> the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs."
The line doesn't have to do with the infringement of privacy, it's about whether that infringement is being done by publicly sanctioned power, or the whim of the arbitrary, domineering power of private (tech) actors. Elizabeth Anderson has written quite well on this topic in "Private Government."
Facebook and Twitter have millions of people who want mass executions for all kinds of groups, a quick trip into Muslim areas of both services and you'll find moderate and right-wing versions that want execution for LGBTQ+ people. You can find the same desire for marginalization and extermination of other groups. Not every language and dialect has a huge team of moderators that review content and take the appropriate punitive action against malicious users.
I have a Parler account. I have a GAB account. I make accounts on all new social media platforms and communications services. Everyone should. Because you have no idea what platform might be the next Facebook, or which one is going to be the next MySpace.
Someone then decide to associate with these people by joining the site. They may not personally post messages calling for violence, but are now associated with them. And the response is: well sure I'm in the group but I don't actually agree with any of this.
Then my question is: why did you join in the first place? If you don't agree with the most vocal 1% (I SERIOUSLY doubt that number after spending time perusing the site), and you don't denounce what they're saying, what do you expect others to think? We're supposed to read your mind that you're part of a "silent dissent" and just joined the site because...?
People were banned from facebook and twitter for calling for violence, if you switched sites specifically to follow that person I have a REAL tough time believing you don't support them.
>Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.
Edit to add: Also what happens behind doors on invite only subreddits?
Edit to add further: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/bmtdqb/ch...
CHapoTrapHouse got banned but....CTH is invite only.
I agree. I completely agree. I myself call the transgender people in my life by their preferred pronoun.
I also find compelling someone's speech by threat of banning them to be disgusting. Especially when there's a block button available. If you don't like what someone's saying, you can literally ignore everything they say.
Herein lies the conundrum for me - for, what seems to be, an increasingly large group of people, its not enough to simply stop interaction with people they don't like, those people have to be removed from the landscape altogether. I just do not see this ending in any positive way.
This seems to be viewed as a sort of "bug" of scale; I see it as a feature. If you become extremely popular and your voice is amplified, you're going to have to contend with being criticized and scrutinized to a greater degree.
I fall into the Sam Harris & Joe Rogan Greater Internet Reply Theory: "Don't read the comments. You can't read the comments." Jamie Foxx said it best on why you don't need to read them, "Sometimes the comments'll get in that ass."
I will simply never agree with removing someone for the content of their speech. I do think that you eventually reach a point of harassment (for example, if you reply to every single tweet of someone you don't like with, "You're a cunt."), but by-and-large, a lot of the "problems" simply result in people not being able to ignore others, either by using a button on a website, or just by sheer willpower of not looking at a comment.
"Don't say this thing, or we'll ban you forever from the platform."
If I walk up to you and say, "Don't say this thing, or me and my 9 associates here will punch you in the face," that's compulsion. Period.
Chomsky said it best: "If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
And yes, Twitter, under the first amendment, is free to associate with whomever they want (or to refuse to associate with them)! Twitter isn't compelling Meghan Murphy to do anything anymore than than twitter is, at this moment, compelling me to give them my wallet.
On the other hand, if you said "Give me your wallet, or me and my 9 associates here will punch you in the face," you'd be committing a crime.
That's the difference between being kicked off twitter and punching someone in the face. One of them is a crime. No matter how purely you uphold the principle of free speech, it doesn't make sense to compare someone who doesn't share those values to a criminal.
Well, they do know what happens when you let Nazis and their apologists/enablers get a toehold in public discourse, so maybe they actually have something useful to contribute to the discussion.
You think you can assert with confidence that there are not 40,000 people with Parler accounts who want mass executions?
I'd like to think you're right, but I'm not as confident as you are.
Not after watching someone beat a Capitol Police officer to death with a flag pole flying the American Flag. People think they are defending their country against evil. Like me, apparently.
How many QAnon followers are there? How many believe the most outrageous claims? I would not be surprised if 40,000 do. Would you?
Easily done:
https://imgur.com/gallery/nHb2lO8
Some of these are Verified users - Parler has their Drivers License and Social Security number, and yet they still felt secure in brazenly violating the law like this.
I do not think "literally millions" do. That is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
I am saddened by extremists like this, on all sides.
I want to win a tough but fair political fight, and I think that's what almost everyone in America wants, too. I'm sorry some people think 60 court cases were simultaneously wrongly decided, but I don't feel sympathy for anyone who thinks the next step is to storm the Capitol.
Unfortunately the service is down, but I would imagine that other post was removed as well.
The question we were discussing was whether or not many of the USERS are calling for mass executions.
I provided ample evidence, despite your "find me a single post" challenge.
Now we might want to engage in a different discussion, about whether Parler was correctly moderating that content. But that is not a "clarification," that's a new topic.
I do not have access to information about how long content was allowed to remain before it was removed. Do you?
I will admit that it's draining, talking to one user who keeps moving the goal-posts.
And I will then say that I think it's their intention to drain people like me.
So I try to shrug it off and keep refuting arguments with the evidence they pretend they will be convinced by.
It's clear that you are arguing in good faith and the other person who keeps moving the goalposts and demanding more proof is not, and moreover it's very enlightening to see this scenarios played out nearly identically whenever I lurk and follow a discussion between the left and right in US politics.
You can't usually "win" the argument, just your own time.
> single post
> on Parler
> calling for mass executions
I still think these are not legit death threats by the content of it. Saying things like “a good commie is a dead a commie” might be tasteless but it’s far from being a serious thing. No one is killing communists in the US.
https://imgur.com/gallery/nHb2lO8
Those are legit death threats. Including from a lawyer associated with the President.
> “Death to all Marxist Democrats. Take no prisoners leave no survivors!!” Chief Holland added.
How would this have to be modified to become a "legitimate death threat"?
I am equally concerned about what happened about the Capitol, but the actions taken by tech in response are unacceptable to me.
The problem with fascist terrorists is not their rhetoric, it's their violence. Allow them to speak their mind and you lower their need for violent action and everyone else gets to show that their ideas are horribly flawed.
It's amusing to think that people seriously believe there are huge swathes of people just ripe to become neo-nazis because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote some tweets - how do you manage not to succumb to these rhetorical titans?
Given that exactly this happened 90 years ago and caused the deaths of tens of millions, people are needless to say cautious.
If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have eventually been someone else.
That may be true, or that may not be true. Has there been any research on this?
On top of that, it's only a matter of time before they're linked to one of the many .win site that sprang up after Twitter purged the_donald and the Qanon people.
And again, people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find.
I'm really not, and I'd prefer if you started off responding to me by not (mis)characterising my intentions. I'm 100% sincere in my support of free speech and stand 100% behind my comment.
> People having their brains hit with racist or violent rhetoric over a long period of time will be changed by that
Yes, they will, which is why it's good to allow every voice and every kind of viewpoint a chance to be expressed and hence challenged. Unless you think that echo chambers are a good thing?
> people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find
Did they occur in places with high amounts of censorship or free speech? The Holocaust wasn't caused simply by one of Hitler's speeches, for example, it was also (among other things) primed by the rampant anti-semitic prejudice that came from the pulpit every Sunday for hundreds of years - which was unchallengable due to blasphemy laws.
Another "win" for the repression of speech someone in power doesn't like, eh?
> which was unchallengable due to blasphemy laws
There's basically no support for this claim in any literature I can find. Care to cite a historian?
> There's basically no support for this claim in any literature I can find. Care to cite a historian?
Tell me the literature you looked in first, because I want to know which books can miss such basic facts, and hence what I should avoid. The history of Europe is soaked in blood provoked by differences over what can be said by religious people, to religious people, and of them and their views. Entire wars have been fought over it - are you going to tell me there are historians that are credible who'll claim Europe was a land of toleration? Locke wrote his letter of toleration specifically because of the widespread intolerance and bloodshed.
If you use the word heresy instead of blasphemy and your search may prove more fruitful. It was effect in Europe from the Edict of Thessalonica, which brought the first execution, and in some countries hasn't been repealed from law. If you look up the last people executed under these laws you may even find what they said to deserve execution.
Yes, widespread antisemitism was a contributor to the holocaust, but that wasn't primarily or even really particularly due to blasphemy laws. Taking anti-Semitism in pre WWII Europe and blaming it, in any significant part, on a lack of free speech, is not something that has any mainstream historic support. It's weird historical revisionism that's honestly a bit uncomfortable. (for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism)
I'm claiming that they were a necessary condition. Am I changing my position? No. I've no idea how you came to that.
> Yes, widespread antisemitism was a contributor to the holocaust
We agree.
> but that wasn't primarily or even really particularly due to blasphemy laws
In which free speech zone did a similar situation occur? Your statement is pure speculation. At least try attribute things to conditions that are present or have something to compare with to show the contrast.
> blaming it, in any significant part, on a lack of free speech, is not something that has any mainstream historic support.
I'd like to know what these mysterious "mainstream" historians think was behind the anti-semitism that was so rife in Christian Europe for so long. Where did Nazis get the idea of blood libel from? What ever could be the reason…?
On a less sarcastic note, I hope they don't blame the Jews for their predicament, as the only other explanation would be that the hatred arose from nothing but some rousing speeches by Hitler. That to me would seem incredibly childish a notion and not in the slightest supported by the accounts of prominent Nazi party members of the time but at least it's better than victim blaming.
Of course, we could rely again on looking at the conditions present and what effects correlate - what happens when blasphemy laws are present, and what happens when freedom of conscience (free speech + freedom of religion) is present - does support for Christianity go down? Does anti-semitism rise or fall? Is this consistent across the world? Is the same true for Europe?
> for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism
On the one hand there are the hate speech laws that were in place for a few years, and on the other is the rampant anti-semitism for at least hundreds of years prior (supported by blasphemy laws), and to top it all off the hate speech laws didn't even work! On the contrary, they contributed to the rise of the National Socialists.
In both cases a lack of free speech resulted in a negative outcome. Yet, you seem to be against free speech. Maybe it's your comfort levels, and I agree, that really is a problem with free speech.
I'll take it over the alternatives though.
> Your statement is pure speculation.
So is yours.
> and to top it all off the hate speech laws didn't even work!
I'm not talking about hate speech laws. I'm talking about blasphemy laws. Like I said you seem to not have a particularly strong knowledge of the actual history here, hence my request for a historian who supports your position.
> blood libel from
Funny you bring that up. Guess who propogates blood libel conspiracies today? Q-anon, a conspiracy theory group that overlaps with the people who stormed the capitol building. So you see, even with free speech you can have large groups of people believing absolute nonsense.
You also wrote this:
> for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism
You'll have to forgive my assumption that you were referring to hate speech laws, though I'm not sure what else you would be referring to in the context of this debate. I'm sure you're also clear that the Weimar's hate speech laws protected Judaism and were used against prominent National Socialists.[1]
> > Your statement is pure speculation.
> So is yours.
No, pure speculation occurs when you invoke an alternate timeline. I've speculated based on the existent timeline and factors therein. Yours is akin to fantasy, mine is a deduction. Mine is an answer to "how did that happen?" whereas yours is a "what would happen if…?"
There's no would in my speculation.
> We got damn close here in the US with the Japanese internment. So speech suppression it clearly isn't necessary to imprison an entire ethnic group for political reasons.
Speech was suppressed during wartime. From[2]:
> The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover emergency authority to censor all news and control all communications in and out of the country.
The Supreme Court also upheld the government's right to the internment (among other things) because SCOTUS has previously and consistently ruled that things are different at wartime, which I largely disagree with, along with the internment.
Not that free speech ultimately protects anyone like a magic amulet, it simply increases the likelihood of protection. You and I will no doubt both wear a seatbelt when driving but neither of us will claim it will definitely stop us flying out of our seats, there are more conditions to consider to make that claim.
Which makes this all the more amusing to me:
> Like I said you seem to not have a particularly strong knowledge of the actual history here, hence my request for a historian who supports your position.
Well, I guess I'll have to wait for you to bring forth the materials you say you checked, and perhaps for you to find out what was actually happening during WWII in the US.
> > blood libel from
> Funny you bring that up.
The only source of possible irony relies on misconception and tribalism so we'll have to disagree on its amusing quality. I brought up the blood libel because these are the consequence of competing Abrahamic religions that took hold over large areas and disallow speech that contradicts doctrine, doctrine that includes anti-semitism. Where's the Jew hatred in groups with no religious affiliation - do you find much anti-semitism among Buddhists and Hindus?
> So you see, even with free speech you can have large groups of people believing absolute nonsense.
When did I claim otherwise? Free speech only makes discernment of truth more likely, it does not guarantee it. Rather like having the best lab with the best scientists and best practice methods for your procedures, it will not guarantee you discoveries but it increases the likelihood versus a garage with a self taught scientist who is making it up as they go along, but some discoveries may still happen there too. To think that freedom of speech is the medicine for all ill would be to engage in fallacious thinking.[3]
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...
[2] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1597/free-speech-du...
I've been browsing /pol/ for years, hell almost decades. Its a great place to go to get an idea of just how fringe certain elements of society are becoming. I was actually actively browsing when QAnon was making his posts there.
I thought they were just as ridiculous and far-fetched then as I do now. People become radicalized largely because some condition in their life is lacking. For every single successful mechanical engineer that joins ISIS, there's 99 out-of-work coal miners and factory workers who storm the American capital.
Most people who have everything in their life going great don't end up extremists.
I watched lawyers, doctors and owners of IT companies attack the Capitol.
There are very few struggling coal miners who can afford to fly into DC during the week along with hundreds of dollars in riot gear in order to spend a few days rioting.
Popper draws a clear distinction between those who will have intolerant views but do not engage in violence, and those who do engage in violence. It is only the latter, in Popper's view, that must be restricted.
I still think it's wrong to leak the data.
Many of these people use twitter and gmail too - does that justify a leak from those services? If not, why not?
There were and are legal means for law enforcement to access that data if they need to.
People minimizing this attack and not treating it like a legitimate 9/11 scale crisis for the US are not considering the propaganda win this is for extremist groups domestically and autocratic regimes internationally. Could this be a slippery slope? Sure, but it's not as slippery as the other side of the slope which goes right off a cliff.
There is still plenty of time/space to have debates about how to move forward from here with moderation and privacy on social networks, but for now we are in the middle of an insurrection that needs to be put down.
Also, should another attack take place couldn't platforms knowingly providing services to the capitol attackers find themselves liable for providing material support for terrorists? If I were managing risk at AWS that definitely be a major concern.
My POV, if we wouldn't have a problem doing it to ISIS after an attack on our Capitol, then we shouldn't have problem doing the same to QAnon and these "patriots".
We're still getting groped by the TSA and wrapping up a war from the last time we had a 9/11 scale crisis. We were tricked into spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives invading a nation that had nothing to do with it and we gave some of the less savory government agencies a lot of power which they still have not returned.
I think the public is right to be hesitant to play the knee-jerk reaction game this time around considering how well it turned out last time.
All this "hold on and let's make sure we're not being too unfair to far-right extremists" while they actively recruit and plan more attacks sounds like an under-reaction from a fear of over-reacting.
I think it is right to be worried about the ascendant tech industry being able to quash certain ideas before they have a chance to influence voters at the ballot box.
Just this past 3 months, we've seen true stories about Joe Biden's son banned from posting on social media, anti-Biden news outlets banned from posting, and now the president banned.
I vote straight democrat pretty much every time, so that is where my leanings lie, but I'm not going to shut my eyes as wealth inequality goes over the moon in the past 20 years and consolidated platforms owned by the hyper-wealthy increasingly control what news people even see.
To me, it is entirely inappropriate to be blasé about this point.
Get warrants, subpoenas, etc., and go after those inciting riots/sedition.
This is an absolutely disgusting and disgraceful thing to say.
Far fewer lives were lost, but the impact and implications of this are on par.
Nothing like 9/11 or the OKC bombing has happened in the last 19 years; full stop.
I have lived in DC my whole life, I hate to see this happening in my city, but we can be honest with ourselves.
I remain unconvinced about how close that actually was, nor have I seen a compelling case that it was that close actually made.
Further, before it becomes close to "executing the Vice President", you can bet shots are going to actually be fired. Crowds of rioters behave very differently when gunshots start ringing out.
The people most imminently in danger in that case, as I understand it, were staff in the Speakers Lobby, not members or the Vice President, who were in the chambers.
But as I understand the timeline, the attack, with defenders just on the other side with guns drawn and prepared to fire, on the doors to at least one of the chambers also were ongoing before members had been evacuated from the floor by another exit, so the incident at the Speakers Lobby came very close to being repeated where members were more immediately at risk.
Do you have a source for this? I understand you to be saying that the picture we all saw (of the guns being drawn at a door within one of the chambers) occurred while there were still elected representatives in that chamber?
I’ll try to dig up something; I’ve seen a couple accounts from people in the chamber or galleries that seemed to suggest that (I think specifically the House chamber).
What does "on the United States itself" mean and why does 9/11 meet that standard but not, say, the Pulse nightclub shooting?
On 9/11 there was a plan set in motion to crash a plane in to the Capitol, which only failed because of the bravery of the passengers in that plane. Incidentally, the very same Capitol self described 'patriots' broke into and vandalized last week.
So what made 9/11 have large scale was the (thwarted) plot to crash into the Capitol and the successful attack on the Pentagon? Not the 2600 killed in the WTC?
This seems like a very twisted reading to compare two not-actually-that-similar events.
Rather than engaging in the reasons for why it might be, you choose to insult my reading comprehension. Take care, and hopefully you can be more charitable to those you encounter in-person.
I create a Parler account myself out of curiosity's sake. The platform had basically no moderation, and was rife with open calls to violence. It was absolutely serving as a recruitment & coordination site for domestic terrorism.
Even if the platform had terrible and dangerous content on it, we should avoid assuming that everybody on it supported that content, and we shouldn't celebrate their personal information being leaked.
I am absolutely a privacy advocate. However, in the case where the continued existence of our democracy hinges on rooting out violent domestic terrorists, I am willing to make tradeoffs. At this point, you should think about Parler as a jihadi forum for rednecks.
The real threat to democracy is allowing leaders to stop following the democratic process. For example, on 02021-01-06, 147 congresspeople voted to throw out the votes from an entire state, even after their party had pursued the appropriate legal remedies [0]. Next time, they may succeed in throwing out votes. At that point, USA will be an oligarchy. This is the real threat to democracy.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/...
The country could have terrorist acts every day and still have democracy. Our congresspeople could have their meetings in an underground bunker, wear body armor all the time, and travel in armored vehicles, and it would still be democracy. Democracy means the people decide who has power.
Terrorists can use violence and may change some people minds, but they cannot destroy our democracy. Democracy exists in the minds of US voters.
Hey wait, they had the opportunity to vote their conscience on it? Does that mean they were Constitutionally empowered to raise and decide the question?
The USA is a republic, and explicitly not a democracy, said status having been debated early on and pure democracy was found seriously wanting in the qualities needed for a just and lasting society of free people.
A republic is a form of democracy. Arguing semantics has no place in HN.
And "vote their conscience" is a weasel phrase. They had a duty to tally the votes, a procedure to follow. Some of them didn't want to follow the procedure. Changing the procedure requires a constitutional amendment, agreement from a supermajority of states. Regardless of their individual thoughts on the matter, the laws of the land do not allow them to vote to disregard the law.
So are you neglecting the Electoral Count Act of 1887? If the law and procedure requires they must vote when a proper objection is raised, it is not against the law to vote as they see fit, aka vote freely. This is the generally accepted meaning of "voting their conscience", not vague or misleading and thus not a weaselly phrase.
Perhaps you should cite the Constitutional support for the premise that Congress must vote a particular way when a vote is taken in this case. Especially when actual law and rule allows for the particular question to be raised and put to a vote.
>>A republic is a form of democracy. Arguing semantics has no place in HN.
There is a distinction, as described in Federalists no. 10, Madison proposes that representatives are elected to protect us from the failings of democracy. It is my understanding this is the generally accepted distinction of why we don't vote directly or bind our Senators and Representatives to vote a particular way. I feel it is germane because it means the actions taken were consistent with the specific republican form of government in the USA and to imply they were un-democratic or a threat to democracy is to imply the government is a different form.
In other words there is nothing wrong or unlawful with contesting the electors the way they did. Their only risk in Congress is if Nancy Pelosi (or whomever is Speaker) can gin up a ⅔ majority of members present for a quorum and win a vote to expel the objectors. And of course that can be for any reason she pleases, just like the impeachment. Which is why we may interpret the stated reason as partisanship.
I reviewed the act. It contains rules for handling the situation when a state has not properly selected its electors or certified its votes. Pennsylvania did properly select its electors and did certify its results before the deadline.
The act allows congresspeople to submit written objections, with grounds. The objections submitted on 02021-01-06 were the same lies that were rejected by Republican judges in Pennsylvania and the US Supreme Court. You can read them in [1]. Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey eloquently explained the situation to the Senate [2].
I see nothing in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that would allow Congress to throw out a state's votes. If you can find it, please reply.
Throwing out a state's votes is unacceptable. And it is unconstitutional, regardless of any acts passed by Congress short of constitutional amendments. Our nation has democracy written into its core. No party can throw it away with a vote.
[0] https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/24/ST...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/hou...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/sen...
Not only does chapter 90, section 4 of the original act you cited provide an explicit procedure for raising objections to submitted electoral votes by state, conducting debate, and a vote, but the congressional record you cite shows the Senators and Representatives following the procedure outlined in the original act as incorporated in 3 U.S. Code § 15.
Hardly an unlawful attack on democracy. Lawful objections were raised, lawful debate was held, and a lawful vote was taken.
You originally asserted >> "The real threat to democracy is allowing leaders to stop following the democratic process. For example, on 02021-01-06, 147 congresspeople voted to throw out the votes from an entire state, even after their party had pursued the appropriate legal remedies [ https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/24/ST... ]. Next time, they may succeed in throwing out votes. At that point, USA will be an oligarchy. This is the real threat to democracy."
Like it or not, the Senators and Representatives followed the lawful process. It was not exhausted until the objections were defeated. Asserting there was something "undemocratic" about the objections or the potential of throwing the out the electoral votes is irrelevant, it is not unconstitutional or illegal.
The objective of the process is to end up with someone holding the office of President. If it is true, however, that the election was fraudulent, and that fraud involved disenfranchising the democratic vote for the slate of electors, that would be a threat to democracy, especially if Congress refused to acknowledge it. The courts want no part of it because it's the responsibility of the State Legislatures and Congress.
we need compassion to restrain ourselves from harming others
but I dont think anyone can expect to hide from anyone else on this rock at this point.
Just like certain subreddits weren't banning people just for having posted in certain other subreddits, even if those posts were opposition posts, right?
I think you need to read more Jonathan Haidt, because research shows you're flat out wrong about this.
I think folks here are underestimating how many people just viewed Parler as a right-leaning Twitter and didn't realize how far some corners of it had went or were going.
And honestly, 4chan really is a utopia compared to orange reddit. Removing identities makes conversations less about how the individual appears and more about the substance of the topic.
They don't always do a good job of it, though.
If we don't move past this kind of absolute nonsense, you really will have a violent confrontation on your hands, because you're going to end up alienating millions.
People are forgetting that if they're ok with this sort of behavior now, it'll be difficult for them to argue-against or prevent the same behavior when their opposites are in control.
Will happen? Try has happened. Partisan hacking has been a thing for a decade. Remember the DNC emails? Remember weev?
>People are forgetting that if they're ok with this sort of behavior now
What does it matter if I'm okay with it? Nobody consulted me before breaking into Parler. In fact, they didn't take my opinion into account at all. Sure, grey-hats are somewhat motivated by public opinion, but even Mitch McConnell gave a floor speech on Wednesday angry enough to incite a few keyboard taps.
>it'll be difficult for them to argue-against or prevent the same behavior
Because American politics consistently punishes hypocrisy, right?
I'd argue the opposite: As the rank rhetorical hypocrisy on BLM-related protests vs. Trump protests shows, the marketplace of ideas has broken down and all that really matters is power. We're only a couple steps away from tech/media being able to dictate that we've always been at war with Eastasia, with a horde of willing partisans being eager to punish any sort of dissent on the matter. Being hypocritical is unimportant if you have the ability to mess with the lives of those who are too vocal in pointing out whatever hypocrisy. Most people are perfectly rational in not being willing to risk cancellation by speaking up.
Please tell me how rooting out seditionists is a bad thing.
If someone is committing crimes, then arrest and prosecute them.
You can pretend that people are being persecuted for being a Republican but 30 seconds of fact checking will disprove that. In fact the only ones calling for violence against Republicans are those very same white supremacists and domestic terrorists because it seems that anyone that doesn't align with Donald Trump is somehow not a conservative. Mike Pence isn't a Republican? Really? I can't think of a politician much further right, and somehow he's no longer acceptable.
If your political belief system is "whatever Trump thinks this week" then maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you really stand for.
No, we're not calling everyone a terrorist. Not even everyone on Parler, though clearly some were, and the service rules were set up to facilitate them planning their atrocities. We're calling these terrorists what they are. Pipe bombs and a dead policeman for goodness sake.
Where do we draw the line?
https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-statement-opposing-hr-4192-...
Right???
Ah. Wait. They took one of these actions within an hour of it going up. :P I suppose it'll be no time at all until they take down the account of the person hacking Parler and live tweeting the content being discussed in this article... which they've been doing for that past ... 48 hours.
You don't consider exploiting 2fa fail-open being triggered by deplatforming by their 2fa provider being used to mass password reset accounts and vacuum up their private messages not a security circumvention?
What about using a arbitrary content type upload on their video subdomain to implement an XSS attack to allow them to download all videos, including ones sent privately between users?
There might have been other attacks in the way you describe, but it doesn't seem to be used by the team behind archiving the content.
Honestly, the speculative and proactive accusations of hypocrisy are getting really tiresome. I wish people would stop.
The real crime here is that Parler was collecting sensitive information above and beyond what most social providers were asking for and still made shoddy security decisions.
and what do you think they are?
We need better communication tools -- language seems to be failing us.
This was also a bad thing to do, since, presumably - some of it was intended to be private or hidden.
It will be interesting to see what the results of the content are. There have been many arguments implying that parler was "pretty normal". We can now empirically find out.
As others have noted, this is also a lesson in design and code priorities.
They sacked the capitol and cheered it on (yes, almost exclusively as far as the people on Parler are concerned).
They are indeed the bad guys.
I doubt anyone on HN would take seriously any other service turning over evidence of a crime to authorities because its 'private messages'. We might not like that it is there policy but we damn well would know it is their policy and not use services where it is technically possible to plan crimes?
https://www.ipsos.com/en/american-reaction-pro-trump-mob-ass...
You’re gonna have to find another hyperbolically bad thing to accuse your opponents of fear mongering about.
You mean like that these group was "violently and undemocratically install an authoritarian government"? Did you feel much scared of the possibility of some dictatorship (as opposed to an act of protest in the congress)?
Second, even if they did seriously try to do that, heck, even if they succeeded in establishing an "authoritarian government", that wouldn't be enough to qualify them as "literally nazis".
We don't call all authoritarian government nazis. Just the ones that actually are nazist.
In fact, the most succesful ones we call "business as usual", with the Patriot Act, surveillance, several global wars, torture, etc...
They also had functioning gallows, and a guy with a taser and zip ties running around in the Senate chamber just minutes after it was evacuated, and lots of “kill Mike Pence” shouting.
Some people were there to take selfies. Others were there to take hostages.
How about SS tattoos?
"6MWE" - "6 Million Wasn't Enough"
"1488"
"Camp Auschwitz"
All things seen in the group.
But I get it, still not nazis, neonazi, or other. I guess unless they were card-carrying, dues-paying members of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei?
Yeah, so? If a group of "neo-nazi" tags along, that makes everybody a neo-nazi (much less so, a nazi danger, as neonazi is more like a kind of "edgelord" archetype for far-right leaning people).
If a group had the hammer and sickle or Mao or whatever on their t-shirts on a democratic side protest would it make the people there "communists"?
Or would mean anything about some "danger" to the US of communism becoming installed?
US was, is, and will remain corporatist and capitalist. Democrats, Republicans, and Liberalists all agree on that, and even if they didn't, tough luck, it's not them that have the power, the corporatist elites do.
There is as much "danger" of a fascist coup as there is of a communist overtaking, or as there was of Obama being a radical pro-Black president or Trump "draining the swamp": zero.
The rest are talking points for masses with nothing better to do (and pundits that make money of it) to hit each other with.
My european 2 cents.
Yes but the whole wishing to extend the holocaust and kill more jews thing makes them nazis
> Did you feel much scared of the possibility of some dictatorship
Why are you pretending this about some abstract threat of some vague unspecified dictatorship? If Trump had succeeded in his attempts at gaining a second term, when he lost by a landslide in the democratic and fair election, that would make him a dictator. And it was their goal to try to make that happen.
Peacefully assembling outside the capital with signs would be a protest. Breaking into the capital armed with guns and pipe bombs and zipties looking to take members of congress hostage, killing police that stood in the way, bringing a working gallows and chanting to hang the VP who presides over the senate, during the vote in which they are certifying the election, is an insurrection attempt.
What I'm surprised the most is that with these complex and not obvious questions (at least to me) people without any shadow of a doubt are certain that it is right for big tech to censor Trump, shut down parler and take political sides like it happened.
Maybe Trump is bad but at least i want to see his stupidity or his wrongdoing rather than other people to chew the news and feed me like im an infant.
To me these questions require philosophical debates and dialogue (even with myself) to understand f it is right for a company to impose their political worldview on their clients - I don't feel it is right.
But if others take these positions very easily, to me that is an indication that they got these ideas from somebody else rather than thought them through.
Dare I say, if more technical education was required, some of the issues in US could be, at least, ameliorated.
So all social media then
I seem to remember just a few years back, social media platforms, and the darling media being quite proud of organising violent mobs - or as they preferred to call it, "freedom" - in a movement known as the "Arab Spring"[0]. It was touted as one of the "virtues" of such platforms.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...
I feel the same way about Facebook [1]. This is not whataboutism. I truly believe Facebook should also be shutdown for its role in Genocide.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
Its enough to raise a mob.
Facebook are also central to the investigation: https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/how-facebook-is-complicit-in...
(However, maybe Facebook indeed made things worse, once the Facebook-connected military got involved.)
The UN also said that Facebook played a "determining role" (see the Diplomat link).
Charging phones from car batteries, damn !
1: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou... ; https://twitter.com/OfficialNOI
2: https://twitter.com/Zabehulah_M33/status/1343458261459218432
Upgrade your argument!
I didn't say twitter or Facebook was better.
Either Parler and Twitter are both dangerous or neither of them are.
Personally I think both are dangerous, but thanks to audience self-selection and rules of the platforms, Parler is more dangerous of the two.
Twitter is used for this kind of thing too. So is whatsapp, signal, telegram etc.
Do we ban all Trump marches/meetups just in case those are used as platforms to organize violence? Why don't we just ban meeting up in public for everyone who voted trump because people can use their mouths to arrange violent mobs too.
There's no relationship in what you're saying. Parler is responsible for content on it's platform. It doesn't matter if it's supposedly "neutral" or not.
Parler is a social media app, not a messaging app like signal. People don't go to signal for their latest fake news, they would go to parler and be swayed by a mob of people that continually build off of each other's aggressive behavior. It was a closed loop of people that didn't like being told they're wrong.
There's nothing neutral about parler either, their user base is no mistake. It's entirely intentional, you can't hide behind "freedom of speech" when you're marketing your platform for this behavior.
The memory of all the pathological mob like violence that occurred during the BLM movement which occurred worldwide should still be fresh in all of our memories. If only the actors who incited that violence were held to this same standard.
If I label him a terrorist, that doesn't mean I label all Trump followers terrorists.
Stop thinking so black and white. It's that way of thinking that lead to all of this.
And I find you comparing BLM movement to Trump's supporters "election fraud" bullshit to be absolutely sickening.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667848
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691407
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671284
Objectively, the summer's riots (as opposed to the more numerous peaceful protests) caused more deaths, injuries, and property damage. At the same time, the assault on the capitol was an unprecedented attack on democracy and the peaceful transition of power, to which there is no direct BLM parallel.
For now, I suggest we all stop comparing these things. I don't think many are receptive to either side of the argument. Emotions are still running high, and we're not through the transition of power just yet.
> I suggest we all stop comparing these things.
One group of people were protesting/rioting because police continue to suffer little consequence for murdering Black folks, despite years of effort at reform.
The other group protested/rioted by breaking into the Capitol and threatening to murder politicians because the current POTUS has claimed, repeatedly and without any evidence, that the election he recently lost was somehow rigged against him. Again, for context, this has come from the side of American politics that has for the past four years claimed that "elections have consequences."
To compare these two events on a "look who did more violence" level is reductive at best and at worst a bad faith argument in support of the folks who stormed the capitol.
If "protesting/rioting" includes gunning down unarmed black kids in the street (third link above), count me out.
This is a highly flammable topic and we seem unlikely to agree, so I'd prefer we pause here.
Antonio Mays Jr. was not killed near a protest by a random passerby. He was murdered by armed "anti-fascist" protestors. They shot him in the face with a rifle. It's on camera. The killers audibly confessed to the murder. See this link [1] for the clips, if you must. The footage is disturbing.
[0] https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/george-floyd-pro...
> He was murdered by armed "anti-fascist" protestors.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/26/almost-no...
If you can stomach it, watch the whole video. It is graphic:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0cUYLQkhGmU&t=2m
Another clip with the killer(s) and other protestors repeating, “I didn’t see sh*t!”, the mantra of those who don’t talk to police:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kDmNJ6tO2Lg
Unsurprisingly, Seattle police have made no arrests in the case. Per official statement, the crime scene was destroyed and witnesses aren’t cooperating.
This happened in a residential neighborhood. An unarmed black kid died at the hands of political vigilantes. Rifle bullets entered people’s homes. It barely made national news. Joe Biden felt no need to tweet. Compare that to later coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse. To some, this disparity represents a double standard.
That double standard is the essence of my comparison between this summer’s violence and the storming of the capitol. Both are reckless, deadly, and reprehensible. Both must be condemned. Perpetuating the double standard just perpetuates one group’s grievance, fueling more violence.
You say you're concerned about the violence on both sides and there being a double standard which you find distasteful, and yet all of your posts are attempting to paint the BLM protests with the same violent core as the folks who overran the capitol, which given any kind of context or detail isn't true at all.
To my original point: the context around these events make it clear that they are different and should be judged differently -- context which you've continually ignored to push this narrative.
If there exists a double standard, it isn't that "violence on the left" is suppressed, it's that if the capitol were stormed by BLM protestors who've finally had enough of police violence and systematic racism, they wouldn't have gotten into the building, and they for damn sure wouldn't have walked out under their own power.
You aren't giving the same treatment to the the other side here -- you're not saying "if keeping people safe means the police should be allowed to murder folks / bludgeoning a police officer to death when storming the capitol" so I find it difficult to believe you're merely concerned about the use of violence.
You did, several comments up, state "the assault on the capitol was an unprecedented attack on democracy," which it was, but that's after posting multiple links where you're posting links and evidence trying to discredit the nationwide BLM protests by painting them as violent, so again, your bias is evident.
I’m only trying to discredit the violence, as I made clear in my original comment.
If you’ll casually assign me false motives and claim I’m “intellectually dishonest,” I see no reason to continue our discussion.
That's totally the same as invading the center of government decked out in illegal guns and armor while most of the line of succession is there, chanting your intention to murder them while breaking down doors, stealing government laptops, building a gallows to hang the politicians you don't like with, dragging police officers outside to beat them to death, all the while declaring the start of a new civil war, and while sympathetic insiders feed them real-time information about the location of the politicians you intend to kill, etc etc etc.
Hate speech is not protected. Plotting and committing treason against the United States government is not protected.
Say unimaginably hateful shit, see how fast it takes to get punched in the mouth. Simple as that.
Yes it is. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. [1]
> Say unimaginably hateful shit, see how fast it takes to get punched in the mouth. Simple as that.
This is incredibly dangerous and short-sighted. I can tell you've likely never been in a fight, or very, very few.
People who think this way need to be very fucking careful with their rhetoric here, because while they think they might be the Billy Badass who'll set the world 'right', there's a lot of other Billy Badasses out there who might just jerk a knot in their ass, either temporarily or permanently.
You might want to take a more reasonable approach and figure out why someone feels the way they feel first.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
Fortunately our founders realized how necessary speech is, especially speech we don't like. I'm waiting to see Noam Chomsky get canceled for saying, “Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
> I have no comment on you telling that other guy to be very fucking careful
He should be thankful, because I'm trying to save him from getting seriously injured - perhaps even killed one day. People who have a lot of experience fighting, especially having either seen or participated in fights outside of a controlled environment, will tell you just how incredibly dangerous it is to fight someone for whom you have no idea of their capabilities. You might have just picked a fight with someone with advanced combat training who will hand you your ass... even worse, you might have come upon someone with enough training you to seriously harm you, but not enough training to know how to exercise restraint.
You are far better served to try to de-escalate a situation than to actively jump in like your John Wick... because you're not. John Wicks of the world are only fighting when they have no other option.
Parler's members are the rejects that couldn't survive on mainstream platforms due to their poor conduct. That userbase just planned and executed an attempt at insurrection against the US government.
The market overwhelmingly has agreed that Parler violated ethical standards egregiously enough that severing business ties is appropriate.
I fail to see the importance of these people's privacy in the wake of recent events. I also fail to have sympathy for people who trusted this hacked-together Twitter clone with their personal information.
Leaking this information sends a clear message: Extremism and violence are intolerable, and every possible means is at our disposal to fight back against it. That includes exposing violent extremists to the light of day.
Then I fail to have any sympathy and solidarity with you. You're just another violent extremist in my eyes, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend by a long shot.
Can you explain how not caring that a bunch of people got their data leaked makes you a "violent extremist"?
> He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
But if you don't mind their use of "violent extremists" apropos nothing, no, I don't particularly "care to" explain myself to you for using the same phrase in response to them -- I just do it because I can. You could simply remove or ignore my re-using that phrase and my point would stand unchanged. Address the core of an argument, don't just play "gotcha" while ignoring the context and the woods for the trees.