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Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

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Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#881

Post by TeMPOraL »

orblivion wrote: post #387
soupson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's fine! It doesn't depend on that core network. Make your own. That's what open source is for!

I always thought it was the perfect solution, if by accident. The network is segmented, and people can connect to who they tolerate. It avoids censorship but still lets people curate their own experience. Win/win. Gab used to be federated through to Mastodon (not directly of course, but via a hop or two). For some reason they stopped, but there are other "non-conforming" Mastodon instances out there.

I thought so too, until I saw how this works from inside. Segmented networks sound fine in principle, but there's a pathological behavior happening: there's a group of people around the core instances that like to take offense over things, who then try to pressure the administrator of that person's instance to ban that person, or else they'll defederate the whole instance. The source of offense may be some wrongthing the person posted, or reposted from another instance, or any "known association", etc. Also defederation because of incompatible codes of conduct is a thing, and as you expect, this creates a pressure towards CoC extremism.

The Gab thing was funny to watch, lots of people behaving as if that service was a literal existential threat to Fediverse, and banning - or advocating to ban - anything related to it up to two degrees of separation. It also revealed an interesting pattern - Mastodon itself may be decentralized and instances are theoretically independent, but there for sure is a community of Fediverse people that's pretty hiveminded. And left-leaning. Gab definitely wasn't welcome, and wouldn't be able to benefit much from federating through Mastodon, even if technically nobody could stop them.

(To be clear: I don't like Gab, never interacted with it, and I don't particularly care about it. It was just weird to see the degree of moral panic on Mastodon happening the moment they said they are considering joining the network.)

Mastodon is therefore an interesting experiment in how the ideal of distributed web - of virtual archipelago[0] - falls to realpolitik. Freedom of curation is limited by your ability to deal with threats of defederation.

In this sense, when you're switching from Twitter to Mastodon, you're switching from a stable tyranny to highly volatile sorta-democracy. Pick your poison, I guess. I stick to Mastodon, and try not to give the admin a reason to get me banned for going against the party line.

--

[0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic...

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#882

Post by all_factz »

rangoon626 wrote: post #783
all_factz wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your own post makes clear the problem with your logic. This isn’t about convincing people. It’s about the fact that people’s political views are guided by gut, instinct and the bubbles they’re in instead of by critical thinking. These people believe abortion is killing an innocent baby. They don’t want their tax dollars spent on thing X. They believe the election was rigged — evidence doesn’t come into it. How do…

Just wanna add that the left seems to believe what institutions and the legacy media tell them, at face value. Many on the right use critical thinking, however they seem to believe that numbers and “science” can be spun into any narrative the gatekeepers want (whoever they may be). Most of the schism really seems to be based on trust. Left trusts by default, the right does not. The left trusts that the government kno…

Yes, the left trusts “science”, broadly. That’s because when we see 99% of scientists in a field claiming something, we don’t pretend we know better than them. We respect science, we understand on some level the work that goes into good science, and so we aren’t arrogant arses.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#883

Post by hrbf »

nicbou wrote: post #11

Someone brought an interesting perspective in another thread and I can't shake it off. The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're *ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right. We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the populat…

Being able to voice your opinion without government interference or consequences is your right. However, there is no right to be heard, hosted, given air time, published or even listened to. In the example of conservatives, if you align yourself with the current batch of conservative representatives, most points you want to raise fall flat. Without other context, you’re generally judged by the company you keep. Conduct yourself like an empathic human being and it’s likely (but not guaranteed) that people will listen to you. Scream at them and only people who are already as angry as you are going to listen. That applies to humans in general.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#884

Post by jackjeff »

I don’t understand this attitude which consists of censoring objectionable content like one sweeps dirt under the carpet.

If what these people are saying is illegal, just go and arrest them, make them face a judge and go to jail.

Otherwise, let them have fun with their silly petty flat earth theories, or whatever imaginary BS they fancy.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#885

Post by jackjeff »

nicbou wrote: post #153
bjtitus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. Well these last two seem pretty par for the course for illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate. At a certain point the line of absurdity has been crossed at it is not the duty of society to constantly debunk illegitimate claims. > The other side keeps deplatforming them In this particular case, Parler has been host to a num…

Yes, that is what reddit, twitter and Hacker News reinforce constantly. It's either because it's true, or because the other side has been repeatedly discouraged from adding their two cents in those communities. I've been seeing the world through this lens for so long that I can't tell. I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I…

> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels.

Have you met people? How would credit card companies, casinos and multi level marketing have a business model if that was not the case?

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#886

Post by finder83 »

Tokkemon wrote: post #462
botwriter wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the left have to censor the right? Surely they should be able to beat the right with logical and reasoned arguments? Censorship has always struck me as a tool that a side which isn't confident in its arguments uses.

That doesn't work with people who didn't get to their beliefs by reason in the first place.

I'm not sure if you're applying that statement in mass or not, but I have seen this reasoning from both sides, straw-manning people into a belief system and calling them irrational because they disagree. I see this much more about the right from the left though.

I think if you sat down with an educated conservative and an open mind you'd have a different point of view.

If your statement was just a blanket statement about people in general, I apologize for mis-categorizing it.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#887

Post by design-material »

logicchains wrote: post #820
design-material wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective. Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country. This is a textbook example of racist policies. Half the population either - voted him because of those policies (and so are racist),…

>Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country. A religious group is not a race. When China persecuted the Falun Gong, nobody called them racist. You could say it's islamaphobic, but that connotates an irrational fear. It's not completely irrational when the values of many adherents to that religion differ so significantly from secular American values: pe…

The Pew data seems to refute your point: it highlights opposing views across Muslim nations when it comes to redistributive justice - some nations are along the same lines as mainstream American thought, others aren't i.e. there isn't a universal, shared set of 'Muslim values' that can be said to clash with 'American values'

And fair enough, it's not strictly racist. I believe the semantics here don't alter the spirit of what was said (that is, discriminating against a group of people)

I'm not entirely convinced by the claim that one's religious choice being a choice means that it's not wrong to discriminate against them; what would your stance be on what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs? (And - dare I ask - what does that then mean about your stance on the Nazi's policies?)

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#888

Post by design-material »

jolincost wrote: post #847
design-material wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective. Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country. This is a textbook example of racist policies. Half the population either - voted him because of those policies (and so are racist),…

Straw man

How so?

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#889

Post by finder83 »

jariel wrote: post #827
nicbou wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is what reddit, twitter and Hacker News reinforce constantly. It's either because it's true, or because the other side has been repeatedly discouraged from adding their two cents in those communities. I've been seeing the world through this lens for so long that I can't tell. I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I…

"I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. " No - they aren't. The answer is very easy: They believe Donald Trump . Trump has credibility in their minds, and when he repeats the lie, over and over - that 'the election was stolen' - they believe it. On election night - he literally came out and said 'If you count the fake votes, Biden won' - declaring mass frau…

To be fair, CNN has proven multiple times in the last few years that their credibility is worth very little. They have a VERY extreme slant to the left, so much so that news casters were even becoming anti-vaxxers against the Covid-19 vaccine simply because Trump was the president at the time trying to push for people to take it. Their handling of Covid-19 early on was also atrocious. I don't mean to demean them if they're your favorite news source, but they've lost a lot of faith in the past few years.

The others, NPR, NBC, etc, I think you'd be surprised how many Republicans watch them for a differing point of view. There are many republicans who are more libertarian, classical liberal, or independent leaning than classically conservative leaning.

That's part of the problem though with this argument, is that the "right" or "conservative" or "republican" can actually be very different things. It seems that most people on hacker news lump them all into the same category.

Also, not every conservative is an over-the-top Trump supporter. I'm definitely not. It doesn't mean I don't like some of the things he did, but he's got a lot of issues and was FAR from my ideal candidate.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#890

Post by chordalkeyboard »

wisty wrote: post #856
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racism was the absolute norm in the US until ~not that long ago. The racists during the time of slavery and Jim Crow made no attempt to deny their racism. The large majority of Republicans, including Trump, denounce racism. The news will find every schmuck with a confederate flag and put them on the TV, but that doesn't explain why a Republican majority Senate passed criminal justice reform and Trump signed it. > S…

You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement. This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

> You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement.

downvotes are the voice of the unheard.

> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

its common on both sides because its part of the human condition. However hn is one of the few places on the internet where it is even possible to achieve this, despite the downvotes.

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