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Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

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Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#121

Post by refurb »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #98

Big Tech and Big Media really overplayed their hand this time, IMO. Millions and millions of people are now skeptical and looking for an alternative, even from Fox News. It might not be to Parler, or to the next site after that, but fragmentation will continue to happen. Facebook and media at large only have power if they have viewers, which is a far less stable resource than iron, or oil, or other corporate mainstay…

I have to agree that big tech really messed this one up. Their attempt at regulating speech on their platforms (entirely their own right to do however they want) has resulted in both sides being pissed. I had commented on this a while ago that it was like War Games - the only way to win this game was not to play at all. The second they started being the arbitrator of speech they were guaranteed to piss people off. Then they tried to adjust and pissed another group off.

And even before all that crap below up, they had the gov't taking a long and hard look at the anti-trust problem. The platform censorship just threw gasoline on that smoldering fire.

The smartest move now is to fire all their public relations and government affairs folks. They handled this about as poorly as they could.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#122

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

seibelj wrote: post #61
p1necone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"free speech" is just being used as a dog whistle for far right ideas in this case. These people are not behaving in good faith, don't bother engaging with them as if they were.

That's the point of "free speech" - I don't care how far right / left / in outer space your ideas are. You can say them, and I won't absorb the message if I don't care. It's the old saying about TV - if you don't like what's on, just change the channel.

That ends when you start inciting violence and promoting actions that can end other people's lives.

As it should. It's one thing to claim space lizards are controlling Facebook, it's another to start saying you want to shoot up busses full of Facebook workers.

Unconvincing? Replace "Facebook" with "Democrats" and you get worryingly close to Parler.

But there is another problem. These sites don't just happen. If they were bottom-up spontaneous forums - someone starting with phpBB and taking it from there - they'd be tolerable. (And likely less extreme.)

They aren't. These are deliberate attempts to farm and concentrate certain kinds of people with certain kinds of sentiments so they can be used as political leverage for certain interests.

They're not free speech at all - they're farmed speech.

That is the problem. The people who farm them are knowingly and maliciously using them to spread lies and enflame violent sentiment so they can profit from both, financially and politically.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#123

Post by wernercd »

joshuamorton wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald Trump attacked illegal immigration specifically: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/... Also, he attacked accepting refugees from certain high-risk countries (which had been designated as such by the Obama administration). He didn’t say “immigrants bad.” > Kaine has embellished the controversy by saying Trump has said "all Mexicans are rapists." The Democrat doesn’t come close to provi…

> Also, it’s not like Clinton didn’t spend four years “disputing ... democracy.” See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum ... I don't believe Clinton ever attacked the integrity of the election process itself. She did claim (and as far as I'm aware the investigations more or less supported the claims) that the Trump campaign colluded with foreign governments to influence the election.

"colluded with foreign governments"

Russia Collusion itself is an attack on the legitimacy of Trumps presidency - just like election fraud is an attack on the legitimacy of a Biden presidency.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#124

Post by robswc »

ardy42 wrote: post #57
dannyw wrote: post #19

1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints. 2. Instead of changing people’s minds (isn’t the evidence overwhelmingly conclusive that people rarely change political viewpoints?), people flock to “community bubbles” like Parler, TheDonald, etc where they feel welcome. 3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the li…

> 1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints. For the most part, those "viewpoints" are verifiable falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation and misinformation. For instance, the recent migrations to Parler are chiefly people who want to deny the legitimate US presidential election result and spread false claims…

I could agree with a lot of this... the problem for me though is it always comes back to actually enforcing this stuff.

I already know I sinned by trying to have a productive conversation of twitter, however when "talking" with a few self proclaimed communists (no, I don't think they were joking) they basically implied the "rich" deserve to die, they were morally allowed to kill them, etc. IIRC, this was on a post about a teachers union displaying a guillotine and I pretty much said "yea, lets not be like this." There was also some racism thrown in there, I guess for good measure. They seem to have even developed their own "secret language", calling white people 'mayos' and 'yts' - maybe to get around filters? Or just to be extra edgy.

I would argue that pushing some justification of murdering fellow citizens because of their net worth is just as dangerous as the insane conspiracies about lizard people... if not more. Yet, I don't think these things are shut down or given the same standards as what you're thinking of.

I wish for twitter (and everyone else's sake) they equally applied their "TOS". I have no need to go to those sites you mentioned... in fact I can't think of anything less productive but on the flip side of the coin, I've pretty much deleted twitter for the same reason.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#125

Post by sverhagen »

Grustaf wrote: post #78
EdwardDiego wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would FB and Twitter be plotting to "silence the right's voice?"

Is this a serious question?

There's plenty of opinion out there that the leadership of these companies themselves are right leaning, even if the average silicon valley employee isn't. I don't know.

But maybe they are also just hoping to be neutral. Maybe it's good business to not alienate half of your marketplace. Maybe there's some aspect of genuine principle there. If you believe that can't exist, how is it possible that right leaning state governments ever can verify the election in favor of a left leaning candidate? I'm naive in so many ways, but I need some hope to stay alive.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#126

Post by redis_mlc »

least wrote: post #33

When "free speech" is the primary selling point of a social media website, it tends to only attract people who feel slighted by the platform they're migrating from. Unfortunately this has the opposite effect of Parler's stated goal of being "the world's town square" since it simply isn't attractive to people with opposing views of those who did move. I think free speech is important and I think that social media plat…

[dead]

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#127

Post by pjc50 »

flyinglizard wrote: post #93
Grustaf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a Jewish person I’d say that none of this political polarization is beneficial for us. It’s not that one side has intrinsically safer qualities for Jews. With the work of ADL and many prominent Jewish figures in the past century, anti-semitism had kind of a special status where it’s taboo even when it’s very nuanced, on both the left and right sides of the aisle. It’s drowning in the cultural discourse now. When 7…

America used to be an explicitly racist county where the majority of voters supported bans on interracial marriage and segregation in schools as recently as the 1960s. There's nothing absurd or unlikely about racist voters being a large fraction of the country.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#128

Post by alkonaut »

dustinmoris wrote: post #118

In mid October I deleted almost all my tweets and likes (but Twitter being so shit they are still showing my likes except it’s not liked anymore lol) and have not been tweeting anything anymore. I found Twitter too toxic, it made me angry with people for no reason, so I deleted all my tweets and the app. No more notifications, no more “just checking Twitter quickly”. I now go to Twitter like once a day just to have a…

I think it’s down to who you follow. First, never ever read “trends” or random tweets. Never trust Twitters official app to show you anything useful. Using third party apps also saves you from ads.

Second and most importantly, follow a set of users that are interesting, friendly, and who don’t engage publicly with trolls. It’s a magnificent tool for staying up to date with a narrow topic like a niche technology.

Just unfollow or block the negative people and trolls.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#129

Post by AntiImperialist »

alphabettsy wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald Trump attacked illegal immigration specifically: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/... Also, he attacked accepting refugees from certain high-risk countries (which had been designated as such by the Obama administration). He didn’t say “immigrants bad.” > Kaine has embellished the controversy by saying Trump has said "all Mexicans are rapists." The Democrat doesn’t come close to provi…

When Donald Trump launched his campaign he said; “ When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” How else is one to take this? He said some are good people…

He was specifically talking about Mexicans crossing the border illegally. Are you saying majority of people who cross the border illegally are good people?

Most "good people" don't have to cross the border illegally. They can get a U.S. visa and never leave. The people who will definitely not get a U.S. visa to do that is those have a criminal record in their own country, so their only option is to cross the border illegally.

Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter

#130

Post by alkonaut »

ThePreacherMan wrote: post #53

Are there any good information how advertising works in this network? From my experience its easy to convince "free-speechers" to buy things - think gold investment, self defense equipment, prepping, everything with the US flag colours on it.

Parler isn’t a tech startup like any other. It’s unlikely to ever be profitable. Why Mercer and others think it’s a good idea to plow money into it is the question.
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