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I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

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Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#91

Post by yesTheyDid »

ashneo76 wrote: post #90
yeuxardents wrote: post #4

I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By cr…

You're gaslighting. Storming the capitol and threatening the lives of senators isn't the same as protesting to be heard. BLM protestors didn't show up with a guillotine

They most certainly did though.

This was setup in front of the mayor's house in Portland OR:

https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658

—

I am starting to question if people do not realize this activity has been going on for many months in cities across the country.

Why the media kept this relatively quiet (now and previously) is beyond comprehension for most people aware at this point.

The media is divided and therefore, our people are also divided.

If two people can’t agree what/when/if past events occurred, how can anyone discuss, much less agree on the current events?

In other words, perhaps people should consider that any opinions formed re: politics were likely formed from/by the media they consumed.

If we know the media has lately been “one-sided” (yet coming from all sides), perhaps we should be a bit more vigilant to not make assumptions about “another side” if we are unwilling to look at that side - outside the lens of the “great filter”.

IIRC, the great filter is what Elon Musk calls it, at least that’s my understanding of the meaning.

The instant outrage of today - solely based on what the media is presenting - is at the very least - a possible attack vector for outside or even internal forces.

It is my opinion that folks need to better understand this before becoming immediately outraged.

It’s up to a person to determine what side they want to present to others politically, but having an understanding that most people won’t review “all sides” before discussion can help keep “toxicity” in-check upon the inevitable disagreement that will come after posting any political statement.

This is why it’s an attack vector, and why the attack works. It works based on the likelihood that most won’t even look, yet will make assertions as if they did.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#92

Post by zaq1 »

coffexx wrote: post #76
zaq1 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tabloids are not credible.

https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 Here, from someone on the ground that night, you can clearly see St. John's Episcopal Church in the videos. The tabloid was reporting correctly. The fact these sorts of things, including all the other violence and destruction going on at the time, were either ignored wholesale or played down by mainstream news sources, while also being actively encouraged i…

Wow, there really was a fake Trump model under a guillotine. I agree that major news outlets have become very polarized and lack critical reflection of their own reporting / party they support.

Still, Trump supporters have become quite removed from reality, and "liberal" outlets at least recognized Trump's insane hubris.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#93

Post by 3131s »

jspash wrote: post #61
3131s wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I told my acquaintances that the "insurrection" would happen a full two weeks before it did. Am I a broken clock, or are you just out of touch with the fragmented landscape of political commentary on the internet?

Just curious...what is your prediction for the much talked about country-wide "event" coming in 3-4 days? I mean, the same people who were "chattering" about the 6th have said in no uncertain terms that they WILL once again stage an armed protest (good luck to that) starting on the 16th and culminating on the 17th at the capitol and the capitols of each and every state. With the threat of violence not just between th…

Well it's a little harder to tell what's going on now that some of these right-leaning sites have been shuttered, but from what I can tell people are backing away from this and not showing much interest in further violent protest.

There might be some large crowds in response to all of the recent deplatformings, but at least some conservatives are claiming that no such events are planned on at the capitols and that the media is inflating the story.

Your guess is as good as mine though. There are so many lunatics in America that anything might happen. Hopefully whatever attempts at violence are made will be unsuccessful.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#94

Post by KozmoNau7 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #89
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't represent Twitter, nor do I have any influence on their decisions. I simply corrected your misconceptions about the data present in the dump. However, there is a big difference between posting the information on a single named person and in effect blaming him for the COVID-19 pandemic, based purely on speculation and hearsay about the supposed origin of the virus, and dumping the publicly available data from…

I don't read Zero Hedge and I'm not a "fan" or anything like that. But there is significant disinformation about what they claimed and wrote. Zero Hedge did not present their theory as definitive (read for yourself at https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavir... ). It was speculative, and frankly it is totally appropriate to speculate in a situation like this. Why wouldn't a leak from a lab be feas…

The headline on the Zero Hedge article is literally "Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?", which places blame on the guy, under the bad-faith guise of "just asking questions". They know full well what that means to conspiratorially-minded people and what they're implying.

Since you appear to only want to argue in bad faith, I have nothing further to discuss with you.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#95

Post by Viliam1234 »

tpoacher wrote: post #86
yeuxardents wrote: post #4

I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By cr…

Worse still. You want to cause trouble? All you need to do is open an account in your enemy's platform and start being a publicly visible asshole under its badge. I'm not claiming a "bad apples are always planted" conspiracy theory, but it does worry me how easy it is to do so and create a destructive narrative if you really wanted to. Whereas if you're just trolling in a general platform, most likely outcome is that…

Create a new account, post some shit, immediately screenshot it, and share the picture on your real Twitter account. Takes 1 minute of time, and has a chance to be shared by media.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#96

Post by Viliam1234 »

yesTheyDid wrote: post #91
ashneo76 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're gaslighting. Storming the capitol and threatening the lives of senators isn't the same as protesting to be heard. BLM protestors didn't show up with a guillotine

They most certainly did though. This was setup in front of the mayor's house in Portland OR: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658 — I am starting to question if people do not realize this activity has been going on for many months in cities across the country. Why the media kept this relatively quiet (now and previously) is beyond comprehension for most people aware at this point. The media is…

Hey, when my side brings the guillotines it is completely different from when your side brings the guillotines, how dare you suggest that there is any similarity between their behaviors? Yours are the guillotines of hate, ours are the guillotines of love and tolerance!

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#97

Post by saargrin »

3pt14159 wrote: post #69
saargrin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im super annoyed by people who are outraged about this then turn around and repost memes about eating the rich or guillotining/GULaging Jeff Bezos

I'm highly critical of certain billionaires, Bezos included, but I do not endorse or even tolerate language like "eat the rich" because I still value the humanity of people that I think are presently exploiting a broken political / economic system. Bezos has done some good. Especially on climate change. Just because we disagree on the distributive effects of capitalism doesn't mean we're not both part of the same hum…

bezos ,almost single handedly, drove the whole concept of consumer accessible computing

having been in the IT field throughout this period,i remember the awful pains you had to go thru to get any reasonable amount of computing power ,including purchasing hardware with months-long leads and having to deal with import/export documents and shipment ,not to mention things that are completely irrelevant like power requirements and rack weight per sqm of datacenter space

this has changed completely and now anybody with a bright idea can spin up a cluster of tremendous capacity for literally a few dollars that would deliver enterprise grade software (like RDS , EMR or ML engines) that you as a startup wouldnt have been able to license at all

this has been an immense boon to humanity for which Bezos deserves every single penny of his fortune

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#98

Post by formalsystems »

roenxi wrote: post #38
formalsystems wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally spent many hours on Parler reading the discourse. The Turner Diaries were openly discussed and gave rise to various gallow-related hashtags which proliferated on it. I don't presume to predict anything as was correctly pointed out. I could not and did not imagine the events that transpired.

> The Turner Diaries were openly discussed and gave rise to various gallow-related hashtags which proliferated on it. This looks to me like a classic correlation-causation mistake. * Discussion a book with mass hangings can lead people to talk about gallows. * Going to a political protest can traditionally involve bringing a gallows. They are not linked, even though both things involve a gallows. Political protest co…

Hello, after further research and contacting an academic source about this, I believe I made a mistake in making a definitive statement about the gallows- it was pointed out to me that gallows as a protest symbol are not tied to any specific group, and I was given enough examples of their use in other protests that it cannot be definitely stated as the original commenter mentioned.

I've updated my writing to clarify it as an opinion, and I'm taking a step back to improve my research and tone of writing. The truth is I have never written anything for the Internet before and the constructive criticism of HN users has helped me tremendously. I want to make neutral statements/analysis of facts and rarely if ever provide my personal opinion.

Thank you both for taking the time to provide your feedback.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#99

Post by formalsystems »

throwawaysea wrote: post #51

It's unclear exactly what these graphs are showing. The axes are not labeled well - why does "relative" frequency matter? From my reading of this post, all the author is saying is that the rate of those posts went up over time, relative to themselves. But if they're still an exceedingly rare occurrence, that tells a different story. How frequently were they appearing overall? What percentage of all Parler users poste…

Thank you for this valuable feedback. I have added a disclaimer as I believe I have not answered the questions you listed well enough, and I need to ensure whatever statements I make can be reproduced by others.

The truth is I have never written anything for the Internet before and was never expecting this level of attention. I'm taking a step back from writing to ensure that whatever work I put out there can be reproduced/verified/criticized by others (ideally by more experienced/knowledgeable data scientists) and that uses the complete scraped archive of Parler, however long the wait for that may be. I will also be reworking the visuals to use a non-proprietary language.

Lastly, I believe one point you mentioned about explicitly calling for violence is important - even someone who talks about hanging a politician may have simply reiterated a hashtag they saw elsewhere, without explicitly stating their own malicious intent. I am now using AWS Comprehend and plan to share this data in a more engaging way.

Thank you again for taking the time to help me think critically about this.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#100

Post by formalsystems »

throwawaysea wrote: post #52
throwawaysea wrote: post #51

It's unclear exactly what these graphs are showing. The axes are not labeled well - why does "relative" frequency matter? From my reading of this post, all the author is saying is that the rate of those posts went up over time, relative to themselves. But if they're still an exceedingly rare occurrence, that tells a different story. How frequently were they appearing overall? What percentage of all Parler users poste…

Also, kudos to this author for not logging personal information: > there is panic among the ex-Parler community that all their data, even private/deleted posts, have been scraped and archived — it has, just not by me. Furthermore, Parler did not follow industry standards in obfuscating EXIF metadata from uploaded images, so millions of users had their exact location logged. However, I am stunned that Twitter still ha…

I appreciate what you are saying here. What started as concern for my personal safety morphed into a realization that an Internet mob is looking to lynch any Parler user who said anything even remotely questionable. I also believe these people need compassion and dialog from the other side, as they will retreat even further if the people they consider elitists start publishing names.
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