Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

Which Amazon, Facebook and Twitter also do "in abundance". I can give a list of links which show direct violations of their violence policy, discriminating religion, people et all and it has been happening for years and yet no action as been taken. But does it matter if I give you such a list? It doesn't matter. Why? Because it is taken for granted that all venomous stuff that you find online is coming from the Right Wing/Alt Right/Trumpists etc. There is nothing that Left can do wrong.

Since this is the notion that I find most left liberals employ there is no way to come to a common ground in such scenarios. Unless you are willing to accept that there is venom on the left wing too there is no way I will agree to your point. If you feel Parler harbors hate in abundance you will be shocked to see the kind of hate I have found on Amazon, Twitter and Facebook spewed by the left. If you want to address the issue you should take a holistic approach of condemning it in all platforms and not single out one platform. Only then I can take your argument seriously. But the question is: Can you do it?

In my humble opinion, a democracy is one in which free speech is championed, but ultimately this freedom is trumped (genuinely no pun intended...) by the ability of the individual or group to actually rationally talk, accept difference and rationalise their point of view.

My liberty to say "the earth is flat" or "Covid19 doesn't exist" is not "free speech" but lunacy. I have zero rational evidence to support these positions, and I'd be unable in the face of serious scrutiny to even try to support these.

Science is a great example of a method which actually works. The whole, entire point of the scientific method is that it is based around being right until it is proved wrong. Every single serious academic ever knows this: they publish a paper with a theory, and they pretty much literally ask their community to shoot it down. Sometimes the theories remain for decades, sometimes they're found to be wrong immediately, and then a new paper and theory is published which sets out the latest position, there again until it is proved wrong.

The interesting thing in almost all the examples being pored over right now - Twitter and Trump, Parler, Voat - is that the individuals concerned are actually all involved in an echo chamber which self-supports. They are completely unable to rationalise, and if you ever tried jumping onto any of these streams or platforms and providing an alternative point of view then you'll see exactly what I mean by this - you're almost immediately flamed out of the room. The irony here - that these "free speech" platforms are the least able to support any kind of dissenting opinion - is intense.

Ultimately, the person claiming the primacy of "free speech" needs to accept that this freedom has a price: they need to be able to defend their position, and accept that others have alternative positions, and accept that even if their position is "true" now, it may not be "true" when further evidence emerges. This is rarely, I would suggest never, the case in the examples provided here.

In terms of this specific thread: I don't see Parler as a "platform of free speech". I see it as "a self-supporting echo chamber of individuals who are completely against free speech".