Parler Raises $20M
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But I'm glad it exists as a place people can safely be wrong on the internet.
Have you considered that written words that remain uncontested (or unpunished if against the law) can lead to actions outside of the Internet where people are killed?
Free speech just for the sake of it is not good for societies. I don’t know Gettr but Telegram is also a place where people can be safely wrong on the Internet. And it leads to calls for politicians to be murdered. Groups radicalize themselves in their thought bubbles, take the protest (in their eyes justified) to the streets, and even murder people (in their eyes justified) all because they can be safely wrong on the Internet.
People shouldn't confuse an ideological stance with an operational strategy.
I see this not particularly clever argument against the "free speech absolutist" strawman frequently enough that it's getting stale. Can people really not distinguish between the free speech issues involved in suppressing legal but controversial speech (e.g. "We support $DEPLORABLE_CANDIDATE and their $BAD_POLICY.") versus the entirely separate issues of suppressing illegal or unwanted speech (e.g. threats, spam)? This simplistic binary "all or nothing" thinking cannot capture the nuances involved in the complex philosophical and legal quagmire that is the principle of freedom of speech.
Beyond that, it's particularly ironic to attempt to use HN as the example given that the HN moderation team has tried very hard to be evenhanded on controversial threads while enforcing the rules to the extent that they routinely get accused of favoritism by all sides.
So you think platforms should allow for radicalisation?
No. Try that act on someone else.
Frame it however you want. If you frame free speech as the potential for radicalization than I'm 100% fine with the potential for radicalization. That's part of what living in a free society entails, the right for people to believe in things that you find radical.
Radicalization like the civil rights movement or the LGBTQ rights movement, both considered extremist back in their day? Everyone should; allowing radicalization is very, very important. Platforms that aim to prevent radicalization sustain the status quo which is exactly what a conservative would want.
To quote Doug Gwyn "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." and perhaps something similar could be said about the principle of freedom of speech.
Just because the most egregious and dangerous stuff from one side gets deleted does not mean it's a place only for the polar opposite.
However the volume of users is sufficiently large that you can be swamped by any minority if you choose, no matter how tiny.
Although the crowds booing trump after he announced he had his vax booster shot should give advertisers in this space some pause, sometimes the messages and disinformation create a life of their own that doesn't follow the script.
Twitter is already an echo chamber, so it's really puzzling how all of a sudden the echo chamber problem needs to be pulled out for other platforms.
Meanwhile Facebook and Twitter, which played more of a role in the Capitol riot and in the numerous much more violent and damaging riots throughout 2020, faced no such pressure or consequence from politicians or technology companies.
I have never posted on Parler. But the few times I glanced at it, the content seemed fine. Most importantly it was legally protected speech. I don’t agree with all my fellow citizens but I want them to be able to talk, and I want to hear their ideas. Parler raising funds is great news and I wish them luck. Even if I disagree with their audience.
Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
I'm sure the foot-soldiers of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot had the exact same purity of thought, the exact same infallible self-belief and the exact same certainty they were on the right side of history.
I'm guessing Eisenhower, Euclid and Fermi would have had no problem with people disagreeing with them.
And I picked some extreme examples from the same side of the political spectrum to illustrate that.
In your opinion. There are many good arguments against this and you know it.
> Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
This sounds like your arguments are misinformed or perhaps not realizing how things are.
Speech is already heavily regulated by civil agreements throughout American society. I don't have enough time to type all the examples, but here are a few: you can't sell trade secrets from your employer and claim freedom of expression, you can't scream loudly during a theater performance, you can't curse in a restaurant, you can't go sell things 'table-to-table' in a restaurant, you can't make public statements about someone's marital fidelity, or whether or not they have transmissible infections or diseases. There are many other examples.
So there are already pretty strong guards against behaving in antisocial manner and trying to claim that it's 'protected speech'. But I understand that it's very convenient for you to try to say that such guards are 'authoritarian' and 'kafka,esque' instead of presenting even a tiny crumb of valid argument against my very well-argued position.
The best solution would be to run your own infrastructure. If your gonna piggy back off someone else's infrastructure, you have to play by their rules rather or not you like it.
Amazon even produce documents over months prior to them shutting off the services of concern and willingness to work with them to resolve them. Parler chose not to respond.