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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

#651

Post by [deleted] »

zanmat0 wrote: post #572
sdenton4 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: Perhaps you'd be willing to agree that this was an explicit attempt at a soft coup: The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. Second: As others have observed, we got extremely lucky that the rioters didn't actually come in contact with any congress-people or the vice president. What do you think would have happened if, say the crowd has come in c…

>The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. And then what? Once the mob was cleared out, they would have resumed. There's a chasm between disrupting proceedings and actually taking over a country. The latter also almost always involved having control of the military by the way.

[deleted]

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

#652

Post by slg »

voicedYoda wrote: post #531
apple_innocent wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I agree with your opinion. That includes not letting politicians onto these websites to do campaigning. This was a big mistake. The number of former public servants who have gone to work for Facebook is alarming, IMO. The number of possible future public servants who have worked there is perhaps even more worrisome.

It's been a revolving door for a long long time

The question is how do you fix that? We should want domain experts in a lot of these government roles, but the primary way you become an expert in an industry is working in that industry.

Let's image we put a ban in place to prevent this revolving door. Why would someone working in the industry be willing to forfeit their post-government career, especially if they are a political appointee and might only have the role for a few years until the next election?

That is a huge disincentive to participate in governing and will likely lead to more career politicians and bureaucrats which isn't exactly an ideal situation.

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

#653

Post by rodgerd »

echelon wrote: post #605
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 thought I believed in free speech Fascists on the left and right want you to doubt this. What we saw on Capitol Hill was vile and atrocious, but it was a bunch of uneducated hillbillies that have been indoctrinated. They might have been afforded the chance to invade by Trump insiders, but they would never have toppled our government. In reality, they stood zero chance of threatening our democracy. Big media and b…

> but it was a bunch of uneducated hillbillies that have been indoctrinated.

A woman who flew in her private plane. Serving and former military officers, including intelligence officers. Children of judges. A sitting politician. But yeah, obviously hillbillies.

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

#654

Post by sdenton4 »

easton wrote: post #496
sdenton4 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, /someone/ had an explicit plan for using a delay of the congressional certification to overturn the results: 'Giuliani tells Tuberville that McConnell wants to narrow the objections to just three states and explains that the Trump team wants to object to 10. “So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us…

Constitutionally he can’t do that though, since it requires his term to end at noon on January 20th. If there was a deadlock on certification Trump would still leave office, and we’d probably have an emergency constitutional convention to pass a amendment to fix this bug.

You think Trump cares about the constitution? He cares about Trump. We just saw over a hundred Republican congressmen vote against the results of a fair election in favor of Trump for Trump's sake. The constitution is a rhetorical tool at best for these people.

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

#655

Post by h_anna_h »

glogla wrote: post #242
eznzt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 claim…

> but not on bases of what someone allegedly done hundreds of years ago when societal standards were different

Guess we can't legally criticize people for owning slaves now.

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

#656

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

People have to understand that this is what free speech actually looks like. Some people want to say some things, and other people don’t want to say them, so the latter choose not to help the former. In this case, the people running Amazon decided not to help the people running Parler anymore.

And it is decentralized. No central authority told Amazon to drop Parler; Amazon decided on their own.

I think a lot of young people came up thinking that “free speech” meant no one ever gets shut down for any reason. And they grew up thinking that tech platforms are like the government; neutral and inalienable. Neither was true and IMO it is very good in the long run for people to now understand and accept this.

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

#657

Post by jacquesm »

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…

That's the problem with absolutist positions, they rarely survive contact with the real world. I commend you for having a principled position on this, and I'm sad that you ran into this particular bug. But human nature treats absolutism like loopholes, it gives a person the opportunity to ignore the spirit of what is given and take the letter instead leading to all kids of nastiness.

Free speech would be a great thing to have, in a society where people are not hell bent on destroying each other and their own societal structure given half a chance. Memes are very powerful and the wrong meme has the power to wreck much more than good memes can help repair due to the asymmetry between destruction and creation. Destruction is far easier than creation.

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

#658

Post by colordrops »

dragonwriter wrote: post #502
colordrops wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some reasons that may talk you down: * The world, and the US has always gone through periods of chaos. This is not the first time we've seen violence and strife, with assassinated presidents and students mowed down by bullets. What's happening now is not worse than what happened before and somehow we still kept free speech intact. * While certain speech is hateful, painful, and even somewhat dangerous, stifl…

> Lastly, one of the main reasons these people are getting violent is because they are suffering, in poverty, without jobs, and recognize that something is seriously wrong society. Yeah, if you look at the people detained and identified in the Capitol riot, they aren't people who got violent because they were suffering, in poverty, or without jobs; they are largely middle class and up, currently employed, well-establ…

I don't know the veracity of your statement, but censorship, particularly of right wing narratives, has been a hot topic for a long time, not just after the capitol riot. Your statement would imply that the massive support for Trump is only due to people wanting to protect their privilege. You are denying reality by ignoring the vast swath of poor people that voted for Trump because he claimed he would address their needs. This is an undeniable fact.

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

#659

Post by beerandt »

acdha wrote: post #441
trident5000 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the secret service made the call to take the president into a bunker because it never happened. Just wanted a little adventure that day.

Whoever made decision to move him into the bunker doesn’t change the fact that the protesters did not go past the gates or otherwise do anything which was unusual from decades of protests – which happen all of the time in DC. You are clearly desperate to portray a false equivalence but that simply doesn’t fit the facts.

>>>>A poor execution does not make it less seditious

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

#660

Post by timoth3y »

Is this really new? It certainly feels new, but I don't think it is.

There are two issues here.

1) You should be very careful about having your business too dependent on a single supplier or partner. You need to have a backup plan in case that relationship goes bad. That is undeniably true, good advice for all startups, and it has always been true.

2) The more specific case of Parler? Again it feels new, but I don't think it is. There has never been a time in modern history when if all the leading companies in an industry decided your company was too odious to do business with, you would be able to continue to do business.

I'm not saying this is the ideal situation or that we should not discuss how it could be improved, but this is not really anything new.

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