If they actually agree to let an unstable, anti-semitic [1], petulant bully [2] with no tech experience take over their platform, then doesn't that prove them to be rather stupid?
They're really agreeing to let him be their boss?
[1] - Latest tweets saying he's going "death con 3 on jewish people" and "who do you think created cancel culture?"
My thoughts exactly. Twitter and Parler are going to turn into 4chan. Cesspools sure, but not something sane people are interested in participating in.
FB is very different depending on curation. I know everyone on my list, there is no 4chan content (of course, I also stopped using FB because they made the website so bad I couldn’t anymore)
I'll bet anyone $10 that Kanye West will be president of the united states. If not this election, the next one. He will be a better Trump than Trump, a bigger celebrity, more unhinged, youth appeal and almost deplatformable.
A platform that bans left-wing speech is not a free speech one. Simple as that. Yes I know some work hard in redefining "free speech" to measure "ability of right wing extremists being unopposed". That does not make it reasonable for HN.
Free speech is the right for everyone to express themselves, including right-wing and left wing extremists. It interesting to see how many of the "privately-owned platforms can do as they please" people suddenly change their mind when the shoe is on the other foot.
My complaint is about calling it free speech platform. That is a lie right there in the title. Had the title was "Kanye West to acquire right wing platform Parler" I would be fine with the title.
Technically you are not wrong, but all platforms including Twitter, Facebook, etc basically say "We believe in free speech, but..."
It's really just about choosing who moderates your content. 0 moderation is not possible, so if you don't like Twitter, you can use Parler, and if you don't like Reddit, you can use Retalk, etc etc
Because, while in fact neither is a "free-speech" platform, Parler brands itself as one while Twitter does not, and the person who posted this article has an axe to grind (adding "free speech" to the title when it isn't in the headline of the article).
What's happening to Kanye is a lesson to us all. He's 15 years past his peak cultural relevancy, and desperately wants to claw some of it back — but not by releasing great records or designing clothes that everybody wants to wear.
Instead he's the brave truth-teller telling us things that the Man (who, it turns out, ia jewish) doesn't want us to know. You see a bunch of celebrities and regular people alike fall into this trap — think of the former popular kid in high school who ended up as a janitor who spends their time "researching" the connection between vaccines and autism.
Early in the pandemic there was a notion that the entire antivax movement was white, racist, right wing nut jobs.
Reality is quite different. The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most. They have a certain distrust after years over years of dealing with the government.
Meaning, the vast majority of the antivax hate ends up impacting the most vulnerable in our society.
Hate is bad. It's anti-human and a huge step back. It doesn't make anyone, anywhere, morally superior and it definitely isn't a marker for intelligence.
In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
> The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most.
This is also not true. They're mostly people with low educational attainment who are more susceptible to misinformation, but I can see the narrative you're trying to create!
> In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
I thought so too, and yet I can't count how many times I've heard the phrase "the science is settled" when it came to any pushback on the prevailing narrative surrounding COVID or mRNA vaccines in general.
Even just the argument to support mandates has completely changed, and yet too late for those who lost their jobs.
I'm not sure why you're suggesting I am being dishonest, twice.
There are billions of webpages that presumably say just about everything possible. The link to the NYT article that was never promoted doesn't do much in this regard
There are also plenty of scientists who have different opinions. Only scientists with certain opinions are given interviews/timeslots. This applies to Fox as it does CNN.
None of that matters though.
My points were not about vaccinations, they were about hate. The why isn't really important.
> This is also not true. They're mostly people with low educational attainment who are more susceptible to misinformation, but I can see the narrative you're trying to create!
How is that creating a narrative? People with low education are also often people who deal with government programs a lot. Through medicare, social security, VA, police, public schooling, public housing and I can keep on going, these people are often dependent on government. And that combined with lower mental capacity really doesn't help.
> Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
That's what they did in my country... And in my country, the covid anti-vaxxers are very relatable to the ones in the US. Hell, they get most their information from Q-anon.
The self-declared vaccination prophets are quite exhausting to deal with. Especially since it doesn't hinder transmission as much as first assumed. You can argue that this is better than nothing, but I argue that many people should be ashamed of themselves for making blind demands.
> The self-declared vaccination prophets are quite exhausting to deal with.
This is no less true of the self-declared anti vaccination prophets, and their cousins the lab leakers. The one area in which "both sides" tends to be true is that there are condescending extremist never-shut-ups on every side of every issue, and even their allies often find them exhausting.
It is, but to a lesser degree because they don't have any demands like keeping me out of the public life if I don't have the correct papers or masks or whatever. Lab leakers were censored for political purposes while the question was open. Or it still is open as far as I know. Not too relevant for me personally, but I believe it shouldn't be possible to censor such opinions and that alone warrants a closer look. Self-inflicted harm in that case. They too don't have many demands.
I don't know much about him but isn't he super successful with his businesses? Looking from the sides it doesn't seem like he's culturally irrelevant either but maybe I'm too old to realize that.
I'm the farthest thing from a fan of Kanye West, but this is false:
"West remains a considerable force in pop music. Every album except his debut, 2004’s “The College Dropout,” has topped the Billboard 200, including 2021’s “Donda,” which received a Grammy album of the year nomination. In the run-up to “Donda,” he held public “listening parties” at football stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago that were livestreamed on Apple Music (he was roundly criticized for bringing out special guests DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, who are each under scrutiny for bigoted language or alleged abuses). His sold-out December show with Drake at the L.A. Coliseum affirmed he’s still a formidable concert draw, one of few hip-hop acts who can credibly headline major global festivals." [1]
His continued popularity is precisely what makes his comments so dangerous.
Genuine question- if you don't measure a musician's cultural relevancy by album sales, concert attendance, or award nominations, how do you measure it?
I mostly agree with the parent that just sales of all sorts are not a sign of cultural relevancy.
However, measuring said relevancy is a very subjective endeavor (due to the fact that it’s hard to objectively evaluate things outside of our own bubble). In my view it’s whether the artist is “talked about” and whether they are influencing the current music (and a broader culture) - that’s what makes them relevant. Kanye is still doing both of those things, so he is very relevant.
Donda (and Donda 2 to a smaller degree) was a very noticeable cultural event. Listening parties, album guests, the controversy around his romantic relationships (scandalous IG posts, etc), merchandise (tied to his big fashion releases)…
Billy Joel has none of that. Nostalgic concerts are definitely not a sign of relevancy outside of his fandom bubble.
Something must be seriously wrong with the financials at Parler for them to accept an offer from him. He's basically untouchable on both sides of the mainstream political spectrum at this point, something I'm sure Parler is aware of. However, desperation makes for strange bedfellows. Perhaps, like Elon, he'll try and get out of the deal at which point his bipolar condition will come out front and center as a basis for withdrawing the offer.
It’s never not been mainstream. Crazy girlfriends, calling people psychos, joking about having ocd(“or as I prefer it, cdo!”), adhd squirrel!, calling people narcissistic, autistic as an insult for being overly petulant, “retarded”, etc etc. the list goes on and on.
At no point was someone’s mental well-being not a point of mockery or weakness in society, I think.
I don't think that this specific issue is "hate on people for their mental health" it's more that, mental health issues of powerful people playing out in headlines and prime-time media will never not be uncomfortable to watch, a tragic and unnecessary spectacle.
Foucault is a fraud and charlatan, also, evidence of his pedophilia in Algeria came out recently. No surprise since he fought against age of consent laws in France - along with most of the other post moderist french critical theorists...
Beyond that, most of his books are extremely anti-historical and filled with literal falsehoods. Foucaults take on leprosy is literally conspiracy theory tier BS and is anti-scientific.
This is mostly very silly and is not backed by facts.
1. On "pedophilia in Algeria":
a. You are probably referring to the rumors started by Guy Sorman which mention crimes allegedly taking place in Tunisia, where he lived and taught, rather than Algeria.
b. As described in a report (in French) published in the Obs[1], Foucault was under strict police surveillance when he lived in Tunisia, because of his political activities. The State was desperate to find a reason to convict him. One would think that allegations of rape and pedophilia wouldn't have gone unnoticed.
Moreover, Sorman himself admitted that his allegations were not founded[2].
c. Even if these allegations were true (which they don't seem to be), I failed to see what they would have to do with the argument you are answering to. This would make him a criminal and a despicable person; it would not imply that nothing he wrote was philosophically and historically pertinent.
2. On the age of consent laws in France: your argument is simply dishonest. At the time, the age of consent for heterosexual relations was 15 (and it still is), whereas homosexual relations were forbidden until the age of 18, which was (rightfully) seen as discriminatory. However, some of the people involved in that movement were indeed despicable.
3. "most of his books are extremely anti-historical" That makes absolutely no sense. What does "anti-historical" mean?
a. "filled with literal falsehoods". This is a gross overstatement. The accuracy of some facts described in some of Foucault's books have indeed been disputed, it doesn't make them "filled with falsehoods".
b. "anti-scientific": that's ironic, because, for reasons that I cannot explain in much detail here (do study Foucault and make your own opinion about his work rather that believe what random strangers say on the Internet), it is, to some extent, precisely the point (but it is dealt with in a much more complex manner than what your comment leads one to think).
Think whatever you want about Foucault and his work, but please do your homework and don't spread ridiculous rumors and over-simplifications.
what makes you think this is a mentally ill decision? i haven't seen the numbers but this is a lot cheaper than twitter, he could leverage it pretty decently and there's plenty of magabux out there to be made.
Uhh what? Drake is a generational mega star and was previously best known for playing the kid in a wheel chair on a canadian teen drama Degrassi. No one is looking over their shoulder looking for JCole or Childish Gambino.
Hard edge rappers are a relic of the 90s/00s. They still exist for sure, but its not going to ruin your cred if you dont "come from the streets".
Drake never played that game (he couldn’t as a former child star, to your point). His rap songs are largely taking the piss (see HYFR for example) in my opinion.
I’m not talking about gangster cred or whatever. I mean, Beyonce isn’t harmless.
In all seriousness, he’s created a small and apparently growing following by fostering the “harmless” persona. Sure, he’s no Dr. Dre, but his songs have featured in a couple of relatively large ad campaigns even though they definitely aren’t “radio friendly”.
If his purpose truly is promoting, advocating for and protecting the free and open exchange of ideas in an open society, then I fully support his purchase of Parler.
I don't care what he's said in the past. I don't have to agree with him on the issues to agree with him that the trend towards social media companies censoring people (sometimes in collusion with the government) is terrible for everyone except the globalist elites.
He got banned from social media for posting “I am going defcon 3 on the JEWS” or something like that, not for exchanging Ideas in an Open Society. Unless you include this type of “ideas” in your definition.
I am not advocating censorship, but want to point out that your hopes might be misplaced. The illuminating ideas this kind of a free speech platform usually attracts rarely go far beyond bigotry.
And what, exactly, do you believe he means when he says that? Because I have a hard time seeing how any rational person would think that that's an actual threat towards Jewish people.
And absent it being an actual threat (which it's clearly not), I don't see what your issue is. Kanye West is well within his rights to criticize Jewish people the same way that literally every woke person is within their rights to criticize, nay, demonize white people these days on every social media, corporate media platform, and news outlet these days.
I rarely understand what his actual position is (outside of contrarianism). In this specific case it's a bigoted thing to say, regardless of whether this is a legitimate threat. Worth banning? I don't know, I don't set rules or own Twitter. A valuable contribution to an open society? Don't think so.
If he is "criticizing" Jewish people (which does not sound like it to me) - do you think it's not an antisemitic thing to do? (To pre-empt your counter-argument... yes, criticizing all white people is also racism/bigotry.) Treating a race, a nation, all followers of a religion, etc as a uniform group that can be subjected to some "criticism" is not an idea that's valuable to an open society. Saying that, I don't think people should be immediately banned for posts like that.
If you think we need a "free speech" app filled with these "valuable" ideas - that's fine, just don't expect that it will be a space for discussing opposing views. Places like that always end up on either extreme right or extreme left.
I wouldn't put this against Parler actually thinking they have some future. They're just looking to unload their highly unprofitable business[1]. The CEOs wife has been following Ye around supporting him at the controversial Paris Fashion Week and ever since[2]
And it doesn't end at the buyout. According to the deal that was described this morning, Parlers parent company stays open, and keeps billing Ye forever for "engineering and cloud services". He basically has to keep paying them for life, or start recruiting his own tech company, or shut the website down, even though he's the owner, he doesn't directly employ their employees nor owns their cloud accounts
This is the team at Parler taking advantage of someone who is very obviously having some serious mental issues
ye is buying parler specifically not the whole thing, parler currently runs on parlement but he could presumably move to anything else. the "consulting" part is pretty normal for a transition like this.
I'm pretty indifferent towards Kanye. Not the biggest hater but this imo is somewhat stupid. It would need to undergo an overhaul and relaunch since it got banned off the app stores. Furthermore, the platform it mimics is potentially going to be overhauled by Elon anyway. Even if you're still at disagreement with Twitter, there is a sea of twitter alternatives out there. Some of which have policies that support free speech. For some reason, most alternative social media platform mimic twitter.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadThey're really agreeing to let him be their boss?
[1] - Latest tweets saying he's going "death con 3 on jewish people" and "who do you think created cancel culture?"
[2] - ongoing drama with Taylor Swift
[edit] Dropped the reference to bipolar.
"Heard Yeezy was racist, well, I guess that's on one basis... I only like green faces."
- Musk will destroy Twitter
- Zuckerberg is defunding Facebook via the metaverse
- Now West will take out Parler
Parler has always been irrelevant. Facebook in increasingly irrelevant. Twitter may win by default.
I imagine they sold for a very small amount (although they did apparently raise some money earlier and buy Dynascale, a hosting company).
Most of those who used parler are now on Gettr or Truth Social or Retalk.
Making the system invite-only may be a requirement.
If needed, split a team of moderators by political association and have each moderator handle the users of the "opposite" side.
Otherwise you end up getting shadow banned for reporting an actual call to violence which then took place.
This isn’t partisan hypocrisy — it’s applying an objective standard to a bad-faith argument.
I said that it is not free speech platform.
So they did. You should be happy?
It's really just about choosing who moderates your content. 0 moderation is not possible, so if you don't like Twitter, you can use Parler, and if you don't like Reddit, you can use Retalk, etc etc
Moreover, this title was not written by Parler. The free speech platform is editorializing by submitter.
Instead he's the brave truth-teller telling us things that the Man (who, it turns out, ia jewish) doesn't want us to know. You see a bunch of celebrities and regular people alike fall into this trap — think of the former popular kid in high school who ended up as a janitor who spends their time "researching" the connection between vaccines and autism.
Reality is quite different. The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most. They have a certain distrust after years over years of dealing with the government.
Meaning, the vast majority of the antivax hate ends up impacting the most vulnerable in our society.
Hate is bad. It's anti-human and a huge step back. It doesn't make anyone, anywhere, morally superior and it definitely isn't a marker for intelligence.
In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
These are weasel words. The antivax movement among progressive west-coast parents in the US has been covered frequently in the national media e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/measles-outbreak.html
> The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most.
This is also not true. They're mostly people with low educational attainment who are more susceptible to misinformation, but I can see the narrative you're trying to create!
> In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
Even just the argument to support mandates has completely changed, and yet too late for those who lost their jobs.
There are billions of webpages that presumably say just about everything possible. The link to the NYT article that was never promoted doesn't do much in this regard
There are also plenty of scientists who have different opinions. Only scientists with certain opinions are given interviews/timeslots. This applies to Fox as it does CNN.
None of that matters though.
My points were not about vaccinations, they were about hate. The why isn't really important.
How is that creating a narrative? People with low education are also often people who deal with government programs a lot. Through medicare, social security, VA, police, public schooling, public housing and I can keep on going, these people are often dependent on government. And that combined with lower mental capacity really doesn't help.
> Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
That's what they did in my country... And in my country, the covid anti-vaxxers are very relatable to the ones in the US. Hell, they get most their information from Q-anon.
This is no less true of the self-declared anti vaccination prophets, and their cousins the lab leakers. The one area in which "both sides" tends to be true is that there are condescending extremist never-shut-ups on every side of every issue, and even their allies often find them exhausting.
Reminds me of Inception. At least when I think of the overall outcome which I get to see daily.
But I agree the last couple of records weren't exactly radio friendly!
Probably never?
I'm the farthest thing from a fan of Kanye West, but this is false:
"West remains a considerable force in pop music. Every album except his debut, 2004’s “The College Dropout,” has topped the Billboard 200, including 2021’s “Donda,” which received a Grammy album of the year nomination. In the run-up to “Donda,” he held public “listening parties” at football stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago that were livestreamed on Apple Music (he was roundly criticized for bringing out special guests DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, who are each under scrutiny for bigoted language or alleged abuses). His sold-out December show with Drake at the L.A. Coliseum affirmed he’s still a formidable concert draw, one of few hip-hop acts who can credibly headline major global festivals." [1]
His continued popularity is precisely what makes his comments so dangerous.
1. https://archive.ph/cg6YO
There's no denying Kanye's words still have an impact, but his star is dimmer than it once was, and he knows it.
And isn't Kanye also still popular by those metrics?
However, measuring said relevancy is a very subjective endeavor (due to the fact that it’s hard to objectively evaluate things outside of our own bubble). In my view it’s whether the artist is “talked about” and whether they are influencing the current music (and a broader culture) - that’s what makes them relevant. Kanye is still doing both of those things, so he is very relevant.
Donda (and Donda 2 to a smaller degree) was a very noticeable cultural event. Listening parties, album guests, the controversy around his romantic relationships (scandalous IG posts, etc), merchandise (tied to his big fashion releases)…
Billy Joel has none of that. Nostalgic concerts are definitely not a sign of relevancy outside of his fandom bubble.
He's definitely lost his mind but to say he's lost his cultural relevance is a stretch.
CNN Business - Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler - https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_ad4adf7e27837537f8b07523ab...
Associated Press - Kanye West to buy conservative social media platform Parler - https://apnews.com/article/kanye-west-parler-5b1cbdb1f311ae9...
Reuters - Kanye West to buy social media app Parler - https://www.reuters.com/technology/parler-be-acquired-by-kan...
At no point was someone’s mental well-being not a point of mockery or weakness in society, I think.
Beyond that, most of his books are extremely anti-historical and filled with literal falsehoods. Foucaults take on leprosy is literally conspiracy theory tier BS and is anti-scientific.
1. On "pedophilia in Algeria": a. You are probably referring to the rumors started by Guy Sorman which mention crimes allegedly taking place in Tunisia, where he lived and taught, rather than Algeria. b. As described in a report (in French) published in the Obs[1], Foucault was under strict police surveillance when he lived in Tunisia, because of his political activities. The State was desperate to find a reason to convict him. One would think that allegations of rape and pedophilia wouldn't have gone unnoticed. Moreover, Sorman himself admitted that his allegations were not founded[2]. c. Even if these allegations were true (which they don't seem to be), I failed to see what they would have to do with the argument you are answering to. This would make him a criminal and a despicable person; it would not imply that nothing he wrote was philosophically and historically pertinent.
2. On the age of consent laws in France: your argument is simply dishonest. At the time, the age of consent for heterosexual relations was 15 (and it still is), whereas homosexual relations were forbidden until the age of 18, which was (rightfully) seen as discriminatory. However, some of the people involved in that movement were indeed despicable. 3. "most of his books are extremely anti-historical" That makes absolutely no sense. What does "anti-historical" mean? a. "filled with literal falsehoods". This is a gross overstatement. The accuracy of some facts described in some of Foucault's books have indeed been disputed, it doesn't make them "filled with falsehoods". b. "anti-scientific": that's ironic, because, for reasons that I cannot explain in much detail here (do study Foucault and make your own opinion about his work rather that believe what random strangers say on the Internet), it is, to some extent, precisely the point (but it is dealt with in a much more complex manner than what your comment leads one to think).
Think whatever you want about Foucault and his work, but please do your homework and don't spread ridiculous rumors and over-simplifications.
[1] https://www.nouvelobs.com/idees/20210506.OBS43714/michel-fou... [2] https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/idees-et-debats/michel-fou...
Hard edge rappers are a relic of the 90s/00s. They still exist for sure, but its not going to ruin your cred if you dont "come from the streets".
I’m not talking about gangster cred or whatever. I mean, Beyonce isn’t harmless.
In all seriousness, he’s created a small and apparently growing following by fostering the “harmless” persona. Sure, he’s no Dr. Dre, but his songs have featured in a couple of relatively large ad campaigns even though they definitely aren’t “radio friendly”.
I don't care what he's said in the past. I don't have to agree with him on the issues to agree with him that the trend towards social media companies censoring people (sometimes in collusion with the government) is terrible for everyone except the globalist elites.
(that's a rhetorical question, don't answer please)
I am not advocating censorship, but want to point out that your hopes might be misplaced. The illuminating ideas this kind of a free speech platform usually attracts rarely go far beyond bigotry.
And absent it being an actual threat (which it's clearly not), I don't see what your issue is. Kanye West is well within his rights to criticize Jewish people the same way that literally every woke person is within their rights to criticize, nay, demonize white people these days on every social media, corporate media platform, and news outlet these days.
If he is "criticizing" Jewish people (which does not sound like it to me) - do you think it's not an antisemitic thing to do? (To pre-empt your counter-argument... yes, criticizing all white people is also racism/bigotry.) Treating a race, a nation, all followers of a religion, etc as a uniform group that can be subjected to some "criticism" is not an idea that's valuable to an open society. Saying that, I don't think people should be immediately banned for posts like that.
If you think we need a "free speech" app filled with these "valuable" ideas - that's fine, just don't expect that it will be a space for discussing opposing views. Places like that always end up on either extreme right or extreme left.
And it doesn't end at the buyout. According to the deal that was described this morning, Parlers parent company stays open, and keeps billing Ye forever for "engineering and cloud services". He basically has to keep paying them for life, or start recruiting his own tech company, or shut the website down, even though he's the owner, he doesn't directly employ their employees nor owns their cloud accounts
This is the team at Parler taking advantage of someone who is very obviously having some serious mental issues
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/06/02/parlers-p...
[2] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-719370
ye is buying parler specifically not the whole thing, parler currently runs on parlement but he could presumably move to anything else. the "consulting" part is pretty normal for a transition like this.