[HN Gopher] How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler
___________________________________________________________________
How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 669 points
Date : 2021-01-12 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (greenwald.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (greenwald.substack.com)
| sershe wrote:
| As someone who makes a boatload of money in large part because
| tech companies are not regulated, I have to say - it's time to
| regulate large platforms like utilities. You cannot cut someone's
| power because they broadcast a death threat from their house. All
| you can do is sue (if that). It should be the same with
| oligopolistic cloud and social media platforms, since "breaking
| them up" doesn't really seem workable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > it's time to regulate large platforms like utilities.
|
| Not if we aren't first regulating lower levels of the internet
| infrastructure that way. Starting with ISPs, DNS providerd,
| etc. And even if we were doing the lower levels, it still
| wouldn't be, but we might relieve the perceived need.
|
| What amount to algorithmically assembled personalized
| magazines, like all the newsfeed-focussed social media outlets,
| are pretty much the least utility-like and most-media-outlet
| like (hence, the name) parts of the internet, and regulating
| them like state-directed utilities makes as much sense as
| treating the New York Times as a state-directed utility.
| chrischattin wrote:
| I agree 100%. The mega-tech corporations enjoy legal protection
| as a platform vs a publisher. They are clearly taking an
| opinionated stance re content moderation and should lose their
| legal protections as a platform and become liable for content
| like a traditional publisher.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| "If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating
| content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" I regret
| to inform you that you are wrong."
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello.
| ..
| chrischattin wrote:
| Oh, I know. I was saying they _should_ lose their status as
| platforms if they are going to be un-equatable in
| moderation - which they clearly are.
| ohazi wrote:
| > time to regulate large platforms like utilities
|
| Sure.
|
| > You cannot cut someone's power because they broadcast a death
| threat from their house
|
| Uh... are you sure you understand what it means for something
| to be a utility?
|
| Governments and police can absolutely cut power to your house
| if you hole up inside and broadcast death threats. They've done
| so for far less [1] [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20160928/electricity-...
|
| [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-angeles-shut-off-water-
| powe...
| tolstoshev wrote:
| That's the government doing it though, and not just the
| utilities deciding to cut off your power.
| pb7 wrote:
| First step is to make ISPs utilities. Zero-th step is to
| recognize that ISPs are just as oligopolistic with even fewer
| comparative alternatives.
| ayemiller wrote:
| Who said anything about ISPs?
| pb7 wrote:
| How are you planning on accessing Facebook and Twitter if
| Comcast boots you off their network because they're allowed
| to? We don't even have net neutrality anymore.
| ayemiller wrote:
| off topic.
|
| EDIT: I think we have enough to discuss here without
| bringing up hypothetical situations that would make us
| all very sad.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I'm going to agree with the parent comment: The question
| of ISPs being a public utility or not is crucial for this
| discussion because it goes to the core of the issue of
| what should be a privilege and what should be a right.
|
| If you can be booted from Amazon because it's a private
| company then you can also be refused service by your ISP.
| And there's an argument to be made that, at some point
| down the chain (AWS, DNS, ISP) you should have a _right_
| to internet access. Should Amazon be forced to offer
| unconditional access to Parler? Probably not. But right
| now there 's nothing stopping ISPs from cutting people's
| internet connection just because they don't like what the
| customers are doing with it, and that's a much thornier
| issue.
|
| Regulating ISPs like utilities would delineate a clear
| line in the sand for problems like this.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> You cannot cut someone's power because they broadcast a
| death threat from their house
|
| You probably wouldn't need to cut their power in order to stop
| the broadcast. Just call the local police.
| ip26 wrote:
| Why are large social media platforms more like utilities than
| newspapers?
|
| In my head I would liken your ISP to the USPS or a utility,
| while platforms I would liken to the press.
| root_axis wrote:
| Comparing social media access to electricity is the height of
| disingenuous absurdity.
| filoleg wrote:
| I don't think the comparison is between social media access
| and electricity access. The comparison is between access to
| internet and access to electricity. You just picked a
| specific case of "internet access" to make it look more silly
| and easier to defeat.
|
| Using that same technique, I can say "Comparing internet
| access to being able to use your toaster is the height of
| disingenuous absurdity". You can see why this technique isn't
| really legitimate and should be avoided in public arguments.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > You cannot cut someone's power because they broadcast a death
| threat from their house.
|
| This is a bad, needlessly hyperbolic analogy. The reasons there
| are regulations prohibiting the shutoff of utilities is that
| these are basic needs without which people can be directly
| harmed (often very seriously, if you cut off heating in the
| winter, etc...).
|
| There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler account.
|
| I'm not saying I disagree that some level of regulation is
| appropriate. But this issue is (for somewhat obvious reasons)
| being wildly overstated. Parler was shut down for explicitly
| violent rhetoric which inspired real political violence,
| period.
|
| Surely everyone agrees that this particular speech should have
| been banned, right? We just disagree about the specifics of how
| it should be done. If so, why are we screaming so loud about
| "Silicon Valley" showing "Monopolistic Force"?
|
| Is hyperbole really the answer here? Or is it an attempt to
| deflect discussion from things that seem a little more
| important at the moment?
| grecy wrote:
| > _There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler
| account_
|
| Canada considers internet access a basic human right, and
| it's pretty clear the rest of the world will move in that
| direction shortly.
|
| I think it's _very_ clear you can harm a person by cutting
| them off from the world / loved ones, news, etc. Especially
| in communities that have no outside access _other than_
| internet based.
|
| Maybe not Parler specifically, but certainly internet access.
| And if the vast majority of the world and people around you
| are getting news and info and social life from <website>, it
| could be argued that denying access to <website> will harm a
| person.
| newacct583 wrote:
| And similarly: likening the banning of one site that was a
| hotbed of rhetoric akin to (or directly related to) a
| serious incident of political violence to the "vast
| majority of people around you" losing all internet access
| is senselessly hyperbolic and unhelpful.
|
| If we grant that the reason we're currently in this crisis
| of democracy is that people are addicted to an outrage
| machine (stop the steal, #resistance, whatever), then maybe
| it's our job to get us off the train.
|
| Why can't banning Parler just be about banning Parler and
| not an assault on democracy or whatever? I mean, we all
| agree that the kind of speech banned should be banned
| somehow, right?
| pbourke wrote:
| >> There is no similar human rights mandate for a Parler
| account
|
| >Canada considers internet access a basic human right, and
| it's pretty clear the rest of the world will move in that
| direction shortly.
|
| Having a Parler account and having access to the internet
| are two different things.
|
| Funny that you mention Canada. Parler would likely have
| trouble existing as a Canadian entity due to Canada's hate
| speech laws and the courts' propensity to leave carriers
| exposed to liability for hosting content that violates
| those laws.
|
| Also, the Canadian government has a broad power to restrict
| speech in times of crisis through the War Measures Act.
| They could easily have switched a site like Parler off if a
| similar event occurred.
| root_axis wrote:
| Getting banned from a social media site doesn't remove
| one's access to the internet.
| tjr225 wrote:
| What a backwards ass situation we've found ourselves in.
|
| Imagine the flip side. Imagine if a bunch of "conservatives" from
| Mississippi started a web hosting company 10 years ago and then
| an anti-fascist social media platform sprouted up on their
| infrastructure. Imagine people on this platform started posting
| about how black lives matter on the platform.
|
| Imagine what the "conservative" reaction would be.
|
| You take a platform for violent extremists off of _private_
| servers hosted by a _private_ company on the West Coast and
| everyone flips their lid. "Conservatives" have no shame.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| How do HN readers, who I presume would generally support safe
| harbor provisions for free speech, common carrier rules etc, not
| find it deeply alarming that this is happening? Even if Parler
| hosted straight up illegal content, surely the proportional
| response is to block _those accounts_ , not the entire platform?
| If no, why aren't we deplatforming Twitter or Facebook next?
| mplewis wrote:
| Read the suspension letter. AWS suspended them BECAUSE they
| refused to moderate the problem accounts.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Parler stated in its lawsuit that it removed all the content
| that Amazon pointed out...
|
| 'On January 8, 2021, AWS brought concerns to Parler about
| user content that encouraged violence. Parler addressed them,
| and then AWS said it was "okay" with Parler.'
|
| 'The next day, January 9, 2021, AWS brought more "bad"
| content to Parler and Parler took down all of that content by
| the evening'
|
| https://www.scribd.com/document/490405156/Parler-sues-Amazon
| hnburnsy wrote:
| also Parler wrote in the lawsuit...
|
| "AWS knew its allegations contained in the letter it leaked
| to the press that Parler was not able to find and remove
| content that encouraged violence was false--because over
| the last few days Parler had removed everything AWS had
| brought to its attention and more. Yet AWS sought to defame
| Parler nonetheless."
| busterarm wrote:
| Because HN readers are just as tribalist as anyone else and now
| they're winning after a bad ref call.
|
| You've seen this play out in sports hundreds of times. Politics
| isn't any different. It's even got WWE-esque storylines.
| dinero_rojo wrote:
| It's even got a WWE "Superstar" at the center of it all!
|
| https://www.wwe.com/superstars/donald-trump
| rodgerd wrote:
| Do you support the idea that government should be able to force
| you to allow your private property to be used by others?
|
| If so, when can I start hosting raves in your front room?
| RangerScience wrote:
| Been thinking about this, and basically -
|
| Freedom of speech is, colloquially, about being able to discuss
| things. That's something I'd like to support, and to see more
| of,
|
| but I'm going to draw a stark categorization between
| _discussion_ and _incitement_. Both use words, sure. Are both
| speech that should be free?
| akmarinov wrote:
| This right here. At least Apple gave them time to implement
| moderation in their app. A really unrealistic 24 hour
| timeframe, but still.
|
| Truth is it was good PR to obliterate Parler for everyone
| involved and they weren't a big enough player to be able to
| fight back.
| inscionent wrote:
| Parler was never a good faith actor. They are profiteers
| looking to corral a conservative audience. They were more than
| happen to moderate descriptions of areola, but not violence.
|
| We do have a big tech problem. Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet, and
| Apple should be broken up. Twitter should be required to
| improve moderation and bot removal. Public/Private enterprises
| should be established to provide alternates to Twitter/Parler.
| awillen wrote:
| Blocking individual accounts is something Parler can do (and
| chose not to), not Amazon/Facebook/Google who don't have access
| to the contents of those accounts (at least not easily).
|
| Also, it's worth looking at some of the hacked info that was
| released - Parler had a serious moderation system, but it was
| used to make sure people had MAGA viewpoints, not to prevent
| violence. This is not some free and open platform, it was a
| controlled one that purposely built an echo chamber of violent
| rhetoric. Twitter and Facebook don't allow the same kind of
| violent rhetoric, lies, etc., and while they may not do an
| ideal (or even good) job at it, the fact is they're broad
| platforms used for a whole lot of things for a whole lot of
| people and are absolutely not comparable to Parler.
| Allower wrote:
| >Twitter and Facebook don't allow the same kind of violent
| rhetoric, lies, etc.
|
| You must not be paying much attention..this is simply not
| true
| 6sup6 wrote:
| I can remember very well calls for violence in twitter
| against Nick Sandemann. And I remember very well those calls
| for violence not being removed at all.
|
| Also, during the riots of 2020, it was extremely common to
| find calls to violence in twitter that weren't deleted.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| What's your point, that they apply TOS inconsistently? I
| don't think anyone will disagree with that assessment. They
| let Trump violate the TOS for 4 years.
|
| They are perfectly within their rights as a private
| business to make those exceptions. Is it fair? No. Would we
| much rather they apply things consistently? Yes.
|
| The question is, do we want to enforce who and what they
| can and cannot allow on their platform via law, or do we
| want private businesses to control who they are allowed to
| do business with?
| MrMan wrote:
| If my account could downvote I would. I dont want the top
| comment once again to be some generic free speech
| fundamentalism. It amounts to putting our head in the sand. We
| should be able to rank, sort, and discriminate between
| different competing challenges to the peaceful (as if everyone
| even agrees that this is good) conduct of civilization.
|
| By all means "deplatform" Facebook, please, but why would you
| condone that and condemn deplatforming Parler? makes no sense.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I personally would be very angry if their ISP refused them
| access, because I believe the internet should be a public
| utility that everyone can use and "you can still yell on the
| public square" wouldn't be a good faith argument.
|
| But I don't feel the same way about AWS, because they are not
| as critical as an ISP would be. Nothing is stopping Parler from
| plugging in and managing their own servers. I see AWS as a
| convenience, and as such I don't think anyone is entitled to
| it.
|
| As a side note: I would like to take a minute to remind the
| youngsters that no one owes them a revolution. If you want to
| go fight against the status quo, you should _really_ have a
| plan for when the status quo fights back.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| Because Parler was explicitly designed to host reprehensible
| speech, and was not making a good-faith effort in censoring
| their platform. Those hosting the platform decided "nah, we
| don't want to be associated with this" and cut them off.
|
| These free-speech advocates still have the ability to create
| mastodon instances or a listserv or something else where a
| company doesn't have that leverage over them. They still have
| options and this crying is overblown.
| dboreham wrote:
| This is action taken because AWS's customer (Parler)
| specifically did not take that action. Since the raison d'etre
| for Parler is to host content not acceptable to mainstream
| social media sites, it seems reasonable to assume they won't in
| good faith moderate their content.
| umvi wrote:
| Why should AWS care though? It's infrastructure. They should
| not be disconnecting service just because the infrastructure
| is used for something they perceive as evil. It would be like
| Verizon automatically dropping calls if you make a phone call
| and try to say something evil to the person on the other
| line.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Maybe, but that's not how internet services are currently
| regulated. Ironically, because the Republicans have fought
| that type of regulation tooth and nail.
|
| AWS cares because they're a public company with a
| reputation, and many of their customers and employees are
| anti-rioter.
| baxtr wrote:
| I think it's one thing if Twitter bans DJT. In the end it's
| their platform, and their rules. But I feel very different
| about infrastructure players starting their censorship based on
| what's happening 1 or even 2 steps further down the line. It's
| a wrong move and will just push the discussion somewhere else,
| the least. The worst that this might lead is that the internet
| breaks off into several non-communicating islands, which we all
| don't want.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| If we're talking about individual ISPs, backhaul providers,
| and electricity companies, I agree. But we're not.
|
| If anything, we should be more bothered that people consider
| something like AWS or any of the other major clouds, core
| infrastructure akin to backhaul or electricity. (Google Play
| and the App Store have always had very clear TOS rules that
| limit certain types of content so I don't even see them as
| being part of the discussion.)
|
| I fundamentally agree that something like Parler, as
| abhorrent as much of its content was, has the right to exist
| somewhere on the internet, but I just as fundamentally
| disagree that Amazon should be forced to provide them with
| services or that we should equate having a right to exist
| with "having the right to exist on X's brand of compute."
| malwrar wrote:
| But how far can this principle be applied? I admit this is
| complete hyperbole, but what if your local grocery stores
| forbade you from buying food there because they didn't want
| people associating them with you? I think there's a grey
| area to explore here where that principle becomes
| unsustainable, and even though this banning was done for
| noble purposes it still isn't a norm I'd want to curse
| future generations with.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Hasn't this always been the norm though? People with
| abhorrent views are not welcome in polite society. The
| idea that I should be forced to associate with those
| people is definitely not a norm I'd want to curse future
| generations with.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| But in your grocery store example, if the stores rules
| are "customers need to wear a mask, wear shoes, wear a
| shirt," and I refuse to do those things, or I strip naked
| inside the store, or cause a commotion and start
| screaming epithets at other customers, that store is more
| than welcome to ban me from entering again. Now, if it is
| literally the only store in existence, that's a more
| complicated question, but me being inconvenienced by
| having to go to a store further away as a consequence of
| not following a place of businesses rules is fair game.
|
| What a store _can't_ do (at least in the US), is say, "we
| won't let you shop here because your skin color is this,
| or you're from this part of town, or you practice this
| religion, or are this sexual orientation." Now, if a
| person who matches one of those descriptions and chooses
| to violate rules and screams at people in the middle of
| the store, they can be denied service for that reason,
| just not on the basis of their race or religion, etc.
|
| Parler violated AWS's terms of service. I'm not going to
| be obtuse pretend that the type of political ideology
| that Parler actively seeks out/evangelizes/caters to,
| doesn't make them a target, of course it does. That
| doesn't negate the fact that the TOS was violated and
| there was no real plan of action from excising content
| that violated Amazon's TOS from the platform. (Although I
| want to be clear, getting a bunch of conservative
| celebrities and Fox News hosts on your platform as a way
| to try to buy respectability doesn't mean that the
| rhetoric extolled by Parler CEO and championed by the
| service is mainstream or even mainstream conservative.
| Parler was/is a place that was not about free speech but
| about pro-Trump speech; dissenters were banned from the
| service, which is Parler's right, but it was hardly a
| "free speech" platform.)
|
| Again, I'm not arguing Parler doesn't have the right to
| exist. But I am arguing that AWS shouldn't be obligated
| to host it. I'm also arguing that as big as AWS and the
| other clouds are, they are not yet at the point of being
| true pieces of immovable infrastructure. And honestly, I
| hope they never are. Even those of us who don't shed any
| tears for Parler, probably agree that we don't want to
| live in a world where the only options for hosting a
| website or app belong to a FAANG.
|
| If it were an issue of an ISP or a backhaul provider
| denying access to the service, I would be the very first
| person criticizing and standing up to the action. But
| that's not what happened here. Someone came into a store
| without shoes, without a shirt, without a mask, screaming
| in the face of the employees and other customers. They
| aren't allowed to shop at that store anymore. But a store
| that might be a little further away is still an option.
| pas wrote:
| Cloudflare stopped hosting white supremacists before. It's
| not the first time they terminated an account based on
| content.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| That traffic was very targeted and isolated. With Parler
| there was a lot of collateral damage.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| And it's being flagged on here, presumably because it's against
| certain users' political priors.
| PretzelFisch wrote:
| What is your definition of Free speach? In america we have a
| fredom of speach to protect the people from the government. Not
| to protect the government from the people. As a buisness owner
| i may refuse some one/entitiy service, it is how the free
| market works.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Can you really? Here in Sweden, if a business owner refuses
| service to people based on political opinions or similar they
| are in for a world of hurt. I imagine it's the same in most
| of the western world.
| awillen wrote:
| So if a neo-Nazi walks into a restaurant and says that all
| Jews should burn to death then tries to order lunch and is
| refused, that owner is in for a world of hurt?
|
| We need to stop pretending like everyone's viewpoint is
| equal and we shouldn't exclude people for what they
| believe. Violent racists should be ostracized and pushed
| out of society. People who choose to have those kinds of
| beliefs are a constant threat to the safety of people
| around them.
|
| Now obviously it's a blurry line, but again, the neo-Nazis
| storming the capital and their ilk are just way over the
| line. Just because it's blurry doesn't mean we have to
| pretend it doesn't exist out of some sense of fairness.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| It is a founding principle of western civilization that
| you cannot be prosecuted for thoughts and ideas. All
| viewpoints and thoughts are equal before the law; only
| actions can be prosecuted.
|
| > We need to stop pretending like everyone's viewpoint is
| equal and we shouldn't exclude people for what they
| believe. Violent racists should be ostracized and pushed
| out of society. People who choose to have those kinds of
| beliefs are a constant threat to the safety of people
| around them.
|
| I will hard disagree with this every day of the week. To
| me this is a clear example of how ideology has taken the
| place of religion in today's society. It's no longer
| enough for you to be civil and respect the laws, but even
| having the wrong thoughts is considered criminal, just
| like lust and envy are considered sinful in religion.
|
| We're heading in a dark direction if we're re-adopting
| the same principles and perspectives that were behind
| McCarthyism, let alone used to burn witches and conduct
| the Inquisition.
| evgen wrote:
| > All viewpoints and thoughts are equal before the law;
| only actions can be prosecuted.
|
| And this would be an issue if we were actually talking
| about government action, but we are talking about private
| individuals deciding who they will associate with. When
| the government gets involved then you have reason for
| concern, but if this is private parties engaging in
| commerce you have absolutely no leg to stand on.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >All viewpoints and thoughts are equal before the law;
| only actions can be prosecuted.
|
| Speech is a kind of action, isn't it?
| anthonyrstevens wrote:
| You're arguing against a straw man. No one is saying "ban
| them for their thoughts", they are saying "ban them for
| inciting violence".
|
| (cue the desperate, too-cute-by-half arguments "but are
| they REALLY inciting violence?")
| [deleted]
| lurker619 wrote:
| So do you agree we were wrong to ban ISIS recruiting
| groups on facebook?
|
| Less sarcastically, do you agree that the amplification
| of thought and rhetoric possible using social media isn't
| something that was considered 500 years ago? i.e. having
| wrong thoughts isn't dangerous, but having 75 million
| followers and pushing your wrong thoughts on them is
| dangerous. It isn't thoughts any longer - it's an action.
| [deleted]
| mind-blight wrote:
| I think the owner would get sued, but I'm not sure if it
| would hold up in US court. We have laws preventing
| businesses from discriminating based on race, sex,
| ethnicity, and national origin, but I don't know if there
| are any such protections that apply to businesses for
| political affiliation.
|
| The US tends to bias towards letting market pressures take
| care of this sort of thing, and then stepping in if there
| are enough high-profile cases of failure.
|
| There are also a bunch of edge cases that I think most
| people would be ok with. There are conservative-only dating
| sites. I wouldn't be allowed on the platform, but that
| doesn't really bother me. If there was a republican-only
| grocery store, that gets sketchy. And if there was a
| democrat-only government program, that would clearly be
| illegal.
| tjalfi wrote:
| > I think the owner would get sued, but I'm not sure if
| it would hold up in US court. We have laws preventing
| businesses from discriminating based on race, sex,
| ethnicity, and national origin, but I don't know if there
| are any such protections that apply to businesses for
| political affiliation.
|
| It depends on the context.
|
| Political affiliation is a protected class for employment
| in some states[0].
|
| Political affiliation is a protected class for
| accommodations such as grocery stores in DC[1] and
| Madison, Wisconsin[2].
|
| [0] https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-
| employment/discrimin...
|
| [1] https://ohr.dc.gov/protectedtraits
|
| [2] https://library.municode.com/wi/madison/codes/code_of
| _ordina...
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Fun fact- political affiliation, which is not a protected
| class in most of the US, IS in fact a protected class in
| DC. So yeah, you can kick someone out of your bar simply
| for wearing a MAGA hat in almost the entire US...except
| for DC.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > if a business owner refuses service to people based on
| political opinions or similar they are in for a world of
| hurt
|
| That surprises me. "Political opinion" is not a protected
| class [1] in most jurisdictions in the US, and I assume
| that the same holds for whatever the local equivalent is to
| protected class. Especially considering that a lot of
| European countries also have laws that prohibit Holocaust
| denial--which are unconstitutional in the US per the 1st
| Amendment.
|
| [1] Protected class, in US discrimination law jargon, is an
| attribute that you cannot legally use to discriminate
| against. The usual protected classes are sex, race,
| ethnicity, national origin, disability, age, sexual
| orientation, and gender identity, although there is some
| variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (e.g., military
| service is protected in my state).
| bjornsing wrote:
| You're right to be surprised. I looked it up and
| political opinion actually isn't protected in Sweden
| either.
|
| There are other laws that prevent business owners from
| denying people entry or removing somebody from their
| store or similar (see Supreme Court decision NJA 1995 s.
| 84). They can't even prevent people who have historically
| stolen from them from coming in and spending time in the
| store. But apparently they don't have to do business with
| them. I thought they did.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Broadly speaking, the situation you described is legal in
| the US. We have protected classes that you're not allowed
| to discriminate against, but "political belief/affiliation"
| isn't one of them.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Actually, it's not in Sweden either. I thought it was,
| but it's apparently not.
|
| There are other laws that prevent business owners from
| denying people entry or removing somebody from their
| store or similar (see Supreme Court decision NJA 1995 s.
| 84). They can't even prevent people who have historically
| stolen from them from coming in and spending time in the
| store. But apparently they don't have to do business with
| them. I thought they did.
| fimoreth wrote:
| (In US) I agree that business owners should never refuse
| people based on political opinions. I would be firmly
| against AWS/Google not willing to work with a company
| because it has conservative views.
|
| In Parler's case, the issue isn't that they are
| conservative. The issue is that they refuse to take any
| responsibility for the hate and violence on their platform.
| John Matze had every opportunity to take responsibility for
| the content, but he was vocal that he would not do anything
| about it.
|
| If I were running a cloud provider company, I wouldn't want
| anything to do with this behavior either. Who cares whether
| the users lean right or left - hate and violence are
| unacceptable.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| With english that bad there is no chance you are American or
| a Business owner. Please downvote this Russian/Chinese
| astroturfer.
| alacombe wrote:
| > As a buisness owner i may refuse some one/entitiy service,
| it is how the free market works.
|
| Can a business in the US refuse you service if you're gay /
| black ?
|
| Same argument applies.
| yoav wrote:
| The key thing here is that Parler _refused_ to do this.
|
| Had Parler done this these companies wouldn't have distanced
| themselves from them. But also their whole brand is enabling
| those accounts so had they blocked those accounts they wouldn't
| have a community.
| eximius wrote:
| I find both the existence and destruction of Parler disturbing
| as separate incidents.
|
| However, I am going to worry more that it existed in the first
| place than it being destroyed.
| valuearb wrote:
| Free speech doesn't mean you have the right to go over to your
| neighbors house and print out and distribute hate speech from
| their printer.
|
| Parlour used AWS property to allow its members to help organize
| sedition. AWS has the right to nope out.
|
| All the problems with large private entities like Twitter and
| Facebook hosting speech on their own terms pale in to
| comparison with letting governments dictate how they host
| speech.
|
| Parlour can find or create another hosting device and get back
| up quickly. If they want to use mainstream services, they
| should moderate out something other than liberals.
| pas wrote:
| One current model of what's happened/happening, is the US
| system of politics is broken (first-past-the-post voting in
| states, 2 seats per state, two party, polarization ... and now
| on top of that the drawback of the separately elected president
| is that now the Executive and the Legislation was in a
| deadlock), so the private sector stepped in its usual awkward
| way. (FB/Tw/YT profited from hosting recruiting content, they
| did some minor moderation to calm advertisers, but now real
| people realized that they have the capacity, right and maybe
| even moral duty to do something with the problem they helped to
| create, so reverse course, full throttle backward, bam-bam,
| ban, ban.)
|
| It's not about illegal content. It's about politics and ethics.
| (And private companies can choose to do or not do business with
| whomever they want - except a few protected things. But there's
| a gay wedding cake somewhere too in this. Free association and
| free speech. Ethically it's hard to coerce anyone to say or not
| say something, and to host or not host some content.)
|
| Furthermore, there's the power imbalance aspect. Twitter
| banning SciHub is probably Twitter abusing its power, Twitter
| banning Trump is less likely an abuse. (Though there very well
| could be and are exceptions.)
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > Even if Parler hosted straight up illegal content, surely the
| proportional response is to block those accounts, not the
| entire platform? If no, why aren't we deplatforming Twitter or
| Facebook next?
|
| I've made this exact argument. It's a blatant double standard
| that Youtube or Twitter, as you said, aren't held liable for
| the content their users upload, but Amazon and Google can
| deplatform whoever they want for whatever they want.
|
| I've read a joke that we're officially in a cyberpunk world now
| that corporations are "going to war" with each other. I've
| thought that our society has been heading towards civil war for
| years, but only in the past year with so many riots and
| corporate overreach have I started to believe it might actually
| come sooner than later.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| YouTube and others _try_. Parler didn't, on purpose.
|
| This is really just a lesson about what happens when you
| squander your reputation and lose the presumption of good
| faith.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Except Twitter and Youtube routinely moderate their content.
|
| It isn't perfect but they are actively and publicly doing so.
| Parler publicly seems to take the stance of no to little
| moderation. I haven't read the hacked info from the site on
| principle of how it was distributed/hacked but seems that
| data confirms it based on others notes in the thread
| alacombe wrote:
| > Except Twitter and Youtube routinely moderate their
| content.
|
| Counter argument : twitter letting "Hang Mike Pence"
| trends.
| Tallasatree wrote:
| So lets think about this for a minute. What is the goal? To
| stop violence and to stop promulgating illegal material? Or
| to make it look like you want to stop violence?
|
| If its the latter, then lets continue to deplatform people.
| If its the former, then lets ban facebook, twitter et al
| given their proven history of allowing violence and hate
| speech and as an essential tool to organize mobs.
|
| The logic here is terrible and you can't argue against
| that. No matter how many users parler gets, it won't even
| come close to having the same reach.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > If its the former, then lets ban facebook, twitter et
| al given their proven history of allowing violence and
| hate speech and as an essential tool to organize mobs.
|
| Sounds good to me... They're totally culpable for the
| domestic terrorism that happened at the capitol. Facebook
| too. Dogshit companies that track our behavior and make
| money off of outrage.
| darig wrote:
| Parler, in a show of embarrassing lack of technical ability,
| unable to build and operate their own private infrastructure,
| destroyed themselves.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong but this isnt about politics, its about violence
| to the public. Only when that line was crossed did private
| companies concluded their terms of service were breached.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Only when it was clear the Republican party would hold little
| power in the US government did private companies concluded
| their terms of service were breached.
| jxramos wrote:
| > That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies -- Amazon,
| Google and Apple -- abruptly united to remove Parler from the
| internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-
| downloaded app in the country.
|
| I think I heard this point before about it trending to most
| popular for a fleeting moment. Does anyone have specific dates
| when that occurred and how long that trend lasted? Where exactly
| is this information conveyed, in the app stores themselves? Is
| there some archived location I can go look up to verify the
| veracity of the claim?
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| Is Parler content, or a service? If the former, then taking it
| down seems reasonable. If the latter, horrifying.
|
| Of course it's both, like all social media.
|
| The content is horrible now, but it's quite possible -- likely
| even -- that it would have broadened quite a bit. It was a likely
| home not just for political extremists, but also quite acceptable
| content that's being deplatformed elsewhere, like firearms-
| related content.
| _nothing wrote:
| > how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy
| a rising competitor.
|
| From the start, this stood out to me as a very faulty premise.
| How exactly was Parler, a social media site, a competitor to
| Amazon, Google, or Apple? It would be different if this were
| Facebook, but we're talking about ecosystems/infrastructure vs a
| single app/website.
|
| Also how can the power of three separate companies be a monopoly?
| The argument seems to be that Silicon Valley is itself a
| monopoly, except Silicon Valley is only a geographic location.
| [deleted]
| NDizzle wrote:
| Can anyone provide a link to all of these reprehensible things
| that Parler refused to take down?
|
| I know this may be difficult to do currently, with the site
| brought offline, but still.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| It's not so much the "refused to take down" anything, the
| community was doing exactly what site intended. The problem is
| that community started planning violence.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/07/capitol...
| NDizzle wrote:
| Greenwald says the majority of the planning was done on
| Facebook.
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1348619731734028293.html
| jonathankoren wrote:
| 1) So what? You can have a bit planning, as a treat?
|
| 2) Facebook is self hosted.
| NDizzle wrote:
| The "so what" is that Parler was taken down for an action
| that was planned on Facebook.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Leaving the shifting goalposts aside, you've failed to
| explain why compelled association, and loss of control of
| private property is justifiable.
|
| My band needs a place to practice. Give me your living
| room. You have people over, so if you don't let my band
| practice, you're censoring me.
| NDizzle wrote:
| I haven't shifted the goalpost. Greenwald says, right
| there in his twitter thread talking about this article,
| that nobody was planning Jan 6th on Parler. They were
| planning it on Facebook. That's it.
| NDizzle wrote:
| I'm searching, but I'm finding things like this:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/22/parler-maga-electio...
|
| "Hashtags on Parler denoting Trump's favorite conspiracy
| theories -- #Dominion, #Sharpiegate, #QAnon -- trend freely,
| without the restrictions Twitter and Facebook have instituted
| to suppress them."
|
| Hashtags trend freely. Oh no! I might be exposed to free range
| hashtags! I may have to actually think for myself.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| This is what polarizing actions do, they force people to choose
| sides. And as the American right coalesces into two camps, pro-
| Trump and everyone else, the left is forced to harden around it's
| majority mindset. And that mindset includes, platforms and
| megaphones aren't free. The people that built Silicon Valley are
| liberals, and until called on to protect those liberal values,
| they'll allow (and make money from) everybody else.
|
| If the finger-quote conservatives want their own platform with
| which they can plot the downfall of American democracy
| unrestricted, they're going to need their own infrastructure and
| their own apps and, it's starting to look like soon, their own
| banks and financial industries to handle their money.
|
| You have ANY idea how hard it is to get a bank to overlook a
| pecuniary interest for a moral one? Apparently you have to erect
| a gallows on the Capitol lawn.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Parler isn't destroyed. They're in the process of migrating to
| Epik and will be back online. Epik is also who hosts Gab,
| InfoWars, and other similar right wing sites.
|
| They signed a contract with AWS and didn't live up to it, so AWS
| cancelled it. That's how free markets work.
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| Would Twitter/FB have lived up to these standards early on?
|
| It seems like any new social platform could be pretty easily
| crushed under these standards. So the only way we will see a new
| social media platform is if they build their own data centers,
| and can grow without having an app.
|
| And maybe they need their own browser, maybe client hardware like
| phones and tablets?
|
| It seems unlikely that a startup would succeed under these
| conditions. So we better be happy with our current overlords (and
| whatever humans happen to be in charge of those companies in the
| future).
| [deleted]
| patagonia wrote:
| A monopoly is composed of "one" entity. It's in the name. This is
| not a fair characterization of what happened.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| You are technically correct.
|
| The right term in this case is an oligopoly.
|
| Semantically it makes little difference though.
| darig wrote:
| It certainly is different when EVERYONE hates you, rather
| than just the king.
| patagonia wrote:
| Which generally requires collusion. There was no collusion.
| These are independent actors in a competitive space that
| arrived at the same conclusion independently.
|
| People want free speech. You get free speech so long as your
| speech doesn't unduly impinge on other's liberties. That is
| the trade off we accept when we exchange the rule of force
| for the rule of law in a self governing, democratic society.
|
| People are not complaining about business practices. People
| are complaining about not being able to say whatever they
| want over whatever medium they want even if other people get
| dead.
| 6sup6 wrote:
| Mark zuckerberg, during one of the senate hearings,
| admitted that facebook coordinates with other big tech
| companies in certain situations.
| FabHK wrote:
| I suppose that the article is talking about monopolies in their
| respective market (namely iOS app stores, Android app store,
| and "the cloud").
|
| Unless you're quite tech savvy, you can't sign up for Parler
| anymore by using a competitor. So, while I mostly disagree with
| Greenwald, I don't think this characterisation is unfair.
| bo1024 wrote:
| What bothers me about this article is that it tries to present a
| logical argument that tech monopolies are a problem, wrapped in a
| political rhetoric about how liberals are authoritarian. It
| starts off as an interesting perspective but ends up as
| inflammatory whataboutism that doesn't engage deeply with the
| issue.
|
| This is a really interesting moment in history to think about
| censorship, platforms, speech, and monopoly. We can do a lot
| better than this article.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| We have discussed this in my workplace (a bank) to reconsider
| lifting our k8s and shifting it to a cloud provider from our data
| centres. I imagine this is a conversation many other companies re
| going to have specially when those companies are outside of USA
| and using US companies services.
| maedla wrote:
| Is it good that unelected people have this much power? No. Did
| they do the right thing here? Yes
| SonOfThePlower wrote:
| All people, regardless of their worldview, left- and right-wing,
| should be aware that they are in the same boat on this.
| wilsynet wrote:
| When we used to talk about "monopolies", we referred to specific
| private enterprises. But these companies aren't actually
| monopolies. Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on social
| networking, there's Twitter and TikTok and Snap too. AWS doesn't
| have a monopoly on cloud infra, there's GCP and Azure and Oracle
| and Digital Ocean too.
|
| The author knows that these companies aren't actually monopolies,
| so he insinuates that the whole region (Silicon Valley) is a
| monopoly. And one of these companies (Amazon) it isn't even
| located in the Silicon Valley region; it's located in the state
| of Washington.
|
| So really the author has expanded the target of the ire to a
| whole industry. That is to say, the tech industry has a monopoly
| on the tech industry.
| Miner49er wrote:
| If Amazon isn't a monopoly (or at least close) then why is
| Amazon facing action or under investigation for antitrust from
| Congress, the European Union, the DOJ and 3 states?
| wilsynet wrote:
| The European Commission is investigating Amazon based on
| "distorting competition in online retail markets" [1]. I
| don't see a claim by the commission that Amazon is a
| monopoly. You can be investigated and have antitrust related
| actions applied to you without actually being a monopoly [2].
|
| Further, the investigation is related to Amazon's retail
| marketplace business, not Amazon as a provider of cloud
| infrastructure. What is congress investigating Amazon for? I
| think you need to be more specific.
|
| 1. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_2
| 0_...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
| "In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of
| federal and state government laws that regulate the conduct
| and organization of business corporations and are generally
| intended to promote competition for the benefit of
| consumers."
| kevwil wrote:
| This is the beginning of the end for America. Regardless of
| whether we agree or disagree with what someone says, a free
| society depends on freedom of expression. It's the first right in
| the Bill of Rights for a good reason. Layers and layers of legal
| loopholes make politically biased corporate censorship perfectly
| legal. I weep for those whose livelihood depends on social media
| and e-commerce, because they now must live in fear of having
| their lives destroyed for expressing an opinion. Or for no reason
| at all.
| kickopotomus wrote:
| > Layers and layers of legal loopholes make politically biased
| corporate censorship perfectly legal.
|
| What loopholes? The 1st amendment protects you from being
| persecuted by the government for your speech. It does not
| require private entities to publish, promote, transmit, or
| broadcast your speech. Similarly, discrimination is legal in
| the US. It is only illegal to discriminate against members of
| protected classes on the basis of them being members of those
| protected classes. Political affiliation is not a protected
| class.
|
| Anyone that wants to spout off abhorrent things on the internet
| is free to do so. However, no private entity can be forced to
| allow such behavior. You do not have a right to have your tweet
| published by Twitter. You do not have a right to store your
| bits on an Amazon server.
| MrMan wrote:
| boohoo - if I have to be afraid of half the country putting me
| on a kill list because of what they read on social media, then
| people who peddle poison via social media - including the
| social media firms themselves - should be as uncomfortable as
| me and my family.
| alboy wrote:
| To me, the worldview where half the population of the country
| are mindless zombies that can be remotely controlled through
| their social media feed and need to be shepherded by Uncle
| Faang just to prevent them from killing people is even
| bleaker than GP's perspective.
| eastbayjake wrote:
| This is a really bad take. This country has never accepted
| calls for violent overthrow of our democratic system as
| "freedom of expression", and that's a view that's been upheld
| by all three branches of government across all eras of our
| history from the founding (Shays Rebellion?) through the Civil
| War (which definitively settled that armed rebellion is not a
| permissible way to settle political differences) through World
| War I (which defined our current laws about sedition and
| restrictions on the freedoms in the First Amendment) to the
| present day. You don't have a right to force anyone else --
| individuals or private corporations -- to amplify your views,
| and you certainly don't have a right to incite violence or
| rebellion even on your own dime.
|
| EDIT: This would be a _less bad take_ if Parler had been booted
| just because people on the platform voted for Trump, but to be
| clear: Parler was booted because _it was used to organize an
| armed rebellion with the explicit goal of finding and executing
| members of Congress certifying a democratic vote_ , and _its
| users have been encouraging people to feed Democrats ' families
| into woodchippers while making them watch_.
| alacombe wrote:
| > This country has never accepted calls for violent overthrow
| of our democratic system as "freedom of expression"
|
| This is literally how the US were born, cf. The Declaration
| of Independance. I'm fairly certain King George was praised
| by a majority.
| Svettie wrote:
| No one is defending calls for violent overthrow, but
| typically we hold the people that have actually committed the
| acts responsible. Here, we're shifting the responsibility a
| level above with the sentiment that "this happened on your
| platform, so you have a duty to moderate". The kicker is that
| these tech giants employed the polar opposite of this
| philosophy for the majority of their existence to eschew as
| much responsibility as possible for their users' content.
|
| Let's see. If I go and organize a violent insurrection using
| GMail, what does Google need to do to comply with it's own
| philosophy here? It seems that it needs to start scanning all
| emails for inciting violence and send them to a moderation
| queue. Of course, it's never going to do any of that, because
| unlike Parler it doesn't have any overlords holding it by the
| neck.
|
| Google, Apple, and Amazon like to do whatever they can get
| away with when it comes to anti-competitive practices, and
| enjoy the protections granted to them as private entities. On
| the other hand, this shows that they're willing to also take
| unilateral action to silence millions of people, based on
| nothing more than a whim and a holier-than-thou attitude.
| There's a messy contradiction here. They're not subject to
| having to abide by the 1st amendment because they're private
| companies, but in practice they're in control of the majority
| of public discourse. This is a big problem.
|
| And this returns me to what I think was a big point in the
| article. The response to any free-speech concerns has been:
| "if you don't like Facebook or Google's policies, you're free
| to create your own." But the sway of FB/Google's policies is
| no longer just over their own content, but also the platforms
| they manage. Which as it turns out, form the majority of the
| infrastructure of the internet.
| RIMR wrote:
| Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to, in the face of violence,
| sedition, and misinformation, care more about some vacuous notion
| of "free speech" than the health of our Democracy.
|
| This guy used to have a ton of my respect, but honestly he seems
| like a complete joke recently.
| dominicjj wrote:
| You don't live in a democracy by design. You live in a
| constitutional republic.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Pedantic hairsplitting is pedantic.
| dominicjj wrote:
| Not hairsplitting at all. They're vastly different systems.
| And you know they are.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| You ban people from Twitter they go to Parler, you destroy Parler
| they go somewhere else where no opposite point of view will ever
| be herd and no dialog can ever happen. This is how you create
| domestic isis. Is there a patriot act 2.0 already in the making
| to guard US from this self made media sponsored disaster?
| jackson1442 wrote:
| By domestic ISIS do you mean an organization that attempts to
| take over the capital to abduct and/or kill politicians and
| stop a democratic election?
| blank_fan_pill wrote:
| How is this a show of monopolistic force?
|
| Its like a a half dozen interdependently owned companies each
| choosing on their own to not associate with Parler.
|
| If you piss off everyone at the same time and everyone decides to
| not do business with you, thats not a monopoly issue.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| This article makes me sad, because I used to support Greenwald.
| It's surprising he doesn't know the definition of monopoly
| (i.e. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter do not compose a
| monopoly).
| rodgerd wrote:
| I mean Greenwald has also asserted that no Parler user was
| involved in the insurrection, which is a straight-up lie. The
| fact his work has such an uncritical following on HN doesn't
| say much could about HN's pretensions to offer high quality
| discussion.
| kats wrote:
| In the US there are two mobile OS options (Android and iOS)
| with a combined 99.8% market share. And large companies like
| Microsoft (Windows Mobile), Amazon (Fire OS), and Samsung
| (Tizen) haven't been able to grow their market share, so the
| barrier to entry seems pretty high.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| even if that's true (it is and it isn't, but the pedantry
| isn't important), what you're saying is effectively is that
| a duopoly over mobile devices is the same as a monopoly
| over the internet.
|
| that's patently untrue. it's untrue in the simplistic sense
| that you can access the internet with non-mobile
| technology, and its even untrue in the slightly less
| simplistic sense that an organization can provides its
| online presence as a website (gasp!) so as to avoid the
| need to have an app available on corporately-controlled
| stores.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Glenn Greenwald again proving to be a crank.
|
| If Silicon Valley is such an overwhelming monopolistic force, why
| is 8kun and 4chan up?
|
| No, Parler did a dumb thing by depending so deeply on one hosting
| provider, and the inevitable bit them.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Why aren't Google, Apple, AWS free to dissociate themselves from
| trouble brewing?
| tdullien wrote:
| Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the
| HN crowd - but I find the conflation of "right to free speech"
| and "right to a platform for said speech" to be odd.
|
| I don't agree that "infringement of free speech" can happen in a
| commercial context. The right to free speech is the right that
| you cannot have government force act on you for what you are
| saying; e.g. the _government_ has no right to tell you "don't
| say this or it will have consequences". As for private contracts:
| Trying to enforce "free speech" that must not be infringed upon
| in private contracts would also mean all NDAs are always void,
| and would be a huge intrusion into another liberty: That of
| entering into arbitrary agreements with each other.
|
| The .cn regulator cracking down on Ant Financial because they did
| not like what Jack Ma said is an infringement on free speech. A
| private business actor deciding to terminate a contract because
| they don't like the business partner is not.
|
| Related: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midtown-uniform-patagonia-
| will-...
| strken wrote:
| Free-speech-as-legal-right and free-speech-as-moral-principle
| are different: the legal right exists to uphold the moral
| principle. You're probably correct when you say the legal right
| can't be infringed in a commercial context, but the moral
| principle can be violated by anyone.
|
| I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only
| acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who
| support free-speech-as-moral-principle.
| Kapura wrote:
| This is what happens if you build a platform on somebody else's
| platform: you're subject to their whims. Any and all people who
| make their living off of YouTube understands this, and they
| intentionally diversify so they have options if their primary
| platform becomes unavailable.
|
| Outside of that, though, I couldn't care less that fascist
| organization platforms are being tanked. Free speech as an
| abstract principle has been used as cover for fascism in the U.S.
| for the better part of the past half century.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > somebody else's platform
|
| My concern is how far down "somebody else's platform" goes.
| Twitter bans Trump: they're a platform, they can ban whoever
| they want. AWS bans Parler: they're a platform, they can ban
| whoever they want. Verizon is an ISP... are they a platform?
| Can they ban whoever they want? GoDaddy is a domain registrar.
| Are they a platform? Can they ban whoever they want?
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Verizon is an ISP... are they a platform?_
|
| Remember net neutrality? Guess who killed it.
| Kapura wrote:
| Yes, this is the different between utilities and other forms
| of business. If you think everybody is entitled to cloud
| compute resources, then your argument holds water.
| dgellow wrote:
| Also to consider/add to your list: certificates authorities.
| sershe wrote:
| A few years ago, the power was cut to the broadcasting studio
| of Navalny's organization (a Russian opposition guy), while
| they were live covering the anti-corruption protests. I guess
| "this is what happens if you build a platform on somebody
| else's platform", instead of running your own power plant!
| Kapura wrote:
| do you not understand the difference between power being cut
| and needing to build your own servers? AWS cloud isn't a
| public utility.
| locusofself wrote:
| Is Substack becoming the Parler of journalism in a way? It seems
| to be attracting "overton window" challengers from both sides,
| but I wonder if it's going to devolve into a cesspool in it's own
| way.
| acdha wrote:
| It's a common failure mode of funding everything from
| advertising: controversy attracts attention and you can ratchet
| that up profitably for a long time before you reach a point
| where advertisers don't want to be associated with you.
| craexs wrote:
| There is no "right to be broadcast" or "right to be published" in
| the right to free speech. You have the right to say it, but you
| don't have the right to force others to listen, read or see it -
| nor are publishers or conduits required to broadcast or transmit
| it.
|
| Your online "self" does not exist. There is no such thing as a
| right to free speech in an online sense as there is no shared
| utility that must accept all speech. Every step of the way is
| owned by a business - be it your ISP (which is _not_ a utility -
| at least at the moment), a platform provider, or content
| publisher, or web infrastructure provider. All of them can and do
| have Terms of Use that any user must comply with in order to use
| their service. Unless /until that changes, any discussion of
| "right" to free speech online is patently ridiculous.
| codenesium wrote:
| I feel like you have the right to free speech. You don't have a
| right to a platform though. If you want to spread your hate
| person to person go for it. We're not going to broadcast your
| nonsense to the world.
| [deleted]
| 99_00 wrote:
| I see a lot of people saying that Parler was only used to promote
| hate.
|
| How where they able to determine this?
| vannevar wrote:
| Or, "How Parler outsourced nearly every critical aspect of its
| business, incurring massive risk in pursuit of maximizing
| profits." This is the risk of the modern, ultra-lean online
| enterprise. Parler got kicked off for knowingly providing a
| communications platform for terrorists. But other businesses that
| ride along on the backs of FAANG, like the business equivalent of
| remora eels, have been similarly affected by factors out of their
| control like changing search algorithms and shifting app store
| policies. It's a risk of running a business on top of someone
| else's business.
| dmode wrote:
| The whole debate has been framed in terms of free speech. Which
| is misleading. Because, technically, any corporation are free to
| impose their policies, as long as they abide by the laws of the
| state. The debate should be pivoted to tech concentration and
| monopoly. This has been argued by Elizabeth Warren during her
| presidential run. However, the same people who are complaining
| about tech's supposed censor of free speech, where vehemently
| against Warren's plan for tech break up
| beaunative wrote:
| Many comments here mentioned free speech though constitution only
| stipulates that congress should make no law abridging the freedom
| of speech. Surely a person is within his rights to reject such
| protest happening in his own backyard when it comes to the right
| to assembly. Why can't Apple, a private company, forbid an app
| from its own appstore? It is a matter of monopoly, if Apple,
| Google and Facebook alike are acting like market regulators,
| since they together owns the market itself when it comes to
| mobile app consumption, which is traditionally something only the
| government is capable of doing.
| foolinaround wrote:
| a big issue is being missed.
|
| Apple, while accusing Parler of not monitoring what it users
| send, technically is guilty of the same, when users send SMS
| messages to each other to bomb a place.
|
| Now that Apple is enforcing tenants on its platform such as de-
| platforming Parler, it should also be held responsible for the
| actions of any other app ( left or right wing), since it has
| stepped up to do that.
|
| If this is not acceptable, all talk of free speech is really
| hogwash.
| curation wrote:
| Platforms are a form of the public commons that have been
| privatized. The privatization is the problem, not the content.
| What is happening is that the form of free public speech has
| become, over the past 15 years, something that we now have to pay
| rent to use. FB, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Parler are private
| forms of communication that we now all have to pay rent to in
| order to communicate. There needs to be a free public commons of
| communication. If that existed this problem would not exist. It
| is, as most here have asserted, a dissonance and problem with
| allowing unelected billionaires to decide on free speech. This is
| because it attacks the form of free public speech only because of
| the content and our economic order. The solution is to create an
| international public commons that protects communication, health,
| etc.
| cafard wrote:
| "Freedom of the press belongs primarily to him who owns one."
|
| --A.J. Liebling, quoted from memory.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Legally they have the right to refuse service but ethically they
| owe the public. However "Free Speech" does not entitle people to
| Freely Lie. As we have seen the wrong words from the right person
| can cause the loss of life. The police officer did not deserve to
| die to further the political ambitions of a few morally/ethically
| bankrupt individuals.
|
| Parler can recreate itself on another platform if they wish. Gab
| is still up. It is just as disgusting. The Constitution only
| guarantees that Congress shall pass no laws prohibiting free
| speech. The last time I checked Amazon or Twitter cannot pass
| legislation.
|
| Free speech is prevented by the use of force. We held an
| election. The results where not what some people liked. They
| tried to cancel the people's voice. That is the real speech
| suppression here.
| esoterica wrote:
| Parler has already has another host, which is proof that Amazon
| etc. don't have monopolistic force.
| chrispeel wrote:
| I detest click-bait
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Parler was providing material support to terrorists. Not cutting
| off Parler would also be providing material support to
| terrorists.
|
| This Administration publicly announced a policy of maximum
| prosecution of offenses connected in any way to domestic civil
| unrest, in general (now, at the top this was obviously, though
| not on its face, politically targeted at their opponents, but the
| career prosecutors called on to execute the policy are perhaps
| less likely to apply it narrowly in that way), and, in specific,
| both the D.C. AG and the US Attorney for the District of Columbia
| have separately indicated that they will be actively pursuing all
| connections out from the attack on the Capitol, including
| incitement, in the DC AG's case explictly including that which
| may have been committed by the sitting President's inner circle,
| and, though charges would need to be held until after he leaves
| office, the President himself.
|
| There's a reason people are fleeing from any material connection
| to the terrorists or anyone seen to have a connection who isn't
| themselves actively cutting ties with them.
| kfarr wrote:
| Yes, this is a liability issue for Amazon / AWS. Which has more
| liability -- keeping them or shutting them off for TOS
| violation? The answer is easy.
| alacombe wrote:
| > Parler was providing material support to terrorists
|
| So is Twitter, by having Iranian leaders account left alone.
| igetspam wrote:
| Multiple companies banding together is not a monopoly. This was a
| collective effort. You could call it a polyoploy but click-bait
| gonna click-bait.
|
| They didn't kill Parker though, we did. We made if clear that we
| wouldn't do business with companies that supported the worst of
| us. They complied with our demands to force them out of the
| public sphere and I applaud them for it. As an ex Googler and
| generally anti FAANG, I don't have many fond words for them but I
| support this action. For the most part, I even approve of the
| timeline: let garbage peddling monsters be garbage peddling
| monsters until they do real damage and then cut them off.
| exegete wrote:
| People complain that this violates free speech rights but what
| about the rights of those at AWS, Twitter, etc? They have the
| right not to do business or associate with these people.
| lachlanwaterbur wrote:
| Well, that's the last HN article I will knowingly read.
| dgellow wrote:
| Next will be DNS, then encryption. If you're more than 25 old you
| already know this.
| nipponese wrote:
| Uhhh, no. If you know you are going to be attracting users with
| some extreme views, make sure you have a strategy to scale up
| your moderation tools and staff, or at least APPEAR to be doing
| it. Their "oh, it's just too hard to moderate" argument is pretty
| pathetic. Even Youtube, in the make or break moment with
| copyright holders, struck a deal with Viacom so that they may
| survive. That's how you build a "tech" company.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > The platform was created based in libertarian values of
| privacy, anti-surveillance, anti-data collection, and free
| speech.
|
| I'm sorry, but parts of this are not true.
|
| Liberals were banned. [1] That's anti "free speech."
|
| Parler only did a soft delete of data, flagging it as deleted,
| rather than removing it from servers. [2] That's anti "anti-data
| collection".
|
| [1] : https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-
| pr...
|
| [2] : https://mashable.com/article/parler-archive-user-posts/
| andred14 wrote:
| I was on Parler and never did I see anyone suggest violence
|
| This ban is simply the spread of commun1st party propaganda.
|
| sovetskii komissar privetstvuet vas tovarishch.
|
| Da zdravstvuet Stalin!!
| Bud wrote:
| "Monopolistic force"? Fucking Glenn Greenwald. Jesus.
|
| This is neither "monopolistic", nor is it "force". Words still
| have meaning.
|
| First, obviously it's not monopolistic; quite obviously, Parler
| is still _entirely free_ to roll its own hosting, even if every
| host out there shuns them.
|
| Second, for reasons I hope I don't have to explain, this isn't
| "force". This is the opposite of force. This is peaceably
| retreating from doing business with Parler.
|
| I don't know what happened to Glenn Greenwald about 10 years ago,
| but something definitely happened.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Glenn is totally fine with fascists, as long as those fascists
| aren't after him personally (i.e. Bolsonaro).
| busterarm wrote:
| You're perfectly free to drill your own oil, even if nobody in
| the oil industry will supply you.
|
| At a certain point this kind of argument is farcical. If you
| can't at a minimum get racks in a datacenter, the bandwidth and
| power costs of running a site that large will destroy you.
|
| Oh and DNS registrars are known for being picky about their
| customers too.
| Bud wrote:
| Fine, but even if we accept all that, Glenn's argument that
| this is "monopolistic" doesn't pass the laugh test.
|
| Because in order for Parler to be unable to get racks in _any
| datacenter_ , it'd be necessary for dozens or hundreds of
| different providers to all refuse access. That doesn't sound
| like a "monopoly" to anyone who has a dictionary or
| understands what "mono" means.
|
| If the bandwidth and power costs destroy them? Then maybe
| they just don't have the resources to run their giant multi-
| million-user Nazi site, and they should go out of business,
| like all businesses that lack the resources to sustain
| operations.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Fine, but even if we accept all that, Glenn's argument
| that this is "monopolistic" doesn't pass the laugh test.
|
| Well, at least that it's an SV monopoly.
|
| If the reason that so many businesses are cutting service
| and not just to Parler is that, in the wake of the Capitol
| attacks corporate counsel have taken note of the law on
| knowing material support to terrorists, which includes
| supplying essentially any service when you know of it's use
| in connection with a wide array of federal criminal
| offenses that are designated as "terrorism", then there is
| a monopoly denying them service, and it's the monopoly on
| legitimate force held by the US government.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Generally agreed. Another distinct possibility being that
| there's a legal / national security interest, no longer subject
| to Trump's obstruction, compelling action.
|
| Greenwald is _way_ out over his skis, with ample invective but
| thin ecidence.
|
| And yes, some bit definitely seems to have flipped. Use ECC RAM
| and validate your hashes, peeps.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| > In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar
| to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections,
| including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize
| them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests
| in order to promote content or products to them.
|
| Sure, Parler isn't going to serve you a custom feed with that
| data, but what are they doing with it? They collect an insane
| amount of PII to create an account, when compared with
| alternatives Reddit and Twitter.
|
| On another note, this whole article is written in bad faith:
|
| - The AppStore screen shot shows Parler at the top of the social
| media list on Jan 8th, when it was trending because the impending
| ban, but the image is intended to show Parler as a more popular
| app. Bad Faith.
|
| - The claim that there was a united attack is unsubstantiated,
| and, in order with Occam's Razor, it is far more believable that
| these companies banned their support of Parler as a response to
| violations of ToS from those companies than any sort of
| conspiracy.
|
| - In referencing the Congressional report on anti-competitive
| practices, the article seeks to conflate the actions taken
| against Parler with anti-competitive behavior. This doesn't come
| close to being anti-competitive. ToS were violated, and private
| companies have to right to not host whatever they want, and the
| right to moderate it however they want.
|
| - The article seeks to conflate the actions of some mega
| corporations with _all_ liberals, claiming all liberals cheered
| for this. That is also unsubstantiated mudslinging.
|
| - The article overall seeks to conflate freedom of speech with
| access to private platforms and mass audiences. This is not the
| reality. Parler itself may have promoted itself as a free-speech
| platform, but that was only true if you agreed with the common
| opinion on the platform, and anyone who promoted dissenting ideas
| there were banned.
|
| The whole article is a bad-faith farce, and should be treated as
| such. Ignore it.
|
| There are real points to be made about how the behavior of these
| companies might impact discourse, whether they have too much
| power, and more. However, this bad faith argument is a
| distraction from meaningful discourse.
| squibbles wrote:
| >The whole article is a bad-faith farce, and should be treated
| as such. Ignore it. > >There are real points to be made about
| how the behavior of these companies might impact discourse,
| whether they have too much power, and more. However, this bad
| faith argument is a distraction from meaningful discourse.
|
| I disagree that the article distracts from meaningful
| discourse. To the contrary, the article has elicited a great
| deal of meaningful discourse (in these HN threads) that helps
| us examine the role of social media in modern society.
| vernie wrote:
| Greenwald flushed his whole-ass reputation down the toilet for
| Trump, much like Giuliani. Ya hate to see it.
| jimmy2020 wrote:
| Why this post is flagged? HN, If you don't like the post, please
| ignore it don't enforce censorship with flagging.
| jimmy2020 wrote:
| Wow, just keep getting downvoted because I think we should be
| allowed to criticize and discuss big tech decisions on the
| biggest community for tech. Thanks!
| Miner49er wrote:
| Glenn is wrong that Parler is pro-free speech. They censor all
| kinds of things, including those with different political views.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle...
| jandrese wrote:
| Does anybody know a place where moderate conservative can have
| adult conversations? No Q-Anon nonsense. No white supremacy. No
| baseless accusations against political opponents. A place where
| people carefully consider their positions, post research from
| reputable sources, and avoid the absolute nuttery that infests
| all of the conservative spaces on Reddit, Parler, Facebook,
| Twitter, etc...?
|
| One of the reasons moderate Republicans are going the way of the
| Dodo is they have no place to form a community. It seems like
| every time someone starts one the entire place immediately veers
| off into whackjob city.
| defen wrote:
| No, because "moderate conservative" is not a stable political
| position, at least as far as social issues go. It really
| consists of people who are comfortable with things how they are
| and who oppose liberal attempts to remove unprincipled
| exceptions to liberalism. Liberals have a vision of what they
| are fighting _for_ , conservatives only have something they are
| fighting _against_. The one exception to this which has had
| some political success is abortion, because it has been
| successfully framed as fighting _for_ the rights of the unborn.
|
| Consider the "moderate conservative" opinion 100 years ago on
| women having the vote; compared to today's moderate
| conservative. Or on segregation 60 years ago. Or on gay
| marriage 20 years ago. Or on transgender issues today vs what
| will be considered "moderate conservative" 20 years from now.
|
| The only cohesion they _do_ have is on economic issues, but
| people are finally starting to realize that it 's been a grift
| all along, perpetuated by big business and conservative
| establishment elites. "We'll pander to you on social issues
| (and then fold like a house of cards) in exchange for moving
| your job overseas, importing workers to reduce labor costs, and
| lowering taxes on the rich"
|
| So given this loss of trust in the conservative establishment,
| people find themselves rootless and end up finding a community
| in this sort of nuttery (whether it be Q-Anon or ethnostate
| fantasies). Barring a return to throne-and-altar conservatism
| (which seems unlikely) I don't see it getting better any time
| soon.
| jandrese wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a "stable" political position for
| people to have principled discussion. In fact I'd expect any
| community to drift as the norms of society change. Granted,
| Conservatives should resist such change because that's what
| it means to be conservative, but it doesn't mean you set a
| marker in the sand and never deviate. That would be
| reactionary.
| igammarays wrote:
| Whack-a-mole. Users will move to decentralized platforms or other
| providers in no time. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25
| million new users from around the world joined Telegram, an app
| built by Russians.
| RIMR wrote:
| This may be true, but this is a lousy excuse for tolerating
| Nazis on your platform.
|
| Sure, banning a Nazi from Twitter doesn't actually kill the
| Nazi. They still exist, they still have Internet access, and
| they're still filled with hate. But at least they're not on
| Twitter anymore.
|
| And when AWS sees that they're flocking to a hate site hosted
| on their platform, there's no reason they have to tolerate it.
| Sure, they'll go somewhere else, and maybe the hate site will
| find a new hosting provider, but at least they aren't hosted on
| AWS anymore.
|
| If we have to play an constant game of Whack-a-Nazi, I vote we
| whack as many Nazis as we can.
| 6sup6 wrote:
| Will you also include communists in your game? I'm asking
| this because many countries had "beautiful experiences" while
| being governed by communists.
| cccc4all wrote:
| In your worldview, how many people are Nazis? Is it
| thousands, Millions, Billions?
|
| What will you do when you find out that a family member or
| friend or neighbor is a "Nazi"?
| arbuge wrote:
| > "That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies -- Amazon,
| Google and Apple -- abruptly united to remove Parler from the
| internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-
| downloaded app in the country. If one were looking for evidence
| to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies
| that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of
| antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with
| them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine
| anything more compelling than how they just used their
| unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor."
|
| I'm not buying the premise of this argument. If anything, Parler,
| a social network, was a (diminutive) competitor to Facebook and
| Twitter. Amazon, Google and Apple do not come to mind as
| companies standing to gain by destroying it.
|
| The author seems to have an axe to grind against companies he
| perceives as monopolies and is stretching the facts to support
| his world view.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Parler isn't competing with Twitter. The users on Parler are
| persona non grata on Twitter.
| totalZero wrote:
| My own personal speculation:
|
| The timeline of events almost feels like Google, Apple, and
| Amazon took those steps as part of a means to convince Twitter
| to commit to a ban.
|
| Without Parler, Twitter is able to stem any right-wing exodus
| due to a Trump ban.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| The pattern of evidence is consistent with Parler being part of
| Russia's disinfo/anti-democracy attack on the US, along with
| their asset Trump himself. I cant prove this 100% but is the wise
| way to bet, given the total context.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control
| the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon
| Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their
| adversaries.
|
| The Biden Administration is getting stuffed with corporate
| executives and lobbyists of all kinds. If that alleged quote
| about fascism being the merger of corporate and state power, then
| congratulations, fascists! You won.
|
| And if that quote is wrong, this situation is still bad, way
| worse than Trump.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Trump was a kleptocrat.
| brlewis wrote:
| Here is the most important paragraph in the article. Can anyone
| confirm or refute the part about Parler's TOS and moderation?
|
| _It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly
| advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even
| more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And
| contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler's Terms of
| Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they
| employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such
| postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or
| instantaneously -- which is why one can find postings that
| violate those rules -- but the same is true of every major
| Silicon Valley platform._
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I cannot; however, I heard the CEO of Parler say on a podcast
| on Jan 7 that moderation decisions were made by (I'm
| paraphrasing as closely as I can) "a random jury of the user's
| peers. If the jury decides the content doesn't break the TOS,
| it remains".
| [deleted]
| ainiriand wrote:
| To be honest, I am glad they did. I am sick and tired of these
| people finding that there are loopholes in which they can hide
| their hate speech and fascist rhetoric.
| baxtr wrote:
| I can understand why you might feel that way. At the same time,
| I think censorship on an infrastructure level sets a very
| strong precedent. I think infrastructure players should refrain
| completely from that kind of action.
| ainiriand wrote:
| Sorry, I don't think that is censorship. It is just the bar
| owner deciding he had enough about you insulting the patrons
| and kicked you out, but you can keep saying your shit. Just
| not in his bar.
| titzer wrote:
| I think we disagree on what censorship means. To me,
| censorship very clearly means an active effort to go out and
| eliminate a particular type of speech or a particular
| speaker. That means going out and finding that speech or
| speaker and shutting them down, everywhere.
|
| In this instance, a platform decides, effectively "we refuse
| to host your ideas, go elsewhere." Facebook and Google and
| Twitter aren't going out of their way to scrub these people
| off the internet; they are just kicking them off their own
| platform.
|
| You might consider this part of the "cancel culture", but
| it's not censorship.
| anthonyrstevens wrote:
| AWS and Twitter are not infrastructure. Electricity and
| telecoms are infrastructure.
| mind-blight wrote:
| I just don't think AWS should be considered core
| infrastructure. ISPs are definitely core infra, which is why
| I think net neutrality is so important. Domain name
| registrars and CC processors are a bit of a grey area for me,
| since those gate access to the internet and online financial
| services respectively, but there's plenty of precedent for
| blocking certain businesses from both of those services.
|
| AWS is great the servers you run. Those can be anywhere on
| earth, including physically located at your business
| PretzelFisch wrote:
| At the end of the day if my buisness is hosting something the
| market does not like, my buisness will suffer. It becomes
| harder to retain and attract new customers and grow my
| buisness and interfers with my marketing messaging. We live
| in a capitalistic society this is how the free market works.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| This power could be used to sensor you in the future. This
| power could be put in the hands of a group of people who thinks
| completely different from you.
| whatisthiseven wrote:
| That power has always existed, and could have always been
| used "by those who think completely different" from us. If
| they think that differently, then they wouldn't even think
| twice about using said power to censor.
|
| In this case, Twitter et al. thought a LOT about what to do,
| as they did very little for 4 year's of Trump's presidency,
| and only decided to act after Trump incited a literal self-
| coup and insurrection with the goal of illegitimately keeping
| himself in power.
|
| If in the future "those who think completely differently from
| me" are going to think liberal ideas are so dangerous to be
| removed, it won't matter what "standard" we set today. It
| seems even with the highest standard of "don't support open
| coups", you still think I will be judged the _exact_ same.
|
| Censorship is bad. But insurrections against legitimate
| governments are worse.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| I do agree 100% with you. That's why I do think we need to
| decrease the power of the state and also the power of the
| corporations using a modern antitrust law. If they power
| continues to grow, we'll live in a totalitarian state,
| dictate by politicians and corporations together.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Honestly, where on earth have you people been? Tech companies
| have been "censoring" all sorts of people they deem
| undesirable for _years_ , why is it the literal terrorist
| white supremacists that caused everyone to sit up and notice?
| mcfly1985 wrote:
| Fuck you fascist.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| I'm more concerned about the app store bans than AWS ban.
|
| The app stores are true monopolies that as gatekeepers to users
| loading apps on phones (particularly so in apple's case). There
| isn't really any alternative to them.
|
| In contrast, a hosting solution can be swapped out for another
| hosting solution. While non-trivial (especially if you are using
| a bunch of AWS specific services), there are viable solutions.
|
| Parler has already found a new hosting solution with epik. [1]
|
| Given that anyone can host a website (potentially even by buying
| their own bare metal hardware and procuring IP addresses), then
| one always has the ability to disseminate one's ideas. The
| "public square" equivalent is simply having your content online
| as it is available for all to read / consume.
|
| That does not entitle you to speech on other people's platforms.
| That is the equivalent of saying you should have the right to go
| into a private venue, hosting a private event, and espouse your
| ideas.
|
| I've long thought that we should reinterpret campaign finance law
| from this perspective. Specifically, that because the internet
| enables anyone to get their ideas published and accessible, then
| we should remove the ability of political campaigns to buy ANY
| advertisements. Having the right to speak should not be expanded
| to having the right to BUY eyeballs / impressions. You should be
| able to speak all you want, freely, on the internet. But all
| traffic should be earned, organic traffic from folks actually
| wanting to listen to you.
|
| The ability to use targeted advertising to target specific
| messages to specific political segments seems disingenuous. It
| allows the politician to choose their voter instead of the voter
| to choose to listen to their politician. It is like digital
| gerrymandering.
|
| Given that a politician can easily host videos, content, etc that
| can literally be consumed by the entire planet with relative ease
| (not to belittle the complexity of youtube), free speech exists
| fundamentally in the foundation of the internet / web.
|
| Attacks on those fundamental components of the internet are
| concerning though. For example, SciHub having its domain names
| revoked and thus being unable to have DNS properly route to their
| servers is of grave concern. But the recent developments of
| NextDNS and similar decentralized DNS solutions are promising
| [2].
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/parler-moves-to-epik-
| domain-...
|
| [2] https://www.coindesk.com/pirated-academic-sci-hub-handshake
| yoav wrote:
| Ya why would AWS have any reason to stop providing service to a
| customer who didn't follow their terms of service and took pride
| in a festering a community of terrorists who are now making
| credible threats to attack aws and recently tried to overthrow
| the US government in a violent coup.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25745908
|
| The mental gymnastics of the people defending Parler on here are
| wild. If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-
| christian extremists none of y'all would be insisting on Apple or
| Amazon's requirement to do business with them and be complicit.
| igammarays wrote:
| > festering a community of terrorists
|
| This is what it feels like to live in a country like China,
| where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant
| narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a
| "terrorist" and denied basic rights like expression and put on
| no-fly lists. Anti-government rhetoric is routinely suppressed,
| fire-walled, and forced out. Are you sure that is what you
| want?
| eximius wrote:
| Okay, sure, China is scary _but Parler was literally doing
| those things_. This was not some overreaction, this is not
| ostracizing mere disagreeing philosophies, this is not like
| Trump calling the media the enemy of the people. They
| literally were plotting kidnapping, murder, and sedition.
| This is an _appropriate response_.
| [deleted]
| zmmmmm wrote:
| There is a qualitative difference between concretely planning
| an attack and the things you describe. I am taking the
| platform's statements at face value, but what I understand is
| that they observed concrete, specific planning to coordinate
| a physical attack on US democratic institutions. In that
| sense, this is not about free speech at all. The actions
| taken were done with intent of preventing violence, not
| speech.
| evgen wrote:
| And then when you take up arms and commit sedition you get to
| act all surprised that actions have consequences. The people
| who invaded the US Capitol building ARE TERRORISTS. Pure and
| simple. They should be put on no-fly lists and denied basic
| rights like the right to exist outside of a small cell (after
| they are tried and convicted for their crimes.)
|
| This is what it feels like to live in a country which tries
| to uphold the rule of law. Sorry if it inconveniences you,
| but not sorry.
| igammarays wrote:
| I absolutely agree that those who advocated for violent
| acts should be investigated and punished. Go after those
| authors on Parler. But shutting down an entire platform,
| which is used by lots of other people who are NOT violent,
| on the basis of some violent posts? You can find far worse
| content on Facebook, are you going to advocate shutting
| down the whole platform?
| fimoreth wrote:
| Facebook and Twitter do not have the violent posts solved
| by any measure. But at the very least they make the
| gestures and put money towards trying to fix it.
|
| Parler has been vocal that they have no plans solving it.
| If they had at least showed some vague plan to resolve
| it, they would have earned some sympathy.
| [deleted]
| eximius wrote:
| And Twitter while we're at it /s
| rvn1045 wrote:
| Did you see the images of these so called terrorists? They
| have committed an illegal act by trespassing on government
| property but to call them seditious terrorists is a bit too
| far fetched. They're a bunch of clowns who happened to
| storm the capitol.
| [deleted]
| OniBait wrote:
| Some of my favorites are the little old lady carrying a
| little American flag, the people walking in a line
| between the roped off areas and the folks cleaning up
| after a couple of trash cans got overturned.
|
| Seemed incredibly tame compared to the riots that went on
| over the summer that had massive amounts of looting and
| had buildings burnt to the ground.
| solidasparagus wrote:
| I dunno. I think once you build a gallows, hang a noose
| on it, and start chanting about hanging someone as you
| push against barricaded doors where that person is
| sheltering, tame is no longer is quite the right word.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| I'm not American, but what I saw on my TV last week was
| an outgoing President organising an armed mob outside the
| seat of Government and inciting them to disrupt the
| democratic transition of power. There were people inside
| the building that were clearly intending to take
| hostages.
|
| There was a _gallows_ out the front.
|
| In any other nation on earth, this was an attempted coup.
| Just because it failed doesn't mean that those involved
| didn't have intent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, it was a very incompetent coup. If Trump really
| intended a coup, he should have had friendly military
| embedded among the rioters. He shouldn't have said "now
| go home". It's a very half-hearted coup on the part of
| the president.
|
| Note well: I am far from saying that Trump is innocent.
| He absolutely should have known that his words would
| incite violence. In the most charitable light possible,
| he's still clueless about the effect his words would
| have. (I could kind of see his intent being to use the
| mob to pressure Congress, so that they would be inclined
| to see it Trump's way. He may have intended the mob
| surrounding the Capitol, but not the breach... in a very
| charitable interpretation. Even in that interpretation,
| though, he still very dangerously misjudged the effects
| of his words.)
|
| And Trump may well be guilty of more than that. He may
| well be guilty of attempting a coup to remain in power,
| and just not have had any idea of how to do it right. (I
| prefer that rogues be incompetent...)
| akiselev wrote:
| The Armed Forces [1], Capitol Police [2], and other law
| enforcement agencies around the country are investigating
| the participation of their members. It's going to take a
| while to sort everything out, but I'm betting it's more
| sinister than it appears give the gallows, flex cuffs,
| the former AF officers in tacticool gear, and the general
| rhetoric.
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/military-
| investigating-servi...
|
| [2] https://www.wesh.com/article/2-capitol-police-
| officers-suspe...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had
| friendly military embedded among the rioters.
|
| There were military personnel friendly to Trump among
| them.
|
| > He shouldn't have said "now go home".
|
| I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after
| members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so
| the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP,
| or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate
| members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to
| provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to
| resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified
| votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded
| had already failed?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go
| look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have
| no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone
| attempting an actual coup.
|
| But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that
| sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that
| cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that
| point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...
| danans wrote:
| > They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the
| capitol.
|
| Clowns who beat a police officer to death with a fire
| extinguisher, planted pipe bombs, and roamed the capitol
| with sidearms and zip ties to take hostages.
|
| Still sure they're just clowns?
| rvn1045 wrote:
| Not denying that part of the group became violent. They
| should absolutely charged with whatever crimes they
| committed. But a lot of the reaction to them is a
| coordinated theatre by the left to make it seem much much
| worse that it was. Part of the strategy to make things
| seem worse then they are is to use words like sedition,
| insurrection etc
| danans wrote:
| They didn't "become" violent. It was an organized attempt
| to prevent the lawfully elected head of state from being
| certified and overthrow American democracy using
| violence.
|
| Even the least violent among them committed a felony by
| entering the Capitol building. That someone else broke
| the window they entered doesn't make their entry any less
| illegal.
| rvn1045 wrote:
| Inserrectionists who stormed the capitol to take Congress
| people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing
| for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying
| themselves
| pii wrote:
| It was an organized insurrection surrounded by a circus
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is what it feels like to live in a country like China,
| where if you criticize the government, or question the
| dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called
| a "terrorist"_
|
| There's a big difference between criticizing the government
| and storming the capitol.
|
| Talk all you want. Engage in constructive debate. Run for
| office. Change laws through the system. All of those things
| are OK in the United States.
|
| Dragging a police officer down the stairs and beating him
| with a flag pole is not OK in the United States.
| [deleted]
| dionian wrote:
| Claiming 75 million people are terrorists without evidence is a
| bold move.
| jonathantm wrote:
| You forgot that the government forces everybody to use a single
| service, and will sent a SWAT team to any company not using
| AWS.
|
| /s
| mhh__ wrote:
| Greenwald isn't doing mental gymnastics, this is just where
| he's laid his eggs now.
|
| He is full in-bed with this crowd, constantly spreading FUD
| about criticism of Trump, etc.
| mitchs wrote:
| I was initially troubled by the booting of Parler, but I've
| come around to seeing AWS's position as similar to the payment
| processors who don't want to deal with porn sites. Doing
| business with some clients creates risks. Traditional players
| don't want to deal with risky clients, but there are
| specialized services who are willing to take them. However,
| they are more expensive for the same nominal service (because
| of the risks.) While the payment processors are dealing with
| frequent charge-backs, the risks I'd see in hosting Parler are
| more about liability and litigation.
|
| There are clearly hosting providers (like Epik) who would be
| willing to take them on as clients from the start. If you read
| AWS's acceptable use policy, and then read the Parler's TOS, it
| is clear AWS was a terrible match as a hosting provider. By my
| read, AWS doesn't want to deal with anything that can be
| construed as "harmful" where Parler only forbade directly
| illegal behavior. (And it is apparent they barely felt a
| responsibility to moderate even to that level.) This was never
| going to work. Jan 6 brought things to a head, but as I see it,
| this business relationship was doomed from the start.
|
| (I work for Amazon, these opinions are my own.)
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without posting in the
| flamewar style. We're trying to avoid the latter here because
| it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious, thoughtful
| conversation about interesting things.
|
| When accounts build up a track record of flamewar, snark,
| political/ideological battle, and other things that break the
| site guidelines, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise
| this place will be engulfed by hellfire and then become
| scorched earth. Those things may be exciting and/or activating
| for a while, but they're not interesting.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful. You
| can still express your views in that spirit, as many other HN
| users have been showing.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Completely not true. ISIS, Hamas, and other Wahhabistic groups
| still maintain a very large presence on these platforms. A
| little closer to home, riots and looting were planned in real
| time on Twitter. It's admittedly a very hard problem to solve.
| [deleted]
| jmeister wrote:
| See also Facebook in Myanmar:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934
| awillen wrote:
| How about some examples of ISIS using AWS?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| ISIS uses AWS in the same sense the capitol hill rioters
| did, via services like twitter that are hosted on AWS.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_re
| ports/...
| dboreham wrote:
| == they don't use AWS.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I do not know if Twitter uses AWS now but it looks like
| they will be, I believe that Parler mentioned it in the
| lawsuit it filed.
|
| 'Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN, Amazon Web Services announced
| Tuesday that Twitter Inc. would be using its cloud
| services to support its delivery of users' timeliness.'
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/aws-says-twitter-will-
| use-...
| watwut wrote:
| Twitter was closing ISIS accounts a lot. Twitter was not
| "free speech except illegal" platform for ISIS _at all_.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| In 2018 Twitter banned over 1 million ISIS linked
| accounts. Prior to that they banned hundreds of
| thousands. Without much of a peep from the free speech
| fundamentalists.
| kansface wrote:
| Back in 2014, ~50K accounts were posting support for
| ISIS. Parlor got one day's notice. How much notice did
| twitter get before the liberal consensus was to remove it
| from the Internet for inciting hate?
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/06/isis_tw...
| mthoms wrote:
| >Parlor got one day's notice.
|
| Not true. AWS has been working with Parler for "several
| weeks" [0] to help it comply with their TOS. Not only did
| they fail to remove the posts Amazon provided, the calls
| for violence on their platform got _worse_ during that
| time.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazo
| n-p...
| aeturnum wrote:
| If you're really going to go down this line of argument -
| do you think it's incorrect to say that AWS banned Parler
| because the Parler team can still 'use' AWS through
| twitter?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I'm not sure what the point of this nitpicking is. The
| context of this conversation is someone asking for an
| example of ISIS using AWS, in a conversation about the
| capitol hill rioters "using" AWS. And my response is that
| they indeed use it in the same way. Now, if you want to
| argue that this doesn't in fact constitute "using", then
| the capitol hill rioters didn't use AWS either, and AWS
| isn't responsible for them.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think we have different reads of the root comment of
| this thread. Yoav[1] was talking about the contract
| between AWS and Parler as corporate entities. I'm not
| sure how you made the leap from organizational
| relationships to individuals using services implemented
| on AWS.
|
| That's why I asked about members of Parler still being
| able to "use" AWS through other AWS-hosted services. I
| don't get what you're driving at.
|
| > AWS isn't responsible for them.
|
| Again, I'm not sure I understand what point this is
| responding to. No one is claiming AWS is responsible for
| the capital hill folks. They are claiming that Parler
| bears some responsibility and did so in such a way that
| violated AWS' policies. So AWS banned them.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748097
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > The mental gymnastics of the people defending Parler on here
| are wild. If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white
| non-christian extremists none of y'all would be insisting on
| Apple or Amazon's requirement to do business with them and be
| complicit.
|
| This is a very typical of the drivel from the pro censorship
| crowd. Not even an attempt to formulate any coherent principle,
| just acccusations of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism, without
| any evidence whatsoever. This is the top comment as I'm writing
| this. This is apparently the best defense they have to offer.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Anti-fascism is a coherent principle.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| That anything is justified as long as it's done in the same
| of anti-fascism is indeed a coherent principle, though not
| exactly one with a noble history. The official name of the
| Berlin Wall was Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| Aww are you sad that Stormfront 2.0 got banned and you can't
| be a closet Nazi with your friends anymore? How sad.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Can someone flag this please? Seems to be violating the code
| of conduct on HN given it is attacking a user here.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| You'd look good with a serrated 7 inch SOG knife buried all
| the way into your neck.
| noarchy wrote:
| The evidence is now hidden in terms of linking to Parler
| itself, but people took screenshots of the things being
| posted on Parler.
|
| There were open calls for murder and violence. This not
| protected speech even if it was in a genuinely public forum.
| guidovranken wrote:
| You can post outrageously racist, threatening hate speech
| on @jack's Internet Hate Machine all day long as long as
| you're attacking the race on which the woke hive mind has
| unanimously agreed that it is deserving of eternal
| deprecation and punishment on the basis of their melanin
| alone. https://i.imgur.com/fjbhBms.jpg
|
| As improbable as it sounds there are people who would much
| rather live in a world where people are judged on the basis
| of their character, instead of a race and gender based
| purity spiral, and those indeed constituted the majority of
| the Parler userbase when I spent some short time there.
| esoterica wrote:
| I suppose it's very difficult for some people to notice
| hate when it's only directed at other people, not them.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-
| christian extremists none of y'all would be insisting on
| Apple or Amazon's requirement to do business with them and
| be complicit.
|
| This is the accusation without evidence that I'm talking
| about. It's not an accusation against random parler users,
| but an accusation against those of us who do not think that
| AWS should decide what's allowed on the internet.
| swiley wrote:
| I'm by no means a parlor fan and don't think they really
| stood for free speech as much as something else.
|
| But: there are open calls for murder and violence on
| literally every internet forum. I've seen them on
| hackernews even!
| d357r0y3r wrote:
| I can show you screenshots of tweets that are as bad or
| worse. The difference is that Twitter actually has built
| up, over time, the ability to moderate fairly well.
|
| The value of Twitter isn't really that you can post and
| view small snippets of text. It's that they've developed
| technology that allows them to effectively moderate.
|
| Any poorly moderated site eventually becomes associated
| with the right.
| noarchy wrote:
| Agreed. One Parler, one could search for terms like
| "execute" or "hang" and get _thousands_ of results. It
| was a vile place. The owners of the site have chosen to
| die on the hill of protecting that as "free speech".
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >>Not even an attempt to formulate any coherent principle,
| just acccusations of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism, without
| any evidence whatsoever.
|
| The US Capitol got breached and looted by deranged
| insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021. There was a guy
| walking with a _Confederate flag_ inside the building. And
| they were all supported and incited by many prominent
| conservative figures, including current politicians.
| Including the President himself.
|
| What other evidence do you need that these people have been
| acting on bad faith, hypocrisy and racism?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > If Parler was a community of ISIS or any non-white non-
| christian extremists none of y'all would be insisting on
| Apple or Amazon's requirement to do business with them and
| be complicit.
|
| This is the accusation of bad faith, hypocrisy and racism
| that I'm talking about. It's not an accusation against
| random parler users, but an accusation against those of us
| who do not think that AWS should decide what's allowed on
| the internet.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Pointing out that people only care because they are
| broadly sympathetic to Parler and the people on it isn't
| untrue though.
| [deleted]
| dominicjj wrote:
| There's nothing in the President's speech on the 6th that
| called for violence. Not a word. See for yourself:
|
| https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-
| sav...
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-
| riot.html
| dominicjj wrote:
| I can't read that because of the paywall but why should I
| when I have the original? The original does not call for
| violence. Case closed.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Here are some relevant bits: --
|
| "Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with
| his hands tied behind his back. It's like a boxer. And we
| want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of
| everybody, including bad people. And we're going to have
| to fight much harder. ...
|
| "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going
| to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,
| and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for
| some of them, because you'll never take back our country
| with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to
| be strong."
|
| "I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I
| hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we
| win the election. ... And I actually -- I just spoke to
| Mike. I said: 'Mike, that doesn't take courage. What
| takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.'"
|
| "I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of
| the U.S. Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson,
| Senator Josh Hawley. ... Senators have stepped up. We
| want to thank them. I actually think, though, it takes,
| again, more courage not to step up, and I think a lot of
| those people are going to find that out. And you better
| start looking at your leadership, because your leadership
| has led you down the tubes."
|
| "We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't
| happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.
| Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore,
| and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite
| term that all of you people really came up with, we will
| stop the steal. ...
|
| "You will have an illegitimate president. That is what
| you will have, and we can't let that happen. These are
| the facts that you won't hear from the fake news media.
| It's all part of the suppression effort. They don't want
| to talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. ...
|
| "We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell,
| you're not going to have a country anymore."
|
| ---
|
| This is incitement, pure and simple. I mean, look at this
| shit:
|
| "We will never give up. We will never concede."
|
| "You will have an illegitimate president... and we can't
| let that happen."
|
| "...if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to
| have a country anymore."
|
| What else do you need? Are you looking for instances
| where Trump told the crowd to attack and breach the
| Capitol before you're convinced that he's guilty?
| dionian wrote:
| "fighting" is often used in a political context, we have
| people on both sides of congress saying it publicly as
| recently as 2020. This is constitutionally-protected
| political speech.
|
| Your case would be much stronger had Trump not explicitly
| said people should go "peacefully".
| dominicjj wrote:
| That's exactly what I'm looking for: evidence that he
| told the crowd to attack and breach the Capitol. Because
| there isn't any and yet that's what he's being accused of
| in the media. You are of course welcome to read these
| words and interpret them any way you see fit but I don't
| see any incitement or calls for violence here. Neither
| would a court.
| OniBait wrote:
| None of those sound all that inflammatory. Mostly just
| political rhetoric.
|
| "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going
| to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,
| and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for
| some of them, because you'll never take back our country
| with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to
| be strong." -- In context, he is saying: "Cheer for the
| Republicans in congress, maybe not so much for the ones
| who aren't backing me because they aren't showing
| strength" -- nothing about that seems like it is
| incitement.
|
| Yet somehow Democrats saying worse things is applauded.
| Compare that to where actual violence is implied: "If you
| see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a
| department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and
| you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you
| tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere." -
| Maxine Waters "Go to the Hill today. Please, get up in
| the face of some congresspeople." - Cory Booker "We owe
| the American people to be there for them, for their
| financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of
| every person in our country, and if there is some
| collateral damage for some others who do not share our
| view, well, so be it, but it shouldn't be our original
| purpose." - Nancy Pelosi
| potatoz2 wrote:
| If I convince you falsely and knowingly that someone has
| tortured and murdered your child and I tell you "we can't
| let that happen, the courts won't do anything, we have to
| fight much harder, he's at this restaurant right now, you
| should go" and you go and kill or maim that person, am I
| not responsible in your mind?
| dominicjj wrote:
| Falsely and knowingly doesn't enter into it. I've never
| seen a more fraudulent election in my life and I used to
| monitor elections in Africa for a living. Seriously, this
| was a steal that would make Robert Mugabe proud.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Come on now. The President and prominent republicans and
| their allies fanned enough flames by claiming election
| was stolen. Its not one speech or one instance, its the
| collective narrative thats been going around since the
| time it was clear that Trump is going to be on the losing
| side.
| dominicjj wrote:
| I used to oversee elections in the Third World and Nov 3,
| 2020 was the most fraudulent election in recorded history
| in my humble opinion. You are of course welcome to deny
| the overwhelming evidence of this but it won't make any
| difference to what happens in a few days time.
| weeboid wrote:
| It's the thinking where 100% of the product should be designed
| around 1% edge cases
| owlbynight wrote:
| Our political representatives are corrupt and generally represent
| whomever gives them the most money, namely large corporations.
|
| We, the people, are represented through our wallets now by the
| corporations that control our politicians because social media
| has unionized us. We're able to use online platforms to leverage
| companies into giving us what we want socially by threatening
| them when they step out of line. The companies that led to Parler
| shutting down were acting on public sentiment as a boon to their
| brands, thus ultimately reflecting the will of the people.
|
| It's kind of like a single payer system for social justice.
|
| It's weird end run back to representation but I'll take it for
| now. The radical right is a scourge that, unchecked, will lead to
| us having no rights at all. They need to be repeatedly smacked
| down until normalcy is achieved.
| stuart78 wrote:
| This take strikes my as a bit absurd. You have to take a pretty
| all-encompassing view of 'tech' for it to make sense. Apple
| success on the shoulders of a wide app developer ecosystem, not
| on the narrower set of other tech titans. Google, via Android, is
| in a similar spot. And AWS is even further afield.
|
| Two names not included in the de-platforming accusations here are
| Facebook and Twitter. If anybody of the tech titans were to
| benefit from this cynical take on the actions against Parler, it
| was them.
|
| SV is not one entity, and each of the five listed above has very
| different goals for themselves, so I'm pretty skeptical of this
| conspiratorial perspective.
|
| I understand the sense that these things are monopolistic, but of
| course there are real alternatives. They are harder, and more
| expensive, but the cost is borne by the transgressor of pretty
| reasonable common norms (don't tolerate promotion of violence).
|
| Parler gets to join Stormfront and all the torrent sites on the
| lower decks not because Apple, Google and Amazon are knocking out
| nascent competition, but because those sites violate reasonable,
| privately set and moderated rules.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| The discussion here focuses on the free speech aspect of online
| platforms as applied to private companies. This seems like a
| topic where a political solution is called for, as there seems to
| be enough opinion on both sides to warrant an examination of the
| current laws. Certainly many people seem to feel that somehow
| these social media platforms now represent a type of public
| platform.
|
| I wonder if the united States at this point is capable of that
| discussion? In a healthy democratic political process as applied
| to this issue, there probably needs to be input from both the
| free speech side and the societal protection side, and some
| compromise legal solution reached.
|
| If Biden follows through on his rhetoric that seems possible, but
| that seems like a big if, with political power apparently firmly
| in Democratic hands for the next couple of years at least.
| DeafSquid wrote:
| They can run their site on their own servers. Nobody should be
| forced to host content they don't agree with.
| snikeris wrote:
| Why is this flagged?
| mattbee wrote:
| Probably the rep of Greenwald, a notably "former journalist".
| (it's unflagged right now)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| It's such a polarizing topic that anyone with a slightly
| opposing viewpoint will immediately recoil in disgust, for the
| most part.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I have no idea... but I'd sure like to know.
| CivBase wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people say Parler was intentionally designed
| to host morally objectionable content and that they refused to
| moderate it. Many arguments supporting the de-platforming of
| Parler hinge on those assertions.
|
| I have not seen any evidence backing up those claims, but that
| doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you're aware of any such
| evidence, could you please post it? I'd honestly just like to
| understand the situation better.
|
| In the absence of such evidence, I see two plausible
| explanations:
|
| 1.) Parler was a small-scale operation (30 employees from what
| I've heard) who built a social media platform intended to appeal
| to pro-Trump conservatives by tolerating a higher degree of free
| speech compared to the likes of established social media
| platforms. It became very popular very quickly and speech on the
| platform became increasingly violent. Parler's relatively small
| team was unable to keep up with moderating so much content, which
| enabled a lot of extremist calls for violence to propagate. Since
| they could not keep up with AWS's requests to moderate their
| platform and it was facing public scrutiy after events at the
| capitol, AWS pulled the plug.
|
| 2.) Parler was intended as a platform for violent, pro-Trump
| extremists and used "free speech" as a week justification to not
| moderate their platform. It became very popular very quickly and
| speech on the platform became increasingly violent. Parler still
| refused to moderate the platform even after events at the
| capitol, so AWS pulled the plug.
|
| AWS is not necessarily in the wrong in either case. However, the
| optics for Parler looks very different between the scenarios.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I thought the owner said he didn't want to moderate, not that
| he was unable to.
| CivBase wrote:
| Did he? That may be true, but I've heard conflicting stories,
| which is why I'm asking for evidence one way or the other.
| justinzollars wrote:
| I for one excited about the decentralized tools that will be
| developed and adopted as a result of Silicon Valley's censorship.
| fblp wrote:
| The author uses the word "united" liberally, implying there was
| some kind of collusion between Amazon, Apple and Google. I would
| imagine it was quite the opposite, they each would have
| independently banned/limited Parler regardless of what the other
| company did. Parler also doesn't compete with any of those
| companies. It competes with Facebook and Twitter. So where's the
| anti-competitive conduct?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Generally services look at each other when deciding to ban
| things.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The guy with no shirt and no shoes does not have an anti
| trust lawsuit because McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's all
| decided to prohibit his entry into their restaurants.
|
| Sometimes the customer is the reason they all make the same
| decision.
| bravo22 wrote:
| That's if it is equally applied to everyone. Examples,
| similar to yours, are used as basis of racial
| discrimination lawsuits when the evidence shows that it is
| selectively applied to a group of people.
| kickopotomus wrote:
| Discrimination is perfectly legal in the US. It is only
| illegal if you discriminate against someone within a
| protected class on the basis of them being a member of
| that protected class. Political affiliation is not a
| protected class.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > With virtual unanimity, leading U.S. liberals celebrated this
| use of Silicon Valley monopoly power to shut down Parler
|
| Just to be clear, it's possible to detest silicon valley monopoly
| power while celebrating the deplatforming of Parler in
| particular.
|
| Antitrust is one concern, the risk of losing democracy to
| political violence during a transition of power is a separate
| concern.
| jbrun wrote:
| America is so blinded by their love of free speech they fail to
| see that most countries operate quite well with modest limits on
| speech. If American style free speech were so great the country
| would not be tearing itself apart as we speak.
| est wrote:
| might as well add sendgrid, digitalocean, twilio, etc to that
| list.
| tristanb wrote:
| Im glad it's gone. It was a vile cesspool of miss-information,
| hate and violent fantasies.
|
| Whats next - havens for kiddy porn?
| FredDollen wrote:
| Think of this analogy: Almost every driver in the US breaks
| traffic laws every time they drive. They speed, cross a line,
| don't come to a complete stop at stop signs, etc. Imagine that
| there was a company in charge of doling out violations, and only
| conservative drivers were having their licenses revoked.
|
| Every platform has people who violate the TOS, and by that
| standard, they all should be deplatformed. But that is not
| happening. You cannot say with any level of proof that Parler was
| worse at moderating content than any of the other social
| platforms
| viktorcode wrote:
| From the piece: > It is true that one can find postings on Parler
| that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque.
|
| It is the same to me as saying "it is true one can find sexually
| explicit images of children on a dark net pedo site". Parler was
| made to harbour the kind of content which is getting purged by
| any platform caring about not appearing as a Daily Stormer
| outpost.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I simply don't care. Sure, there's slippery slope arguments and
| discussions to be had about who gets to decide what is and isn't
| acceptable speech.
|
| Right now though there's a small group of people looking to cause
| harm and damage using tools that barely existed 10 years ago and
| our laws won't keep up. Antisemitism and racism have no place in
| the world and private companies have no business profiting from
| its proliferation. Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make
| it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share
| their views? Crack on.
|
| I will use my limited resources and time on this planet to cry
| for someone else.
| pstuart wrote:
| While I loath "think of the children!" arguments, I'll lower
| myself to one here.
|
| Imagine that Parler was a site dedicated to child pornography.
| Would anybody be complaining about it being shut down them?
|
| Hopefully not. My point is that what Parler represented was
| _equally odious_. It 's a hate speech platform and hate speech
| should not be tolerated.
| Closi wrote:
| Well hosting and distributing child pornography is illegal,
| while hosting other people's hate speech isn't.
|
| And how is hosting hate speech "equally odious" to hosting
| photos of abused children anyway?!
|
| You can use the same argument to abolish all free speech,
| just by claiming that anything your opponent says is equal to
| abusing children.
| Clubber wrote:
| He's using hyperbole to make the argument an emotional one
| rather than using reason. I'm not sure if he even knows
| he's doing it or not, the tactic of hyperbole has become so
| prevalent in today's political discussions.
| pstuart wrote:
| We're on the precipice of a civil war that's being fanned
| by this hate speech. I wish it were hyperbole.
| pstuart wrote:
| This is about morality, not legality (which is often
| perverted anyway).
|
| Hate speech translates into hateful actions, case in point
| was on display in the US Capitol last week.
|
| This is challenging territory but to frame this as a free
| speech issue without acknowledging that there are limits to
| such is not being entirely honest about the matter.
| Closi wrote:
| > This is about morality, not legality (which is often
| perverted anyway).
|
| Well this is exactly the issue here - because unless you
| believe in moral absolutism, why are these tech companies
| suddenly the arbiter of morality?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Totally different thing.
| bsirkia wrote:
| I think this is generally right. We tend to focus on the one
| side of the slippery slope which is "descent into an
| Orwellian dystopia", but the other side of the logical
| extreme is what, that no matter what private companies aren't
| allowed to remove and censor certain things on their forums?
|
| Like you said, if there were an app where 90% of the
| conversation was about child pornography, no one would cry
| "1984" if it's removed by Apple. So we're just having a
| conversation about where the line should be and if hate
| speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard,
| not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
| Clubber wrote:
| >So we're just having a conversation about where the line
| should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection
| should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent
| into thought control.
|
| It obviously is. It started with child pornography which
| most everyone can agree on banning, now you are suggesting
| we apply the same ban to political discussion. That's the
| definition of a slippery slope in action.
| pstuart wrote:
| Not banning political discussion, it's about not
| supporting hate speech.
|
| Parler wasn't banned, the market decided they wanted
| nothing to do with it.
| Closi wrote:
| > The market decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
|
| I don't think this means what you think it means, because
| it doesn't appear true.
|
| The market usually means 'the free market' i.e. raw
| consumer demand - 'are people buying it?', 'vote with
| your wallet' e.t.c., By all accounts it looked like the
| market _did_ want it - because they had a rapidly growing
| user base. Left to the free market, Parler would have
| continued.
|
| The market does not mean the CEO's of other tech
| companies want nothing to do with it. It also does not
| mean that popular opinion is that it's bad.
| pc86 wrote:
| You do need a better argument, because you're changing the
| entire point of the platform.
|
| One is speech - maybe hate, maybe political, maybe both - and
| one is distribution of illegal products of child abuse.
| They're not the same thing. They're not "equally odious" and
| honestly it's pretty gross you'd even pretend they are.
| protonimitate wrote:
| HN users have read 1984 one too many times.
|
| It is possible to think that SV has too much power AND that
| they still have the right to deem what is acceptable on their
| own services.
|
| You can be entitled to free speech without being entitled to a
| platform or an audience. Despite how much HN loves to bash on
| SV big tech, this _isn 't_ 1984 and there are plenty of other
| ways to spread hate if that's what you really want to support.
|
| I'm growing really weary from all the slippery-
| slope/everything-is-being-censored/what-aboutism alarmist
| arguments.
|
| There is quite a large spectrum between "any and all speech is
| acceptable, on the platform of your choosing" and "total
| censorship". Let's stop pretending its a binary choice.
| chmod600 wrote:
| It's not a slippery slope any more. We already fell off and
| it just happens that the immediate casualty is Parler. But
| real victims are not far behind (in fact, they already exist,
| they are just not important enough).
| chmod600 wrote:
| It's not about crying for Parler.
|
| It's legitimate concern that we have passed new thresholds of
| power, that the power can be exercised, and there's not much
| anyone affected can do about it.
|
| Furthermore, it's disturbing how much those in power think --
| and act -- alike. Isn't it weird that nobody has really broken
| ranks here?
| RIMR wrote:
| I agree with you 100%. There is absolutely no reason to care.
| Nothing we're seeing from these tech companies is a threat to
| our liberties.
|
| Getting banned from Twitter for violating the ToS is not
| censorship.
|
| Getting your Twitter clone kicked off of AWS for violating the
| ToS is not censorship.
|
| Companies refusing to do business with you on ethical grounds
| is not censorship.
|
| Anyone calling what we're seeing this week "censorship" is
| carrying water for fascists.
| chaostheory wrote:
| You will care when the other side is able to do the same thing
| to us. I'm not necessarily talking about racists either. This
| seems great until it's used against us.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Who exactly is us, though?
|
| For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications
| generating anywhere _close_ to this level of breathless
| outrage on HN. The leftists I know (actual leftists, not the
| USA 's conflation of centrist ideals with leftism) are all
| already very intimate with getting targeted and censored. Who
| is the "us" whose unfiltered work/speech/views have always
| been guaranteed a platform?
| grej wrote:
| I think (hope) everyone would agree that antisemitism and
| racism have no place in the world. And it's easy not to care
| when you earnestly believe the ends justify the means.
|
| But in practice, the risk is that these labels will be applied
| much more liberally by self-interested parties precisely
| because they are unquestionably bad and hard to refute. If
| power hungry forces have access to a weapon which can be used
| to shut down discourse with no due process, it will most
| assuredly be used and create undesirable outcomes.
|
| IMO we should all take issue with the ability of a small
| oligopoly to take these actions without any legal due process
| or recourse. History shows us that this kind of power without
| restriction in the hands of very few will lead to abuses.
| qez wrote:
| > Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for
| people with those views to meet, organize and share their
| views? Crack on.
|
| No, they should not be doing that. It shouldn't even be legal
| for Silicon Valley to do that. I don't care that you describe
| the people being censored as having negative traits, that is
| your political opinion.
| pc86 wrote:
| Why shouldn't it be legal? What right do you have to say to
| AWS "you have to host my website?"
|
| I am a free speech absolutist but that doesn't mean you have
| a right to force others to endorse, host, or amplify your
| speech. Just that you shouldn't go to jail for it.
| neilwilson wrote:
| That's fine when there are alternatives. The fact that
| Parler isn't back online shows that there is an oligopoly
| in place. The point of the first amendment in the first
| place was to stop those with overwhelming political power
| preventing those they didn't like from speaking.
|
| What this entire episode has shown is that capitalism's
| ability to offer alternatives is being stymied by network
| effects. In the USA that used to bring out the Anti-Trust
| big stick.
|
| Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have
| breached legislation passed by the country and has been
| found guilty of that in a court of law after due process.
|
| It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is
| innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which
| are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
| pc86 wrote:
| AWS has alternatives in 1) Azure; 2) GCP; 3) Any number
| of smaller VPS providers; 4) self-hosted infrastructure;
| 5) co-location, which sometimes (often?) has different
| requirements compared to virtualization re: content.
|
| > _The fact that Parler isn 't back online shows that
| there is an oligopoly in place._
|
| It shows that they have mediocre-at-best technical talent
| in place, which isn't all that surprising given the
| content and target market.
|
| > _Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have
| breached legislation passed by the country and has been
| found guilty of that in a court of law after due
| process._
|
| This may be what you want, but it's not reality so I
| wouldn't frame it as a definitive fact like this.
|
| > _It 's not just free speech that is at issue here._
|
| It's not a free speech issue at all. Free speech means
| you can't be jailed or persecuted _by the government_ for
| your speech.
|
| > _It is innocent until proven guilty and due process._
|
| You're conflating a misunderstanding of Constitutional
| rights with criminal law. Due process is 100% irrelevant.
| qez wrote:
| > AWS has alternatives
|
| Yes, but we are seeing collusion
|
| > It's not a free speech issue at all
|
| Yes, it is.
|
| > Free speech means you can't be jailed or persecuted by
| the government for your speech.
|
| This is incorrect. You are confusing free speech with the
| 1st amendment.
|
| The first amendment is the law that says the government
| cannot suppress your free speech. Free speech is not
| synonymous with that.
|
| > Due process is 100% irrelevant
|
| It is relevant to the extent that tech companies are
| operating as quasi governmental entities.
| Closi wrote:
| > It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is
| innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of
| which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
|
| Due process is inefficient and slow compared to letting
| unelected mega-corps determine what other businesses can
| exist and what speech can and can't be heard.
|
| Imagine how awful a system with a 'burden-of-proof' and
| 'oversight' would be compared to just trusting the
| invisible hand of the market and profit motives determine
| the optimum course of action! Adam Smith proved that it
| would all work out fine anyway - there was a graph with
| some curves that proved it I think.
|
| Now if only we had a way to merge all these mega-
| companies into one, bigger super-mega-corp. Imagine how
| much better that would be! Hopefully over time with
| market consolidation we can achieve anything.
| leshow wrote:
| I think the argument is that the fact these services
| represent a monopoly that means they shouldn't have
| absolute power on who gets to use their platform.
| pc86 wrote:
| The world is better without Parler, and it will be better if
| the most vicious from that platform have trouble finding
| megaphones for their atrocious speech.
|
| _Buuuuuut_ I hope the larger community takes this as a
| cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single
| entities - whether that 's AWS, or Facebook, or even larger
| entities such as "Silicon Valley" that are grouped by ideology
| - that you may agree with today, but not tomorrow.
| [deleted]
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Well the lesson here is that you shouldn't build your castles
| on other people's land. None of this is new. Sex sites have
| had this problem for decades. Cannabis companies can't use
| popular payment providers. If there's really a lucrative
| market on AWS for Extremists, then the market will provide.
| Closi wrote:
| > Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a
| cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single
| entities
|
| Great, now what's that technology that lets my domain be
| split between two entities again so I can't get deplatformed?
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Buy two domains? Host your own DNS server. Use Tor.
|
| There's plenty of ways to get around supposed censorship,
| rightly or wrongly.
|
| You don't need AWS.
| Closi wrote:
| Ok, so the barrier to entry to building a business is now
| that I need to get all my customers to be aware of two
| domains, get all my customers to use Tor and to host my
| own DNS (presumably in a makeshift datacenter in my
| bedroom?).
|
| Great, thanks.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Yeah, if what you're doing means that no private business
| wants to do business with you then the bar to doing what
| you're doing is higher. Fine by me.
| valvar wrote:
| Just remember to not complain if eventually the tables are
| turned and your preferred political team is getting this
| treatment.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I absolutely will complain. As parler's members are doing
| now.
|
| Nobody is saying they have no right to speech. AWS is just
| saying they don't have the right to speech on their turf.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| People on the left (and right) have been booted off platforms
| for years, so I don't know about "eventually".
| valvar wrote:
| The systematic suppression through denial of critical
| infrastructure is pretty novel, though.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Is it? I don't think so.
|
| On the contrary, people have generally been smart enough
| to not do business with companies that won't want to do
| business with them (for example, nobody is really sure
| where the various [\d]chans are hosted, and Pornhub self-
| hosts). There are any number of actually competent people
| on the left, the right and orthogonal to politics that
| aren't visibly getting denied "critical infrastructure"
| because they simply knew better than to use it in the
| first place; what we are really witnessing is rather
| entitled people realising they're not guaranteed a ready-
| made popular platform (whether for an individual's speech
| or for an app's deployment). The lack of guarantee of a
| platform itself is far from news.
| watwut wrote:
| The fact is, right wing is present on Twitter, Facebook,
| reddit just fine.
|
| What is not present are their radical wings, which were
| kicked away just like leftist violent radicals.
| Difference is that at least so far, mainstream left is ok
| with those being kicked.
| [deleted]
| AaronM wrote:
| Honest Question. At what point do service providers like AWS
| become utilities? Should they?
| jredwards wrote:
| ISPs, plausibly. But that's because physical infrastructure is
| such an important component. It's the same reason you generally
| only have a single choice for an ISP. THAT's the problem there,
| and that's why there's a good argument for ISPs to be
| utilities, and why net neutrality is so important.
|
| Hosting and domain registration are commoditized services. If
| one doesn't want to do business with you (or vice versa) there
| are thousands of other options.
| chasing wrote:
| There's an interesting debate to be had about all of this, but
| this Glenn Greenwald article ain't it.
| dang wrote:
| Threads are currently paginated for performance reasons (yes
| we're working on it) so you need to click More at the bottom of
| the thread to get to the rest of the comments--or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=3
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=4
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25747659&p=5
| kemitchell wrote:
| Does AWS monopolize cloud services?
|
| The complaint Parler filed in its lawsuit against AWS cites 30%
| market share. It also mentions they've been unable to find
| another hosting company, though it doesn't go into why. The
| antitrust claim wasn't that AWS cut them off. That was the
| _breach of contract_ claim. The antitrust claim was based on
| allegations that AWS and Twitter just did a multi-year cloud
| deal, and conspired to shut Parler down. Section 1
| anticompetitive conduct claim. IIRC, the relevant market was
| microblogging, not cloud infra.
|
| The Nadler Committee report Glenn cites puts AWS at 24% of US
| spend and "close to half" of global spend on cloud services. US
| courts don't typically find "market power" below 50% in the
| relevant market. The concept of abusing "dominant position",
| mentioned over and over in the report, comes from European
| competition law, not US antitrust law.
|
| Anecdotally, I use cloud services and I don't use AWS at all
| anymore. As an attorney who advises on terms of service for cloud
| services, I'd also expect every major cloud platform has broad
| "acceptable use" or similar terms that let them refuse or
| terminate customers that cause more problems---law enforcement
| requests, law suits, marketing crises---than they're worth.
|
| A number of my cloud clients rack their own iron. Others
| intentionally seek out providers and services with permissive or
| aligned activist reputations. Those services often cost more,
| both because they're smaller and because they deal with more
| warrants, lawsuits, DMCA takedowns, &c. &c. &c. I personally
| prefer to patronize smaller, upstart providers. Which is only
| possible if you don't bite the hooks---k8s, vendor-specific APIs,
| and so on.
| franklampard wrote:
| eeewwww
| romellem wrote:
| There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.
|
| Read the letter [AWS sent them][1]. This isn't AWS punishing a
| corporation for having different political views, this is AWS not
| taking on the risk that their infra contributes to violent acts.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I read it and Amazon said they found 98 posts across serval
| weeks that were related to violence and the included screen
| shots showed very little engagement with those posts. I read
| that Parler had 2.3 million DAU in December. Feels like weak
| sauce from Amazon, but I do get their objection to the CEOs
| moderation comment.
| monocasa wrote:
| They gave 98 examples, and Parlor refused to moderate those
| examples even when they were specifically pointed out by
| Amazon.
|
| It's not that they could only find those examples.
|
| And among those examples were specific calls to bomb AWS data
| centers.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Parler said in its lawsuit they did address everything
| Amazon raised. My point was the small number against the
| large user base. BTW, that bomb post had 0,0,0 which I
| assume is retweeets, up votes, and down votes. Amazon
| looked over several weeks and that was the best they could
| find?
| monocasa wrote:
| It's not that Amazon was able to find these comments,
| it's that they had looked for examples, given those
| examples to Parler, and even that low barrier for
| moderation wasn't reached after a normal amount of time.
| As in 'here's specific examples of what you agree clearly
| need moderation, and are calling for terrorist attacks on
| our (Amazon)'s infratstructure, you (Parler) still
| haven't taken down days later'.
|
| > It's our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers
| to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will
| not work in light of the rapidly growing number of
| violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact
| that you still have not taken down much of the content
| that we've sent you.
|
| They sent the examples well before they sent the final
| letter, gave Parler plenty of time, and Parler refused to
| even moderate under those extremely generous
| circumstances.
| zefool wrote:
| I understand parent to say that Parler claims they _did_
| moderate in all those cases.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Yup, in its lawsuit Parler said..."AWS knew its
| allegations contained in the letter it leaked to the
| press that Parler was not able to find and remove content
| that encouraged violence was false because over the last
| few days Parler had removed everything AWS had brought to
| its attention and more. Yet AWS sought to defame Parler
| nonetheless."
|
| https://www.scribd.com/document/490405156/Parler-sues-
| Amazon
| monocasa wrote:
| They say all of that including using the term defame, but
| then don't assert a claim of defamation.
|
| That's legal code for "we're pulling this out of our
| ass".
| mindvirus wrote:
| I still don't know what to think about this.
|
| On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy
| theories, radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's
| gone, and it took far too long to deal with it. And just like I
| wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS recruitment site,
| I don't really see any loss here.
|
| On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not
| we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but shouldn't
| we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| Overall it feels like a legislative failure - in an ideal world,
| we have laws applied even handedly to deal with this. But in the
| absence of political will for these laws, what should be done? I
| think we are better off without Parler, but how can we do that in
| an even handed and consistent way?
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| No one cried like this when Stormfront was taken down. These
| "Libertarian" Ayn Rand type morons just dressed up the white
| supremacy in a hipster tie and beard and suddenly its all about
| free speech.
| whateveracct wrote:
| seriously - Parler just slapped some SV branding on it all,
| and now they get to tap into the average HNer's contrarianism
| to garner their support.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't think it's inconsistent to simultaneously believe:
|
| * _In general_ , tech companies should be less powerful and
| monopolistic.
|
| * _In this specific case_ , the tech companies used the power
| they have in a way that is overall beneficial to society.
|
| Trump incited a violent insurrection on the US Capitol. If
| Senators and Representatives had not successfully escaped
| through tunnels before the rioters got to them, some of them
| would be dead. The fact that Trump is still in office after
| that shows that the US absolutely does not have a functioning
| legislative branch to check Trump's executive power.
|
| In the absence of that, we need _some_ entity powerful enough
| to push back against rising fascism and authoritarianism. I don
| 't like that that power apparently has to be a handful of tech
| giant companies, but I'll take that (temporarily at least) over
| the US becoming a right-wing dictatorship.
| codekilla wrote:
| This seems fair.
|
| > the US absolutely does not have a functioning legislative
| branch
|
| I'm more concerned by this than anything else. In effect this
| results in calcified government, which can neither regulate
| tech companies (or anything) effectively, or serve as a check
| on executive power. People need to start moving to Wyoming
| and Alaska, yeah the weather sucks.....but we need to
| redefine 'civic duty'.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| It's like a newspaper, with editors deciding which letters to
| the editor to publish or not. Tech companies are really media
| companies, it's just that we don't consume dead trees anymore.
| dboreham wrote:
| As opposed to billionaires like Rupert Murdoch?
| Moodles wrote:
| > On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy
| theories, radicalization and racism.
|
| This is a question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence
| at all that Parler had more "hate" than Twitter, etc.?
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| It's hard to quantify, but I can provide an example of a
| specific post that likely wouldn't have stayed up on twitter:
|
| "Everyone said Pence sold out!!! Time to enter the capitol.
| Go patriots. Echo and enter the building dont let them vote.
| Put pressure. We are riding in!!! Echo big"
|
| 66 comments, 301 echoes (i.e. retweets), 375 upvotes (i.e.
| likes)
|
| There's a torrent of Parler posts that is being analyzed, so
| there may be better conclusions published soon:
| https://parler-archive.deadops.de/parler_2020-01-06_posts-
| pa...
|
| That said, I still don't support taking down a site because
| there's no moderation. These people won't go away; I wonder
| if decentralized/p2p technologies will see more adoption by
| the radical right for this reason.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| > I wonder if decentralized/p2p technologies will see more
| adoption by the radical right for this reason.
|
| It seems as though there is in inverse relationship between
| ease of use and centralization (obviously). As
| communication becomes decentralized, the ability to accrue
| a large audience becomes more difficult. This supports the
| rise of ideas that can gain widespread support on their
| merit, as opposed to gaining widespread support via having
| a mass audience to start with.
|
| To illustrate: on one side, we have a centralized extreme:
| Twitter (or Reddit, or Facebook). On the other side we have
| a decentralized extreme: spoken word. Which is easier to
| radicalize a country with?
|
| If extremists move to decentralized or p2p alternatives to
| social media, they will shrink in the long run, letting the
| fringe ideas remain on the fringe.
|
| If all social media went the way of decentralization, we
| would see far less extremism in general, simply because
| most people wouldn't go looking for it and it's pretty hard
| to spread extremist ideas in a one-on-one conversation.
| MrMan wrote:
| Yes the big problem is mom and pop becoming infected with
| this hate so now what was radical a couple if years ago
| is now literally mainstream.
| kofejnik wrote:
| This is still on Twitter:
|
| "On September 17, 2020 we will lay siege to The @WhiteHouse
| for exactly fifty days.
|
| We need your wisdom and expertise to pull off a radically
| democratic toneshift in our politics.
|
| Are you ready for #revolution?
|
| This is the #WhiteHouseSiege"
|
| https://twitter.com/adbusters/status/1288193793267625984
| Moodles wrote:
| Right. So a somewhat rough analysis would be: sample a
| range of "average" tweets on both platform and somehow
| aggregate an average "hate" value.
|
| What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a
| right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate"
| will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning
| platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be
| generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about storming
| the capitol isn't good evidence that Twitter is better.
| Because, for exmaple, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would
| be left alone on Twitter but moderated in Parler. Perhaps
| some ML bot can quantity sentiment of tweets.
| evgen wrote:
| Others have mentioned it, but there is a multi-TB dump of
| parler posts and videos out there if you feel like digging.
| In addition to the widely recognized fact that hate speech
| and outright calls to political violence were tolerated on
| Parler we have evidence that what little moderation did exist
| on the platform was dedicated towards suppressing dissenting
| opinions and reinforcing the Trump viewpoint. As an absolute
| number Parler probably had fewer objectionable messages, but
| they were a much larger percentage of the whole and unlike on
| Twitter there was no moderation that was preventing them from
| being distributed.
| reddog wrote:
| Good question. Normally I would try to figure this out for
| myself by logging on to Parler and taking a look. But Tim
| Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey and Mark
| Zuckerberg have decided that I can't be trusted to do that --
| I could become a Nazi or Qanon nutter and try to violently
| overthrow the government.
|
| I really dodged a bullet. Thank God for our tech overlords
| and their new Ministry of Truth. I can now sleep easy knowing
| that they are busy scouring the rest of the internet and it's
| marketplace of ideas for more doubleplusbadthink from which
| to shield me.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I believe that once any social media site gets big enough
| people with radical and violent views show up. It's
| unavoidable. Some of them are just trolls and troublemakers.
| The real question becomes how they deal with those people.
| Parler already had a moderation policy in-place, but to be
| fair they are a growing company that experienced an absolute
| surge of new users. Twitter is a fully mature company with
| much more moderation in place. Even still, you can find a ton
| of calls for violence on Twitter by blue checkmark people and
| nothing ever seems to come from that.
|
| Just because radical things are posted on your website
| doesn't mean all the discourse on the site is bad and your
| site should be deplatformed. We already apply that standard
| to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and others.
|
| As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually
| stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs outside
| of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to coordinate
| and not Parler.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Parler already had a moderation policy in-place
|
| A policy that was FAR more relaxed than any of their
| competitors, which was by design and part of their
| marketing pitch: come here to say those things you're not
| allowed to say elsewhere.
|
| Parler's position is: unless the language is _strictly_
| illegal according to the letter of the law that 's designed
| limit _government_ censorship of speech, then it 's
| allowed.
|
| By that definition, if I call for someone's death, unless I
| have the means and the opportunity and mention a specific
| time, then it doesn't count and the post stays up.
|
| Clearly Amazon, Google, and Apple have policies that are
| more strict than US law. And that makes sense: US law is
| shaped by the constitution, which is meant to restrict the
| _government 's_ ability to limit speech. And we should
| absolutely want the rules regarding government censorship
| to be as narrow as possible.
|
| But private services are free to operate by different
| rules.
|
| For example, if I walk into a McDonalds and start swearing
| at all the customers, I'll get kicked out even if I'm not
| breaking the letter of the law.
|
| So, did they have a moderation policy? Yes, technically.
| But did that policy allow extremist and violent language to
| persist on their site at a level above and beyond what's
| seen on any competing platform outside of, say, 8chan?
| Absolutely.
|
| > As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually
| stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs
| outside of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to
| coordinate and not Parler.
|
| And Facebook would pull that content down if they found it.
|
| Parler won't.
|
| That's what got them pulled from AWS, and the Google and
| Apple app stores.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Facebook for a long time refused to remove holocaust
| denial. What do you think about that?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Holocaust Denial is not inciting violence? While
| distasteful, it's not illegal in the U.S.
|
| Facebook ultimately started removing Holocaust denial
| content because it violated their harassment policy, not
| because it was illegal.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Facebook for a long time refused to remove holocaust
| denial. What do you think about that?
|
| I think it's a non-sequitur.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "But private services are free to operate by different
| rules."
|
| But that's just it, isn't it? Parler tried to make a new
| service that plays by a new set of rules. And they were
| crushed, because it turns out that you actually can't
| have your own rules unless you are already at the scale
| of Apple, AWS, etc.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yes. If I try to run a business selling klan robes, and
| word gets out, I might find I no longer have any willing
| fabric suppliers.
|
| That's not an infringement on my rights, that's the free
| market at work
| chmod600 wrote:
| I didn't say it was illegal or an infringement of
| Constitutional rights. But it is pretty worrying.
|
| Before this, the power was somewhat theoretical and used
| in tiny marginal cases. Now, it's proven that they can
| effectively exercise the power in a major way, and that's
| news.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Now, it's proven that they can effectively exercise the
| power in a major way, and that's news.
|
| Honestly, it's really not. We've seen groups like ISIS
| kicked off social media, for example, and no one blinked
| an eye. Heck, Milo Yiannopoulos was deplatformed way back
| in 2016.
|
| The thing that's news is that a significant percentage of
| a major US political party is now associated with a form
| of right wing extremism and wrapped up in a major
| conspiracy theory movement whose adherents are willing to
| commit violence in an attempt to subvert an election.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > But that's just it, isn't it? Parler tried to make a
| new service that plays by a new set of rules. And they
| were crushed, because it turns out that you actually
| can't have your own rules unless you are already at the
| scale of Apple, AWS, etc.
|
| That's not at all true. If I recall the same thing
| happened to 8chan/8kun. Yet somehow they live on. If
| Parler has a market, they'll find a way.
|
| That said, it sucks but, well, that's capitalism for ya.
|
| What else would you suggest? Regulating these various
| companies such that the government gets to decide who can
| use their services?
|
| Because if so, a) that would require new laws, b) it'd
| probably fall afoul of the first amendment, and c) it
| doesn't seem to align well with free market conservative
| ideology, and so should be opposed by the very users of
| Parler that are being affected by this.
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| The following link contains a racial slur in the text of a
| screenshot - you probably don't want to open it at work.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/ktwmje/this_is.
| .. is a concrete example of speech that would be banned from
| Twitter and Facebook. I think it's telling that there are 25k
| up votes.
| Moodles wrote:
| You have provided an exmaple (I assume, I didn't click the
| link because I have a productivity blocker which I
| obviously need to update for Hacker News, lol) of a bad
| thing on one platform, but not another. But ok, are there
| vice versa examples?
|
| What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a
| right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate"
| will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning
| platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be
| generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about e.g.
| storming the Capitol being banned on Twitter but not Parler
| isn't good evidence that Twitter is better. Because, for
| example, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would be left alone
| on Twitter but censored on Parler. Perhaps some ML bot can
| quantity sentiment of tweets. That's the kind of evidence I
| would like to see.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It perfectly valid for you to dismiss my account as anecdotal
| because admittedly that's all it is.
|
| But man, wow. I joined Parler several months ago and that's
| literally all my default feed was -- various flavors of right
| wing rage. Not all was violent or racist. Some were verified
| celebrities and right wing politicians; those tended to be
| rather mild.
|
| But typing various slurs or words like "shoot" or "hang" into
| the search box returned some eye-watering results.
|
| The difference between it and Twitter was _not_ subtle.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The relevant question is about Twitter/FB at a similar
| development stage. Now, they have all kinds of moderation
| algorithms and employees, so it's not really a fair
| comparison.
| eximius wrote:
| 1. Probably. Take a look at some of the Parker dumps before
| it was shut down. Calls for death squads weren't couched in
| metaphor. 2. Even if not, Twitter, as much as I loathe it,
| also has many non-hateful users. Parler was a haven for alt-
| right extremism.
| dionidium wrote:
| Anybody who has ever talked about housing on Twitter or
| Facebook knows that pictures of Mao and guillotines
| frequently accompany calls to kill all landlords (just to
| take one example I'm familiar with).
|
| Are these legitimate calls to violence? Or just jokey
| memes? Is there a difference? Who decides that? In what
| sense do these posts not demonstrate support for political
| violence?
| xref wrote:
| Replace "landlords" with "black people" and ask the same
| questions. Report the posts.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dageshi wrote:
| In the case of Parler, it turned out that yes, the calls
| to violence were real and not jokes.
|
| You might say all these platforms previously gave Parler
| the benefit of the doubt and then were faced with
| incontrovertible evidence that Parler was facilitating
| political violence.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > This is a question in good faith. Can you provide any
| evidence at all that Parler had more "hate" than Twitter,
| etc.?
|
| The problem isn't just that they had more, though logic would
| suggest they did; after all, their user base are refugees
| from other platforms that pushed them out for extremist
| language, advocating for violence, conspiracy theories, etc.
|
| It's that Parler refused to remove it.
|
| So even if the rate of introduction of this content was the
| same on Parler (which I don't buy for a second, see argument
| above), the total concentration and visibility of it is
| higher because it's not taken down.
| idunno246 wrote:
| i imagine twitter has more in absolute terms, just due to
| the relative size of the two sites. I think the major
| difference is worse than just refusing to remove it, Parler
| advertised itself as the place where you can say things
| that most sites would moderate away, it actively encouraged
| it, so as a percentage it was much larger
| [deleted]
| Applejinx wrote:
| This is another question in good faith. Can you provide any
| evidence at all that you're not knowingly asking that as a
| political/debating tactic to suggest your proposition is
| reasonable, knowing full well that the purpose of Parler's
| existence is (was) to facilitate communication that larger
| social networks stifle, and categorize as hate speech?
|
| I think it's very interesting that you lead off citing good
| faith in a situation where, in my experience, you're about to
| demonstrate literal bad faith. It's like you wish to take off
| the table the interpretation that you are intentionally lying
| for the sake of argument.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Tu quoque; it seems uncharitable of you to respond to a
| "question in good faith" by immediately accusing them of
| bad faith and of lying, and asking them to prove their
| innocence by proving a negative.
|
| I think the parent raises a very legitimate question of
| what defines a "hate site, filled with conspiracy theories,
| radicalization and racism." I've never had a Twitter
| account myself, but some of the publicly-available content
| I've seen there there certainly fits that description.
| Conversely, I did briefly have a Parler account, and what I
| saw in my particular bubble did not fit that description at
| all - It was crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and
| comedians. I'm not trying to imply that my anecdote is data
| or that Parler is some bastion of positivity, but the way
| your premise is stated only requires a single
| counterexample: _some_ "hate speech" exists on Twitter, and
| not _everything_ on Parler is.
|
| You say, "the purpose of Parler's existence is (was) to
| facilitate communication that larger social networks
| stifle." To me that sounds like the old adage that "the
| Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around
| it." At least five years ago that was largely seen as a
| feature rather than a bug. But recently the tide of popular
| opinion seems to have shifted in general favor of
| censorship. Undeniably there are some bad ideas out there,
| but I worry that the "cure" of censorship is a slippery
| slope that could very quickly become worse than the
| disease.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| God forbid anyone wants to discuss anything "that the
| larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate
| speech". Anyone that expresses such a desire is guilty of
| hate speech and must be silenced.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > that larger social networks stifle, and categorize as
| hate speech?
|
| Let me fix that:
|
| > that multiple countries and international organizations
| categorize as hate speech?
|
| A casual reminder that when most think these open air rules
| are intended to stifle conversation it is generally for
| very clear legal and moral reasons. If you believe this is
| used by them to control people then you should also believe
| that a replacement should view this speech as antithetical
| to the existence of the free speech social company.
|
| It's one thing to ban talk about the platform you are
| talking on.
|
| It's not the same thing to ban intolerant behavior.
|
| It all leads back to this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| sickofparadox wrote:
| I've seen this argument so many times, and it always
| strikes me that those who cite it often have either not
| read, or completely miss the point Karl Popper was trying
| to make. He goes so far as to even say: "I do not imply,
| for instance, that we should always suppress the
| utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can
| counter them by rational argument and keep them in check
| by public opinion, suppression would certainly be
| unwise." I am quite sick of the usage of the paradox of
| tolerance being used as an attack against a free,
| pluralistic society.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Clearly you didn't quote the rest of that exact line for
| a reason.
|
| He goes on to explain what situation would call for use
| of suppression, for example, the use of violence or
| rejecting reason or logic by the intolerant (Which,
| obviously both are what happened in January 6th and in
| this narrative) ;)
|
| The ban isn't on conservative viewpoints, it is on
| intolerant speech that has no want to make a logical
| discussion and resorts to violence. Trust me, I'm using
| it correctly.
| kofejnik wrote:
| Banning intolerant behavior means that whoever screams
| 'Intolerance!' the loudest wins
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The funny thing about intolerance is that it's pretty
| easy to define:
|
| Unwillingness to accept(or tolerate) views, beliefs, or
| behavior that differ from one's own.
|
| When we talk about intolerant behavior we are talking
| about actions and statements that are intended to demean
| others by design (and praise the inverse), this is pretty
| easy to define. Saying that a person's skin color or
| gender makes them lesser or to be despised is clearly
| intolerant, the person in context is clearly unable to
| change this as it is how they are. Whats funny about this
| is that the US Bill of rights is a statement on
| intolerance by design. It's meant to both give rights but
| also set tone.
| [deleted]
| Moodles wrote:
| > This is another question in good faith. Can you provide
| any evidence at all that you're not knowingly asking that
| as a political/debating tactic to suggest your proposition
| is reasonable, knowing full well that the purpose of
| Parler's existence is (was) to facilitate communication
| that larger social networks stifle, and categorize as hate
| speech?
|
| Maybe something is lost over text, but I genuinely prefaced
| my question because I know it's a delicate political topic
| for people. But your response is just childish. I literally
| barely know anything about Parler. Also, how is asking for
| evidence so triggering? That should be the cornerstone of
| any these types of discussions.
|
| But to answer your question: No, I can't prove to you what
| I'm thinking. Nobody ever can. So perhaps you should just
| take my question on face value and stop assuming malicious
| intent.
| neither_color wrote:
| So the answer is no. In that case let me answer for you
| while you have your moment of outrage. A hacker named
| donk_enby made a back up that will soon be available for
| researchers to answer just this question. We will be able
| to look at this data set and see if Parler incites more
| violence both in absolute numbers and in percentage terms.
| My best guess is that twitter/has has more calls to
| violence in absolute terms because it is several times
| larger and has been around for several years. They have a
| large moderation team but they're not as responsive in all
| languages. In percentage terms, that can't be answered yet
| without looking at the data. https://www.usatoday.com/story
| /tech/news/2021/01/11/parler-h...
| [deleted]
| grumple wrote:
| How is this different from any other moderation?
|
| Nobody would bat an eye if you were banned from HN or reddit
| for hate speech. Why should a platform be any different? If my
| customer started using my services to spread Nazism, I'd ban
| them too. Let's say I was a baker - would it be reasonable that
| I be compelled to draw swastikas on cakes? Obviously, that's
| absurd! It is equally absurd to demand that other businesses
| provide platforms for behavior they don't condone.
|
| Freedom of speech is freedom from oppression by government.
| Parler isn't being oppressed, they just aren't being given a
| platform to oppress others by private citizens and
| corporations. Well, not anymore, although lots of corps made
| some money from them while they could.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| I think the issue is that the town square that the first is
| supposed to protect doesn't exist anymore. The town square is
| now Twitter, and valid or not, the de-platforming of a lot of
| conservatives is going to have a lasting backlash against
| tech companies.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to see GOP resurgence in 2022, along
| with another very real attack on section 230.
| dleslie wrote:
| With the town square metaphor: while you cannot be
| prosecuted for what you say in the square, you can be
| persecuted by your civilian peers; folks may stop speaking
| to you, or begin informing others of your nature.
|
| Twitter et al booting persons from their services is the
| neighbour slamming their door in your face, or the baker
| refusing to do business with you.
|
| The town square is tcp/ip, not the services on top of it.
| mullen wrote:
| Twitter is not the town square since real town squares are
| owned by the State. They are public spaces for all and, let
| me point out, that you usually need a permit to speak or
| have a rally. So they are not that free as everyone thinks.
|
| Twitter is more like a mall owned by a large corporation
| and while there is some trouble there, they will kick
| people off the property that are too offensive. If you try
| to start an insurrection at a mall, you will be kicked out
| and banned.
|
| It is in Twitters and mall owners best interest to start
| insurrections on their properties because there will be
| ramifications for allowing that to happen, that is not good
| for business.
| nullc wrote:
| Because part of the justification for sloppy and capricious
| banning without anything resembling due process is that
| you're free to go elsewhere.
|
| This justification doesn't work if elsewhere is shut down
| too.
| jquery wrote:
| I've been using Parler since June to discuss fairly mainstream
| views and talk about day to day life on a Twitter alternative.
| This week that option was taken away from me, without due
| process for me or the company in question. The alleged
| violations were nothing I hadn't seen on Twitter, except
| Twitter regularly hosts even worse content, but I guess it has
| enough important people using it to crush alternatives on shaky
| claims and spotty evidence.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Freedom of speech doesn't aim to protect speech that is 'nice'.
| evgen wrote:
| Freedom of speech aims to protect speech from government
| suppression, not from societal norms or the consequences of
| that speech in the marketplace.
| zajio1am wrote:
| The pivotal book about freedom of speech, 'On Liberty' from
| J. S. Mill, is predominantly interested in freedom from
| societal suppression, not just government suppression:
| "Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at
| first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as
| operating through the acts of the public authorities. But
| reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself
| the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate
| individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannising are
| not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of
| its political functionaries. Society can and does execute
| its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead
| of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it
| ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more
| formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since,
| though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it
| leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply
| into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
| Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the
| magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also
| against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling;
| against the tendency of society to impose, by other means
| than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules
| of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the
| development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of
| any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel
| all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its
| own."
| evgen wrote:
| Mill may be the most passionate philosopher to defend
| this maximalist interpretation of free speech, but he is
| hopelessly out of date. Mill was a proponent of the
| 'marketplace of ideas' delusion that has been shown over
| the past few decades to be an illusion; Mill seems to
| think that knowledge, and only knowledge, emerges from
| arguments between dedicated opponents. These quaint bon
| mots from twee English gentlemen of the Victorian period
| are about as relevant to modern life as are their
| opinions about medicine, hygiene, education, and the role
| of women. Interesting as a historical artifact but not
| for much more.
| hertzrat wrote:
| You are saying that social censure is no longer something
| that humans need to worry about. That the concept of is a
| free exchange of ideas is antiquated, and that the
| principle of letting people learn from their debates was
| only valid a hundred years ago? All because of some tech
| algorithms?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This book had no bearing on the First Amendment's
| conception of freedom of speech, seeing as how it was
| written several decades after the formation of the U.S.
|
| This book may have been pivotal to British
| utilitarianists, but it didn't have much, if any, impact
| on the U.S.
| zajio1am wrote:
| The thread is not about First Amendment, as a specific
| legal protection, but about general societal principle of
| freedom of speech.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Which has its foundations in the First Amendment...
|
| Before then, "free speech" as a concept did not exist.
| (The closest was the freedom of religious practice, which
| is not the same thing.)
| hertzrat wrote:
| No, it does not. Free speech is a principle of political
| philosophy. The United States founders did not invent it
| throwaway829 wrote:
| As an ex-Scientologist it saddens me that I have to tell
| HN readers this, but please read "On liberty" which
| explains why censorship is a flawed approach.
| flyingfences wrote:
| > Before then, "free speech" as a concept did not exist.
|
| Now _that_ is a heavy claim to be making. Do you have
| anything to back it up?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| History itself?
|
| Before the U.S., nobody even thought free speech was
| possible. England was the closest, but their version of
| free speech was still subject to government censorship.
|
| It was the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the Bill
| of Rights in particular, that established the doctrine
| that is today known as "freedom of speech."
| jumby wrote:
| I saw a great analogy on Twitter: Imagine Twitter as the
| anti-homosexual cake shop and Q-Anon/Trump/Radical Right as
| the couple who want a cake for their gay wedding.
| Steltek wrote:
| Are people born "QAnon"? If you consider yourself
| moderate, are you Bi? Am I cis-liberal?
|
| I think this analogy needs a lot of work.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Tolerance for the intolerant is a virtue? There need to
| be boundaries on destructive behavior. One scenario isn't
| substantively harming society.
| jumby wrote:
| Not at all. The hypocrisy is that the same folks who
| cheered the Supreme Court cake ruling are now wanting AWS
| to bake them a cake.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Why is this a great analogy?
|
| Specifically, how does banning people for their actions
| work well as an analogy for banning someone for who they
| are (and you _must_ take that for granted, because that
| 's the legal frameworks opinions on the matter)?
|
| That's also an even worse example because the supreme
| court found in favor of the cake shop.
| evgen wrote:
| I think it is the reverse. If a baker can't be forced to
| bake a rainbow cake (for members of a protected class)
| then AWS most certainly cannot be forced to provide
| service to people espousing violent political action (not
| a protected class.)
| dionian wrote:
| > Parler was a hate site,
|
| What evidence do you base this on? Do you have evidence
| quantifying how Parler users are more hateful than Twitter or
| Facebook?
| newacct583 wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech
|
| Yes? I mean, look where you're posting. HN is very heavily
| moderated. Check out dang's post history for all the work he
| has to do. HN has very clear ideas on what speech is
| "acceptable" and what is not, and they are significantly more
| complicated than the "don't incite political violence" standard
| being enforced against Parler.
|
| I mean, really. Parler failed to clear even the simplest, most
| straightforward, most consensus- and norm-driven ideals of how
| public discourse is supposed to work. And they didn't really
| get "moderated" any harder than any of us would have.
|
| Yet we still have to rally behind them as the standard-bearer
| for megacorp censorship? Really? Can't we wait for at least a
| tiny bit of evidence that they're misusing their power first?
| f430 wrote:
| > Parler was a hate site
|
| Have you seen Twitter, Reddit? It's filled with hate,
| conspiracy, radicalization and racism.
|
| It's astounding how quickly people fall back to their dfault
| political leanings and stop being objective.
|
| If they can do this to Parler citing politically motivated
| excuse to shut them down, what stops your company from getting
| booted off the internet because some of your users posted "lets
| blow stuff up"?
|
| This sets a dangerous precedent going forward and it affects
| all of us regardless of your political spectrum. I get that AWS
| is an independent commercial entity that has its own terms but
| do you realize the problem of trusting billionaires and their
| monopoly to always do the right thing?
|
| Tomorrow, the currents might change, and it could be you too.
| First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
| because I was not a socialist....
| zmmmmm wrote:
| That's where I think people are missing the point to some
| extent. I'm taking on good faith what was reported by these
| companies - but their statements claimed they observed
| _actual_ concrete planning to organise _actual_ violence and
| further insurrection. Stopping speech is one thing. But the
| claim is it is not the speech they are worried about, it is
| the violence. The infrastructure is being used for more than
| speech. Removing the infrastructure is being done to impede
| those larger effects.
|
| Does it change the flavor if I rewrite the phrase as
| First they came for the murderers and I did not speak out ...
| ?
| f430 wrote:
| Facebook and Twitter has been used to organize violence and
| overthrow governments too.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I don't think an argument of consistency really works
| here. Sure that has happened. And possibly in those
| countries they suffered consequences for their part in
| that. That does not mean they should not apply those
| principles in the US, in this instance. All these things
| are context specific, driven by judgement taking into
| account the whole circumstances.
| f430 wrote:
| It kills the argument that Parler is exclusively used for
| organizing violence although the insurrection part is
| where they will have a lot of trouble with specifically
| because they chose the worst possible place.
| Animats wrote:
| Parler.com is down too. It's been removed from DNS. DNS server
| is EPIK.COM ("Resilient domains"). Their DNS server is
| returning 0.0.0.0, instead of NXDOMAIN. The domain is still on
| Verisign, and they don't seem to be doing anything to it.
| trianglem wrote:
| Epik.com the refuge of far-right, neo-nazi sites led by Rob
| Monster epik? Of course it is.
| Covzire wrote:
| Parler wasn't a hate site. You're parroting far left
| propaganda.
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| Here's a comment with a racial slur on Parler with 25k
| upvotes.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/ktwmje/this_is.
| ..
|
| IMO it's reasonable to consider it a hate site or a site
| which embraces racist behavior.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Comments that are acceptable on Parler: "Personally I'm
| hoping for war I'd love to crush leftist skulls and rip out
| their spines. Rally your soy boys. Your Pantifa and BLM
| wannabe gangsters. I'll bath myself is leftist blood and
| drink from your skullcaps."
|
| Comments that are unacceptable on Parler: Pretending to be a
| cow owned by Devin Nunes
| charly187 wrote:
| What makes you think the former is acceptable on Parler?
| Are there documented cases where something like that was
| reported and Parler refused to take it down?
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| You can go ahead and look at any of the 98 examples cited
| in Amazon's letter to Parler.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If you don't moderate that stuff you are going to be tarred
| by association. I don't know how you could avoid that.
| dogman144 wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| Putting aside questions around whether or not a media filter
| has always existed in some form...
|
| You're using social media hosted on EC2 instances that can be
| terminated vs instead of your local newspaper and other
| similar, less directly filtered options. That's the trade off.
| I don't really see anything unusual about it - a newspaper
| could fire a writer (or even hire writers that reflect a
| certain tone), and nobody batted an eye.
| liberal_098 wrote:
| _IF_ we proceed from the hypothesis that X is "a hate site,
| filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism"
|
| _AND_ we want to ban the whole platform X,
|
| _THEN_ it would be logical to ban also all the layers down the
| technological stack: AWS, Google Play Store, Telecoms that
| transported the traffic etc.
|
| Indeed, X platform has approximately the same responsibility as
| other platform layers and hence they all should be punished.
|
| Another idea is to punish them proportionally to their
| _ability_ to check the content published on the platform so
| that telecoms probably will not be punished at all because they
| are not able to read encrypted traffic.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Ban the least layers needed to achieve the goal. The layers
| closer to the violent speech get the most responsibility.
|
| If the next layer refuses to ban the previous layer, then
| yes: keep going after the next layer in the stack.
| dnh44 wrote:
| When it comes to issues like these I tend to agree with the
| sentiment of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend
| to the death your right to say it."
|
| But this isn't about criminalising speech promoting conspiracy
| theories, radicalisation, and racism. It's about private
| entities withdrawing the infrastructure of speech, which
| obviously gets a lot more complicated to reason about and
| legislate.
|
| I'm mostly okay with Apple and Google removing the app from
| their stores. I'm slightly less okay with Amazon withdrawing
| their services. But if Parler ends up reborn on a server
| running out of someones house or business I would be very much
| against their utility providers cutting off access.
|
| So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm with you and don't quite
| know what to think about this either.
|
| However I do worry that if we're not careful as a society
| someone posting on HN (or maybe a government approved Facebook
| group) will eventually say:
|
| >The internet was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories,
| radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's gone, and
| it took far too long to deal with it.
| glogla wrote:
| > When it comes to issues like these I tend to agree with the
| sentiment of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend
| to the death your right to say it."
|
| That approach, combined with filter bubbles and AI
| recommendations driving engagement/addiction, gave us rise of
| things like Antivax movement, Trump, QAnon and now an
| attempted coup in the US.
|
| We should probably think hard before we consider it the only
| possible approach.
|
| At the same time, saying "some speech actually isn't ok"
| doesn't mean that unaccountable monopolies of corporate
| overlords that wield more power than some nation states are
| ok. Both things can be true at the same time.
| dnh44 wrote:
| The root cause of the things you describe aren't free
| speech or filter bubbles.
|
| It's a lack of confidence and trust in our governments and
| corporations. The fact that those same governments and
| corporations own our media makes it even worse.
|
| I think criminalising unpopular speech will make the
| symptoms of this problem worse rather than better.
| glogla wrote:
| "Criminalizing unpopular speech" is a peculiar way to
| answer to "some speech might be harmful".
|
| Is sharing someone else's private information, publishing
| outright lies about safety of vaccines, or claiming some
| ethnicities or nationalities are subhuman and should be
| murdered right now "unpopular speech"?
|
| I mean, I sure as hell hope it is unpopular!
|
| But it is much more than just "unpopular speech". Framing
| it like "criminalizing unpopular speech" makes it sound
| like someone wants to criminalize saying "I think the
| Twilight series were genuinely good movies." but we're
| talking about people saying "All those <insert slur>
| should be killed."
|
| And yet, you are right that in some cases this happens -
| for example when some US states decided to solve problem
| of people complaining about animal cruelty by making
| filming on farms illegal. That's a complete bullshit and
| it is harmful to the society.
|
| But people who incite violence and Antivaxxers who
| actively hurt people by spreading diseases? I don't think
| so.
| esyir wrote:
| Let's put it a different way then. Imagine right wing
| dystopia where everything you value is considered bad. Now
| you try to discuss Gay rights. You can't talk about it on
| Facebook, nor on any platform, as they ban you instantly. You
| build your own platform. Aws/gcp/azure ban you there too and
| kill the whole thing. I'm going to go the next step. Now
| credit cards and other payment services refuse services as
| well.
|
| Are you supposed to rebuild the entire tech ecosystem that
| the entire world runs on? Fight through every damn moat along
| the way? Is this the bar we set here?
|
| Its easy to talk free speech for popular speech. It's how
| people react to unpopular speech that shows their true
| colours.
| ip26 wrote:
| The 1st means you can't be jailed by the government for
| discussing gay rights.
|
| It doesn't mean private individuals have to humor you. It
| doesn't even mean they have to listen to you.
| zaroth wrote:
| There are other laws than the 1st Amendment that come
| into play here.
|
| The 3 biggest technology companies in the world united in
| the last two days to shut down an upstart competitor who
| was, at the time, literally the #1 app on iPhone and
| Android.
|
| So the issue is primarily one of anti-trust laws.
| Monopolies do not get to arbitrarily and selectively
| enforce their ToS against competitors; that is an illegal
| abuse of market power.
|
| The tech giants this week seem to have demonstrated that
| they do in fact hold monopoly power in the market, and
| are willing to use it to crush a potential competitor.
| This seems to me to be an unprecedented situation, a
| likely anti-trust violation, and potentially to the
| extent that it was a coordinated action by these
| companies, a violation of RICO statutes.
|
| I think it is fair to say that Parler, like _every_
| social network, could be used to post hateful messages,
| or messages advocating violence. GP stated that Parler
| was a "hate site" but I think it's more accurate to say
| that Parler was a site that carried some hateful
| messages. It was by no means a site formed or designed
| specifically to carry hate.
|
| A corollary that I would raise is a similar standard in
| copyright infringement. Sites which are designed
| specifically with the intent of committing copyright
| infringement are now criminally liable -- it has recently
| become a serious felony to make these kinds of sites.
| However, site that show a significant non-infringement
| purpose are not illegal, even if some infringement takes
| place on their platform. You might recall that YouTube
| was a site that got its start with rampant copyright
| infringement, and to this day has a significant amount of
| infringing material on its servers, but it is not
| criminally liable, or even civilly liable for that
| content due to the fact that the site has a significant
| non-infringement purpose. I think that's a fair analogy
| with Parler.
|
| If there's a copyright or public safety issue with a
| piece of content posted on a social media platform, the
| law should provide for a takedown procedure against the
| _content_ , not against the whole platform. The cause of
| action should be against the poster, not against the
| entire platform. Nuking the entire platform from orbit is
| not an appropriate remedy, and in any case should be done
| through a court of law, not through the actions of a
| monopolistic cartel.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| > The 3 biggest technology companies in the world united
| in the last two days to shut down an upstart competitor
| who was, at the time, literally the #1 app on iPhone and
| Android.
|
| Maybe Facebook, but...
|
| How did Parler compete with Apple? What market were they
| competing in?
|
| How did Parler compete with AWS? Did they share the same
| sort of clients?
|
| How did Parler compete with Google?
| ip26 wrote:
| _If there's a copyright or public safety issue with a
| piece of content posted on a social media platform, the
| law should provide for a takedown procedure against the
| content, not against the whole platform. The cause of
| action should be against the poster, not against the
| entire platform._
|
| Remember Parler was asked by the tech co's to moderate
| such content, and it refused.
|
| I also don't see how Parler competed with AWS.
| darkarmani wrote:
| > The tech giants this week seem to have demonstrated
| that they do in fact hold monopoly power in the market,
| and are willing to use it to crush a potential
| competitor. This seems to me to be an unprecedented
| situation, a likely anti-trust violation, and potentially
| to the extent that it was a coordinated action by these
| companies,
|
| Coordinated? Competitor? Where do you find evidence of
| coordination? Why do you think parler is a competitor?
|
| > it's more accurate to say that Parler was a site that
| carried some hateful messages
|
| Not accurate at all. Why do you think people used parler
| instead of twitter.
|
| > Nuking the entire platform from orbit is not an
| appropriate remedy
|
| When the entire platform resists and refuses to moderate,
| nuking from orbit is a fine remedy. Parler was too stupid
| to build alternatives into their risk profile. I think
| they believed their own hype.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If there's a copyright or public safety issue with a
| piece of content posted on a social media platform, the
| law should provide for a takedown procedure against the
| content, not against the whole platform.
|
| For many kinds of criminal content posing an acute public
| safety hazard, it does, and it's very simple: if you have
| knowledge of the existence of the material, you must take
| it down or become yourself criminally liable for it, in
| addition to anyone who is already criminally liable. (For
| copyright, there's the DMCA takedown process, which is
| more generous because people don't tend to get killed as
| a forseeable consequence of civil copyright violations.)
|
| Of course, if you are a second level host and don't have
| item-by-item control (such as AWS for a site hosted there
| by another firm), the only efficient way to acheived that
| may be to drop the entire account.
| dnh44 wrote:
| I'm mostly in agreement with you, and if the choice were
| left to me I probably wouldn't have banned Parler from the
| app stores or AWS. Although I'd have to reconsider if an
| incoming Biden administration would punish me in any
| upcoming anti-trust case, as cowardly as that may seem.
|
| But I also think the rights of the services providers have
| to considered as well. Should Nintendo be forced to publish
| porn apps in their Switch online store for example? Should
| HN be prevented from moderating comments here? Should
| thedonald.win be prevented from deleting anti-Trump
| comments? No is my answer to those rhetorical questions.
|
| At the same time I don't think that electricity, water, and
| internet service providers should be allowed to cut off
| Westboro Baptist Church either. Likewise for their domain
| name provider.
|
| I think things like AWS and payment services are more like
| electric and water suppliers then they are like app stores
| and web forums. So I suppose that I'm in favour of drawing
| a line in a reasonable place, it's just not clear to me yet
| exactly where that line should be.
| ng12 wrote:
| I feel similar. It's a tricky problem.
|
| What would help is what we should have done a long time
| ago: Apple should either allow users to install different
| app stores or submit to regulation as a platform.
| [deleted]
| downrightmike wrote:
| It is the same thing when they take down any other hate site:
| bye bye haters. Intolerance cannot be allowed to be free
| speech. Just like you can't walk into a club and yell fire
| without consequences. We have tragic historical events that set
| precedence.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > Intolerance cannot be allowed to be free speech.
|
| That's just "I'm for free speech unless I disagree with the
| speech", right?
|
| Who decides what's too intolerant?
|
| We all love our Popper quotes but it's a very hard line to
| draw. Nearly any opinion can be explained at being somehow
| intolerant if you try hard enough.
| millbraebart wrote:
| Would this law also apply to LeBron James when he "incites"
| black youth by claiming black people "are hunted everyday" by
| the police? A fact check would show the statistics don't
| support such a claim. It's clearly dangerous speech that needs
| to be moderated. Why does the left assume nobody has any agency
| over their own actions?
| mariodiana wrote:
| Parler was not a "hate site." It's a social media platform that
| chose to take a reactive rather than proactive approach to
| policing illegal behavior, and experienced the growing pains of
| an up-and-comer advertising itself as a Twitter alternative
| that then had to deal with a flood of Twitter refugees during a
| political crisis.
|
| The overwhelming vast majority of the people on Parler were
| simply normal people tired of what they perceived as a double
| standard in Twitter's treatment of conservatives as opposed to
| liberals, and wished to support a competitor.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Overall it feels like a legislative failure - in an ideal
| world, we have laws applied even handedly to deal with this.
|
| Whether it will be applied even-handedly remains to be seen,
| but there is a law to deal with this, and I suspect it's a
| factor in why businesses of all kinds are running screaming
| from anything connected to the attacks (including other
| businesses that fail to themselves cut off any activity with a
| nexus to the attack, the attackers, and the apparent planning
| for future attacks): 18 USC Sec 2339A, which makes it a federal
| crime to knowingly provide any goods or services except
| medicine and religious materials connected to any of an
| enumerated list of federal criminal offenses collectively
| designated "terrorism", punishable by fines and imprisonment
| for up to 15 years unless death occurs as a result of the
| crime, in which case the imprisonment becomes for any term of
| years or life.
| acomjean wrote:
| There are laws, but as a practical matter they aren't
| enforced.
|
| Individuals are not held responsible for the threats and
| illegal speech they make. Look at all the threats made
| against people on social media. The fact that there is almost
| no accountability means it keeps happening.
|
| The only repercussions most of the time is that the platform
| kicks you off. Part of it is, its their platform and from a
| business perspective having you around if you are too toxic
| isn't wise.
|
| It seems like a society problem. Non enforcement and a lot of
| people with nothing to loose.
| johncessna wrote:
| I'll simplify the issue for you. Your tribe won out in this
| particular battle but you're worried that may not always be the
| case. You should absolutely be worried about that.
| mattbee wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| No, because you don't need AWS or Twitter or Cloudflare or
| _any_ of the name tech companies to run a high-traffic web site
| successfully.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have
| begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to do
| business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If both
| Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App Stores,
| what exactly is your recourse?
|
| Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the constitution
| is supposed to protect, which is the difference between
| feudalism and democracy, is de-facto (though not de-jure),
| owned by monopolistic corporations. They are only accountable
| to their shareholders, and they have nearly complete power
| over their platforms. The vast majority of public discourse,
| news and financial transactions take place on these feudal
| fiefdoms.
|
| This is an oversight in the current legal framework, and will
| have to be corrected eventually.
| mattbee wrote:
| > This is disingenuous. Already credit card companies have
| begun to de-platform people. Once Visa and AmEx refuse to
| do business with you, you are on increasingly thin ice. If
| both Google and Apple refuse to host your app in their App
| Stores, what exactly is your recourse?
|
| Host on your own infrastructure. Present a mobile-
| responsive web site. Take Bitcoin.
|
| (we're talking, politely, about free speech extremists - so
| none of this seems wildly inappropriate, right?)
| whateveracct wrote:
| > Host on your own infrastructure. Present a mobile-
| responsive web site. Take Bitcoin.
|
| This is all fair. If your goal is to exist on the fringe
| of the acceptable and legal, you're going to have to DIY.
| ssalazar wrote:
| If banks and a score of major tech companies independently
| decide not to do business with someone, maybe that someone
| is the problem.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| There was a time when many businesses refused service to
| blacks and jews. By our logic, that would have been right
| and proper.
|
| As a bonus, I'll just add this one: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
| ssalazar wrote:
| Not my logic. Refusing service to someone based on their
| sexual orientation, religion, or color of their skin is a
| very different moral proposition than refusing service
| based on facilitating the subversion of the
| democratically elected government that sustains said
| business.
| war1025 wrote:
| Then add political affiliation as a protected class and
| prosecute people who break actual laws.
|
| My personal opinion is that this discussion about tech,
| politics, censorship, etc. is something that needs to
| happen, and maybe all parties were completely within
| their rights to act how they did.
|
| There are a lot of people who don't see that as self-
| evident, and what they are hearing is "if you are pro-
| Trump, you deserve to be a social pariah." That is a real
| quick path to radicalization.
|
| Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon rules.
| If you convince enough people through your actions that
| the rules are "Heads I win, Tails you lose", then they'll
| decide not to play by those rules anymore. And then all
| hell breaks loose.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| > Society is based on a set of mutually agreed upon
| rules.
|
| Agreed, and it follows from that that "political
| affiliation" protection _cannot_ include "wants to
| destroy the government" -- no matter from what quadrant
| that sentiment flows (anarchist, socialist, fascist,
| whatever).
|
| Agreeing to democracy -- and probably republicanism --
| (note, both lowercase) is a bright line across which
| you've really decided to step outside of our mutual
| rules.
| ssalazar wrote:
| Neither "conservatives", "republicans", nor any other
| actual political affiliation are being shut out by any of
| these companies. People who affiliate with "opposing a
| democratic election with direct violence" are.
| war1025 wrote:
| > People who affiliate with "opposing a democratic
| election with direct violence" are.
|
| The trouble is that many of the same people saying these
| actions were perfectly acceptable also have a habit of
| casually stating that all people who voted for Trump are
| the irredeemable scum of the earth.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| I don't doubt that it could be used as a hint among other
| points, but doesn't that approach scream "tyranny of the
| mob"? How often in the past has a minority view been
| objectively right and a majority view been wrong? For
| example, Galileo was accused of heresy due to his belief
| that the Earth revolved around the sun. The "maybe that
| someone is the problem" view would say Galileo was the
| problem.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| History is full of people whose thinking stopped at "no
| smoke without fire". Those people are still here today.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The free market argument is that it isn't tyranny of the
| mob. It's tyranny of the market. The companies are
| responding to market forces, which implies that _so many_
| people are concerned that it 's actually a democratic
| push of people voting with their wallets.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| In 1984 everyone hated Goldstein's guts, but was he
| really the problem?
| Avamander wrote:
| > Already credit card companies have begun to de-platform
| people.
|
| For a while now. Sex workers, sex shops have complained
| about it for years. Nobody cared. I find it ironic that the
| same group of people advocating against consumer and worker
| protections now seem to demand them.
| protonimitate wrote:
| > Nowadays, the public square, the thing that the
| constitution is supposed to protect, which is the
| difference between feudalism and democracy, is de-facto
| (though not de-jure), owned by monopolistic corporations.
|
| That's quite the exaggeration. You can quite literally
| still gather in a physical public square. Just because it's
| more convenient to do so online doesn't mean it's a granted
| right.
|
| > The vast majority of public discourse, news and financial
| transactions take place on these feudal fiefdoms.
|
| And? If a bank decides they don't want you as a customer,
| you can still perform cash transactions. You aren't
| entitled to a bank account just because the majority of
| people do banking.
| speeder wrote:
| > You can quite literally still gather in a physical
| public square.
|
| You can? Last I checked I can't, if I do that I get
| arrested for breaking social distancing...
|
| > you can still perform cash transactions.
|
| You mean, like in Japan and Sweden, that decided to
| attempt to go cashless by creating more and more rules on
| cash so that only debit (or credit) cards are practical?
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| That's quite a pedantic interpretation of gathering in a
| public square at a particular moment in time where doing
| so is detrimental to the health and economy of a
| community. In the event that you're not disingenuously
| asking that question, as with all things, "it depends",
| on specific local ordinance, how many people, the ability
| to maintain six feet distance, etc.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| > if I do that I get arrested for breaking social
| distancing...
|
| This is inaccurate at best. The gathering in D.C. last
| Wednesday had a legal permit for thousands of people to
| join.
| free_rms wrote:
| We've built a society without physical public squares,
| for the most part, though, and substituted them with the
| virtual.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Also, what Parler was doing was not so much "gathering in
| the public square" as they were renting a storefront in a
| privately owned mall. The mall owners are well within
| their rights to evict the tenant.
| Closi wrote:
| > No, because you don't need AWS or Twitter or Cloudflare or
| any of the name tech companies to run a high-traffic web site
| successfully.
|
| The problem is you need to rely on someone.
| mattbee wrote:
| You need to rely on the net as a whole - which allows for
| multiple hosts and carriers and a lot of flexibility
| between them.
| Closi wrote:
| But there are two problems:
|
| 1) Some parts are still single points of failure, e.g.
| domains, dns servers
|
| 2) There are switching costs (particularly on the infra
| slide) both in time and money (time was the issue here).
| zhobbs wrote:
| You need an ISP right? You think telecom companies are
| anxious to provide them bandwidth?
| evgen wrote:
| Telecom companies are common carriers and do not have the
| luxury of being able to deny customers access if they are
| not breaking the law. Nothing preventing these people from
| starting up their own ISP and hosting company.
| uberduper wrote:
| Nothing stopping them from fabricating their own silicon
| too, right? How far down this hole till we reach the
| bottom?
|
| I wonder if this was the same sort of argument used to
| justify denying minorities homes / home loans? "Well
| they're free to build their own house!" "Well they're
| free to cut their own lumber!" "Well they're free to
| forge their own hammers!" "Well they're free to..."
| filoeleven wrote:
| Denying people homes or loans because of race is vastly
| different, because one's race is an inherited physical
| characteristic.[1] Here, companies are denying service to
| Parler based on the beliefs (edit: and behavior) of its
| users.
|
| This situation lies somewhere between "refusing service
| based on someone's religion" and "refusing service
| because I just don't like them." Political affiliation is
| not yet recognized as a religious belief, so they are not
| a protected class. I don't know enough about the law to
| say on what grounds a company stands if they drop/refuse
| service because they think someone is being a dick.
|
| [1] it's more nuanced than that of course, but I'm
| speaking broadly here
| minkzilla wrote:
| Thank you for this example. I'll be using it. I've been
| struggling to articulate that just because technically
| someone is free to do something doesn't mean they aren't
| being meaningfully hindered from doing it.
| mattbee wrote:
| Depends where in the world they are. But US carriers are
| nowhere near as fussy over who they supply unless their
| clients end up overwhelming their networks.
| treis wrote:
| But you do need Google and Apple to have a mobile app.
|
| I do agree with you that AWS dropping them isn't evidence of
| a monopoly. There's plenty of competitors in that space. None
| of them, however, are going to touch Parler with a 10ft pole
| at this point.
| klyrs wrote:
| You don't need google to side-load apps.
| maxfurman wrote:
| Apple and Google can't stop you from providing a working
| mobile-responsive web app
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Apple do it in certain degree. By makes their mobile
| browser extreme buggy and feature lacking. You don't even
| have proper notification support on it. How could it be
| used as a proper app? A social app that can't tell you
| that someone send a message to you sounds a no-go to me.
| Grustaf wrote:
| They could prevent people from accessing them on their
| phones though, let's see how long it takes.
| klyrs wrote:
| DoH is gonna throw a huge wrench into that plan.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Likely not at all for Apple.
| evgen wrote:
| Like how they prevent people from getting the ISIS
| websites, Hamas websites, neo-Nazi web sites? Looks like
| they have more than a decade to do so and still nothing.
| Maybe your hyperbolic slippery slope argument is wrong?
| Grustaf wrote:
| Many of these are still allowed on Twitter, so I'm not
| sure what your argument is.
|
| And I'm saying they "could". They might decide not to.
|
| Although I don't think anyone could have foreseen level
| of censorship we have now, even 5 years ago, so who knows
| what it will look like in 2025.
|
| And I think if you ask the average HN reader he wouldn't
| be opposed to blocking websites for political reasons.
| [deleted]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them?_
|
| That has always been the history of media, see Hearst, Murdoch,
| Mercer, etc. The democracy of the early Internet was the
| _exception_ from billionaires being in charge, not the norm.
|
| Hearst used to _be_ the voice of print media for decades.
|
| The situation in radio is the same as it is on the internet: a
| few publicly-owned companies own a supermajority of the FM
| airwaves. If you wonder why you can change the station and hear
| the same song simultaneously on 5 different stations, it's
| because they're all owned by the same company.
|
| In TV, for most of the past 2 decades, conservative
| billionaires have owned more than 75% of the public TV stations
| in the U.S. and Australia, and have been using that bully
| pulpit on behalf of conservatives during that time. Murdoch
| especially was instrumental in providing Trump (and other
| extremist candidates like Cruz) thousands of hours of free
| coverage during the 2016 campaign. The ownership groups would
| regularly interfere with local media and demand they either air
| or avoid topics as directed by ownership. Where was
| conservative outrage over billionaires deciding speech during
| this time?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I think one difference is that people inhabit and create
| social media in a way that they didn't with print and TV. A
| significant percentage of our lives is spent in these de
| factor public squares.
|
| As a media company that 'creates' tweets to be displayed on
| CNN, etc., or read by logged out users, the analogy to
| traditional media is more straightforward.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| How was it different from Facebook? Plenty of hate there, for
| months, why aren't they shutdown?
|
| Just listen to the Parler executives account of what happened.
| Contrary to all the nonsense being spewed by ideologues, Parler
| did have a moderation policy that prohibited incitement to
| violence, and they did enforce it, but it was neither perfect
| nor instantaneous (since, by deliberate choice, only humans
| were involved). They also complied to the requests from the
| three tech titans, but of course that did not matter, their
| fate was sealed before the first letter was sent.
|
| This is a moment of astonishing hypocrisy and terrible abuse of
| power. Silicon Valley has proven to half of America that the
| system is rigged beyond recourse, and for a number of those
| Americans that might be the straw that breaks the camels back,
| leading them into radicalization and terrorism. It would be
| very wise for all of us in tech, in any position of influence,
| to urge calm and dialogue and to provide space for all speech
| that is not urging violence. We are not children to throw away
| our country because of a single deranged fool. We need to show
| to the country that tech is not an instrument available to only
| those of a certain ideological bent and that we can talk and
| sort out our differences without violence or repression.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Parler was created to be a place where the alt-right could
| freely spout their lies without fear of censorship. Facebook
| has that, but it's not the reason the platform exists. The
| intent is completely different.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| And who is it that decides what is Parler's intent and
| allots the corresponding thought-crime punishment? I am
| sorry but your point is absurd.
| sbarre wrote:
| People digging into Parler found out that all new users
| were shadowbanned by default until a group of like-minded
| moderators reviewed and approved their posts.
|
| These moderators were overwhelmingly MAGA/Trump
| supporters, so I'm sure you can guess what kind of posts
| they expected to see before they unblocked a new user.
|
| This was all shared/revealed on Twitter, so take it as
| "evidence" with whatever grain of salt you like, but
| people didn't just make up these claims about what Parler
| was..
|
| So while perhaps Parler claimed to be a place for open
| debate and unrestricted ideas, it is seems that was just
| a thin cover for their much more focused goal of being a
| home for all this extremist right-wing talk in America.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Do you have a good reference that summarizes these
| findings? I would like to learn more about this.
| arethuza wrote:
| "do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding
| what is acceptable speech"
|
| That's pretty much been newspapers in the UK for as long as I
| can remember!
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Yes but the solution is not to now hand them more power.
| vehementi wrote:
| More, or less? It's easier than ever to DIY a site on your
| own infrastructure and be reachable by everyone in the
| world
| guerrilla wrote:
| Can you DIY your own domain registrar and payment
| processor though?
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Until they coordinate to shut you down...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm in the US, and old enough to remember the time before the
| Internet, and that's what I remember. You had three or so TV
| networks and a handful of national magazines and newspapers.
| Big tech isn't really any different from the media zeitgeist
| I grew up with.
|
| It's just the last 20 years or so of everybody having a
| megaphone that is outside the norm.
| Zambyte wrote:
| It is very different. Everyone saw the same or very similar
| information on the TV. People watching the same channels
| would see the exact same thing.
|
| With social media, your feed is perfectly catered to you as
| an individual, by using as much data on you as they can get
| their hands on, and a nearly endless supply of content from
| the "megaphones" of other users. Even if you have many of
| the same friends as someone, and politically align with
| them, you probably would find scrolling through their feed
| to be less interesting than scrolling through your own.
| kolbe wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech
|
| Elected billionaires (and millionaires/thousandaires) don't do
| much better.
| [deleted]
| Grustaf wrote:
| Isn't the solution pretty simple? Make platforms choose, either
| only remove illegal material, or be regulated as a publisher.
| Would take care of calls to violence and freedom of speech.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Would also put a huge burden on small businesses. I run a
| little forum for by business. I want to remove spam and off-
| topic posts, so I'll be classed as a publisher, but I don't
| want to be subject to restrictions of "Publishers may be held
| liable for omissions, mistakes, and transgressions of their
| authors". What if a user quotes somebody else's words but
| doesn't use proper quotation marks? My problem!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I believe the market will work it out. They overuse this power
| there will be consequences/outcry. We can figure it out when we
| get there. I'm not worried about any slippery slope.
| charly187 wrote:
| "just like I wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS
| recruitment site, I don't really see any loss here."
|
| There were about 10 million people on Parler before it was
| taken down. If you really think its comporable to an ISIS
| recruitment site, we got a much, much bigger problem here.
| riccccccc wrote:
| Lets not forget that Twitter just last month signed a new deal
| with Amazon to be hosted on AWS. Don't suppose this has
| anything to do with Amazon booting Twitter's largest competitor
| from the platform do you?
|
| As for hateful rhetoric on Parler, that same hateful rhetoric
| exists on Twitter as well, don't fool yourself, it is only the
| fact that it is the left threatening the right that anyone
| allows it. Remember when Kathy Griffin held the bloody head of
| the President, or the current rise up and kill cops tweets you
| find everywhere on Twitter. Or the white people should all be
| dead tweets? Whether you agree to it or not does not therefore
| make hate speech. There is no clear cut defined line for hate
| speech to begin with. Anything can be declared hate speech,
| hell what I am saying now could be considered hate speech
| because I actually defend Parler and the people on its right to
| speech. At least then we can show examples of see this guy
| right here? He is a moron and believes in really dumb stuff.
| All they are doing by silencing these people is forcing them
| deeper underground where even more nefarious ideas and figures
| lie becoming more radicalized and more violent. But I guess
| that is what establishment wants, a perpetual idea to scare
| people with so that they give up even more freedom of thought.
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't know why it's right to ban conspiracies. Conspiracies
| are to be debunked, not banned. Otherwise, people who believe
| such conspiracies simply go underground and we end up
| cultivating anger, distrust, and cynicism. Is that covid-19
| would turn into a global pandemic back in Feb a conspiracy? Is
| criticizing USSR in the 30s a conspiracy? Is that earth is not
| the center of our universe a conspiracy 700 years ago? Is that
| FBI's infiltration and surveillance on political groups a
| conspiracy? Are all the questioning on the reasons for the US
| to invade Iraq conspiracy theories? Where are the WMDs now?
|
| In general, are we sure that no conspiracy ever turned out to
| be true? How many heresies turned out to be correct and changed
| the course of our history? And how many people were persecuted
| in the name of spreading conspiracy? Why are we so afraid of
| conspiracies?
| markkanof wrote:
| Right. It's frustrating that the term conspiracy theory has
| become a blunt weapon that can be used to quickly dismiss
| allegations of wrong doing and paint the accuser as a fringe
| lunatic. Sometimes people do evil things or conspire with
| others to do evil things (see Tuskegee experiments, Epstein,
| etc.). Just because someone doesn't currently have
| irrefutable proof that something happened doesn't mean that
| they shouldn't be able to talk about it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I don't know why it's right to ban conspiracies.
| Conspiracies are to be debunked, not banned.
|
| No one is threatening to kill an elected official over
| _grassy knolls_.
|
| Times change.
| hintymad wrote:
| That's hate speech, and it's illegal to threaten a person
| with death. It's different from banning conspiracy theory
| eigenrick wrote:
| Most of the modern, big conspiracies have been thoroughly
| debunked, but that doesn't stop their spread. Any flat-
| earther has heard all of the flat-earth debunking. Sadly, I
| know a handful of flat-earthers, and I tried arguing for a
| while, but it does no good. Instead it appears that the
| theorists double-down on the conspiracy.
|
| I think people believe in conspiracies, not because they're
| mislead on a certain topic, but because they _want_ to
| believe. So debunking conspiracies is attacking their faith,
| which is what causes zealotry.
|
| It's more like spreading a religion, which, yeah, you can't
| really ban it. You just have to let people do their thing.
|
| tl;dr I agree that one shouldn't censor it, but only because
| it does no good.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| I find it ironic that the ban is what makes people think the
| techCos are controlling society rather than the fact that all
| actions of social networks and hosting services impact society.
| Like the time when FB make some news feeds more negative to
| track impact and engagement. Or how the radicalization of users
| on FB can happen due to the Algo.
|
| Ultimately this is a legislative failure, but it also is how a
| free market should defend itself of dangerous content as well.
| (keep in mind a Civil war 2 isn't exactly great for the
| economy).
|
| What is wild is that the laws for this all exist and are in
| use. The behavior here is the use of Section 230 as designed.
| The definition of insurrection and hate speech are all defined.
| Clearly what has happened is actually late action by social
| platforms rather than overreach as the US Gov lacks any mode to
| actually take on this content.
| c54 wrote:
| We can empower democratic institutions like the FTC to be able
| to take action in these cases, rather than leaving important
| decisions in the hands of private corporations.
|
| > ...what Parler is doing should be illegal, because it should
| be responsible on product liability terms for the known
| outcomes of its product, aka violence. ... But what Parler is
| doing is _not_ illegal, because Section 230 means it has no
| obligation for what its product does.... Similarly, what these
| platforms did in removing Parler should be illegal, because
| they should have a public obligation to carry all customers
| engaging in legal activity on equal terms. But it's not
| illegal, because there is no such obligation. These are private
| entities operating public rights of way, but they are not
| regulated as such.
|
| [0] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/a-simple-thing-biden-
| can-...
| trianglem wrote:
| Absolutely not. That sounds like Soviet nonsense.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn 't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?_
|
| And what did start-ups do before AWS _et al_? Didn 't they
| 'just': rent a rack, fill it with computers, get an ASN/IP
| block, and make it accessible by DNS?
|
| I understand it's more 'agile' to just spin up instances as
| needed, but are we in a place that the Old Way can no longer
| work? (At least theoretically.)
|
| Doesn't Stack Overflow (still?) run on their own hardware?
|
| * https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/03/29/stack-overflow-the-
| ha...
| kevwil wrote:
| Gonna disagree there a bit, semantically. Parler was a no-
| censorship social site, open to everyone. Extreme right-wing
| people flocked to it while very few people with other
| perspectives did. Parler being a hate site was not purely of
| their making, but rather a result of society's bias toward
| silencing opposing views. We need more people like Daryl Davis
| (a black jass musician who has converted hundreds of KKK
| members through kindness and friendship and music) so that
| censorship seems less and less like a good idea.
|
| I'm not surprised at the end result, but the effort to retain
| free speech was a valiant one. Forcing extremist views
| underground doesn't silence them, it emboldens them and makes
| it harder to know what they're up to. Not a good idea.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I don't think this is exactly true, according to other
| seemingly well-informed comments on this site, e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731121
|
| Parler _was_ moderated, and it was explicitly moderated for
| coherence with a right-wing /reactionary viewpoint. It was
| not a neutral, unfiltered platform.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Parler was a no-censorship social site, open to everyone.
|
| This is just false. They censored all kinds of things:
| antifa, parody accounts, obscene usernames, porn, etc.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle.
| ..
| MrMan wrote:
| "society's bias toward silencing opposing views."
|
| censorship is NOT the underlying problem here
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I'm in the same boat as you - I'm glad parler is gone but I go
| back and forth on the implications of the ability of a few to
| silence so many - the most reasonable way I've come to think of
| it is if David Duke (huge racist scumbag) suddenly wanted to go
| on CNN and speak for an hour once a week - should CNN let him?
| You wouldn't think twice about it, you'd likely think - why
| would CNN have to comply? It's not a perfect analogy, but
| that's the best way I've been able to think of it. In the end,
| it's lose-lose for non fascists. While we're all debating
| whether there was overreach and or if it should be mitigated,
| actual fascists are regrouping and planning their next assault.
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| Are they actually being silenced, as in someone is forcing
| them to not express their thoughts? Can they not congregate
| together the old fashioned way and have as much free speech
| as they want?
| threatofrain wrote:
| We should really be talking about Ron Paul because as a test
| plaintiff Parker is awful. Per their CEO, law firms, banks and
| payment providers, mail and texting services have also
| cancelled on them.
|
| By that point, what would having your own tech stack do? How do
| you even collect revenue when banks and payment providers
| cancel on you? This is the power of freedom of association at
| work, the power behind cancellation.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Indeed - Ron Paul is not so much the "canary in the coalmine"
| - this is the whole mining crew succumbing to the toxic
| fumes!
|
| Even for people who don't agree with his libertarian
| politics, there's no arguing that he is anything short of an
| uncommonly decent man. He's certainly the closest I've ever
| seen anyone come to being the mythical "honest politician."
| So _of course_ they 're attacking him...
| trianglem wrote:
| What? He wrote a whole bunch of extremely racist op-eds
| about how black people are inferior and slavery was a boon
| to them. Your post is a lot of dissembling nonsense.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| That seems unlikely. Do you have links to any reliable
| primary sources, if they haven't been conveniently
| censored?
|
| I have a hunch that any "extremely racist" comments may
| have been more to the effect that although slavery was
| very bad indeed, there might have been better ways to
| dismantle it than by half the country fighting the other
| half [0], which is a sentiment worth considering in the
| context of current events.
|
| [0] https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/12/bob-murphy/ron-
| paul-and-...
| awillen wrote:
| They're not deciding what is acceptable speech. They're
| deciding what is acceptable speech for their platforms and
| services. And given how absolutely insane and extreme that
| speech became before they took action, it's just strange to
| look at these companies like they're a problem. They tolerated
| increasingly violent and hateful rhetoric until people
| literally stormed the Capitol, then took action against the
| worst offender that helped to plan violence against our elected
| officials. This isn't some theoretical case of billionaires
| imposing their worldviews by banning people that we should be
| tremendously fearful of.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > This isn't some theoretical case of billionaires imposing
| their worldviews by banning people that we should be
| tremendously fearful of.
|
| I think you've missed the point. The concern OP raises is
| that this is no longer theoretical - these few billionaires
| actually can impose their worldview by controlling speech. In
| this case, we can all agree that Parler had to go. But the
| precedent / principle of the issue can be considered
| separately.
|
| > They're not deciding what is acceptable speech. They're
| deciding what is acceptable speech for their platforms and
| services.
|
| This is a distinction without a difference. If the major
| platforms all ban you, you are silenced. Its time we
| recognize the power these platforms have.
| big_curses wrote:
| > This is a distinction without a difference.
|
| I disagree, there is an extreme difference there. Freedom
| of speech is specifically in regards to the government
| giving you the negative right of being able to say whatever
| you want without government prosecution (aside from some
| edge cases like direct threats and the like, which are
| closer to actual violence). What they do not do is
| guarantee you a platform. You are free to say whatever you
| like, but you are not owed the right to be listened to.
| Removing someone from a platform is not silencing them. A
| private company does not owe you anything, let alone
| service.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| No. The first amendment is about the government. The
| concept of freedom of speech is broader. If in a pandemic
| I can only legally communicate via digital tools, and the
| billionaires running the digital tools all decide to ban
| me, I am silenced.
| skuthus wrote:
| >the billionaires running the digital tools all decide to
| ban me, I am silenced.
|
| How so? Are you incapable of using non-digital media to
| communicate? Are you incapable of creating your own
| digital platforms for communication or using alternative,
| less popular means to do so? Are you prevented from going
| to city hall, council meetings, political rallies, or
| voting? Your speech as it relates to your rights granted
| in the constitution remains completely intact. Your
| rights are unaffected by your access to certain digital
| platforms.
| Miraste wrote:
| I support banning Parler, but this argument becomes more
| transparently untrue by the day. The internet _is_ speech
| now. Visiting city halls and council meetings doesn 't
| affect elections or policies, voting is useless without
| being part of an organized bloc, which can no longer
| happen without the internet, and Parler was one of
| several alt-right attempts to make their own platform--
| control of the internet is centralized enough that making
| a platform for non-technical users against the will of
| the megacorporations is not possible.
|
| If you don't believe free speech absolutism should be
| allowed, say so, but free speech and this level of
| corporate dominance are not compatible.
| xxpor wrote:
| >Visiting city halls and council meetings doesn't affect
| elections or policies,
|
| Oh how I wish this were actually true sometimes. Try
| going to any zoning board meeting.
| skuthus wrote:
| I agree that corporations should be curtailed in both
| their size and power. This would resolve the paradox of
| speech being free, but it's platforms being controlled by
| a few large organizations. However, to say that free
| speech is absolute is absurd, because absolute free
| speech in this context would require the limitation of
| rights of organizations and owners too.
| Miraste wrote:
| > However, to say that free speech is absolute is absurd,
| because absolute free speech in this context would
| require the limitation of rights of organizations and
| owners too.
|
| I agree, but that's a common position here.
| cm2187 wrote:
| If you are on the no fly list of an airline, aren't you
| free to buy your own B787, get a pilot license, get the
| relevant airport slots and authorisations and go fly by
| yourself anywhere you want? I mean in theory yes.
| skuthus wrote:
| precisely. A better way to look at it is that you are
| free to travel by other means. The burden is convenience.
| 8note wrote:
| It is not true that you can only legally communicate via
| digital tools. The US still has a post office
| ccn0p wrote:
| You're right, but the reality is that physical mail is no
| longer an effective form of communication relative to the
| speed of online platforms in most cases.
| [deleted]
| big_curses wrote:
| If the first amendment and your concept of freedom of
| speech don't line up, then one or the other need to
| change I would think. If a right is not recognized by
| others/the government, then it effectively doesn't exist.
| That's not to say it's not right or that you couldn't
| rationally defend it though.
|
| >If in a pandemic I can only legally communicate via
| digital tools
|
| I see the conflict you're bringing up, it's in effect
| illegal to communicate in person a lot of the time due to
| the pandemic, so digital tools are very useful for you to
| be able to communicate, but if you are somehow banned
| from those you have few options, if any. I think the
| thing that is incorrect here is actually the government
| making it illegal to communicate via non-digital tools,
| even if a lot of times it is in an individual's best
| interest to stay inside. And once again, no one owes you
| a platform. You are, in your words, silenced, but I don't
| think that that is an issue that requires government
| action.
| Svettie wrote:
| I think it could require government action: I could argue
| that it was government inaction in allowing a
| monopoly/oligopoly over the conduits of free speech that
| is now depriving me of my rights.
| notahacker wrote:
| There's no shortage of conduits for free speech you have
| a right to use, on and off the internet.
|
| The oligopoly only concerns distribution to the widest
| possible audience, whether it's social media or broadcast
| media. And even a First Amendment constrained government
| is allowed to pick and choose which speech it
| _distributes_
| big_curses wrote:
| For what reason are we considering these platforms
| "conduits of free speech"? They are simply private
| services, private property. In the same way you can
| legally remove people from your home that you don't want
| in there, they can bar you from their service. They also
| didn't always exist. At what point in their existence
| would you argue that being banned from being able to use
| them was depriving you of some right? Can they have a
| monopoly over all of the "conduits of free speech" if all
| the old methods of communication still exist? If those
| alternatives exist, could they really be called a
| monopoly? (Although for things like Twitter, they're
| definitely not a monopoly, but if we're talking about
| govt backed ISPs, which can be a monopoly, then that is
| indeed a different story, but I would argue that ISPs
| should be divorced from any government
| regulation/subsidies).
| Svettie wrote:
| "In the same way you can legally remove people from your
| home that you don't want in there" -> I agree with you in
| principle, but this is the type of thing where the
| principle doesn't generalize at every level of scale, and
| at a big enough scale it becomes problematic.
|
| Let's consider the other extreme with a fictional
| corporation "MEGA INC", which suppose owns all web
| hosting, all ISPs. Let's also throw in that they have a
| monopoly over paper production and publishing. Now, do
| you think your argument that "this private entity can do
| whatever it wants" is problematic? I should hope so.
|
| I'm not making the case that it's black/white and that
| this situation with Big Tech is equivalent to MEGA INC.
| But, it's not that our free speech rights are binary. My
| point is simply that we're somewhere along the spectrum
| spanning "private home" <-> "MEGA INC", and at this point
| rights are actually being diminished because of the
| oligopolistic nature of a significant corner where
| discourse happens.
|
| So, unfortunately, I think it's a nuanced situation
| that's not easily reduced to a simplistic principle such
| as what you've stated. We have clear principles to reason
| about the extremes, but it's hard to make an argument in
| the hairy middle because both can be made to apply.
| peytn wrote:
| PG&E is a private company, and I'm pretty sure they owe
| me service as long as I pay my bill. I could be totally
| wrong. Who even knows anymore.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Utility companies are for all intents and purposes,
| governmental. Regulating social networks like utilities
| is one possible course of action our society could
| choose. But it is not how we do it today.
| peytn wrote:
| That is my point.
| mperham wrote:
| PG&E is a utility monopoly and regulated differently than
| a typical private business for that reason.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| PG&E is a government-granted monopoly and is close to
| being part of the government itself (in that the
| government gets to decide how much profit the company is
| allowed to make, and insists they service every
| individual).
|
| I can see the argument that basic Internet access should
| be similarly regulated, especially as it uses either
| public frequencies (e.g. 5G) or public land (sidewalks
| etc) to provide the service.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I agree that nobody's first amendment rights were
| violated. I maintain that big tech is controlling
| _acceptable speech_. All the major platforms are working
| together to decide what kind of speech society gets to
| hear, which is dangerous.
|
| First amendment rights are orthogonal.
| uep wrote:
| > What they do not do is guarantee you a platform.
|
| I think this is a really important point. How I have
| framed this to others is: "the 6 o'clock news isn't
| required to give you airtime."
|
| In the past, you could write articles to the newspaper,
| or contact the news and hope they picked up your story.
| There was not a right to be heard.
|
| That said, I'm still not sure how I feel about what has
| transpired in the last week. Freedom of speech (as a
| principle, not in the US legal sense) has always felt
| like a core principle of the Internet.
| Splendor wrote:
| > Its time we recognize the power these platforms have.
|
| We have. That's why millions of people have pushed these
| companies to take a stand against hate. None of these
| companies are doing this because they want to lose money.
| If they thought it would be profitable long-term, they
| would keep doing it. It's the invisible hand of the market
| that you're really upset with here.
| ccn0p wrote:
| don't discount the power of personal ideologies inside of
| these companies as well.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Casual reminder that the slippery slope fallacy is
| ultimately a fallacy.
|
| I think the issue isn't really controlled speech with these
| platforms but more often a loss of control of the
| narrative. They are ill-preppared to deal with hate speech
| and often will act as the very propagators of it. (See FB
| in 2016). The real issue to be found is the massive control
| they have in light of their blindness to the context of
| their product and inability to enact real censorship of
| things that are truly intolerant. Personally looking from
| the outside in, I think that makes them a long-term risk to
| themselves rather than just a risk to society. It's worth
| noting that this will likely lead to a platform that
| intentionally 'free' to intolerant behavior that will
| compete and likely compete well as it will be additive to
| those looking for hate.
| mful wrote:
| Modeling them as independent businesses that can decide --
| based on any non-protected principle they choose -- to censor
| speech is too generic to be useful. They are closer to
| telephone or radio or broadcast TV companies than to private
| enterprise as an overarching category. Communication business
| are, of course, regulated around what they can and cannot say
| on air (the broadcast ones, specifically), and we probably
| need a similar approach to handling social media.
|
| Yet we do not treat them like regulated broadcast media,
| which I guess is unsurprising in that regulation lags behind
| technology. In the context of Parler, it seems they tried to
| make the best of a bad situation.
|
| But I don't know that we should cheer this as "the right
| outcome", even if, in this case, it seems justified (my gut
| is that this was the right thing to do, in this specific
| case). It's time to ask broader questions around whether
| these companies should have that power at all, or if we need
| government to step in.
| dehrmann wrote:
| AWS is more interesting in that case, though, since it's
| usually transparent to end users. AWS not doing business with
| Parler is a little like a craft store not selling posterboard
| and markers to a klansman, or a gun store not selling rounds
| to the guy who keeps talking about insurrection.
| ip26 wrote:
| I would liken it to a contract print house deciding they
| don't want to run the Unabomber Manifesto in their presses
| anymore.
| ldoughty wrote:
| From the letter AWS sent, a better analogy would be:
|
| Craft store noticed their brand logo was on a poster board
| with messages calling for rape and execution of named
| individuals (a clearly illegal act). Craft store said in
| their sale recipt that the reserve the right to stop
| serving customers that promote illegal conduct.
|
| First, however, the craft store asked the organizer to stop
| providing their poster boards to people organizing mass
| rape and execution event planning. "Please moderate, and
| you can continue to use our service"
|
| The organizer days "go bleep yourself", to the store,
| followed by "if my members want to organize a mass
| execution of people, that's their protected speech!"
|
| Store says "okay, your not welcome here anymore, see our
| terms of service"
|
| AWS gave them a chance.. but at the end of the day, those
| messages calling for illegal acts are stored on AWS
| servers.. and Parler wanted to promote that kind of content
| to continue and amplify (it's good for business), but every
| day AWS is probably getting 50 warrants for information
| tied to having Parler as a customer. AWS service mark up
| doesn't cover 20 full time lawyers
| esyir wrote:
| I'll say if you're making this argument, then aws should
| be responsible for all content on aws servers. No hosting
| protections, direct responsibility. After all, the
| illegal data was on their servers, thus they should be
| directly responsible.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They are? They cooperate with law enforcement for illegal
| material takedowns on a regular basis. You might have
| heard of raids for botnet hosting, or if not those, the
| ones for child porn or movie piracy. AWS is absolutely
| committed to having no illegal activity on their servers.
| spaced-out wrote:
| >gun store not selling rounds to the guy who keeps talking
| about insurrection
|
| Yes, imagine a small town, and there's a guy known for
| always ranting about the coming insurrection, pedophile
| conspiracies, how "The Great Awakening" is near... then one
| day he walks into the town gun store and asks to buy a
| bunch of AR-15s and a ton of ammo, and the owner of the
| store says: "Hmm... no."
| bbreier wrote:
| To elaborate on your point here, gun store owners
| choosing not to sell firearms to particular customers
| because they suspect those customers are a danger to
| themselves or others for any reason (including just the
| owners' hunch) is very commonplace, and not generally
| controversial.
| klyrs wrote:
| > ...or a gun store not selling rounds to the guy who keeps
| talking about insurrection.
|
| If he follows that up with "Allahu Akbar," do you expect
| the gun store to complete the sale, or call the feds? Is
| that a limit on "freedom of religion"?
|
| Or if you go to buy a ton of fertilizer, and as they're
| loading it into your truck, you talk about blowing up the
| white house -- what do you think is gonna happen?
| kofejnik wrote:
| Russia's censorship laws are formulated around 'preventing
| religious and ethnic hatred' (among other things).
| danielrpa wrote:
| Would Voltaire's famous "I disapprove of what you say, but I
| will defend to the death your right to say it" apply here?
|
| Perhaps we need a better, faster judicial mechanism for taking
| down "major content". I'm not saying the government is a great
| solution for this problem, but IMHO it beats the status quo
| until we can find a better system.
| ip26 wrote:
| Your right to say it (& not be jailed)
|
| Not your right to be provided an audience
| srveale wrote:
| Exactly. Can you demand to be broadcast by your local TV
| station? Can you demand that your letter be published by
| your newspaper?
|
| The right to a platform has never been guaranteed. The only
| difference is that with social media, your message is
| broadcast first and moderated after.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Interesting examples - both Newspapers and TV Stations,
| for their public "platform" nature, don't enjoy certain
| libel protections that Social Media does.
|
| FB's "platform" feature is largely listener-driven. You
| can still use FB and not listen to persons X, Y and Z.
| It's all posted by users, and users decide what to follow
| or read (except paid content). Not like TV Stations and
| Newspapers. That's what Social Media companies have been
| telling us for a while!
|
| But if we want apply usual standards of platform rights
| and responsibilities to FB, we should then require it to
| also be responsible for what's posted there.
|
| You can't have it both ways.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| As much as some of the Parler content was definitely awful,
| I've seen much worse on dialup BBS's and during the Great
| Cognitive Corruption of Usenet that started in the 80's and
| greatly accelerated onwards from there.
|
| I'm more troubled by the total cessation of infrastructure as
| the mitigation of choice, rather than a temporary pause of
| services. During the pause, work with law enforcement to
| identify those specific posts that satisfy the _Brandenberg_
| "imminent" criteria, mark those as redacted, then return to
| service. Leaving open possible further work with law
| enforcement to share a feed and tie in redaction by future
| judicial decisions. I'm hoping I missed where it says that
| Parler was offered this choice and turned it down.
|
| I'm even more troubled by the continued "let them eat cake"
| dismissive ennui of the chattering classes to the natural-world
| plights of the most radicalized members of the Trump supporters
| (and for that matter, to BLM supporters' plights treatment by
| other chattering classes), as they're pretty much at the
| "nothing left to lose" stage. Having been not simply ignored
| since the 70's onwards, but jeered at, derided, and mocked,
| instead of rehabilitating their life situations, has driven
| them into the arms of malign ideologies that openly lie to them
| fealty will improve their lot in life, when no other ideology
| will have them.
|
| Just like in my enterprise work with my clients, when I hear
| extreme dissatisfaction, that's an opportunity for me to
| listen, empathize, then work together iteratively to solve
| problems. Instead, the US treats such expressions as
| opportunities to suppress. That only guarantees the pressure
| builds up elsewhere you cannot predict (in enterprise work, it
| often manifests as political chits being called in, and budget
| found where none was found before to completely pivot away and
| build the users' own solution, however imperfect it may be).
|
| The US treats many of its have-nots (all along the political
| spectrum and not just along one vector) like it treats its
| prisoners. Brutalize with platitude-laden inaction instead of
| rehabilitate. It's no wonder the nation manufactures a
| dictatorship-loving consent.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I keep seeing this sentiment pop up here on HN and I've come
| at it in other posts.
|
| All of the Trump supporters I know are upper middle class
| suburbanites who have been fairly well off for quite a while.
| Not sure I have any empathy for the contempt at all. I just
| don't buy this sob story what-so-ever.
|
| I feel even less bad for violent extremists that have zero
| goals or demands except to destabilize everything because
| they believe whatever they see on the internet. There is no
| ideology for them to defend; only their right to hate. They
| only want the ability to have whatever they believe to be
| true to be the case even when it is not the case.
|
| Ironically, if the people who were truly destitute and down-
| trodden could find some way to ignore the superficial
| partisanship that they've been sold and unite under social
| and economic policy we might have an actual movement on our
| hands. Unfortunately they've all been convinced that their
| superficial differences aren't superficial at all and that
| the other side is wrong; now it appears at any cost.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| That's likely an artifact of the circles you run in. If
| you're on HN, then odds are really good you don't mill
| around in the lower socio-economic milieu many of the "foot
| soldiers" of radical movements draw upon, whichever part of
| the political spectrum we're discussing. Our very
| vocabulary distinguishes us as a separate "other"; when I
| speak with them, I have to consciously "tune into" their
| preferred vocabularies.
|
| The financial bifurcation in the US and to a lesser extent
| in many other parts of the developed world is quite big,
| and I don't know how big it has to get before a _competent_
| demagogue gets traction in the US. The extremes in both the
| GOP and the DNC have just been handed a dangerous working
| template with Trump 's history lesson. They just learned
| that extremism works, and it scales from local to national
| politics. It was not always so; one of the salient features
| of American politics in the past was just how consistently
| difficult it was to move the center any appreciable
| distance politically, the infamous "lumpentariat".
|
| I believe this is because the US valuation landscape is
| fundamentally broken. This goes way beyond the economic or
| financial system. How we account for value over time is
| structured in very perverse incentive structures leading to
| the power law popping up in an all-over fashion when in the
| past it didn't use to dominate the landscape so much (it
| had localized instantiations but these were more local
| maxima than a general law more widely applicable). It's
| generating a "desperation deciles" that the means and
| averages of metrics sweep under statistical rugs.
|
| I think these deciles are mattering now due to the law of
| large numbers. With "only" a 100M population base, such
| deciles are manageable, whether through coercion
| (unfavorable), assistance (nominal approach), or
| generationally long-term rehabilitative policy like public
| education (ideal). But I suspect there is something about
| near-billion- and billion-scale population governance our
| governing systems are not scaling to meet.
|
| Also, a consistent theme I see in these kinds of
| discussions is similar to your "...if the people who were
| truly destitute and down-trodden could find some way to
| ignore the superficial partisanship that they've been sold
| and unite under social and economic policy...". In my
| humble and limited experience, the ones in the developed
| world are short-term focused on survival, putting food on
| the table and a roof over their heads, then with what
| limited discretionary time and cognitive energy left over,
| trying to find some happiness in a pretty bleak outlook as
| globalism systemically blocks their avenues of escape.
|
| There are some limited avenues left, but the arithmetic
| doesn't support lifting enough of the desperation deciles
| out of poverty or functional poverty to matter through
| transitioning them to plumbers, welders, fitters, rig work,
| _etc._ While there are currently screaming needs for many
| of those skills, it isn 't in the tens of millions scale
| we're needing (law of large numbers).
|
| Poor people don't riot if their poverty is perceptibly,
| contiguously improving over time. Rich people don't incite
| malign ideologies if there aren't poor people who will act
| as foot soldiers absorbing the brunt of adverse
| consequences of swearing fealty to such beliefs. When there
| is a chicken in every pot, people will riot over sports
| teams, but not politics. Actual getting-policies-and-
| legislation-established-and-practiced politics is dead-ass
| boring to the vast majority, so getting this many people to
| even pay attention to just the cartoonish depictions of
| politics we see in the US now is a major signal. I
| currently don't think it is a good signal. And I suspect it
| is a more complex signal than "get the wrongthink upper
| middle class suburbanites to shut up". But I'm just a
| layperson throwing some brush strokes out there and wanting
| to hear thoughts from folks like you. I hope I'm wrong-
| wrong-wrong since I'm operating from very limited data. I
| don't know what the hell the on-the-money forecasters are
| making of all this, but in a world this big, I gotta
| believe there is someone or some entity out there that has
| had access to sufficient data and has been consistently
| right for a couple decades plus, and some very wealthy
| people are paying very dearly for their ongoing analysis.
| [deleted]
| grahamburger wrote:
| > in an ideal world, we have laws applied even handedly to deal
| with this
|
| We have laws protecting people from discrimination based on
| race, sexuality, etc. A grocery store can't refuse to serve
| people by race. Maybe we should expand these protected classes
| and make sure they apply to Internet businesses as well. I
| don't think we will (or should) expand them in such a way that
| Parler would be included, though.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Hi friend. You don't need to dither over hate speech. It's
| okay.
| slapshot wrote:
| My concern is not that AWS should be forced to host content
| they don't want. It's that AWS (and Apple, Facebook, and
| others) have misrepresented what they do.
|
| It's no shock that DailyKos shouldn't have to host pro-Trump
| content. Nor should /theDonald have to host pro-Bernie content.
| We all agree that people can choose who to associate with, and
| that free association is important.
|
| But AWS (and Facebook and others) didn't say "we're sites that
| present only one kind of content" the way /theDonald and
| DailyKos did. They presented themselves as universal tools for
| people to express themselves, build their own sites, install
| apps, etc.
|
| So it comes as a shock when AWS says "we actually only want to
| support sites that present views that Jeff Bezos thinks are
| reasonable." And when Apple says "you can only download apps on
| your phone that we think do a good enough job moderating." And
| when Facebook bans people for posting wrong opinions.
|
| The government can't and probably shouldn't force AWS to host
| content that Bezos doesn't agree with. It would be Amazon's
| right to host only content that is pro-Trump, or equally
| Amazon's right to only host content that is anti-Trump. But
| when Amazon presents something as a neutral utility but
| secretly enforces different rules, we can and should criticize
| them.
|
| That's true even if all the content being removed today is
| garbage. I haven't seen any "worthwhile" content that's been
| affected by the recent moves, and I have never heard of any
| valuable speech on Parler. But I am still concerned that Apple
| gets to decide what apps I can install on my phone because they
| don't like the content. For every Apple (managed in California
| by socially liberal periople) there's a Walmart (managed in
| Arkansas by social conservatives) that will take the same
| powers and use them in a different way. Walmart is legally free
| to remove pro-BLM books from their online bookshelves, but we
| can and should criticize them if they do.
| gyudin wrote:
| I feel like erotic, kink and LGBTQ+ communities got hit with
| all the new rules. Over the last few years they've been
| kicked out of Tumblr, now Instagram, Twitch and Youtube
| aren't really happy with non PG13 content, Apple refusing to
| publish Fetlife app for years or Onlyfans, Pornhub deleting
| all content from non-partners and so on...
|
| Honestly feels like just companies are trying to maximize
| their profits and "don't be evil" became just an old memory.
| erdeszt wrote:
| I kind of feel the same as you. I'm happy that Parler is gone
| but on the other hand I think that Google, Facebook, Amazon and
| Twitter are monopolies and should be broken up.
| sidr wrote:
| These are 4 different companies that compete with each other
| (Google Cloud vs. AWS and Facebook vs. Twitter, also although
| you didn't list it Apple vs. Google) in the spaces relevant
| to this conversation (cloud services, social media, and phone
| apps).
|
| One can always list all the players in an industry and call
| that set "a monopoly and should be broken up". Or we can just
| take this for what it is, which is that some entity is so
| toxic that none of these companies (which compete with each
| other otherwise) want to touch it.
| erdeszt wrote:
| Google has monopoly on search, Amazon on online retail and
| to a lesser extent cloud hosting, Facebook on social media.
| Twitter on 140 character word dumps so that's maybe not at
| the same level bad as the others. Edit: Apple doesn't
| really have a monopoly on anything.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are monopolies
| and should be broken up.
|
| Dominant market share != monopoly
|
| For a monopoly, you need anticompetitive practices. Is
| Facebook unfairly preventing the success of other social
| networks? A good example of a monopoly was 90's era
| Microsoft, which prevented its OEMs from shipping competing
| operating systems.
|
| Terminology aside, I completely agree with you that we need
| far, far more choice in the marketplace.
| erdeszt wrote:
| Amazon: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/eu-to-investigate-
| amazon-ove... &
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2020/06/13/if-
| amazo... Google: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-
| sued-again-over-anti-0... & https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/technology/anti-competitive-g... Facebook:
| https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-is-killing-the-
| competition-... &
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/529504-state-ags-
| ftc-s...
|
| Granted these are just lawsuits at the moment and not final
| verdicts but still it's not hard to see how they don't play
| a fair game.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I agree. I see a lot of people pushing to give them special
| status or make them town squares and I think that is the
| exact opposite solution we need. We should take anti-monopoly
| action and foster competition in their respective markets
| instead.
| b0bb1z3r0 wrote:
| You can still say what you want. It's just harder to say
| DIVISIVE HATEFUL RACIST INCITING VIOLENCE against blank. (Caps
| because I don't have italics on phone, not yelling). I control
| what's on my private network. Issue is people "want" to use
| these networks to spread their "#%$&PSx" to the largest
| audience. These bad faith arguments, because you can't come to
| "my house" and cause your trouble. No you don't have that
| right. Do it at "your house". Can someone explain how
| Twitter/Amazon/Apple/Google owe me?
| baryphonic wrote:
| > On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy
| theories, radicalization and racism. So it's no loss that it's
| gone, and it took far too long to deal with it. And just like I
| wouldn't bat an eye for AWS taking down an ISIS recruitment
| site, I don't really see any loss here.
|
| (I'm going to leave aside the unfounded assertion that Parler
| was a "hate site." If it is, then every popular website is a
| "hate site," from Facebook and Google all the way down. Scores
| of prominent people who aren't hateful but for bizarre Left-
| wing constructions of the word "hate" use Parler to communicate
| with millions of people who are themselves not hateful
| conspiracy theorists.)
|
| I always feel there's an unjustified logical jump on the part
| of authoritarian sentiments such as this. The argument seems to
| be, "X hosts hateful content that it refuses to remove. If we
| remove X, then we will have reduced hate."
|
| This doesn't make much sense. Has anyone's mind actually
| changed because of Parler? It makes even less sense for
| conspiracy theories, where censorship makes conspiracy
| theorists feel like they're on the right track.
|
| I remember looking up some moon landing hoaxer content on
| YouTube probably five to eight years ago. There was a lot of it
| on YouTube, but then YouTube also recommended some debunking
| videos (a few of which had been made specifically in response
| to the conspiracy theory videos themselves). The debunking
| videos were just frankly more persuasive. (The only issue with
| my little experiment was that the "Algorithm" recommended me
| conspiracy nonsense for a few weeks after.) There were no
| passive-aggressive, condescending propaganda boxes, no appeals
| to the authority of the media or legal system, no "fact
| checks." Just arguments for and against.
|
| This is not to say that people can't do bad things with speech.
| We have stories like a random lynch mob forming in India over a
| viral series of videos shared via WhatsApp.[1] There are other
| stories like this. All are appalling. And technology has
| removed frictions that existed before to keep these things from
| happening.
|
| But let's not forget that the world in which speech is
| restricted is much, much scarier. The Rwandan genocide of 1994
| was perpetrated by the most powerful members of Rwandan
| society, who used their monstrous power to slaughter Tutsis as
| well as moderate Hutus who spoke against the killings.
|
| In the South under Jim Crow, speech was also violently
| suppressed with the aid of the states, who turned a blind eye
| to terrorist groups like the Klan going after black southerners
| or even white "race traitors" with lynching.
|
| "Censorship, but only for the bad stuff" seems to be an
| unworkable system. People get riled up, and the consequences
| can be horrific, but they seem worse in a regime with heavy
| censorship that doesn't allow a safety valve for the bad ideas.
|
| [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/whatsapp-
| de...
| helen___keller wrote:
| I don't think there's an easy answer. 2 possible solutions:
|
| (1) deplatforming could be either a democratic process, or be
| challengeable through some kind of democratic process.
|
| (2) deplatforming could be at the sole discretion of platforms,
| but the platforms themselves need to use open standards and
| protocols such that it is sufficiently easy for those who were
| deplatformed to switch to the opposition or self-platform (for
| example: ios allowing competing app stores). This would be
| difficult and technically challenging to enact in many
| situations (what does it mean in the case of social networks
| for example?), And if there's no competition we need antitrust
| ASAP
|
| If _all_ the competition are also deplatforming you, I think at
| a certain point it becomes fair to say that you were more or
| less democratically rejected, much like if every bar in town
| kicks out neo-nazis that 's not a failure of free speech but a
| success of the free market. But that relies on a large,
| healthy, robust competitive ecosystem which does not exist in a
| billionaire-dominated tech scene.
| kirghiz wrote:
| A form of ostracism, you mean?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
| weeboid wrote:
| > (1) deplatforming could be either a democratic process, or
| be challengeable through some kind of democratic process.
|
| Think gay wedding cakes
|
| > (2) ... but the platforms themselves need to use open
| standards and protocols
|
| Open standards and protocols like `https` and HTML?
| hn_asker wrote:
| You as the consumer accepted the terms of service of the
| hosting site. So don't be surprised when things like this
| happen once you've violated the terms of service.
| bordercases wrote:
| This will push towards a balkanization of the Internet at the
| platform level as people will want to self-determine the
| terms of service for the basis of their communication. Second
| boom spurred by corporate hubris. You might think there's
| nothing wrong with this hubris, depending on how comfy your
| pockets are when lined with their money. The grand majority
| of the world will not agree - they are not paid by them, when
| they are they are not treated fairly, and if they are treated
| fairly they are likely within a sociological bubble.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This will push towards a balkanization of the
| Internet at the platform level as people will want
| to self-determine the terms of service for the
| basis of their communication.
|
| This seems like a _good_ outcome. Rather than arguing about
| whether or not Facebook and Twitter should allow various
| kinds of content, folks can choose the sorts of spaces to
| which they 'd rather belong. And it's not like you have to
| pick one and only one. It just seems like a non-problem.
|
| My feeling is that most people would not like to belong to
| a space where open racism and other abhorrent views are
| tolerated and encouraged.
|
| Those that do can have their fringe spaces, but they
| shouldn't expect mainstream companies to help them do so.
| cmsonger wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| I think it's fine to be concerned about the principle while in
| agreement on this use. Both things can be true.
|
| And FWIW, that's the state in which I find myself. The
| president used Twitter to promote lies about the election that
| were consumed by his followers who then used social media to
| plan and execute violence in the US capitol. When that same
| cycle threatened to repeat, these companies stepped in. Good
| for them, what was their other choice?
|
| But appropriate action in this case does not mean that the
| process and standards used are OK in the arbitrary case and
| completely agree that lack of legislative standards is the
| problem. The tech companies had not good choices here because
| as a society we've not yet set any reasonable rules.
| dchichkov wrote:
| As per Wikipedia: "A majority of developed democracies have
| laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark,
| France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand,
| and the United Kingdom."
|
| The Unites States is not in that list. Hence it is more
| vulnerable to problems associated with allowing hate speech
| (i.e. incitement of violence by foreign-state actors, etc.).
|
| Companies that operate on the global markets tend to operate
| with the standards that are acceptable globally. In
| particular: "On 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and
| Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct
| obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid
| notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on
| their services within 24 hours."
|
| So in that particular case, influence of these companies
| might be bringing United States closer to best practices
| adopted in the majority of developed democracies.
| umvi wrote:
| > So in that particular case, influence of these companies
| might be bringing United States closer to best practices
| adopted in the majority of developed democracies.
|
| Best practices for maintaining a democracy or best
| practices for maintaining social order? There's a
| difference. You might argue that restricting hate speech is
| actually a step away from democracy towards more government
| control.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Personally, I want the government to set the rules on hate
| speech, and private companies to follow them.
| briandear wrote:
| Did Pelosi use Twitter to promote lies about an election? Was
| she banned? We're her tweets labeled/tagged/removed?
|
| Here you go:
|
| https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?.
| ..
|
| And Hillary Clinton was, for years, claiming the election was
| "stolen" from her. "Stolen" is her word, not mine. Is she not
| responsible for whipping people into a frenzy over election
| integrity?
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019.
| ..
|
| 10 Democrat congresspeople objected to the electoral count in
| 2016, including Sheila Jackson-Lee challenged the electoral
| count in 2016. That they didn't get a Senator to also
| challenge doesn't change their own opposition to the
| election. Is Shiela Jackson-Lee deplatformed? Or course not.
| She's a member of the congressional black caucus. She, an
| violence-promoting Maxine Waters get a pass from the hand-
| wringing of the tech and leftist "elites."
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-democrats-
| trump...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/maxine-waters-
| trump-...
|
| People on the left are gigantic hypocrites. And liars.
| Conveniently ascribing to Trump what they have been doing
| since before November 2016. There are hundreds of not
| thousands of examples of outright hypocrisy.
|
| Another example: violence committed against Senator Rand Paul
| was cheered by Twitter users. Accounts weren't purged, nor
| users banned en mass. The assassination attempt of
| Congressman Scalise -- no punishment of Bernie Sanders'
| campaign for inspiring hatred of Republicans that led to a
| self proclaimed "Bernie Bro" from firing over 50 shots in an
| attempt to kill Republicans.
|
| Where is the "community standards" enforcement around people
| on Twitter that celebrate this actual violence against
| elected officials?
|
| Hypocrites and phonies. That's what the tech "elites" and
| leftist are.
| smithza wrote:
| This is a false equivalence. The clearest reason is that
| zero of these cases resulted in sedition. This argument is
| distracting, it is classic whataboutism. In no way is it
| the case that moderating the app stores and shutting down
| access to Parler or the President's Tweets equivalent to
| condoning Clinton's or Jackson-Lee's or Sander's actions. I
| recommend that you look at this particular case and draw
| your conclusions about it without complaining about the
| failure to respond the same way to very different
| situations from other people years prior.
| dionian wrote:
| I'd like to see the evidence of how violent actions by
| pro-DNC parties like BLM/antifa which occurred after
| these words are any less tied to them than the actions
| that happened after Trump's words. For empirical data's
| sake.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Other than the President giving an in person speech
| before this exact group of people on the same morning as
| the events took place in which he directed them to march
| toward the Capitol building?
| hartator wrote:
| The capitol riot happened at the same time as his speech.
| Not after. Devil is in the details.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| During and after, but mostly after.
|
| During: President begins speech at approximately noon.
| Some protestors already amassed at Capitol. During
| speech, crowd begins moving away from the speech
| location, gather at the Capitol building, and breach
| outer perimeter "bike fence".
|
| After: The President's speech ends at approximately
| 1:10pm. Crowd is still outside the Capitol doors.
| Congress begins certifying the vote. Protestors clash
| with police, both sides spraying chemical irritants.
|
| Protesters continue to gather in numbers, surrounding the
| Capitol building until breaching the exterior doors at
| approximately 2:10pm.
|
| Other than the planting of pipe bombs at the
| Capitol/RNC/DNC (which I haven't seen reporting on the
| timing), all significant violence took place shortly
| after the President's speech ended.
| dionian wrote:
| If they are lies then why can't they be refuted instead of
| suppressed?
| xxpor wrote:
| This was my attitude too until about 3 years ago. But we're
| dealing with a group of people who genuinely believe that
| Trump is saving the world from a cabal of cannibalistic
| pedophiles, and if Biden becomes president they'll all be
| carted off to FEMA camps. How do you reason with someone
| like that?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If they are lies then why can't they be refuted instead
| of suppressed?
|
| It's harder to refute lies in the marketplace of ideas if
| everyone with a megaphone is obligated to echo them.
| Perhaps this wouldn't be true if people were perfectly
| rational, but if people were perfectly rational they
| wouldn't be believing and spreading lies in the first
| place.
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
|
| >Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry
| principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the
| difficulty of debunking bullshit: "The amount of energy
| needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger
| than to produce it."
| armagon wrote:
| From an optics point of view, if it looked like they were
| handling all users the same way, there'd be so much less of a
| problem here. But right now, it is like selective law
| enforcement -- action will be taken if we don't like you,
| much more than whether you are deemed to be complying with
| the terms of service.
|
| What they could've done is consistently enforced their rules
| all the way along, to people of all political persuasions.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Is there evidence that there are other AWS customers with
| easily discoverable content that incites violence, which
| AWS is not working to have removed due to their terms of
| service?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I find the phrase "incite violence" to be a deceptive
| term to use. A threat of violence is a very defined term.
| Both legally and in common understanding. "Incites
| violence" is vague and takes the responsibility away from
| the one conducting violence, and places it on somebody
| else who may or may not have been promoting violence.
| It's usage is not defined legally or in common usage.
| "Barney is the worst dinosaur" could be "inciting
| violence" if somebody attacked the purple children's
| mascot.
|
| Should we have to mute ourselves because crazy people
| might use our words as justification for their madness?
| Should others censor my opinions because in their
| opinion, a third party might use my words for
| justification for their madness?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Incitement" has absolutely been defined legally by the
| US Supreme Court.
|
| See: Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 US 444 (1969)
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test
|
| https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Great find, thanks!
|
| The usage I'm seeing does not fit the below defined
| criteria: The speech is "directed to inciting or
| producing imminent lawless action," AND The speech is
| "likely to incite or produce such action."
| sanderjd wrote:
| I personally believe the posts Amazon asked to have taken
| down meet the Brandenburg test, but note that Amazon is
| not beholden to apply the legal test, though I do believe
| it is a good starting point. Another reason to take
| things down is "glorification of terrorism", which I
| believe also applies to some of the posts.
| bitstan wrote:
| People rioting under the guise of "antifa" killed
| innocent people in Portland. They even bombed a court
| house. There's videos of "antifa" who tried to molotov
| police but accidentally self-immolated instead. It's a
| meme that the media will call these "peaceful protests".
|
| As someone who has no dog in the race, and hates violence
| -- is this "fake news"?? Do these rabid maga idiots
| actually have a point?
|
| If these protests were organized using FB or Twitter then
| why aren't they also removed from the app stores?
|
| FB profited from radicalizing people using "engagement
| metrics" and machine learning at a massive scale just to
| sell ads. Now they want to wash their hands clean?
|
| These billionaires weren't democratically elected and
| they shouldn't be shaping our democracy.
| Daishiman wrote:
| If there was a social network whose primary objective was
| to promote these actions, then sure.
|
| As it happens, these actions are not coordinated en
| masse, are neither promoted nor supported by even the
| vast majority of people who are supposedly aligned
| ideologically with is perpetrators, and are not organized
| in spaces mostly devoted to that purpose.
| didibus wrote:
| If you're interested in having your own opinion, the
| wikipedia page is a surprisingly good source of
| information around the Portland protests I found: https:/
| /en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Por...
|
| I was actually in Seattle while similar protests occured,
| and seeing things myself, I can say that the media did
| mis-portray things greatly. 99% of the protestors were
| completely peaceful and tens of thousands of people
| rallied to protest day over day all peacefully. I was
| surprised the media coverage didn't really cover those
| much, it chose to focus on like the single instance of a
| car lit on fire at 3am and those very minor instances,
| sometimes the media photoshopped images too, where they'd
| like superimpose a person holding a weapon in front of
| the photo of the car on fire and things like that. And I
| mean all media, left-wing, right-wing, small media, big
| media, like they all did this, which I was very surprised
| about.
|
| I felt pretty safe for the most part, when people weren't
| protesting I'd still go and have coffee and order
| croissant at my favourite places in the area that was
| "occupied".
|
| Things got scary when "anti-protester" started showing
| up, and suddenly everyone felt like people would show up
| with guns so protesters felt they needed guns too, and
| then there was this weird tension of like why we all have
| guns?
|
| I was really surprised personally at the intensity of the
| police response, especially in the beginning, and to me
| it felt like the police really escalated tensions early
| on which is what led to protesters starting to bring
| fireworks and umbrellas to protect themselves from police
| "croud control". Like if a single person in the croud
| threw a single bottle that was enough for the police to
| just start pepper spraying and tear gazing everyone. I
| always wondered why the police doesn't just go after that
| person that threw a bottle or broke a window, I'm not
| sure what justified all this collateral damage from them.
| There were kids and moms and even handicapped people at a
| lot of those protests.
|
| Most striking is the way the police organises around
| protesters, even though the protests are peaceful, they
| flank the croud, and really position themselves like the
| police and protesters are about to have a Braveheart
| style face off. I don't understand why the police doesn't
| spread themselves through the croud and instead help keep
| the protest peaceful by deterring the few people who are
| there to cause raucous. They should focus on the people
| disrupting the protests, help protect others from them,
| and arrest those.
|
| I was just really surprised by that, because if there was
| a parade, the police would do what I'm describing, but
| for a protest it seems they treat the protesters like a
| huge threat and that makes the whole thing really tense
| and makes people feel like the police is actually against
| them. It didn't help that the protesters were there to
| protest police brutality and they were welcomed by more
| police brutality and confrontation.
|
| What I really want people to focus on here is this fact,
| I'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously, and
| when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars are
| lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people celebrate
| the victory to the street or morn the loss of our hockey
| team!
|
| Now in Seattle, you had 60000!! Yes I said Sixty
| Thousand!!! PEOPLE marching an entire day completely
| peacefully without a single broken window or fire:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thousands-
| march-in... when the population of the whole city is
| 600000. That means 1 in 10 people participated in this
| protest, and there were not even minor raucous! That's
| the most peaceful assembly of such a large number of
| people I've ever seen in my life.
|
| In Montreal, you have 1k people in the street it doesn't
| matter why and there's more raucous then that.
|
| And these protests, they didn't just happen once, day
| over day thousands of people over and over again, and
| everytime only a handful of incidents, mostly in the late
| evening or at night. Just do the math, 60k people, if 100
| of them broke windows, threw rocks and lit some things on
| fire that would be 0.16% of the protestors. It be enough
| for the media to have footage ad-nauseam and publish 100
| article about the "riots" and for police to bring out the
| tear gas. But it also means that 99.84% of the protestors
| were peaceful. Honestly, if it was for me, I think I'd
| call these the most peaceful protest I've ever seen, I
| think they should be given an award for how peaceful
| these were given the amount of people and the
| circumstances of how tense the topic was and how they
| were received by the authorities.
|
| Disclosure: I'm just a bystander here, I didn't
| participate in the protests myself, I only observed and
| watched from the sidelines, and I knew people who did and
| heard from them. So take my info for what it is.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> What I really want people to focus on here is this
| fact, I 'm from Montreal, where we take Hockey seriously,
| and when the team Wins or Loses at the final, police cars
| are lit on fire, windows are smashed, while people
| celebrate the victory to the street or morn the loss of
| our hockey team!_
|
| Happens in almost every city I've ever lived in. I've
| seen far more violence at a Los Angeles Lakers or San
| Francisco Giants riots after they win a championship than
| at my local BLM protests.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Is this responsive to my comment? I am asking whether
| there are examples of posts of the kind that Amazon asked
| Parler to take down (clear incitement to violence /
| glorification of terrorism), which another service hosted
| on AWS has refused to take down when made aware of them?
| I don't know whether there are or aren't, which is why
| I'm asking. Your comment does not answer this question.
| bitstan wrote:
| If I link you to examples of people with blue checkmarks
| calling for violence then what? Would you support twitter
| becoming deplatformed? Is principled based reasoning
| something you're capable of or even interested in?
| sanderjd wrote:
| Is Twitter hosted on AWS? Has AWS asked them to take
| those down?
|
| I'm pretty confused by your last sentence. It seems like
| a very out of order personal attack with no basis.
| bitstan wrote:
| You're continuing to demonstrate that if I answer your
| questions it has no bearing on your ideology.
|
| Now you want to know if Twitter has an active account
| with AWS. I could answer that. But does it matter? Nah.
| That's what my last sentence meant.
| umvi wrote:
| > Good for them, what was their other choice?
|
| "do nothing", just like they did nothing when riots were
| breaking out in BLM protests.
| listless wrote:
| I find myself in the exact same position.
|
| It's one thing if I say the election was stolen. I should not
| be censored for saying that it was. My voice alone will not
| sway anything. The problem is that so much power is
| concentrated with the president that it ONLY takes his voice
| to throw an entire country into chaos. That's too much power
| with one person.
|
| So what am I saying? That I should have freedoms the
| president should not?
| coryfklein wrote:
| > That's too much power with one person.
|
| Well, the USA could impeach and remove that person, or they
| could reduce the power of his office. But so far the people
| and their elected representatives have opted not to do
| either of those things.
| ruined wrote:
| This same power has been used, on a less dramatic scale over
| the past year and for a long time before now, to attack
| police reform activists and disrupt organizing of the local
| activist communities that exist to oppose this shit on the
| ground.
|
| It's not really a situation of "this may be socially
| chilling", it's been happening, and now it's just the first
| time they contravened the president and made the news cycle.
|
| I don't really see any other decision they could have made
| this past week. But if social media and capital in general
| would stop kneecapping every political option but ineffective
| liberalism and dogwhistle fascism, maybe the large numbers of
| people who are angry and feel helpless would currently have a
| pressure valve in a healthier direction.
|
| Three or four massive companies with incentives to suppress
| the slightest disruption to profit, that hold unprecedented
| surveillance power, and exercise detailed control over
| individual and mass communication, that make apparently
| ideological decisions about who is allowed to exist online,
| are not compatible with a healthy society or any path that
| could lead us out of this situation.
| creato wrote:
| "Opposing this shit on the ground" is why we're in this
| nightmare in the first place. Imagine if there had been
| counterprotestors "opposing this shit on the ground" at the
| Capitol insurrection: we'd probably be pretty fucking close
| to a civil war right now instead of near universal
| condemnation of the extremist forces.
|
| If you have anything to do with "opposing this shit on the
| ground", please fucking stop. You are accomplishing less
| than nothing.
| ruined wrote:
| christ. i'm talking about doing actual organizing work. i
| assure you nobody wants to put life on the line and throw
| down for friggin congress
| esoterica wrote:
| The constitution prohibits the government from banning
| political speech unless it will, e.g. incite imminent
| violence. Keyword being imminent. Merely supporting violence
| in general and non-specific terms is not illegal and cannot
| be made illegal under the constitution, so the government
| cannot decide to ban most of the types of speech that the
| tech companies have chosen to ban (including Trump's recent
| tweets that got him banned).
|
| If you think it is good that the recent bans took place then
| you have no choice but to delegate decision making authority
| to the industry, because the government is not
| constitutionally permitted to demand that tech companies make
| those decisions.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| My understanding is multiple posts on Parler did match our
| incitement laws even up to planning events to come in the
| next few weeks.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I guess it's theoretically possible to set up an arm of
| law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all
| social media, along with a judicial division that could
| stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment
| takedowns. Maybe.
| no-s wrote:
| >>I guess it's theoretically possible to set up an arm of
| law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all
| social media, along with a judicial division that could
| stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment
| takedowns
|
| not theoretic (not pumping my post but amusing you would
| comment simultaneously with my noticing this):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749923
| scruple wrote:
| My understanding was that planning was happening on
| multiple social media sites, notably Facebook.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I believe the distinction between the two (though note: I
| am very willing to change this belief based on learning
| details I don't currently know) is that Facebook tries to
| remove such content (though it may not perfectly succeed)
| whereas Parler actively refused to do so when AWS made
| them aware and asked them to remove it.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| And the US government should bring a case against them. I
| don't think you'll find me inconsistent in that thought,
| I also argued an ISP yesterday that blocked FB is fully
| within its rights to do so.
|
| Personally I think we need anti-trust action against a
| lot of larger tech companies and second that they have
| now opened the door on further regulation regarding
| content moderation. I think getting rid of Section 230
| entirely would be a mistake but I won't be surprised to
| see it amended in some form.
| guscost wrote:
| Never mind plain old lobbying, any legislator who
| supports a crackdown on Facebook could be de-platformed.
| These tech leviathans have captured the regulators in a
| way that has never been seen before, and now they are
| flaunting grotesque anti-competitive bullying in all of
| our faces. Depending on the government to fix this mess
| is not going to go well.
| acomjean wrote:
| This is one reason why amazon pulled the plug and the
| violent posts were "rapidly growing". This kind of
| customer is probably a huge headache to deal with, and
| complaints were being sent/forwarded from amazon and
| "some" were acted on.
|
| From Ars article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2021/01/amazon-cuts-off-...
|
| Amazon said: "It's clear that Parler does not have an
| effective process to comply with the AWS terms of
| service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to
| determine its position on content moderation. You remove
| some violent content when contacted by us or others, but
| not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated
| publicly that he doesn't "feel responsible for any of
| this, and neither should the platform." This morning, you
| shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate
| violent content, but plan to do so manually with
| volunteers. It's our view that this nascent plan to use
| volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous
| content will not work in light of the rapidly growing
| number of violent posts."
| MrMan wrote:
| Libertarianism == billionaires subbing in for government. this
| is what we get
| dahfizz wrote:
| Are you implying our government, which spends $6.6 trillion a
| year and jails people for smoking weed, is libertarian in
| nature?
| kingaillas wrote:
| I think your statement is the reverse of what was implied.
|
| Doesn't libertarianism posit a weak central government,
| shedding all responsibilities (that can be shed) to the
| free market, where competition ensures the best outcomes,
| choices for all, etc?
|
| If that's true, the current situation of wealthy
| corporations controlling various social media platforms
| is... the desired outcome?
|
| The fact that competition is better in areas such as motor
| vehicles, due to physical standards like roads that work
| for everyone, lack of network effects, and so on, is beside
| the point. It isn't the government's fault that Orkut and
| MySpace didn't compete well against Facebook, or that
| Parler entered a service contract with another corporation
| that decided their TOS was violated.
|
| This will all be sorted out in the courts, interpreting
| contracts which are the ultimate source of truth in the
| libertarian world view. Fear nothing, justice will prevail.
| If Parler was not in violation of the contract, they will
| be compensated. If they were, too bad, they failed to
| adhere to the contract they agreed to. They deserve to fail
| and the NEXT competitor to take up the mantle will have
| incrementally better information and chances to succeed.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| double plus good point comrade
| MrMan wrote:
| for me, libertarianism is a cancer. that doesnt make me a
| communist, and I am definitely not. but hyper-individualism
| is a literal poison to society.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Can't you disagree with a philosophy without calling it a
| cancer? It's this warping of language, 1984-style as in
| the original comment, that is the biggest problem.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| It might not make you a communist, but I'd say definitely
| a statist at least, of which there are both left and
| right leaning flavors.
|
| If libertarianism and individualism are "a cancer" and
| "literal poison" then then they are the most benign and
| beneficial ones I've ever heard of. Of course any
| ideology has a spectrum of interpretations and people
| involved, but the core ideas of "don't hurt people and
| don't take their stuff" (and maybe also "leave me alone")
| seem pretty good to me.
| Cabal wrote:
| > Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories,
| radicalization and racism
|
| Citation needed. Neither I nor my friends or acquaintances used
| it for any of these things. Hell, I've hired people off of
| Parler.
| [deleted]
| briandear wrote:
| > Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories,
| radicalization and racism
|
| And so is Facebook. And Twitter. And YouTube.
|
| And so what? If you don't like that stuff, you are free to not
| use services that you don't like.
| MrMan wrote:
| Parler is not gone, I don't think,
| dude_bro wrote:
| I would agree - what's interesting to me is that taking
| Parler off the mainstream platforms like Google and Apple app
| stores though will probably only contribute to the
| radicalization of its content.
|
| Essentially, these companies are probably just contributing
| to the thing they are against. But I guess so long as their
| hands aren't getting dirty they get to pretend like they're
| doing the right thing and taking the moral high ground.
| indigochill wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| I think this question conflates "private company exercises
| right to refuse service" and "private company decides what's
| acceptable speech". The internet is not truly centralized and
| no tech giant has a monopoly on speech. There remains plenty of
| internet real estate to host ideas on that's not owned by tech
| giants. I think it should remain the right of these companies
| not to do business with organizations they choose not to and
| that said organization should also have the right to find
| another provider who will do business with them (or create
| their own if need be).
|
| Is this not basically the same as porn hosting? There are hosts
| who don't want to be associated with it, and there are hosts
| who have no qualms taking porn money.
| gpapilion wrote:
| With a Parler, the dependence on aws, twilio, and other
| solutions took them out of the iaas world and into paas and
| saas. They depended on Amazon and other vendor solutions, so
| migrating to anything else would be almost impossible.
| aldarisbm wrote:
| Yeah, but one could argue that is their fault that they
| leaned into AWS vendor lock-in. They should've architected
| cloud-agnostically
| cm2187 wrote:
| Google and Apple have a duopoly on mobile platforms, which
| are the natural place for any communication app. If those two
| act in concert you are facing a monopoly. There are only two
| ways out. Competition or regulation.
|
| For AWS, I agree there are many alternatives, and in fact
| what shocked me wasn't so much that they terminated their
| contract with Parler, but the fact that they seem to have
| done so with zero notice period. Which I find extremely
| cavalier.
| iaHN wrote:
| Regulatory capture prevents competition. Money influencing
| politics prevents regulation.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| What regulation prohibits you from making a phone OS,
| even for an existing phone? Or your own android build? Or
| your own _store_ on Android?
| cm2187 wrote:
| Up to a certain point. No amount of money would prevent
| congress from toughening bank regulations after the
| financial crisis. I also doubt that the republicans are
| going to give big tech companies a pass when they come
| back to power.
| notahacker wrote:
| You can't get an OnlyFans app in Google or Apple's app
| stores either, much as I'm sure the company in question
| would like the exposure of having one, because much of that
| website's user generated content also falls foul of Google
| and Apple's content policies. I don't understand what
| appears to be a commonly held view that it was fine for the
| appstore duopoly to deem content unsuitable for their store
| until the content in question was calls to hang the vice
| president and shitposts about Jews.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yeah, I think that both of those things should probably
| have more public input when the players at hand
| effectively control the entire market for smartphones in
| the US.
|
| We have strong bill of rights restrictions on
| governmental power because of the massive amount of power
| held by the government. So having that power be
| controlled by small numbers of entirely unaccountable
| figures with more power than the government in certain
| areas doesn't seem better at all?
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the main thing is if you want to make a case for
| there being anti-trust or user freedom or dubious
| moderation priorities issues with app stores, a campaign
| centred around examples _other_ than Parler is much more
| likely to win widespread support.
| cjameskeller wrote:
| Market share is low, but there certainly are other mobile
| OS options out there. The fact that people in general don't
| want to use them doesn't make Android & iOS a "duopoly".
| thereddaikon wrote:
| This line of thinking is similar to what happened in the deep
| south before the civil rights movement. Private businesses
| didn't want to serve African Americans and the excuse given
| was its their right to refuse service. Except when all
| private businesses colluded to deny service to African
| Americans to enforce an informal segregation.
|
| Eventually the federal government came in and decided race
| was a protected class.
|
| Obviously the problem isn't as simple as saying Google or
| anyone else must allow certain groups to use their platforms.
| Because that compels speech. Which the government also can't
| do.
|
| Proper legal experts would have to craft it but I think the
| limit should be somewhere around access and use of the
| infrastructure. Domain registrars and hosts cannot
| discriminate. However If Twitter doesn't want someone on
| their platform I can't see why they shouldn't be allowed to
| kick them. We just cant allow for those paltform hosts to
| collude with the infrastructure providers to deplatform
| others completely.
|
| And I can think of two reasons why from a legal standpoint.
| 1: most of the internet infrastructure in the US was built
| with public dollars. Even if its nominally owned by a private
| ISP, they were paid by the government to build it.
| Historically the courts have used government funds as a way
| to enforce legal limits.
|
| 2: coordinated deplatforming like what happened with Parlor
| looks an awful lot like it was an intentional hit to take out
| a potential competitor to the current online status quo. That
| should worry everyone really.
| loceng wrote:
| They aren't deciding what free speech is acceptable, they're
| deciding what free speech is acceptable on their private
| platforms.
|
| People are pretending like the platforms that deplatformed the
| group inciting violence are the only platforms on the internet
| that they could have used, they're not - they're not monopolies
| in regards to that. They are however the most convenient
| platforms to use because of various reasons, however we're not
| talking about having a right to convenience - we're talking
| about having the right to free speech, which everyone still
| does in America and on the internet.
|
| Some advice: if you're going to have a mob boss and wannabe
| tyrant like Trump and rally your followers on a platform, I'd
| recommend using, depending on, technology layers of owners who
| are aligned with you and okay with inciting of violence; Trump
| goes on Fox News to say whatever the fuck he wants to millions
| of people while saying he's being prevented from free speech -
| come on now people, let's come back to reality and stop getting
| sucked into the gaslighting.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Your definition of monopoly is wrong. Microsoft was judged by
| the court to be abusing its monopoly power by bundling IE
| with Windows and making it difficult to uninstall even though
| users could still install competing browsers if they spent
| the extra effort.
|
| There's no natural monopoly that you can't find an
| alternative to if you're willing to spend enough effort.
| intended wrote:
| I'd go a step higher, the normative framework that informs our
| legislation is old and needs to be examined.
|
| We support a market place of ideas because, it was argued that
| bad ideas would eventually be trumped by better ideas - only by
| examining bad ideas would we be able to move past them.
|
| Part of that remains true today, but it does not account for
| the realities of mass communication.
|
| The model ends up painting a passive, solitary image of ideas.
|
| But ideas are neither passive, nor without context. Signal
| without context is noise.
|
| Nor are brains neutral processors of information, they are
| vulnerable to psyops, malformed arguments, pressure, ignorance
| and emotion.
|
| I have read propaganda, I have seen arguments which sound
| legitimate, but underlying it is xenophobia and hatred.
|
| I know for a fact, that Popper was right and you cannot
| tolerate the intolerant.
|
| They do not come to discuss or exchange ideas. They come to use
| your platform as an opportunity to gain followers.
|
| And they use the gaps in our norms to create space for
| themselves.
|
| Counter speech is not a panacea, it require conditions to work.
| If those conditions are not satisfied, the strategy fails.
|
| The norms behind modern speech need to account for these trade
| offs.
|
| The status quo comes with the trade off that partisanship will
| increase, more people _will_ be radicalized.
|
| This is the trade off, and people have to decide if they are
| willing to enjoy this trade off.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| > On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or
| not we agree with them? We talk about net neutrality, but
| shouldn't we apply the same standard to hosts like AWS?
|
| Parler was co-founded by an unelected billionaire as a
| "grassroots" way for the Mercers to push their ideology and
| their version of "acceptable speech". I don't really have any
| qualms with their power play getting shut down, and I don't
| think other businesses should be forced to support it.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| In my opinion, things are working as expected. The US federal
| and state level governments are not supposed to regulate
| speech, per the US Constitution. In this case they are not
| regulating speech.
|
| Private companies are regulating speech (in their applications,
| through their services and websites, etc.) as they are free to
| do under the US Constitution. While there may be a market for
| the speech Parler promotes and amplifies that market is not
| sufficiently large (in the opinion of these companies) to
| offset possible bad public relations or the loss of other
| customers.
|
| I don't think there's any place for legislation that forces
| private companies to take a loss in this manner. It's clearly
| anti-free market and definitely anti-free speech, forcing
| Amazon to associate with speech they feel might harm the
| companies financial outlook.
|
| Also, is it necessary? There are many BitTorrent tracker sites
| that are treated as illegal in the US and are still available.
| If Parler was really dedicated to keeping their website running
| they could surely do so. Maybe they won't have applications in
| the Apple App Store but that's not a right, is it? You have to
| have product that Apple feels helps the overall goal of their
| App Store, which is to make money for Apple.
| rootsudo wrote:
| "Private companies are regulating speech (in their
| applications, through their services and websites, etc.) as
| they are free to do under the US Constitution. "
|
| Technically, there is no barrier that restricts a corporation
| from granting free space, so it isn't "free" to do so, moreso
| that it was not addressed because at the time of the framing
| of the constitution, the bigger dissenters of free speech
| were government, and religion, backed by government (or being
| the government.)
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I disagree that this was an oversight of the of the US
| Constitution. Newspapers and books were both things when
| the US Constitution was written and, in all the years
| since, we haven't seen any amendments that would force a
| newspaper to print articles or letters that might cost them
| customers. Publishers are not forced to publish books that
| they feel might tarnish or otherwise harm their brands.
|
| Indeed, it's my position that such laws would in fact be
| infringing on the free speech of those private companies.
| In addition they might cost those companies money, making
| these hypothetical laws also anti-free market.
| vageli wrote:
| While not an amendment, there certainly have been
| provisions to compel entities from providing a forum for
| sides they don't want to promote. [0] See also the now-
| repealed fairness doctrine. [1]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| I suspect the bottom line is that general anonymity on the
| internet needs to be discarded.
|
| No, wait, hear me out.
|
| No moderation isn't acceptable. Really. (If someone wants to
| make a counter-assertion, I merely point to this site.)
|
| Non-transparent, corporate moderation doesn't seem palatable to
| anyone. There are just too many pitfalls.
|
| Independent moderation falls apart when you consider that
| different fora have different moderation requirements. (A forum
| for Cinderblock the obese cat is going to be very different
| from any kind of political or technical site.)
|
| The best case seems to me to be case-by-case, transparent
| moderation with precedents, similar to common law. And
| ultimately, I expect transparent moderation to, in the extreme,
| go to the court system, so that's not necessarily a bad
| starting point.
|
| Unfortunately, _that_ falls apart when large numbers of
| participants are (including, say, moderators) are not speaking
| in good faith. I see two possible ideas to address that: First,
| to tie accounts to physical identities (but not necessarily
| disallowing the account to be effectively anonymous), to cut
| the number of bots, multiple accounts, etc. Second, to attach
| an account to a user 's reputation (which does break
| anonymity). The results I see are to cut down on the volume of
| _crap_ while ensuring users have skin in the game (with a side
| order of making legal action against stalking, harassment, and
| threats).
|
| But what about those situations that _require_ anonymity? Most
| of those already have legal and social protections:
| psychological, religious, and legal counseling, for example. I
| would support anonymity for those fora, which places
| responsibility for moderation on the fora, of course, as well
| as meaning that the moderation cannot be transparent.
|
| One area does require special handling: whistleblowing. It does
| require anonymity, and does not have any current legal or
| social protections. _That needs to be fixed._
|
| But anyway, as a general rule, the default for social media
| should not support anonymity. _The only way to free providers
| like Facebook, Reddit, this site, or AWS from responsibility
| for what is posted there is to_ place that responsibility on
| the actual posters _---having no responsibility doesn 't work,
| and giving that power to the discretion of the owner of the
| provider isn't acceptable._
|
| There are some objections that I think I can answer, but this
| comment is getting too long for me, so I'll wait until anyone
| cares.
|
| And no, the irony of Parler's requirement of photo-ids and
| (allegedly) SSNs isn't lost on me.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| This is exactly the point that the article misses. It's not
| contradictory to hold the views that "This was the right
| decision" and "This decision shouldn't have been up to private
| companies".
|
| While there are significant improvements that could be made to
| our laws, the most significant failure here is one of
| enforcement. When Republican senators chose not to hear
| witnesses during the impeachment trial they took a significant
| step towards making Donald Trump a despot and legitimizing the
| alt-right. The recent strife is a direct consequence.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Come on. People keep citing "key events" that led to this.
| It's silly. The rioters would've not rioted if more witnesses
| had been heard? You think they even are aware of the trial
| proceedings?
| MajorBee wrote:
| If these witnesses _were_ presented and heard, leading to
| (long shot maybe, but still) a _conviction_ by the Senate
| of Trump, of course, things would have been very different
| today.
|
| You can argue that the violent events of last week would
| have simply taken place early last year, but at least it
| might not have threatened peaceful transfer of power after
| the elections.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Parler may sue to have their site reinstated, which they are, I
| don't see an issue here. If these companies were wrong to take
| them down the courts will force these companies to reverse it.
| I don't think they will though because multiple posts, comments
| etc on Parler apparently match the criteria for incitement
| which Parler insufficiently moderated and is not covered by 1st
| Amendment rights.
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires
| deciding what is acceptable speech_
|
| Historically newspapers, television and radio have decided what
| is acceptable to be published through their media. There is no
| reason modern internet-based media should be any different.
|
| On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate.
| Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
|
| Excerpts:
|
| Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe
| absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media
| lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people.
| President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories
| more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers.
|
| Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will
| always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child
| abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free
| platform to amplify their views and target their victims.
|
| Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech
| companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of
| Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is
| such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
| yandrypozo wrote:
| Finally someone gets it: "No authoritarians believe they are
| authoritarians."
| frazras wrote:
| Is it ok to say that anything I can put on a placard and walk
| around a city displaying without getting arrested or breaking any
| law should be considered acceptable free speech on the internet?
| Just trying to separate the medium from the message.
| DarknessFalls wrote:
| This is so stupid. Silicon Valley is not a company or a
| federation, so the charge of "monopolistic force" is false. It's
| just a hub of innovation. Parler is a terrorist network.
| [deleted]
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| The US is being destroyed by the Paradox of Tolerance and
| Putin/Xi could not be happier. What better possible outcome,
| short of an actual Civil War, could there be to prove to their
| people that Democracy is a flawed ideology?
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| This is just a good ole' fashioned reactionary claw back. It's
| not a show of force. I feel bad for Parler, they got the short
| end of the stick. But can't have your cake and eat it too.
| MrMan wrote:
| anti trust action is needed against a few big tech firms, but
| this article for some reason frightens me. I dont understand the
| perspective and there seem to be contradictory undercurrents. I
| dont use any social network apps except occasionally browsing my
| couple of dozen friends feeds on my private Instagram account. I
| know Insta is not good, but I dont feel particularly threatened
| by it, since no discussion is ocurring (on my feed), just
| pictures and videos of music and places people have been, meals
| they have cooked.
|
| I don't really care if Amazon crushes Parler. I also don't find
| back-doors, infiltration and R&D relationships with the
| government alarming or surprising. What matters to me is whether
| the government itself is corrupt.
|
| I am a globalist and I do hope for more, not less integration
| between trade blocs. I think it would be beneficial to avoid the
| supply chain panic that underlies the extreme pursuit of labor
| cost arbitrage, but not in pursuit of national, but rather
| regional, balance of power and trade.
|
| Surveillance is not going away. We cannot fight it. What can be
| combated is the willingness to harm others and the tendency to
| view others as separate from ourselves and as a danger to our
| interests.
|
| But these tech firms are not yet absolute monopolies - Amazon,
| Google, Facebook, all display in my opinion anti-competitive and
| in some cases anti-consumer behaviour, but I think a new
| framework is needed to quantify harm in tech antitrust
| regulation.
|
| I think Facebook is the most egregious offender because, as I
| have hyperbolically stated before, have constructed what amounds
| to a genocide machine. So while they are not "anti-consumer" in
| terms of price, they are anti-peace and stability of the system
| which hurts all of us. They disrupt the political process and not
| in a fun way.
|
| Greenwald seems to be inviting pretty draconian anti-trust
| action, which would certainly be a bit controversial because some
| libertarians might not like it - ideologically the founders of
| Parler might be among them. On the other hand he seems to be
| stroking Parler as being some kind of underdog that is less bad
| somehow than other social networks. In my view Parler is only
| different in scale.
|
| Again, Greenwald makes me very uneasy in this article because he
| comes out hard against "monopoly" but whose side is he on? I feel
| weird that I agree on paper that antitrust action is needed, but
| his article feels bought and paid for in some way.
| aeturnum wrote:
| The stupidest possible take on things always seems to rise to the
| top of social media.
|
| First, I fully agree that the entire mobile ecosystem is walled-
| garden first. That should be addressed to a greater degree than
| sideloading apps on android. Second, the idea that this is
| 'monopolistic' seems deeply silly. Parler isn't offline because
| Amazon, the only provider of web services, told them to get off
| the internet. It's offline because Amazon and most of their
| specialized service providers (twilio, etc) kicked them off _as
| well as_ all of those service providers ' competitors. This is
| not an example of monopolistic power. It's an example of an
| entire industry choosing to reject a company they find odious.
| This is very similar to what happened with Stormfront some years
| ago[1].
|
| Still, this is troubling. I feel like it's reasonable to see
| Parler as acting in bad faith. It seems to me like they knowingly
| fostered an environment that would lead to militants using the
| service to plan attacks. I think they protest too much.
|
| I also think that hosting truly "free" speech in an ethical way
| is enormously, obviously difficult. Threats are genuinely hard to
| evaluate and must be taken seriously. Mass communication has been
| at the center of all the modern genocides (and early forms of
| communication were key to the older ones). I think _this_ is the
| discussion we should be having - what is the "right" way to
| create a space where people are save to speak? How could Parler
| have existed to allow people to speak their minds _while_
| preventing the platform from providing aid to violent hate
| groups? I suspect it 's impossible to allow people to speak
| freely about their belief that other people are not human without
| fomenting violence but it's clear that not everyone agrees with
| that and I think we need to talk about it.
|
| P.s. Quite sad to see that Greenwald has descended into red-faced
| sputtering grievance-listing. I agree that the moral case for
| shutting down Parler and shutting down Facebook is the same. I
| think both should be shut down for fomenting and planning
| violence. We can reopen both of them when we figure out how to
| more effectively stop their use in violence. I didn't even need
| ten paragraphs to say it.
|
| [1] https://slate.com/technology/2017/08/stormfront-has-been-
| kic...
| seventytwo wrote:
| There's absolutely nothing "monopolistic" about any of this.
|
| Greenwald is a conspiratorial loon.
| throwaway111z wrote:
| It feels like the tech giants are dipping their toes into
| partisan politics and they don't like the message more than the
| tactics.
|
| For example, if BLM had occupied the capital does anyone think
| that BLM would have been removed from the big tech platforms
| within two days or the response would be remotely similar?
| Although BLM is a much better cause, there were fringe elements
| that advocated violence for change that received no widespread
| tech backlash. Furthermore, there were BLM protests for months in
| nearly every state capital and Seattle had an occupied portion
| for weeks with no similar response.
|
| Sure, perhaps in this case BLM is such a better cause than
| Trump's election shenanigans. However, couldn't someone on the
| center or right could see this as a problematic precedent? Today
| it's clear cut, but in the future it could be 'agree with the
| left or be 'cancelled''?
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| I have a suggestion to keep these conversations from spiraling
| into pedantry: let's stop using the phrase "free speech" when
| referring to these companies (I'm going to use it a few more
| times here though, for illustration), and instead be descriptive
| and refer to "a group of people having their ideas and voices
| silenced at scale." Whether we agree with the people being
| silenced or not, that's what this is really about, right?
|
| We don't need names to know what something is. A young scientist
| might think an elderly aboriginal person foolish because the
| elder has never heard of a "star", but that doesn't mean the
| elder hasn't seen the sun rise every day of their life.
|
| My point is that we should not be discounting opinions because
| someone used the wrong word. We're smart enough to read between
| the lines and see the crux of what is bothering someone. Free
| speech, as an ideal, doesn't have to refer to any law, but to
| avoid spiraling into pedantry, I would suggest that we all be
| more descriptive during the course of these conversations.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Was it really monopolistic?
|
| server hosting isn't a monopoly, everyone has access to the web
| on their phone even when app stores drop apps
|
| they may have had problems getting managed services on the big
| providers but there are many many other options
| piercebot wrote:
| Silicon Valley does not control the Internet though. I get that
| headlines like this make for good clickbait, but it's not like
| Parler can no longer exist on the Internet.
|
| Parler can go buy some servers, hook them up to the internet, and
| come back online.
| kats wrote:
| If Apple and Google can do whatever they want on their platform
| (where they have a combined 99.8% market share in the US), then
| what's to stop AT&T/Verizon/CenturyLink/Comcast from doing
| whatever they want on _their_ platform, the internet?
| ip26 wrote:
| The carrier who provides your physical location service is more
| comparable to a utility or the postal service than are Apple or
| Google.
| kats wrote:
| Ok, but I assume (could be wrong) that's because of the
| difficulty of creating your own water/sewage/electric
| service. But isn't it comparably difficult to create your own
| app store or payment processor?
| ip26 wrote:
| It's not just difficulty- it's really not a good thing for
| anybody if you have three different sewers and four
| different electrical service lines running to your house.
| It's expensive, wasteful, a mess, and can even degrade
| quality of service.
|
| But a variety of app stores or payment processors
| functioning over a common carrier (ISP, USPS) is a good
| thing.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the early 1990s, if you wanted to have an online presence you
| needed to buy hardware, connect it to the internet and run some
| software on it.
|
| If Parler had done this, the ways they could have been
| "destroyed" would have been: 1. refusal to
| provide DNS for their address 2. refusal to certify an SSL
| certificate (not absolutely required but more than just a detail
| in 2021) 3. refusal by an ISP to carry their bits
|
| I believe that even the progressive end of the tech community
| would have been extremely negative about any company that did any
| of these 3 things. I also think its very unlikely that any of
| them would have happened, though the Gab case provides some
| evidence to the contrary.
|
| Instead, Parler followed the unfortunate dumbification of online
| presence over the last 20-30 years, and instead of doing the
| above, contracted with a large corporation to take care of things
| for them. The large corporation decided they didn't want to do
| that anymore, and Parler lost its online presence.
|
| Parler is not exactly unique in having made this choice. But
| perhaps the consequence of the choice they made might convince
| more people/organizations/corporations to think a bit more
| clearly about the type of hosting infrastructure they really
| want/need. If Parler had followed the self-hosted pathway, I
| think it is extremely unlikely (though sure, not impossible) that
| they would be offline at this point.
| inkeddeveloper wrote:
| Did you just refer to using global cloud providers as
| "dumbification of online presence?" I'm not even sure how one
| comes up with that.
| curiousllama wrote:
| REAL programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand
|
| https://xkcd.com/378/
| dgellow wrote:
| DNS can clearly be a target, same for TLS certificates.
| zionic wrote:
| >I believe that even the progressive end of the tech community
| would have been extremely negative about any company that did
| any of these 3 things
|
| Strongly disagree. The comments here would be overwhelmingly in
| support with crap like "you can't force a private company to
| give you a certificate!"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Lets Encrypt has (AFAIK) no TOS that would provide any basis
| to revoke a certificate.
| cthor wrote:
| You also need DDoS protection. Cloudflare has booted people off
| for naughty speech before and got away with it, so no reason to
| expect anyone else in the game wouldn't.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Was that when the CEO penned a letter that started "I kicked
| X off the internet because I was in a bad mood this
| morning"?IIRC, even they felt this power was a bad thing at
| the time, even if the instance of it was ok
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Booted people from its hosting services, or booted people
| from their DNS service? These are not the same.
| tpmx wrote:
| Could have, should have. This isn't material to the discussion
| at hand. (It is however good advice in general.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It is material to any discussion of whether or not AWS,
| Amazon or Silicon Valley or corporations in general have
| "Monopolistic Force" abilities in this area.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| Even DNS services are kicking people off. AR15, a widely
| trafficked gun forum with an e-commerce store was just kicked
| off of GoDaddy.
|
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/amazon-godaddy-boots...
| alacombe wrote:
| > AR15, a widely trafficked gun forum
|
| Given the amount of time it's been openly operating, if there
| was anything done related to gun trafficking, the ATF would
| have shut it down long ago.
|
| Just because a site has a LEGAL private sales section and you
| don't agree with it doesn't mean it's "trafficking".
| boston_clone wrote:
| it may have simply been an opportunity for a better choice
| of words. in this case, i think they meant trafficked as in
| heavily visited.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| I meant site traffic, yes. Thank you for clarifying.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I don't the know the details of that case (and I don't expect
| the WE reporter does either). It seems as if GoDaddy refused
| to continue _hosting_ the site. That 's quite different from
| providing just DNS for a server owned and administered by the
| organization.
| robocat wrote:
| From linked article: "As a result, we[=godaddy] informed
| the site yesterday that they have 24 hours to move the
| domain to another registrar, as they have violated our
| terms of service" i.e. domain, not hosting.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Their registrar is and was epik.com, starting in 1997
| according to whois records.
|
| I can't find an obvious link between godaddy and epik
| (though one may exist).
|
| Their current DNS service is provided by ... AWS :)
|
| I'm not convinced that the quote from godaddy is
| technically informative here, though using the word
| "registrar" would seem to be more indicative of something
| other than hosting.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The left has been censored and deleted enough times from social
| media and regular media, that this is a cause for concern. Any
| laws which restruc freedom of speech could come back to haunt us.
| FabHK wrote:
| While I generally disagree with Greenwald, he makes a good point
| here:
|
| > So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on
| Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google
| and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the
| internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more
| extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?
| watwut wrote:
| Because those repeatedly and often and again and again censor
| extremist content.
| MrMan wrote:
| "while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism
| and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis"
|
| I am not sure this is true? The point could have been made
| without resort to hyperbole stretching into disingenuousness.
| What about that other platform should not be the issue - social
| network apps/sites are all subject to and propagate abuse.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Democratic politicians have been hounding Facebook and YouTube
| since 2016.
|
| Perhaps you mean why did we focus so much of our efforts on a
| single website? In this very moment, it's because this website
| was used to coordinate the efforts of a national group of
| potential terrorists. The pot boiled hard and fast.
| pas wrote:
| Charlottesville was a proving ground. Trump's singing to
| white nationalists, violence against "the other side",
| casualti(es).
|
| In this particular case Trump directly ordered the attack.
| (At first I put quotes on order and attack, but alas no
| quotes needed, it's what it is.) But he has been flaring
| these flames since ... that fucking birth certificate dog
| whistle.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| It's surprising Twitter let him keep his account this long.
| SV is not _that_ powerful.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Greenwald's thing is totally ignoring what his ideological
| opponents do, and then whine about them not doing what he
| thinks they should have done.
|
| The idea that Democrats have been easy and kind on Twitter
| and FB is so disconnected with reality it's actually kind of
| funny.
| pas wrote:
| The question is, was this an exception, or they changed policy,
| and will they start to enforce similar rules with regards to
| those bigger platforms/groups?
| jonahrd wrote:
| The reason Parler is popular in the first place is because
| YouTube and Facebook are no longer viable options for this kind
| of hate speech. That fight already concluded.
| awillen wrote:
| No, this is not a good point. Parler is a one-purpose app that
| existed solely (and was moderated by its own employees) to
| foment a chamber of hateful, violent rhetoric. Facebook and
| YouTube are used for many things by many people. Also Facebook
| and YouTube remove those kinds of content (even if they don't
| do a great job of it, they spend a whole lot of money employing
| a lot of people to get rid of it). Parler moderators removed
| those people who disagreed with the violent MAGA rhetoric.
| They're just not comparable, and pretending they are is
| ridiculous.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| I signed up and used Parler and I was never hateful or
| violent. Its purpose was not that but to have a place where
| conservative voices (or anyone for that matter) could speak
| freely without the risk of being silenced by Twitter,
| Facebook etc. because your views didn't align with the left.
| bluedays wrote:
| I use to have an immense respect for Glen Greenwald and follow
| his writing regularly, but Greenwald's tone has changed
| drastically recently. I'm not sure why, but he seems to have a
| rather myopic view of the left. It's a sudden departure from the
| writing he was known for during the days of The Intercept and
| Salon.com. I am honestly even starting to question the honesty of
| his writing, even.
|
| An example for this article:
|
| > including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize
| them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests
| in order to promote content or products to them.
|
| He says this but fails to mention that the same people who were
| the founders of Cambridge Analytica also were the founder of
| Parler
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201116/01141545710/what-...
|
| Furthermore there seems to be little, if any, mention of the fact
| that the Mercers who were major funders for the Trump
| organization were also using the data obtained from Cambridge
| Analytica to target political advertising.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595338116/what-did-cambridge-...
|
| I know this is beyond the scope of the article that Greenwald was
| writing but having read his writing for _years_ I have to wonder
| why it wasn 't mentioned? It's not something that would typical
| go without mention in writing from earlier in his career.
|
| I am not one to typically hedge on the side of removing "free
| speech" from people, but Parler represented a clear and present
| threat to American democracy. The ties to the Trump organization
| and it's funders were innumerable. Why does Greenwald have an
| agenda to foment discord regarding this? His writing lately, the
| twitter screeds that he has gone on against the left, and his
| staunch denial of the Russian interference in the 2016 election
| makes me question if he hasn't been compromised in some way.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice,
| evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on
| and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as
| is? Do we loose sleep over it?
|
| I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in
| our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt
| that that is true. I think the _speech_ part should always be
| 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will
| always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the
| _speech itself_ should be viewed as illegal, or something that
| should be regulated.
|
| Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that
| presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate
| all of those things without believing that the site should be
| censored.
| tryauuum wrote:
| Your comment could be so much better without the highway
| analogy. Now there are people expanding it, indulging in
| thoughts like "wouldn't the digital equivalent of Toyota be
| XYZ...".
|
| I think comparisons suck, because people obviously come up with
| comparisons with the things that prove their point of view,
| while ignoring all other comparisons.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You can't post pirated content or child porn online - because
| you're either directly engaging in or enabling criminal
| behavior.
|
| If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection -
| that is also a crime.
|
| And sure, this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB
| - but they make some attempts to stop it, and it's not the main
| value proposition of the platforms.
|
| The problem with Parler is that this was always where it was
| headed. It was built to serve people who would use it for this,
| and a significant portion of the content created and consumed
| was about this.
|
| There is also legitimate content available on Kick Ass
| Torrents. But the majority of the consumption is for things
| that are illegal in the US. So it gets the same treatment as
| Parler.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| And, let's note that torrent sites are still widely
| available. Most torrent sites are simply better constructed
| for their niche than Parler was.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > If you're promoting armed, violent protests and
| insurrection - that is also a crime.
|
| You are conflating Parler with it's users
|
| > this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but
| they make some attempts to stop it
|
| From the article:
|
| > And contrary to what many have been led to believe,
| Parler's Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy
| of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained
| moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not
| happen perfectly or instantaneously -- which is why one can
| find postings that violate those rules -- but the same is
| true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| You've made some good arguments throughout this thread, but
| this one in particular is disingenuous. You can't market
| yourself to people that were deplatformed specifically for
| inciting violence and then credibly mock surprise when
| those people begin inciting violence on your platform. By
| the time the limited number of moderators get around to
| deleting or hiding posts the damage is done, and everybody
| knows it.
| coryfklein wrote:
| A few things:
|
| 1. You either are unaware of the meaning of the word
| "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than
| I do.
|
| 2. Did Parler express suprise that some of its users
| attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite
| violence on their platform?
|
| 3. Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the
| discussion, but " _everybody_ knows it " and "the damage
| has been done"? This is a very strong statement indeed,
| claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation
| has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform
| is able to view all inciting content before it is taken
| down.
| deedree wrote:
| In your comparison it's about what CAN be done with the
| highway. For the comparison to hold true it's more like we let
| them knowingly drive there while we're 100% aware where they
| are at that moment. So we could have acted on it but didn't and
| watched them do it.
|
| Threats, slander and misinformation where never part of free
| speech and never will be. Invoking "free speech" here is
| disingenuous.
|
| To go back to your comparison, if Parler - or anything similar
| - was like the highway we wouldn't know about what was going
| on. But we do, and it's inciting violence so it's basic human
| decency to stop it. Even apart from anything that a government
| would say. I don't get it, why are we still talking about this
| on HN.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| Drug Lords in Mexico build roads to help them traffic narcotics
| and some law abiding people have access to them.
|
| The US built roads to enable commerce and some law breaking
| people have access to them.
|
| Intent matters
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| If there were a US highway that was used primarily or
| disproportionately for crime, then the government would take
| some actions.
|
| Examples of this in practice are the checkpoint around El Paso
| in West Texas that checks for all sorts of contraband. And the
| agriculture checkpoint on Highway 80 between California and
| Nevada.
|
| In this analogy, Parler seems more like a single road used for
| lots of crime, while social media overall is the highway
| network that is more free.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I don't want to nitpick, but i've been thru the checkpoint
| east of el paso many times. It's deeply racist. Here is how
| every interaction i've had goes:
|
| Checkpoint cop, looks at people in vehicle, sees they are all
| white, bored sounding asks "is everyone an american citizen?"
|
| Driver: "no, some of us are american and some are canadian."
|
| Checkpoint cop, confused: "uhhh that's alright, proceed"
|
| There purpose is supposedly to check for illegal cross border
| activity in the US and yet a car full of canadians doesn't
| even blip their radar because it's not actually about
| nationality it's about race.
|
| Which is all to say that i believe your comment about that
| checkpoint being about contraband glosses over the real
| motivations. In the dozens of times i've been thru there all
| i've ever been asked about is citizenship, and it's never
| mattered what the answer is because i am white.
| newfriend wrote:
| No, it's not.
|
| There aren't millions of Canadian citizens crossing the US-
| Mexico border illegally every year. There aren't tens of
| millions of Canadian citizens living illegally in the US.
|
| They are trying to stop the 99.999% of illegal aliens who
| are from Mexico and Central America from crossing the
| border, not the random Canadian who is basically guaranteed
| to be entering legally.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Because it's a car full of white people, the border
| patrol and you assume that they're "very likely to be
| entering legally". There is a similar ratio of canadians
| legally and "illegally" living in the states as there are
| latinos living legally and "illegally". But that aside, a
| car full of white people definitely gets treated
| differently at that checkpoint than a car full of latinos
| - and nobody EVER asked about "contraband" as originally
| suggested
| Jochim wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee
| justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The
| list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the
| highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
|
| The people responsible for those highways spend a lot of money
| preventing them being used for drug trafficking, blackmarket
| weapons etc. Parler actively refused to moderate right wing
| hate speech.
|
| > Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that
| presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate
| all of those things without believing that the site should be
| censored.
|
| I have to ask, where then do you want the line to be drawn? How
| detailed does the plan have to be before it's nipped in the
| bud?
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| I'm perfectly fine with Parler being an outlet for conspiracy
| theories and such. Many people made good money off of Parler,
| and Parler made good money grifting off of delusional folks.
| All legal. Crazy? Probably. But definitely within the realm of
| "free speech".
|
| The line gets drawn when a platform is used as a base of
| coordination to overthrow a legitimately elected government and
| threaten violence against people. Not sure why that's so hard
| to grasp.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure?
|
| Are you equating social media with the US highway
| infrastructure? I have to disagree with you in that case. The
| Internet and ISPs are like the US highway infrastructure.
| Social media is like demanding your stuff be carried by a
| particular truck company.
|
| If you want social media to be public infrastructure, maybe the
| government should start a social media company.
| flowerlad wrote:
| 28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines
| to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44%
| among Republicans. [1]
|
| If a significant chunk of the population hesitates to get
| vaccines then it has consequences for all of us, regardless of
| our beliefs. Lies and misinformation spread through social
| media should be kept in check by patrolling, just like our
| highways are patrolled.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648
| newacct583 wrote:
| > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I
| very much doubt that that is true.
|
| Then why are you posting that on a heavily-moderated discussion
| forum and not 8kun?
| uncoder0 wrote:
| Well funny you mention 8kun specifically it is down at the
| time of your comment. I find HN to be a good balance of
| moderation and open discussion. Like all platforms it has
| it's biases but, people are relatively civil and open to
| discussion which is commendable in the current climate of
| online discussion.
| Krollifi wrote:
| Some of the reasons HN is civil is that it covers a niche
| area and quickly flags things that are highly contraversial
| such as politics and race relations.
|
| I just checked and 8kun.top is up.
| juskrey wrote:
| Traffickers, when using the highway, do not make HQs at major
| intersections and rest zones and do multiply at will there. And
| if they do, they got banned for some time.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| >"Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that
| _presumably occurred on Parler_ is abhorrent. I think I can
| hate all of those things without believing that the site should
| be censored. "
|
| I have yet to see any evidence that the capitol protest was
| planned primarily on Parler. I have seen plenty of evidence
| that it was planned primarily on Facebook (that has since been
| deleted/hidden by Facebook). You'd think if the goal was to
| punish or curtail such events Facebook would be getting at
| least similar treatment as Parler.
| smithza wrote:
| Difference being that Facebook moderates content. This was
| the Apple complaint against Parler. Parler has publicly
| touted itself as the 4chan/8chan of social media apps. It is
| more that the culture of Parler is being rejected by the App
| Store gate keepers and not so much the vehicle enabling it.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Parler absolutely moderated content - many went on and
| posted something left leaning and had their content quickly
| removed. It was moderated by ideology instead of by any
| attempt at "decency" though.
| smithza wrote:
| I haven't heard this. Can you point to examples of this?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| TechDirt ran an article on it: https://www.techdirt.com/a
| rticles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
|
| There are plenty of individuals claiming they were banned
| for posting left content or disagreeing with right wing
| content. Hard to know how much is trolling or not, but I
| think that's kind of the point. If it is the home of free
| speech, who is Parler to determine their intent?
| intended wrote:
| it's standard practice for many certain political forums,
| If you don't espouse the same beliefs, you will get
| banned.
|
| Their counter argument is that if you bring up
| conservative view points, the liberal echo chambers ban
| you. So they should be able to do it in their free speech
| spaces.
|
| This also unfortunately hides the fact that hate speech,
| dog whistles, saying that COVID is a hoax, pushing for
| falsehoods and getting upset about not being able to do
| so, is why you get banned.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > This also unfortunately hides the fact that hate
| speech, dog whistles, saying that COVID is a hoax,
| pushing for falsehoods and getting upset about not being
| able to do so, is why you get banned.
|
| I fail to see how this any different from any other
| social media site??
|
| Again, NOTHING that Parler did is any different from any
| other social media platform that is a total cess pool of
| what you just described. The difference is, the speech
| was predominantly conservative in nature. Which leads me
| to believe the decisions to remove the app were purely a
| political decision - which is an incredibly dangerous
| precedent to start.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as
| -pr...
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-
| space-fo...
|
| > Still, there is a set of community guidelines and a
| user agreement, which prohibits deliberately obscene
| usernames, pornography, and threats to kill others.
| Meaning even Parler's free speech absolutists have some
| vague rules for what they deem as too offensive. "When
| you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal
| matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,"
| wrote Matze during a consequential exchange on his site,
| shattering the hopes of conservatives and libertarians
| everywhere who dream of a social media site with a
| completely laissez-faire ToS.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Which is why it was started.
|
| Because all of the people who defended Twitter from
| suppressing conservative voices told them if they don't
| like it, they can start their own network.
|
| Which is exactly what they did.
|
| Now THOSE people who told them to start their own network
| so they could do as they please, are up in arms because
| they didn't moderate their content enough for their
| liking?
|
| Seriously, that's asinine.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| That's a fair point. As a self dubbed 'free-speech'
| platform I'd assume they'd shy away from the excessive
| moderation seen on Facebook.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Did you look? Here's the first result in a search [1]
|
| [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/06/trump-riot-
| twi...
| molbioguy wrote:
| The article linked does mention Parler, but focuses more
| heavily on YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and Redit.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| You need a license to legally use the US highway system. It is
| patrolled by police who can stop you at any time and request
| your documents. You can have that license revoked for a variety
| of reasons.
|
| The highway has a crapton of regulations around how you can use
| it. Speed limits, rules against drunk driving, driving only in
| 1 direction, requiring your lights be on (in some places during
| the daytime).
|
| Nobody (almost) complains about limits on "free driving."
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, OPs entire argument is very poor and very much a
| strawman.
|
| If you start doing crazy stuff on the highway you _will_ not
| only be stopped, but potentially fined and imprisoned.
| FredDollen wrote:
| Right, now imagine only conservatives are having their
| licenses revoked for such violations.
| rpvnwnkl wrote:
| A better analogy would be landlord-tenant. AWS was the landlord
| here. Although they should have the right to evict Tenants
| under certain circumstances, we might all be better off if
| these evictions were legal proceedings, and could be documented
| and challenged in court.
| tathougies wrote:
| Speech should have limits, but calling anything that took place
| on parler automatically 'hate speech' so contemptible that it
| ought to result in banning along with everything else on that
| site is ridiculous. There have been few instances of truly
| censorship-worthy speech over the past year, from either left
| or right.
| ArtDev wrote:
| The content I saw on Parler was more akin to an ISIS
| recruitment website than just plain hate speech.
| tathougies wrote:
| I've been on parler for months. Stop exaggerating
| munificent wrote:
| _> I think the speech part should always be 100% free._
|
| I don't think a claim like this is meaningful without a precise
| definition of "speech". And, consequently, I think you'll find
| any attempt to define which things are not "speech" ends up
| being functionality equivalent to dialing back from that
| theoretical 100%.
|
| In general, you can't have 100% freedom over any finite
| resource. If there's only one dessert in the fridge, you and I
| can not both have 100% freedom to eat it.
|
| If you presume that any meaningful "speech" has some non-zero
| audience size, then speakers are competing for the finite
| attention of other humans. You can't have perfect freedom for
| that.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it._
|
| Schrodinger's pie - you both have 100% freedom to eat it
| until one of you actually does
| dmode wrote:
| I don't understand the comparison with US highway
| infrastructure. That infrastructure cannot be use to spread
| "crime" at rapid scale, leading to extreme degradation of
| society. The whole ISIS movement took advantage of lax
| enforcement and created a monster that will haunt was for
| decades. What's the equivalent for highway infrastructure ? Are
| drug dealers using it to spread addiction at rapid scale ?
| brlewis wrote:
| > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits
|
| Convince me. I have a side project that's intended to foster
| free speech, but I disallow advocating harm toward identifiable
| humans, except through process of law. Should this limit really
| be removed?
| richardthered wrote:
| Nobody is proposing to remove the infrastructure itself. It's a
| question of who gets to decide who gets to _use_ the
| infrastructure.
|
| Imagine that you have a private company that manages all of the
| toll roads in a city. One day, this company decides that they
| no longer want John Smith to use their toll roads. John Smith
| is banned.
|
| Maybe John is a terrible person. Criminal convictions, DUIs,
| whatever. Regardless of that, should a private company have
| unilateral right to ban a customer? With no recourse? No
| appeal, no accountability? There is no elected official to vote
| out of office if you don't like it. There's no appeals court to
| hear your claim. John is just banned. He now has to drive an
| extra 30 minutes every day because he can't use the high-speed
| toll roads to get to work.
|
| Parler is problematic. For sure. And I'm a big believer in free
| speech, and that companies, in general, should be able to run
| their business however they want.
|
| However, there are limits. A sandwich shop can't refuse to
| serve a customer because they are black, for instance. But cake
| shops can refuse to serve customers if they are gay, as we
| recently learned from supreme court cases.
|
| I think that much of the issue here revolves around how much of
| a monopoly a company has. If my local sandwich shop doesn't
| want to serve me, because I'm a jerk, that's fine. I can just
| go to another shop down the street. I'm not that
| inconvenienced.
|
| But these massive tech companies have enormous ecosystems. They
| dominate their industries, and are often the only really viable
| choice in their markets.
|
| I see a constant stream of article about YouTubers that build a
| massive business with millions of followers, and then one day
| 'poof', Google kicks them off, and they have no recourse.
|
| Or the guy on Facebook that spent $47 million dollars in
| advertising over the years, and one day Facebook kicks him off,
| banned for life. No recourse, no appeal, no explanation, even.
|
| Apple and Google have absolute say over their app stores, and
| what is allowed. Companies can be ruined overnight because some
| algorithm tipped from the "ok" to "not ok" overnight.
|
| This is troubling.
| oblib wrote:
| We have to consider the old adage about screaming "Fire" in a
| crowded theater.
|
| Unfettered free speech would dictate we can all do that anytime
| we want because free speech has no limits.
|
| Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, limited the scope of banned speech
| to that which would be directed to and likely to incite
| imminent lawless action. That is where the line in free speech
| ends.
|
| The notion that the purveyor of technologies used to distribute
| speech that are incitements to imminent lawless action has no
| legal obligation in regards to the consequences is akin to
| saying a theater owner has no obligation to make sure a person
| who's repeatedly screamed "Fire!" and caused a stampede that
| injures people isn't allowed in their theater doesn't hold up.
| And it has ground at all to stand on if the theater owner
| actively pursues them and promotes they can do that in their
| theater.
|
| In this case, Parlor has essentially pursued and invited those
| who love to scream "Fire" and actively encourage them to use
| their service to do that. And in fact they used it to organize
| a mob and help plan a insurrection.
|
| And it did not matter to them that lies were being spread to
| fan the flames of hate, or who or how many might lose their
| lives as a result.
|
| Parlor is a prime example of the lowest form of capitalism.
| Little different than crack dealers. We cannot let them hide
| behind the noble goals of "Free Speech".
| offby37years wrote:
| The cliche about "screaming fire in a crowded movie theater"
| misconstrues limits on the 1A.
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-
| ha...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-
| tim...
| Fellshard wrote:
| One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred
| on Parler, but rather tended to occur on FB. If you'd used
| Parler before it went down (I poked it months ago, before all
| this madness, and found it to be sorely lacking), you'd notice
| that it's a shoutcasting platform like Twitter, and is wholly
| unsuitable for any kind of event planning. At most, you could
| give messages saying to prepare for X at event Y, which is
| 'planning' of a sort, I suppose.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning
| occurred on Parler
|
| No, that's one of his unsubstantiated claims that
| conveniently fits the ideological tirade he's been on since
| long before the events in question.
|
| Other journalists have pointed to planning on Parler,
| including citing specific posts.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
| Violent threats and incitement to violence occur on these
| platforms all the time. Some of this content is moderated.
| Much of it is not.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and
| Reddit.
|
| Sure.
|
| And that may indicate problems with those platforms. At a
| minimum, though, those platforms reacted against
| continued use by the same terrorists once it was
| unmistakably, publicly, concretely clear that they were a
| deadly serious threat.
| Amezarak wrote:
| There are still plenty of posts by these people on those
| platforms.
| MrMan wrote:
| an assertion, not an observation
| Fellshard wrote:
| He provides some cursory anecdotal evidence to that effect
| in the article, at least. My only addition is observing the
| nature of the platform itself as also making it an unlikely
| venue for that activity. But people have used platforms for
| entirely unsuitable purposes before...
| hertzrat wrote:
| I don't think he said that. He said that many of those
| arrested were not active parler users, and that significantly
| more planing happened on Facebook and Twitter
| useful wrote:
| Counterpoint: if tanks were the primary way to transport
| something obvious like a giant battle tank that were being used
| to kill people and attempt overthrow of the government. If the
| checkpoints setup couldn't catch enough of them to remove the
| danger, would you support shutdowns of the highway
| infrastructure until the checkpoints could stop them?
| bun_at_work wrote:
| > I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part
| should always be 100% free.
|
| A trivial counterpoint is shouting fire in a theater, or other
| forms of inciting a riot.
| fsociety wrote:
| A highway doesn't scale in the same way a social media site
| does. I disagree that this is brainwashing. We just don't know
| how to cope with the internet's scale and the answer is not
| clear..
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is a bad analogy to compare Parler with a highway.
|
| If Twitter is a highway, Parler is a tunnel operated by drug
| cartels.
|
| What do you think about the Silk road? The onion website that
| operated strictly in Tor that was a marketplace used
| exclusively for crime? That is infrastructure too right? Should
| it be legal? Fuck no.
|
| Stop defending a lost cause. They got shut down because they
| tried to stage a coup by kidnapping senators in the Capitol.
|
| They failed, and it is a good thing that they failed, and it is
| a good thing they got censored. And it is great that more
| companies decide to do the same.
|
| Shut them down, all of them. Enough is enough. Have you ever
| been assaulted by a Trumper while minding your own business,
| just for being a minority? I have. These news make me happy.
| Adios, amigos... Your movement will never attain anything
| again.
| totalZero wrote:
| Highways are a public utility. AWS is a private for-profit
| service.
|
| Drug trafficking and gun running are illegal activities.
| Generic Parler hate may not be illegal.
|
| Your argument does not establish an effective parallel between
| the things you are comparing.
| mywittyname wrote:
| AWS has terms of service that are legally allowed to be broad
| and ambiguous. Violation of these terms of service is grounds
| for removal from their platform. AWS has sole authority over
| the adjudication of such violations and they are under no
| obligation to inform the client as to the reason behind their
| decision.
|
| If we want to limit the powers of these platforms, then
| Congress needs to pass laws limiting the scope of ToS and/or
| create a regulatory agency charged with adjudicating claims.
|
| There's no analogs or moral arguments necessary. Just the
| legal ones. And Congress has failed to take any action to
| invoke legal authority over these platforms and their ToS.
| Thus, the government has minimal control here.
| totalZero wrote:
| AWS sets its own terms because it is a business.
|
| A highway is funded in large part via taxation.
|
| The argument is a poor one because it draws parallels
| between things that are not parallel. There is no
| indication that (A) it serves the public interest for the
| government to forcibly alter business decisions, nor that
| (B) there is an existing legal basis upon which to do so.
| buffington wrote:
| While I like the highway analogy, it only works if the places
| where "free speech" are being conducted are US owned , public
| infrastructure.
|
| A closer analogy would be private roads. If Amazon owned a
| series of private highways used solely for shipping goods,
| would we care if they stopped transporting items they didn't
| agree with on those Amazon owned highways?
|
| Forgive me if I'm repeating a common refrain here, but the
| words we say on Twitter, Parler, Facebook, and even HN aren't
| "free", spoken in a public place. They're owned by Twitter,
| Parler, Facebook and HN. Those companies can choose to do
| whatever they want, for better or worse.
| chrischattin wrote:
| If that's the case, they're acting as publishers and should
| be liable for the content.
| buffington wrote:
| I don't disagree.
|
| But right now, it doesn't matter if I disagree or not. US
| law makes it very clear what responsibilities and rights
| publishers have.
|
| Title 47 U.S. Code SS 230 explicitly states that publishers
| are not liable for the content that their users post, with
| some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking.
|
| They are also allowed to restrict whatever they like,
| whether it's constitutionally protected or not.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Title 47 U.S. Code SS 230 explicitly states that
| publishers are not liable for the content that their
| users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex
| trafficking.
|
| No, it doesn't.
|
| It states that online systems with user generated content
| (and other users on such systems) aren't treated as
| publishers of what their users post, with some major
| exceptions related to civil liability related to sex
| trafficking _and all criminal liability regardless of
| subject matter_. Civil liability _not_ deriving from
| status as a "publisher" is also not on its face,
| affected, though some courts have also applied 230,
| controversially, to immunize against notice-based civil
| liability that would apply to them as _distributors_ ,
| even if they aren't considered publishers.
| buffington wrote:
| > No, it doesn't.
|
| To be accurate, it certainly does.
|
| > No provider or user of an interactive computer service
| shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
| information provided by another information content
| provider.
|
| It also says other things that I neglected to state, most
| importantly, that section 230 does nothing to change
| criminal law, so it's also fair to call me out on that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > To be accurate, it certainly does.
|
| No, it doesn't say they won't be liable for user content,
| it says they won't be considered the publisher. There is
| liability for content that is tied to being a publisher,
| and there is liability that has other bases. On its face,
| 230 says nothing about liability on other bases (as noted
| in GP, some courts have also used it to provide immunity
| from liability as a distributor, but that is
| controversial and not stated in the text.)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| 230 does protect platforms from liability of what their
| user base posts. Having run forums and chat servers for a
| long time, I can attest to the experience of having to
| moderate content and having received legal complaints.
| There are two major factors that people are conflating in
| these discussions. There is the direct legal aspect of
| having illicit content. The platform is covered if they
| make an effort to remove illicit content AND they
| themselves are not encouraging the illegal behavior. So
| for example, if they have users that also have admin
| roles and make sub-forums that promote illegal behavior
| and they do not warn/ban the admins, they may eventually
| be outside the protection of section 230.
|
| Then there is the acceptable use policy of the hosting
| provider(s). _dns, server, cdn, app store_ This is
| entirely outside of 230. If the provider gets enough
| complaints, they may eventually see your site as a risk
| and may choose to terminate your account in order to
| protect the image of their business. They do not want
| their reputation tarnished as it will affect their
| profits. I think that is totally fair. If you want to run
| a site that may likely provoke emotional response from
| the public, then in my opinion it would be best to find a
| hosting provider that accepts the risk in a contract. The
| contract should state what is expected of you and what
| you expect of them and what happens if the contract is to
| be terminated, such as off-boarding timelines. Smaller
| startups are at higher risk as they provider has less to
| lose by booting them off their infrastructure.
|
| Where I believe this issue has gone sideways is what the
| industry believes to be considered an appropriate method
| of moderation. The big platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
| Apple are using automated systems to block or shadow-ban
| things they consider a risk to their company or their
| hosting providers. This leads to people fleeing those
| systems and going to the smaller startups that do not yet
| have these automated moderation and shadow-banning
| systems and that is what happened with Parler and a
| handful of other newer platforms that wanted to capture
| all the refuges of the big platforms. A similar thing is
| happening with that alternate to Youtube, but I can not
| remember what it is called. Bitchute?
|
| Another potential problem that may confuse the 230
| discussion could be that many powerful politicians and
| corporate leaders use the big platforms like Twitter and
| Facebook. They and big lobbyists and investors may have
| some influence over the behavior of these platforms and
| may be able to tell them to squash the sites that do not
| follow the automated version of banning and shadow-
| banning. Does that create echo chambers? Is that what is
| happening here? Not sure. If so, I predict it will push
| many people under ground and that is probably not great
| for agents that would like to keep an eye on certain
| people.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > If that's the case, they're acting as publishers and
| should be liable for the content.
|
| I'm afraid you're misinformed.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hell
| o...
|
| > > If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating
| content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher"
|
| > I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that
| you've likely heard this from someone else -- perhaps even
| someone respected -- but it's just not true. The law says
| no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it. The law
| does distinguish between "interactive computer services"
| and "information content providers," but that is not, as
| some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying "platform" or
| "publisher." There is no "certification" or "decision" that
| a website needs to make to get 230 protections. It protects
| all websites and all users of websites when there is
| content posted on the sites by someone else.
|
| > To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case
| regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether
| or not a particular website is a "platform" or a
| "publisher." What matters is solely the content in
| question. If that content is created by someone else, the
| website hosting it cannot be sued over it.
|
| Edit: BTW, I'd suggest reading that whole article. Section
| 230 has been misrepresented by politicians and the media
| fairly regularly, and this piece does a nice job of laying
| out the current state of the law and its interpretation and
| application.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Aren't you being a bit pedantic? The statement was an
| opinion, not a legal argument
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| I didn't read the comment as an opinion. What they wrote
| is a common misunderstanding of section 230 that, these
| days, is being promulgated by defenders of Parler.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Honestly my road analogy was more about reflecting on the
| notion of limits on free speech in general. It was not meant
| to be compared to the specific issue of AWS & Twitter. It was
| meant to draw our attention to the fact that we
| wholeheartedly endorse many systems (e.g. roads) that
| absolutely facilitate immoral and criminal activity. And
| that's ok to do. Thus I claim that it's similarly ok to
| endorse absolutely free speech without limits, _despite_ the
| immoral & illegal activity that it might incite.
|
| Roads _encourage_ bank-robbers. Honestly who would rob a bank
| if you could only flee on foot? It 's ok though that it
| encourages and facilitates bank robbers. We should not close
| the roads because of it.
|
| We need to be OK that certain things (free speech) can have
| huge negative effects and criminal elements.
| didibus wrote:
| Generally speaking, there's two ways to determine a truth,
| either from experimentation and results, or from first
| principles.
|
| From the experimentation side of things, you have Canada,
| Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa,
| Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (I'm probably
| missing some) where they impose restrictions on free speech
| while still having mostly free speech rights. You can even
| include the US as well, since it does have restrictions,
| they're just more relaxed, and seem to only be enforced if
| financial damage can be proven from libel.
|
| Now very broadly looking at that list, it seems that
| countries that take a most speech is free (especially
| speech that criticizes the government and ruling class),
| but some speech is restricted (especially hate related
| speech, speech that imply violence to others, speech that
| targets minority groups, and diffamation and libel speech)
| seem to work pretty well in practice. At least, those
| countries have had stable social and economic environments,
| and seem to allow for good opportunity to its citizen and
| give them a good standard of living in general.
|
| So from the experimentation side of "truth seeking", it
| seems to me I'm not seeing an argument for absolutely all
| speech should be free always no matter the circumstances or
| the intent of the speech.
|
| Now, we don't have a good experiment example of "all speech
| goes" unfortunately. Maybe the US is the closest to it, and
| that seems to be causing quite a lot of social and economic
| instability for now at least. But I'd say it's too soon to
| conclude anything on that front.
|
| The other approach to "truth seeking" would be from first
| principle. The theory around free speech comes from the
| liberal progressive thinkers of the enlightenment. So
| turning to them for first principle makes sense. From my
| research into it (and I welcome you do your own), there
| seem to be no winning theory around it. All agree that
| speech against government should be free, but how far to
| take other speech in other circumstances is not clear. Also
| debatable if the government should be free to criticize
| groups of citizens or not, because that can enable top down
| propaganda and repression, which free speech is trying to
| protect against. Most theory seem to recognize the "risks"
| with unrestricted free speech, but some believe that the
| benefits of free speech against authoritarianism and
| majority's rule is worth it, while others think it is
| possible to draw a line that protects against this and
| mitigates the risk of unrestricted free speech.
|
| It seems some of the thinkers that are pro unrestricted
| free speech also assume the system provides people with an
| education that allows them to identify and rationalize fake
| and manipulative ideas and thoughts from legitimate ideas
| and thoughts.
|
| So the first principle outlook also seems inconclusive in
| my opinion.
|
| That personally leaves me to conclude that mostly free
| speech is good, and fully free speech might also be good
| but that's not yet been demonstrated to really know, with
| keeping in mind that this uncertainty about fully free
| speech could resolve in it being worse or better than
| mostly free speech.
| downandout wrote:
| _I feel like we 've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion_
|
| While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I
| wouldn't say that the brainwashing has been on the part of the
| government. All of the efforts at limiting speech, at least
| recently, have come from private, left-leaning people and
| organizations. The general consensus seems to be that all
| speech that doesn't endorse leftist political views is hate
| speech and should therefore be banned.
|
| I went on Parler, which I had never heard of before last week,
| just to see what the big deal was. I saw nothing endorsing
| violence, planning attacks, conspiracy theories, or hate
| speech. I saw a modern looking Twitter clone with similar,
| mundane conversations. I suppose I didn't see much leftist
| banter, but that was the only real difference between it and
| Twitter.
|
| The idea that elite liberals with monopoly power colluded to
| strangle a site like this, simply because a percentage of its
| users likely voted a different way than they did, should be
| offensive to all Americans, regardless of political
| affiliation. It makes me fear for the future of democracy as a
| whole. Democracy cannot exist without the ability to debate.
| option wrote:
| once you've lived in a totalitarian state, then you instantly
| agree with the comment "speech should always be 100% free". It
| is just too important value to lose.
|
| As someone who was born and lived in USSR it pains me so much
| to see to many Americans willing to give up or restrict free
| speech...
| millbraebart wrote:
| The hackers of the 90s would be laughing at the
| Bezo's/Zuckerberg bootlickers on this site. Big tech and the
| feds used to be the evil empire, now over half this site want
| them to censor words that make them mad, and tuck them in at
| night for good measure. Bezos is reading this stuff and
| laughing his ass off, probably with a gaggle of prostitutes
| on a yacht in the Caribean somewhere.
| mindvirus wrote:
| If the primary use and purpose of highways was to commit
| crimes, and the people running them refused to do anything
| about it, then yes I'd question them or at least their
| management.
|
| I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need
| to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut,
| but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some
| degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before
| that harm occurs.
|
| With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more
| radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to
| others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we
| should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms
| rather than causes.
| chrischattin wrote:
| What if two groups of people both use the highways to commit
| crimes, but the moderators of the highways only enforce the
| rules on one group?
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| That's some sneaky language but this isn't a philosophical
| hypothetical. Parler hosted people calling for specific
| acts of violence and did hardly anything to moderate them.
| Those people were almost entirely right wing and you can
| see for yourself looking through the data dumps provided
| recently by a hacker or looking up articles about Parler.
|
| If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where
| left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it
| when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show
| everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has
| to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we
| saw on Parler.
| chrischattin wrote:
| Uhh, yeah. Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc.
|
| Edit to reply the post below:
|
| Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on
| Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide
| against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism.
| Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics.
|
| U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and
| calling for violence around the country this summer.
| Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it
| but not the other?
|
| There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation
| policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as
| platforms under the assumption / intent that users create
| the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they
| aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and
| should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are
| opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| When it became undeniable that the traffic was connected
| to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly to cut it
| off. Parler did not.
|
| Now, it's arguable that the other sites knowingly
| facilitating crime and just hoping to escape consequences
| because no one was going to make a big deal of it, and
| they only cut it off because the risk of that strategy
| increased after the Capitol attack. But while that may
| paint the past actions of the other firms in a worse
| light, it doesn't paint Parler's actions before it was
| cutoff by other suppliers in a better one.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > When it became undeniable that the traffic was
| connected to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly
| to cut it off.
|
| Remind me when the politicians who promoted the Antifa
| and BLM riots and actually set up funds so the protestors
| would be bailed out had their accounts "indefinitely
| suspended" for doing just what you're describing as the
| reason Parler got shut down.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I don't always go 85 in a 55 but when I do I get passed by
| a cop going 95.
|
| Unequal enforcement is already very much a thing on the
| roads. Ever heard of a "fishing stop" or "driving while
| black". Getting cut less slack than a boring sedan and a
| work truck is one of the few things red Porche drivers and
| 30yo shitbox drivers have in common.
| dougmccune wrote:
| For the analogy to work it's not even enough for the roads to
| be used to commit crimes. The roads would have to be
| continuously re-routing you from your intended destination
| and taking you down roadways filled with signs inciting
| violence, cult indoctrination, and lies about reality.
|
| The algorithmic curation of all social media platforms that
| is intentionally built to assault users with the most
| distasteful, extreme lies (because it's good for engagement!)
| is the real problem in my view. If every social media
| platform stopped all algorithmic curation/recommendation and
| simply presented a chronological list of updates from people
| you follow (and did not recommend who to follow), then I
| think the bulk of the problem goes away.
|
| I have no problem with free speech (even abhorrent speech).
| But I have a problem when a person's online experience is
| controlled by algorithms specifically designed to ratchet up
| the garbage and inundate people with hateful rhetoric.
| notthemessiah wrote:
| It's pretty telling that "64 percent of people who joined
| an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the
| company's algorithm recommended it to them" according to
| facebook's own research into divisiveness.
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-
| divisio...
|
| With all the discussion about Section 230, could such
| opaque algorithmic curation constitute a form of editorial
| control, not unlike that of a publisher? Could we reform
| Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website
| wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw
| feed available to the user, or if they provide algorithmic
| curation, it's transparent to the user how information is
| prioritized? Could we clarify the distinction between
| platform and publisher?
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Wow. That is an amazing statistic- I find it hard to
| accept that the average person would be influenced by
| social media to that extent but that type of study result
| is undeniable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user,
| so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have
| to make their raw feed available to the use
|
| That's not reforming 230, that's abolishing it and
| repudiating it's entire purpose. _Enabling_ host action
| to suppress perceived-as-undesirable content without
| increasing host liability for content not removed was the
| purpose of 230.
|
| > Could we clarify the distinction between platform and
| publisher?
|
| The distinction in 230 is _crystal_ clear: to the extent
| content items are user-generated, the online service
| provider (land other users, even if they may have the
| power to promote, demote, or suppress the content _are
| not publishers or speakers_ , period, the end.
|
| The source (whether it is the user that is the source or
| the service provider for it's internally-generated,
| first-party content) is the publisher or speaker.
| mcguire wrote:
| Fortunately, the source is easily and transparently held
| responsible for their actions....
| lkbm wrote:
| This is a bad analogy. The highway is heavily policed to combat
| those things, and they're nowhere near a central use-case.
|
| I'm sure it was a small minority of Parler's activity that was
| death threats or planning/encouraging/inciting violence, but it
| seems like it was intentionally a safe-haven for those
| activities.
|
| The highway _has_ criminal activity, but is not a safe haven
| for criminal activity. Parler appears to have been to an extent
| beyond what is generally considered acceptable.
| blacklight wrote:
| I believe that there are two common and non-negotiable
| principles for any kind of freedom to apply:
|
| 1. Abuses and crimes should always be persecuted. I have read
| lots of posts on Parler, and ALL grounds for violent speech,
| radicalisation and terrorism apply to lots of them. I've read
| posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the
| streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting
| armed sedition against the institutions. Those who use this
| kind of language MUST be made accountable of their words, just
| like we'd make ISIS supporters accountable of their words. It's
| not that just because they're white and Christian dudes that
| look like us we can condone them a bit more. And if a platform
| refuses to limit this language, then the whole platform must be
| taken down.
|
| 2. Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying
| whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information
| about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading
| misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you
| are NOT free to do that.
|
| Parler has failed to guarantee both the non-negotiable freedoms
| when it comes to building a sustainable free speech framework,
| therefore it must be taken down. I really fail to see any
| contradiction in this.
|
| And keep in mind that the anarco-liberalist vision of free
| speech is something that has arisen only in the past couple of
| decades. The founding fathers of the liberal school thought
| (including Popper and Hayek), those who had REALLY seen how
| things in Europe ended up when unlimited freedom of speech is
| guaranteed also to fascist jerks, were well-aware that
| unconstrained freedom with no framework to contain
| fundamentalism is a threat to a tolerant society. "Being
| intolerant with the intolerant is a civic duty for a tolerant
| society that wants to preserve its values" (Popper)
| unanswered wrote:
| > I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter
| democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well
| as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions.
|
| And I've read posts on HN saying we should hang and quarter
| Trump supporters; should HN be wiped from the face of the
| earth?
| mcguire wrote:
| Could you point them out? We tend to downvote and flag that
| sort of thing, although dang usually gets to them first.
| unanswered wrote:
| "I vote we whack as many Nazis as we can."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749435
|
| Took me about 30 seconds to find. But in general I will
| not do unpaid moderation work for ideological crusaders
| like dang. For example, I'm sure there will be a
| reallllly good excuse why this comment is actually okay.
| And I'll probably get flagged/moderated for good measure.
|
| Oh, but for good measure... "The radical right is a
| scourge ... They need to be repeatedly smacked down until
| normalcy is achieved."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749634
| darkarmani wrote:
| Those aren't examples of violence. Did you read the whole
| quotes?
|
| It's a reference to the children's game whack-a-mole
| about banning Nazis from a platform:
|
| > If we have to play an constant game of Whack-a-Nazi, I
| vote we whack as many Nazis as we can.
|
| It's like you aren't even trying to hide your
| distortions.
| unanswered wrote:
| "We really need to whack Joe Biden before he becomes
| president!"
|
| That's okay, right? Because it's just a children's game,
| right? Or is it interpreted differently depending on who
| the target is? Nazis, whacking them is just a game.
| Leftists, whacking them is srs bsns?
| darkarmani wrote:
| > Or is it interpreted differently depending on who the
| target is? Nazis, whacking them is just a game.
|
| Did you read the full quote or not? The context matters
| not the targets (in this case a singular target changes
| the context). There is only one Joe Biden, so they way
| you are using it has a different context. If it was about
| whacking lib-trolls from your news group, that's
| different than specifying a person.
|
| Maybe you aren't a native english speaker, but whack-a-
| mole is a common carnival game. That's the context in the
| quote YOU picked.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _" I vote we whack as many Nazis as we can."_"
|
| The complete quote: "If we have to play an constant game
| of Whack-a-Nazi, I vote we whack as many Nazis as we
| can."
|
| That is a reference to the game Whack-A-Mole. Literally,
| that would mean hitting them with a soft foam hammer.
|
| " _Oh, but for good measure... "The radical right is a
| scourge ... They need to be repeatedly smacked down until
| normalcy is achieved."_"
|
| owlbynight's entire quote:
|
| " _Our political representatives are corrupt and
| generally represent whomever gives them the most money,
| namely large corporations._
|
| " _We, the people, are represented through our wallets
| now by the corporations that control our politicians
| because social media has unionized us. We 're able to use
| online platforms to leverage companies into giving us
| what we want socially by threatening them when they step
| out of line. The companies that led to Parler shutting
| down were acting on public sentiment as a boon to their
| brands, thus ultimately reflecting the will of the
| people._
|
| " _It 's kind of like a single payer system for social
| justice._
|
| " _It 's weird end run back to representation but I'll
| take it for now. The radical right is a scourge that,
| unchecked, will lead to us having no rights at all. They
| need to be repeatedly smacked down until normalcy is
| achieved._"
|
| I could be wrong, but I'm also not reading that as a call
| for violence, much less "hang and quarter". It's not a
| particularly attractive metaphor, though.
| unanswered wrote:
| See what I mean? There's _always_ an excuse for leftist
| calls for violence; whereas right-wing calls for peace
| like Trump 's recent tweets are akshually dogwhistles for
| violence. I'm disgusted.
|
| It just jumps so easily to your mind how to defend,
| defend, defend leftist violence; you don't even consider
| yourself doing it. You too have trained yourself well as
| an ideological crusader.
| mcguire wrote:
| You are correct. I admit, as a Democrat, that I want to
| hit all of those on the right with a medium-sized foam
| mallet thing. I am ashamed of the violence in my soul.
| unanswered wrote:
| Can you show me where on this page "whack" is defined as
| a reference to a childrens' game?
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whack
|
| Because all I see is "murder".
|
| Look how far you will stretch to defend _literal calls
| for murder_! What do you even tell yourself your
| motivation for doing this is?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I missed those I guess.
| unanswered wrote:
| Or you turned a blind eye, subconciously perhaps, because
| they're acting on behalf of your tribe.
| koolba wrote:
| > Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of
| saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing
| information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends
| up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death
| threats, then you are NOT free to do that.
|
| You just described investigative journalism.
|
| Doxxing is not itself a violation of your rights, it's just
| taboo when it's done in the small.
|
| Only when it's done with the intent of causing illegal harm,
| such as "X lives here, go kick his ass", would it be a
| violation.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee
| justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The
| list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the
| highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
|
| They get closed fast when the shit hits the fan though. So,
| where does the analogy leave us ?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Is it censorship if law enforcement puts up a blockade to catch
| a suspected criminal?
|
| Is it censorship is law enforcement shuts down a section of
| highway due to safety issues?
| sanderjd wrote:
| From my perspective, your analogy fits for the internet
| backbone, but not for the fact pattern under discussion here.
| To stretch the analogy, I think AWS would be more like a really
| big network of private distribution centers where client
| businesses can drop off and pick up goods. I think those
| distribution centers would be well within their rights to
| refuse to serve clients who are trafficking "drugs, humans,
| blackmarket weapons, etc".
| toper-centage wrote:
| If there was a highway that was mostly used by drug cartels,
| blocking it would be a no brainer. That's not an adequate
| comparison. The problem is really that this is uncharted
| digital territory and, as always, our laws are too outdated to
| fit a digital world. Facebook/Twitter has enough money to flood
| a competitor social network with nazi spam, to bribe
| journalists to write about it and to push competition to
| destruction and still have hacker news and reddit applaud it.
| Not defending Parlor, but that is a very possible scenario.
| tj-teej wrote:
| Free Speech does have limits though. If you're incarcerated for
| a felony you can't vote, if you go to a mall and start yelling
| obscenities you can be removed, if you make youtube videos on
| how to create pipebombs the US President can kill you in a
| drone strike without a public trial.
|
| The thing I think people miss when making the "this is an
| assault on free speech!" is that they think it's _becoming_ a
| gray area, when in fact it has always been a gray area.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part
| should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive
| from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just
| question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as
| illegal,
|
| So would you say, for instance, that we should be able to do an
| unlimited amount of discussion, planning, and coordination of
| an elected official's death. And it's only when one person
| takes a concrete action towards the plan that they should
| anyone be able to be arrested, and only that person? Because
| the rest is all protected speech?
| datahead wrote:
| I found this [1] breakdown helpful to understand the legal
| position of this hypothetical.
|
| > unlimited [...] discussion, planning and coordination
|
| turns into evidence once "intent" and an "overt act"
| thresholds are crossed, for all involved.
|
| [1] https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-
| charges/conspiracy.htm...
| mlyle wrote:
| Yes, this would certainly be naughty under current law, but
| perhaps not in a legal regime where "all speech is OK!"
| Note that the overt act need not be committed by the
| speaker, too.
|
| There's even ambiguity about elements of this in current
| law. If one were to advocate for the violent overthrow of
| the government, and begin running training exercises to
| help people prepare to overthrow the government at some
| unspecified future date--- it is unclear whether this is
| protected by the First Amendment. SCOTUS mentioned -- but
| did not address -- this problem in Stewart v McCoy (2002):
|
| ... While the requirement that the consequence be
| "imminent" is justified with respect to mere advocacy, the
| same justification does not necessarily adhere to some
| speech that performs a teaching function. As our cases have
| long identified, the First Amendment does not prevent
| restrictions on speech that have "clear support in public
| danger." Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 (1945). Long
| range planning of criminal enterprises-which may include
| oral advice, training exercises, and perhaps the
| preparation of written materials-involves speech that
| should not be glibly characterized as mere "advocacy" and
| certainly may create significant public danger. Our cases
| have not yet considered whether, and if so to what extent,
| the First Amendment protects such instructional speech. Our
| denial of certiorari in this case should not be taken as an
| endorsement of the reasoning of the Court of Appeals....
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-20.ZA.html
| dmitrygr wrote:
| There are already laws for the situation you describe.
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I
| very much doubt that that is true.
|
| I very much disagree. Hate speech is just one example. "Speech"
| designed to terrorize, threaten, and incite action should not
| be "free".
|
| > Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always
| been fully enforceable.
|
| By this logic no one who is purposely inciting anything is even
| liable for the actions that they cause. "Leaders" will never
| face punishment, because they only say things, right?
|
| The line (or at least one of the lines) comes when speech is no
| longer an expression, but an instruction. It may be a tough
| line to draw, but that doesn't mean that the line shouldn't
| exist somewhere.
| molbioguy wrote:
| Then see [0] which points out that _Brandenburg vs Ohio_
| makes hate speech protected unless there is direct
| incitement.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_St
| at...
| trident5000 wrote:
| "hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years to
| silence people. The only things that are dangerous are when
| people actually act or are explicit and then we deal with
| them. This isnt Minority Report. Free speech is meant to be
| nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. The only
| restrictions are explicit threats (someone is literally
| saying they are going to kill someone and names said person)
| Today the interpretation has morphed into whatever is
| unpopular or is 3 steps away from being an actual threat.
| dhosek wrote:
| I'm older than 5 years old. This isn't remotely true.
| trident5000 wrote:
| time-frame admittedly was way off. I edited it.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect
| unpopular opinions.
|
| You're missing a part in this line that's very important,
| it should be "nearly absolute and protect unpopular
| opinions from the government."
| chrchang523 wrote:
| Let's set aside the distinction between free speech
| rights guaranteed by the First Amendment vs. the broader
| free speech ideal that's foundational to our society,
| since it isn't even needed: as suggested by the
| objections from Germany, France, and Mexico noted by
| Greenwald, these corporations are effectively acting as
| the government, so the reasoning behind the First
| Amendment's existence directly applies here.
|
| (This is not an endorsement of the delusional
| presidential behavior that created the leadership vacuum
| filled by the corporations.)
| eightysixfour wrote:
| The irony of referencing Germany as an example when
| Germany has an explicit ban on speech that is anti-
| constitutional is pretty high here.
|
| It would be government overreach to tell the platforms
| that they're required to host whatever speech is posted
| to them, not the other way around. As I've mentioned in
| other comments, there are more ways to communicate now
| than at any other time in history. Facebook and Twitter
| do not have monopolies on speech, nothing on the internet
| does.
|
| See this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25750501
|
| Where would you draw the line?
| chrchang523 wrote:
| The issue is that the corporations are acting as the
| government. As you noted, Germany restricts speech more
| than the US for obvious historical reasons. So the fact
| that even their government objects to this behavior is
| evidence against _your_ position, not mine.
|
| In your linked comment, all of these governments
| recognize (3) as a scenario that should be governed by
| laws (which vary between countries).
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > In your linked comment, all of these governments
| recognize (3) as a scenario that should be governed by
| laws (which vary between countries).
|
| So why not 2? When does 2 become 3?
|
| > As you noted, Germany restricts speech more than the US
| for obvious historical reasons. So the fact that even
| their government objects to this behavior is evidence
| against your position, not mine.
|
| The German and French government objects to the US not
| having laws that require this behavior and leaving it in
| the hands of private companies, sure, and I object to the
| US having censorship laws and would rather private
| entities be able to make the decision for themselves, the
| direction of MORE freedom of speech.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| If this was primarily about "[objecting] to the US not
| having laws that require this behavior", their emphasis
| would not have been on the platforms being out of line.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > as suggested by the objections from Germany, France,
| and Mexico noted by Greenwald, these corporations are
| effectively acting as the government
|
| To elaborate on the other user, Germany and France both
| ban holocaust denial and "hate speech", which would
| include much of the content on Parler. Mexico's speech
| laws are less clear, but if my reading is correct the
| constitution allows regulation of hate speech. And in
| practice, speech in Mexico isn't protected from the
| government or cartels.
|
| So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US
| government to take a stronger stance on hate speech. This
| would, of course, require a constitutional amendment, at
| which point anything goes. Excluding that, what you see
| (and will continue to see) is corporations stepping in to
| ban hate speech because the government is restricted from
| doing so.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| Did you actually read what Merkel or AMLO said? The first
| sentence of your second paragraph ("So France and Germany
| could be seen as asking the US government to take a
| stronger stance on hate speech.") can be immediately
| verified to be false in the sense that you are stating it
| (as justification for the platforms' behavior).
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Asked about Twitter's decision, Merkel's spokesman,
| Steffen Seibert, said social media companies "bear great
| responsibility for political communication not being
| poisoned by hatred, by lies and by incitement to
| violence."
|
| > He said it's right not to "stand back" when such
| content is posted, for example by flagging it, but
| qualified that the freedom of opinion is a fundamental
| right of "elementary significance."
|
| > Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany's example
| in how it handles online incitement. Rather than leaving
| it up to tech companies to make their own rules, German
| law compels these companies to remove possibly illegal
| material within 24 hours of being notified or face up to
| $60.8 million in fines. [0]
|
| You mean verified to be correct as confirmed by her
| spokesperson who released the initial statement. (Seibert
| released the initial statement, as can be seen here[1])
|
| So yes, the statement can be seen as saying two things
|
| 1. Twitter is too powerful and needs to be regulated
|
| 2. The US needs stronger regulations on hate speech.
|
| [0]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/angela-merkel-rips-
| twitters...
|
| [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-
| hits-out-at-...
| mcguire wrote:
| From [0]:
|
| " _Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany's
| example in how it handles online incitement. Rather than
| leaving it up to tech companies to make their own rules,
| German law compels these companies to remove possibly
| illegal material within 24 hours of being notified or
| face up to $60.8 million in fines._
|
| " _" This fundamental right can be intervened in, but
| according to the law and within the framework defined by
| legislators -- not according to a decision by the
| management of social media platforms," he told reporters
| in Berlin. "Seen from this angle, the chancellor
| considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S.
| president have now been permanently blocked."_"
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I don't think this contradicts what I've said. One can
| conclude from this statement both that Merkel believes
| Twitter needs to be regulated, and that the US needs
| stronger speech regulation in general. (also I'll note
| that what Twitter did isn't actually _illegal_ in
| Germany, there 's no law that compels social media
| companies to host people)
| chrchang523 wrote:
| It directly contradicts your use of the statement _as
| justification for the platforms ' behavior_.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I haven't used the word "justification" so i'm not clear
| what you're talking about. My statement was
|
| > So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US
| government to take a stronger stance on hate speech.
|
| Which was, and continues to be, supported by Merkel's
| statement.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| The primary message from all of these governments is that
| the platforms are out of line.
|
| Your original comment was in support of/elaborating on
| "It would be governmental overreach [to set the rules]."
| That original comment had an overly permissive rule in
| place of what I've bracketed, but that's beside the point
| since all of these governments are specifically objecting
| that the recent actions are problematically restrictive.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > The primary message from all of these governments is
| that the platforms are out of line.
|
| Yes, and one reason for that, as stated by Merkel, is
| that the US doesn't have a democratic framework for
| managing hate speech. Because such a framework is illegal
| under the first amendment. And her statement suggests
| that the US adopt a more German framework for
| adjudicating such speech, so that corporations don't need
| to make their own rules.
|
| Your claim is that Twitter is "effectively" acting as the
| government. That's not true under a significant amount of
| law and precedent. (There are cases where private
| entities are acting as a government, and importantly,
| trying to use government force to suppress speech, Marsh
| v. Alabama).
|
| In fact, one could argue that by censoring speech,
| Twitter is explicitly _not_ acting like the government,
| because Twitter is taking action the government _cannot_.
| mcguire wrote:
| It doesn't. I added it because it amplifies your point.
| panopticon wrote:
| > _" hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years
| to silence people._
|
| Americans have been struggling with hate speech and
| censorship for well over a century. The most obvious
| example is the censoring of the film _The Birth of a
| Nation_ back in the late 1910s, but there are examples even
| further back in US history.
|
| Our interpretation of "freedom of speech" (both
| philosophically and as protected by the First Amendment)
| isn't immutable and has changed since the Bill of Rights
| was adopted. Prior to the 1950s, the supreme court upheld
| the censorship of books and film for reasons that we now
| interpret as unconstitutional, and censorship remained the
| law in many states for decades after.
|
| I would argue that our current expectation for "free
| speech" and this idea that it is "nearly absolute" is far
| more liberal than what we've seen through most of American
| history.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Freedom of speech starts at absolute, and then has carve-
| outs as opined by courts, specifically the supreme court.
| panopticon wrote:
| And everything I said fits within that framing. Hopefully
| I've illustrated how those "carve-outs" have changed
| quite a bit over the centuries.
| staticman2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by this but Free Speech in
| America certainly did not start at absolute. Our
| constitution endorsed slavery and slaves had no freedom,
| including speech. The constitution only prevented the
| federal government from restricting speech. The Supreme
| court has both expanded or restricted free speech
| depending on the ruling.
| intended wrote:
| None of this is true.
|
| Hate speech was very much an issue even before 1947.
|
| Libel laws alone put paid to your second sentence.
|
| Free speech is not meant to be nearly absolute - it is not
| even meant to be largely absolute, copy right alone would
| be incompatible with such a strength of freedom.
| trident5000 wrote:
| None of what you just wrote is true actually and it is
| meant to be nearly absolute. Everything you just listed
| is a specific legal carve out. We start with absolute and
| insert very specific exceptions through court cases which
| are narrow. Copy right just happens to be one of them.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| By this logic you're saying that advocating and inciting
| genocide is just an "unpopular opinion" that deserves to be
| protected. You know, because it's not against a specific,
| named person.
|
| I'm not even going converse this with nonsense.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Actually that would be a direct threat of harm which I
| specifically mentioned several times. So no, I'm actually
| not saying that. I'm not sure how its even possible you
| arrived at that conclusion.
| afuchs wrote:
| How is it determined if something is a call to genocide
| or otherwise a call to commit harm?
|
| From what I can tell, whether speech in the form of
| "group X should be eliminated" constitutes a threat is
| still subject to controversy [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-
| dish/archive/2007/02/steyn...
| [deleted]
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| "hate speech" is not a recent term unless you mean that it
| was developed in the past century. In the united states,
| hate speech was determined as a limitation on the first
| amendment in 1942.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Can you point to the court case (court case that was not
| subsequently overruled)? The reason I dont believe this
| is that would be extremely arbitrary. If hate speech is
| in fact banned it likely has a very narrow and explicit
| definition in the ruling, most likely circling back to
| direct threats of harm.
| chc wrote:
| Chaplinsky v New Hampshire found that a law forbidding
| abusive speech in public was Constitutional because the
| words in question "by their very utterance inflict injury
| or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| We're so far down in the comments I forget who's arguing
| for what but I don't think that case is relevant.
|
| That case gave rise to the "fighting words" doctrine or
| test which has (thus far) only been applied
| (successfully) to speech that is so vulgar or offensive
| as to provoke violence. A good representative example is
| the recent Twisted Tea smackdown video that made the
| rounds. If a police officer had swooped in and arrested
| the instigator before he got hit the arrest likely would
| have been kosher under the doctrine because the n-word is
| generally so vulgar you don't expect to be able to use it
| in that manner and not start a fight. Basically it's used
| to justify arresting someone for speech so inflammatory
| that even though you are not picking a fight someone is
| inevitably gonna pick a fight with you whether you want
| one or not.
|
| I can't think of any case where it was used to prosecute
| someone for calling for "adjacent to violence" type
| behavior. I am unaware of any cases (that have not been
| overturned) where fighting words doctrine was used as a
| justification for suppressing political speech. If you
| know of any examples I'd be interested to read them.
| chc wrote:
| There's sort of a catch to the way you're framing the
| question. Instances of speech that are forbidden are
| generally not considered political speech, even if there
| are political issues involved. For example, if I threaten
| the President because of his policies, there is obviously
| a political angle to that, but it is also a fairly
| uncontroversial felony.
|
| For a concrete example of nominally political threatening
| speech that was found not to be protected, see Planned
| Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists, where
| it was found that certain anti-abortion ads were not
| protected by the First Amendment because they reasonably
| caused the targeted doctors to fear for their safety. I
| don't believe they explicitly invoked the "fighting
| words" doctrine, but it relied on the same principle as
| Chaplinsky -- that if speech has the effect of creating a
| real-life threat, the speech isn't necessarily protected
| by the First Amendment.
|
| (To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the be-
| all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech,"
| where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of
| free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > that if speech has the effect of creating a real-life
| threat
|
| >(To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the
| be-all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech,"
| where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of
| free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)
|
| Yes, but those consequences must be imminent and
| unlawful.
|
| The point of Chaplinsky isn't that it's a real life in
| the moment affront to civility so offensive that it's
| bound to cause a fight.
|
| Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life
| Activists is about specific threats, e.g. "I'm going to
| specifically kill you".
|
| Both examples of non-protected speech are under totally
| different doctrines (I forget how far back the specific
| credible threat doctrine goes and what the real name for
| it is but it's really old, older than planned parenthood)
| that were more or less condensed into the "imminent
| lawless conduct" test established in (Brandenbyug).
|
| It's going to be very hard for anything that is published
| in an asynchronous medium that isn't a direct call to
| lawless action by someone who can credibly get people to
| pull it off to fail the test because in order for the
| lawless action to happen people must do things that would
| be premeditated crimes on their own. There is no current
| US court doctrine for limiting free speech with regard to
| hate unless the content and situational details add up to
| something that fails the Brandenburg test.
| trident5000 wrote:
| v New Hampshire. I dont know much about this one (which
| is limited to a single state) but 1) it can be overturned
| by the supreme court, 2) if its an old ruling there may
| be an updated ruling 3) I have not seen the parameters
| that justify abusive speech, its probably quite specific.
| mcguire wrote:
| You know, if you narrow your definition enough, it
| becomes physically impossible to satisfy. Try adding
| "...and was issued on a Thursday."
| Daishiman wrote:
| You need to actually read up on the history of the
| Enlightenment and the philosophers who actually devised the
| notion of free speech and how they envisioned its use.
|
| In no way does it even reflect the possibility of something
| like Parler being used to amplify the sort of messaging it
| does.
| [deleted]
| trident5000 wrote:
| We have court opinions on what free speech means in this
| country and the supreme court has made the heavy
| decisions on that. Its not a distorted wish list of what
| each individual wants it to be.
| chc wrote:
| Those court opinions all say it's absolutely fine under
| the First Amendment for a private business to refuse to
| do business with another business that it finds
| objectionable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
| trident5000 wrote:
| This off-shooting discussion has nothing to do with
| Parler or any other business which for sure does have
| that legal right.
| smoe wrote:
| Not GP, but I would expect parts of the highway infrastructure
| where more crimes occur to be more closely monitored and
| controlled than others. I don't see how this is a black and
| white issue where you either should be in support or against
| the highway infrastructre.
|
| And since you mention drug trafficking, Personally, I think
| 100% of drugs should be legal and we have been brainwashed by
| the governments and media about their effects. But I realize
| that it is currently very much not the case where I live, so I
| have to be aware that my actions might have consequences and
| know I'm going to have a hard time to convience others of my
| view, so I might have to compromise to get anywhere.
|
| This should be in my opinion the main focus of democracy: to
| contiously tweak the system to what the current society agrees
| on in regards to living together instead of inisting on ideals.
| It just seems to me, that most democracies are not really fond
| of the idea of taking democracy actually seriosly.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc.
|
| This is a good thought experiment actually. I think typical
| Americans support policing all roads and highways, especially
| where stretches of road are known to be frequented by bad
| actors. If private corporations owned highway infrastructure
| and unilaterally decided to shut down segments of road in order
| to stop those bad actors, it should raise a lot of questions.
|
| I think this highlights the need for better legislation, not
| _only_ to limit corporations ability to shut down services, but
| but to replace that with policing put in place by elected
| governance and based on laws that apply equally to everyone.
| toss1 wrote:
| We have free speech. That means I can speak freely, and not be
| compelled to repeat or amplify what you/they/govt want me to
| say.
|
| Free speech is one thing, free amplification of speech at
| global scale is another
|
| To the highway analogy: Yes, highways can be used for crimes.
| And there are restrictions on highways to prevent crime,
| enforced by everything including local police, county sheriffs,
| state police, border patrol, and national guard when necessary.
|
| The Interstate highway system was built specifically for
| wartime transport of people and materials. One of the
| specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in
| 24 hours.
|
| You can get away with small crimes on the highways.
|
| However, if you try to wage your own war doing that, with
| significant numbers of your own fighters, you will be shut down
| pretty quickly.
|
| Similarly, we have free speech.
|
| I am also not required to amplify your speech. That would be
| compelled speech - your govt compelling me to speak what I do
| not want to say - just as bad as forbidding me to say what I
| want.
|
| Similarly, nothing should require any hosting provider to carry
| the propaganda for someone else's war, when they do not want to
| be a part of the war (and make no mistake, what was being
| planned on Parler is nothing short of war). No hosting provider
| should be required to carry, or be prevented from carrying porn
| either.
|
| Should the New York Times be required to carry David Duke's
| (fmr KKK Grand Wizard) screed on the benefits of racism, or
| should Fox be required to carry Bernie Sander's latest speech?
|
| This is no different from the press since Guttenberg.
|
| If you want free speech, speak
|
| If you want free amplification at scale, build your own press
| or find a friendly one.
| danaliv wrote:
| The highways are policed. Parler was not.
| garrettgrimsley wrote:
| >The highways are policed. Parler was not.
|
| "And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler's
| Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of
| violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators
| who delete such postings."
|
| -TFA
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Let us be real. People who were using Parler were using it to
| plan violence. If not, no one is stopping them from using FB or
| Twitter or some other social network. There is no special love
| for Parlers rights except that it allows illegal activities not
| covered by free speech. People who are fighting this are using
| free speech as a blanket to do what they wish
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee
| justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The
| list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the
| highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
|
| IMO, this is literally a strawman argument. You're picking a
| very rare, extreme event and amplifying the importance of that
| event in an attempt to make an argument.
|
| Following the implication of your argument (that we don't worry
| about a rare even on an otherwise good system), we shouldn't
| even bat an eye at Parler being removed.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's by definition not a straw-man. He's not misconstruing
| the parent's point. He's making a comparing or extending it
| to another subject. It might be comically bad comparison but
| it's not a straw-man.
| boublepop wrote:
| There isn't really anything related to free speech here. No one
| censored parler, let alone the government. Amazon and Apple
| didn't even censor them, just refused to support their product
| because they failed to live up to the terms of service.
|
| The only element of free speech ironically was that Parler was
| found to censor left-leaning and moderate messages in its
| forum.
| JudgeGroovyman wrote:
| No the internet is the highway infrastructure in this metaphor
| and no one is proposing to ban the internet.
|
| We are debating whether the hateful series of billboards and
| bulletin boards along the side of the road can be removed by
| monopolies or not.
| jarjoura wrote:
| Crossing a state line on a federal highway to commit an illegal
| act is a federal crime. Parler was given the opportunity to
| police itself, and they defiantly said, no. What other choice
| do these companies have? They can't just leave it ignore it,
| considering there was legitimate concern for the safety of
| other humans lives.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| But the US highway is policed (moderated), maybe too much (e.g.
| racial profiling in violation of a few constitutional
| amendments).
|
| Whereas Parlor intentionally created a system where there was
| virtually no/super biased moderation, and bragged about it as a
| core feature.
|
| It would be like if the various law enforcement that is tasked
| with keeping the drugs, trafficking etc you mention off the
| road, were instead staffed entirely by a group of a handful of
| these very same law breakers who obviously vote in their own
| illegal interests.
|
| And additionally the creators of the highway spoke to the
| NyTimes bragging about their setup, maybe even telling the
| public about specific highway routes for these criminals
| travel.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| If the highway system was created purpose or was majorly used
| for traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc., and the
| people running/building/profiting from the highways support
| trafficing drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. then I
| would not support the highway infrastructure.
| [deleted]
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee
| justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The
| list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the
| highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?_
|
| I've seen this kind of argument all too frequently in the last
| week. While I don't think the People Who Decide what is taken
| down to be infallible, I do think that we're all capable of
| making reasonable decisions here. Taking down a hate speech
| site obviously doesn't mean we need to delete the internet, or
| iPhones, or whatever else Parler users have in common with
| every other person who uses the internet.
|
| > _I feel like we 've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I
| very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part
| should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive
| from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just
| question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as
| illegal, or something that should be regulated._
|
| I strongly disagree. Apps and websites being taken down is not
| something new at all, and what happened to Parler is only
| notable because it impacted more people.
|
| There are many sites that are IMO righteously taken down. Our
| conversation should not be "should big tech control what we see
| online", but should be "where do we draw the line?".
| trianglem wrote:
| I definitely think speech should have legislative limits. I
| like Germany's model.
| gigatexal wrote:
| The analogy of the highway system is apt. I never thought of it
| like that.
|
| That being said the Supreme Court has weighed in on what kinds
| of speech are protected under "free speech" and which aren't.
| Overt calls for violence and such are not protected.
| stephencoyner wrote:
| If there was a specific highway that was almost exclusively
| used by drug / human traffickers, and there was a mountain of
| evidence to prove that, it seems like we would really look into
| that road and add extra security or shut it down until we could
| get a plan together.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| By building a wall across it perhaps?
| stephencoyner wrote:
| Not what I was referring to at all, but I see where you're
| going.
|
| I was just trying to make a point that this was removing a
| toxin from the app eco-system. Not a harmless player who
| did mostly good with a few "bad apples"
| threatofrain wrote:
| But do you believe in free association? Is it okay that per
| Parler's CEO, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail
| services have also cancelled on them?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the
| government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I
| very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part
| should always be 100% free.
|
| I think you should be free to say what you want and to think
| what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the
| right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in
| that space.
|
| Here are three examples:
|
| (1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your
| patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out?
|
| (2) You start a social media company and somehow a large
| contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate
| group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their
| hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it
| on the site unless it is breaking a law?
|
| (3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size
| of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the
| internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you
| want to be able to remove that?
|
| Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line?
| If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities
| and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return?
| Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned
| monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their
| regulation.
| ng12 wrote:
| Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability
| sway elections in democratic countries and help topple
| authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between
| #2 and #3.
| the_other wrote:
| Facebook isn't a utility, it's an ad platform.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| (0) A large contingent of your user base is using your
| service to conspire to overthrow the government.
| chmod600 wrote:
| It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able
| to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate
| speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the
| electric company?
|
| Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own
| users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these
| days) dependent on a number of other services to work.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Im not sure this is a good metaphor. None of Apple, Amazon,
| or Google (no matter how hard they try) are social media
| companies. None of them are in direct competition with
| Parler, and shutting it down wont increase their market
| share one iota. None of the social media companies are
| banning people because of things they said on Parler, and I
| doubt that the pressure applied to Apple/Amazon/Google came
| from outside the companies, this is most likely the result
| of engineers working on the AWS team pressuring their
| bosses, and it snowballing.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| When Parler became a liability for any company associated
| with it, to their shock, it turned out no company wanted to
| be associated with it. In a world where people "vote with
| their wallets" companies like Amazon, Google and Apple
| would prefer to avoid giving people a reason to do just
| that.
|
| I don't understand the shock and surprise. No US company is
| going to choose anything over their own bottom line.
| Certainly not for a site as small and niche and literally
| riddled with hate speech as Parler.
|
| Parler and it's customers can say whatever they want to
| whoever they want. Can they force Amazon to take their
| money? Absolutely not. Should they be able to? No: forcing
| Amazon to host Parler would be a violation of Amazon's own
| right to free speech.[0]
|
| From Parler's point-of-view it would be unfortunate if they
| tied themselves to AWS specific infrastructure. There's
| absolutely no way that they now have some kind of "right"
| to be hosted by Amazon. Also, it's just poor planning on
| their part.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar
| that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist
| group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel
| the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease
| to me.
| stickfigure wrote:
| A lease is just a contract. It can specify conditions for
| termination. Without reading the contract, it's
| impossible to know if it is being breached or not.
| flerchin wrote:
| It's a good analogy, and yes, criminal activity often
| breaks your lease agreement.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, most likely. Eviction is a legal process, involving
| the courts. Did that happen with Parler?
| coryfklein wrote:
| FTA
|
| > of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the
| breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of
| Parler
| julienfr112 wrote:
| They may mostly use Android Phone. Should we ban them for
| Shops ?
| mcguire wrote:
| As of this Thursday, 82 people have been arrested,
| according to one news report.
| mcguire wrote:
| Have you read the "lease" in question?
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/aup/
|
| I suspect _Amazon_ is not the one to breach the lease.
| ArtDev wrote:
| I think this is a good analogy of where AWS sits here.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down
| a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside.
|
| No, and I didn't suggest that.
|
| > electric company
|
| Regulated. The electric company is a regulated monopoly.
| Hosting companies aren't. If an ISP had banned traffic from
| Parler, that would be an issue, it is a regulated monopoly.
| If Amazon shuts them down, there's no issue, it is an
| unregulated service provider.
| happyrock wrote:
| Thought exercise: what if say, Twitter, wanted to put one
| of its competitors out of business, and decided to engage
| in mass creation of accounts/content on that competing
| platform with the intention of violating their ToS and
| getting the platform kicked off of their hosting provider.
| Is this a viable business strategy now? Heck, is this even
| illegal?
| [deleted]
| jpeterson wrote:
| Yes. Implicit in these "free speech" arguments is the idea
| that the government should be able to force private companies
| to publish user content that violates their policies. This is
| the sort of thing that the 1st Amendment is actually supposed
| to protect us from.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| In all the above cases (person spouting epithets at your
| bar, social media users posting hate on your website) these
| are people with whom you have no contract. They are there
| at your permission, as long as they behave according to
| your standards.
|
| When you rent space to someone, and they start using it in
| a way you don't like, maybe even specificially violating
| their lease, you can throw them out, but it becomes a legal
| process called eviction. You can't just put their stuff on
| the sidewalk and change the locks without going through
| that process. This is how the game is played when you get
| into that business.
|
| Maybe that is the part that's missing with the AWS/Parler
| situation. AWS doesn't want them, but they leased space and
| services to them and there is a contract. Breach of
| contract is not something that either party to the contract
| can determine, because they both have conflicts of
| interest. If we had a judge review the contract, and
| approve the eviction, at least there would be a lot less
| basis to claim that are acting capriciously or out of bias.
| d1zzy wrote:
| > Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway
| infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs,
| humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee
| justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The
| list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the
| highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it?
|
| As we've learned from the now settled case law on Bittorrent
| trackers & co, it is not sufficient for your infrastructure to
| make it possible to support legal uses, it is necessary to show
| that that is the vast majority of its uses.
| mcguire wrote:
| There are, and always have been, significant restrictions on
| using the highway system. It's absolutely not unrestricted.
|
| There are limits.
| simias wrote:
| "Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this
| discussion. You can be convinced of something without being
| brainwashed.
|
| I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in
| order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect
| people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it,
| I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can
| lead to.
|
| Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn
| and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we
| need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and
| accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't
| been brainwashed into.
|
| After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected
| billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography
| with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all
| have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all
| about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced.
|
| And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of
| expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to
| have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to
| fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to
| shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make
| revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.
| etangent wrote:
| > I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in
| order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect
| people from mob
|
| Imagine saying this in June 2020
| simias wrote:
| I'm not American and I don't have a strong opinion on the
| events you refer to (I actually had to read the replies to
| understand what you were getting at), so I definitely
| would've told you exactly the same thing in June of 2020.
| Feel free to ask me again whenever you see fit.
| _vertigo wrote:
| Could you explain what you mean by this?
| j_walter wrote:
| Protesting anything is fine. It's how far you take that
| protest that is the problem. When does a protest become a
| riot?
|
| When you block traffic? When you enter a secured space?
| When you break into a federal building? When you set fire
| to a federal building? When you set fire to cop cars?
| When you break windows of local businesses? When you loot
| local businesses? When you spray paint hate speech? When
| you threaten cops families with death? When you throw
| fireworks at people? When you throw Molotov cocktails at
| people?
|
| These all occurred in large numbers during between the
| death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many
| times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating
| efforts for those protests/riots?
| adrian_b wrote:
| I do not think that it is very hard to determine when a
| protest becomes a riot, but I think that it is extremely
| difficult to determine who is guilty for transforming a
| protest into a riot.
|
| I have no idea about what has really happened last year
| in USA, because the truth cannot be discovered just from
| video transmissions at TV or on the Internet.
|
| Nevertheless, I have seen much more closely a large
| number of peaceful protests in other countries, which
| eventually became riots.
|
| However it became clear later, that in most or in all
| cases, the transformation of the protests into riots was
| done by undercover police agents or secret service
| agents, who had infiltrated the protests and who had done
| this in order to discredit the protests so that their
| demands could be ignored and their organizers punished.
| watwut wrote:
| > These all occurred in large numbers during between the
| death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many
| times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating
| efforts for those protests/riots?
|
| They did closed accounts that called for violence. I have
| literally seen that. Both twitter and facebook. Not
| perfectly, but they did not refused to delete tweets or
| whole accounts.
| kofejnik wrote:
| https://twitter.com/adbusters/status/1288193793267625984
| is still up
|
| "On September 17, 2020 we will lay siege to The
| @WhiteHouse for exactly fifty days.
|
| We need your wisdom and expertise to pull off a radically
| democratic toneshift in our politics.
|
| Are you ready for #revolution?
|
| This is the #WhiteHouseSiege"
|
| 1k retweets
| lwheelock wrote:
| > Fifty days -- September 17th to November 3rd. > > Let
| us once again summon the sweet, revolutionary nonviolence
| that was our calling card in Zuccotti Park.
|
| If your stated intent explicitly calls for 'non-
| violence', I expect this doesn't violate ToS despite
| potential inferences from the sensational branding.
|
| I never heard of this before so I don't even know what
| happened on Sept. 17. Was it violent?
| weaksauce wrote:
| because they didn't call for a violent overthrow of the
| government but a peaceful jazz fest like they had 9 years
| prior. they are calling for an occupy wallstreet 2.0
|
| https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/whitehousesiege-
| tactical...
|
| the stuff that parler was leaving up was outright
| sedition and calls for violence.
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Adbusters/status/1289363787879915522
|
| Doesn't seem they were advocating for violence.
| j_walter wrote:
| There are dozens of accounts for groups in Portland that
| aren't specifically calling for violence because they use
| code words. Despite violence happening constantly for 5+
| months at the events being organized...
|
| I haven't actually seen any proof that the Capitol riot
| was anything other than a protest that got out of hand
| (like what was described every time there was violence
| and riots after BLM protests across the country). It only
| takes a few dozen agitators to get a mob mentality going.
|
| Facebook suspended #WalkAway, a group of 500K people that
| joined to support leaving the Democrats because they were
| being alienated by their policies (their words, not
| mine). No threats, no violence. Straight up deleted the
| group with no recourse by the organizers. All Facebook
| said was that the page allegedly ran afoul of "hateful,
| threatening, or obscene" content, but no proof was
| actually given.
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/8/brandon-
| stra...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hm. I think a lot of people reasonably draw the line on
| speech somewhere after the protests & property damage
| that happened during 2020, but before action coordinated
| to take control of the seat of government/potentially
| kidnap or kill elected representatives.
| neuland wrote:
| Or, people are just inconsistent and not thinking about
| things beyond their politics.
|
| People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter
| without considering the implications for the events at
| the Capital on Jan 6th.
|
| People are fine with Parler getting banned by all their
| vendors for not moderating violence and threats. But
| people would loose their minds if the same thing happened
| to Facebook for their failure to moderate violence around
| the Rohingyan genocide.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's been a decade, I think people's opinions of the Arab
| Spring have been revised since then. The Arab Spring
| worked out best for the actual country it originated in,
| Tunisia.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on
| Twitter without considering the implications for the
| events at the Capital on Jan 6th._
|
| This is a great point. It's also key to consider that
| some of the groups that praised the Arab Spring were the
| Obama State Department which was led by Hillary Clinton
| at the time.
|
| It appears the threshold is "support violent insurrection
| in other countries but stamp out the discussion of it
| here".
| mcguire wrote:
| Or, perhaps, "support violent insurrection after peaceful
| protests against authoritarianism, human rights
| violations, political corruption have failed, _when there
| is no further peaceful opportunity for opposition._ "
|
| (The United States had an election, right? One with no
| more than the usual, minor, issues, right? One where
| legal actions were taken and weighed appropriately,
| right? One where one specific loser seems only to be
| complaining about losing, right? One where all of the
| other contemporaneous votes were not objected to, right?
| One that will be revisited in 2 to 4 years, right?)
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Serious question: Which of the lawsuits went into
| discovery and were heard to weigh those claims? I'd love
| to read the details as that could dispel rumors and bs.
| garden_hermit wrote:
| > People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on
| Twitter without considering the implications for the
| events at the Capital on Jan 6th.
|
| The reason why someone might hold these competing beliefs
| is simple: they strongly value democratic institutions.
| Violence, in the name of promoting democratic
| institutions, and ideally expanding human rights, is
| justifiable. Violence in the name of authoritarian
| insurrection is not.
|
| Now, of course this gets really tricky, because many
| people on Parler, and in the capitol riots, fully
| believed that they were protecting democracy from massive
| voter-fraud. No clear answer to address that issue, but
| it is something that democratic societies will need to
| reckon with. How does one preserve democratic ideals
| (including promoting free speech, to whatever extent
| possible), while still maintaining a healthy society that
| doesn't tear itself apart?
| ekianjo wrote:
| But you know that people only think about the narrative.
| If its BLM everything goes. If its the other side, its
| evil, has to be stopped. And the best thing is that they
| are completely oblivious to their double standards.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| That is one perspective, although it's very limited in
| its nuance. A lot of people supported BLMs pre-violence
| protests because they wanted police held accountable. And
| a reasonable person can discuss whether the violence
| would have escalated if the police hadn't been so
| aggressive.
|
| Compare that to the Capitol insurrection, where the goal
| was to overturn the results of an election. To overturn
| the government. Where the people inciting the violence
| were in the same tent.
|
| There was never good intent on the side of the
| insurrection it's, and they escalated to violence on
| their own.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Parent was obviously referring to the 34 deaths, theft,
| forcing people to comply with the requests (raise your
| first or face the mob) and millions of damage in private
| property, due to the BLM rioting.
|
| Still, it's not relevant because they weren't exercising
| freedom of speech, just incitement of violence. Same as
| the people at the Capitol.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Your numbers are not reliable, and you should discount
| whatever source you got them from. https://www.politifact
| .com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-p...
|
| The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the
| country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main
| exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating
| the shit out of people, etc.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-
| vid...
|
| In various cities a small number of people acted
| violently. These were opportunists without apparent link
| to the Black Lives Matter organizers who took advantage
| of the situation to smash things up. Some were likely
| sympathetic to the BLM message, but others have been
| identified as far-right agitators.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-
| cause... https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-
| infiltrators-an...
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The only number I brought up is number of deaths which I
| thought it was 34 from memory.
|
| I don't mind the people protesting peacefully, I'm
| talking about the violent ones.
|
| Your fact checker doesn't report a number, some people
| counted 36. Wikipedia reports 19+ deaths: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...
|
| It's irrelevant.
|
| There was looting from stores, burning of buildings and
| killings, surrounding people in restaurants and forcing
| them to comply.
|
| You can call it a peaceful protest as much as you want
| and you can link biased sources all day, but you won't
| change facts.
| [deleted]
| jacobolus wrote:
| Did you read your Wikipedia list? We have a whole bunch
| of people shot by cops, a few looters shot by store
| owners, people shot in unrelated murders that happened
| near protests, people run over by cars that drove into
| crowds, some people shot when groups of armed racists
| started gunfights with groups of armed antiracists, etc.
|
| This list does not at all support the thesis that
| organized BLM protests were intentionally violent.
|
| * * *
|
| Yeah, there was a time that a group of white BLM
| sympathizers heckled another white BLM sympathizer who
| was eating at a restaurant table on the sidewalk, and the
| heckling was caught on video. The people involved are
| obnoxious jerks (organizers and most others in the BLM
| movement also agree they are jerks).
|
| Similar heckling by all sorts of groups of jerks happens
| all over the country on a regular basis. For example a
| bunch of MAGA folks were following and heckling Lindsay
| Graham at an airport a few days ago.
|
| But you really think heckling at a restaurant should be
| compared to an armed mob breaking into the Capitol
| building, chanting for the Vice President's execution and
| for the overthrow of the US government, beating cops to
| death, ransacking offices, stealing sensitive national
| security materials, and literally shitting all over?
| optical wrote:
| > This list does not at all support the thesis that
| organized BLM protests were intentionally violent.
|
| Are you really claiming there was never any incitement?
|
| This popped up with one search:
| https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-leader-if-change-
| doesnt-ha...
|
| "If this country doesn't give us what we want, then we
| will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And
| I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking
| literally. It's a matter of interpretation,"
| jacobolus wrote:
| The implication is that the nationwide (and worldwide)
| Black Lives Matter protest marches in wake of George
| Floyd's death should have been prevented and their
| communications shut down, because the grandparent poster
| thinks that protesting police brutality and murder is
| illegitimate, but storming the US Capitol with the stated
| goal of overthrowing the government and extrajudicially
| executing the Vice President is just fine.
| watwut wrote:
| Conservative groups still exist outside Parler. And they
| can and do coordinate there.
|
| The same platforms were closing accounts calling for
| violence and preparing it during BLM protests. The
| difference is that while people on Parler claim that
| violent subgroups don't represent all Trump supporters,
| platforms that don't allow calls for violence are not
| good for them.
| bitstan wrote:
| > it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and
| enforced.
|
| Democratically maybe?
|
| Don't we have an entire police state apparatus to monitor the
| public and snoop on bad hombres? Why should Silicon Valley
| play the roll of unelected police-state.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center
|
| Brainwashed is the perfect term to describe the cognitive
| dissonance and mental gymnastics required to adopt
| authoritarian and undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism".
|
| > For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to
| protect, things to fight against, things to think about
|
| Like blasphemy laws? Brain. Washed.
| pkulak wrote:
| > mental gymnastics required to adopt authoritarian and
| undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism".
|
| It is a paradox, after all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Democratically maybe?
|
| But...we did that. And the answer arrived out through
| representative democracy thus far is:
|
| (1) For matters where no legal liability, or only civil
| liability (except for sex trafficking, and copyright law
| which has its own special rules) would be involved, mostly
| leave it up to the free discretion of each online provider
| to determine and address unwelcome content.
|
| (2) a whole bunch of crime-specific rules in criminal law,
| including (relevant to recent events) an absolute
| prohibition against knowingly providing any good or service
| (with narrow medical and religious exceptions) that will be
| used in "terrorism" offenses.
| simondw wrote:
| > Why should Silicon Valley play the roll of unelected
| police-state.
|
| Since when is a corporation deciding not to do business
| with someone equivalent to throwing them in prison?
| rsync wrote:
| "Of course there's the problem of where the line should be
| drawn and who should draw it"
|
| That's not "a problem", that's _the only problem_.
|
| Of course hatred and bigotry and false scientific claims and
| calls to violence, etc., are negative and of course we wish
| they would vanish.
|
| But a _Ministry of Truth_ would be worse.
|
| I am willing to build and maintain mental, emotional and
| psychological armor against very negative, harmful speech if
| it helps avoid erecting a Ministry of Truth.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily
| equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people
| are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by
| preventing them to hear anything that might influence their
| feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way.
|
| Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct,
| therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not
| see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the
| courage to tell what they really think in the face of those
| whom they want to protect.
| offby37years wrote:
| This is correct. You can't have democracy without free
| speech. If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able
| to deduce the truth, you shouldn't trust them to cast their
| own vote.
| mlyle wrote:
| You need free speech, but you don't need free
| coordination of violence by those rejecting discourse.
| offby37years wrote:
| In attempt to curtail the latter you forgo the former.
| dagw wrote:
| _You can 't have democracy without free speech._
|
| So are countries that have more limits on free speech
| than what the US has, less democratic than the US?
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are no single criteria that can be used to judge
| how democratic a country is.
|
| Many European countries have more restrictions on free
| speech than USA, so yes, they are less democratic by this
| criterion.
|
| By other criteria, e.g. by evaluating how many abusive
| laws they have that favor a few rich individuals that own
| some large companies against the majority of the
| citizens, most European countries are more democratic
| than USA.
|
| The same conclusion comes from other criteria, like how
| easy is for most citizens to access education or health
| services.
| modriano wrote:
| > If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able to
| deduce the truth...
|
| Do you trust people who live in an echo chamber overrun
| with disinformation to deduce the truth about the outcome
| of the US election? If so, can you speak to the mechanism
| by which such people can determine the truth? And could
| you speak to the empirical failure of this population to
| discover the truth?
| offby37years wrote:
| With almost every technological advance, destructive
| power arrives long before the protective powers. It's
| much easier to destroy something with a nuclear weapon
| than it is to build a nuclear power plant. Likewise, we
| arrived at muskets before the combustion engine.
| Disinformation is much cheaper (and profitable for media
| companies surviving on outrage driven clicks) than
| delivering self-verifiable empirical information. This
| will change in time.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Yes, you are right.
|
| This is the most unfortunate consequence of the idea that
| free speech must be limited.
|
| If it is accepted that a part of the people cannot be
| trusted to not do wrong things when others tell them to
| do so, then an unavoidable consequence is that to that
| part of the people the right to vote must also be denied,
| because if they may be convinced by lies to do very wrong
| things, like violence, then it is even more certain that
| they will be easily convinced by lies to do a minor
| mistake, like casting a wrong vote.
|
| Any proposal to deny the right of voting to stupid
| people, or to give different weight to the votes,
| depending on the "intelligence" of the voters, would
| rightly generate huge protests.
|
| However, any proposal to restrict the free speech without
| also restricting the right to vote is logically
| inconsistent, even if many seem to not notice this.
| phs318u wrote:
| > but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free
| speech having the courage to tell what they really think in
| the face of those whom they want to protect.
|
| It's not them I want to protect (though I don't have any
| explicit desire for them to _not_ be protected). It's me I
| want to protect. Your right to swing your fists ends at the
| tip of my nose, and your right to yell "Fire!" or "Stop the
| steal" or "Storm the Bastille!" are likewise constrained
| when they infringe on my rights.
|
| The practical implementation and realisation of rights is
| always a trade-off of rights vs rights. What is under
| discussion is where the balance of those trade-offs lay.
|
| Having said that, there is a very strong case to be made
| that we need to address people's propensity to listen to,
| invest in, and act on, obvious bullshit (e.g. flat-
| earthers, reptilians etc). More than education is required.
| My brother-in-law - a highly functioning, tertiary educated
| small business owner and nice guy - is a dyed-in-the-wool
| conspiracist, believing the most outrageous things. Having
| a rational discussion with him has not budged him from his
| beliefs one iota. I believe it's a psychological condition
| as common as depression or anxiety.
|
| There are no easy answers nor quick fixes for this problem.
| glogla wrote:
| I'm not sure you have actually shown the equivalency.
|
| But if you did, how is that different from worker
| protections or consumer protections or environmental
| protections or mandatory seatbelt or million other laws?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >The belief that free speech must have limits is
| necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of
| the people are stupid and they must be protected by the
| smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might
| influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong
| way.
|
| I don't see why this is true; intelligent people can be
| harmed by speech just as much as stupid people can.
| _Everyone_ can certainly be harmed by the immediate follow-
| on effects of speech. Some words can harm in a way it is
| unreasonable to expect guard against, or those for which it
| is impossible to guard against.
|
| The scholarly literature on speech, harm, and legality has
| dozens of such examples.
|
| >but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free
| speech having the courage to tell
|
| I can courageously say now that I'm not in favor of
| restrictions on speech for reasons of "stupidity" but
| rather the demonstrable harm speech can cause.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is
| correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but
| I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech
| having the courage to tell what they really think in the
| face of those whom they want to protect._
|
| Maybe people don't actually espouse that stated position
| because it's a strawman.
|
| Intelligent people can be fooled and manipulated without
| being stupid - they have been for ages. What's different
| _now_ is the speed and concentration of misinformation.
|
| Platforms of mass misinformation and manipulation are
| curious beasts, and susceptibility to radicalization !=
| stupidity. Something somewhat novel appears to be happening
| due the new ways we communicate, and it's not unreasonable
| to suggest that "something" should be done about it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And of course, those advocating limiting speech are sure
| that _they_ are not among the stupid. They 're always
| advocating limiting someone else's speech, not their own,
| because they're _smart_ people who are not fooled by the
| wrong things, and who listen to and believe the _right_
| things.
| chopin24 wrote:
| >The belief that free speech must have limits is
| necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of
| the people are stupid and they must be protected by the
| smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might
| influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong
| way.
|
| You're leaving out some very well-established restrictions
| on free speech, including slander, libel, copyright
| infringement, obscenity, privacy violation... in short,
| absolutism hasn't been a prevailing philosophy for
| centuries. This sudden resurgence of it feels like a
| refusal to engage with the very real, very difficult debate
| on what speech deserves censorship.
|
| It doesn't have anything at all to do with intelligence,
| but the observed consequences of certain kinds of speech.
| Lies, for example, that manipulate peoples' emotions. This
| is not unique to "stupid people."
| adrian_b wrote:
| Some other poster already mentioned that what you list
| are actions that are punishable by various laws, at least
| in most countries.
|
| There is a huge difference between punishing someone for
| something already done, e.g. slander or libel, and
| denying him access to publication media because you
| believe that in the future that person might say
| something that might have who knows what effect on other
| people, who might do some crimes.
|
| I completely agree that whoever abuses the free speech
| right to do something punishable by law must be judged
| and punished if found guilty.
|
| On the other hand, I do not agree with any of these
| "deplatforming" actions based on vague beliefs about the
| future actions of some people.
|
| If Trump or anyone else is expected to do a speech crime,
| then watch him and, as soon as he does that, fine him or
| arrest him.
|
| If he already did such a crime, then also fine him or
| arrest him.
|
| Otherwise, "deplatforming" him has no basis in facts.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| > denying him access to publication media because you
| believe that in the future that person might say
| something that might have who knows what effect on other
| people, who might do some crimes.
|
| Is this the case here?
|
| The statements in question are already made. Typically,
| the deplatforming happens after a violation has already
| been made. Which seems to be the case here, unless I am
| misunderstanding.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think it just comes down to Popper, who puts it elegantly
| enough:
|
| > ... In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance,
| that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant
| philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational
| argument and keep them in check by public opinion,
| suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should
| claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by
| force; for it may easily turn out that they are not
| prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but
| begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their
| followers to listen to rational argument, because it is
| deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of
| their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the
| name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the
| intolerant.
| adnzzzzZ wrote:
| >The hobbit is simply embarrassed into compliance by his
| elven betters. The ideas he believes become a dangerous
| mental disease. This diagnosis is written into history.
| The sooner he gives up this nonsense, the better. To help
| convince him, we'll make this idea quasi-illegal. The
| sooner he gives it up, the less his life will suffer.
| Eventually he can be fired for staying an idiot. Everyone
| will agree that he deserved it.
|
| >This is Popper's paradox of tolerance. Popper discovers
| that every real regime must have the apparatus of the
| Inquisition in its back pocket. If it hesitates to deploy
| its intellectual rack and thumbscrew, it will be replaced
| by a regime with no such qualms.
|
| >Popper, read logically, advises the Nazis to repress the
| Communists, the Communists to repress the Nazis, the
| liberals to repress both and both to repress the
| liberals. From his "open society" he comes all the way
| around to Hobbes, Schmitt and Machiavelli. Next he will
| tell us, in Esperanto, that "the earth is nothing but a
| vast bloody altar."
|
| I think Moldbug reads Popper much more elegantly.
| https://graymirror.substack.com/p/vae-victis
| [deleted]
| mlyle wrote:
| Poorly, you mean, because Popper asserts (as I quoted
| before):
|
| ...as long as we can counter them by rational argument
| and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression
| would certainly be most unwise...
|
| It's only when the other side has abandoned discourse and
| is interested in meeting you with force that tolerance is
| to be abandoned.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Popper's point is that if someone wants to curtail your
| right to free speech, you have the right to curtail
| theirs. On the other hand, if a political opponent
| respects your right to speak freely, you should do the
| same for them. It's not really a paradox; it's about
| symmetry.
|
| By analogy, imagine if someone commits murder. Would
| putting them to death as punishment also be murder? No.
| You have the right to life as long as you respect other
| people's right to the same.
| Knufen wrote:
| The problems always begins with grey and ends in black.
| Who defines when, where and how someone is curtailing
| their right to free speech? There is always asymmetry in
| power.
| FuckButtons wrote:
| I don't agree, perfectly rational otherwise smart people
| can be duped by lies, to suggest otherwise is to deny the
| evidence of the entire advertising industries existence. We
| need to protect everyone from predatory actors, propaganda
| and lies irrespective of their intellect because we are all
| susceptible.
| nec4b wrote:
| And who will do the protecting if we are all susceptible?
| You?
| leetcrew wrote:
| > Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is
| correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but
| I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech
| having the courage to tell what they really think in the
| face of those whom they want to protect.
|
| I don't know about this part. the narrative seems to be
| more about protecting the vulnerable from the stupid, not
| so much protecting the stupid from themselves.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Nobody can be so vulnerable to the words of other people
| that they will do obviously bad things, unless they are
| stupid.
|
| Normal people are vulnerable to lies only in the sense
| that when presented with deliberately false information
| that they cannot verify immediately, they may trust the
| liar and make a wrong decision to do something that they
| cannot know yet whether it is right or wrong, e.g. buying
| something cheap for a high price or being the victim for
| another kind of fraud.
|
| Only someone stupid will beat someone or burn a house
| because of some false accusations.
|
| All the arguments for these deplatforming actions were
| that the people, who would have heard the propaganda of
| those to whom the access is denied now, would have been
| easily convinced to do stupid things.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Free speech doesn't need limits.
|
| Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech,
| committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not
| covered by free speech.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The problem is people are idiots who will believe someone
| who calls themself Q and claims the deep state is trying to
| take down the president. Once you convince people of that
| you don't need to use illegal speech to inspire violence,
| they're already inspired.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I completely agree.
|
| However, I want to repeat what I have already replied to
| another similar post.
|
| All these speech crimes should be punished according to the
| law, as soon as they are committed.
|
| Restricting the speech of someone, by denying access to
| publication media, just because it is believed that they
| might commit some speech crime in the future, that is
| clearly an arbitrary and baseless restriction of the free
| speech right.
| simias wrote:
| If you want to frame it that way then fine by me: "there
| are no limits to free speech, but there are limits to what
| can be described as free speech". I'd argue that it's
| effectively exactly the same problematic seen from a
| slightly different angle.
|
| Saying things like "I support Nazis" could be considered a
| valid political opinion protected by free speech in some
| countries and illegal hate speech in others.
| hctaw wrote:
| Those are examples of limiting of free speech
|
| edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take
| a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free
| speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits
| applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even
| exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any
| discussion below is fruitless.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I think parent was pointing out that the question of
| "where should the line be drawn and who should draw it"
| has _already_ been settled. Those things are _already
| illegal_ , so we don't need to impose further
| restrictions on speech in order to prevent those things.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >the question of "where should the line be drawn and who
| should draw it" has already been settled
|
| I think it should at least be a line open to challenge
| without being accused of being brainwashed. If that line
| cannot be questioned, we're skating on dogmatism. There
| are very few good reasons for a special guarantee of free
| speech (versus, say, a special guarantee to be able to
| eat fries) which stand up to closer scrutiny.
|
| The only convincing reason for a constitutional guarantee
| to freedom of speech is mistrust in the government, but
| again, that depends where you draw the line. Food
| regulation is arguably just as important in our lives,
| but few mistrust the FDA as to call for its abolition, or
| propose a constitutional amendment banning all regulation
| of foods.
|
| This isn't a matter of what the law _is_ , it's a matter
| of what the law _should be_ - whether it 's a
| constitutional law or not.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I think parent was pointing out that the question of
| "where should the line be drawn and who should draw it"
| has already been settled. Those things are already
| illegal, so we don't need to impose further restrictions
| on speech in order to prevent those things.
|
| I'm skeptical that such a line can ever be truly
| "settled." Sure, it can be settled in a particular social
| and technological context, but when those latter things
| change, the line may need to be adjusted.
| coryfklein wrote:
| See Trope 9: "This speech may be protected for now, but
| the law is always changing."
|
| TLDR: yeah, the law _can_ change, but it 's highly
| unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has
| been more consistently protective of free speech than of
| any other right, especially in the face of media
| sensibilities about "harmful" words"
|
| [1] https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-
| critique-...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > See Trope 9: "This speech may be protected for now, but
| the law is always changing."
|
| It's worth noting that _no_ legally forbidden censorship
| has been happening with regards to the recent
| insurrection against congress.
|
| > TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly
| unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has
| been more consistently protective of free speech than of
| any other right, especially in the face of media
| sensibilities about "harmful" words"
|
| But that's not a fixed fact of nature, it's a reaction to
| a particular social and technological context.
|
| For instance, if someone discovers an idea instantly
| turns 10% those who hear it into murderous zealots (sort
| of like the poem in "The Tyranny of Heaven" by Stephen
| Baxter), that idea is going to censored _hard_ and the
| Supreme Court will be like "Yup, ban it."
|
| Likewise, if some social change or technology renders the
| legal regime that the Supreme Court has created a cause
| of serious dysfunction, then Supreme Court is going to
| have to change that regime to accommodate. Idealism's
| great, but not when it doesn't work.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > _no_ legally forbidden censorship has been happening
| with regards to the recent insurrection against congress.
|
| Yes, this is true as far as I am aware as well. But I
| find myself in a conundrum; had this "inciting" speech
| taken place in the town square or a public park, much of
| it likely could not have been censored because it would
| have been protected by the 1st amendment and the last 100
| years of case law. Where, then, is the town square and
| public park of 2021?
|
| Despite the fact that the legal protections of public
| speech haven't changed much in decades, the _practical_
| protections of public speech (as I discuss in greater
| detail in [1]) have indeed been eroded, because social
| media platforms and, apparently, web hosting and device
| makers are now the arbiters of the vast majority of
| speech. Free speech that only applies where virtually
| noone can hear you is a very limited free speech indeed.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662466
| allturtles wrote:
| The town squares and public parks are still there.
|
| The existence of Twitter, Facebook, etc. have accustomed
| people to the ability to air their opinions globally free
| of charge, however that is a very novel phenomenon. It's
| hard for me, having come of age in the 1980s/1990s, to
| see this as an inalienable right.
| option wrote:
| no it is not. Saying "covid is a hoax" should be
| protected by free speech because it is an expression of
| (stupidly false) opinion. Saying "we storm Capiton at
| 8:00am on Jan 6" is a call to violent action, not an
| idea, thought, or opinion and obviously must be taken
| down ASAP
| hctaw wrote:
| All speech is free speech. Avoid hyperbole here because
| it doesn't help. Your examples both kinds of speech that
| people think should be limited, trying to discard one as
| _not speech_ rather than focusing at hand on _what speech
| should be limited_ does nothing but rile up those that
| disagree with your examples.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > no it is not. Saying "covid is a hoax" should be
| protected by free speech because it is an expression of
| (stupidly false) opinion.
|
| But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign
| saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to
| remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie.
|
| Most of the people who are complaining about free speech
| being limited are really arguing for things like the
| above.
| foolinaround wrote:
| yes, but then you don't get covered under section 230,
| because you are actively making judgement calls, and
| therefore, should be liable for those.
| tstrimple wrote:
| That's really not how Section 230 works.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/he
| llo...
| foolinaround wrote:
| this link clarified some things for me,thanks
| chc wrote:
| Whatever news source you heard talking about section 230,
| you should stop trusting it, because they are actively
| misinforming you.
| ericd wrote:
| You preventing signs on your lawn are fine, you
| preventing specific messages on systemically important
| communications infrastructure you happen to own is not.
| It's the same reason that AT&T was heavily regulated back
| when it carried 90% of telecom traffic and before it was
| ultimately broken up via antitrust.
|
| You running a corner store the way you want is fine, you
| running the only store in the country the way you want is
| not.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > You preventing signs on your lawn are fine, you
| preventing specific messages on systemically important
| communications infrastructure you happen to own is not.
| It's the same reason that AT&T was heavily regulated back
| when it carried 90% of telecom traffic and before it was
| ultimately broken up via antitrust.
|
| You know, you don't need AWS to run a website, right?
| Similarly, newspapers have often been local monopolies,
| but as far as I know, they've always been able to decline
| to publish a letter to the editor.
|
| Whoever wants to stick a sign on my lawn is going to come
| up with some rationale to force me to do it, but that
| doesn't mean it holds any water.
| majormajor wrote:
| We got to the latter because of years and years of the
| former.
|
| "You're allowed to talk people into believing that they
| need to violently rebel, but you're not allowed to
| actually do the rebelling" is not a particularly
| reasonable position.
| avgDev wrote:
| I'm working on a blog, where users will post about their
| experience with a particular drug and its side effects.
| Since, I am paying for hosting and I created the blog, I
| will NOT allow any pseudo science. Am I limiting free
| speech? No.
|
| There is a good reason twitter, facebook, youtube does
| remove certain content. They have the right to remove
| whatever they want.
| option wrote:
| do you think your water and energy utilities should be
| free to decide whether to serve your house or not?
| kolinko wrote:
| +1.
|
| If someone publishes fake news about vaccines, it takes a
| lot of effort then for people to keep explaining to other
| people how this is not true. It is harmful to society,
| and unfair - it takes less time to invent a new hoax than
| to fact-check it.
|
| Just like loitering on the ground is considered an
| offence, so should be publishing fake news. It doesn't
| hurt one person, but it hurts society.
|
| There also are objective criteria for determining if
| something is fake or not - so it is possible to create
| laws that forbid it and don't limit a freedom of opinion.
| silexia wrote:
| Why is everyone debating on whether they should be limits
| on free speech when that is irrelevant? Free speech is
| something provided by the government, not by private
| companies. Any private company, such as a restaurant, can
| throw you out for any reason outside of discriminating
| against a protected class.
|
| What seems to be under attack here is the right of
| individual companies and people to decide who they wish
| to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for
| choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting
| that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you
| want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why is everyone debating on whether they should be
| limits on free speech when that is irrelevant?
|
| It's not irrelevant.
|
| > What seems to be under attack here is the right of
| individual companies and people to decide who they wish
| to work with.
|
| To the extent that that is based on expressive
| preference, that is an aspect of free speech, and the
| closely-related right of free association.
|
| Limiting that right is limiting free speech.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| On the other hand, forcing a platform to allow expression
| they disagree with is limiting their free speech to not
| amplify something.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's not the other hand, that's what I was saying in
| GP.
| zaroth wrote:
| I agree that this is a limit on corporations' free
| speech. Monopolistic corporations do have a well founded
| legal limit to their free speech rights.
|
| For example, it's a form of free speech for Microsoft to
| decide how they write their own software. One of those
| decisions was to bundle a free web browser in with their
| OS and tie the OS function tightly together with that
| browser. Microsoft Corporation was almost broken up by
| the government because they did that.
|
| The issue that Greenwald is raising is similarly rooted
| in anti-trust;
|
| > _If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that
| these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage
| in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust
| laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with
| them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine
| anything more compelling than how they just used their
| unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising
| competitor._
|
| Freedom of speech is not absolute. Just like individuals'
| free speech rights have limits such as incitement to
| violence, corporations also have limits to their "free
| speech" rights based in anti-trust law and anti-
| racketeering laws in how they can attack potential
| competitors.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > What seems to be under attack here is the right of
| individual companies and people to decide who they wish
| to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for
| choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting
| that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you
| want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?
|
| You mention protected classes in your first paragraph,
| but then act like it's self-evident that it's bad to
| "force people to work with (and serve) people they
| abhor". What else is the concept of a protected class if
| not this?
|
| It's clear that we already don't have full freedom of
| association, and the question is where the line should be
| drawn. When people talk about big tech regulation, it's
| undergirded by many of these platforms' unique amount of
| market power. This isn't a novel concept; utility
| companies are an example of a natural monopoly:
| benefiting from scale, considered critical
| infrastructure, and legally prohibited from cutting off
| power to its customers, even if they don't like their
| politics. The topic under discussion here is whether the
| "new public square" (or things like payment
| infrastructure!) are considered critical enough to
| society that we want to protect access to them.
|
| I'm constitutionally (not "Constitutionally") disinclined
| against ill-considered regulation, and most of the
| conversation by government about tech regulation is
| pants-on-head stupid. But the dissonance between the two
| paras in your comment are a good indication that this
| discussion isn't nearly as simple as you're framing it.
| mkolodny wrote:
| > The topic under discussion here is whether the "new
| public square" (or things like payment infrastructure!)
| are considered critical enough to society that we want to
| protect access to them.
|
| That's one core question. Another is whether it should be
| up to these companies to police their own platforms.
| Inciting violence is illegal. They're banning people and
| platforms inciting violence.
|
| "Repeal section 230" seems to be about making these
| companies responsible for policing their own platforms.
| When people incited violence/genocide on Facebook in
| Myanmar, some people held Facebook partially responsible.
| Now, there are people are inciting violence on Facebook
| in the US, and it's still an open question whether
| Facebook should be held liable.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| When people incited violence/genocide on <radio> in
| Myanmar, some people held <radio> partially responsible.
| Now, there are people are inciting violence on <radio> in
| the US, and it's still an open question whether <radio>
| should be held liable.
|
| There are important differences, but the parallels
| between the Rwandan genocide and the growth of talk radio
| in the US in the 90's have always struck me as
| interesting.
|
| That being said, I think that the new public square
| argument is strong, and if we're going to have internet
| monopolies, then they probably need to be regulated
| similarly to the utilities.
|
| Alternatively, they can be broken up. I don't think the
| current state is sustainable over the longer term.
| brlewis wrote:
| > Free speech is something provided by the government,
| not by private companies
|
| It is not _provided_ by the government. Congress is
| prohibited from passing laws that abridge freedom of
| speech; Congress is not the fountain that free speech
| springs from.
|
| It is perfectly relevant to discuss freedom of speech in
| contexts where someone else might be doing the abridging
| besides the U.S. Congress.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It isn't _really_ free speech, you are right. It is more
| of an anti-trust issue, that a couple companies could get
| together to completely ban another one. We should
| consider if too much power has been concentrated in the
| hands of a few tech companies, if essentially their
| content moderation policies can so easily be
| misinterpreted as free speech issues.
|
| That the outcome here is banning a community that was
| apparently mostly used for hate speech (never actually
| checked it out) is... maybe a red herring? I mean, they
| obviously didn't build these massive companies with the
| primary goal of banning niche hateful websites.
|
| If we were to, say, break up social media and internet
| infrastructure giants, then this sort of website would
| probably be able to persist by hopping from host to host
| until they found one without any morals. But could
| consider if losing the ability to perform this kind of
| deplatforming would be worth it, in exchange for a much
| more competitive marketplace.
|
| I think it is actually a really tricky situation.
| silexia wrote:
| Keep in mind that sites like parler are not actually
| banned. They could simply hook up their own computer to
| the internet and run their site if they wished. No one
| has some natural right to be able to use a convenient
| service like AWS. And if AWS refuses to do business with
| you, there are hundreds of other hosting companies that
| you can choose from.
|
| Ultimately, if not one of the hundreds of hosting
| companies out there wants to work with you, that should
| be a very strong indication that the community is not
| something we want. But if you really really want this
| community anyways, just hook up your computer to an
| internet connection and host the site yourself.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| So when a politician or pundit cherry-picks one sentence
| out of a larger statement and spins that to imply
| something other than what the speaker meant, perhaps even
| the complete opposite of what he meant, is that "fake
| news" or is that "opinion?" And who decides?
| mcguire wrote:
| How do you suggest prosecuting those crimes?
|
| If I threaten to kill you, or commit fraud, in person, you
| call the police, give them what information you have about
| me, and ideally I get a knock on the door. If I do it
| online, well, you don't have much recourse.
| [deleted]
| adrian_b wrote:
| If the author of such an online message cannot be
| identified, then the recourse is what is already common
| practice, to delete the offending message or possibly to
| replace the deceiving information with correct
| information.
|
| If the author can be identified, which is frequently
| true, then it should be the same for online as for in
| person.
| gyudin wrote:
| Not American per se, but free speech has limits. People
| breaking the law should be prosecuted in courts.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unlike the US highway system, Parler was specifically set up to
| encourage - or at least provide a haven for - insidious
| planning and hatred. So I don't see how your argument is
| convincing.
|
| Would you feel the same way if it had been Muslim terrorists in
| camo storming the Capitol, and they had organised on a Muslim
| site?
|
| Because no matter how this is being spun, that is literally
| comparable to what happened last week.
| ian-g wrote:
| Would the highway not be better equated to the internet itself?
|
| With AWS, Google Play store, iOS store as toll roads
| (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Gate Bridge etc...) and Parler,
| Facebook, HN etc... as car brands?
|
| Manufacturers can be forced to take all of their cars off the
| road for repair. Take Toyota or Waze.
|
| You might have an argument about iOS taking Parler off the
| store as an issue because you can't sideload, but you can
| directly install APKs onto Android. You can self-host Parler
| with physical servers. I guess I'm less bothered by this than a
| lot of folks cause one of my rules is basically "Be nice around
| other people's things and ask before you touch". AWS and the
| Android + iOS stores are other people's things. And Parler
| poked at a sore spot: being used to plan attacks
| dang wrote:
| This was a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748129 but I've detached
| this massive subthread in an attempt to spare our poor server.
| yes, we're working on it
| cynusx wrote:
| In europe, we long accepted that uncensored talk of hate speech
| which in practice is almost always racial hatred will lead to
| the eventual overthrow of democracies and therefore deserve to
| be censored.
|
| Is preserving democracy worth putting limits on free speech?
| I'd argue absolutely. People are animals.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| "Yet American liberals swoon for this authoritarianism" you had
| me up to this point. Liberals don't swoon for this any more than
| they do for a mandatory curfew to curb coronavirus cases. The
| powers of SV are a lot and I would hope that out of the ashes of
| the last four years we get a) a more progressive Conservative
| party and b) a more diversified collection of service providers,
| to combat AWS, and the like.
|
| All of these companies, for what it's worth, seems to only use
| their power when its socially acceptable. For instance, they
| continue to abide by restrictive Chinese laws for the benefit of
| money. I'm convinced they will submit to the will of the state in
| Poland as well, where freedom of speech appears to mean something
| entirely different.
| mattbee wrote:
| How this cesspool got built is a metaphor for the wingnuts who
| used it.
|
| Most of us here know - if you want a resilient, censorship-free
| service, you can still: buy your own physical servers, rent data
| centre space (or a garage), buy multiple transit pipes to ensure
| traffic can get to them from a variety of places. You can move
| your servers around if you have to and keep your sovereignty
| despite everything else changing. It's how the internet was
| designed! Amazon, Google, Apple and most other private companies
| can go whistle if they want you offline.
|
| Sure it takes expertise, time, expense, negotiation... but that's
| the price of true freedom, internet patriots!
|
| Instead they built everything on top of the conveniences and
| goodwill of a single US company, with no backup plan. Hardly
| living in the wild west - and that's this mob down to a tee.
| Rich, well-connected dorks who desperately _need_ the society
| they organise to tear down - why be surprised when the society
| hits back in such a tiny way as terminating their AWS account?
|
| If this is censorship, I'm a bowl of noodle soup.
| fasdf1122 wrote:
| just admit it, you're a closet racist.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Reminds me of all the libertarians who flocked to Bitcoin
| because it was considered a way to circumvent the government,
| and then realized that a) you need governments to run the
| pipes, b) much of the mining is done by conglomerates and c)
| the unregulated market is about as stable as a ship at sea
| seanyesmunt wrote:
| This is being worked on
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/gotenna-bitcoin-wallet-mesh-network
| mattbee wrote:
| Downvotes? _raises fist to sky_ This is censorshiiiiip!!1!
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus, she
| could have just started her own bus line!
|
| If GMC wouldn't sell her a bus, she could just make her own!
|
| Sure it takes expertise, time, expense, negotiation... but
| that's the price of true freedom!
|
| Before anyone comes crying: I in no way support the assault on
| the Capitol, calls to violence (which should be illegal), alt-
| right ethno-state madness, Qanon delusions etc. Nazism is a
| cancer on society.
| badRNG wrote:
| There is a significant difference between refusing business
| on the basis of race (which is rightfully a protected status)
| and refusing business with a platform that hosts far-right
| content. This particular example, comparing the far-right to
| Rosa Parks, is especially distasteful.
| picklesman wrote:
| You are comparing literal Nazis who are calling for
| insurrection and murder to someone peacefully fighting
| _against_ oppression.
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| >You are comparing literal Nazis
|
| Literal Nazis?! Wow! Didn't know there were that many
| National Socialist German Workers' Party members in the US
| in 2021!
|
| Those freedom fighters mostly peacefully protested at the
| Capitol to fight against tyranny and literal communism! /s
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Buses are considered public transit in most areas, not
| private. Also, discrimination against race is illegal, unlike
| calling for violence.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the USA, there are many kinds busses that are not public
| transit. Greyhound and Trailways were historically the most
| famous, but there are still lots of long and intermediate
| distance services (i.e. not just shuttling you around a
| town) that are still completely private bus services.
| Today, Megabus and Bolt would be contemporary examples.
| They are subject to some regulation as a kind of "public
| transportation", but their services, facilities, investment
| and staff are in any significant way controlled by
| governments.
| neaden wrote:
| But the segregation of bus lines was mandated by law in
| Alabama at the time, so it was a government action.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Indeed. I was just trying to clarify the public/private
| status of bus lines in the US, particularly for non-US
| readers.
| titzer wrote:
| > If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus,
|
| Buses are run by governments. And Rosa Parks wasn't
| advocating throwing molotov cocktails at bus drivers, she sat
| in the wrong damn seat in an act of _civil disobedience_.
|
| > If GMC wouldn't sell her a bus,
|
| It'd be great if GMC would refuse selling vehicles to
| insurrectionist militias, IMHO.
|
| Your analogies aren't doing any good here.
| tim44 wrote:
| > Rosa Parks wasn't advocating throwing molotov cocktails
| at bus drivers, she sat in the wrong damn seat in an act of
| civil disobedience.
|
| Agreed. But because some others didn't take her approach to
| civils rights, but were violent, why should she be
| canceled? It would be interesting to ask people at that
| time in history whether they saw her actions as violence or
| inciting violence. I bet the answer is a big ol' yes. I bet
| even many thought it was inciting the overthrow
| society/government.
| Craighead wrote:
| Cancelled != civil disobedience
|
| Everything else in your response is bad faith
| peytn wrote:
| I believe the bus was operated by National City Lines.
| Could be wrong.
| inscionent wrote:
| "The Montgomery City Lines is sorry if anyone expects us
| to be exempt from any state or city law ... [w]e are
| sorry that the colored people blame us for any state or
| city ordinance which we didn't have passed."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Lines
| peytn wrote:
| They were free to not do business with the city of
| Montgomery, if I'm following the logic of some of today's
| discussion correctly.
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| >Buses are run by governments.
|
| Not the one Rosa Parks was on.
|
| >And Rosa Parks wasn't advocating throwing molotov
| cocktails
|
| Rosa Parks no, but other Black groups most definitely. Same
| with Parler, not everyone was advocating violence.
|
| >It'd be great if GMC would refuse selling vehicles to
| insurrectionist militias, IMHO.
|
| Yup, stop selling them to the Black insurrectionist
| militias (codeword for any Black political group), would
| have been great.
|
| >Your analogies aren't doing any good here.
|
| They're pretty great honestly, describes the general idea
| well.
| thewindowmovie5 wrote:
| Not only that, Rosa Parks was discriminated because of who
| she was while the MAGA goons and the platform they used are
| receiving backlash for behaving like pos and refusing to
| moderate the violent posts. The parent poster is
| deliberately muddying the water with the twisted analogy.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| This is the most important part. We need to defend people
| from being discriminated for who they are, but things
| they do is fair game.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| More specifically, for the things they do _towards the
| destruction of our democratic society_.
| spaced-out wrote:
| > If Rosa Parks didn't like sitting in the back of the bus,
| she could have just started her own bus line!
|
| Or she and like minded people could have boycotted the bus
| lines, in modern terms "cancelling" them. (In case any non-US
| users don't know, that's exactly what they did, it was called
| the "Montgomery Bus Boycott").
|
| Ironically, racists in those days tried to use the government
| to shut that movement down, just like Republicans are trying
| to use the government to go after people cancelling Parler
| today.
| umvi wrote:
| Yeah, and if you can't find an ISP that will allow your
| physical servers internet access you can always start your own
| ISP...
| jackson1442 wrote:
| This line is exactly why ISPs should be treated as a utility
| and not be allowed to deny service to anyone except in
| special circumstances. Many people depend on the internet for
| their livelihoods (like me!) and denying them access at their
| home is almost akin to an electric company denying someone
| access to the grid.
| mattbee wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-neutral_data_center
| umvi wrote:
| Just curious, if I buy a physical server, how would I then
| go about installing it into a NNDC?
| mattbee wrote:
| Call them and ask! They may punt you to one of their
| customers if you just want a U or 2.
|
| If you plan on your own AS and IP space - full network
| independence - ask which carriers are there, and plan on
| a quarter or half rack for a router. You'd also need to
| become a member of your regional Internet registry (e.g.
| ARIN in the US) and ask them for resources - e.g. IP
| space and an AS number.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without posting in the
| flamewar style. We're trying to avoid the latter here because
| it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious, thoughtful
| conversation about interesting things.
|
| When accounts build up a track record of flamewar, snark,
| political/ideological battle, and other things that break the
| site guidelines, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise
| this place will be engulfed by hellfire and then become
| scorched earth. Those things may be exciting and/or activating
| for a while, but they're not interesting.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful. You
| can still express your views in that spirit, as many other HN
| users have been showing.
| guyzero wrote:
| Shunning is a perfectly valid means of social expression.
| ilogik wrote:
| seriously, fuck greenwald. he's an idiot
|
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1190700971233619968
| sabhiram wrote:
| While I understand the motive for the article, should service
| provider companies really have to be egalitarian? What happened
| to the likes of "No shoes, no shirt, no service"?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| If a site did nothing but post links to copyrighted/ pirated
| songs, it would get banned. We know this because we've seen it
| happen over and over.
|
| If a site posted links to houses where people were on vacation
| and discussed best ways to break into them. It would get banned.
| Nobody would complain.
|
| Why is it that a site which is essentially built to allow people
| to discuss violent crimes against people is supposed to be
| tolerated? We should tolerate it because it's discussing violent
| crimes against politicians? I don't even think it's limited to
| that regardless.
|
| Parler was created so people could discuss things which were
| banned on other sites for being too violent and had too much hate
| speech. It's unofficial charter is based on supporting criminal
| activities.
|
| I don't understand why people are acting like this is free speech
| when so many similar crime-based sites are not tolerated.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >Parler was created so people could discuss things which were
| banned on other sites for being too violent and had too much
| hate speech. It's unofficial charter is based on supporting
| criminal activities.
|
| Can you provide a source for this?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Greenwald's argument hinges on emotion, insinuation, invective, a
| completely unfounded premise, an absolute absence of evidence,
| and no consideration of alternative explanations: _an
| overwhelmingly plausible ongoing law enforcement and national
| security operation, likely under sealed or classified indictments
| or warrants, in the face of ongoing deadly sedition lead by the
| President of the United States himself, including against the
| person of his own vice president and credible threats against the
| President-Elect and Inauguration._
|
| Such an legal action is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to
| prove, and I cannot prove it. A key clue for me, however, is the
| defection not just of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Stripe,
| and other tech firms, but of Parler's legal counsel, who would
| have to be an exceptionally stealth-mode startup to fit
| Greenwald's, or other's, "it's the tech monopolists" narrative.
| I've tempered my degree of assurance and language ("plausible"
| rather than "probable"). Time will tell. _But a keen and critical
| mind such as Grenwald's should at least be weighing the
| possibility._ He instead seems bent only on piking old sworn
| enemies, with less evidence or coherence than I offer.
|
| This is the crux of Greenwald's argument. It's all he's got:
|
| _On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United
| States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies
| united to destroy it._
|
| I'm no friend of the tech monopolists myself. The power
| demonstrated here does concern me, greatly. I've long railed
| against Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, among
| other tech monopolists. Largely because as monopolies they are
| power loci acting through their occupation of a common resource,
| outside common control, and not serving the common weal. Hell:
| Facebook, Google (YouTube), Reddit, and Twitter played a massive
| role in creating the current fascist insurrection in the US,
| along with even more enthusiastic aid and comfort from
| traditional media, across the spectrum. Damage that will take
| decades to repair, if ever.
|
| But, if my hypothesis is correct, the alternative explanation
| would bet he opposite of this: the state asserting power over and
| through monopolies in the common interest, in support of
| democratic principles, for the common weal. And that I can
| support.
|
| I don't know that this is the case. I find it curious that I seem
| to be the only voice suggesting it. Time should tell.
|
| And after this is over, yes, Silicon Valley, in its metonymic
| sense standing for the US and global tech industry, has to face
| its monopoly problem, its free speech problem (in both sincere
| and insincere senses), its surveillance problem (capitalist,
| state, criminal, rogue actor), its censorship problem, its
| propaganda problem (mass and computational), its targeted
| manipulation adtech problem, its trust problem, its identity
| problem, its truth and disinformation problems, its tax avoidance
| problem, its political influence problem.
|
| Virtually all of which are inherent aspects of monopoly:
| "Propaganda, censorship, and surveillance are all attributes of
| monopoly"
| https://joindiaspora.com/posts/7bfcf170eefc013863fa002590d8e...
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771470
|
| But, speaking as a space alien cat myself, Greenwald is so far
| off base here he's exited the Galaxy.
| yalogin wrote:
| No one sheds a tear for Parlor, but lets also be clear about
| this, the social media companies just showed a token of
| conscience and it doesn't mean anything. They still didn't boot
| people like Cruz, Hawley and Gaetz and the numerous others still
| inciting the insurrection. I am sure they will not boot these
| lawmakers as they will face retaliation if they do. I don't trust
| the change of heart they are showing.
| koolba wrote:
| > No one sheds a tear for Parlor, but lets also be clear about
| this, the social media companies just showed a token of
| conscience and it doesn't mean anything. They still didn't boot
| people like Cruz, Hawley and Gaetz and the numerous others
| still inciting the insurrection.
|
| If following a constitutional process for protesting a State's
| results in a presidential election is " _inciting the
| insurrection_ ", somebody better start fitting Nancy Pelosi for
| an orange jumpsuit:
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?185005-2/debate-ohio-electoral...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Questions like "do we really want a handful of unelected
| billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech" are getting
| ahead of the game.
|
| First, why was it that these supposedly too-powerful tech giants
| could be intimidated into allowing activity that was clearly
| against ToS to go on for years before they grew a pair?
|
| "Free speech" in privately owned spaces is a difficult problem. i
| would settle for even handed enforcement of ToS and a more
| transparent ToS appeal process.
| robodale wrote:
| Good. I have no tolerance for the "Gravy Seals" planning attacks
| using platforms like Parler.
| SassyGrapefruit wrote:
| "free speech" is like the power of pardon. In that until toxic
| individuals insisted on testing its most extreme boundaries it
| was allowed to remain, in theory, nearly unlimited.
|
| "Free Speech" is a great thing when it's used with wisdom and
| solid judgment. It can be a vehicle for insight, innovation, and
| new ways to think about the world. This reflects the constructive
| uses of "free speech"
|
| If you look at the other side of the coin you have these
| eruptions of toxic individualism. The power of "free speech"
| isn't used for constructive reasons. Instead it's a show of
| force. I am going to say this and there is nothing you can do to
| stop me. This has continued even as we see real material setbacks
| manifest because of this capricious use of "free speech"
|
| Returning for a moment to the power of the pardon. It's likely we
| will see that power reigned in. It was never scrutinized before
| because the wielders of that power always used it responsibly and
| judiciously. I think we're going to have to turn the same
| scrutiny to speech on the internet. In the end you can point the
| fingers at the selfish few that ruined a good thing for the rest
| of us.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| > toxic individuals
|
| Are you perhaps referring to Bill Clinton, who pardoned Susan
| Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist that set off a bomb in US
| federal buildings and committed armed robberies?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Are you perhaps referring to Bill Clinton, who pardoned
| Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist that set off a bomb in
| US federal buildings and committed armed robberies?
|
| Bill Clinton did not pardon her, he commuted her sentence to
| the 16+ years she had already served. Commutation and pardon
| are significantly different.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| In practice how are they different? Would you find it
| appropriate to "commute" the sentence of any other
| terrorists?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In practice how are they different?
|
| Are you in a jurisdiction that disenfranchises felons? If
| you are pardoned, you can vote. If your sentencd was
| commuted, you can't.
|
| Is there a job that bars felons (either in general, or
| who have committed the kind of offense you are convicted
| of)? If you are pardoned, you can be hired for it. If
| your sentencd was commuted, you cannot.
|
| Is there a job that, while it doesn't strictly ban ex-
| offenders, requires a criminal background check. If you
| were pardoned, the conviction was wiped away. If your
| sentence was commuted, it is still there.
|
| Etc. Pardon undoes the conviction. Commutation stops
| incarceration and leaves the conviction and all its
| ancillary effects in place.
|
| > Would you find it appropriate to "commute" the sentence
| of any other terrorists?
|
| If, as one hypothetical pattern, their sentence was
| unusually long form the crimes they were convicted of
| with no apparent explanation beyond the political
| circumstances at the time of conviction, if they'd served
| more time than the typical sentence for the offense, and
| their conduct in prison showed a high probability of
| successful reintegration into society, sure.
| SassyGrapefruit wrote:
| They are materially different. A pardon reflects
| forgiveness and seeks to redress civil disability
| typically as a result of a systemic injustice.
|
| A commutation is a lessening of the penalty. It implies
| that the act was wrong and the sentence was deserved but
| perhaps it was heavy handed. There is no implication of
| innocence in a commutation.
| avelis wrote:
| If this is a call to regulate the internet then it is now a
| utility and must be treated as such. That would essentially have
| to ask big tech to be broken up. The model we have now does not
| treat the internet and its platforms as a utility. I am not sure
| if we can even do a middle ground. It is either one or the other.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| The speculated anticompetitive behavior wouldn't be described as
| monopolistic, it'd be horizontal conduct. Tsk tsk, Greenwald.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| Lots of "Libertarians" with bad hyprocrisy in constantly bringing
| up "free speech." Yet the same people cheer for Christian
| Bakeries that refuse to serve gay couples.
|
| And those people trying to claim these tech companies are
| "utilities" are insane. There is a 0% chance that any tech
| company is going to be declared a utility in the next several
| decades in the US and to think otherwise is totally absurd. So
| those arguments just hold no water.
| MrMan wrote:
| this shouldnt be flagged - I think it is a bad blog post by
| Greenwald, but it is good fodder for discussion
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Also: how Silicon Valley makes companies like Parler possible.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| First off, I like Glenn Greenwald very much as a journalist.
|
| Remember that he and Laura Poitras helped Edward Snowden disclose
| to the world what he did, in 2013.
|
| In other words, as a journalist, he does, or should command a
| huge amount of respect from the HN community.
|
| He has my respect.
|
| Now, with that as a background, let's talk about this article.
|
| It's an important article, and yes, broadly speaking, the claims
| that are made are true.
|
| But the problem I have with this article (and not with Glenn
| Greenwald personally, who again, is a great journalist!) is that
| it's a little bit too broad...
|
| To give you an understanding of this, let's say that in the
| future, I ran an online service with an App Store, like Apple or
| Google.
|
| OK, so now, for whatever reason, the Parler App is removed from
| the App Store that I run.
|
| But, to tell me (and the newsreader) that it was an act of Tech
| Tyranny, of Monopolistic Force -- is not good enough.
|
| You see, I believe in several things:
|
| 1) Strong Logging
|
| 2) Chain Of Command
|
| 3) Chain Of Custody
|
| But most importantly, the "5 Whys":
|
| 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys
|
| In other words, I'd like (as a member of the public) an _"
| organizational backtrace"_, starting with the engineer who
| physically removed the App from the app store, moving from there
| to his manager that ordered it, and moving from there up levels
| of management.
|
| In other words, _WHO_ ordered _WHAT_ , _WHEN_ , and _WHY_.
|
| In other words, don't start with the highest level effect, the
| silencing of free speech, start with the lowest level effect --
| the physical removal of the App from the App Store by the
| engineer that did it.
|
| From that point, use the _5 WHYS_ to work backward, something
| like, "OK, this engineer did this because he was ordered to by
| his manager", so WHY did the manager do it?, "Because he was
| ordered to by his manager", etc.
|
| But now the question arises -- _Who was at the highest level of
| management at that company that gave that order?_
|
| And now we ask WHY again... so we need to talk to him, and find
| out exactly _WHY_ (what socio-political-moral-ethic-legal-or-
| whatever pressure was applied to him, and how?)
|
| See, answer all of those questions, and _THEN_ you have the true
| story!
|
| But all this being said, I do love Glenn Greenwald!
| kwindla wrote:
| Ben Thompson provides a more nuanced analysis, including useful
| background for engaging with a lot of the questions posed in the
| threads here: https://stratechery.com/2021/internet-3-0-and-the-
| beginning-...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| America (and my own country the UK) really need to have a serious
| reckoning with a whole mess of things: Fake news, Populism, weak
| leadership, short termism, lack of compromise and partisanship,
| the rise of extremism, censorship and cancel-culture,
| demographics vs democracy issues, racism, over-zealous anti-
| racism, and win-at-all-cost politicians to name but a few.
|
| But it isn't ready or willing to even start.
|
| Until then, it's hard to really care about any of this. I don't
| like censorship or big companies deciding what's acceptable. But
| someone has to, and no one else is willing to oppose some of the
| worst people and events we've had in generations.
| wavesounds wrote:
| It's called a boycott. It's not a "monopolistic force" when
| they're many different companies ranging from lawyers and
| accountants to cloud providers and app stores.
|
| Boycott: "withdraw from commercial or social relations with (a
| country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest."
| riccccccc wrote:
| The whole free speech debate boils down to this, Do you think we
| have enough freedoms, do you think that every civil liberty is
| now afforded to everyone. The Civil Rights Movement in the 60s
| was considered hateful and violent at one point, without free
| speech they would have been driven into the sea. Gay and Trans
| rights were once considered not valid speech as well. Without
| Unregulated and uncontrolled speech. All of these things could
| have been labeled as hateful speech, hateful to white people or
| hateful to the traditional family unit. Any talk about limiting
| speech by the government or social media only dictates that we
| have enough freedoms and liberties and anything new that comes up
| is fair game to be labeled as "hate speech"
| remote_phone wrote:
| I do think that what they did is setting themselves up for
| regulation. To shut off a service used by millions overnight is
| dangerous.
| busterarm wrote:
| Regulation by whom?
|
| They just sent the biggest signal they possibly could that
| they're willing to play ball to keep one party in full control
| of our government forever.
|
| Big Tech is part of your government now. As if years of senior
| cabinet positions for Big Tech employees wasn't already enough
| of a clue.
| eplanit wrote:
| These actions and events are making the case solid that the
| Internet is a utility, and needs to be regulated as such. It's
| sad, but inevitable.
| pfdietz wrote:
| How Silicon Valley, fearing prosecution under 18 U.S. Code SS
| 2383, dropped Parler like radioactive waste.
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