Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

991–1000 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#991

Post by kjr247 »

jturpin wrote: post #802
ianbutler wrote: post #758

I'm just going to come out and say something that I've had a hard self reflective time coming to the conclusion of. I don't believe in free speech without limits. I have strongly felt that the actions taken by these companies is morally and ethically the right thing to do, for any business and that is inconsistent with believing in true free speech. My line for free speech seems to lie in speech that incites violence…

I have not yet concluded whether I believe in free speech without limits, but I can at least say with confidence the following: - Freedom of speech is of extremely high importance for any free society and should not be taken for granted - Removing it in any capacity should be done with extreme care and free of any bias one way or another, with a lot of thought put into any future consequences - Speech without a platf…

What do you mean by "without limits"?

Twitter and Facebook have recently gone to court because of their blatant censorship, editing, and banning or speakers for having differing opinions. They are no longer a distributed publishing houses free. They are now editors and are to be held accountable for their actions and the actions of others on their sites.

I believe that if we add one limit to the liberty of speech and we'll have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#992

Post by Fellshard »

One angle for concern: this means only big, established companies with their own infrastructure will be able to stay up while hosting calls for violence. Anyone hosted in the cloud is now responsible for their own censorship, massively raising minimum cost for competition.

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#993

Post by paulnechifor »

chadash wrote: post #387

A parler message quoted in this article: “On Jan * we need to start systematically assassinating liberal leaders, liberal activists, BLM activists...” I’m not on parler but it seems like this stuff is not uncommon there and since they aren’t a huge company it seems like it would be tough to moderate it. I consider myself to be a proponent of free speech, but I also think you are crazy if you don’t put limits on it.

A message on Twitter:

> Someone take this clown out NOW! #assassinatetrump utter evil this man! #DonaldTrump

I’m on Twitter and it seems like this stuff is not uncommon there and since they are a huge company it seems like it wouldn't be tough to moderate it.

I consider myself to be a proponent of free speech, but I also think you are crazy if you don’t put limits on it.

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#995

Post by jsmith45 »

ianbutler wrote: post #758

I'm just going to come out and say something that I've had a hard self reflective time coming to the conclusion of. I don't believe in free speech without limits. I have strongly felt that the actions taken by these companies is morally and ethically the right thing to do, for any business and that is inconsistent with believing in true free speech. My line for free speech seems to lie in speech that incites violence…

Right.

I fully 100% support the ability of Facebook, Twitter, etc to ban accounts. They have every legal and moral right to do so. Rembember that freedom of association is also a thing.

At the same time, I recognize that sufficently powerful corporations are practically just another form of government. Does it really make practical difference to you if a government says "you can't say that", vs a monopolist/trust/cartel saying the same thing?

But that only points out the fact that, for example, Facebook should not exist in its current form. That fact that that it is basically the only significant player in its niche points to a spectacular market failure, one likely compounded by unlawful monopolistic practices by Facebook.

There should instead be multiple viable competing services in such spaces. If it takes alienating decent sized chunks of the population to eventually get a viable competitor, then so be it. And no Parler is certainly not that viable competitor. But if Facebook's actions piss of enough people who are not extremists, then a true competitor might actually start to emerge.

The same applies to Apple/Amazon/Google.

---

After thought:

Seriously who is the #2 competitor to Facebook's main service? There really does not seem to be any significant competitor in the English speaking world. While on the other hand, Amazon for example has fairly clear competitors for most of its products, at least in the US. Walmart/EBay competes with the shopping, GCP/Azure compete with AWS, YouTube Gaming competes with Twitch, multiple streaming services compete with the video and music offerings, etc. Apple likewise has competitors for pretty much all of their offerings. Even Google has competition on most of their products.

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#996

Post by lillecarl »

I think It's interesting that noone here is talking about how important it is not to fall for vendor lockin. If Parler is using a lot of Amazon specific things they'll have a hard time migrating this fast. We need to use opensource and available technologies to run our software.

(I completely dismiss the political argument here to talk about the fact that we're at the mercy of some companies for our own existence)

Re: Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

#998

Post by Grustaf »

ianbutler wrote: post #758

I'm just going to come out and say something that I've had a hard self reflective time coming to the conclusion of. I don't believe in free speech without limits. I have strongly felt that the actions taken by these companies is morally and ethically the right thing to do, for any business and that is inconsistent with believing in true free speech. My line for free speech seems to lie in speech that incites violence…

> discriminates against people for immutable characteristics of their person

By discriminate, do you mean "disparage" or simply "make a distinction between"? Or something else?

In either case, it seems like quite a low threshold, it seems like it would mean you condone a social network that bans people that say "I don't like white people" or "women can't drive"?

Post reply on HN