I mean...that image alone. "Violence works. Make them afraid", accompanied with text then saying "How about make them hang?", and showing lawmakers hiding in the Capital.
The fact it's a third party forum that these terrorist threats and planning are taking place doesn't really change the fact it's still facilitating terrorism.
It was done back in August last year, so not in response to recent events.
The findings were, essentially, it doesn't reduce the individuals toxicity; it does reduce its spread.
Here's just a search I did now: https://twitter.com/hashtag/assassinatetrump
Seriously, that was Twitter's argument for why they banned him...
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
the deplatforming policy is impossible to define and will be enforced arbitrarily. it's going to satisfy no one.
And she was suspended for that.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1323893513226...
Until you have an incident you actually, rather than hypothetically, object to, why do you assume Amazon is going to aggressively deplatform software platforms? They have a pretty clear financial incentive not to.
There's a difference between protected speech and yelling "FIRE!" in a movie theater. But with the way things are moving, more and more speech is being classified as "hate speech." The line between offensive speech and violent words is getting more murky. I think there needs to be clear standards and clear enforcement.
So do you think Amazon is falling on the wrong side of it here? Because even if it's more murky, if they're waiting until it's -very clearly violent-, egregiously so, with real physical criminal acts occurring because of it, I'm pretty sure no matter how murky the line is, they're well on the side of "violent words", not "offensive speech".
Your concern only applies if they're trying to draw the line in an area that is murky. I'd contend this is not.
are you saying that platforms cannot choose what to moderate because of a right to free speech? that's nonsense. you want free speech, go outside with a bullhorn, no one will arrest you - that's all that means.
I just think it's a slippery slope, and we desperately need to cement our feet in the ground and draw a line somewhere.
Also, when an overwhelming majority of public discourse takes place online (thanks 2020), the people choosing who does and does not get access to the centralized systems have a CRAZY amount of power. Yelling in a public square isn't how ideas spread anymore.
This is deplatforming -a platform-, not those people. Every individual on Parler can go create accounts and post on Twitter and Facebook and etc...unless, of course, their toxicity causes them to be banned there.
Nothing legally, or fairly, forces one platform to host another platform.
AWS is a private business, they don't have to host anything they don't want to. Forcing them to host parler would be an egregious violation of their right to choose who they associate with.
I think a way more interest question is this - what about modern US conservatism makes violence so attractive to it? You cannot have a conservative forum that will not rapidly devolve into violent threats. Even /r/conservative, the more mainstream and mature conservative subreddit is absolutely full of people threatening revolution, backs against the wall, etc.
The reality is that we as a society are getting numb to this and are actually being far too tolerant.
For instance "Forcing them to host parler would be an egregious violation of their right to choose who they associate with." Is true, but we force companies not to discriminate based on Age, Sex, Religion, etc. So your right of who you can associate with isn't iron clad.
We could just as easily add "Freedom of Expression" to the list of things you can not discriminate against, and suddenly the argument holds no water.
I'm not an American, however I sometimes enjoy the irony of America where one side of the political spectrum will be angry that a bakery is forced to bake a cake for a gay couple, but think it's against the customers rights for AWS to not host content they don't agree with.
Whilst the other thinks the baker should be forced to bake a cake against their will, and AWS is free to drop any business they feel like.
none of these qualities pose a threat to others in our civilized society. however, spoken words have a direct influence on anyone who hears them. so there is in fact a difference which is not simply arbitrary.
>“Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates,” Benjamin Franklin declared. By sharing knowledge and sparking debate, a free press invigorates and educates the nation’s citizens. Freedom will be “a short-lived possession” unless the people are informed, Thomas Jefferson once said. To quote John Adams: “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state.”
However you want to define these apps, they're basically falling under the first Amendment. Obviously there are limits which are carved out in law. However how would you feel if newspaper printers elected to no longer print specific news papers backing one candidate or another?
In an ideal world, the market would separate the wheat from the chaff, and these platforms would dry up and die on their own.
> However how would you feel if newspaper printers elected to no longer print specific news papers backing one candidate or another?
like they have been doing since they have existed?
i assume you mean if all newspapers decided to stop printing the same side of the story. if that side of the story was suggesting the vice president needs to be assasinated, then i think that's an okay viewpoint to marginalize before it reaches the entire country.
>i assume you mean if all newspapers decided to stop printing the same side of the story. if that side of the story was suggesting the vice president needs to be assasinated, then i think that's an okay viewpoint to marginalize before it reaches the entire country.
No I was saying if the provider of printing to say your local news paper was friends with the Mayor and there was a corruption story, and they opted to decline the business of the local newspaper and refuse to print it.
Not every newspaper owns their own printing.
I hear what you're saying, I'm just saying the laws need to catch up, we can't depend on each company being socially pressured to do this or that. If we regulate the internet like a utility then we need to move to that world.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
Edit: to be clear, in context, I am saying that these nutjob posters on Parler are not representative. I understand that mainstream conservatives may also have a presence there.
-Noam Chomsky
it's difficult to map pre-internet ideals to 2021.
Death threats and similar do not fit in any shape or form into "free speech".
It was the most wholesome right wing space I’ve ever seen on the internet. People sharing their experiences being alienated by either how they saw media manipulate a story they knew about or by how divisive partisanship and cancel culture personally affected them. Welcoming each other in the comments regardless of their sexual orientation or race. It would have been a useful place to learn from but now it’s gone.
I haven't heard of more than 5 firearms. No mention of where those were. Videos I have seen just show flags, signs, cameras, and mobile phones. What were these "many" armed with?
It'll be simplest to watch the AG charge people, since they only file those charges if they're confident in a successful prosecution. Charges will probably be trickling in for months as they identify the insurrectionists.
And that's just what was captured obviously. Presumably for everything found there were several more things concealed.
In either case, that's whataboutism. If the same thing happened in CHOP, yes, it would also be bad. Are you seriously suggesting this is acceptable behavior?
E.g. If your ISP decides that something you posted on Twitter violates some standard of their own devise, should they be allowed to disconnect you?
But the ability to run a workload on AWS? They're a business. I'm totally okay with them deciding to stop doing business with me. That also has a GOP precedent, what with that whole "You don't have to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple" thing.
That's why. Access to a company's compute resources is not a need. Further, there are options, many different cloud vendors with different T&Cs, different allowed things, different jurisdictions, cultural expectations, etc. If I manage to break the T&Cs to all of them, that's kind of on me, and doesn't preclude me from having access to compute resources (I just have to buy them).
The internet? I've got one ISP option. And without it, I'm cut off from a large part of what it means to function in this day and age.
AWS isn't fundamentally transporting goods but providing a service (the transmission of data happens via a common carrier between you and it). It's not clear that AWS access is a public necessity. And it's never attempted to claim it does so without discrimination.
Your logic defies me.
Keep on voting for pelosi so she could continue becoming rich off the backs of hardworking americans and eating 10k dollar ice cream
This happened to Gab.ai, too, but it happened after one of those plotters committed a mass murder, one he advertised on Gab, at the Tree of Life synagogue.
It's clear that the "line" we're talking about is arbitrarily set for different groups based on some unknown criteria, and that IMO is part of the problem.
For the record, I think all extremists should be banned, including the Taliban and Iran.
Edit: ^specific plans
This is the official spokesman of the Taliban posting a propaganda video of a militant bragging about waging jihad.
https://twitter.com/Zabehulah_M33/status/1343458261459218432
This is another video (and also see part2 of the tweet, which is posted as a reply to this one) where militants holding guns talk about their plan to kill the government leaders of Afghanistan.
In the end this is all about some virtue signaling towards their own employees (so that they don't start quitting and are not unhappy) and about money.
But if your point is that government officials should be held to a higher standard than random, non-official peoples, I agree... which is why it seems like an arbitrary wrong to me that the official leaders of the Taliban are still able to post videos calling for the death of nonbelievers.
If, rather, your point is that we don't care about the Taliban because the ongoing deaths of thousands of people in Afghanistan is something that our society cares less about than the death of a handful of Americans... well, I suppose you're right, but I'm not sure how I feel about agreeing with that.
1. I’m getting mixed up vis a vis Parler vs Trump vs Twitter vs AWS vs the rest...and you’re right that it _is_ wrong for Twitter to give the Taliban a platform to spew vile shit. That said, I think the conduct of American officials is of much greater proximate concern than the Taliban off in Afghanistan...
2. ...but that doesn’t excuse senseless deaths of foreign people. It’s not surprising that Twitter aws et al are more responsive to active threats to American lives than Afghani lives, though it is disappointing—if it’s the case. But I’m not under the impression the Taliban is actively and publicly and widespreadly planning murder and riots on Twitter.
^at least these two, I’m not passing judgement on others.
That said, a big difference is that the taliban are not actively inciting Americans to storm the capitol en masse.*
And there’s not much domestic debate that they’re a problem. My belief is Twitter was pushed to this extent by the fact that it’s the president of the US, an inherently credible figure with huge sway among American citizens.
*edit to add: by ‘actively’ I mean ‘successfully, across thousands of Americans.’ They both incite violence in the US, but so far only Trump et al have accomplished a riot in DC that killed police...
https://thehill.com/sites/default/files/blogs/kathygriffintw...
That alone is true, but this imagery itself is so grotesque that we ought to assume it led to a change in the degree of motive to cause harm. If you don’t believe me, consider a thought exercise where the identity of the person involved is exchanged with someone who did end up assassinated this way. Would it be reasonable to conclude this influenced it?
Anyways, we probably understand each other at this point and don't need to belabor this, even if we don't agree with each other.
In any case, I stand by my claim that to say you can know the full effect on all minds of a certain image is a poor argument to make, since it's literally impossible to know. I hope you'll at least recognize that kind of claim is worth avoiding, if for no other reason that it inadvertently undermines any other point you are trying to make.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
Like many assassins, the person who fired on a congressional sports practice did appear to be motivated by political animus that on the face of it would not include shooting up the players on a ball field. But that is what the person did. This is similar to the attempted assassination of the Arizona congressperson in response to the Alaskan politician's crosshair advertisements.
As a reasonable person it is difficult to understand that folks might not share your views because as a reasonable person one's views seem logical and well grounded. That is totally understandable.
Is that so? Curious, because I was seeing a lot of guillotine memes from leftists last month.
(For the record: I think the guillotine imagery is as offensive as the Pinochet helicopter stuff, which is to say, extraordinarily offensive, and I think less of anyone who uses it. That's easy for me to say though, because I'm also not a leftist.).
Another factor is the climate: nobody is using guillotines anywhere now but mass shootings are sadly common.
Public discourse increasingly relies on these corporate platforms. I don’t think everyone quite understands the implications of normalizing this behavior, and to me that’s frightening.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but it is an important distinction to make.
As for monitoring and throttling personal web traffic from our homes, that's long been an issue which is already an issue and not just with Verizon. EFF has brought suit in the courts, but to no avail, as of yet. So as for being far fetched, not only is it not, it's happening now. Comcast regularly throttles traffic to gaming sites/services during peak television hours. What's the difference?
i find it quite shocking how quickly this is all coming, over a drummed up hysteria.
If democracy does not beat in hearts of all and instead resides in an old building far away then truely its count of future days is not high.
But it's Parler's problem that they've hit this point with so little time to build credible moderation, not anybody else's. Me sowing, me reaping, &c &c.
(And no - it isn't free speech, they're quite happy to ban non-conservatives)
No, it doesnt. Actual terrorist group sites should be banned and kicked of whatever platforms they're operating on. No one, or no company, should be required to provide service to them.
I really struggle to see the issue here. If you allow calls for elected officials, or anyone, to be publically murdered, then it's free game for companys to refuse your service. It's pretty fucking simple imho.
If "BLM people" were calling for murders in public in the same way these Capitol people have been, then absolutely they should be kicked off platforms. I don't think many would disagree with that.
§ 2384. According to the statutory definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people within the jurisdiction of the United States: ... To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States; or.
Terrorists.
Do you think Twitter would deliberate days/months/years to ban an ISIS account?
> December 13th 1954: White civil rights activist Carl Braden was convicted of sedition in Louisville, Kentucky on this day. His crime? He and his wife Anne purchased a home in an all-white neighborhood and then almost immediately sold it to an African-American.
http://todayinclh.com/?event=civil-rights-activist-carl-brad...
Likewise, tech companies have the right to decide what is good business for themselves. Hosting a platform where insurrection and violence is being organized, will turn off your other customers and your employees.
Are we saying no to free markets and private enterprise getting to choose good business decisions for themselves now?
Is this censorship? Looks to like someone saying they don’t want to host someone else’s crap.
It would be a form of censorship if private companies were forced to host content they didn’t want to host.
> Giant corporations aren’t simply following court orders, they are acting on their own now. This is problematic for a multitude of reasons. The precedent has been established.
I think this is a completely different problem that stems from anti-competitive behaviour. If we’re unhappy with a few large companies acting as extra-judicial gatekeepers, then we should break them up and increase competition and diversity in the market.
If they hold a natural monopoly, then we should make them utilities, and make it explicitly clear that government is controlling their behaviour, and concepts like the 1st amendment should apply to them.
What we shouldn’t do is try to fix this problem by having governments force private companies to host certain content. For the same reason we don’t want governments forcing private individuals to express certain speech.
> Obviously actual terrorist group sites can and should be taken down, but this feels more murky than that.
Considering the perpetrators of Wednesday's attack had guns and bombs[1] and declared their intent to kill US political leaders... what exactly distinguishes them from "actual terrorist groups"?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/us-capitol-riots-arr...
My question was to the author of the commentary I was replying...though, since I posted they’ve gone back and appended a note to their comment providing their definition.
With less snark: it's not about how much organization they demonstrate, it's a judgement call about the likelihood of tangible damage and destruction occurring. Yes, it's an imprecise standard. That's the reality in which we live and operate.
Tangentially, not terminating business with Parler could be construed as not operating in their shareholders best interest, a breach of their fiduciary duty, as it could potentially harm future business opportunities if they become associated with the platform. In this case AWS is not a utility that holds a monopoly on some resource. There is market competition, and hosting your own service is an option. If a telcom prevented the latter I'd agree with your argument, as there aren't necessarily alternate options. Even then the law outlines a framework where some content is illegal that any lawyer working for the firm could green flag for client/contract termination.
I'm not concerned about social media network effects. MySpace and AOL used to be dominant services.
So did the press, and yet they were expressly granted this freedom. Buying a printing press and starting your own paper wasn't easy either, but the 1st amendment never said it was supposed to be.
You are not forced to use those, nor any social media platform. Nor are you entitled to the use of any social media platform, legally anyway.
You WANT to use them, but that's much different from being forced. Being forced would mean everyone who gets a US drivers license also gets a facebook account.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_(person)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
Acting/speaking on specific ideas have caused people to be outcast, “social pariahs”, and excommunicated for millennia.
What is new today is the scale that people can reach, and the ability to excommunicate a person’s scale without excommunicating them.
In agreement with everything after your first sentence though.
Above that, I'd prefer to see a more diverse business ecosystem so that AWS' business policies were just one of a larger set of possible choices you would have when picking a hosting solution (note: this doesn't just mean more companies, it means greater diversity of the AUPs on offer)
At that point, we could all do what I consider to be the right thing, and leave AWS or whoever to do whatever they want, confident that there were genuine alternatives available.
I won't suggest solutions to this at the moment other than to say there are more options that providing democratic power over existing private commons. There could be public online commons that are guaranteed to meet certain standards, for example, and for private spaces to not compete and subsume them. Though this is speaking vaguely - there are many potential discussions to have about what a public digital commons could look like.
It's been used to conduct a terrorist attack this week. It's being used to plan a terrorist attack in the coming days.
The creators were given a chance to clean house and take measures. They haven't.
So why is this not a terrorist platform in your mind? Is there a belief that Americans cannot be terrorists?
Edit: you added a clarification that these are not official terrorist groups as classified by intelligence agencies. However white supremacists are considered to be significant terrorist threats by many agencies. (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-...). Parler is a haven for unchecked white supremacy. Therefore it is reasonably classifiable as a terrorist site
No, I'm no lawyer but there is a lot of legal precedent for this, at least in my country.
This and hate speech against groups are the only limitation on free speech where I live.
"Yes when it agrees with my political agenda"
If they are a private company and not a utility with a government granted monopoly then they can do what they want. So not okay for Verizon or the power company, but everyone else should be free to censor. It's their private property.
However, I think the real question is, if you have qualms about them, why use them at all? There are alternatives. Generally, people use them because they want to reach the corps. audience, or want to use the corps. infrastructure because its 'easier' then building there own. If thats the case, you're basically saying you're 'okay' with them having all the rights the TOS grants them.
The network, the platform-provider, the platform?
There is precedent for regulating the network. And Parler can run it's own server . I think there is enough competition in the platform space to allow platforms to regulate themselves.
For reasons I can’t quite figure out, HN will crucify you for equating correlation with causation, but seems incredibly fond of this equally invalid mode of reasoning.
This is why I can’t understand some conservatives having an issue with this. It is principled to anyone who believes in the private ownership of property that they can ban whoever they want.
I also believe internet companies shouldn’t have special privileges. They should be responsible for anything illegal on their property they could reasonably be believed to know about. Especially so if the content is user generated and made public. Crowdsourcing should be a liability.
(To be clear: I think Mark Zuckerberg and the actors at Facebook who have not handled their fomented genocides on Facebook and WhatsApp belong in the Hague. I am not precious about them, either.)
Of course they should have done this 4 years ago...
PS I came from Soviet Union and this is not a theoretical idea.
This isn't about racism. This is about a site that is unable/unwilling to stop itself from being a forum for inciting violence, terrorism, sedition, and treason.
Also, you drew the line at actual terrorist group sites, and I think Parler is one of those. It doesn't matter if you agree or not, enough people at AWS (and other corps) agreed with me and took it down. Sucks to be a minority, huh?
As far as whether giant corps should be censoring content, it's nothing new. The fantasy of everybody running as an independent node of a distributed network is just that. Look how centralized Bitcoin has gotten.
- Should we be okay with Facebook censoring these groups?
- Should we be okay with Google censoring search results?
- Should we be okay with Apple censoring apps?
- Should we be okay with AWS censoring websites?
- Should we be okay with GoDaddy censoring domains?
- Should we be okay with Verizon censoring internet traffic?
Giant corporations aren’t simply following court orders, they are acting on their own now. This is problematic for a multitude of reasons. The precedent has been established.
*
EDIT: By "actual terrorist groups" I mean those that are classified as such by the US Government (e.g. FBI, CIA, NSA). While I think QAnon and Proud Boys have many of the characteristics of a terrorist group, they are not classified as such (personally I think they should be, but it's the government's job to decide that).
*