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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

#241

Post by cm2187 »

millzlane wrote: post #36
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 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…

In the world of micro-aggressions, there needs to be a very strict definition of what we mean by violence.

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

#242

Post by glogla »

eznzt wrote: post #182
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.

"In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr... Is this really what you want?

Here's the actual judgement from ECHR: [1]

It is an interesting reading - it gives a very different impression than the article.

According to the document, she claimed Muhammad was a pedophile in a series of seminars "Basics of Islam" that pretended to be objective courses but were organised by a far-right political party.

The judgement also mentions that saying something offensive or untrue on purpose and then claiming "it was just my opinion" doesn't protect you from repercussions, that you are allowed to criticise current practices of religion but not on bases of what someone allegedly done hundreds of years ago when societal standards were different, and that fine 480 Euro is on the low end of a range and not disproportionate.

So as I understand it, a far right person was deliberately shit-stirring in a propaganda seminar and got slap on the wrist (fine of ~ 15 % median wage) to be more careful next time.

[1]: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{"itemid":["002-12171"]}

EDIT: the link doesn't seem to work properly, you'll have to copy-paste it.

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

#243

Post by alwayseasy »

edbob wrote: post #222
alwayseasy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really hard problem because the "anti-censorship" argument is also used by the side that wants to destroy democracy once in power. Historically, Americans have succeeded at destroying ideologies by grossly impeding on free speech and other constitutional rights when there was political will. Currently, I'm not sure there is a sign of political will to restore democratic norms by suppressing white-supremacism.

> Historically, Americans have succeeded at destroying ideologies by grossly impeding on free speech and other constitutional rights when there was political will. What is the history here?

Native American autonomy and agency, African Americans obtaining land after the Civil War or stimulus measures after the Great Depression, Communism... Of course, the combination of limiting free speech for decades leads to the death of the ideology because no one picks it up.

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

#244

Post by pixl97 »

sojournerc wrote: post #198
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think the legal status quo is pretty close to ideal: governments may not limit speech, but platforms can clamp down on anything they want. The only problem with the platforms is that they still somewhat cling to the idea that they won’t censor speech, which is frankly ridiculous. Of course they will censor, they should just admit it and clamp down any speech they find abhorrent. Allow the marketplace (and…

What about DNS? ISP? There must be some line. Sure you can build your own server and connect it to the internet, but if you're handing out cards with an IP address, marketability is limited.

IP address connectivity should be a universal right. DNS is trickier, but the root level companies that provide names should be required to host your NS records (not your DNS servers themselves).

After that I don't believe the internet owes you anything.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by 015a »

mcguire wrote: post #212

Playing the devil's advocate here: is this really "exceptional power"? Before the Internet, fringe, extremist political movements had essentially the same options as every other minor interest group: local groups, physical, mailed newsletters, maybe magazines, booths at whatever kind of group meetings, and maybe news media coverage. All of those options still exist. So the modern state of things hasn't removed anythi…

I agree; but there are a few worrying trends that we need to keep an eye on with respect to this:

* IPv4 space. IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive. In a perfect world we'd just get rid of them, but instead, we live in a world where Amazon owns roughly $3B worth of them. They're critical to serving web content; what happens when centralized corporate mega-powers are the only ones who can afford them, or own them?

* Email reputation. Its basically a boys club; if you don't send your emails through a reputable provider, with their acceptable use policies which generally reach far beyond "are you sending spam", you're likely to be spam-listed by the recipients mailbox, of which there are roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL).

* "Post-email" customer communication channels. Companies increasingly talk to customers over iMessage, FBM, Telegram, etc. These are all closed loops; piss off Apple and you lose that channel. A truly open, federated 1:1 chat solution is necessary. Unaware of any options here; Signal feels like we're getting there, but its not federated. Gaining market adoption is a whole other problem, but stomping on your privacy and freedom tends to be a big motivator.

* Domain registration. I don't think this is a huge threat vector for market freedom, given how many registrars there are and how lax IANA's rules are. Lets keep it that way.

* ARM. There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. Amazon and Apple have their proprietary ones they aren't sharing. If the industry moves more toward ARM, to where hosting on x86 becomes intolerable due to software support (I expect it will, but on a timespan of decades), this is a big threat vector for increasing centralization into the mega-corp clouds. Definitely need an "Intel for ARM" (AMD? Nvidia? Uh, Intel?)

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

#248

Post by NationalPark »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #238
NationalPark wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> " spam, illegal pornography, and deliberate impersonation " Please stop repeating this tired meme. All of things in that list are off-topic or outright against the law; nobody wants to receive those things. The topic is and always was removal of unpopular speech that is 1) on-topic 2) between consenting parties who consciously wanted to send and receive those messages 3) mostly not illegal. (Yes, of course, the ill…

If your position is genuinely that you believe website operators should be mandated by law to host content they do not want to host except when that content has been specifically determined to be illegal, then we simply disagree on that point - I think that would make the world a worse place and I prefer the world where that rule is not in effect. But if you believe in allowing the tiniest ounce of operator discretion, you believe in censorship, in principle.

Just think about the absolutist argument for a moment and it becomes incoherent: am I infringing on your free speech if I downvote you? What if I upvote you? If someone reads my comment, then decides not to read your comment, aren't I censoring you just as much as if I gave my friend a browser extension that blocks only your comments?

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

#249

Post by tomp »

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…

You need not look further than Nadler's blatant denial (on video!) that Antifa violence even exists to see how powerful and/or dangerous one-sided freedom of speech is.

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

#250

Post by ardy42 »

honest_guy wrote: post #135
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…

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…

> 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.

What "lie" led us into the Gulf War? Are you claiming that Iraq did not in fact invade and conquer Kuwait?

And what about the stuff about Iraqi WMDs? I'm obviously not claiming that lying was invented in the last few years, so pointing out some lie that gained traction in the past doesn't really challenge anything I said.

> 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.

There's a good chance that the kind of freely flowing information I'm talking about will likely just lead you to a different lie. If the truth (or interpretations approaching the truth) is a needle in a haystack, it's unlikely that many people will actually ever find it. That's a problem.

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