If everybody else is an asshole, maybe you're the asshole.
Be careful about where this goes. This one doesn't affect you and I, but the next one might. It certainly will when it gets to HN or Signal. But then it'll be too late.
First they came for...
I'm amazed companies were willing to work with them in the first place. Providing services to a company like that is like providing service to the KKK
That's why sites like Parler, Gab, and Voat end up as cesspools. Those who don't feel the need to post racism and calls to violence can just stay on the mainstream services, getting both their political discussion and their non-political discussion in one convenient place.
Voat tried to have the non-political stuff too, but it just ended up with racism there too. For example, in /v/movies people complaining that the "Call of the Wild" cast included a black actor, and going off about how it was the Jews in Hollywood behind this for nefarious reasons.
Policy is made in a context, not just blind ideology.
The point is that the majority is often wrong, and consensus does not confer virtue.
(I am deliberately making no remark on this instance; I am speaking purely of the underlying principle.)
The answer is that, while such an argument is technically true, we have yet to find a better way to structure society. Your example of Galileo strongly suggests that we should not hand over this sort of decision-making to princes or priests, which are the usual alternatives to the ballot box. The judgment of the majority is regularly wrong, but it is also the most regularly not-wrong thing we know about.
If you think the majority is wrong, convince them that they are wrong. It will take time. I'm sorry there isn't a better way.
We certainly have found a better way to structure society: a Constitutional government that honors certain principles that even the democratically elected Congress and President can only override with much more than a majority, with judges trusted to guard those principles.
I'm not arguing for rule by simple majority. I do agree that important things need the consensus of much more than 51% of society (let alone 51% of people who bother to vote).
If it were only a simple majority of cloud hosts, text messaging services, email providers, and lawyers that ditched Parler, they would be in no danger at all.
Even if all the cloud hosts, text messaging services, email providers, and lawyers in America agreed, that's still much less than a simple majority of Americans.
I haven't seen any evidence that a supermajority supports banning Parler, which was the #1 downloaded app on both Google and Apple app stores back in November[1].
1: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/parler-app-store-facebook/
You can make the argument that it sucks that so much infrastructure is built upon orgs that have their own first amendment rights and I’d agree with that, but just that, no one is forced to associate with you. If a group of companies are refusing your cash, might want to reevaluate your viewpoints respective to the broader community.
It should be expected that when historically unprecedented things happen, people's viewpoints change.
Was Oppenheimer an asshole during the McCarthy hysteria?
Was Solschenizyn an asshole during communism?
We are seeing similar methods of silencing now, starting with universities, open source projects and now free speech apps in monopolies or oligopolies that should be forced to adhere to common carrier rules.