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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

#841
post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer : I am not American, and could care less for your politics. > Can you point to a place where he specifically encouraged trespassing or violence in a way that is more egregious than the ways in which various Congresspeople encouraged violence in Kenosha or Minneapolis? This seems like a weird statement to me. Does it matter what other Congresspeople said or not said? I had a quick read of the speech you lin…

> Disclaimer : I am not American, and could care less for your politics. Why don't then tell us which nationality you are from?

Possibly a typo. I am guessing you mean "Why not then tell us". Australian :) However, again, not sure why that matters.

I thought the disclaimer would help to ensure that I don't accused of being a dem or rep or whatever else.

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

#842
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…

Free expression is chaotic. It always has been and it always will be. It will always have lies and misinformation, some people will even believe the lies. But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. Speech that is free will always seed doubt against ideas, regardless whether those ideas are true or false. It's an avenue that allows anything to be questione…

> But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control.

This ignores all the historical events where groups leveraging said chaotic nature of free speech succeeded in establishing totalitarian regimes which enacted total control over the entire population, including it's supporters.

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

#843
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why you need an educated populace. By educated, we mean one that can think critically and independently rather than a college credential.

We’ve got one of the most educated populations in the world. Europe is only recently catching up to is in e.g. the percentage of people with college degrees.

> We’ve got one of the most educated populations in the world.

Keeping children in school for 12 years doesn't mean they are educated.

Keep in mind that between 7-9% of school-age children in the US are homeschooled.

https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

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

#844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free expression is chaotic. It always has been and it always will be. It will always have lies and misinformation, some people will even believe the lies. But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. Speech that is free will always seed doubt against ideas, regardless whether those ideas are true or false. It's an avenue that allows anything to be questione…

> Free expression is chaotic. The founding fathers(FF) knew this. The FF created a system of government that acts as a society consciousness. Allowing for passion (the House) but having frontal lobe mechanisms (the Senate guards against the mob mentality). The recent insurrection happened specifically because of the laziness/apathy/intentional (take your pick, I'm certain one is true) of the Congress. It was their jo…

> BLM/Qanon are equally screwed up.

Can you please elaborate how a movement against police brutality and racism is in any way comparable with a group that supports a conspiracy theory regarding a cabal of satanic-worshiping cannibals?

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

#845
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. This is the really tricky part, though... absolute free expression only prevents people from enacting total control if it persists; however, free speech is not something that can’t be undone. This is a form of the paradox of tolerance. If people use their absolute free speech to push lies and propaganda that al…

That is why you need an educated populace. By educated, we mean one that can think critically and independently rather than a college credential.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

James Madison, The Federalist Papers

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

#846

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…

A corollary to #1 might be to structure your apps and data to be as portable as possible, e.g. use MariaDB or PostGreSQL rather than an AWS-specific dbms, maintain your own backups, etc. Such portability can pay off in other ways as well. Example: a competitor to Amazon in the retail space told us they would not buy our IoT product with an AWS back end, so we had to port it to an alternative cloud provider. This prob…

Absolutely, but you need to be very deliberate and careful in doing that. It's hard to pull off in practice.

AWS, just like MS in the 90s, gives you access to a lot of amazing tools that make it very easy to "accidentally" lock yourself into their platform.

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

#847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable. Take, for example, the issue of religion. Americans are the most religious developed country by far—comparable to Iran. This drives Democrats crazy, and through the period during which they controlled the Supreme Court based on FDR’s appointments, they turned America into one of the most secular countries in the world in terms of…

Americans are far more ardent practitioners of religion: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-high-l... . In terms of people who pray daily, the US is over 50%, comparable to Bangladesh (a country where the dominant religion requires praying five times a day!). Germany is around 10%. Even Poland is only at 30%. Think of the laws in Poland. Abortion is mostly illegal. Same sex marriage is illegal. How…

> Americans are far more ardent practitioners of religion: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-high-l....

No, that graph shows that Americans are far more Protestant. Weekly church attendance by Christians in Poland and the US are both 41% (actually another source shows ~55% attendance in Poland), given that Poland has comparatively more Christians, weekly attendance overall is higher too. Catholicism places a greater emphasis on weekly mass as compared to the informal daily prayer more common in protestant, and specifically in US Evangelical, Christianity. I'll admit that Hungary is less, their church attendance is lower.

> As to what Democrats would do—we already have examples. FDR-appointed Supreme Courts interpreted the Establishment Clause to create a “wall of separation” prohibiting, for example, things like optional religious instruction in public schools, or public support of religious schools. These things are quite common in Europe.

I made a major edit to my prior comment, which I'll summarize here: the two nations you cite have constitutional callouts for state sponsorship of religion and state religious education. So this comparison isn't apt. The constitutional axioms in the US and Poland or Hungary are totally different. They aren't secular nations, and the things you describe aren't common in secular nations in Europe.

And there was understanding that the establishment clause banned state support of public schools in the 19th century. McCollumn wasn't a particular leftward shift, it was an enshrinement of longstanding practice.

> Abortion is another example.

What changes would you expect to Abortion policy? I'd expect to see things continue roughly in line with Roe. Again, your contention was changes. I'm asking about changes.

> mass amnesty

Polling suggests that between 80 and 90% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the US. This number has been relatively consistent over the past 10 years. Search "over a period of time" on this page: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx (there's, admittedly, weird effects based on the specific question, but the gist is clear).

> Also entrenchment of public unions

I've seen very limited (and only very particularly targeted) support of public unions from the left. Consider that police unions are not particularly loved at the moment.

> Liberals deem “race blind” approaches like those taken in France to be “racist.”

Only contextually. I'd expect, for example, that a race blind application process in France would be less (or, at least, differently) racially biased than a race blind application process in the US.

> Countries like Germany have moved slowly on areas like adoption by same-sex couples.

This seems to be a matter of it being perfectly legal (with some issues around surrogacy), but bias/conservative sentiment among bureaucrats in charge of administering the process that leads to it being slow. Still bad, but it doesn't appear to prevent a gay couple from adopting. And of course, France and the UK are already well ahead of us.

The crux of this line of argumentation (and your general lines of argumentation when we have similar discussions) seem to be that we should take Poland and Hungary, and other ex-soviet nations as examples of how the US should legislate. I don't get that. Do you think there's anyone in the US, Republican or Democrat, who thinks "yes, our jurisprudence and social norms should be modeled on two ex-Soviet states one of which is so unstable that it had its constitution rewritten a decade ago, and the other had a constitutional crisis in 2015 and has been called a "failed" democracy as a result?"

I don't understand why you keep pointing to those nations as good examples of anything. Like, when you describe things this way, my takeaway is "the us would continue to be socially moderate among western european nations, and more liberal than eastern european ones". That's, well, yes. And sure, there's some particular cases where the US is exceptional: guns (I note you didn't mention these), abortion, church taxes. But so what?

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

#849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be nothing illegal about “attacking” a religion with words, all the moreso if those words are factually accurate.

Going out of your way to piss other people off is a poor idea. You may feel that it should be legal (at least until it affects you). Other people may feel otherwise.

[deleted]

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

#850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College degrees are not a relevant metric. What percentage of the population are being taught fundamental critical thinking skills? How many are taught how to evaluate the quality of data and the quality of sources? How many people have a good grounding of statistics? Or civics? Or logical fallacies? How many people can describe the scientific method? I don't have many vivid memories of my primary school education bu…

> how to be suspicious of claims made in advertisements. That one class stuck with me for a long time. (This was in Melbourne, Australia sometime around 1988.) FWIW, advertising and to a larger extent advocacy in 1988 and what is today are entirety different animals. Though I do agree with your point. The number of college graduates does not equate to higher critical thinking of a nation's populace. I did attend a jo…

> FWIW, advertising and to a larger extent advocacy in 1988 and what is today are entirety different animals.

There certainly are more forms and techniques of advertising, but if you teach the fundamentals sufficiently well, the critical thinking skill set can adapt as advertising adapts.

An important fundamental is to recognise that you have a desire for a product or service and to know to be conscious of the chain of events that have led to that desire.

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