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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

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Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#761
post #41

Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any so…

for the record, disgusting should be anything anti LGBT, and that's why parler had to be eliminated

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide aud…

>If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainl…

The delusion and mania gripping the country is evident by the downvotes to the above post. It is beyond dispute that the standards used by tech companies to silence people go far beyond speech that violates the law. Reading the TOS of any of these tech companies will confirm this. Its rather astounding that otherwise intelligent and presumably literate people are so jarred by this statement of indisputable fact. Unfortunately its impossible to have a thoughtful, reasoned discussion about the free speech issues raised by recent events when so many are living in denial of reality.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide aud…

> Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no Right. Even the Post Office is not required to deliver pipe bombs. The issue is that right now, that's not the standard. Amazon /hasn't/ taken down sites in the name of political censorship, but it /could/. The implications of that are important, and they're why I find it hard to be satisfied with justifications like "Amazon is a private company, the…

This is what everyone decided they wanted twenty years ago. Loss of public space was a huge topic of conversation, and the end consensus (IMHO) was that the internet itself was the public space and everyone was free to make something.

From that perspective this looks like a conversation about ease of access rather than free speech. Amazon's the only way to build something on Amazon, but nothing's stopping me from creating something myself.

I don't see being able to buy eyeballs on the cheap as a fundamental right. If you care enough, build it. If others care, they'll come.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullying is real. My wife and I run a side Business Saas product. She is listed as COO on her social media profile for the company. She is also in a bunch of groups about gardening in our local area. During the height of BLM protests and CHOP/CHAZ, someone made a post that was very off-topic for the group, basically saying we should all support what was happening in the CHOP and all the violence against cops was just…

> My wife took no position on the issue but politely replied saying the post felt off-topic and she didn't want to hear about politics in her favorite gardening group. > Several people attacked her on the post, calling her white privileged, racist, etc... all for suggesting the post was off-topic (even though the group's own rules prohibited political content). Isn't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a s…

Isn't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a space and then deciding which issues you'll "take no position" a privilege?

Why is it privilege to avoid discussing politics in a gardening group? I'll grant that "take no position" can be a privileged position in some contexts, but a gardening group discussion seems pretty clearly not one of those contexts.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#765
post #321

I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight. Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this t…

BLM caused the deaths of over 80 people and nobody deplatformed Facebook or Twitter. This is obviously about the belief that republicans are not human.

A nuance: AWS de-platformed Parler for its insufficient moderation on violence-inciting discussion, not for existence of such discussion. Not that I agree with or disagree with AWS decision, but it's worth having a nuanced discussion. A larger problem I see in the US is that many, if not all, nuanced discussions are considered evil by the left or by the right.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#766
post #41

Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any so…

"disgusting" like what? Can you give a few examples? (legit ask, not denying it)

disgusting is anything anti-lgbt, anti progressive, anything that is a bi-erasure or trans smear. Disgusting is that which marginalizes or unfairly imputes the character of a minority community whether black, jewish, or hispanic, since these voices are not adequately represented

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#767
post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of. I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is a s…

It sounds very reasonable up until attempting to identify what, objectively, is the bar to set business policy. Twitter literally claims that "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." was the straw that broke the camels back [0]. That isn't an objective bar. Context which "everyone knows" is a political question - a highly political question. If AWS happens to have a s…

> Twitter literally claims that "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.

Well, no, they didn't claim that. They claimed the two tweets, taken together, were the straw that broke the camel's back.

And, yes, I think you could reasonably make the claim that the tweets were innocuous if you throw out the context of the President inciting a violent insurrection on Congress. But, we don't have to blind ourselves to that prior context. Given it, and given the way a number of people received those comments and have been actively organizing for violence around the inauguration since then, it doesn't seem to be to be a close call.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not everything is a slippery slope From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence. The bar for getting "canceled" is…

> The bar for getting "canceled" is already moving up ... Eh I'm not so sure about that? I mean, "Did your userbase activately participate in a plot to storm the Capitol and potentially take lawmakers and the VP of the State as hostages (or worse)?" is an awfully high bar to clear.

[deleted]

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#769

The great irony here is that these de-platformings are only concerned with non-state violence (or so they claim). There is no censorship of people advocating for disarming the entire population (using political violence) or depriving them of property (again, using state power). And as far as I can tell, none of the politicians who initiate and perpetuate war are de-platformed.

Twitter has hosted the Revolutionary Communist Party USA for at least ten years. It would seem they have no ethical problem with hosting calls for a coup.

I mean the RCP has been basically irrelevant since the 60s or early 70s, so it’s not as if they’re an active concern for anyone
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