Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 984 posts

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

#931

Post by lisper »

bryan_w wrote: post #929
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'm going to just take a guess that the hundreds of replys basically regurgitating talking points have not helped your thoughts. I dunno what the answer is, but good luck man, it's a scary world we live in right now.

Indeed.

I have been on HN since it launched, and I have never had a comment garner this many responses. I've had to stop reading them because I just can't keep up. But from the ones I have read, I am even more dismayed than I was before. The most disturbing thing to me is the number of people who are just shrugging off the capitol riot as just another cost of doing business in a free society. If the riot were an isolated incident that might be a valid position, but it wasn't. It was the culmination of years of a very deliberate propaganda strategy designed to get people to discount facts. And it worked. That is what scares me, because once you succeed in getting people to ignore facts, you are truly gazing into the abyss.

We seem to have dodged the worst of the potential fallout for the time being. Next time we might not be so lucky.

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

#932

Post by heresie-dabord »

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 it is a measure of civilisation that the US has not lost control to barbarism and kakistocracy.

But it should not have come so close... The Trump rioters have been cultivated and groomed for destruction by a genuinely sick political party with funds from wealthy donors.

> I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place

What definitely would make the world a better place is for people to understand, through education, that intelligent debate must exist and compromise is often necessary for civilisation and culture.

Any person who espouses murder by threat or deed has simply become a tribal animal.

"There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech." -- a dictator

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

#933

Post by yongjik »

edbob wrote: post #928
yongjik wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What censorship? The president himself was saying the election was stolen from him for two months and that was basically the only thing the nightly news talked about (other than COVID) every day. At some point we should be able to say "Enough, evidence or GTFO," without being accused of silencing discussion. We're way past that point.

I don't know anything about what the nightly news ran. All I know is that when my news sources got around to talking about it, a couple days later it's "oh I have to be very careful what I say about this, I already got a notice threatening a ban". From my perspective, the period of free discussion was extremely limited. I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hill…

> I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hillary's claims of a "stolen election" for years.

Clinton never claimed the counting of the votes were rigged, and I know of no serious politician claiming that Clinton should be installed as president because of the claimed Russian meddling, whether they believed it or not.

So, on one hand, we have a candidate who was pretty much dropped like a hot potato by fellow Democrats the moment she lost the election. On the other hand, we have mainstream media giving hundreds of hours of coverage to a president insisting he actually won the election, when all evidence says he didn't. ...And you're saying who is censored?

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

#934

Post by newacct583 »

smsm42 wrote: post #689
newacct583 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unauthorized Whitehouse tour. This is awful, and I can't imagine the thought process that leads to this kind of rationalization. MANY members of the crowd are known to have been armed. Five people are dead. Congress had to be evacuated. Had an escape route not existed (many nations don't have cold war fortifications in their legislative buildings!) we could very easily have been looking at a hostage situation. This…

If you mention the Beer Hall Putsch, let's consider how Weimar Republic actually had fallen. Read about the Reichstag Fire and the Reichstag Fire Decree. It started with a stupid and pointless act of violence - a communist (Marinus van der Lubbe) setting a fire in the Reichstag. But that fire didn't kill Weimar. That has been used by the Nazis to claim the communists are preparing a violent coup (which they in theory…

The point was more that the Beer Hall Putch failed, but was "forgiven" in the interests of "unity". Hitler and most of the conspirators were pardoned. The Nazi party ended up being emboldened instead of shunned or prosecuted. And the next time they were smarter about things.

This kind of rhetoric minimizing the attack at the capitol seems very much of a piece with the way the Bavarian establishment treated Nazism in the 20's to my eyes.

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

#935

Post by throwaway894345 »

slg wrote: post #925
throwaway894345 wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one here is "partaking in apologetics for violence"; everyone is condemning the violence. Some people (myself included) are pointing out that while this event was violent and violence is never acceptable, that it alone wasn't a serious threat to our democracy, it wasn't a real insurrection, etc. The violence needs to be prosecuted, but no one needs to hang for treason. To your point though, this forum does occasio…

>Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Property can be replaced. Businesses can have insurance. The murdered police offi…

> When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence.

Right, thankfully no one is doing that (I've seen you around other threads and straw man arguments like this one are beneath your usual high standard of discourse). Everyone here agrees that the people responsible for murdering the police officer ought to be held criminally accountable for murder but not for treason. But this was almost certainly a small number of people and its reprehensible to hold the entire mob responsible, and certainly not for treason. We don't hold every BLM protester accountable for the BLM riots and we don't hold every BLM rioter accountable for the murders that took place during the riots, and we should hold the same standard here.

Elsewhere you remarked that 1 murder constitutes a larger proportion than the BLM murders, but of course you can't extrapolate anything from a sample of 1.

> People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.

They aren't the same, but they're not so different that we can justify glorifying violence for one and exaggerating it for the other.

FWIW, I personally think the Capitol Hill riots were worse in the sense that they were incited by a sitting President and that the security was concerningly inadequate. The President should be held responsible for insurrection, there should be accountability among the police as well (although I don't know enough to venture into details about what kind or degree of accountability), but the rank and file rioters are only guilty of rioting, trespassing, etc (those who assaulted need to be held accountable for assault, those who murdered for murder, those who planted bombs for planting bombs, etc). But this isn't "a coup" nor were the rioters "traitors". They were misled into believing their candidate lost the election and they were angry, but I can't imagine they seriously expected to break into the capitol and forcibly reinstate Trump (apart perhaps for the mentally ill).

So yes, the Capitol Hill riots were worse, but not so much that the BLM rioters (including those who assaulted people or killed people) deserve to escape justice nor that the media should be forgiven for their incitement and later apologetics of the violence. Nor does it merit exaggerating the violence on Capitol Hill.

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

#936

Post by Karunamon »

tw04 wrote: post #895
Karunamon wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single incident on that page involves a series of "protestors" who were forcibly ejected from a series of 2016 rallies after attempting to disrupt them, and in one case, involves a "protestor" getting removed by the secret service after trying to rush the stage. Snopes is here holding up the president saying he'd punch someone who rushed onto the stage as "encouraging violence at his rallies", which is such a w…

So what you're saying is: he called for violence against someone that disagrees with him politically. And the problem is, you apparently fall into the very category of: seeking truth isn't important, believing what you want is. Because you literally just fabricated a story to support Trump that's easily disproven by the very link you're commenting about. Had you actually watched the videos: no, every single one of th…

>So what you're saying is: he called for violence against someone that disagrees with him politically.

This is a lie by omission. He "called for violence" against people who attempted to physically disrupt his rallies, and I would go so far as to call the "violence" that ensued in all of those cases (forcible removal from the venue) justified.

Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.

>Which of course is why he refused to condemn it while it was happening,

He literally told the people assembled there to go home.

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

#937

Post by throwaway_6142 »

jjaammee wrote: post #845
babesh wrote: 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.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. James Madison, The Federalist Papers

please stop with the anti-hellenism

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

#938

Post by Consultant32452 »

vangelis wrote: post #917
Consultant32452 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a credible threat to civilization, but perhaps a credible threat to our prevailing thoughts on governance. There is no good justification that the people of Los Angeles should have to live under the rules and cultural customs of Mobile Alabama. Nor should the people of Mobile Alabama be forced to live under the rules and cultural norms of Los Angeles. As long as we re forced to toggle back and f…

What rules and customs would the people of LA force on Mobile? And vice versa? Sucks to be part of the black population of Mobile, I guess.

The black population of Mobile would be more free to run their schools the way they want, including perhaps things like having prayer in class. If Alabama closed its borders to undocumented immigrants the wages of poor blacks would likely rise due to reduced labor supply.

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

#939

Post by abakker »

tomp wrote: post #858
abakker wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I’m going off of this: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs... https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurati... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021...

Fake news, then. Pipe bombs and RNC/DNC headquarters, not the Capitol. Typical motte and bailey. “They bombed the Capitol building” except they actually didn’t.

I mean, you are correct that they did not bomb the capitol building. BUT, to make a distinction between protesters in Washington and were arrested for entering the building unlawfully, and protesters from the same group who distributed bombs around seems...disingenuous. You can certainly make that distinction, but it doesn't seem like a useful one. A large group of protestors supporting Trump came to washington. Some broke into the capitol, others did other stuff. Many are under arrest for weapons violations and have been charged. That isn't "fake"

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

#940

Post by edbob »

yongjik wrote: post #933
edbob wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about what the nightly news ran. All I know is that when my news sources got around to talking about it, a couple days later it's "oh I have to be very careful what I say about this, I already got a notice threatening a ban". From my perspective, the period of free discussion was extremely limited. I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hill…

> I'm not at all sympathetic to the "we have to crush this viewpoint" camp since they amplified Hillary's claims of a "stolen election" for years. Clinton never claimed the counting of the votes were rigged, and I know of no serious politician claiming that Clinton should be installed as president because of the claimed Russian meddling, whether they believed it or not. So, on one hand, we have a candidate who was pr…

If your argument is actually that no one is being censored, then we will just stop there.
Post reply on HN