Live data from Hacker News

Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

vice.com

101–110 of 640 posts

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#101
post #25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use a web app? I don’t have the Twitter app installed because the web app does everything I need.

They have a Progressive Web App, which should be able to be loaded up and a home screen shortcut just like any app would. But it's not straight forward for Android (Parler users were trying to explain how to do it to each other with hilarious results), and I believe on Apple it can't be done. There have been called for regulating how Apple and Google protect their app stores after Parler was pulled, but I don't think…

If parler users believe it is important to them and to society as they say... what's the problem with just opening up a web browser and going to parler.com anyway? That's too big a burden for something so vitally important to it's users?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I get that there are issues with corporate monopoly control of communication. And there are some things that will only work well as an app, not as a web page. But... parler really isn't one of them? Oh no we have to go to a bookmark in a browser instead of having an app or even an icon on a homepage... seems like a weird complaint when they are also saying access to parler is so vitally important. What's the big deal? I mostly access facebook and twitter this way on my android phone already.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#102
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the downvotes. This essentially is the same as my take. This is the inevitable result of pushing your brand as "no content moderation" but not actually having any skills or plans on what to do when it eventually caught up with them. Anyone familiar with 4chan knows that some of the earliest content that was banned on the platform include childporn and organizing raids/doxxing. If you read the terms of se…

This is factually false. There was moderation, there were terms of service and they banned appeals to violence from their site. The glee with which so many in tech are celebrating was essentially an attempt at corporate murder, on ideological grounds, is revolting.

And yet, in the Amazon suit, Amazon clearly says that Parler did not.

So, it's not "factually false". At best, it's up for a court of law to decide who is telling the truth.

But considering that it's trivial to show messages from Lin Wood, among others at the capital protests messages on parler calling for "appeals to violence" exactly in contradiction to your suggestion that there isn't... Well your argument doesn't appear supported by the facts.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's plenty of big colocation and hosting companies in Russia.

Which will not provide you service unless you give them Russian phone number and scan of your Russian passport.

Parler was backed by very deep pockets with existing international connections. They could afford to purchase the necessary Russian friends to make this happen.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#104
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate businesses like Cloudflare that stay neutral and just provide their service. I don't want to have to think about the political beliefs of a CEO before deciding to use a service.

This entire comment thread can be asterisked with “for now”. GoDaddy kicked off AR15.com with no reason at all, they were fine with the content... until the moment they weren’t. The problem has always been a TOS that is selectively and interpretively enforced. It’s just popular this week. > I don't want to have to think about the political beliefs of a CEO before deciding to use a service. ffs no joke! I was embarras…

Shut the fuck up and do our job hasn't really worked well once the capitol was attacked, those people were organizing in public in many social media platforms (not just Parler!) and people working at those social media companies shut the fuck up and did their job. And then that happened.

Are you saying that staying silent is the answer once you have people organizing to take down the government? How will your business operate once the government is down?

There has to have some limits somewhere. Yes we don't want everything to be political but obviously, there is a line somewhere, wouldn't you agree?

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#105
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a few thousand dollars a month I operate my own servers in n>1 physical locations with different companies and different transit providers. I figured it out. Pirate Bay figured it out. Any company that genuinely cares about eliminating SPOFs has figured it out.

Perhaps Parler did not realize that being aligned with conservatism was grounds for deplatforming. I am sure they will learn as will the whole world.

Fortunately being aligned with conservatism isn't grounds for deplatforming, as can be seen by the literal millions of conservatives on twitter who haven't been deplatformed. It's easy: you have a discussion about your political beliefs without telling the other person you're going to murder them for disagreeing with you.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#106
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate businesses like Cloudflare that stay neutral and just provide their service. I don't want to have to think about the political beliefs of a CEO before deciding to use a service.

This entire comment thread can be asterisked with “for now”. GoDaddy kicked off AR15.com with no reason at all, they were fine with the content... until the moment they weren’t. The problem has always been a TOS that is selectively and interpretively enforced. It’s just popular this week. > I don't want to have to think about the political beliefs of a CEO before deciding to use a service. ffs no joke! I was embarras…

> This entire comment thread can be asterisked with “for now”.

Which is true but its also important to not jump the gun so people can give coherent arguments for/against currents events.

Take Amazon for example, there is significant internal pressure to run the company based on a specific set of (for lack of a better word) progressive values but at the same time there is also a big part of the company that is customer focused and puts themselves in their shoes to try and deliver results and the politics of the day is just noise to them. Who will win in a few years time ? Can't say and the future is still unwritten.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#107
post #89

I got the sense while crawling data from their API that the engineering quality is poor at Parler. Dates were represented as strings in "YYYYMMDD" format (so today would be "20210113053923") instead of UNIX timestamps, certain fields were duplicated for no reason (e.g. every object would have an identical "id" and "_id" key), counts of impressions/comments/etc would be the display strings rather than raw numbers (so…

I think the display strings thing is because exact number of impressions etc is slightly sensitive information. The whole site was "gamed" from the start, but providing exact vote counts makes it easier for other people to game. I guess. Don't really know, but I do believe that the numbers given by reddit, for example, are exact, but fake. Fuzzed a bit. HN also hides some of this, or behaves misleadingly, your downvo…

[deleted]

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#108
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more accurately is they agree on the idea of censorship. That censorship has value to them.

If you don’t mind when platforms get rid of spam, child porn, normal porn, doxxing, death threats, ISIS recruitment videos or assassination contracts, then guess what: censorship has value to you, too.

Maybe misogynistic metal and rap music too? Maybe violent music and movies and video games...

Why stop, we’re on a roll

Very likely the World would be a better place if we only had happy music, happy movies, happy art. No angry art. No angry expression.

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#109
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What puts me off Gab and Parler is that the vast majority are those alienated or banned from other platforms for the same reason, for the most part they all think the same way and the topic of conversation is almost exclusively political. Gab has some interesting groups which slightly mitigates this.

Gab is #537 highest traffic website in the US, up from #647 yesterday. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gab.com#section_traffic I agree with you about the political agitation but I would say its becoming less of an issue on Gab. Parler was quite toxic. However, I prefer MSN messenger style chatrooms, so I use Telegram mostly which has now reached 500 million daily active users. These platforms aren't just filled with p…

I’m not as optimistic as your last prediction, unless Twitter and facebook start eating their own and that Sparks a more diverse range of points of view coming on board. I also think that in terms of interests, people joining these platforms will always have politics as number 1

Re: Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is 'embarrassing'

#110
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a Progressive Web App, which should be able to be loaded up and a home screen shortcut just like any app would. But it's not straight forward for Android (Parler users were trying to explain how to do it to each other with hilarious results), and I believe on Apple it can't be done. There have been called for regulating how Apple and Google protect their app stores after Parler was pulled, but I don't think…

If parler users believe it is important to them and to society as they say... what's the problem with just opening up a web browser and going to parler.com anyway? That's too big a burden for something so vitally important to it's users? I mean, don't get me wrong, I get that there are issues with corporate monopoly control of communication. And there are some things that will only work well as an app, not as a web p…

This is such a weird line of assertion that I wonder if you'd apply it in any other context.

The problem doesn't just exist for dedicated Parler die-hards. The problem exists for Parler trying to become a compelling platform at all among everyone else. And that problem exists for all Parler users including all the would-be users and all people trying to develop a following on Parler.

> Oh no we have to go to a bookmark in a browser instead of having an app or even an icon on a homepage

Sure, not a problem for Parler die-hards. Massive shortcoming for everyone else. iOS users can't even receive notifications from a website. Parler's target audience isn't just the people willing to jump through hoops. If you're someone trying to create content on Parler, your target audience isn't just people willing to remember to check their mobile browser every once in a while when every other app (incl Twitter) gives them real notifications.

You're saying that these obstacles either don't matter or they're inconsequential as long as your product is good, and you're sorely mistaken. You don't want to be lacking a notification system as a fledgling social media platform. Just consider how every time someone receives a "X replied to you" notification and returns to the app, how that enriches the entire platform.

Post reply on HN