Given that all of the services targeting that particular political demographic seem to be largely undifferentiated when it comes to the apps themselves it's gonna be interesting to see how quickly they'll start to cannibalize each other once the Mercer money dries up.
I think this or some other conservative social media actually gaining some dominance is very likely. Especially with all of the permanent bans recently happening on twitter and facebook. Imagine the power of the echo chamber when the whole point of an app is to be republican-twitter or republican-facebook.
Considering it's still dead simple to become inundated with far right opinions and conspiracy theories on twitter, it's a bit of a stretch to claim it's "left-twitter."
Just because the most egregious and dangerous stuff from one side gets deleted does not mean it's a place only for the polar opposite.
“left-twitter” simply designates a subcommunity within twitter. I don’t think OP meant that Twitter as a whole leans left. Many people have an opinion on that topic, but in reality it’s hard to know for sure as Twitter is very large.
Not sure its about power, more about access to a demographic that is pre filtered. Could be lucrative for certain advertisers who want to target the group who is attracted to parler.
Although the crowds booing trump after he announced he had his vax booster shot should give advertisers in this space some pause, sometimes the messages and disinformation create a life of their own that doesn't follow the script.
I don't consider myself conservative by any stretch of the imagination but part of the reason I don't even bother with mainstream social media (besides it just being a toxic idea on an individual level) is that I know I'd repeatedly get in trouble in spite of following the rules for being myself.
Twitter is already an echo chamber, so it's really puzzling how all of a sudden the echo chamber problem needs to be pulled out for other platforms.
As someone who dislikes probably almost every single thing said o Parler, I'm glad it exists. Preventing people from talking is not the way to fix our problems
I gave Gettr a try and came to the same conclusion. I can count on one half of one hand the number of people on there I'd be interested in seeing updates from.
But I'm glad it exists as a place people can safely be wrong on the internet.
> I'm glad it exists as a place people can safely be wrong on the internet
Have you considered that written words that remain uncontested (or unpunished if against the law) can lead to actions outside of the Internet where people are killed?
Free speech just for the sake of it is not good for societies. I don’t know Gettr but Telegram is also a place where people can be safely wrong on the Internet. And it leads to calls for politicians to be murdered. Groups radicalize themselves in their thought bubbles, take the protest (in their eyes justified) to the streets, and even murder people (in their eyes justified) all because they can be safely wrong on the Internet.
You are right, and that is why I want Twitter to cancel the account of the Taliban spokesman for terrorism, Saudi Arabia, whose king is a known killer, Iran leaders, for promoting homophobia, Egyptian government accounts for being a dictatorship, Chinese embassies Twitter accounts for defending the genocide in Xinjiang and a dozen other countries accounts should be cancelled too, as well as violence promoted by antifa twitter accounts, everybody should be boycotting Twitter until they stop promoting terrorism, violence and genocide, , it is disgraceful they are allowing the radicalisation of people that will end up in people being killed.
You can join Gettr and contest written words if you'd like. I don't see the benefit myself, but there's nothing about the platform preventing you from doing that.
Here we are talking on HN. Is it okay for HN to ban people who don't follow the rules? I have heard this is something that can happen here. Does this mean HN is preventing people from talking?
I may be confused by what you are saying. What is the point of a company having an ideological stance if "free speech", if they are violating that all the time by censoring? How is that different from paying lip service to free speech like many companies?
> "Does this mean HN is preventing people from talking?"
I see this not particularly clever argument against the "free speech absolutist" strawman frequently enough that it's getting stale. Can people really not distinguish between the free speech issues involved in suppressing legal but controversial speech (e.g. "We support $DEPLORABLE_CANDIDATE and their $BAD_POLICY.") versus the entirely separate issues of suppressing illegal or unwanted speech (e.g. threats, spam)? This simplistic binary "all or nothing" thinking cannot capture the nuances involved in the complex philosophical and legal quagmire that is the principle of freedom of speech.
Beyond that, it's particularly ironic to attempt to use HN as the example given that the HN moderation team has tried very hard to be evenhanded on controversial threads while enforcing the rules to the extent that they routinely get accused of favoritism by all sides.
Oh no! I don't want to be associated with radicalization! I repent!
No. Try that act on someone else.
Frame it however you want. If you frame free speech as the potential for radicalization than I'm 100% fine with the potential for radicalization. That's part of what living in a free society entails, the right for people to believe in things that you find radical.
> "So you think platforms should allow for radicalisation?"
Radicalization like the civil rights movement or the LGBTQ rights movement, both considered extremist back in their day? Everyone should; allowing radicalization is very, very important. Platforms that aim to prevent radicalization sustain the status quo which is exactly what a conservative would want.
To quote Doug Gwyn "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." and perhaps something similar could be said about the principle of freedom of speech.
What sitting Congress members, big tech (Amazon, Apple, and Google), and others did to collude and blackhole Parler was disgusting. There is no room in an open society with classically liberal values for such censorship and abuse of power. As a reminder, AOC called for tech companies to block Parler and they all complied (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...). These are companies that have every incentive to obey, to avoid antitrust action due to their monopolistic practices. Tech companies also then muzzled a sitting President and continue to use the same playbook today against anyone who doesn’t share their ideology (recent example: https://thepostmillennial.com/youtube-removes-joe-rogan-inte...).
Meanwhile Facebook and Twitter, which played more of a role in the Capitol riot and in the numerous much more violent and damaging riots throughout 2020, faced no such pressure or consequence from politicians or technology companies.
I have never posted on Parler. But the few times I glanced at it, the content seemed fine. Most importantly it was legally protected speech. I don’t agree with all my fellow citizens but I want them to be able to talk, and I want to hear their ideas. Parler raising funds is great news and I wish them luck. Even if I disagree with their audience.
Companies do not have to allow people to use their platforms to engage in antisocial behavior. I'm sorry, but you can't go say whatever you want in the middle of a restaurant and assume that freedom of expression protects you from what happens when others don't want to hear what you have to say. Unless of course you're a toddler.
Good thing we aren’t talking about restaurants. Social media companies are common carriers, just another set of telecom utilities that must be regulated so they cannot deny users access once they’re above a certain size. AWS is also just basic infrastructure the public is dependent on in our modern society and should be regulated similarly. All these companies face limited competition due to network effects and market capitalization, and should be regulated for antitrust reasons as well. And in all cases they must be forced to accept customers of all different persuasions. Political viewpoints should also be made a protected class formally.
Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
I'm sure the foot-soldiers of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot had the exact same purity of thought, the exact same infallible self-belief and the exact same certainty they were on the right side of history.
It's interesting that you raise totalitarians like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot in this discussion. What are you trying to imply? Implication isn't a sound argument.
> Social media companies are common carriers, just another set of telecom utilities that must be regulated so they cannot deny users access once they’re above a certain size.
In your opinion. There are many good arguments against this and you know it.
> Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
This sounds like your arguments are misinformed or perhaps not realizing how things are.
Speech is already heavily regulated by civil agreements throughout American society. I don't have enough time to type all the examples, but here are a few: you can't sell trade secrets from your employer and claim freedom of expression, you can't scream loudly during a theater performance, you can't curse in a restaurant, you can't go sell things 'table-to-table' in a restaurant, you can't make public statements about someone's marital fidelity, or whether or not they have transmissible infections or diseases. There are many other examples.
So there are already pretty strong guards against behaving in antisocial manner and trying to claim that it's 'protected speech'. But I understand that it's very convenient for you to try to say that such guards are 'authoritarian' and 'kafka,esque' instead of presenting even a tiny crumb of valid argument against my very well-argued position.
I don't agree with shutting parler off, and I despise Amazon, but I will defend amazon here. If you believe in property right, Parler ran on AWS's servers and I am pretty sure the ToS probably states they have the right to terminate the service. I am also extremely far left.
The best solution would be to run your own infrastructure. If your gonna piggy back off someone else's infrastructure, you have to play by their rules rather or not you like it.
Amazon even produce documents over months prior to them shutting off the services of concern and willingness to work with them to resolve them. Parler chose not to respond.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadJust because the most egregious and dangerous stuff from one side gets deleted does not mean it's a place only for the polar opposite.
However the volume of users is sufficiently large that you can be swamped by any minority if you choose, no matter how tiny.
Although the crowds booing trump after he announced he had his vax booster shot should give advertisers in this space some pause, sometimes the messages and disinformation create a life of their own that doesn't follow the script.
Twitter is already an echo chamber, so it's really puzzling how all of a sudden the echo chamber problem needs to be pulled out for other platforms.
But I'm glad it exists as a place people can safely be wrong on the internet.
Have you considered that written words that remain uncontested (or unpunished if against the law) can lead to actions outside of the Internet where people are killed?
Free speech just for the sake of it is not good for societies. I don’t know Gettr but Telegram is also a place where people can be safely wrong on the Internet. And it leads to calls for politicians to be murdered. Groups radicalize themselves in their thought bubbles, take the protest (in their eyes justified) to the streets, and even murder people (in their eyes justified) all because they can be safely wrong on the Internet.
People shouldn't confuse an ideological stance with an operational strategy.
I see this not particularly clever argument against the "free speech absolutist" strawman frequently enough that it's getting stale. Can people really not distinguish between the free speech issues involved in suppressing legal but controversial speech (e.g. "We support $DEPLORABLE_CANDIDATE and their $BAD_POLICY.") versus the entirely separate issues of suppressing illegal or unwanted speech (e.g. threats, spam)? This simplistic binary "all or nothing" thinking cannot capture the nuances involved in the complex philosophical and legal quagmire that is the principle of freedom of speech.
Beyond that, it's particularly ironic to attempt to use HN as the example given that the HN moderation team has tried very hard to be evenhanded on controversial threads while enforcing the rules to the extent that they routinely get accused of favoritism by all sides.
So you think platforms should allow for radicalisation?
No. Try that act on someone else.
Frame it however you want. If you frame free speech as the potential for radicalization than I'm 100% fine with the potential for radicalization. That's part of what living in a free society entails, the right for people to believe in things that you find radical.
Radicalization like the civil rights movement or the LGBTQ rights movement, both considered extremist back in their day? Everyone should; allowing radicalization is very, very important. Platforms that aim to prevent radicalization sustain the status quo which is exactly what a conservative would want.
To quote Doug Gwyn "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." and perhaps something similar could be said about the principle of freedom of speech.
Meanwhile Facebook and Twitter, which played more of a role in the Capitol riot and in the numerous much more violent and damaging riots throughout 2020, faced no such pressure or consequence from politicians or technology companies.
I have never posted on Parler. But the few times I glanced at it, the content seemed fine. Most importantly it was legally protected speech. I don’t agree with all my fellow citizens but I want them to be able to talk, and I want to hear their ideas. Parler raising funds is great news and I wish them luck. Even if I disagree with their audience.
Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
I'm sure the foot-soldiers of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot had the exact same purity of thought, the exact same infallible self-belief and the exact same certainty they were on the right side of history.
I'm guessing Eisenhower, Euclid and Fermi would have had no problem with people disagreeing with them.
And I picked some extreme examples from the same side of the political spectrum to illustrate that.
In your opinion. There are many good arguments against this and you know it.
> Also your claims of judging and disallowing speech on a subjective determination of being “antisocial” is exactly the kind of authoritarian kafka-esque censorship that makes the policies of these huge tech platforms incompatible with a free society.
This sounds like your arguments are misinformed or perhaps not realizing how things are.
Speech is already heavily regulated by civil agreements throughout American society. I don't have enough time to type all the examples, but here are a few: you can't sell trade secrets from your employer and claim freedom of expression, you can't scream loudly during a theater performance, you can't curse in a restaurant, you can't go sell things 'table-to-table' in a restaurant, you can't make public statements about someone's marital fidelity, or whether or not they have transmissible infections or diseases. There are many other examples.
So there are already pretty strong guards against behaving in antisocial manner and trying to claim that it's 'protected speech'. But I understand that it's very convenient for you to try to say that such guards are 'authoritarian' and 'kafka,esque' instead of presenting even a tiny crumb of valid argument against my very well-argued position.
The best solution would be to run your own infrastructure. If your gonna piggy back off someone else's infrastructure, you have to play by their rules rather or not you like it.
Amazon even produce documents over months prior to them shutting off the services of concern and willingness to work with them to resolve them. Parler chose not to respond.