Parler CEO says he was fired by board • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#461

Post by syshum » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #455

syshum wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Anyone trying really hard to obfuscate that is probably Parler-like themselves. Thank you for proving my point.... If I do not agree with you then clearly I am alt-right extremist.. Sigh... there really is not point discussing politics in a rational way anymore. This is how extremism persists.

Ya know, if that's the banner you want to march under… then so be it. Nazis lie, and especially love to argue that 'oh, if you don't take me at face value and accept my word then that means I'm a nazi! You know you are just FORCING me to be a nazi, right? You're the real nazi, and when the revolution comes I won't be a bit sorry to gas you, because you're a MEANIE!' So, is that what you are, or not? :) How not alt-ri…

No both of your comments are akin to Running up to someone and say "So when are you going to to stop beating your child"

There is little point to engaging since you have me already threatening to gas you for some reason if I at all support a platform like Parler being allowed to even exist.

I am sure you also take the "Hate Speech is not Free Speech" point of view when it comes to free speech protections, so any debate we have the subject will not go well since you will simply continue with Ad hominem's and there will be nothing of substantive value

For the record, I am left-libertarian or geo-libertarian that support free speech absolutism, though i am sure you do not care much about my actual world view.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#462

Post by jariel » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #226

skynet-9000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does deeply believe in and care about free speech (from all parties), I could not be in deeper agreement with you. (for non-native English speakers: I fully agree). Parler should not have been de-platformed. That was a clearly partisan act, and the truth would have come out shortly about the company's total lack of care for its users. Say what you will about Gab, but they never pulled any of those stun…

That was a clearly partisan act Asking a customer to stick to the rules they agreed to and eventually ending the business relationship when the customer chooses not to is hardly a 'partisan act'. Parler could have just done what AWS asked (even temporarily, to keep themselves online while looking for alternatives). They didn't.

ISIS had Twitter accounts in which they showed beheadings and other things [1], largely as a recruiting tool in order to bring young Western Men to Syria to commit atrocities.

"The Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) continues to use social media as an essential element of its campaign to motivate support. On Twitter, ISIS’ unique ability to leverage unaffiliated sympathizers that simply retweet propaganda has been identified as a primary mechanism in their success in motivating both recruitment and “lone wolf” attacks." [2]

Apparently US authorities were happy to want Twitter to keep those accounts alive for some time as they could use them to track activity - the point remains it's wrong to the point of naive to believe that these decisions are not political.

Facebook was enabling genocidal activity [3].

It's incredibly hypocritical to look at the historical activities of ISIS on Twitter, Facebook and all of these platforms, and then to hear about the 'political violence' caused by Parler.

I don't like Parler, the hypocrisy is staggering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_social_media_by_the_Isl...

[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#463

Post by throwaway19937 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #360

Very childish comments so far even for HN. The simultaneous attack from Google, Apple and Amazon was unprecedented. It should not have been planned for. The PirateBay for instance was slowly attacked at expected places with lots of warnings over years. The security issues were meh compared to other security breaches and even then normally no one would even care a few days later. Metadata was not removed for baby user…

> The simultaneous attack from Google, Apple and Amazon was unprecedented. It should not have been planned for. The PirateBay for instance was slowly attacked at expected places with lots of warnings over years.

AWS cut off Parler's service after several months of moderation problems (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/13/parler-llc-...). It seems highly unlikely that they had a better relationship with either Google or Apple.

> He was fired due to a war from a section of the population who didn't want any speech from that site online. Pick your reality I guess.

Accountability ends at the top. Would you be happy with his performance if you were Rebekah Mercer? Replacing the CEO also makes it easier to try to build a relationship with another cloud service.

Parler's CEO was lacking in at least the following areas:

He didn't keep the site up - excuses don't matter when you're the CEO.

He failed to keep service providers happy with Parler's content moderation. His public statements about moderation (see documents at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/parler-llc-v-a... ) also made relationships with AWS, Apple, and Google much harder.

The security issues didn't help with their reputation. I agree that other services have had comparable issues.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#464

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #248

FireBeyond wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely - the CEO literally hung out on Discord servers hunting for people to ban on Parler.

I hadn’t heard this one, and can’t find anything about this - can you give some links/pointers to this story so I can learn more about this please?

https://imgur.com/WaAMEyn

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#465

Post by Griffinsauce » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

darepublic wrote: post #192

wsatb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler was never a "free speech" platform. This was always a lie, they heavily moderated their content. I've always felt like Parler was just a lazy attempt to make some cash by pulling some users away from Twitter claiming they could do what they want, it was never more or less than that. I'm interested in knowing how you think a real "free speech" platform can actually work, however. We have message boards that do…

Well a real free speech platform should apply strict automatic moderating rules to political threads and basically tease out the best arguments from all sides,

That is not free speech. That could be called something like "quality speech".

With free speech, as defined now, low quality arguments hit the same bar as high quality ones.

Yes we should strive to emphasise high quality arguments (even though I fear this is a near impossible task programmatically) but this is not what free speech means.

Tldr: according to free speech the dummies and assholes deserve to be heard.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#466

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

jrmg wrote: post #347

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not actually answering the question. Suppose that the dominant platforms (e.g. Facebook) are not free speech platforms. They boot off a hundred thousand people. 10% of them actually deserved it and are militant jackasses who ruin everything. Now someone else creates a "free speech" platform. Everybody is allowed in. Well, 80% of the initial users are going to be a subset of the ones who got kicked off of the i…

Isn’t Reddit pretty much proof that, at least of you allow users to self-select into groups, this doesn’t work? Arguably FaceBook is too.

Isn't Reddit significantly less toxic than Twitter and Facebook?

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#467

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #355

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not actually answering the question. Suppose that the dominant platforms (e.g. Facebook) are not free speech platforms. They boot off a hundred thousand people. 10% of them actually deserved it and are militant jackasses who ruin everything. Now someone else creates a "free speech" platform. Everybody is allowed in. Well, 80% of the initial users are going to be a subset of the ones who got kicked off of the i…

I did answer, because the internet started off as your proposed experiment. It didn't work. They didn't get diluted, they just got louder, circumvented, harassed and escalated. They aren't accidentally toxic, they are actively / aggressively toxic. Moderation didn't come before toxicity it came in response to it. Therefore, moderation doesn't cause / focus toxicity. If you want to address this, you need to look at ed…

> I did answer, because the internet started off as your proposed experiment. It didn't work.

It worked great for multiple decades until "social media" applied algorithms that promoted controversy (i.e. anger-inducing hyperbole and conspiracy theories) to increase "engagement" and sell more ads.

That you can find an ASCII swastika or goatse on Slashdot which is instantly downvoted to -1 (but not actually removed from the site) was never a real problem. That Facebook put QAnon at the top of your mom's feed was a major problem.

But then we get calls for censorship as a response to problem created by bad moderation.

Notice that there is a difference between voting (where the community determines prioritization in a decentralized way but nothing is rendered unavailable) and censorship (where some fallible central authority is deciding what people are not allowed to know).

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#468

Post by 5560675260 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #432

BlackFly wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly the same: Armed insurrections planned on Twitter/Facebook in the middle east (the Arab Spring): widely celebrated in the USA. Armed insurrections planned on Parler/Gab in the USA: better shut those down completely. The distinction between these two is precisely political, the view on the legitimacy of the conversation is premised on whether you view the government as legitimate or not.

How is the difference precisely political when all claims of a fraudulent US election were proven to be false? Facts are a matter of opinion now?

AFAIK all relevant court cases were dismissed and didn't go into discovery. There is an opinion that all of the cases were baseless. There is an opinion that judges saw where the wind blows and took an easy way out. Since we're not going to see any serious investigation, you can pick whichever you like.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#469

Post by tomrod » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #309

tomrod wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt-left isn't a thing in the US, perhaps you're falling for a false dichotomy. Alt-right is a euphemism for fascism/white supremism.

I'm not going to split hairs about the actual positions of radical leftists, because it's not really relevant to this conversation. I will, however, point out, that much of the alt-right is terrified of the antifa boogieman... And that Parler, the platform of free speech was quite happy to ban anything that smelled of antifa... As well as much that could, be described as moderate leftism. Its tolerance for speech onl…

Yes, but the notion of an existent, burgeoning "Alt-left" is due to fully attributable for folks being divorced from reality as a consequence of consuming lying media sources (especially those promoted on Parler). Also, "Antifa" isn't an organization. So classifying what white nationalists call "antifa" as boogeymen is surprisingly apt.

What gets blocked on Parler is more appropriately called "not supportive of white nationalism." That way you are sure to capture the entire space of content, whether Alt-right or not, instead of narrowing the universe to Alt-right and things the alt-right is encultured to fear but don't appear in reality.

Re: Parler CEO says he was fired by board

#470

Post by ramraj07 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #289

ramraj07 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep insisting parler as a bastion of free speech then there's not much to argue with you. It was a clearly partisan highly censored place where anything other than right wing commentary was not tolerated. If signal gets deplatformed get your pitchforks. Till then I'm not worried. Also regarding the slippery slope, let it slide. If this is how we start regulating cloud services as utilities then so be it.

> It was a clearly partisan highly censored place where anything other than right wing commentary was not tolerated. This is just false. Did you have an account there?

Do you? Please share. Will love to see what things you have said that ostensibly should have been censored but weren't.