You can think of it as vendors getting 'canceled' for progressively less severe offenses.

Or.

You can think of it as people waking up to offenses that have been allowed to go unchallenged for way too fucking long. People 'waking up' or no longer keeping their heads down being the result of the current administration transitioning to a Lame Duck status.

The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. Yes, you should absolutely be actively paying attention. No static rule will allow you, or me, or that guy over there to go back to not paying attention.

>the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

The irony of censoring people being, “the price of freedom”.

Serious question, why do you think that disenfranchising groups of their ability to communicate online is going to prevent social strife and violence instead of intensifying it? Banning theDonald didn’t help, the Daily Stormer being banished from the web didn’t change anything, kicking so many reactionaries off of Twitter that they went off to make Gab didn’t help, and destroying Parler and kicking Trump off social media isn’t going to help.

How is silencing a group that feels oppressed going to help anything?

This, “conservatives are turning into literal nazis” narrative is extremely toxic to public discourse and needs to completely stop.

Yes, like handing the keys to public discourse over to a private corporation and then defending their right to censor it as they please.

>You cannot yell "fire" in a movie theatre.

Actually, you can. This is protected by Brandenberg as I understand it.

>You cannot publish falsehoods that harm a person's reputation.

Sure, thats defamation. I agree that should be illegal.

>You cannot reveal classified information.

You can also sign an NDA!

>Why is "you cannot incite violent terrorism" suddenly controversial?

Because without the freedom to "incite violent terrorism" we are essentially captive to the whims of the government.

To quote Thomas Jefferson. "What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."[1]

The whole letter I take this quote from is worth a read.

[1]https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tre...

edit: formatting

>Actually, you can. This is protected by Brandenberg as I understand it.

Brandenberg says that the government can't restrict inflammatory speech unless it's "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". The case specifies three requirements for punishing speech: 'intent', 'immenent lawless action', and 'likely to incite'. Shouting 'fire' is discussed in the opinion as potentially prosecutable:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/395/444/

> The line between what is permissible and not subject to control and what may be made impermissible and subject to regulation is the line between ideas and overt acts.

> The example usually given by those who would punish speech is the case of one who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theatre.

> This is, however, a classic case where speech is brigaded with action. See Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 357 U. S. 536-537 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring). They are indeed inseparable, and a prosecution can be launched for the overt acts actually caused. Apart from rare instances of that kind, speech is, I think, immune from prosecution. Certainly there is no constitutional line between advocacy of abstract ideas, as in Yates, and advocacy of political action, as in Scales. The quality of advocacy turns on the depth of the conviction, and government has no power to invade that sanctuary of belief and conscience.

P.S. the theater company can ban you for being a nuisance even if it's not illegal.

The real reason it can be dangerous to ban speech connected with "terrorism" is the quoted term is so poorly defined as to potentially be almost anything abrasive and unpopular. I haven't seen any cohesive explanation of how the occupation of the Capitol January 6 was terroristic in nature, and yet the event broadly is being criticized as such, exemplifying why high-stakes laws against ill-defined things could have a chilling effect far broader than just those things we all agree should not occur. Is the line when protesters are unlawfully in a location? Like the middle of a street? When they advocate for things that are not currently lawful, e.g., changes in law? When they are agitated, animated and frighten their neighbors?

That’s the standard illustration of the Schenk (which suppressed what is widely now recognized as core political speech) “clear and present danger” test, which probably comes to a different result under the Brandenberg “incites imminent lawless action” test which replaced it

Speech has limitations, but banning an entire social media network at the decision of tech oligarchs instead of the actual legal limits on speech is a precedent many see as escalation of the conflict. I do. This is a giant mistake that will breed resentment and do nothing but confirm to Trumpists that there is, in fact, a conspiracy against them.

If they want such a platform, they can go build their own parallel economy and technology infrastructure.

Good luck to them.

This is extremely biased and ignorant. For one, there are plenty of non-white non-conservatives on the platform. Your statement here reveals much about your biases.

You are basically removing platform of communication is ok for people that hold opinions other than the mainstream politically-correct ones. This is exactly the sort of things authoritarian government such as China do.

When it takes pages to describe why something is inciting violence, and the result is huge numbers of people arguing it both was and wasn't inciting violence - including very, very intelligent people on both sides - then maybe it's not as cut and dry as you make it out to be. Or is everyone who disagrees with you either disingenuous or stupid?

Err, so what?, the supreme court has a pretty strict definition per Brandenburg. And I agree with the court's opinion there,

> "These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone advocating for it, especially from behind a keyboard, actually expected storming the capital to happen, and it seems like it only happened as a result of law enforcement essentially giving it it's blessing. As pointed out by your sibling comment, calling a group of people who mostly milled around the capital "insurrectionists" is just fallacious, and tells you how loaded this whole thing is. I'm extremely concerned that this spectacle is going to be used to curtail our liberties the same way 9/11 was used to pass the Patriot act.

I feel like I'm in crazy town when I see so much being done to stop "inciting violence". Isn't it ultimately the responsibility of the public to not act on such incitements? When a group becomes sufficiently disenfranchised the most radical members transition from trying to make peaceful change to calling for revolution. If the disenfranchisement continues unabated more and more members of the group will be convinced of the need for action. This is fundamentally why the U.S. exists, and I think it is the right of the oppressed group to self-advocate and self-determine.

So in that sense I don't think that anyone can honestly say that calls for violence are never appropriate. Any revolution, even a velvet one, is going to have some fringe of people calling for violence or it will never come about. Should western media have shut down the Arab spring for the same reason? What about #freepalestine? There were plenty of calls for violence against Trump, and nobody seemed too concerned. Should Kathy Griffin have been blackballed?

If we define this group of people as predominantly non-college educated, non-hispanic white males, then we are talking about a group whose deaths of despair (suicide and drug overdose) rate has tripled in the last twenty years, a trend that has likely intensified significantly during the lockdown [1]. Now I could be wrong, but I don't think they are killing themselves because they aren't allowed to be racist, rather I think it's because non-college educated rural americans[2] are being and have been marginalized.[3]

Perhaps we should try and lift this group up instead of grinding them down and using them as a scape goat for problems primarily related to wealth inequality.

[1]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/deaths-of-despair-depres... [2]https://www.americancommunities.org/chapter/american-communi... [3]https://www.the74million.org/article/solving-the-rural-educa...

e: formatting

I'd agree that there is a sizeable proportion of the population that feels left behind. However, a large portion of the people present on Jan 6 were not the disenfranchised. There were a worrying number of CEOs, Active Military, Doctors, and Lawyers present.

> Perhaps we should try and lift this group up instead of grinding them down and using them as a scape goat for problems primarily related to wealth inequality.

This is overwhelmingly what people like Bernie Sanders and AOC are trying to do. The rhetoric of both is based around trying to help working people by introducing social safety nets with the express purpose of giving people like them some room to breath financially. Have you seen how those policies have been received? Instead they elected an authoritarian millionaire who stoked division and xenophobia while cutting taxes for everyone but them.

They've been convinced that the reason they're struggling is the fault of illegal immigrants, the Chinese, feminism, and leftists. Propaganda that has carried over from the Cold War leads them to reject any policy that might actually help them as "communism". As a block they vote overwhelmingly for policies that only serve to enrich their bosses and the people producing the propaganda. They'll rant for hours about how awful Obamacare was going to be, but then happily tell you about how much they love the "ACA" that they're currently making use of.

We've reached a point where they're behaving more like a spouse who won't leave their abusive husband. The best thing is remove the source of that abuse for long enough that they might come to some degree of sense.

When they say "literal nazis", they mean literal nazis, not figurative nazis.

I don't think the entire GOP it turning into Nazis. I can't recall the last time I heard someone say they believed it. However, I don't think every German, or even most Germans, in WWII were Nazis either. That didn't stop the Nazis from being in charge. It barely slowed them down.

In order to get his 49% of the votes, #45 had to scrape the bottom of the barrel, courting every non-liberal element of society. The GOP leadership has publicly recognized these groups and groups like them as members of Team GOP. They seated them at a table as if they deserve to be peers with the folks you claim to represent.

Let me ask you a serious question. Was it worth it to win that way? Really? What entitles anyone who says 'yes' or 'maybe' to be painted with a separate brush from the people who delivered the victory at "any cost"?

If getting you, or all of us really, looking in the mirror is going to be predicated on treating you with the respect you plan to earn once they've treated you as if you've earned it, then buddy, you're going to be disrespected for an awful long time. Read the warnings, take some umbrage. I certainly am.

Or are you kind of thinking it is working out and it's your desired outcome?

The Right is excellent at projecting and playing "the victim" so I wouldn't be surprised.

I would never refer to a conservative who recognizes the legitimate results of our free and fair elections as a Nazi! Now the question is, why in the flying MOTHERFUCK do I need that qualifier?

Now? You do realize that the current president is the ringleader of birtherism, right?

Hillary Clinton, in her 2008 presidential campaign brought the fringe conspiracy theory of 'birtherism' into the mainstream as a rhetorical weapon to discredit her rival, Barack Obama, at least in the eyes of enough potential voters to do some harm. Donald Trump did bring the matter up in his campaign, but quickly repudiated it and never mentioned it again. It does not look like a sustainable assertion that Trump is, or ever was the 'ringleader' of 'birtherism.'

Of which there was concrete proof of election meddling by Russia. Obviously we can't litigate what-ifs, but I'm not sure how the two can be separated.

>Stacey Abrams was the actual winner of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race.

The guy she was running against was the secretary of state at the time and passed several laws that were very clearly meant to suppress voter turnout before an election that he was standing in.

>Now Republicans are the devil for not accepting this election?

Yes, and for inciting violence and beating a police officer to death with a flag of the steps of the Capitol while saying the pledge of allegiance. Either work to make sure it never happens again or be inextricably linked to it.

>You know what's even more toxic? Literal Nazis and fascists, the ranks of which have been, if not growing, then clearly emboldened.

What does the word literal even mean at this point? What is fascism to you? What is Nazism to you?

>This group "feels oppressed" because they are not able to exert their will to oppress others.

How is this sentence even appearing on a thread about an app getting removed because they refused to force more stringent moderation onto their users?

> An image of Packer inside the Capitol, whose sweatshirt bore the name of the Nazi concentration camp where about 1.1 million people were killed during World War II, has evoked shock and disbelief on social media. The bottom of his shirt stated, "Work brings freedom," which is the rough translation of the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" that was on the concentration camp's gates.[1]

Apparently the back read "Staff"[2]. While maybe not "literal" Nazis themselves, the people there seem perfectly happy to associate with and receive the support of literal Nazis.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/10/politics/man-camp-auschwi...

[2] https://twitter.com/MrTAchilles/status/1346996921282531328

But it's not just Nazis that are the problem. They're clearly in the minority. There's growing interest in garden variety fascism. Some of the hallmarks of that are nationalism, militarism, submission to authority, anti-intellectualism, fomenting fear of "the other" and outsiders. Umberto Eco has a list [1] that encapsulates and explains these. And, I'm sorry, but a lot of these describe the trajectory of the current Republican Party, especially under Trump's rule. (note: I think the GOP has largely abandoned what we would call "conservatism". Even though many of those left in the party might self-identify as conservative, they have veered into fascist ideology, they just won't admit it)

[1] https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list...

Parler's app was the number one download on the app store & play store after Trump was kicked off Twitter.

Then apple and google decided that Parler was not going to be a platform Trump could use, so they kicked the app off.

Then amazon decided that Parler had no place on their computing resources.

Those 2 tweets were interpreted as they were, to suit the political leanings of those tech companies and their political allies. And a legitimate competitor was destroyed into the bargain. This is not reasonable and it is antithetical to the freedoms on which your great nation was founded.

If you, dear HN reader, can't see the threat to your freedom in this then you are blind.

The US democracy may be under stress, so to speak, but it does seem to be working. The democrats will have their man in the white house. Trump will leave.

Oh, and to call that invasion of the capitol an attempted coup is a real stretch. What were they ever going to do other than get arrested??

Forcing a private corporation to provide a platform for someone else is also a form of tyrrany.

|| Oh, and to call that invasion of the capitol an attempted coup is a real stretch. What were they ever going to do other than get arrested??

They were going to kill our representatives in government. That was their intent, and it's a bit odd that you're making excuses for them.

I appreciate that. I am not sure where I stand on this anymore. I agree that they are private corporations with rights. But they are also unprecedented in history in terms of scale, wealth and power. And they just silenced a president and shutdown a competitor. Those are some implications that need to be considered carefully.

The President is perfectly capable of getting a message out without the use of twitter. There's even a room in his house specifically for giving press briefings. To pretend that this is "silencing" him is ridiculous.

> But they are also unprecedented in history in terms of scale, wealth and power. And they just silenced a president and shutdown a competitor. Those are some implications that need to be considered carefully.

Then break them up, they absolutely deserve to be, I just don't think this particular situation is an example of why they should be broken up.

I would like to point out that Parler claimed to be using AWS as a regular hosting provider, so this isn't an area where the market is anywhere near as consolidated, there are thousands of other hosting providers out there who probably don't want to deal with them either.

Debating, especially on the internet, requires a little generosity when interpreting your opponent's words. Be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you emit. I know that the President wasn't literally silenced. Jeff Bezos didn't send goons to the whitehouse to gag and bag him.

We both know that firing off a tweet to millions instantly is a lot easier than calling a press conference.

Maybe so. But that's still not a coup. It's a heinous, despicable act, but not a coup.

If you wait for the government to provide you every good thing in life, it'll never come.

Governments like to look around at what people are already doing in several locales or regions and either stop them or give it to everybody. The courts get involved and decide whether that's allowed. If the Federal government doesn't like what the courts say, they can use more strongly worded laws so the courts have to agree. We make the last bit difficult so that we don't do it frivolously. It cuts down on overreach, but it also means bad actors tend to get to play a bit longer at the expense of everybody else.

If individuals or corporations are the last word in reasonable political discourse, we will have failed. Not so spectacularly as if we never do anything until Congress says so, but failed nonetheless.

To be clear, I'm not saying this should be the end of this. But someone has to get the wheels of government rolling, and this is fairly typical, if not ideal.

This reminds me of far-leftists refusing to admit that Islamist terrorism should be counted as terrorism, because, after all, what was killing a few people in an LGBT nightclub going to accomplish for ISIS?

Coups generally rely on military support, or some sort of established basis for taking and holding political power. This was not a coup. Or it was the shittest one ever.

I would have thought that was pretty clear from context.

"People" is a general term, "offense" is a relative term. What you may consider an offense, I might consider a complement. Additionally, what you consider an offense today, you might not do so tomorrow. There is no such thing as a static set of provisions that can handle all cases of immorality across all of time and satisfy all people.

>The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance

The price of freedom is nothing, the price of consequence is eternal vigilance. The only reason you would need to be alerted if someone commits an offense you deem immoral, is so that they can be punished for the offense. You can't reverse an act that someone committed, but sure if you have constant oversight of their actions you can definitely punish them as you see fit. Law is synonymous with punishment, but it is punishment that applies universally to all parties, as opposed to the Terms of Service applied by modern corporations, which (by design) can be applied to whomever and can be ignored for whomever the corporation feels like. Hence why it's a slippery slope.

There really is nothing contentious here, unless you feel that if you know that a group is organizing in your platform with the intent of staging a coup then you're in your right to just let them go about it.

I personally never witnessed any violent discussion on Parler. Again, the website was less compelling than Twitter in all ways; it was more like a news website. I have seen more provocative comments on other forums.

I have personally witnessed violent statements on Twitter over several years usually coming from leftists such as AOC. Part of this is due to the comments being easier to read on Twitter than Parler. I assume bad behavior on Parler was deep in the comments, but the website didn't make those easy to read.

I thought the Parler takedown seemed random. They were used as a scapegoat. If you were a normal user, you used it to hear a different viewpoint but you still lurked on Twitter some because there was no real discussion happening on Parler.

I am very curious for an example of an AOC tweet that you considered a violent statement.

I am thinking you must have a very different definition of "violent statement" than I do, and I'm curious to learn more about it by example. Because I read a lot of AOC, and have never seen anything I would remotely consider a violent statement. But you may consider things differently, what exactly "violence" means, let alone in a statement, is to some extent not entirely set in stone, I agree.

Can you provide an example (or three) of a violent statement from AOC you have personally witnessed, as you say?

She is a real person, it seems only fair to provide an example when making such an accusation.

I consider cancel culture a form of violence. There was a tweet from AOC suggesting making a list of all those who worked under Trump; I presume she wants to cancel them. This was dangerous since she was a Congresswoman. There was also a tweet where she voiced support for the riots this summer.

To be fair to AOC, she is not the worst I have seen.

Also, to be fair to Twitter, I bet there is a ton of right side violent speech I just personally haven't seen much of it.

I have personally witnessed violent speech on the postmodern side on Twitter because I'm more tuned into people calling for censorship. It's a topic I'm following.

I think the main reason I didn't see it on Parler was because the comment section is hard to read.

But yes, if you consider "making a list" to be violence, I guess we do have different understandings. I hope you apply this understanding in all directions, to your political compatriots too, telling them they are being violent (presumably in an undesirable way) when they do things like make lists? Or wait, you just presume that she was going to do something? Yeah, I"m curious to see the tweet. It sounds like a lot of presuming...

But cause if AOC isn't the worst you have seen... why did you use her as an example? Like, everyone is always using AOC as an example, when to me she's like one of the smartest and kindest politicians I know, from her utterances. Regardless of what you think of "cancel culture", she's not even a very good example of it, she's not the paragon of cancel culture, that's not really what she does at all. I think it's very unfair to AOC.

And yet, everyone wants to use her as an example. (Including by 'presuming' extra things she hasn't actually done!) Why? If you recognize she's not actually a great example of what bothers you, why did you mention her name as the only specific name example you mentioned?

This is one of the things AOC said which impressed me which I think is literally the opposite of "cancel culture": https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne8wjg/watch-aoc-give-a-dire...

AOC was the first that came to mind. Regarding her list, I believe at the time twitter users were citing a law saying what she was recommending was getting close to being illegal. They called it citizen intimidation, yet with more formal wording.

AOC wasn't the best example. The best examples were people saying it was good Rand Paul had been injured by his neighbor and the professor saying Mike Adams suicide was good.

I hadn't seen the AOC tweet you linked. It does appear uniting at first, yet when I looked closer I saw a familiar persuasion trick. It seems like she's applying the argument that anyone who has certain beliefs is a white supremist.

One of the most divisive things these days is labeling all people with conservative beliefs racist. It seems racist has become a catch-all term for anything postmodernists disagree with.

Calling someone racist means you don't listen to them and you can cause them to lose their reputation even if the claims don't have merit. The parody account Titania McGrath helps outline how the definition of racism has changed.

>I have personally witnessed violent statements on Twitter over several years usually coming from leftists such as AOC.

Kindly provide the evidence or admit your claim was mistaken.

I have personally witnessed violent statements on Twitter over several years. Postmodern leaders, such as AOC, have encouraged low levels of violence using the Twitter platform.

This definition of violence is meant to describe violence as a spectrum which includes the destruction of property and destruction of job prospects of conservative individuals.

As far as I know, AOC has NOT tweeted the worst levels of violence. I apologize for using AOC as the primary example. If I could edit the parent statement I would because she is NOT the best example. It is also possible there is a less inflammatory word to describe cancel culture and property destruction than violence; I don't want to mix two things up.

The AOC tweets I was referring are below:

- Encouraging riots.

AOC, protests/riots threat: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080

"The thing that critics of activists don’t get is that they tried playing the “polite language” policy game and all it did was make them easier to ignore."

- Encouraging cancel culture.

AOC list tweet, is now deleted but was widespread. https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/132481791745673625...

Other tweets I've seen:

Mike Adams bashing soon after suicide before burial: https://twitter.com/ProfeRandolph/status/1286440502271901707

Most Rand Paul violent tweets were deleted. Most were anonymous. This is where Kelly Paul states her memories of the tweets. https://twitter.com/KelleyAshbyPaul/status/13483463720434524...

Hang Mike Pence as recent example. Most of these were deleted. https://twitter.com/TeaPainUSA/status/1348828960679997440

OK snowflake

It's about scale. A disagreement that should stay between a small group of people and often could be solved by mediation, a conversation, or community service ends up being a national event.

An individual who has a specialized skillset loses the ability to be economically viable. They might not be able to get another job in the field.

Often, they are being used as a scapegoat.

If you make it impossible for a person to get a job in his or her field because you disagree with what they say, that's a form of violence. If you're going to economically eliminate someone in a scaled way, make sure it's worth it; it should be a last resort. This is really about scale.

Can you provide an example of a violent statement posted on Twitter by AOC?

I told my husband I would stop looking at Twitter since it upsets me so I'm handcuffed to find specific proof there. But, I was primarily referring to the list tweet where AOC mentioned gathering republicans who worked for Trump. There have been other similar sentiments expressed by her to punish people over time; she has an activist side which can get aggressive for a Congresswoman.

To be fair AOC isn't the worse I've seen as far as Twitter threats. The worst I've seen is the guy who acted like the controversial professional Mike Adams's suicide was good who is currently a North Carolina professor. Also, there were tweets against Rand Paul which were violent after he got attacked by a neighbor. There have also been tweets for years mostly by random accounts threatening Trump; Gab has organized all the data.

Before I started reading AOC's tweets, the right's view of her had seeped into my brain. I didn't know why, but I had a slightly negative view of her.

Once I actually read her views expressed in her tweets I was shocked how reasonable she was. In 100's of tweets I've never seen her say anything that I thought was even remotely radical.

Now change Trump for Biden and you tell me about it

Yes, show me where in those words you find violence. I see someone wanted to hold the enablers of DJT accountable.

So around 40% of the American population. The left loves to talk about the right-wingers doing dog-whistles, this is one from the left. Your commentary also come across as naive or disingenuous when in those days AOC just one of several left-wing politicians and personalities calling for the creation of undesirable lists (again that 40%) to ,when the time comes, get them to pay for enabling Trump. All these within the highly violent BLM protests context.

Again, put up some evidence that is equal to the charge: show us violent rhetoric.

"Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts." https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080

Nancy Pelosi 2017

"When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe."

Robert Reich,2020

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1317614803704115200

BTW show me a tweet from Trump calling for violence, seeing how stringent are your standards and how adamant you are that only the right calls for violence you must have examples a plenty.

But I am wasting my time here.You know it and I know it. You have your mind made up.

2. Russia interfered with our election. Not even close to a call for violence.

3. Not even close to a call for violence.

Trump calls for violence? Easy:

https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-ha...

That was just the first google hit.

Millions feel censored and diminished.

You don't get to the level parler got purely because the few extreme users felt censored.

You saw a minority of users taking free speech too far.

This wasn't Amazon, Google's or Twitter's place to act. This was a job for the police and the FBI and really the fact they intervened at all is just so fucking American.

World police that nobody bloody wants.

Instead, we are left with mega corporations being the arbiters of their own platforms, Just like those supporting deregulation wanted.

0: https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/rioting-and-in...

1: https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sedition.html

The financial backers of Facebook supported the company a lot through its enabling of the Rohingya genocide. But, then again, the Rohingya are not white, nor Christian, and they don't live in a country that can be a potential source of expats (like the UK or Australia, nice, good countries), only of immigrants.

Similarly, I've seen people regularly call for violence on all sides and not be removed from Twitter.

The reality is that the moderators are overwhelmed, etc.

Parler famously had no such policy, that's why it was so attractive to the insurrectionists. The CEO, even after January 6th, went on record that he didn't feel it was Parler's responsibility to moderate user-generated content at all. Whatever last-minute olive branch they tried extending to AWS regarding a potential future volunteer moderator system obviously wasn't sufficient for Amazon.

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=...

Twitter contains worse.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGzmjYWMAI_POS?format=jpg&name=...

I can see how you would take it that way, but honestly people have been saying a lot worse on the internet for a long time now.

I believe he's saying that we should have military tribunals to try and execute traitors, but of course those words were implied, not explicitly said.

I agree it's inflammatory for sure, but after all the crap I've seen on the internet, this is hardly a post to justify removing the entire platform this was posted on.

We got mighty close this time, didn't we? Do we need to get "closer"? Should Nancy Pelosi have had to be captured by some "patriot" with zip-ties and an AR-15?

The masses long for justice while the elite and elite-wannabes try to convince themselves that the system isn't completely broken.

Exposes which crimes exactly? Don't tribunals normally take place after you've got a good idea of what the crimes are?

> The masses long for justice while the elite and elite-wannabes try to convince themselves that the system isn't completely broken.

The multi-millionaire son of a multi-millionaire, truly the only person that knows the hardships put upon everyday americans. It's such a shame our hero was hoodwinked by all those nasty corrupt people who just happened to run his campaign, legal team and otherwise generally surround him...

We should have trials to get to the truth instead of smearing people for having money and being successful. If we assume the worst about people because they were born into a wealthy family where does that leave us?

You don't believe the swamp could be that corrupt. I do. Is it ok for me to hold that opinion? Is it ok for me to speak it, or will I be silenced for wrong think?

You're still being cryptic about this. I'll ask you again what the basis of these trials should be? who and what should we be investigating?

I'm aware of a few trials that have already happened, my favourites:

Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman of the Trump campaign sentenced to 7.5 years in prison[1]. Collusion with suspected Russian operatives, lying about that collusion. Sentenced separately in Virginia for ~4 years for bank fraud, tax fraud, and hiding foreign accounts[2].

Michael Cohen, former personal attorney to Donald Trump sentenced to 3 years in prison. "charges involving campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress"[3].

A fun list of the rest of the swamp dwellers that have been charged or convicted[4].

> If we assume the worst about people because they were born into a wealthy family where does that leave us?

We aren't assuming the worst about people born into a wealthy family. We're asserting that they cannot relate to those born into a lower or middle class family.

> You don't believe the swamp could be that corrupt. I do. Is it ok for me to hold that opinion? Is it ok for me to speak it, or will I be silenced for wrong think?

You're intentionally ignoring the fact that the man who told you there was a swamp is entirely surrounded by people found guilty of some form of fraud or corruption...

[1] https://www.axios.com/paul-manafort-sentenced-years-prison-r...

[2] https://www.axios.com/paul-manafort-sentenced-prison-mueller...

[3] https://www.axios.com/michael-cohen-prison-sentence-mueller-...

[4] https://www.yourtango.com/2020336767/trump-associates-have-b...

That's a big leap to make. I'm sure we have much different narratives we find to be true, but Trump is basically filling stadiums wherever he goes. Maybe he relates to the lower and middle classes better than you are giving him credit for.

> You're intentionally ignoring the fact that the man who told you there was a swamp

To be fair, you have no idea how I came to believe there is a swamp. I thought that long before Trump became president for a variety of reasons.

I'm not going to get into the details of what I believe. There's just too much to cover. I'm not claiming that I could persuade you that I am right. We are on the sidelines in all this. We are in the middle of an information war, and probably have been our entire lives.

There's also the fact that an angry mob overran the US Capitol while chanting "Hang Mike Pence" as a direct result of Lin and Trump's posts/comments

If you do a sufficiently poor job, you might as well not even be trying at all. Especially if you court the content as a growth strategy.

Everyone's free to manage their risks however they please, but I personally have no less confidence in AWS than I had before this event. I have updated my understanding of their decision heuristic as it applies to kicking people off their service. But the probability of me or any company I'd manage running afoul of it is far less than the chance of getting struck by lightning.

Eh I'm not so sure about that? I mean, "Did your userbase activately participate in a plot to storm the Capitol and potentially take lawmakers and the VP of the State as hostages (or worse)?" is an awfully high bar to clear.

The Acceptable Use Policy is here: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/

If your users use your service for illegal or fraudulent activities, you have no way of stopping them, and your service is on AWS, then you risk being shut-down.

That hasn't changed today. That was true as of September 16th, 2016 (and probably before then as well)

It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that because Parler is down, "mom and pop" websites with comment section attached now need to lawyer up.

This is definitely a straw-man, but at the same time, if your website hosts user-supplied content and you don't have a rock-solid strategy for moderating it, then yeah you probably should be worried. (Though the spammers will probably take down your site long before AWS...)

If I run some hobbyist forum where say 1 in 1000 users is posting hate speech or calling for violence, as long as I have less-than-rock-solid moderation that can clean up some of their posts and ban the worst offenders based on user reports, I wouldn't be too worried. It's also in my interest to keep the community healthy.

Now, if 20% or 50% of my users are posting hate speech and calling for violence, yeah I would be worried, but I would be less worried about moderation, and more worried about why my hobby attracts extremists. Might call for some self reflection.

> Now, if 20% or 50% of my users are posting hate speech and calling for violence, yeah I would be worried, but I would be less worried about moderation, and more worried about why my hobby attracts extremists. Might call for some self reflection.

LOL! I think this is actually the right take! Definitely also applies to your social network...

Maybe it doesn't attract extremists. Maybe extremists just happened to randomly pick your site as the latest site to use for communication.

Just theorizing here, but assume that instead of hosting their own content, web sites with comments are hijacked to host extremists propaganda/plans/violent event, with a pointer to the next web site to use (not IF) but when the current one gets shut down.

The only way to avoid this is to moderate the comments before they are allowed to be displayed. And I'm betting there are a thousand+ web sites that are run by amateurs where this is the last thing on their minds.

Hopefully the fact that scaling and searching would be impossible makes this a non-issue.

> ... a rock-solid strategy for moderating ...

The lesson is you need to have a rock-solid `policy` that content which advocates violence is impermissible.

However, based on what is described here (https://theconversation.com/parler-what-you-need-to-know-abo...) `there are policies against “fighting words” and “threats of harm”. This includes “a threat of or advocating for violation against an individual or group”.`

Based on recent examples of Parlor posts it seems like the Parlor moderators were not adequately enforcing this policy.

Just the community self-moderating themselves.

You mean, like Facebook and Twitter?

https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/twitter-trump-dictators...

I fail to see how this is a movement of the bar.

Based on these two examples, the bar seems to be that a site gets canceled if a site is used to promote violence, there is a riot, violence happens, and people return to the site to celebrate and promote future violence. That was the bar in both 2017 and 2021. Doesn't seem to have moved.

Given the fact that the attack on the Capitol was a direct attack on the US government, if anything the bar has been RAISED.

It was done poorly, and seems to have been just a fig leaf to say they were doing it. Objectively it was not working. Way way way worse than anything on FB or Twitter.

Not every new service can afford to moderate things like "FB or Twitter". And this is an important risk to account for.

All I am trying to say is that it is important to realize that how you moderate your service may very well be judged by your venders and you could have a bad time if they find it lacking....

If you're planning on starting a service built around user generated content, you should have an answer for how you plan on moderating content.

If you don't have a plan for how to address illegal uses of your service (fraud, child pornography, etc), then you run the risk of being shut down. This isn't even a question of "is it or isn't it incitement".

If you want to run on a hosting platform that exists as a business unit anywhere in the United States, if you don't have a plan for moderating at least the most harmful illegal content, you are at risk of being shut down. FOSTA and SESTA make clear that the the service providers and hosting platforms bear some legal liability for this content, and they will shut you down if you don't moderate your platform.

So, infective moderation combined with apparent indifference.

There is still a long ways to go from "infective moderation combined with apparent indifference" to "effective moderation" or even to "infective moderation that we are attempting to fix". But somewhere between "apparent indifference" and "attempting to fix" is a nasty grey area that you don't want to be caught in.

FaceBook and Twitter are decent examples---their moderation systems are pretty hit-or-miss, assuming good faith.

There is no daylight between the the Daily Stormer and Parler with respect to their willingness to distribute content that promotes far right violence. They also share that same objective as their founding motivation.

Just different branding.

Just moderate the platform to remove content that is an incitement to violence or the commission of violent crime. That's a pretty low bar to meet.

No. Not at all.

We're software engineers, right? Make the machines do the heavy lifting.

Create a simple keyword based alerting mechanism for known inflammatory language in the languages that you support. There are resources to help you make this easier in multiple languages, i.e. https://hatespeechdata.com/

Add a moderation system for your users to flag abusive content.

Until you grow to a huge size, or unless your platform is courting violence promoting content, there should be a relatively small amount of content you need to manually review and remove.

Parler got canceled for something a lot worse than the Daily Stormer.

> any company that is hosting user-driven content needs to have a plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar.

Yes... They need to moderate out content that promotes violence. This is a thing that they should do.

It was literally a neo-nazi site.

Do you think the issues people had with it were somehow contrived, false, or overblown?

Why would you even bring that site up tbh?

Lol so far the bar is don’t let people plan a violent insurrection on your app.

I was just trying to emphasize that I was using the term in the more loose colloquial sense and not trying to exactly describe the particular actions of the vendors.

> Do you think the issues people had with it were somehow contrived, false, or overblown?

Wow, seriously I am not sure how you could have managed to get this from my comment. Please do not put words into my mouth.

> Why would you even bring that site up tbh?

It is a broadly known example of a website that was dropped by pretty much all major online services (including even CloudFlare). What happened to Daily Stormer generated some interesting discussion around online service provides denying services (see the CloudFlare blogpost on why it terminated Daily Stormer: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/).

Don't provide an unmoderated online platform for neo-nazis preparing for genocide.

I didn't finish my math major but this seems straightforward.