Twitter, FB, AWS, Google eventually came along and said “ok, you want to share your ideas or host a community, we can make that really easy with our tools and platforms!” You can post what you want without worrying about servers in your basement. But in exchange for that convenience you have to accept that they reserve the right to terminate the contract at any time. They should not be required to help you promote ideas that they deem harmful or toxic.

So Parler can go back to how we used to do things in the 90s...it’s a little harder but not that hard. No one is being censored. This is simply a few companies deciding to terminate a relationship with one of their clients.

Only until their ISP decides to do the same thing Amazon did (or buckles under the DDoS attacks that will happen). Or their registrar or DNS provider, assuming you don't consider domains optional too.

8chan was shut down by Cloudflare, Tucows, Voxility and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan#August_2019_removal_from...

I'm surprised these sites haven't been disconnected at the BGP level yet; maybe that will happen this year.

This is no morale debate anymore your choice is life or death. As a German I think about 1923 the attempted beer house coup in Munich and the lax response to Adolf Hitler and can only shake my heads at people like you.

At least I hope your sentiment comes from a high morale standpoint and not from misdirection as so many are in these threads.

I want neither options and behold the screams of people like yourself this is unprecedented that we the people or companies have the power to surpress calls for violence and sedition from a government working on a coup to stop the will of their own people. I am glad that we try it with whatever will come of it because we know from history what will happen if we do not.

If you look at the media outlets left and right they decided to pull trump of the air for much less and we don't see even fox, oan or other right wing media giving him a platform. 90% of the censorship calls are one-sided as well I see no one screaming about parler or thedonald.win banning progressive politicians or users on sight. your bias shows and it's abhorrent.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tUIH3GqGdQ

Yeah.. we know. Nobody is arguing that they can’t do it. Only that they shouldn’t.

It’s a fun straw man though

The internet as it exists for many people all over the world does not always include control over ports, or even a static IP address. Even if you do have a static IP you'll still need to go through a company to register a domain.

And as far as I know there's nothing stopping an ISP from refusing service, which could be coordinated just like this app store removal.

If Amazon said they wouldn't tolerate anyone who supported BLM because of the numerous riots and deaths caused by the movement would we this be okay? It's worth remembering that 50 years ago Amazon would probably morally object to hosting people who were pro-LGBT too.

The point of free speech is to protect those with unpopular opinions. This is because the default human response has always been to do the opposite. For years the science and arts were suppressed by people who just thought they were doing the right thing. As a civilization we have learnt from this mistake. Companies with global monopoly should not be empowered or encouraged to repeat it.

“people can just send letters i fully support att not allowing group X to use their phone lines to spread info.”

They have special legal obligations to, within reason, facilitate every legal transaction that comes their way. The scenarios you describe therefore cannot happen with them.

If you want internet platforms to have that same level of "anything goes", then you're arguing for them to be classified as common carriers.

I'm not sure how I feel about it though. A "commons" physical space has has an firm upper limit on how many people it can reach.

I don't think anyone is entitled to the massive amplification of their words that a large social media platform can provide without recourse to either being moderated or curated the way other broadcast media is done. A person could not perform some analog to "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" on those traditional media forms, and I don't see how doing it on the internet should change that.

The problem as always is where do you draw the line? Some free speech advocates seem to say it's too difficult so we shouldn't try. That one reasonable step could be the justification for an unreasonable one. I think that's a complete cop out. I think you do the reasonable thing, and then fight against the unreasonable thing. Not give up because it's not easy. It's a hard thing and we need to constantly as a whole and in individual circumstances assess our judgements, but not back away from making them.

That setup works just fine, often to serve significantly higher amounts of traffic than you could afford at any regular hoster, too.

Look at the anarchist network setup at chaos camps, serving 100Gbps+ in the middle of rural nowhere, from server racks set up in chemical toilets, powered by geenerators and solar panels.

It’s not impossible to have the entirety of their community communicate solely via Signal, WhatsApp or iMessage. Or any theoretically equivalent end-to-end encrypted messaging app where the “message group” is the entirety of the current Parler community.

Apple, FB or anyone else, have no way to separate those users from others.

Of course, one could argue that Apple & Google could institute new policies to prevent the spread of misinformation on apps. But nobody can argue that it is a definitively more difficult problem to solve than on a user-content based, server-driven social network such as Twitter.

WhatsApp has implemented feature such as limited forwarding to combat misinformation.

But still they haven’t (and technically cannot) prevent Parler users from expressing their views.

In other words, I don’t see any instance of Parler users losing their right to free speech anywhere. Sure, they don’t enjoy the luxury of _convenience_ driven speech. But depending on how you define it, none of us have universally convenient means to express our speech.

There is also an argument that AWS is now so big and important that they should be treated like a utility, and then refusing customers is something that they shouldn't necessarily be allowed to do. I'm not sure how I feel about that argument though.

If you're going to pick the events of the day, it's best to mention both.

If you don't see a qualitative difference between that and the few rioters over the summer, then I don't think there's really room for discussion here.

But there are lines to be drawn, and It's certainly not an arbitrary line when it's drawn between the severity of crimes & their impact on society & the foundation of our government.

Are you telling me you don't see a difference between rioters that disrupt the peaceful transfer of power between Presidents? Between the a rioters that burned down a Wendy's compared to rioters that planned to assassinate the Vice President?

Sure, prosecute everyone who breaks the law, destroys property, etc. But I have no idea how you can say there is not a significant difference, a clear line to be drawn, between the impact of the Capitol rioters and those over the Summer.

It's the equivalent of you saying that a thief breaking into the house next door is no different than a thief breaking into the second most important building in the country. The later has a much larger implication for society, undermines society at a deeper level.

Parler openly allowed the planning of this violent anti-democratic insurrection and has been deemed bad faith in their moderation.

Would also be curios if Facebook or Twitter was used in any way to plan or facilitate communication leading up to the event.

You can look at www.reddit.com/r/parlerwatch to see examples of extremism on Parler.

Doesn’t 230 protect websites from moderation because it would be completely untenable?

Some of the most extreme speech I’ve seen have been on Facebook and Twitter. However I don’t hold them responsible since they’re providing communication infrastructure.

Additionally I believe that 230 doesn't apply to knowledgeable hosting of illegal content. So if inciting violence is a known element on a site, and the owners are aware, then I believe (not a lawyer) that they can't hide behind 230.

Also I do not believe 230 prevents lawsuits against hosting services necessarily. It may make tech companies liable for providing a platform to a service that is behind 230 but they themselves can't claim that.

With regards to Facebook and Twitter, they have significantly larger user bases and active moderation. So definitely not perfect but they can remove content that violates all the ToS they may be beholden to. Parler does not provide such a thing, and doubles down on not doing so. So a lot of content gets removed from FB/Twitter, and if stuff doesn't due to slipping through the cracks, they still abide when notified of transgressions.

Additionally, as noted elsewhere, parler does moderate by removing content that the community dissaproves of, but that is legally in the clear, white leaving up what is largely considered discussion of illegal activity. Therefore they are tacit in those conspiring events.

Please provide examples or you're just providing false equivalencies and whataboutism.

Let me be clear, even if you believe police brutality is a real problem, there can be no justification for the torching of homes and livelihoods done last summer.

Escalating to violence at the capitol was wrong, but I have little sympathy for the politicians that did not use their influence to curb that massive harm done communities across the country by the riots.

Did the VP encourage and incite violence?

This information is not hard to find.

The only one related to the protest has no body cam footage made available. It's currently an allegation and should be treated as such, especially given the protests revolve around police brutality and several events of police fabricating events (Breonna Taylor).

Regardless, you claim the VP encouraged rioters. Did she encourage them to commit violence? Did she or any of her close affiliates say to hang other members of government? Did they say there should be trial by combat?

This is a clear shifting of goalposts and false equivalencies between a (then senator) donating to a charity and a current president and his affiliates fomenting violence.

Did Kamala tell the rioters that they're special and she loves them after they stormed a government building with pipe bombs and zip ties?

She said the protests would not let up, and to "beware". It was not an explicit call for violence, but often politicians tread the line and this case was no different. You may say that she did not actually call for violence, and condemned the violence afterward. So did Trump.

> Did Kamala tell the rioters that they're special and she loves them after they stormed a government building with pipe bombs and zip ties?

He said that in a message for them to go home. Do you think that maybe telling people who are motivated to extreme actions (including violence) might be calmed by being told that they are loved? I think it might have that effect.

With regards to Trump, you may consider his words as a way to quell the crowd, but only if you view them in isolation. He provided no condemnation of the act, most of his statement centered around reiterating his unproven conspiracy that caused the mob. He withheld support from the national guard as well.

To compare the two is highly disingenuous.

Only after the protests had been raging for months. Nor did she call out the specific groups responsible for the violence.

And in any case, actions speak louder than words, and her bail efforts fall into that category. Now, you've questioned whether those bail funds went to the rioters. Let's be clear: the organization that she was donating to explicitly doesn't filter who they bail out based on the circumstances of the arrest. This was not an effort to merely help the peaceful protesters unlawfully arrested by authoritarian cops (which no doubt there was some of that) it was for everyone. There is no way rioters weren't included in that group. And it's clear that the politicians and celebrities who donated to that fund didn't care.

> To compare the two is highly disingenuous.

It is not at all. Democratic politicians and public figures have been providing cover for rampant criminal behavior for months. AOC brushes it off as "making people uncomfortable". Chris Cuomo of CNN asked "Where is it written that protests have to be polite or peaceful?" live on air. Joe Biden only really started condemning the violence after Don Lemon and others pointed out that the rioting was hurting the Democrats in the polls.

Which side had the president of the United States actively inciting riots?

Also, he never disavowed the protestors, just the people who were breaking in and being violent (who were a small minority). And he certainly didn't "get himself banned from Twitter" by "back peddling" given he just said:

> The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!

And

> To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.

I don't know if you are being intentionally obtuse and trolling or just really this dense.

Trump, his son, and Rudy spent hours whipping that crowd into a frenzy and then directed them towards the Capitol.

This look like a small minority to you?

https://teddit.net/r/PublicFreakout/comments/kucaz0/the_mome...

That officer was beaten to death by an American flag surrounded by thousands of trump supporters, who sang fucking songs and watched.

I don't know what disgusts me more, that video or your smarmy dismissive attitude.

> That officer was beaten to death by an American flag surrounded by thousands of trump supporters, who sang fucking songs and watched.

Most of them wouldn't have been able to see anything. And yes, 10 people is a tiny minority of a crowd of a hundred thousand.

Go and have a look at some full raw footage/stream (you're looking for videos at 40+ minutes long) to get an idea of what most people were doing.

Also, I' appreciate it if you kept the personal attacks to a minumum, they do you no favours.

We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're fighting for. We don't have a choice, because it destroys what this site is supposed to exist for.

I'm not going to ban you right now because it doesn't look like you've been doing this for a super long time. But please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit: thoughtful, curious conversation across differences. If you can't do that, that's understandable of course, but then please don't post until you can.

HN's rules have been designed to try to preserve this place as somehow interesting, not the scorched earth that internet forums usually descend to. The rules don't stop applying because someone else is wrong or you feel they are, and it's not ok to break them because you're right or you feel you are. Actually those are the cases where they apply the most.

Honestly I just need to take a break from the web for a while.

I've been feeling pretty enraged lately, especially when dealing with people who seem dedicated to ignoring reality.

I appreciate the warning.

They were chanting "Hang Pence", they had guns, they killed a police officer, they setup a fucking gallows. They were seeking hostages and a few guards and chair barricade were the only thing preventing them from stopping the certification process for the the first time in our countries history.

Are you really this disconnected from what is actually happening right now or do you have you head so far up your ass that you can't see the difference between civil rights protests and an armed coup at the capitol of the United States?

These people stormed the legislature of the US to attempt to install their cult leader as dictator. If that doesn't concern you, I don't know what to tell you.

And Parler will find another web host. If the daily stormer can find one, these clowns will. They're not disappearing.

> The capitol has been the site of multiple bombings, shootings, assassination attempts, and stormings for centuries. Pretending its an unbespoiled sacred Church which has never been penetrated so vulgarly is just ahistorical.

-- https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/kt0xpm/in_1954_4...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s

edit: clicking a button doesn't constitute an argument. You can only ignore Chomsky, neither tie his shoelaces or address his points. Shame on you.

This looking for the root cause usually works well in big companies - for example on the Toyota production line but in politics people tend to look for easy answers. Examples like the war on drugs, getting overly tough on crime or defunding the police altogether do nothing but exacerbate the underlying issues.

Apart from calling this out and trying to vote in people who can think deeper I'm not sure what else to do. Living in close nit community/larger families you need to learn accept people for who they are and that seems to be going out the window with the increased focus on the individual in modern western culture. There's no one size fix all unfortunately...

America has become a country of absolutely insane extremists in a relatively short time.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone willing to try to get things back on track. As an outsider looking in it feels like everyone’s IQ has dropped below room temperature.

You’re operating on stress, fear, and propaganda my friend. Find the truth, and bring your IQ back up.

This type of content should have never been tolerated to begin with, the only reason they're only starting to do something is because they don't fear political retribution any more.

The time to be concerned would be if these companies choose politics over profits.

If it was an ISP blocking, where more Americans have access to 1 or 2, then you'd have an argument, because it's also near impossible for people to spin off their own personal ISP. But there are hundreds if not thousand of hosting platforms online, and you can spin up your own pretty easily.

The events of Wednesday of last week changed my mind.

> "First they came for the XYZ and I didn't care because I wans't XYZ, then they came for the ..., and then they came for me, and there was no one left to stop them from getting me"

First Wikipedia banned Church of Scientology, and no one really cared.

Then 4chan booted Gamergate, and no one really cared.

Then Cloudflare booted Daily Stormer, and no one really cared.

Then AWS / Apple / Google booted Parlor. And you know? Its not really nearly as bad as you think. We have real life examples. You don't have to talk about hypotheticals, choose a real life example.

Like, do you really think Parlor deserves a platform if the community is continuing to plot assassination attempts vs Mike Pence and attacks on the Inauguration over the next two weeks?

Instead of arguing in the abstract, how about you argue with what's going on this week.

Changed your mind to support what exactly? That’s a little to abstract to even argue. Let’s talk specifics.

What did you think companies shouldn’t be doing that they now should? What epiphany did you have on Wednesday?

Is it just that Parler itself is evil and must be stopped? Why not advocate for full DNS removal as well? Advocate for their bank accounts to be closed as well.

Everyone keeps saying this is the obvious correct move, but this seems like a ham-fisted 9/11-type response where the cure is going to be much worse than the poison in the long term.

Stick with reality. I dare you to defend Parlor. Or, if you don't like Parlor, we have a myriad of other deplatformings (Gamergate/4Chan, Church of Scientology/Wikipedia, and Daily Stormer / Cloudflare) you can discuss instead.

IMO, you want to run away to an imaginary world where the events of last Wednesday do not matter. Some pretend argument where people are taking away all cell phones (or something similarly unrealistic...). I'm not going to let you. At a bare minimum, you need to choose a realistic example from reality before I can take you seriously.

Lets be real, lets stay real. Lets use actual, reality-based arguments and discussions.

To me, this is why it feels political: these tech companies are responding more strongly to this than well-organized terror organizations that were active for years.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/europol-and-tele...

It seems like to me, that Telegram is cooperating with police services to delist propaganda.

-------

If anything, you seem to be proving my point? Telegram is closely working with European officials to remove ISIS propaganda today.

> Over the past year and a half, Europol has been collaborating with Telegram in tackling terrorism online. Building upon a previous Referral Action Days with Telegram in October 2018, the event this year was an opportunity for both parties to review the kind of content that terrorist groups attempt to disseminate online and further improve the referral process with the common aim of ensuring that material glorifying terrorism would be removed from internet as soon as possible.

...

> Telegram is no place for violence, criminal activity and abusers. The company has put forth considerable effort to root out the abusers of the platform by both bolstering its technical capacity in countering malicious content and establishing close partnerships with international organisations such as Europol.

The above post is dated 2019, which means they were in close collaboration from 2017. In 2015, Telegram immediately purged ISIS content in response to the attacks on France.

-------

I'm very confused by your post. Could you elaborate on your version of history? Or maybe what you're trying to say? As far as I can tell, your Telegram example only supports the Parlor deplatforming. When extremist attacks occur, our only option is to silence the attackers.

There were never any calls for deplatforming telegram in this manner as far as I know; it would be like giving Parlor another 3-5 years to clean itself up.

I agree that the attackers need to be silenced, but this move by apple and google is unprecedented and unnecessary; if they are inciting violence, it should be dealt with legally, not via corporate ethics panels. Platforms should be responsible for content like what parlor presents, but apple shouldn’t be the who holds them accountable. This isn’t the cake shop declining to serve a gay customer, but rather the phone company pulling the plug.

In contrast, Parlor double-downed on its behavior. It immediately became clear that Parlor admins were NOT working on clamping down the violent extremism that's occurring currently on its site.

I purposefully used three words to describe your argument: unhelpful, abstract, and too hyperbolic. Which hopefully provides you enough room to move forward with the discussion.

-------

I wouldn't sweat it. I don't think your argument is "lazy". If anything, you're posting in too many threads simultaneously.

If I were in your boat, I'd start cutting out the threads which are least helpful, and start focusing on the discussion threads which are most promising.

Not all discussions are fruitful. If you have fewer discussions, you'll find that you'll naturally result in higher-quality discussions. You shouldn't feel the need to respond to everyone.

Agressive tone towards OP: "I'm not going to let you"

They also edited the comment slightly from what you see now.

Why don't you deplatform me from HN if you disagree.

EDIT: So according to you, for my argument to be relevant it has to have an actual precedent in reality? Did Nazi germany have one?

EDIT2: I'm not using nazi germany as an example, I'm pointing out that nazi germany did not have an actual precedent in reality, yet one could have warned about escalating events at the time and, faced with your argument, one would not have been able to provide precedent rooted in history to make one's case that things were going down a slippery slope. Yet, we all know what happened.

No one is trying to get rid of cell phones anywhere in the USA. It is neither concrete nor contextual.

This Parlor de-platforming is extremely similar to the Daily Stormer de-platforming from Cloudflare. That's an actual, reality-based example I feel acceptable about discussing. There are probably many other examples.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

This happened 4 years ago. There's a huge amount of historical discussion and arguments you can look up about this event 4 years ago if you like.

> EDIT: So according to you, for my argument to be relevant it has to have an actual precedent in reality? Did Nazi germany have one?

Yes. Nazi Germany counts as a historical example if you wish to use them. But since they had no internet back then, I think you'll find it difficult to find similarities to today. But give it a shot, what about the Nazis do you want to discuss?

If I'm thinking about the 1930s or 1940s, I'm thinking...

* The US Office of Censorship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship), which literally opened mail and censored them, as a historical example if you'd like. There's plenty of real-life examples of censorship from which you can base your argument and discussion off of.

* There's also Hay's Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code), which is probably a good 1930s example of Free-Market American Censorship being applied to Hollywood (and now that I think of it, bears some level of resemblance to the Parlor vs AWS situation).

Amazon, Google and Apple all warned Parler about their violations and asked them to moderate content, before booting them. And of course Parler didn’t do anything

We don't ban vehicles because they were used as a getaway car in an armed robbery, but we ban automatic weapons that are used in an armed robbery.

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

Why are they holding Parler to a different standard?

They should have started doing this 4 years ago, then maybe we wouldn't have witnessed the first coup attempt in our history and 350k people wouldn't have died from a preventable illness.

Concerning the Capitol I agree.

I can forgive uncertainty about covid until March, despite my part of the world taking it very seriously. After that point I think America as a whole, and the Trump administration in particular really shit the bed. We have been wearing masks here on a mandatory basis since February, and have arguably handled covid better than any nation besides New Zealand.

Yeah it's shocking people wouldn't blame themselves.

> 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.

This seems like it's clearly saying that, as a society, we should reserve the right to silence any group by force if we consider them to be intolerant. It's often said that the government has a monopoly on force, so this is pretty much saying the government should reserve the right to quiet any speech it deems intolerant.

Is this really what the people quoting it want? I'm worried about the government using "intolerance" as a cover for suppressing speech it dislikes for other reasons. Some governments like manage to Germany ban certain types of speech without becoming authoritarian states, but others don't. Particularly in the US, I have a feeling we'll get Trump 2.0 at some point, and he'll be smarter and more capable and more charismatic and more populist and more popular, and I don't know if it's a good idea to give him the right to say "free speech is cancelled and if I think you're not being tolerant enough [to groups I like], you're going to jail bucko". Do people arguing on Popper's side have a reason to be confident that this won't ever happen?

Replace tolerance with "free[dom]" and intolerance with "censorship" without losing its meaning and getting rid of the word play.

"In order for society to be free, it must censor censorship."

even simpler:

"In order for society to be free, it must be free from censorship."

Freedom and censorship are antonyms of each other (mutually exclusive). So obviously, its a paradox.

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.

Even as it is with the word - tolerance, it is not particularly insightful in any profound way to me. Can you explain? It just says that in order for the society to remain tolerant, it must get rid of intolerance. To which my brain goes "No shit!", would love to get more insight.

Doesn't this imply that censorship must be allowed for a free society?

Coming to the main point, I think the meaning behind the phrase is that absolute tolerance is not sustainable; a line must be drawn somewhere and yes, we can argue till end of time where that line needs to be drawn as long it is drawn somewhere.

Discussing the point itself: Yea it makes sense though and I had arguments with a liberatarian friend who wants 100% anarchy. No police, no laws, no anything, no FDA, no Fire department and no medical laws, no lawyers, etc. My argument was that such a society is impossible and would crumble upon itself. One bad actor and the entire society falls apart.

Would you be happier if they banned gay wedding cakes too?

Yes but where to draw a line?

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

Second, if you look at only those with the intention to kill or gravely wound, the numbers are quite comparable.

Third, one of these is an attack on a much softer target and done without any warning, making it a more dangerous threat.

Because it seems like you're whatabouting presidential assassination attempts to do what exactly?

Ignoring your TOS and not moderating terrorists is complicit action by the owners to get ahead of “but they aren’t all terrorists!”

If ISIS made an App to communicate and organize, nobody will have a problem for it to be immediately removed.

If there is a solution to this, it involves empathy and honest engagement. Not banning and blocking, at least not of the rank and file people.

Watching these “patriots” trying to interrupt and attack the democratic process with such blatant, selfish contempt on live television was a breaking point/ wake up call for the majority of morally decent Americans.

The cultural zeitgeist has decided that a line has been crossed and therefore: a stand must be made, and action must be taken.

Because of the way time works, we simply cannot afford the luxury (privilege) of trying to “rehabilitate” these people _at the current moment_.

You don’t get any points for giving these people the benefit of the doubt and/or confusing what’s occurring right now as a “teachable moment”.

The fact that these people can guilt trip you into believing that they should be treated with empathy is 100% irrefutable proof that you, personally, have been conned.

I understand that these actions are obviously not 100% perfect and sustainable, but until we’ve reached a modicum of sensible tech regulation standards, I would take imperfect action over no action at all.

Harm.

When the expression of speech causes harm, then the line is drawn. This is the general interpretation ranging from SCOTUS to free speech philosophers like John Stuart Mill.

I may reconsider this position if they ever "come for me"; but frankly, for now, I value stability and longevity for our nation more than its abstract ideals about freedom of speech.

They were literally threatening to kill Twitter employees and elected officials. How on Earth should anyone defend that as free speech.

Basically; call me when there is a real problem, 'cause this ain't it.

By then it's too late, that's kind of the point of that poem.

In Germany Parler would have been banned months ago for "Volksverhetzung" ("incitement of the masses") because Germany knows what happens when you let right- or left-wing extremists indoctrinate the masses.

I'm having a real hard time understanding how anyone, especially business people can misunderstand this.

Simple: It's not censorship.

The fact that access to the public forum these days requires abiding by a ToS enforced by a private, no-apeal process is bad.

No, it's not. Social media is more like a small printing press that will print anyone's little pamphlet. It may be new but it was never the only venue and never will be.

And, there must be some types of moderation to all speech, all.

There definitely needs to be moderation. But having the power to moderate speech on such a significant platform in the hands of 3 private parties is bad. Not that I think their recent decisions are wrong. But the lack of recourse is scary, and dangerous. Not just dangerous because 'what if they abuse it'.

It is dangerous because people censored by them are much more likely to feel that it _is_ abuse. Hence they don't take the signal and instead have a massive sense of injustice. "How can a decision so big, without appeal being possible, be fair" they think.

> Social media is more like a small printing press that will print anyone's little pamphlet. It may be new but it was never the only venue and never will be.

Social media is the sole source of news and discussion for a lot of people. Sure, there are alternatives, but they fail to reach a large amount of people.

Ignoring the monopoly aspect of this conversation is unhelpful.

If someone posts "Hang Mike Pence" on Erik's Bakeshop Blog in the comments, would you have a law that says I have to leave it up?

What if it's Erik's Bakeshop Blog Network, Home of All Ten of the Most Popular Bakeshop Blogs? Anyone who is Anyone in the Bakeshop Community has a Presence on the EBB Network.

Would you then require me to keep those comments up? Because not having access to the EBBN is professional suicide for a bakeshop professional? Because I'm "ruining lives"? How do you write that law?

Or can I take them down, but I have to continue to allow MagaBakerBabe post, and I am just required to spend money paying content moderators to monitor what they are posting?

I am genuinely curious, from a legal perspective, what is the alternative to "Corporations are allowed to ban people for whatever reason they like, except membership to a protected class"?

Or are we not talking about laws at all, are we saying Google is free to ban whoever they like, but it's Bad, and we're just issuing a strongly worded rebuke here, and we would prefer that anyone with a Blog Network considers the free speech implications of deplatforming users like MagaBakerBabe?

Much of the Parler user base opposes associating with certain groups of protected classes?

Freedom of speech should only apply to protected classes?

Sure, sharing weird QAnon memes and Trump worship... I don’t care. That’s the equivalent of Fox News. But using it as a base of communication to overtly threaten to kill members of government (even ones I didn’t vote for) is crossing the line. From the article, there were hundreds if not thousands of users posting plans to regroup and bring guns and bombs to the Capitol with definite coordination between them all. It’s no longer a free-speech issue.

Yeah, I’m fine with this. You aren’t?

The article that is linked here in the NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...) states examples of Parler deleting content encouraging violence. So it's not as if Parler is doing zero moderation. But it is clear that Facebook and Twitter are not perfect (or even consistent) in their moderation. So where's the threshold for when the unmoderated posts cause you to get deplatformed? That line seems arbitrary to me. It also seems like an unfair line since Parler has only 30 employees. If the response to censorship is "go build your own social network", then surely there needs to be allowance for small social networks that face a sudden influx of new users and traffic. Most users of Parler, and most content, is not problematic.

The same question should be asked when it comes to Twitter banning Trump's account. Twitter's own blog post (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) does not make a great case for proving Trump was inciting violence - certainly none of the quoted info (like Trump choosing to skip the inauguration) would pass the bar necessary for a court to prove incitement. But a more basic issue here is that the vast majority of those who turned up in DC to support Trump and see him speak did not participate in the riot. Per various sources (example https://www.localdvm.com/news/washington-dc/three-demonstrat...) there were tens of thousands of attendees to the recent DC marches, across several fully-legal fully-permitted events. Out of all that, a few hundred raided the capitol. So if a small percentage of your followers engage in criminal activity, is that cause for a ban? And if that is the case, why wouldn't the same apply to other politicians or activists or social media figures? Why do BLM-affiliated events get a pass, with the criminal elements written off as a small fringe?

I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that the President of the United States incited a riot rather than it being something that happened along with the protest.

The author's life story is instructive here as to how misused this particular trope is in this example.

Martin Niemoller voted for Hitler. Twice! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

there is no slippery slope here. millions of more "rational" conservatives are absolutely fine and are not being banned. if this purges all the loony bin q-anon and conspiracy theory stuff then i'm for it. you can make that argument if it stays in discussion land, but as we've seen, it actually boiled into violence against the state.

Nothing. Except laws against hate speech.

If you really need a place to scream about killing leftists, go to the park. The homeless vets will probably yell at you to shut up but I promise Amazon won't try to deplatform you.

Posts like this one are totally unacceptable on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are—and you posted a ton of these. We ban this sort of account, regardless of which politics they're battling for. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.

Your recent posts have been using HN primarily for political battle. Please don't do that—it's against the guidelines and it's the line across which we start banning accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), again regardless of which politics they're battling for. The reason is that it basically destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation on a wide range of topics.