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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

#171

Post by edbob »

dralley wrote: post #130
edbob wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "a credible existential threat to civilization" to you? The recent riots seem to be more than adequately handled through existing law enforcement procedures. Obviously the police can't prevent every crime, but in this case investigation and prosecution seems to be enough to remove bad actors. We know what the consequences of free speech are, and even if the downsides are amplified 1000x by its enemies, the do…

>What is "a credible existential threat to civilization" to you? The recent riots seem to be more than adequately handled through existing law enforcement procedures. The crowd (who had previously been chanting "hang Mike Pence") came within about 30 seconds of being face to face with Vice President Pence and some large fraction of Congress (source [0]). They came very close to being overrun before the building was e…

For context, I don't expect any government to be able to prevent violence and conflict. The best we can hope for is to keep conflict to a manageable level. We've had numerous assassinations in this country in the past, and it held together. The threat of a possible assassination of a right-wing figure absolutely does not rise to the level of "existential threat". If you don't want to call it "adequately handled", fine, I'm not going to argue those semantic distinctions especially as it's not necessary for us to have the same perspectives here. I'm just saying that society is still intact, and would still be intact even if Mike Pence had been attacked.

Other than the personal tragedy to Pence and his family, the worst outcome of an assassination would be people struggling to reconcile their ecstatic glee that Pence had keen killed with their furious rage that right-wingers attacked someone. If anything, division and conflict within the Republican Party only seems to strengthen their opposition. These events lead to less power held by the right, not more. Republicans shooting themselves in the foot is not an "existential threat to civilization".

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

#172

Post by jimmydorry »

pstuart wrote: post #136
trident5000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.startrib…

She posted it again with impunity, so it basically was free, seeing as she was not deplatformed after the first or second time doing it.

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

#173

Post by matchbok »

zarkov99 wrote: post #80
ogre_codes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Nonsense. Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook were moderating content. If Twitter and Facebook hadn't been moderating hate speech, Parler would not exist. Posting voices and content which is banned on Twitter and Facebook is the single unique "Feature" of Parler. Over the months, Amazon has been in contact with Parl…

I think you are mis-informed here, or perhaps your definition of hate speech is different from mine. Parler was created because there was a perception that the moderation at Twitter was heavily slanted against conservatives. Many respectable people joined Parler, though, again perhaps we have different definitions of respectable. Parler has a moderation mechanism which is manual, not automatic as in Twitter, and like…

[flagged]

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

#174

Post by gpm »

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…

I think "free speech" is not quite as simple as a single concept.

Despite how it's often portrayed, Parler was not hosting uncensored speech, on the contrary it was a heavily moderated platform controlling for a certain set of speech.

I'm not convinced that this example (really any of the examples of speech surrounding Trump) are actually representative samples of what private communications products not subject to control by any central authority looks like.

There is still someone that was exercising free uncensored speech here (under the american 1st amendment definition) - but that person is the person running Parler, and not the users. What we observed with this deplatforming was one set of platforms with relatively little censorship (though a fair bit in absolute terms) stop supporting a sub-platform with a lot of censorship.

One lesson I would take away from this is that enabling platforms on which censorship is performed by a third party not under your control can be scary. The amount of damage bad-faith moderation/censorship can do was surprisingly (to me) high - I would have thought people would notice and reject it more strongly. Uncensored platforms for speech might also be scary, but I don't think Trump gives much evidence for it (sites like 4-chan might, I don't really know).

Another lesson I would take away from reddit's handling of Trump (in general) is that manipulation of algorithmic content discovery can do a lot of damage. There we saw that happening with things like bots upvoting (as well as bad faith moderation), but I think the pattern is more general. If you can choose what people are looking at, especially if you can convince them that it's "organic content", it can do a lot of damage. I'm told that similar issues with Facebook/Youtube content discovery existed as well, but I don't have first hand experience with those issues (youtube tends to recommend random technical and rocket related content to me, and I barely use facebook).

Whether those lessons are "anti free speech" - well that's up to your definition of free speech. I don't think they are under my definition, but I think they are under the US constitutions definition.

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

#175

Post by GrifMD »

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…

I know it's a video game, but I really think Hideo Kojima nailed it in MGS2 (2001):

https://youtu.be/C31XYgr8gp0?t=99

Or the transcript: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/95454286

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

#176

Post by dfgdghdf »

Here's how I might open a debate with right-leaning people about freedom of speech.

If you sell a product, but make false claims about that product, then you are committing fraud. You have harmed someone (financially) with your speech, and contract laws rightly overrule freedom of speech here. So, if you believe in contract law, which is essential for free markets, then you must believe in limitations on speech... the question then is simply where to draw the line.

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

#179

Post by matchbok »

the_drunkard wrote: post #68
ogre_codes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Nonsense. Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook were moderating content. If Twitter and Facebook hadn't been moderating hate speech, Parler would not exist. Posting voices and content which is banned on Twitter and Facebook is the single unique "Feature" of Parler. Over the months, Amazon has been in contact with Parl…

> Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook were moderating content. > If Twitter and Facebook hadn't been moderating hate speech, Parler would not exist. I don't think it's fair to claim Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook moderate hate speech. For example, the Hunter Biden story was actively suppressed on both Twitter and Facebook, essentially confirming long-held beliefs that social media platfor…

Only if you choose to think it's based on ideology. Fact is, 90% of the top links on FB are right-wing nonsense and conspiracy theories. Doesn't sound like curation to me.

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

#180

Post by jimmygrapes »

alwayseasy wrote: post #113
edbob wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the worst-case scenario if they had succeeded? That they take some people hostage and have a stand-off until the FBI takes them down? There was no path to them attaining any actual power. Their actions were violent and bad, but had no actual effect on anybody outside of D.C. That is not what I call an "existential threat". Again, you have to compare the downsides of free speech vs the downsides of censorship.…

The worst-case scenario is the end of democracy in the USA in the next 15 years. If one side stays convinced the elections were fraudulent and Trump is a victim , it will cause a permanent shift in how Americans see their own democratic elections. Historically, since democracy has existed, that vacuum is always filled by an authoritarian leader.

I find it odd that most of this could have been prevented if just one judge had said "you know what, you have a lot of notarized affidavits, and a reasonable claim to harm considering you lost the election by conventional wisdom, and you can't legally access any further data to prove your case unless we enter a discovery stage, so, sure, let's play this out and be done with it."

I also find it odd that none of the lawsuits prevented combined the affidavits (generally considered sufficient evidence to proceed) and reasonable proof of harm. Always one or the other (or neither).

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