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Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

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Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#231
post #37

There is way, way too much room for political manoeuvring here - we should all be scared. Facebook is used to coordinate literal genocide. [1] And so AWS everyone is cool with that? I get that Parler was being used to do something 'violent and bad in the US' and that there was arguably not enough oversight - so they are a 'problem case'. But the system is a little bit hypocritical, I don't feel it's backed by science…

What does it mean, concretely, to "wake up" to this realization? I certainly acknowledge that Amazon might make bad content moderation decisions in the future, and if they do I'll speak out against those decisions. I just don't follow why I'd need to do something about that today.

Because the insurrection on capitol hill provides the cover of legitimacy for people to act in a manner that also may be very inconsistent and politicized.

Jeff Bezos owns news publications, he has a worldview and likes to flaunt it to some extent, moreover, these systems are prone to the possibility of arbitrary, and often political decisions.

Note that historically, rich dudes bought newspapers to attack their political and business rivals. Though I don't think it's entirely like that today, we can't say there isn't some of that going on.

Literally Emamnuel Macron and Angela Merkel have spoken out about the arbitrary 'banning' of groups and individuals, and because there is an 'imminent consideration over here in the US' doesn't abnegate our broader concerns about arbitrary banning.

The EU will likely be acting on it.

Banning the KKK is not something anyone is worried about.

Banning some app because we don't like the extent to which they have moderated their discussions, is a much more slippery slope. Especially in light of other institutions that don't moderate very well either.

If the case could rationally be made that FB and Twitter are in the end, equally problematic in their moderation ... then it's likely they would not get banned from various places - they have money, power, influence and possibly friendly relations with other platforms.

It's a dangerous precedent and the EU leaders are essentially correct to speak out and even more so to act.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#232
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics is the the practice of how to organize society. There's no such thing as an apolitical entity. At the most basic level, just the fact that corporations exist is itself a political decision.

Sure, with a sufficiently expansive definition of political everything is, but in the comment above, "politics" meant "dealing with the preferences of." So the local Republican politician would want stuff if you wanted to build your chemical plant, maybe a new baseball field, maybe campaign contributions. Your Democrat-aligned hosting provider would want you to not run the center of operations of their enemies. You a…

Companies should do what their owners want per capitalism. If that's politics, the company should do politics.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They booted Parler off for violence issues. It baffles me how often violence issues become conflated with speech issues. You are absolutely correct, this is a violence issue. America has likely the most free speech protections in the world, but fighting words (violence) are not protected. There is a huge amount of precdent to support Amazon's actions here, dating back decades. Furthermore, just because Facebook did…

Because violence to advance a cause the powers agree with is suddenly protected under free speech all the same. Many have pointed out that the storming of the capitol was not too dissimilar to many of the b.l.m. riots which were also often coördinated and featured chants of killing police officers. And it very much seems that whichever side one be on very much dictates how both are treated with both sides claiming t…

The sentiment you're trying to express here is empathy. There is more empathy for people protesting racial injustice and the murder of minority groups than there is for people waving hate group symbols and trying to kill political leaders. I don't see a need to demand a system void of empathy.

It's not a one side issue. It's not right vs. left. In the case of parler, it's largly Nazi vs. not Nazi, and that's a particularly easy case to judge. Parler does not represent conservative America, even if the extremists at the rally claim otherwise. It represents a mix of violent hate groups and conspiracy theorists. The small proportion of BLM activists that were actively violent do not represent liberal America.

Everyone has a choice. Everyone identifying as conservative can point at the white supremacists in DC and say "Those are my people" or "Those are not my people".

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#234
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, with a sufficiently expansive definition of political everything is, but in the comment above, "politics" meant "dealing with the preferences of." So the local Republican politician would want stuff if you wanted to build your chemical plant, maybe a new baseball field, maybe campaign contributions. Your Democrat-aligned hosting provider would want you to not run the center of operations of their enemies. You a…

Companies should do what their owners want per capitalism. If that's politics, the company should do politics.

Sure, but the political system should not be such that the owners of the companies have anything to gain by wanting their companies to do politics.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#235
post #91
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are these things , specifically?

> First they came for the nazis and qanon extremists threatening democracy, and I said nothing because fuck those people, they are the reason this verse exists.

I would note, the original line is something along the lines of "i did nothing because I wasn't one of them".

The line genuinely doesn't hold up as especially powerful when its "I did nothing because they self identify as a hate group against people like me"

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#236
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, companies do not legally have to provide these services to right-wing groups persecuted off of Twitter. I'm saying that it's _morally_ wrong to deplatform. Not necessarily because I enjoy having this speech hosted, but because isolating and pushing out so called "deplorables" is escalating the current American political conflicts to serious violence. As I said in my other comment, when the disenfranchised c…

> isolating and pushing out so called "deplorables" is escalating the current American political conflicts to serious violence. Can you provide references that back up this claim? Bear in mind that the deplatforming began after January 6th of this year, so any escalating violence which may have occurred on or before that point is not evidence of your claim. And after the events of the 6th I imagine it’d be difficult…

The deplatforming has been going on for years, since at least 2016 when Trump was elected in the first place. In Twitter's case[0] they went after smaller users (edgy "russian bots") until ~2018, when they really ramped things up. This even hit left wing (anti-establishment) activists[1].

One of the conclusions of a recent purge by Reddit was that it just pushed the banned users into even more radical spaces online[2].

Of course we all know about The Streisand effect, and one article suggests that censorship just draws more attention to the banned content[3]. If we assume that ideas are somehow "contagious" or "infectious"[4] then we're just exposing people to them even more.

> In any case, the only news on the topic that I’ve seen has been that election misinformation on Facebook/Twitter has dropped by 70% since the deplatforming happened on those platforms.

But the deplatforming didn't make those people go away, it pushed them to platforms like Gab and Parler, right-wing echo chambers. This is like an extreme version of a filter bubble. Remember, millions of people supported what happened at the capitol[5], and there is zero hope of de-radicalising people if the left and right aren't talking. If anything, both sides will get more extreme.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming#Twitter (see references)

[1]https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-account-ba...

[2]http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

[3] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://th...

[4]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00546-3

[5]https://www.statista.com/chart/23886/capitol-riot-approval/

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#237
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed apparent right when the case was filed that Parler didn't have a leg to stand on. It was partly a play for publicity that plays well into their customer demographics, and a dying gasp of trying to seek some kind of injunctive help from the administration, no matter how impossible it seemed. Judging by how weak their infrastructure was in the first place, getting any kind of resilient hosting in place after…

Tech attorney here (with no relation to this specific matter). I wouldn't say they don't have a leg to stand on. I think it will prove to be very interesting.

It absolutely is going to be interesting, but maybe not in a way that's successful for them. Filing a notice of authority in lieu of a sur-reply is bush-league argumentation.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#238
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "favors". The 50 Democratic Senators represent 40m more people than the 50 Republican Senators. It's far easier for the balance to tip right than left. The electoral college was decided by about 40k votes this time, and about 80k votes last time. The popular vote margin was in the millions. That should tell you something about how far the EC is from reality.

"popular vote" has absolutely no bearing on anything in this discussion. The US is not a direct democracy, it is a representative republic. The 50 senators who represent semi-conservative states represent the same number of states as the 50 who represent more liberal states.

Yeah, the obvious thing is to split LA, and New York into 5 different states each, so that the liberals gain more power in the senate.

The state level representation of the senate is very arbitrary

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting how much actual political power the right in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. The Senate and electoral college favor them massively. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to change any laws that might counter their preferences.

Banning speech by half the population is not "soft power" anymore in the world we live in.

When did half the population have their speech banned?

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, companies do not legally have to provide these services to right-wing groups persecuted off of Twitter. I'm saying that it's _morally_ wrong to deplatform. Not necessarily because I enjoy having this speech hosted, but because isolating and pushing out so called "deplorables" is escalating the current American political conflicts to serious violence. As I said in my other comment, when the disenfranchised c…

> If you disagree with these people, say that to them That doesn't seem to be working in a post-truth world. Not sure what the solution is, but this isn't nearly enough.

We live in a post truth world because of social media algorithms, which made that content successful. I think we need to heavily regulate those ASAP.
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