Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

I have an example - I remember a time before social media and internet populism. In those days these same groups existed, but were exclusively on the fringe. You didn't hear people bring up radical alt-right talking points, or sympathize with nazis, or spout outright racism (as much).

The fact of the matter is that echo chambers encourage extremism and social media is nothing but echo chambers.

Another fact of the matter is human psychology. Humans have a biological tendency to accept as truth the first opinion they hear on a topic. This is a result of evolution. If your tribe member tells you a berry is poisonous, is the first response to argue? Or to just listen. Better to be safe than sorry.

When you combine that bit of psychology with social media, you see people go online to some circle jerk, innocently at first, and then get radicalized.

Now before any counter examples get brought out, just consider that while it doesn't work this way for every person, in every context, it does work this way for some non-trivial amount of people, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of users on parler aren't domestic terrorists, but if it's even 1% who fall victim to basic human psychology, that's enough for what took place on Wednesday.

So yeah - the example is the time before social media.

That half voted for Trump. They aren't going to realize anything.

Where is racism "literally written" into the constitution?

edit: look I know it's bad form on here to complain about being downvoted, but I was asking an honest question. Chill, people.

Can I play Devil's advocate here? Why not lock out browsers that aren't controlled by the os? What about email clients?

I think what you're saying about causation has a lot of truth to it. I believe one of the other fundamental considerations is simple numbers. Looking at the pictures of the Capitol riot it doesn't look like there were more than a few thousand people there and probably less than ten percent of those breached the Capitol and/or engaged in violence. There are more than 328 million people in the US, some minute percentage of those people, because of mental illness or some sort of subclinical ideological derangement are going to be drawn into this kind of idiocy given the present environment.

The rise of online platforms unquestionable explains part of why large hordes of conspiracy addled red hats have taken to the streets. But I am very pessimistic about the potential for deplatforming to solve this problem. Clinton famously said that the Chinese censoring the Internet would be like, "nailing jello to a wall," basically impossible. It turns out, for the most part, the Chinese have been able to hammer down dissent online. But they were able to write almost any laws they wanted, create a massive censorship apparatus, and exert control over every aspect of society. Even with all these advantages they barely managed it. Western society will never be willing to exert the control necessary to effectively manage online speech. There are simply too many members of the alt right, creating too much demand, for them to be effectively cut off from communication platforms. Trying will likely be counterproductive. It will balkanize the internet into more ideologically extreme and insular networks where "responsible adults" have less influence. It will feed a sense of paranoia and persecution. Over time it will lead them to harden their platforms and improve their tactics of evasion making it more difficult to monitor them and exert any kind of control.

We also have the very significant problem of where to draw the line. Now that the big tech platforms have decided to remove political speech that they believe is dangerous, there will be a lot of pressure on them to keep going. "If you removed $X for $I why are you now giving a platform to $Y to say $J?" There is going to be a lot of discussion in the coming months about what kind of opinions should lead to deplatforming, not all of it is going to be productive.

There is no easy solution and deplatforming is probably part of the answer. I believe a larger part will (or at least should) be finding more effective ways to reach out and influence opinions when possible. The Capitol police being caught so unprepared shows the urgent need for effective intelligence and responsive protection strategies. If deplatforming is used in an excessive or capricious manner it is likely to make any kind of effective action much more difficult.