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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

#61

Post by inerte »

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 was watching Legal Eagle discussing if Trump incited the mob / insurrection https://youtu.be/XwqAInN9HWI and he goes over some previous cases of “incitement of violence” and it’s crazy how high the bar is.

On the other hand, tech companies can very quickly take down illegal content, like child pornography or people singing Happy Birthday. I do think they have the technical chops + content moderators to at least try to curb some of the more inflammatory posts.

But, it’s not illegal. So they won’t do it, in fact, they’ll profit like Facebook matching body armor ads to groups of people plotting to hang the Vice President. The solution might be to lax the definition of imminent threat, or consider that someone with millions of followers is basically planning acts of violence with a retweet. The fact that people think “it’s just a retweet” means you have zero responsibility and accountability for influencing millions of people shows how we are not prepared technological changes.

I can’t talk you out of it because I am very confused and conflicted. I think I know what needs change, and even how, but not change to what.

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

#62

Post by klyrs »

zarkov99 wrote: post #25
gameswithgo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

epik, apparently. at some point too when you notice that everyone thinks you are horrible maybe the problem is you.

Yeah, that is a great mental heuristic: the majority is always fair and right. I am sure the Jews thought that back in 1930’s Germany. And the Christians in Rome, the Kolacks in Russia, the intellectuals in Mao's China, the wealthy Cubans when Castro took over and blacks in the US before the civil rights movement.

False equivalence. Freedom to persecute is not equal to freedom from persecution.

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

#63

Post by ogre_codes »

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…

What exactly is "Free Speech" are we talking about the constitution or some hard to defend philosophical idea?

There hasn't been any legal free speech issues here. Fundamentally, if you make a platform, you can (mostly) enforce whatever policies you want about the type of speech you allow. This is why Parler is trying to chase this from an anti-trust angle, not a 1st Amendment angle.

If you are talking about the more general philosophical idea, keep in mind we are talking on Hacker News. Here, right now we are moderated. Much discussion on Parler which caused Apple, Google, and Amazon to hit them with the ban hammer is banned here as well. Likewise, most online forums ban talk of murder, rape, death threats, etc.

Parler itself has policies against this kind of content, if they didn't, Apple at least wouldn't have allowed them on the App Store. Parler does not enforce their own Terms of Service. If they did, we wouldn't be here now.

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

#64

Post by ipsocannibal »

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 you are confusing the freedom with the technologies used to amplify the use of that freedom. This is similar to the current debate about the second amendment. The right to bare arms doesn't mean we give everyone an M60. The freedom of speech doesn't mean that we should give everyone an unlimited megaphone to the world. Licenses for the use of powerful technologies have been pretty effective in limiting the damages they can cause in untrained hands. Maybe the solution to your troubles is a license to broadcast media on the internet.

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

#65

Post by voodootrucker »

Wow, why did this fall off the front page? There's no way it wasn't being upvoted sufficiently watching the flurry of initial comments...

Was this discussion blocked? And if so, is there a particular policy it violated? This discussion seems extremely important right now.

@dang can you elaborate?

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

#66

Post by lisper »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #59
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…

Perhaps you could being by asking yourself why a "central authority" is inherently more wise and capable of deciding what people are allowed to think and say than individuals themselves? Does the ability to seize power and become the central authority denote inherent wisdom or morality? History is littered with examples of societies where communications were overseen by a central authority, from Nazi Germany to the S…

I don't know why a central authority works better. But it seems to be manifestly true if you look at human history that it works better once you try to scale society beyond the tribe. (At least by my personal quality metric. But I acknowledge that I am strongly biased by the fact that I'm a rich white guy in a society dominated by rich white guys, so I'm definitely open to alternative ideas. But unfettered free speech doesn't seem to me to be working very well, and I don't think that's a reflection of my white privilege. The burden of covid, for example, is falling disproportionately on people of color in no small measure because of denialism. That seems like a bad outcome to me.)

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

#67

Post by mrstone »

mschuster91 wrote: post #26

I call bollocks on this. Everyone whose business goes against the terms of service of the major three cloud providers (in the case of Parler, serving as a platform for calls to violence and sedition, which are criminal offenses ) still has the freedom to go to any of the literally hundreds of "bullet-proof hosting" providers, to rent rack space and a fiber uplink somewhere and to place one's own bare metal hardware t…

I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected online?

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

#68

Post by the_drunkard »

ogre_codes wrote: post #32
zarkov99 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight and all that. Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Their banning from AWS could not have been reasonably anticipated. It was an unprecedented act of censorship in response to an unprecedented moment in American history. The world will learn and AWS will likely loose a few customers though not enough to change its policies.

> Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Nonsense. Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook were moderating content. If Twitter and Facebook hadn't been moderating hate speech, Parler would not exist. Posting voices and content which is banned on Twitter and Facebook is the single unique "Feature" of Parler. Over the months, Amazon has been in contact with Parl…

> Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook were moderating content.

> If Twitter and Facebook hadn't been moderating hate speech, Parler would not exist.

I don't think it's fair to claim Parler was created because Twitter and Facebook moderate hate speech. For example, the Hunter Biden story was actively suppressed on both Twitter and Facebook, essentially confirming long-held beliefs that social media platforms curate based on political ideology.

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

#70

Post by lisper »

millzlane wrote: post #36
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 free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…

> Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped.

Are you actually black? Because if you were I would think that you of all people would understand that calling someone (let's not mince words here) a nigger is threatening their life. The problem is not so much if I call you a nigger as if I say to my friend bubba, "Hey, what do you think we oughtta do 'bout that uppity nigger over there?"

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