I hate Facebook and Twitter as much as anyone but it generally takes saying some crazy stuff to get blocked on Twitter or Facebook. Now they suddenly have a social network for their cult where Donald Trump is their leader and is somehow taking down the deep state and will uncover massive voter fraud while simultaneously getting hundreds of thousands of votes thrown out making him the winner and using martial law to mass arrests all the Democrats for operating undeground pedo rings in pizza shops. Do I have that right?
Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
661–670 of 889 posts
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is ridiculously overstaffed for what they are and it resulted in very few improvements over the years. I really wonder what most people there do. And yes, I’ve run popular apps so I’m not underestimating anything. If Parler can grab a percentage of this market and not unnecessarily overextend themselves, they’ll be just fine.
You’ve run popular apps on the scale of Twitter? It’s left ambiguous, but personally or with a team that’s much smaller than Twitter? That sounds very impressive. Can you share more details?
Significantly smaller than Twitter of course but big enough to have a pretty good direct idea of sizes of various teams that are needed and also indirectly when working with larger apps of others. And for completeness I’ll admit that it was 3+ years ago. Twitter is not exactly going through explosive growth either.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree broadly though I'd add two caveats: They can't do that AND profess to support free speech within their club. I think people should be able to form their groups as they like. But that doesn't mean that that group is a healthy place or that it doesn't harm wider society. I'm also not clear whether this is a group of people forming under their own initiative (as is their democratic right). Or if its actually som…
The problem is when Reddit shuts down r/conservative because they don't agree with the opinions on the sub.
Both that and this would be problems. But reddit hasn't closed r/conservative. Quite the opposite: it's open, people access it and mock the dumber comments there and gain something from the smarter ones.
Parler chooses not to maintain the same freedom. But then falsely claims it does...
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
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2020, or more likely 2016 will perhaps be seen as a turning point in the fortunes of the US Republic, when the democracy began to unravel, the law was used as a weapon against enemies, and the rule of law was replaced by mob rule with different factions warring in the streets. The parallels between the US at this moment and pre-war Europe or Rome at the time of the Catiline conspiracy are striking - the centre cannot…
Hm.. perhaps in the faceless namespace that is the Internet, but much of that interaction hasn't yet percolated into every day life of the vast majority of individuals. Any person not participating in these exchanges and these networks might not even recognize that these heated interactions are happening. Another part of the complication (fortunately) is that there is also no "real life" external markers that separat…
You didn’t notice the flags, bumper stickers and hats?
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
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You also get posts that they may have favourited or friend a they follow. That's when things get toxic.
No. That’s not what Twitter does. That’s something some clients do , unfortunately including the official Twitter clients. I just see tweets from those I follow, in chronological order, with no ads. If I saw ads, “recommended” or “trending” etc., I’d get off that client in a hurry.
Twitter indeed works like that. You’ve used the star menu to set your feed to chronological, which is not the default.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
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The argument that we need to stop tribalism to preserve society is both an un-self-conscious conservativism and a more pernicious appeal to cultural homogenization, which is what the dominance of the platforms caused, and which these innovations are a reaction to. There is no diversity in 140 characters of closely monitored claptrap, and there is no risk and opportunity in trust and safety. There is no culture in a h…
I still vote Democrat, but it is the growth of exactly this attitude that you've identified that is causing me to move increasingly away from considering myself a "Democrat". I can't see how people fail to notice the snobbish elitism underlying "we need to manage the discourse so that people's behavior is under control." It's amazing how cyclical this sort of stuff is. Plato's Republic was enmeshed with a similar log…
I do not think we need to manage speech or control discourse whatsoever. If you think that's the idea here, you're not thinking deep enough about the nature of the systems that are problematic right now.
We've designed communication systems that are optimized for instant gratification, engagement, getting the dopamine hit of seeing things you agree with or angry at, and rapidly moving to the next. That's not speech, that's a designed system of attention seeking, all with the primary objective of getting eyeballs on advertisements and content primarily.
We've designed communication platforms that cause us to cease seeing each other as human beings, and instead condensed thoughts and memes that are simply repeated to conform and get reinforced for a quick natural drug.
I do not think we should control the discourse or have structural control over what's right or wrong to say or think; that would be absurdly dystopian.
I do think we need to change our systems to incentivize human context around that speech, and reinforce our own humanity in how we read and respond to it.
I think it's possible to design better platforms that don't bring out the worst in society, and that we should do so.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
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> No one wants to spend time on the Internet listening to a bunch of randos talking about how the Jews are secretly lizard people manipulating the elections except other such crackpots. I don't think that is representative of users of Parler. I would agree with you if you said Gab. This may surprise you but the vast vast majority people are joking about the likes of the lizard people. It is a bit of fun because of ho…
Nah, I don't need large news organizations to do anything. If you walked up to me today and gave me the latest spiel about how Kamala Harris was born in Kenya to a two-headed alligator man, I'm going to walk away. Online it's not so easy to walk away, so I prefer that you have alligator man conversations with other alligator man enthusiasts.
> If you walked up to me today and gave me the latest spiel about how Kamala Harris was born in Kenya to a two-headed alligator man, I'm going to walk away.
Except most of the so called "conspiracy theorists" don't talk about that stuff at all. They normally talk about how "this information Y is being supressed from the public because this will undermind the governments policy on X".
People always bring up the crazy the stuff to discredit the other things that could be legitiment. It must be some form of strawmanning.
> Online it's not so easy to walk away, so I prefer that you have alligator man conversations with other alligator man enthusiasts.
I don't have alligator man conversations at all. I just don't strawman the other side position to feel morally superior like you appear to be doing.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
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> The internet has created the ability for any given subculture to discover instant validation and reinforce their beliefs into a tribe, which further solidifies and extremifies those beliefs. I don't believe this is true. I remember "Ye Olde Days" (TM) of the Internet. You went to an independent forum or mailing list that supported your interest (video games, music, politics) and then you argued with everyone in you…
You're right. The way we design our social platforms has a gigantic impact on how people see each other, and talk to each other, and the impact that has on us. Perhaps the problem isn't the self-reinforcement, but rather the platforms being designed more on instantaneous engagement and addiction rather than talking and human-level discussion. We've devolved internet discourse into very simplistic, unintelligent, inst…
We have, and the users, for the most part, chose the screamy, thirsty, censored, algorithmic ones.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if twitter is so bad, why do you keep using it? Did you read what I said? I have stopped using Twitter. I don't tweet, I don't have the app, I don't engage in anything what happens there now. I just occasionally peek in to see if I'm missing out on anything and surprisingly I don't. As a result I see myself (unconsciously) check Twitter less and less.
> I have stopped using Twitter. > I just occasionally [use Twitter] to see if . . . Hm.
When I switch TV programs I might view a program for 1 minute before I decide that I don’t like the content. The next day when I look for something to watch I might tune into the same TV station again for a minute before moving on. I am not a “user” (viewer) of that TV station despite checking it out for approximately a minute each.
My current Twitter “usage” is the same concept. You decide if you call this a Twitter user or not.
Re: Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.cato.org/blog/twitter-alternative-they-can-keep-... To be clear, it makes sense to ban fake accounts proporting to be well known people and people breaking the law. Banning anyone with views you dislike and anyone paroding conservatives is where it gets censourous.
> It’s worth noting that the first thing Parler did was start censoring anyone unsupportive of their form of conservatism. Thanks for the link but nothing in that article supports this comment. The only mention of content not allowed is: 1. Matze's post about spam, NSFW content, and death threats not being allowed ( https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public... ) and 2. Matze's post about banning th…
>A seeming blanket ban of Antifa supporters