasters. As far as I know, they're magic bagel browning devices.

Having the ability to properly operate any machine is not 'elitist'. Computers and the internet were not made for the purposes they are used as now - and therefore they are heavily exploitable for others profit. People that don't understand how it works are significantly more suspectible to apply real world principles in ways that are entirely non applicable.

The average person trusts what others say and does not have a basic understanding of what constitutes facts and evidence. Therefore they cannot navigate truth through the internet.

Facebook and Twitter don't go out of their way to support conspiracies and are not marketed specifically towards those that consume it.

Fact is people whom want to believe these things heavily gravitated to Parlor and call Facebook and Twitter bad/evil.

Everything is a gradient - not absolutes. You also have to understand that, again, this is the internet and HN does have political bots.

>People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freely behind a camera or keyboard.

This is a silly statement. Do you (whoever first said this) think widespread misinformation started with the internet? It has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with people.

People who don't understand people should not be on the internet. Their knowledge of tech is completely orthogonal.

The engineering of Gab (politics aside) is probably worthy of a front page HN post. They run on Mastodon and their entire codebase is open source.

It is plain silly to require phone number verification as a 'security mechanism

why?

i have simply assumed that the purpose of this requirement generally is for the platform owner to establish your real identity for monetization and/or indemnification, and that any benefit to the user is incidental.

who ever said that "security" meant yours? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think those who think this misunderstand the type of security it is meant to provide. It's not about blocking account takeover attempts. Services mostly don't really care about that, because it doesn't affect the service as a whole. It's about reducing spam, bots, and other organized hostile activity towards the service as a whole. It's tough to create a bunch of accounts in a way that the site can't easily track if you have to provide a real phone number. Yes, everybody knows about buying phone services on the internet, and they do seem to have ways to block using those numbers.

Pretty much every service does this. Try signing up for a Google, Facebook, or Twitter account without providing a real phone number. Usually if it works at all, the account created will be rapidly blocked until you do provide one.

Which PII? I never created an account but my understanding was name, email and phone number which is no different than most social media.

I don't want to be all conspiratorial or anything but wasn't Parler hacked during the Capitol Hill protest and a bunch of protesters where caught? To me this seems like a successful honeypot.

>> It is not about the appeal, it is about contempt towards Twitter. Also Gab is a bit hard to approach for Parler crowd

> Why is that?

IIRC, it's even more extreme (e.g. full of outspoken and unapologetic racists talking about racist things in racist terms).

My understanding was that the “first wave”, so to speak, of Gab users were the hardcore folks who genuinely had extremist views.

Free Speech and censorship resistant platforms tend to attract users in waves. The first wave is the most extreme, as those users get kicked off mainstream platforms first. Then subsequent waves of users join as less extreme views become problematic. While those waves are less radical, they still have to contend with being in the same pool as the others. Ordinary folks join for idealistic reasons and then see a bunch of radical content. I’m sure that puts a ton of people off. Parler, it seems, wants to be free speech but not that free speech, if you get what I’m saying.

I believe the "echo chamber" concept is overrated. It's really not difficult to go out and find somebody representing the other side of an argument. You can construct yourself an echo chamber if you want, but you don't automatically get one.

The narrative that reasonable points of view are being censored out of existence is part of a narrative constructed to leverage the right-wing persecution complex. There are plenty of right wingers all over social media; it's chock full of them. But that persecution complex has turned into violence, and that complex is perfectly positioned to pretend that trying to stem violence is censorship. (They didn't seem to mind when it was being used to fight anti-American terrorism.)

If you don't want an echo chamber, don't make one. Seek out sensible people with different points of view, which is no harder than taking up an interest in ballet dancing or Malaysian cuisine. They weren't being excluded from your non-ballet-mee-goreng-free circle.

You're not required to give equal time to conspiracy theorists -- and there do exist non-conspiracy-theorist right wingers to talk to, if that's what you want. Social media isn't banning them. The ones who are being banned are using that language to pretend that there's a different reason.

I always worry about the objectives and goals behind the people in the shadows injecting money into projects like this. Twitter started off as an open forum, but look at it now.