I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?).
The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants like that), and they all would throw "update your flash player!" malware popups.
Next to each of these links on Parler were view counts - 207, 412, 897, etc - of people who'd clicked the link to view the article.
I could not reply to the link with a comment like "this has malware" because... my account was not verified. Only 'badged/verified' accounts can comment on 'links'. AND... the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). This becomes incredibly lopsided "free speech" biased against moderating/critical voices.
It was literally a field day for bots to post malware garbage and have thousands of victims per day, and no ability for people to warn others.
On one 'article' I followed there were comments from people saying "I don't understand how Parler works" in the comments on the linked article. Indeed...
"We're in! We're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!"
https://www.businessinsider.com/derrick-evans-capitol-siege-...
The "wrong kind of association" for creating a social media account?
Beyond that, if a platform is known for encouraging behaviour that you and your peers disapprove of. It might make sense for you to avoid registering there in case your peers get the wrong impression of you should the information leak. While not exactly social media, you only need to look at the fallout from Ashley Madison for why you might not want to sign up somewhere because of "the wrong kind of association".
Why social media would be the only forum exempt from this line of thinking I can't imagine.
I guess I was approaching that question from a different angle where "wrong kind of association" was from the perspective of Big Brother. So I probably made an incorrect assumption about what the parent comment intended.
I agree with you that there probably is an element of this in the parent comment. Linking your "Cell phone at a protest" to you is probably going to be at the behest of the government.
What the implications of social media and "big tech" are in our society is definitely a conversation worth having. It's just a shame that it's often only brought up in order to distract or deflect attention from bad behaviour. The conversation would be much more productive if it happened at a time when people weren't so inflamed by the issue of the day.
Perhaps another question to ask would be, "How fair is it that others are pigeonholed to platforms like this and undoubtedly get the "wrong kind of association"?
Are we reducing certain thoughts, beliefs and, dare I say, questions indiscriminately down to "crimethink"?
How sad is it that our free society has turned into this? So much for tolerance.
Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people.
Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.
Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?
> Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?
The best way to get a bunch of white supremacists and insurrectionists to robustly, undeniably identify themselves might be to ask them to upload their ID. :P
The best method for target acquisition, sure. If someone is so perturbed by their reality being rejected by the mainstream that they're willing to sign up for an alternative to maintain their worldview, then running that alternative would be a fantastic way to identify people at risk of radicalization, domestic terror risks, etc.
And if we're being clear, the USIC has run companies with this explicit mission in the past. In fact, running a company to provide one service at face level while providing a different service to the IC underneath is the mode that yielded some of the biggest intelligence wins in Western history. See Crypto AG.
That said, no reason to run it themselves; they're well aware that someone else will end up running it for them, and with security nowhere near front-of-mind for any startup, they can just pick up the key from underneath the doormat and take the farm.
No, but it’d be a really good way to get behavioral data on people and use a government ID to tie that data to real identities rather than pseudonyms.
Of course they already have all government IDs. But tying it to a username helps correlate data across other services, and additionally if the user checks from mobile phone or other device, tying it to recent IPs could also be useful. OPSec could prevent some of that, but how many users are doing that?
Just a thought. Not an endorsement.
To me, the more realistic (and scary!) explanation is this thing is just one huge identity theft machine.
It's a interesting thought to entertain but Parler is most likely not this.
I'm not saying it's likely, but certainly possible.
Actually why the flying fuck would someone think it is a good idea to plan an insurrection on this site in the first place?? It's like opposite day opsec
Turkey and Russia are good examples of how this attack works. It relies on a large number of people, possibly even a majority, to overthrow the republic with a populist government with no rules the leader can't change or selectively enforce. The leader shuts down one threat to himself at a time, making his control permanent.
IMO the military is obligated to arrest Trump for treason, which was the turkish backstop, and after a few rounds Turkey finally missed the last time. So once it is used, you have to patch your system to drop privileges from the Presidents office for the next round.
One example would be cambridge analytica...
If they were so concerned with "freedom" why would they have the following in their terms of use?
“Parler may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason.”
<puts on tinfoil hat> Maybe the entire site is just an FBI honeypot for right-wing extremists? (It's obviously not an NSA honeypot, because they could afford to self-host.)
So spare us all the "No hate and violence on our platform" BS. Either you go after all hate and violence or you are just a hypocrite.
Stop trying to convince these people of hypocrisy. They aren’t listening to critics and they lack the ability to see the world outside of the tight frame they were provided. We are all like this most of the time but I find that the moral panics have created situations where online communication is not possible along political lines.
Focus on you, not them. People who build ideas from self-reflection are less volatile and not as susceptible to moral panic than those who define themselves by politics.
If all people tried as hard to understand each other as they do framing their political opponents as evil, we wouldn’t be in this place. Interesting times.
To the best of my knowledge, YouTube tries hard to do this. And Twitter has been trying to do a better job at this. And Facebook hasn't been particularly good about doing this at all. If I am completely wrong about this, someone should set the record straight.
Perhaps their position is evolving. I'd be curious to revisit the evolution of this problem 365 days from now and take another checkpoint.
But... horses, barn, door
The fact that a platform didn’t do the right thing before, doesn’t mean it can’t do it now.
What, you came out of the womb with perfect understanding of right from wrong?
What I learned the hard way (as hard as having light PSTD) in the course of 3 years is that just doesn't work. You only need a handful of motivated people who won't stop at anything to push their agenda and narrative to create an extremely toxic environment which only favors the best liars and the most unprincipled people.
It's really a cultivation effort - otherwise your "idea garden" will be overrun with weeds and pests.
This whole deplatforming thing will have vast unintended consequences. It will hit people like you, because these movements always eat there own.
Sure about that?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=...
Of course it does! That’s like saying ethics don’t apply to corporations.
If you meant the first amendment you would be correct but free speech is a long standing liberal ideal and is absolutely not the same thing nor is it what is being discussed in this context.
> Of course it does!
Well, it does in that free speech is exactly the liberty of owners of non-government resources to choose how to control their use in expressing, relaying, and amplifying speech.
But “free speech” doesn’t provide any entitlement for any other party against the interests of the owners of non-government resources.
Where did the parent comment mention the government? They referenced the concept of free speech. That is not the same thing as the first amendment which is what you are referring to.
And that's before considering the insane uphill battle any social media platform has to fight to become as popular as the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc - assuming the presence of "disgusting content" does not limit its ability to ever scale that much to begin with.
Btw, I'm using the phrase "disgusting content" to quote the OP because I can't think of a more appropriate phrase, not to indicate sarcasm or cast doubt on the nature of the content. I've never been to Parler, but I trust that there was some pretty awful things being said there.
You see something you don't like, don't click on it.
You see someone you don't like, just block or mute them.
Almost every platform lets you choose the level, of lack thereof, of discourse you want to have with people with whom you disagree.
There are many other possible attackers who won't be coordinating themselves on social networks in the open.
Capitol et al. should have robust enough security to keep most threats out, because some threats just won't be easily predictable in advance.
If I orchestrate a criminal conspiracy to rob Fort Knox, it is still a criminal conspiracy when it eventually fails.
And it should have.
We do need to think about the precedents we are setting with respect to free speech. It’s possible that action might be needed in the short term to moderate these channels. But we must also consider the longer term in a world that is rapidly evolving.
I’m less concerned about specific, currently existing platforms like Parler, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These “social media” platforms are mere trinkets and could go away and society would carry on. In moderating or completely dissolving them we lose little.
I am more concerned about the nature of communication when the channels of communication are centrally controlled and/or controlled by private entities. We have no idea how digital communications will evolve or how important they could become.
Our lives are increasingly become digital… Imagine a world 50 or 100 or X years from now when people never leave their homes (except perhaps through VR?) and nearly all human interaction is via digital means. There’s a good chance those digital means will be run by private entities. So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how those would be protected in the future, and that means being careful about what precedent we set today.
Are we really willing to have all of our communication moderated or potentially terminated in a such a future?
It’s true that we might need to take action in the present, but let’s not forget that we are simultaneously shaping our futures.
The doom may be inevitable. who knows? I don't mean to be a defeatist. But I would say if a single private entity (or alliance) did control all digital communication, any actions they took could be invisible to anyone that opposed them, assuming they had sufficiently advanced machine learning capable of preventing subversive communication. You would need alternative options for communication, digital or otherwise to have any hope of overcoming such a hypothetical scenario.
My hope would be that we continue to have utilities such as phone lines, that internet would ultimately end up treated as a utility in the same sense as phone lines (especially if it completely replaces them, which is largely is doing), radio (just as ham radio operators believe in the importance of maintaining their systems), etc.
And my other hope would be that we continue to legislate and enforce against monopolies, not just on capitalistic entities but especially on privately run communication channels.
I don't know if that's true. I downloaded the app a few months ago to check it out. I followed some of the same folks I followed on Twitter (I guess you'd call them center-right?) and it was basically civil discourse about politics.
I didn't see anything "disgusting" and I didn't work hard to avoid it. Granted I didn't spent a ton of time in the app and didn't explore deeply, but the claim that it was just filled to the gills with something terrible doesn't ring true to me.
Unless the definition of disgusting is "someone who may not have voted for Biden" - but I don't share that definition and I don't think most sane people do.
I disagree with this. My experience with Parler was very limited, but from a quick glance, I was not able to find any call for violence. I'm sure it exists, but the sense I got is that the vast majority of content and accounts are simply posting conservative content. Do you have evidence that "disgusting content" (whatever that means) is its "reason for existing"? That seems like a self-serving editorial conclusion rather than something borne out by hard evidence.
Trump's own daughter and grandsons are Jewish.
"black, hispanic":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc
"anti-lgbt":
Trump himself attended several gay marriages in public way before running for president, late 90s/early 00s. None of the examples Amazon or Twitter gave were anti-LGBT. Trump got 72 million votes. Statistically, there is 7 million LGBT atleast who voted for him.
It can be true that both:
- The NYT deserves a lot of blame for the lead up to the iraq war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War)
- Newspapers generally do a really good job of fact checking the articles they print
But further, even just acting in good faith can be a defense against libel. It's only when you knowingly publish a false statement that you get in legal hot water.
This is why Fox news and the like have been doing 180s on voter fraud lies. It's not because they have the best interest of the public at heart, it's because they are trying mitigate liability.
Have you forgotten 3 years of the MSN saying Trump's presidency was illegitament because he stole the election by coluding with the Russians?
The issues regarding Russian interference were not centered on collusion, but on ... well, interference (which some believe went so far as to include actual collusion).
Mueller's report and the Senate report did find conclusively that the Russians did interfere, and did so with the goal of getting Trump elected. Mueller said that they did not find evidence of active collaboration between the campaign and the Russians ... here's the current Wikipedia summary:
>did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities". Investigators ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved and due to testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined. However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts
Again, I recall essentially nobody in any position of power (certainly not elected Senators) saying the Trump's election was illegitimate. People did say that his election was aided by Russian interference (Mueller and the Senate investigation state this clearly), and that it was/is unfortunate to have a president elected without winning the popular vote.
The faulty NYT reporting gave the government a certain level of cover to allow them to do what they already planned to do. Parler was a forum for participants to discuss and actively plan sedition. And there's already violence threatened in the days around inauguration so it stands to reason it could have served the same role again.
Actually, looking up the numbers right now, the total civilian death rate is perhaps 1 million at most, more likely somewhere in the 100,000s. Iraq Body Count gives ~200k civilian deaths; estimation from the number of internally-displaced peoples (basically figuring that displaced-to-dead ration is between 5:1 and 10:1) suggests a number more like ~700k civilian deaths. Extrapolating excess death counts suggest that the latter number is more accurate.
Can we stop with the "whataboutism" already?
So I guess they were involved, but the journalists in the organization in the time did not have the power or the information to swim against the currents of what was happening. Even if they had shut down their paper, we would have gone to war with Iraq.
On the other hand, Parler has purposefully created a space for people to plan violence against the state, and refused requests to be more careful about moderating.
And that is why truth by consensus is not a good way for a reporter to report compared to actually investigating somethng beforehand.
But all humans are self-serving hypocrites, it is in our nature.
So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why they get taken more seriously. Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US.
Too often, you can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. This time, we saw it in time. I commend these companies for taking a stand, despite the obvious backlash they'll suffer as a result.
Apple and Amazon absolutely have the legal right to not do business with anyone, for any reason; and they have the ethical obligation to not do business with anyone openly proposing violence.
Your right though -- you often can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. Sometimes it comes from the place you least expect.
It's really hard to argue that conservative voices are completely silenced when the have the largest network news television station in the country. Take a look at the New York Times best seller list sometime and look at how many conservative authors make the list.
Yes, you can't spread fake bullshit on Twitter anymore about how the election was stolen but even that would've been ok until 5 people died trying to overthrow the capital.
Actions have consequences, and unfortunately for conservatives those consequences are a purge from social media as big business seeks to distance itself from radical right-wing politics.
Democracy won here, sorry.
"You're the only one who's confused. BLM is both a sentiment and a real political organization. The sentiment is overwhelmingly popular whereas the actual political movement is not."
Yeah, that's not confusing at all. Kind of like "Hey, 'Defund the Police' doesn't mean defund the police" Maybe the organizers should hire (better) PR firms.
You're trying to conflate the detailed political views of an organization with people who tend to agree that Black people need to be treated like human beings by police officers.
I also agree, 'Defund the Police' is a shit term for Police Reform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Black_Lives
Demanding that people all be treated equally by law enforcement isn’t far left, I thought that was important to state that.
If you consider the silencing of organized threats to overthrow the US government by neo-Nazis and Confederates to be acts against "conservative voices," this tells us a lot about what "conservatism" means now.
Almost all private companies are authoritarian. Examples of non-authoritarian companies might include co-ops.
The USA isn't really a democracy. For it to be democratic it would have to use more democratic voting systems than FPTP and the electoral college.
It's an oligarchy, but by the ruling class, which includes the big tech companies.
> Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US.
Unless it's one where they are in charge.
It's self-evidently impossible for Trump and the red tribe to overthrow the US system of government, they simply don't have control of enough of the levers of power.
It would be a lot easier for Biden/Harris and the blue tribe to do so, as they control a lot more of the levers of power (e.g. academia, journalism, big tech).
We have the closest thing to a democracy that any country has. I'm not going to split hairs about what a "real" democracy is. The fact is, our democracy is good enough that we, the people, (barely) stopped a fascist leader from maintaining power for the indefinite future, despite his very sincere desire to hold on to that power.
Your overall point is reasonable, but this is a reach there are many countries now that are at least as democratic as the US by any reasonable definition, and some pretty supportable arguments that some of them are meaningfully more democratic.
It's not that interesting to argue about I think though, because the differences are pretty small, and there is a huge gulf between all of the democratic countries and the non-democratic ones.
Is there any historical precedent for such a weakly armed group of people[1] overthrowing a heavily armed government?
Seems like hyperbole suggest they almost succeeded in overthrowing the most heavily armed government in the world.
But its naive to think the most heavily armed and powerful government in the world was nearly overthrown by a mob of people armed with fire extinguishers, zip ties, pepper spray, and little to no guns.[1]
No they didn't. Ransacking a building isn't overthrowing a government.
> We have the closest thing to a democracy that any country has.
Ha ha ha -- good joke, I could do with a laugh
> I'm not going to split hairs about what a "real" democracy is.
It's one where the government does what the people want.
> we, the people, (barely) stopped a fascist leader
Trump isn't a fascist. To be a fascist he would have to be more intelligent and have more coherent beliefs.
> despite his very sincere desire to hold on to that power
Nor does Trump want power. He wants attention -- narcissistic supply.
Trump's actually to lazy to exercise power (as well as being too stupid); that's why he refuses to read memos more than a page long.
Then it becomes martial law time, with Trump retaining power.
How close is that?
What in the hell do you think would have happened if they had caught up to any member of Congress? Seriously. Even if you foolishly assume the most charitable and peaceful of intentions, the size of the mob and physical violence on display going through the halls of the Capitol should make it painfully obvious that any Democratic member of Congress they happened upon would have ended up seriously injured. The mob beat a cop to death.
There's simply no way a rational person could come to the conclusion that the mob wouldn't have injured or killed Congresspeople. If you can't see the mob's intent you're either being willfully obtuse or disastrously ignorant. There's not a charitable middle ground as these people documented themselves during the riot and months leading up to it.
Do you believe that BLM rioters who chanted at politicians and cops and had various weapons intended to murder them? BLM rioters broke through barricades and smashed windows as well. Some BLM rioters killed multiple cops as well.
If I saw a BLM riot break into a building with politicians I would hold the same view I hold with these people. They may do violence, but we don't know for sure.
When people broke into the Wisconsin capital years ago over act 10 I didn't assume they were going to murder people.
I don't like to assume entire groups are going to do violence. When some individuals do violence in a group I don't assume the entire group wants to do violence.
I mean after you beat numerous police officers and murder one.
One person killing a cop doesn't mean the whole group was going to use violence.
And they weren’t stopping their co-“protestors” from beating cops, there were more assaulted.
And we know who planted the bombs, they already arrested multiple individuals who were armed, had pipe bombs or Molotov cocktails and who were photographed at the building.
I agree that people who attacked cops and watched it happen were willing to do violence. They should be in jail. They appear to be a minority of the rioters. That is all I was trying to say.
There was a van that had some molotov cocktails and bombs. These appear to belong to the rioters. I am talking about the bombs placed at the capital and at the RNC headquarters. Just because someone has a bomb doesn't mean they planted bombs nearby. I don't like assuming things like that.
Those people dressed like Huck Finn Braveheart had as much chance of overthrowing the US government as memelords did kidnapping an alien and bringing intergalactic peace.
This feels like 9/11 all over again. You got the worst legislation in US history as a result of 9/11. (the Patriotic Act)
What's going to be the Patriotic Act for the internet now everyone is convinced we are being attacked? We know they want to get rid of Section 230. How bad is the law going to be that replaces it?
When I read other comments expounding on how close we came to a coup, I can't help but roll my eyes as memories of being stuck in Egypt at the beginning of 2011 surface again. It's tough to not go on a rant about the order of magnitude of violence, uncertainty, fear, etc. between what happened with the violent nuts at the capital and a coup.
Not to say that the safety and/or lives of some political leaders weren't at risk, but once you've huddled in a dark apartment while a true overthrow is in play, you'll have no problem distinguishing between the two.
Then there's the whole topic of Boebert and her obsession with carrying a gun around Congress in the days leading up to the event then tweeting their locations live during the incident. It looks like telegraphing in hindsight; like she knew what was going down.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-...
> House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) mentioned that looters had found their way to his unmarked, third floor office and stole his iPad. He questioned how they could locate that office but not his clearly marked ceremonial office in Statuary Hall.
Bizarrely, the FBI even concluded Scalise's shooting wasn't politically motivated because the assailant was a wife-beater whose wife had got fed up with him and left him, and everyone in the press went along with it - even though if we applied this principle to domestic terrorists in general, the US probably wouldn't have anyone who counted as a domestic terrorist.
We are, literally, being attacked by fascists, anarchists, and neo-Nazis.
As I said, it's hard to see these things until it's too late. What happened on Wednesday was nearly the end. If you still don't see it, you're wearing blinders.
Like I'm saying powerful people want to convince America we are being attacked. The best way to do that is to make it look like a real threat. They basically left the front door open, where BLM protesters got tear gas immediately. Do you disagree that the response to the two groups of protesters was a little uneven?
The only difference in our opinions is that I think the response was on purpose. Huck Finn Braveheart is not a criminal mastermind. The number of protesters were miniscule compared to the BLM protesters. If the secret service and police actually wanted to stop them it would have been very easy.
We don't need to crack down on the mob, but we do need to address the situation which led to it's rise.
The electoral college is an outdated piece of government 'software' that has been repeatedly exploited in recent years. Through 2016, there were 58 presidential elections. In 5 of these, the popular vote didn't match the electoral vote. About 8.6% historically.
But for the last couple of decades, excluding this last election which is apparently still being argued, that percentage has been 40% instead of the 6.8% historically.
If Trump's re-election argument fails, that life number will likely drop to 33.3% in my recent subjective experience compared to 8.5% historically, or rise to 50% in recent experience compared to 10.2% historically.
Either way, these numbers mean something's wrong. "That's just a statistical variation you see in any set of data when giving it enough numbers" is not likely with 58 and 59 datapoints. Particularly with the inclusion of other data.
If you check the history logs, you'll see a technological explosion the last couple of decades that coincides with these electoral results that suggest exploitation of the system. Technology allowing fine grained microtargeting is only getting better, and it's being used to exploit the electoral system.
This time with disinformation campaigns and fine grained behavioral tracking and analysis (eg, Cambridge Analytica).
"Yes, we say we're a democracy but technically we're a republic so that means everything is fine and we don't need the numbers to always match up with the voting majority." I mean, I guess. Sure. Until we decide to push exploitation further, beyond the boundaries of the game we've set up.
This time it looks like the actors in the system missed the margin of exploitability within the game and went searching for new exploits. Instead of acknowledging the loss, they spammed every court they could find with useless lawsuits.
Like a malware bot checking every port to try to fingerprint services and check for vulnerable versions. And they turned the disinformation dial up to 11, inciting their base to keep their political machine operational since it's got a 4 year reboot cycle and it'd take time for their port scanning to finish.
This tactic led to a mob rioting. And it's unfortunate, but the mob were ultimately a system mechanic that got out of control. They were the tools or were 'acted upon' in a systems thinking perspective, rather than actors in the system. The actors were wielding them as a tool, and like any tool, irresponsible handling resulted in injury.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-do...
Websites like 4chan, 8kun, Stormfront, etc have been pushed out of mainstream hosting providers since forever. This isn't new. What is new is venture funded hate sites. This is big money trying to make a buck on selling ads to the most radical. Literally anyone who's watched the rise and fall of these free speech zones on the internet knew that relying on infrastructure provided by companies like Amazon was beyond stupid.
You can put whatever you want on the Internet, there's lots of hosting companies around the world that are willing to help. Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing to do you with.
This is precisely my point! Who gets to decide what's reasonable discourse?
I personally don't think the whole rank and file of establishment press jumping over each other to get in line behind the US state and starting two truly godawful wars is reasonable.
If I was in charge of distributing news to people in the early 2000s, I'd have simply disallowed all of it and made sure people only heard opinions about how the USA is the world's leading terror state. How would you like it if I did that? Luckily, you'll never have to find out because I don't have the power Amazon et al now have.
> Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing to do you with.
This is a deflection. I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even dream of.
Cheer it on at your own risk!
If it escalates to violence it's not reasonable, that's it. It gets muddy around state sponsored violence but the assumption is that we already have controls around that. I think that's a reasonable line to draw. If I go on Twitter and make specific threats to other users I believe that Twitter is within reason to prevent me from using their platform.
> I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even dream of.
I agree with most of what you're saying. We as a society have handed over what I believe to be the vast majority of our day to day communication to a handful of companies that have no motive in mind other than profit. Social media has been shaping our society for the worse in way less overt ways for the last 15 years by driving eyeballs to controversial posts/topics to keep up engagement.
I'm not pretending to have the answers, what I'm trying to point out is the phenomenon of big companies avoiding hosting questionable content is not new. What is new is the ubiquity of social media in our lives and politics.
I think we're better without it personally.
I know you think "facilitating a violent mob" applies more to Parler than the New York Times piece...but I'm going to disagree. Parler was anything but 'reasonable', but The New York Times (or individuals thereof) creating propaganda to lead a nation to war...can be described as facilitating a violent mob.
Now, in practice, it might be more accurate to call these markets oligopolies (certainly cloud infrastructure is more this), but this still leaves a few companies with dramatic power over important parts of society.
And monopoly is a problem for the government to solve; these companies aren't 'evil' (any more than most others at least, except in virtue of their size), and the lasting solution is not to try and shame them or call them out here or claim victimhood (as the right has done) - though exercising voice can work as a short term tactic sometimes.
Where would the authority come from to force Amazon to support a message board they believe is for the purpose of inciting and organizing violent insurrection?
Why shouldn’t Amazon be able to make judgements about who it’s safe to do business with? Why should Parler’s decisions about who to do business with override Amazon’s?
Suppose Amazon did something Parler didn’t like, and as a result Parler decided to move to a different provider... should Parler be forced to stay with Amazon after all?
But if you look at this situation and don't see problems that are expanding beyond the ability of laissez faire contracts to account for (I'll be specific: it's the concentrated accumulation of communicative and cultural capital to a tiny number of minimally publicly accountable, opaque, private, exceedingly deep-pocketed firms), you're burying your head in the sand.
The first amendment does not prevent businesses from terminating a relationship.
edit: my opinions are my views and dont represent anyone elses
based (presumably, but I'm not a constitutional scholar) on the 14th amendment's section 3:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
These corporations are societally expected to uphold a cultural respect for free speech and the rights granted in the First Amendment, but there is no legal basis to compel them to allow speech or activity they do not approve of.
Extrajudicial behavior such as terrorizing a legislature is harmful to these corporations’ profitable predictability. Operators would be in violation of their fiduciary duties to allow such a direct threat to their bottom line to continue, let alone grow.
In other words, money cares more about itself than anyone’s feelings.
I agree. Those are the facts, for sure.
> money cares more about itself than anyone’s feelings.
No argument.
> terrorizing a legislature is harmful to these corporations’ profitable predictability
Strongly agree. This explains AWS's economic motivation. It's not that they just care so much about democracy and rule of law, though a liberal (read: Democrat loyal) employee culture there is probably also a source of pressure pushing them toward the move. In this case the stars align: liberal employees want it, and they can have it because it aligns perfectly with AWS's economic incentives.
I think where we part ways is in thinking this is good for society. My problem with it is not that it violates any laws, but that it amounts to an incredible concentration of power in the realm of cultural production.
Is this, legally, a free speech issue on its own? No, and I support Amazon’s right to “nope” out of anything they want.
But in the current context of the rush to also prevent open Trump support in other areas like payment processing, and the way the media is hellbent on trying to inextricably link Trump support with terrorism, it should be apparent that there’s a larger effort in play here, that feels highly politically motivated.
What bothers me at this point isn’t whether Amazon has the legal right to do this (they do).
What bothers me somewhat is that there is a clear chilling effect that is intended across the board for a huge portion of the country.
What bothers me even more, is that so many intelligent, well intentioned people are practically giddy about it.
We don’t all have to agree politically in any capacity, but I would at least hope we would have enough empathy to judge this in the context in which any reasonable person would see this on the other side, and be willing to advocate, at the very least, that we do this carefully and with respect for our fellow neighbors. Instead, I see absolute celebration about what can very fairly be seen (whether rightly or wrongly) as an attempt to ostracize millions of Americans.
It literally makes the problem that the people supporting this are CLAIMING they are trying to solve worse. I think it works wonderfully for the problem they are ACTUALLY solving, which is to cement an image of normal members of the political opposition as radicals on the verge of terrorism.
I spoke to my brother last night.
In an utterly predictable fashion, the Parler shutdown has made him worse. It turns out that when multiple global corporations collude to halt the communications of people who think they are being persecuted by a colluding body of global corporations, it makes their movement stronger. Who would have thought?
A great point. I have yet to hear any response at all to this problem from the pro-censorship camp, much less a convincing one.
Every attempt to solve the problem creates more problems.
In the past, I would be able to help talk people through their conspiracy theories to come to a logical conclusion that what they were hearing was too big, too harmful, or otherwise incapable of accomplishing anything to actually be true.
That approach is becoming harder the bigger this becomes.
Trump's opposition is going to be giddy about Trump's downfall and Parler's removal, the same way Trump's supporters were giddy when Trump won. It is not reasonable to expect the mass of political partisans on Facebook and Twitter to adhere to a code of civility.
If your principles are altered by the behavior of strangers on Twitter, they aren't really principles, right?
Sure. But seeing how many of these “giddy” people are blue checkmarks at real news organizations makes folks antsy about conservative news outlets (including mainstream ones) coming under attack as a response to the the Capitol Hill riot.
So given that, the only reasonable conclusion I can come up with this that this is essentially an enemy force living in our country - thousands of terrorists and perhaps millions of terrorist sympathizers. Our only goal at this point is to deny them aid, support, and the tools to organize effectively.
Like it or not, we have entered into an era of asymmetric warfare with what amounts to a terroristic cult in the United States.
This is exactly part of the problem: The hyper-dramatic reaction to a mob of political extremists that forcibly took over a public government building that occurred when the mob was right-wing, and when the building was the DC Capitol, that didn't at all occur when entire neighborhoods, court houses, police precincts, and Federal Courthouses had the exact same occurrence, with a minimal reaction from the press.
My brother isn't mentally ill, anymore than the people dressed in black shooting green lasers in the eyes of Federal officers guarding the Federal Courthouse in Portland are mentally ill. If anyone had bothered to focus on the dangerous radicalization when it was people who they happen to agree with politically, maybe we'd be a bit further ahead on countering it. Instead, we waited until it was people on the other side of the spectrum to notice how dangerous the echo chambers have become, and will label these people members of a cult, without acknowledging the absolute nut jobs on our own side. I was in Portland over the summer, and the crowds around the courthouse were mirror images of the crowds around the capitol. The amount of derangement on display was equivalent. Instead of MAGA gear, it was all black bloc gear, but that's about the only difference.
You are clearly a part of this sectarian viewpoint, because I'm sure you're going to tell me numerous reasons why ONLY these people are terrorists, and not the people who occupied several city blocks of Seattle with assault rifles for months over the summer (with no permission from the residents). I view them all as lunatic, dangerous terrorists, whether they have a MAGA hat or BLM shirt on, provided they are engaging in destruction of property or violence.
To me, it boils down to something simple? There are apparently two groups of people who will lie to you about whether it’s raining outside right now. One group just tried to overthrow the government, so I’m obviously hoping they lose. But that doesn’t make me thrilled about the other group using this as an opportunity to press their advantage and further dominate media outlets.
Trump has moved himself outside of the system of American democracy and to this day refuses to acknowledge a democratic election result[1]. So yes, actively supporting him at this point is supporting an end to American democracy, pretty objectively. Linking the overthrow of the democratic order with terrorism, just after a mob entered the capitol and successfully interrupted the democratic order for multiple hours, doesn't feel a huge leap.
Being conservative isn't linked with terrorism. Being libertarian isn't linked with terrorism. Supporting somebody who rejects democracy is linked with terrorism. It's seems pretty clear cut to me.
[1] He said that a new administration will enter office but never that it does so rightfully based on a legitimate election.
No. "Rejecting democracy," a position held by myriad political currents, each of which probably means something different by the term, is basically a run-of-the-mill ideological position. (It's not one that I hold personally, in case anyone is thinking about downvoting for "extremism.")
You know what's linked with terrorism?
Terrorist acts. That is: sporadic acts of intense, spectacular violence and devastation designed to rock and destabilize some existing political order. Usually but not always from "below" (sometimes it's literally from above, like from a B-52).
I'm concerned pretty deeply, but very, very far from being terrorized by the pathetic spectacle at the Capitol. One reason for that is I don't take the extremely hyperbolic US press as literally as so many seem to.
Terrorism is subjective relative to the system in power. And I said "linked to" not "is". Having the opinion isn't terrorism. But giving money or vocal support to people who then invite others to or themselves try to violently overthrow a form of government is - from the subjective perspective of people in the current system - closely linked to terrorism. If they had succeeded in installing Trump as the continued leader in a post-democratic US, it wouldn't have been terrorism. Because they would've been judged under the new system of government. But they didn't succeed so far. So from the perspective of a post-Trump democratic government, it was terrorism. Terrorism doesn't mean every single person is scared afterwards, so your personal feelings towards it aren't the defining factor.
> to have some disgusting content on it.
You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter.
> And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes"
> and social media do not mix.
As with all free speech, it had legal limits, such as threats of violence. We can argue about how effective the moderation system was in Parler, but I know for a fact that they repeatedly removed material that broke the law.
> Capitol Riots and the posts were still there. If they had
> any moderation it was not at all effective even for the
> most obviously unacceptable content.
That's clearly a failing of the moderation system. I imagine they were very overwhelmed that day, as all social media platforms probably were (including Twitter and Facebook from what I saw).
One problem Parler specifically are up against is that they were already unofficially blacklisted in multiple places that would allow them to raise the funding to hire moderators, due to cancel culture and the fear of it. They already couldn't get advertising, investments, etc. Now the situation is even worse, and when it reappears, it will likely have even less resources for content moderation.
The only way out for them will be to distribute the problem of content moderation as some other platforms have apparently done (I am told Minds do this). Of course you have to rely on randomly selecting a fair jury in order for it to work - something that won't happen now.
Observe: That's generally the point when political speech crosses the line from 'soap box' to 'bullet box.' [1] Trump and his friends crossed that line on January 6th. #eattherich, Chapo Trap House, etc, has yet to do so.
You're drawing false equivalences.
[1] Despite having lost its case at both the ballot box, and the jury box. [2]
There's no doubt the material is objectionable, but it was only up for a short time and got very little reach, even getting negative reactions within their own circles. And bare in mind, these aren't exactly random examples either - this is supposed to represent the very worst - and it's just some random people with little reach who get negative reactions from their own followers.
Meanwhile over on Twitter you've got people sharing a picture of Trump's severed head, you've got "Hang Mike Pence" trending as a hash tag, you have people celebrating the death of the lady who got shot in the capital, etc.
Perhaps a little context?
I don't see how upvotes or views are relevant.
>There's no doubt the material is objectionable, but it was only up for a short time and got very little reach, even getting negative reactions within their own circles. And bare in mind, these aren't exactly random examples either - this is supposed to represent the very worst - and it's just some random people with little reach who get negative reactions from their own followers.
It's only supposed to represent the 15 seconds of work I performed in going through the dump of parler data. There's plenty more if you're interested. Again, whether or not it reached a lot of people is hardly relevant.
>Meanwhile over on Twitter you've got people sharing a picture of Trump's severed head, you've got "Hang Mike Pence" trending as a hash tag, you have people celebrating the death of the lady who got shot in the capital, etc.
And that shouldn't be allowed either. What's your point?
Of course it's relevant. If your hate message is received by nobody - who is the victim? You're just shouting into the ether. The larger your reach, the more moderation becomes important.
> And that shouldn't be allowed either. What's your point?
Because Twitter isn't been wiped from the internet for breaking the exact same ToS. It's clearly selective enforcement.
My understanding is that Apple wanted some form of auto-moderation. Parler's self regulation by user votes is a joke and leads to the opposite of free speech. They wanted a plan and a conversation, Parler refused. So, bye bye.
Apparently everyone has abandoned them, including their own lawyers. They could have fixed this, but they decided not to, and are now crying foul.
No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
[0] mentioned in the article: "I wish they[sic] were interoperable implementations of a protocol, rather than individual silos, but..."
Also the Parler system is that you essentially are sandboxed for a short period of time when you first join - if you get tonnes of negative responses you get removed. So the fact they got removed in the first 24 hours makes sense.
So: No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous.
Our right to say and read what we want cannot be determined by the lowest common denominator of what is 'acceptable'. That is how you arrive at an authoritarian monoculture, fast.
The only correct response to disgusting speech is good speech used to tear it down. Both sides here, (I am not a part of either) have dug in so deep that they essentially live in two different realities or dimensions. When perception and the interpretation of the world differs so much between two groups there eventually becomes a point where they cannot coexist. This is where we are headed if we don't start trying to find common ground instead of the current environment of complete, unquestioned intolerance of the other.
Self examination is what the world needs right now.
And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any sort) need moderation. Certain people have turned this fact on its head and want you to believe that "completely free speech" and "healthy communities" are compatible because they want to overrun healthy channels with their garbage.