I've looked at Parler - while I don't find the content at all compelling, it doesn't seem any more dangerous than Twitter. Have we forgotten the truly odious content that was freely available on Twitter during last summer's riots?

Most people here already have instantly forgotten about the planned action of millions of dollars worth of damage and looting of businesses and federal buildings that were burned down during the summer riots with BLM and Antifa inciting violence during the run up to the elections last year which the content is still freely available on Twitter with it being hosted on AWS.

So I do not see how Twitter is any different to Parler here if I can still find both of this content (and the users responsible) on their platforms. Perhaps the moderation on Twitter has a bias to one camp or its users have a heavy bias to only reporting the content that they think 'violates the ToS'.

The fact is, both social networking sites here have this content hosted on AWS and either have a poor or a bias in moderation of this content.

I can't speak for everyone, but I haven't forgotten about those things and was arguing at the time that much of that rhetoric needed to be shut down. I do wish that internet platforms would consistently shut down everyone who plans violence, but I'm hardly gonna say that this violence should be allowed just because other kinds were allowed in the past.

To resolve this whataboutism, I'd be perfectly fine with banning Twitter until they improved their moderation practices. But it's whataboutism nevertheless, no?

Amazon made the decision to change that calculation and in this case, whataboutism is perfectly valid.

I'm not sure how you could come to that conclusion when Parler has been specifically used to plan more violence this week, after many of the people involved have been booted from Twitter.

And Twitter (along with Reddit and Facebook) wasn’t used to plan violence during the protests last summer?

Show us the BLM tweet equivalent of "We need to systematically start assassinating Liberal leaders"

well... there's a #killallcops. I'm sure a quick googling could find you plenty more.. : https://twitter.com/hashtag/killallcops?lang=en

Would you consider that hashtag to have serious intent to incite people to commit acts of violence?

The same level of seriousness as any other violence condoning call. In that its hard to gauge intent and willingness to follow through vs. “just saying it”..? where do you draw the line? Do you let one group call for un mitigated violence against a group of people, but not another group, just because you personally dont believe they are serious, even if it might inspire other to take action..?

Yes, context is important. If someone makes a call to violence that is not intended to be taken seriously and is not at risk of being taken seriously that is different from making a call to violence in the hope that someone picks it up at a time when people are likely to act on it.

There is a test for this decided at the supreme court level: inciteful speech can only be prohibited if the speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action."

No, it wasn't.

The summer violence is not equitable to what's being planned on Parler. This is not run of the mill shit going on.

People are literally planning to murder other people on Parler but you don't find the content compelling ? There are tons of posts like this on Parler. This isnt a slippery slope, they arent moderating at all

https://twitter.com/IntelDoge/status/1348099918381068289

One major difference though, is that Parler (right now) only really hosts said dangerous content, while Twitter is >99% innocent.

Twitter and facebook have troves of child porn. They should be absolved and permanently wiped from the interner

Parler sprang up as a reaction to widespread deplatforming of both mainstream conservatives and violent radicals. What this achieves in practice is giving violent extremists a platform where they're free to radicalize ("redpill") moderate conservatives who've even been primed (via deplatforming) to distrust mainstream media and seek alternate sources of information. It's the opposite of what you want if you care about re-unifying the political landscape around rejection of violent extremism.

Can you give an example of a mainstream conservative who didn't advocate for violence who was deplatformed?

I think the best plan of action is creating a new decentralized free speech platform, as resilient as a cockroach, blockchain or scihub.

I’ve sent a message to sama & pg asking to add this to the YC list of ‘requests for startups’. I hope they hear.

For those lurking, this is a tremendous opportunity and real need as you have half the country desperate to let their voice be heard while being aggressively silenced and de-platformed for political reasons.

You can have a monopoly on free speech.. just kidding , purely decentralized. Hit me up with your hot ideas and Go chops.

I disagree with this. This might be a solution, but it is not "the" solution.

I really, truly believe that any startup idea has to pass the child pornography test. Most B2C companies have to deal with this at some point if they allow user to user interaction.

A decentralized platform as advocated for could not survive if it's not capable of censuring things. You have to censure for child pornography--it's illegal to host it. Court actions around torrents have held that the sites hosting them are not decentralized--The Pirate Bay is at fault for hosting illegally obtained content. Same thing with this--as long as hosting child pornography is illegal (and it should be, not debating that) you won't have a mainstream "decentralized" social media site[0].

This follows for all the other stuff that's going on. Inciting violence is illegal. That, plain and simple, is why Trump was removed from Twitter. Twitter even waited until his violence actually killed people. Even Parler recognizes this[1] and has started censuring, because it could be sued into the ground for inciting violence. If you think that there's a technological solution for this problem--you're missing the bigger picture. Big social media tech _loves_ this stuff--people talk about it all day--they even donate to the groups that help organize it[2].

We're not missing a technological solution--we're missing a legislative one.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/02/parler-...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/09/parler-reportedly-removed-...

[2] https://documented.net/2021/01/republican-attorneys-general-...

You make some good points. I want to reply to a couple of them.

I like the idea of a decentralized platform, but I agree that the solution has to be a legislative one. What's being lost is the "national conversation" on the subject and now private companies are deciding for everyone. Billions of people are now being told they don't get to decide how they interact with society; instead, literally a few people are deciding on behalf of billions. There is very little way to spin that as a positive result. This is what democracy is literally for - "we all decide together what we want the rules to be". I'm... honestly so saddened to see that people can't see that.

If "the people" decide, and what's happening now is what everyone votes for? Great! I may not like it but at least we know that we used good means since the means determine the ends. Right now, the means we are using is literally corporations acting as governments - making decisions for billions.

Re: idea has to pass the child porn test: agree. There's a few others too like illegal incitement etc. A platform needs a meaningful way to detect and remove this (not only because the law requires it, but this is a protective measure to ensure everyone gets to interact on that platform instead of it just disappearing).

This comment does not deserve to be downvoted. A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want is a net positive for society.

If this is something you're interested in, I am as well.

> A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want

Once upon a time, we called that "The Internet." Good times. Good times.

That’s called Mastodon, email, finger, Usenet…

Mainstream conservatives haven't been deplatformed. That's just the prevailing excuse for why many of them radicalized.

> Mainstream conservatives haven't been deplatformed.

But clearly, they have been. 74 million Americans voted for President Trump in the recent election, and now a bunch of techies in California are unilaterally saying that they shouldn't have a platform, and giving their support to the other side of the political spectrum. This doesn't look good for the average Republican or Conservative.

My dude that's total nonsense.

Hiding dangerous content amongst innocent content is even more egregious. It's much easier to identify and deal with when it's out in the open.

Twitter also has a much larger audience to push hate and violence to.

Is it still available today?

If it has since been removed, that's due to moderation!

What about right now?

"Hang Mike Pence" has been trending lately. I don't like anyone promoting violence.

And stuff like #killallmen and #killallcops was trending for months, but nobody banned Twitter from their infrastructure.

So you signed up for Parler and gave them your drivers license?

That's only if you want to be verified (i.e. like a blue checkmark on Twitter).

I installed it long ago to see what all the fuss was and never used it and didn't give them a damn thing.

>Pretty much anyone with any intelligence can determine this

This seems to be another way of saying 'if you don't agree with this view, you are likely stupid'. That's not a great opening, and in general if one finds themselves thinking their view is the only intelligent one, they should consider it a sign they are only considering a strawman of alternatives and not the real views held.

I think them getting booted is a slippery slope. Much better to have things like this in plain sight. Think about how much harder it would be to identify people storming the capitol w/o their social media platforms... Either way, it's great when "they" are harmful to society. I'm not so sure it's not possible to end up on the wrong side of that gun down the road when "they" define "harmful"...

I'm also curious as to what AWS's stance is regarding ISIS or radical militants in other regions of the world. I genuinely don't know the answer here.

I'm pretty sure they can't legally do business with ISIS.

These groups are only able to organize and recruit at this scale because of these platforms.

The question is not if Amazon made the right decision in this case but if they can be trusted to make it in general.

That question is only applicable if you equate this extreme current situation with something incredibly bland and normal.

What is a situation that's both bland and incredible supposed to look like?

Exactly because right now, between Apple, Google and AWS, several billion people have had a decision made for them.

That looks like government behavior to me.