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Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

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Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#131

Post by [deleted] »

dan-robertson wrote: post #122
pmlnr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. One hard truth: it would have been enough to look at European laws made after WWII, and adopt them in the US as well in the first place.

What do you mean by “European”? And what laws are you talking about? Does this include the laws made in East Berlin or other communist countries? Do you think Le Pen didn’t get into power because of free speech laws? It seems to me like she just didn’t have quite enough support to get in. What about the laws made in post-communist countries like Poland or Hungary or Belarus? (Or Lithuania or Latvia?) Perhaps you mean…

[deleted]

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#132

Post by redisman »

decasia wrote: post #10

The thing is, you're always going to dependent on someone in the mainstream economic world if you want to have a web presence in North America. Even if you run your own servers, you're at the mercy of your hosting provider, your ISP, your DNS registrar, and even browser level things like Google Safe Browsing. Any of these can be major points of failure. So yeah, not using AWS would avoid being dependent on AWS, but y…

It's pretty baffling how people all of a sudden expect Fortune 500 companies to not act "politically correct" when bad actors are breaking their TOSes. Was there ever a medium backed by a large corporation where you could post calls to violence against politicians without getting booted off?

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#133

Post by pmlnr »

dan-robertson wrote: post #122
pmlnr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. One hard truth: it would have been enough to look at European laws made after WWII, and adopt them in the US as well in the first place.

What do you mean by “European”? And what laws are you talking about? Does this include the laws made in East Berlin or other communist countries? Do you think Le Pen didn’t get into power because of free speech laws? It seems to me like she just didn’t have quite enough support to get in. What about the laws made in post-communist countries like Poland or Hungary or Belarus? (Or Lithuania or Latvia?) Perhaps you mean…

I thought it's obvious from the context, but examples include denying the holocaust being a crime.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#134

Post by NationalPark »

hartator wrote: post #49

I don’t get all the anti free speech comments here. I rather live in a country with real free speech but no democracy than the reverse. You can’t have democracy without free speech.

Sigh. I am unbelievably tired of people setting this up as "pro free speech" vs "anti free speech". It's inflammatory (who proudly calls themselves "anti-free speech"? It's bad faith just to say that. Anyway.) and it's misleading.

Most critically, almost everyone fundamentally agrees that censorship is a good thing, in principle. Even the most extreme "free speech" oriented websites remove spam, illegal pornography, and deliberate impersonation. Therefore, we both agree with the proposition that sometimes website operators should exercise their discretion and remove content. We are now discussing what should be in the set of things it is acceptable to remove and what is not. But we are not having a disagreement about the concept of censorship.

Another thing to think about: Is a website operator that uses their discretion to remove content not, by that action, exercising their free speech? Would you have the government require website operators to host content they don't want to host? Because that is definitely a First Amendment violation.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#135

Post by honest_guy »

ardy42 wrote: post #93
millzlane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…

> I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. Then what about lies? The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against (if you disagree, try using facts and rea…

And what of the lies which led us into the Gulf War and the Iraq War? Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of those lies, and they were broadcast from coast to coast by every credible news media organisation in existence. The same organisations now being lauded as the bearers of ultimate truth.

When the next set of lies is rolled out to land us in another unending conflict, I would quite like the internet to be a place where information can freely flow. My fear of governments is far greater than my fear of kooky people on the internet.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#136

Post by pstuart »

trident5000 wrote: post #126
millzlane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…

Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.

It was a stupid gesture on her part and she paid a step price for that act, so it wasn't so free.

When talking about the riots that happened it important to acknowledge all the players. Most of the protesters against police brutality were peaceful and exercising first amendment rights of the first degree -- complaining about government abuses.

There are recorded cases of agents provocateur, e.g., https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-...

And the police themselves were not passive in these regards, at least in the case when the protesters were not about white nationalism.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#137

Post by slg »

jmull wrote: post #115
ardy42 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. Then what about lies? The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against (if you disagree, try using facts and rea…

We do have some limits on lies. There are libel/slander laws. These limits are usually very weak, though. They vary from place to place, but tend to have a high bar, are expensive to pursue, and have many exceptions.

Furthermore these laws almost exclusively apply when speaking about specific people. QAnon people can be sued if they say "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of children". However they are safe saying "Democrats drink the blood of children." I don't understand why these two should be treated differently from a moral, ethical, or legal perspective.

Also these are largely viewed as civil issues and not criminal so Hillary Clinton needs to take them to court and not the State. These two issues combined basically give Americans free rein to make up whatever lies they want about whatever group they wish to defame.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#138

Post by danudey »

voodootrucker wrote: post #41
lisper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is exactly the problem: how do you separate the two? Once someone figures out a way to profit from "free speech" the profit motive takes over and infects the whole system. I don't see any way around that without compromising freedom.

I think banning online advertising causing these sites to charge their users for the service would right a lot of wrongs automatically, when the free market can start to kick in and do it's job. It makes it so Facebook's product becomes online photo sharing, instead of it's current product which is manipulation and addiction. https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-ad...

Thanks for this link, it was a great read - and compelling.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#139

Post by kiba »

netizen-9748 wrote: post #98
ipsocannibal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this point of view neglects the emergent properties of a society where millions of people can spew nonsense all at once, at the speed of light, using AI assisted audience targeting. Crackpots and liars have existed since the beginning of time but never before has a technology been designed to so readily amplify and reenforce their nonsense. Never before has a technology been so adept at hiding from you that t…

I think the issue is rather the visibility of the nonsense, as a global species we are still adapting to this new communication medium

This is because we use 'votes' and 'likes' along with non-transparent algorithms to amplify certain voices over other.

Nothing to do with the medium, but how we structure social media.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#140

Post by peytn »

quacker wrote: post #44
lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

> But we've now done the experiment in a big way and the results seem overwhelmingly negative to me, to the point where they present a credible existential threat to civilization, on a par with climate change. Free speech is certainly a double-edged sword. For example, would you be comfortable running a large site on which users spread misinformation about climate change? Would you continue allowing that misinformati…

I’d be fine with that. Climate change is hard enough that I don’t think banning dissent and reinforcing groupthink is gonna get us to a good place. We should think about designing better solutions and incentives to adhere to those solutions instead. Banning misinformation won’t cure the desire not to go along with a plan. It just kicks problems with aligning incentives down the road.
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