Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

This kind of seeming pattern is a gigantic Rohrschach blob in which people notice things based on their preconceived opinions and then backfit stories to them. Other people react based on theirs, and so we get the same exact flamewar as before, just on a meta level. Meta is internet forum crack. Flamewars on crack is bad idea.

> that ultimately led to

This seems a very dangerous line of reasoning.

For example, I wonder how many violent crimes alcohol ultimately led to. How many violent crimes Facebook ultimately led to. How many violent crimes encryption ultimately led to.

In a court of law, there is a distinction drawn between different events leading up to a crime, with a great deal of thought put into which of those events can be held responsible and which cannot. Now, Apple or others don't have to follow that reasoning, at least absent being involved in any court cases, but there is a great deal of wisdom in that reasoning that it would be dangerous to dismiss when politically convenient.

The difference here will be the whether Parler was negligent. If they had calls for violence on their platform that were reported to them, and their community moderation team was so short-staffed that they didn't act on them, Parler could have culpability.

Facebook, et al have moderation mechanisms that can probably withstand scrutiny, but Parler sounds like an extremely lean operation that the discovery process may reveal to have negligently failed to act on information that led to death. It's not about people disliking their political speech, it's about them ignoring things they had a responsibility to act on.

So then it potentially becomes impossible to create a startup that replaces existing social networks due to moderation requirements. Facebook and twitter got lucky they didn't get killed this way in the early days. This is similar to the criticism on the EU automated copyright violation detect requirements.

If moderation laws essentially make it impossible to build new mass platforms, then that creates a very strong case for having rights to have unrestricted open access to existing platforms, does it not? For example, the networks then wouldn't be able to issue lifetime bans at their discretion.

It's not difficult to create new social media platforms. They're created all the time.

If your newborn community attracts so many bad actors that they become such a drag on your business that you can't operate because of the liabilities the create for you, you are a victim of these bad actors. You're not the victim of a functioning legal system.

I don't get it.

Excuse the analogy but are you staying that if someone plans a protest in my Minecraft server, and the protest turns violent - I can be held to blame for that?

If someone told you people were plotting to overthrow the government on your minecraft server, and you didn't act on that, you could be culpable if that report turned out to be true. If people died, their next of kin could hold you accountable for civil damages in a wrongful death suit.

A very wise remark.

You're proposing to remove a very large, very alienated group's last public channel to express themselves peacefully. This risks further escalation. This is compounded with the stark contrast to how the protests were handled this summer.

people are straight up calling for murder on that website, it's insane. There's no negotiating. "Let me call for violence on the internet, or I'll go out and actually shoot someone" is nuts. That's not someone you negotiate with, that's a person that belongs into a mental ward. Authority does not need to back down because someone threatens terrorism. And yes before other events are invoked, that goes for all form of violence advocacy no matter from which group.

Are you claiming nobody has ever called for murder on Facebook or Twitter? By your line of reasoning those apps should be taken down too. We know for a fact that Facebook and Twitter have been the direct causes of far more numerous deaths than Parler. How do you reconcile this view?

Because Twitter and Facebook have policies against doing those things, and they enforce them. That's why so many right-wing extremists complain about being "de-platformed" - they're mad that Facebook isn't letting them agitate for martial law, the kidnapping of governors, etc.

They don't seem to care when blue checks empassionately call for the murder of trump supporters

Still up: https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...

People regularly threaten NFL players on twitter... what is a real solution? It has been going on since at least 2012...

2020 - https://foxsportsradio.iheart.com/content/2020-11-23-nfl-pla...

2012 - https://www.nfl.com/news/david-akers-closes-twitter-account-...

You know, if these people weren't pushed off the mainstream platforms they may have been de-radicalized by regular people before things got worse. Just look at how QAnon festered underground until it was too late to get rid of.

Further escalation beyond storming the capitol? Becuase that's what tolerance has resulted in.

Tolerance? Remember when the left taught America it's okay to use violence if it is for the greater good?

> The elite media class of academics, influencers, celebrities, and journalists who make up the #resistence, spent all summer saying "riots are the language of the unheard," as a way of excusing and justifying violence, vandalism, and riots in the streets

This thread will help you remember: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/134693785297048371...

This is extraordinarily tame in the scheme of American history.

And as someone who lives in one of those areas of the country constantly scorned, belittled, and caricatured, I can say with confidence that you do not want those people to act in kind to Antifa.

There's been a lot of living vicariously through Antifa/BLM lately with portions of society that want to "stand for something." It's the same mentality as people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but complain when the wifi on their plane isn't available.

On the other side of that is a enormous, peaceful, patriotic section of U.S. society that is heavily armed and competent with those armaments.

If you make this segment of society feel as if they are the enemy of the country they love, it will be a disaster. If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.

> “If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.”

I remember back in third grade when kids would argue about how their dad would beat the others’. As I grew up, I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.

> I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.

Please tell that to the Afghanis.

This isn't about some civil war, it's about what would happen if Red State America decided it wanted to behave like Blue City America has been for the last year. People talk about "Proud Boys" as if that's equivalent and I just have to roll my eyes.

There is an immense reservoir of anger within America in people who feel overlooked and the system is stacked against them. If they receive the downsides of civil strife even though they haven't participated in violence, they might decide they want the upsides of civil strife as well. This culture, unlike the sadly tolerated insurrections of Antifa, has the ability to have real power through violence if it ever came to it.

Despite the often exaggerated claims of singular victimhood, I actually do realize that the current right-wing rage does come from real suffering, and sympathize to an extent. What makes me wonder is that extent to which this rage is directed at the new wave of black civil rights movement; they both have roots in economic or cultural marginalization of certain populations, and from what I can tell, they’re not competing for some common resource. Which, in my mind (and many others similarly puzzled), leaves racist hate as a likely candidate.

Point being, if your goal was genuinely to bring awareness to and address some real suffering in your community, you’d just do that; get out on the street, break a few windows, punch a cop, petition for legislation, like BLM does. That’s called civil disobedience. “Insurrection” starts when you try to override and overrule the very fabric of the system, like the federal legislature.

There is nothing at all patriotic about what these people did. There is nothing peaceful about what happened this week.

These people demand Constitutional rights while trampling all over that very document.

They are not “patriots,” they are traitors.

I'm not saying these people who stormed the Capitol did the right thing. Far from it.

What we're seeing is this being used as a blunt instrument to suppress the non-extremist components of that disagreement.

That "non-extremist" component is patriotic. It is extremely large and also very angry. Treating them as if they are the same as the people who did this is ill-advised.

Man, are you bad at math. The urban areas account for over half of the population.

And of the 400 million firearms in the United States, what portion of them belong to Blue Cities?

There are a lot of higher steps, just look at US history. For example, the mob could murder someone. In the bad old days of civil rights resistance, the mob would regularly engage in homicide against targets they thought were upsetting their power.

They DID murder someone. US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.

Although his death was tragic, it was not an example of the targeted political murders that have occurred in America's past. To put this in context, take a look at some of the other riots that Wikipedians have co-categorized with the 2021 Capitol riot. We should not think of things like the Lincoln assassination as if they are mere founding myths - they happened, were perpetrated by humans with the same nature, and we are all descendants of the people alive at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:White_American_riots_...

He died of a stroke. That's not exactly murder.

On the other hand, Capitol police killed 4 unarmed citizens. If this were a BLM rally, and those people were black, we would never hear the end of it. We'd have to "say their name," irrespective of the circumstances of their death.

The woman who was killed on video is effectively nameless. She won't receive any encomiums or major press coverage.

"""Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners."""

- https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-c...

I'm not even American and followed the events with idle curiosity, and I already know her name is Babbitt. NPR, The Guardian, NYTimes, etc all have headlines with it.

You call the past few years "tolerance"? Just about any and every application that attempts to support a fully free-speech network that isn't literally a web browser has been kicked off every app store out there.

Exactly. Remember when this was OK? https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136?s=19

Aside from the fact that this demonstration was limited to the semi-public atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building—historically, a location where many such demonstrations have been held, and all peacefully, to my knowledge—I'm willing to bet you that none of those demonstrators are armed. Nor did they arrive with zip ties to take hostages—didn't you see the footage of those armed thugs sweeping the Senate chamber looking for potential hostages? Nor did they rampage through the building, with the intent of targeting specific politicians for violence.

They didn't damage property, either. Nor did they impede the democratic process which we all put so much stock in. There's just absolutely no equivalence between these two events. I don't know if that was your intent or not, but there's absolutely no comparison.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. Are you saying that:

- What the pro-Trump crowd did on 2021-01-06 at the capitol building is essentially the same as what the anti-Kavanaugh crowd did on 2018-10-04 at the Hart Senate Office Building.

- And so, the actions themselves have not escalated; what has escalated is our sensitivity to them in that we no longer deem them as "OK".

? Or am I totally misreading you? Because if I understood you correctly, um, see what 'benmaraschino wrote.

They are a minority. You can argue that putting them closer to the general public will normalize them, but there has been no sign of this. In fact quite the opposite. Putting them closer to the general public only simplifies recruiting. I think it is naive to assume their bubble can be forcefully diluted; at best we can take steps to stop promoting it.

Recruiting is simple because many moderate voices are labeled as "nazi" and consequently deplatformed and censored, that creates massive polarization and resentment.

there is absolutely nothing peaceful about this https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347609631527489537

For those of us who refuse to submit to Twitter terms of service, what is the link?

Copy-paste:

> UPDATE: The calls for violence over on Parler are getting much, much worse.

> There are now open calls for the murder of police officers and planning for violence on January 20th

> This obviously severely violates the law, much less the @AppStore and @GooglePlay rules.

I'd posit two things:

Who on earth says they need or deserve a "public channel to express themselves"? The world seemed to get by just fine before social media existed, and I have no doubt we'd all be perfectly fine if it were gone tomorrow. If the white supremacists are stuck going back to physically mailing letters around and struggling to organize that's a net win for society...

Where exactly did you come to the conclusion they're expressing themselves peacefully? So far we've had the Capitol stormed, and a thwarted attempt at kidnapping and murdering a state governor. Neither of those two events are anything resembling "peaceful".

> Who on earth says they need or deserve a "public channel to express themselves"?

This is prime "Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee".

You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.

>This is prime "Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee".

That was a pretty bold assumption on your part, and couldn't be any further from the truth. I don't participate on Twitter or Facebook, and I'm getting by just fine. Somehow I don't feel my freedom of speech has been in any way limited. So I can tell you with 100% certainty that you can in fact get by just fine without having a "public channel to express yourself".

>You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.

It doesn't actually matter if it was "a significant portion" - they allowed the organization of what became a violent protest and will likely be de-platformed as a result. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to private companies. I have literally no idea what BLM has to do with any of this other than you're making another poor assumption that I'm OK with violent protests if it's by a certain group. You'd be wrong.

I may have made some assumptions about you personally but the points still stand.

You can speak for yourself with regards to your need for social media or platforming of any kind. Just remember that where we're going, there are no limits. Next you're off HN. Next is hosting providers. Then it's the internet (ISPs). So sure, they're all private companies but to ignore that fundamental impact is odd to say the least.

I will assume then, that you also concluded that BLM supporters as a group did not "express themselves peacefully" as there were plenty of linked violence, in aggregate well beyond what we witnessed a few days ago. It would be a breath of fresh air if that was really the case but I struggle to find consistency of principle among people these days and making that comparison is an attempt to highlight that.

You have to draw a line somewhere:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

* 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24082241

Popper's paradox of tolerance is flawed reasoning IMO. Who decides what is tolerant and what is not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...

That’s why it’s called a paradox.

Paradox of tolerance is nonsense. If you are intolerant "only to the intolerant", you are intolerant, period.

If you want to have some moral higher ground, win them over with your virtue. Yes, it's incredibly hard. But it is not a hypocritical bullshit like this 'paradox'.

s/express themselves peacefully/spread lies and coordinate attacks with impunity/

It is really not Apple or any private company's responsibility to make all information accessible. They can use an Android phone, they can use a website, they can create their own Android based platform.

I am an advocate for Apple allowing side loading, but that is a different argument than requiring the App Store to host specific software.

They are not expressing themselves peacefully is the issue. They are calling for armed insurrection.

Can you remind me how long ago has antifa / BLM started its owned armed insurrection (especially in Seattle & Portland) ?

Were these people attempting to directly attack a legislative body as it performed its constitutional duty?

I thought not.

May 31, 2020 attempting to breach White House perimeter: "More than 60 Secret Service officers and agents were injured near the White House ... when protesters threw “projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items,” according to the statement. “Personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched and exposed to bodily fluids."[1]

July 22, 2020: "As they have for the past 53 days, violent anarchists continue to riot on the streets of Portland as federal law enforcement officers work diligently and honorably to enforce federal law by defending federal property and the lives of their fellow officers.

Attacks on federal personnel and property overnight have included attacks on Law Enforcement officers with commercial grade fireworks, hard projectiles, and lasers – which can cause permanent blindness. Last night violence was even more aggressive than previous nights as rioters once again tried to set fire to the federal courthouse and actively tried to breach the entrance of the courthouse. Rioters are also employing tactics that force federal officers to leave the Hatfield Federal Courthouse, setting them up to be attacked with lasers and projectiles."[2]

Perhaps these do not meet your narrow definition, yet violent attacks on our other branches of federal government seem fairly analogous if not of the same magnitude as Wednesday's assault. Are you suggesting Apple would/should allow apps where users organized violent assaults such as these on the executive and judiciary - just not against the Capitol building as Congress is in session?

[1] https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protests-05-31...

[2] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/22/portland-riots-read-out-...

They did, on another occasion https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1047935416182235136?s=19

Also, Antifa was planning an attack on the white house after election day.

You can't wake someone up who is only pretending to be asleep.

00:00:00

You can always go on Gab. At least they don't ask users to submit copies of their driver's licenses and social security numbers.

Huh? Its being used to organize insurrection.

People with authoritarian mindset have a great respect for force.

Case in point: the Republican support for putsch has dropped from 47% to 18% mere hours after the first FBI raids.

This is a completely flawed premise. The idea that 'if we don't let them talk to each other to organize insurrections, they'll somehow will do something worse' is ridiculous.

Unfortunately, I think this is only the beginning. The Trump era was just a warm-up.

The only chance in hell this country has of surviving is if Republicans widely condemn Trump's behavior and make an example of other agitators like Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones who whipped these people into a frenzy.

If there are no consequences, they'll only get the message that they can do whatever they want and things will only get worse.

> The only chance in hell this country has of surviving is if Republicans widely condemn

It won't change a single thing, at best, those elected official will be considered traitors / pussies.

It will. Plenty of people in my own family who've been Trump staunch Trump supporters through thick and thin were appalled by what happened on Wednesday. If the Republicans want to heal the country, they have to reassure these people that there is a path to normalcy and it involves rejecting this kind of extremism.

The worst thing Republicans can do is pretend it's all business as usual and force these people to choose between 'the evil Democrats' (who they won't support, ever) or 'our guy who might try a coup here and there but at least is on our side'.

> it involves rejecting this kind of extremism

It's not "extremism" if, from the point of view of History, you're on the winning side, in that case, it's "heroism".

So your argument is that the violence would've been justified if they had managed to pull the coup. Got it.

History is not written yet.

Unfortunately the non-Trump wings of the Republican party get you people like Mitt Romney. I'd vote Democrat before I backed that guy.

Really just planning to excuse myself from politics for the next few years.

> The only chance in hell this country has of surviving is if Republicans widely condemn Trump's behavior

Trump acted like a clown, but he's hardly the only agitator in this mess. The entirety of 2020 has been a shit show from all sides, and near as I can tell no one is interested in backing down.

I keep hearing this argument, to which I have to answer: at no point, ever, in 2020 or 2021 did the other side - which you are trying to equate with Trump - organize an attack on the United States Congress while the totality of our elected officials were in session.

Trying to equate people rioting on the streets with an organized pseudo-coup-by-proxy is ridiculous and it just sounds like you are trying to give one side an excuse by using whataboutism.

> organize an attack on the United States Congress

Oh spare me the faux sanctimony. No one was "organizing a coup" it was a bunch of dipshits getting in over their heads.There is nothing inherently sacred about the capital buildings.

Buildings? No. Democratic process and elected leaders? Definitely.

You are trying to downplay this as if it was just some goons setting an empty Denny's on fire, but you know exactly what was happening and who was in that building at the time they broke into it.

"How dare you interrupt when the adults were talking" is basically how this comes across to pretty much everyone I've seen reactions from on social media.

> The fake Thomas Paines here need to understand that we are at WAR. If you care about this country, this shit has to be put down mercilessly.

Just like all the BLM / Antifa shit this summer? Or is it only when it's the other side causing trouble that people need shot on sight?

It's a trope at this point, but when BLM protested in Washington, there were hundreds of National Guardsmen guarding the entrance. When Trump's supporters broke in, the Capitol Police didn't do anything until one of them got close enough to our elected officials and got shot.

There were thousands of arrests because of the BLM protests. If you were truly in favor of 'treating them equally', you'd be rooting for every single person who broke into the Capitol to be arrested. Are you?

I think the entire year and everything about it has been a disgrace. Sure, treat them equally.

The hope is that they will go back to watching sports, wrestling, nascar, porn, and whatever else these idiots watch. I feel bad that they got scammed by Trump, but they really should do something other than echo chamber themselves into a deadly mob again.

> very alienated

You're going to need to explain exactly how the right is "alienated".

> last public channel

You're going to need to explain what right they have to an audience or for other entities to provide time/effort/money giving them a voice.

> This risks further escalatation

Oh good. "More violence if we don't get our way"? You're literally saying "deplatforming them in response to incitements and planning of violence will lead to further violence" as an argument why we should allow that to continue?

> This compounded with the stark contrast to how the protests were handled this summer.

I'm sure Trump will be pushing for "10 YEARS FEDERAL PRISON" for protests at this federal building, any minute now.

It’s the opposite, before the Internet groups of nutcases could not organise themselves around fascist ideas as easily as today. We have the president suggesting crazy conspiracy theories that half the US population believe. Half the US population don’t wear masks as a political statement. I think someone made a wise connection between the downward spiral of public education standards and where we are today. These people unfortunately are screwed unless welfare in America helps them... they are going to get poorer and angrier. I wonder if the GOP are starting to realise a lot like tea party playing with the Trump nationalist agenda can create something you won’t necessarily be able to control.

> Half the US population don’t wear masks as a political statement

This is just wrong and a sloppy way to insult "half the US population". This sort of attitude contributes to the tribalism that is creating so much division.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201022/mask-use-by-america...

Half the people around here think half always means exactly 50%...

But in this case it was clearly a slam against anyone who didn't vote a particular way. It wasn't just some sloppy use of language to mean "many".

You are right, the comment I made on the Internet late at night was not perfectly formulated. I think there is a better wording here, I was trying to say there is a political aspect to how people view everything nowadays (before an edit I compared to taking a knee on the other side, but again it’s too complicated a point to get across right now). Good night Gwright.

Things are much less likely to escalate when these groups aren't able to communicate.

Its the opposite.

Organizing an insurrection is expressing yourself peacefully?

I just wish being removed from the Apple app store wasn't certain death.

Yeah it's a private platform they can do what they want but they're basically a monopoly too.

I'm fine with Parler being banned, but for what it's worth:

I think you can be pro free-speech, and still be happy to use the downvote button. The downvote button is an agreed upon and standard way of expressing disagreement on the site, so is in itself a part of free-speech.

That said downvoting a well-reasoned, but contrary-opinioned comment is clearly against the intention of the button, which weakens my argument a bit.

I think Apple has the right to ban the app from the store. They own their whole ecosystem and that's perfectly fine with me. At the same time people have the right to protest to put pressure on Apple not to ban it. In the end Apple should be able to do whatever they please, and if people dislike it enough they'll switch to other ecosystems. It's absurd for regulators to try to run Apple "better" than Apple itself.

To preserve liberty there must be no tolerance of intolerant behavior like terrorism, sedition and other criminal acts, and some might even say racism/sexism/etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I think to prescribe irony would mean that the people downvoting simply have conflicting opinions and made a mistake or something. Parler is an app that, regardless of its intentions, is used to promote far right extremism and many of the people on the platform promote terrorism and facism. These people don't care about free speech. Their lives suck and can't conceptualize the fact that its not black people's fault or other's fault for their crappy life. Its the people they vote for and their immediate surroundings (so probably parents) that are at fault.

You seem very angry, there's no need.

I'm sure many people on Parler are very concerned about free speech. It is discussed often and very passionately.

Some peoples lives might suck, some seem very happy, in my experience the atmosphere on Parler is generally far less depressed and hostile than on Twitter and it's quite relaxing seeing a lot more civil discourse. There does appear to be a bit more spam compared to Twitter but Twitter does have a 10 year head start.

How many people do you think your false equivalence incited, and should ycombinator.com be confiscated as a consequence?

Paradox of Tolerance.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Just incase you're not trolling, there were people carrying zip tie cuffs and armed with guns in the rotunda. Several doors were barricaded by the Secret Service and defended at gunpoint. At least two IEDs were found (one in the DNC offices, another in the RNC), and 5 people died. Stop making it less than it actually was.

Out of curiosity, did you think the CHAZ/CHOP protests earlier this year were an attempt at succession or revolution?

Yes that's what happens when protestors get into buildings. They bring their weapons with them. 5 people dying, mainly protestors themselves, for the amount of people pouring in to a secure building, is fairly minimal.

Protestors, armed with guns and pipe bombs carrying zip ties as well. Who were seeking to stop the certification of the electoral college vote. Yes, insurrection.

It's America. People arm themselves. It was far less violent and less of a show of power than taking over a police station and city blocks from the other group.

Gun shots were fired into the senate chamber.

And? 24 people died from last year's left wing riots.

With zip ties and molotov cocktails, and nearby, pipe bombs.

Watch this footage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ash...

It shows men with baseball bats feet from members of congress.

Let's see. Guns. Handcuffs. Zip ties. Duck tape. A gallows and noose outside. A large part of the chain of leadership in one place. No, just "first amendment rights", I'm sure. No-one was ever intended to be harmed. Those chants of "Hang Mike Pence" were entirely ironic, no doubt.

Elizabeth from Knoxville was there for a revolution. She said so her self. I don't know her views after getting maced. Maybe she's down for talking it out, now?

It was not an attempted insurrection. It was a show of force.

It was literally an attempt to prevent the Constitutional succession process from operating.

You are right that a few too many people actually had the idea that was a possible outcome.

But the crowd outside was chanting “Who’s house? Our house!” and just celebrating. Then almost everyone left and did not defy the curfew.

Are you serious?

I'm sure plenty of Nazis fuckos were very polite before they shot someone. I'm sure that by your standards that would then be fine and acceptable; so long as they said, "please take of your hat" first.

The only person shot was an unarmed protestor/rioter.

You're comparing banning a company from the App store with having a comment show up in a lighter color.

There's an amusing irony to AOC asking (https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1347679332014161920) for Parler to be banned from the Google and Apple app stores when she personally participated in an illegal raid on the capitol in 2018 that also ended up at Pelosi's office (https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez...). Somehow there's no calls to ban her from Twitter or to ban The Guardian's app for running articles that excused and applauded that riot by just calling it "youthful zest" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/17/nancy-...).

It is incredible that people who have benefited from America's free society are now so ready to give up their commitment to the principles of free speech as soon as they get a taste of power through their monopolistic tech/social media platforms.