Live data from Hacker News

70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

cybernews.com

971–980 of 1001 posts

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#971

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler was literally designed with suppression of political viewpoints they disagree with in mind from the start. "We're a community town square, an open town square, with no censorship... If you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler." That's a quote from the CEO I just grabbed from CNBC[1] and there are others floating around about the lack of censorship. How does that lead to suppression…

This is just talk. You can scroll up to the head of the thread and see how the platform was designed to censor in order to maintain a certain ideology.

> This is just talk

If you can't construct a proper response don't denigrate mine, thanks.

> You can scroll up to the head of the thread

Again, if it's too much effort for you to construct proper responses then you shouldn't respond at all.

> see how the platform was designed to censor in order to maintain a certain ideology

That is not what the tweets show. They show that there are moderation tools. There is no proof that any view was censored, you, along with the tweeter, have inferred that. If you have a statement sent out to mods about what should be allowed, or you have something that shows certain types of speech were suppressed then you can make the claim. "Social network has moderation tools and mods" does not cut it.

Now, if you're going to reply again I'd ask that you try harder to maintain some civility and up the quality, probably through greater effort.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is not gasoline, and ignoring the fact that "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is not the correct quote (it's falsely shouting it, and I only know one case of it happening[1]), you've placed the cause of this on algorithmic ranking as much as speech itself. Great, let's stop interfering with speech, it leads to bad things. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Hg-Y7MugU

> Speech is not gasoline It's a metaphor. Let me extend it a bit: Speech is the drought of repeated lies about the illegitimacy of an unwelcome outcome drying out the underbrush of widespread discontent. Speech gathers the tinder of a crowd committed to "stop the steal". Speech is the accelerant convincing those so predisposed that violence or the threat of violence is acceptable and even to be admired. And speech is…

> It's a metaphor.

Clearly, here's a better beginning:

“Let me extend the metaphor a bit".

> Speech is the drought of repeated lies about the illegitimacy of an unwelcome outcome drying out the underbrush of widespread discontent.

Did you mean hate speech? A drought is usually a negative. Sorry, I just can't make sense of that.

> And speech is the match tossed offhandedly aiming the mob you primed and egged on at the target you want to intimidate (and that's the most charitable interpretation).

All very poetic but, again, I'm sorry but I can't find any substance to it.

> I don't think we get to unring that particular bell

I wasn't the one suggesting we do. You presented two causes - algos and lies, the negative outcome of the latter being magnified by the former - and then chose to suppress one. I think that's a false choice as I can think of other possible ways to remedy the situation and would pursue them instead, but even if I only had the false choice then I wouldn't pick suppression of speech. I can manage with a chronological feed, I was on Twitter and Facebook pretty early, it wasn't bad enough for me to give up the foundation of liberal society. I even remember a time before the internet, it really wasn't that bad.

> I don't think there is a way for them to back away from algorithmic ranking unless government regulation simply forbids it outright (which isn't too likely)

What's likelihood got to do with it? You're just shrugging your shoulders and choosing to support the suppression of speech instead. It's not as if you've made the argument that you care about free speech but the alternatives are unlikely. I don't even see any evidence as to why it's unlikely. Making a decision based on the likelihood makes little sense, it's not a horse race.

> I'm not sure how useful HN itself would be if the front page wasn't being automatically ranked…

I agree. Why would legislation of algorithms mean no algorithms? It doesn't and it wouldn't. Here are some viable alternatives:

- Social media sites give users control over the algorithms that decide their feed - Users get access to the tools for blocking et al, and the scoring of users. Why can't I know that the person replying to me is likely to be a bot? Or has scored highly for trolling? Why can't I know my own score? Why can't I choose my own shadowbanning? No good reason other than the centralisation of power. - Companies over a certain size lose section 230 protections. This will encourage greater moderation on the large sites and foster competition from smaller ones.

I'm sure there are more.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#973

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you compared the unbridled free speech on the internet, which is (or was) available to US citizens, with that of bridled speech available to citizens of other places around the world? Which place has more violence as a result?

Have you used an email with no spam filter?

I still get to see what's in my spam folder.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#974

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does start off many people with a shadowban–I know because I have vouched for many of these initial comments.

Is it really a shadowban if you could vouch for them? Shadowban is when the poster sees their stuff looking normal and no-one else (modulo mods) sees it at all right?

By default, nobody sees those comments–you have to go to showdead in your profile to enable it. I keep it on because it gives me occasional insight into the dregs of the site and the effort that goes into moderating it, but also lets me save the insightful comments that get killed (or, very rarely, erroneously flagged.)

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#975

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a shadowban if you could vouch for them? Shadowban is when the poster sees their stuff looking normal and no-one else (modulo mods) sees it at all right?

By default, nobody sees those comments–you have to go to showdead in your profile to enable it. I keep it on because it gives me occasional insight into the dregs of the site and the effort that goes into moderating it, but also lets me save the insightful comments that get killed (or, very rarely, erroneously flagged.)

Right, I showdead for similar reasons. I figured that shadowbanning would prevent even showdead from revealing those comments, but apparently not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article itself never defines "messages" and, from context, it seems like they referred to users' [public] posts as "users' messages" -- not DMs/PMs. EDIT: A clarification on Twitter from ~9h ago: "since a lot of people seem confused about this detail and there is a bullshit reddit post going around: only things that were available publicly via the web were archived. i don't have you e-mail address, phone or credi…

This is in the twitter post in the article >I am now crawling URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequentially from latest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files coming up, 50k chunks, there will be 1.1M URLs total: https://donk.sh/06d639b2-0252-4b1e-883b-f275eff7e792/ >This may include things from deleted/private posts.

"Private" posts are posts shared to specific circles AFAIK, not the classic definition of 1:1 DMs. They're still semi-public, a bit like Google+ Circles.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#977
post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarian vs neoreactionary. Whereas the Kochs want to be in charge of government, the Mercers want to eliminate government.

Eliminating government will favor whoever is best equipped to become one. Similar, generic libertarian: means handing over all power to the biggest corporation. Big corporations exercise so much power already that it is only where they disagree that any civil governance is even possible. Principle is that a power vacuum is always immediately filled by the strongest party.

Utopian thinking is the great irony, isn't it? Your utopia is someone else's dystopia? TBH, I have a really hard time wrapping my head around these philosophical paradoxes.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give a bit of context, this is the "Keyboard Cowboy Hack The Planet" Parler lead engineer: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErcFo5tXAAAa0KP?format=jpg&name=...

> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErcFo5tXAAAa0KP?format=jpg&name= ... I'm not following, what does this provide in support of the discussion? What context does this provide other than a picture and username? If the notion is of this person being lower or lesser because they worked for parler, then you aren't seeing the forest through the trees. Plenty of engineers make mistakes, many are just as ego centric. Go to Defco…

> If the notion is of this person being lower or lesser because they worked for parler

No. I support free speech. But I for one wouldn't trust someone with my security who approaches his jobs like a "cowboy hacker". Infosec is hard and needs to be taken seriously. Only the paranoid survive.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#979

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation Needed

Citation for what? What is it you want someone else to tell you to believe instead of using your own mental faculties and logic? Do you want a citation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? I am sure you can find that on your own, my friend.

You proved my point.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#980
post #850
post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two of those are non-violent opinions you clearly disagree with. The second two are pro gun ownership - which would be perceived as appeals to violence in most of the world, but in the US is a perfectly common political position. So this fails to support your false equivalence re: Parler and Twitter. There's actually plenty of extremist hate filled bile on twitter, but these are terrible examples. Search "#…

I just think, given the current milieu, that asserting that there is literally not such thing as a good cop (a hyperbolic and somewhat extremist statement by its very nature), and that stealing from corporations (I mean, there are lots of videos of people violently smashing into stores in recent months) that perhaps this is encouraging violence.. Yeah, you can twist the last 2 into a political position. But given the…

Here's actual trying to incite to violence.

https://twitter.com/TipsyRose75/status/1347856358440398849

Post reply on HN