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Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

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Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#221

Post by acdha »

DenisM wrote: post #202
acdha wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this argument works better as a question about decentralization: those three companies didn’t “scrub the entire Internet” — they simply chose not to provide free hosting and promotion for it on their own servers. If the authors had registered plandemic.com they’d be easy to find, but then they’d have to pay out of pocket for hosting. I think this is something a lot of us older people forget: if you experience…

Their sacks of money are so heavy they cause all content and services to fall into their gravity well, which is where it gets scrubbed. Decentralization is stalling in the face of the economy of scale.

You’re not wrong. YouTube is relatively easy to beat on UX but it’s hard to compete with free bandwidth and a massive promotion engine.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#222

Post by masterphilo »

otterley wrote: post #102
masterphilo wrote: post #67

Parler may have just ended its own business, I think. They should have pivoted to be a free speech alternative to sensible conservatives, with sensible moderation, and market their product as such. As it is, no one wants to do business with a company that openly allows neo-nazis, anti-semites, and lately, criminals, on their platform, and no one with a brain would even want to be on such a platform. I'm open to a Twi…

Twitter itself is open to conservative views. It’s just not open to outright lies about factual matters of critical importance, or to incitements to violence or the overthrow of the state. Surely one can express conservative opinions without resorting to such things—and most do.

I agree, but conservatives have been complaining about the phenomenon of shadow-banning on the platform for years, and this was pretty much confirmed after the Twitter hack last year. To allow conservative views but reduce their visibility is just a more subtle form of censorship, reflecting a left-leaning bias. I don't think Twitter or Facebook would even bother denying any of this at this point.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#223

Post by soneil »

candybar wrote: post #165
simonh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d have to prove conspiracy, but there’s no reason to believe any of these businesses conspired with each other.

That's too generous. Even if these these businesses "conspired" to do this, that's still not a conspiracy in a legal sense, which is about an agreement to commit an actual crime. As it's not a crime to end business relationships with an entity (which btw almost certainly has been in violation of TOS), no amount of prior coordination would make this a conspiracy. It's not illegal to conspire to do something that's oth…

Besides the obvious correlation to an external event, I think another major factor here is the rolling stone effect - "x, y, and z removed $(abhorrent content), why didn't you?". No-one wants to be left holding this hot potato.

I believe a conspiracy (in the legal sense) requires communication - peer pressure doesn't.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#224

Post by masterphilo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #154
masterphilo wrote: post #67

Parler may have just ended its own business, I think. They should have pivoted to be a free speech alternative to sensible conservatives, with sensible moderation, and market their product as such. As it is, no one wants to do business with a company that openly allows neo-nazis, anti-semites, and lately, criminals, on their platform, and no one with a brain would even want to be on such a platform. I'm open to a Twi…

Parler seems purpose built for revolution.

I read your other comment under the submission, and suddenly this makes more sense. It's possible there's something these companies know/aware of that we don't, or that the government is secretly involved in it somehow. What I know for certain is that it's extremely rare for all the FAANGs to gang up on a company like that simply because of differences of opinion.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#225

Post by panarky »

brayhite wrote: post #115
manfredo wrote: post #96

The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate lead…

I don’t think the goal of banning these folks is to change the banned person’s mind. It’s to slow down the spread of the banned person’s rhetoric. To your suggestion that folks who witness the ban take place suspecting “there’s something afoot”, while that could be right, I’d bet that’s a much smaller number than the number of folks who would’ve otherwise seen the rhetoric and came around to agreeing with it, if not…

Censoring ISIS beheading and recruiting videos was effective.

Any resentment or suspicion of censorship was far more than offset by the reduction in reach.

Suppressing incitement to violence along with the recruitment, training and organization of violent actors is essential.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#226

Post by otterley »

masterphilo wrote: post #222
otterley wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter itself is open to conservative views. It’s just not open to outright lies about factual matters of critical importance, or to incitements to violence or the overthrow of the state. Surely one can express conservative opinions without resorting to such things—and most do.

I agree, but conservatives have been complaining about the phenomenon of shadow-banning on the platform for years, and this was pretty much confirmed after the Twitter hack last year. To allow conservative views but reduce their visibility is just a more subtle form of censorship, reflecting a left-leaning bias. I don't think Twitter or Facebook would even bother denying any of this at this point.

> shadow-banning ... this was pretty much confirmed after the Twitter hack last year

Citation? Also, Twitter says otherwise: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...

To have the technological capability to do something does not necessarily imply that it is being used for the wrong reasons. Without proof, all there is is speculation.

> To allow conservative views but reduce their visibility is just a more subtle form of censorship

You're moving the goalposts. I was referring to allowing speech - you're talking about amplifying it. There is a huge difference between tolerance and amplification, and nobody should expect Twitter or any other media you don't own to amplify what you say for free. If you want people to follow you, say interesting things and influence people (but don't cross the line of inciting violence or calling on people to overthrow the government).

How the hell did we get from "this platform should allow me to post what I want" to "this platform should broadcast what [person X] says with equal volumetric distribution to non-subscribers as it does [person Y]?"

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#227

Post by aliakhtar »

jlos wrote: post #121

I think there are actually two issues here: the incidence of violence and use of a "Content Killswitch". By a content killswitch, I mean that concerted action by 3 companies to basicaly scrub the entire internet of source materia in 24-48 hours and leave only articles giving their spin on the events. I remember the same thing happened when that stupid "Plandemic" movie came out earlier last year. Even while I had no…

The fact that this has never happened before except when literal incitement of violence was being carried out (google for screenshots) and not being stopped, shows there's no reason to worry this will happen to you.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#228

Post by bjtitus »

DenisM wrote: post #205
tzs wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't quickly. Parler has been around for two years, and the kind of material that got them finally kicked out of places has been there from near the beginning. Parler's lack of moderation of user content has been in violation of Apple and Google's rules for all that time. I bet if someone had started a service similar to Parler but non-political, where people posted massive amounts of death threats and hate spee…

It’s an interesting hypothesis. I wonder if we can verify if. Are there really awful services out there? I’m think 4chan - do they have an app? And more to the point - would AWS and Stripe deplatform them?

Just a few examples of deplatforming situations:

8chan and Cloudflare: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/cloudflare-will-stop-servi...

Daily Stormer by Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

In 2007, Verizon blocked a text message campaign from an abortion rights group: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27verizon.html

Similar kinds of censorship have, realistically, been going on for quite a while. IMO it's the monopolies which are now making it more of a concern. Deal with the anti-trust problem and everyone wins.

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#229

Post by kthejoker2 »

DenisM wrote: post #215
simonh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I think we all should be free to associate or do business with whoever we choose. That should be the default position. There may have to be some exceptions where available options are limited for crucial services. I’m trying to avoid using the word Monopoly because it’s bandied about so much inappropriately, but some services are so essential and providers are so limited that we should probably expect them…

Legal counsel is not essential?

Legal counsel != a specific law firm.

AWS is one service. YouTube is one service. Twitter is one service.

Yes, they are big services - in most cases, the biggest service among their competitors.

They have stakeholders and financial incentives to not be associated with - or worse, seen as condoning - deeply unpopular or controversial political positions.

Why is it so easy to understand when it's a baker refusing to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding or a Christian-owned company refusing to provide birth control for their employees?

Re: Parler CEO Says Service Dropped by “Every Vendor” and Could End His Business

#230

Post by jhanschoo »

manfredo wrote: post #96

The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate lead…

> The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders.

Historically, for a forum with nationwide reach, you were nevertheless reliant on periodicals and newspapers and their editors, or running your own publishing.

If there was a will, there's still a way: sites like The Pirate Bay, Library Genesis, and WikiLeaks still find a way to stay up; and they definitely run their own servers though of course there's more that's needed. That kind of effort is what one must be prepared for. It can likely find friendly vendors if willing to look beyond US companies.

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