Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

Re:Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler by sebmellen on Saturday January 09, 2021 @09:29PM (#25708176)

I see the point you're making. If we deconstruct the whole matter and look at it from an existential point of view, humans are incredibly constrained in their freedoms by the nature of our existence. In a fundamental way, our language and culture predetermines what we can think and how we think, and our environment is probably a bigger impediment to freedom of speech and thought than anything else.

But from a policy perspective on the ground, I think the ideal of freedom of speech should eclipse the concerns of private platforms wherever possible. But this is not to say we should not police the boundaries of free speech. In fact, if we had a more strict enforcement policy about unprotected speech like direct threats (such as L. Lin Wood's declaration that people should execute Mike Pence by firing squad [0]), we might not need these platform interventions at all.

[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/secret-service-says-...

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Re:Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler by germinalphrase on Saturday January 09, 2021 @09:36PM (#25708294)

Sure - but we’re not in that policy place with regards to social media, and they will fight any attempt to exert that kind of requirement.

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Re:Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler by sebmellen on Saturday January 09, 2021 @09:45PM (#25708451)

Agreed — I'm not trying to say I know the answers. However, I do believe there's a role that social media companies have played in this polarization that needs to be addressed. Tristan Harris (of The Social Dilemma fame) makes very good points in this regard. Many of the political problems we have are thanks to to a distorted landscape of information distribution centered around advertising and platform addictiveness.

Maybe we need a "C-SPAN/NPR of social media".

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