> On one hand, Parler was a hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism.
This is a question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence at all that Parler had more “hate” than Twitter, etc.?
This is a question in good faith. Can you provide any evidence at all that Parler had more “hate” than Twitter, etc.?
"Everyone said Pence sold out!!! Time to enter the capitol. Go patriots. Echo and enter the building dont let them vote. Put pressure. We are riding in!!! Echo big"
66 comments, 301 echoes (i.e. retweets), 375 upvotes (i.e. likes)
There's a torrent of Parler posts that is being analyzed, so there may be better conclusions published soon: https://parler-archive.deadops.de/parler_2020-01-06_posts-pa...
That said, I still don't support taking down a site because there's no moderation. These people won't go away; I wonder if decentralized/p2p technologies will see more adoption by the radical right for this reason.
It seems as though there is in inverse relationship between ease of use and centralization (obviously). As communication becomes decentralized, the ability to accrue a large audience becomes more difficult. This supports the rise of ideas that can gain widespread support on their merit, as opposed to gaining widespread support via having a mass audience to start with.
To illustrate: on one side, we have a centralized extreme: Twitter (or Reddit, or Facebook). On the other side we have a decentralized extreme: spoken word. Which is easier to radicalize a country with?
If extremists move to decentralized or p2p alternatives to social media, they will shrink in the long run, letting the fringe ideas remain on the fringe.
If all social media went the way of decentralization, we would see far less extremism in general, simply because most people wouldn't go looking for it and it's pretty hard to spread extremist ideas in a one-on-one conversation.
What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate" will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about storming the capitol isn't good evidence that Twitter is better. Because, for exmaple, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would be left alone on Twitter but moderated in Parler. Perhaps some ML bot can quantity sentiment of tweets.
"On September 17, 2020 we will lay siege to The @WhiteHouse for exactly fifty days.
We need your wisdom and expertise to pull off a radically democratic toneshift in our politics.
Are you ready for #revolution?
This is the #WhiteHouseSiege"
The problem isn't just that they had more, though logic would suggest they did; after all, their user base are refugees from other platforms that pushed them out for extremist language, advocating for violence, conspiracy theories, etc.
It's that Parler refused to remove it.
So even if the rate of introduction of this content was the same on Parler (which I don't buy for a second, see argument above), the total concentration and visibility of it is higher because it's not taken down.
I think it's very interesting that you lead off citing good faith in a situation where, in my experience, you're about to demonstrate literal bad faith. It's like you wish to take off the table the interpretation that you are intentionally lying for the sake of argument.
Let me fix that:
> that multiple countries and international organizations categorize as hate speech?
A casual reminder that when most think these open air rules are intended to stifle conversation it is generally for very clear legal and moral reasons. If you believe this is used by them to control people then you should also believe that a replacement should view this speech as antithetical to the existence of the free speech social company.
It's one thing to ban talk about the platform you are talking on.
It's not the same thing to ban intolerant behavior.
It all leads back to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
He goes on to explain what situation would call for use of suppression, for example, the use of violence or rejecting reason or logic by the intolerant (Which, obviously both are what happened in January 6th and in this narrative) ;)
The ban isn't on conservative viewpoints, it is on intolerant speech that has no want to make a logical discussion and resorts to violence. Trust me, I'm using it correctly.
Unwillingness to accept(or tolerate) views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own.
When we talk about intolerant behavior we are talking about actions and statements that are intended to demean others by design (and praise the inverse), this is pretty easy to define. Saying that a person's skin color or gender makes them lesser or to be despised is clearly intolerant, the person in context is clearly unable to change this as it is how they are. Whats funny about this is that the US Bill of rights is a statement on intolerance by design. It's meant to both give rights but also set tone.
Maybe something is lost over text, but I genuinely prefaced my question because I know it's a delicate political topic for people. But your response is just childish. I literally barely know anything about Parler. Also, how is asking for evidence so triggering? That should be the cornerstone of any these types of discussions.
But to answer your question: No, I can't prove to you what I'm thinking. Nobody ever can. So perhaps you should just take my question on face value and stop assuming malicious intent.
I think the parent raises a very legitimate question of what defines a "hate site, filled with conspiracy theories, radicalization and racism." I've never had a Twitter account myself, but some of the publicly-available content I've seen there there certainly fits that description. Conversely, I did briefly have a Parler account, and what I saw in my particular bubble did not fit that description at all - It was crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and comedians. I'm not trying to imply that my anecdote is data or that Parler is some bastion of positivity, but the way your premise is stated only requires a single counterexample: some "hate speech" exists on Twitter, and not everything on Parler is.
You say, "the purpose of Parler's existence is (was) to facilitate communication that larger social networks stifle." To me that sounds like the old adage that "the Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it." At least five years ago that was largely seen as a feature rather than a bug. But recently the tide of popular opinion seems to have shifted in general favor of censorship. Undeniably there are some bad ideas out there, but I worry that the "cure" of censorship is a slippery slope that could very quickly become worse than the disease.
Are these legitimate calls to violence? Or just jokey memes? Is there a difference? Who decides that? In what sense do these posts not demonstrate support for political violence?
You might say all these platforms previously gave Parler the benefit of the doubt and then were faced with incontrovertible evidence that Parler was facilitating political violence.
Just because radical things are posted on your website doesn't mean all the discourse on the site is bad and your site should be deplatformed. We already apply that standard to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and others.
As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs outside of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to coordinate and not Parler.
A policy that was FAR more relaxed than any of their competitors, which was by design and part of their marketing pitch: come here to say those things you're not allowed to say elsewhere.
Parler's position is: unless the language is strictly illegal according to the letter of the law that's designed limit government censorship of speech, then it's allowed.
By that definition, if I call for someone's death, unless I have the means and the opportunity and mention a specific time, then it doesn't count and the post stays up.
Clearly Amazon, Google, and Apple have policies that are more strict than US law. And that makes sense: US law is shaped by the constitution, which is meant to restrict the government's ability to limit speech. And we should absolutely want the rules regarding government censorship to be as narrow as possible.
But private services are free to operate by different rules.
For example, if I walk into a McDonalds and start swearing at all the customers, I'll get kicked out even if I'm not breaking the letter of the law.
So, did they have a moderation policy? Yes, technically. But did that policy allow extremist and violent language to persist on their site at a level above and beyond what's seen on any competing platform outside of, say, 8chan? Absolutely.
> As a side note, I've heard that the people who actually stormed the Capitol Building (not just holding signs outside of it, which is perfectly fine) used Facebook to coordinate and not Parler.
And Facebook would pull that content down if they found it.
Parler won't.
That's what got them pulled from AWS, and the Google and Apple app stores.
But that's just it, isn't it? Parler tried to make a new service that plays by a new set of rules. And they were crushed, because it turns out that you actually can't have your own rules unless you are already at the scale of Apple, AWS, etc.
That's not an infringement on my rights, that's the free market at work
Before this, the power was somewhat theoretical and used in tiny marginal cases. Now, it's proven that they can effectively exercise the power in a major way, and that's news.
Honestly, it's really not. We've seen groups like ISIS kicked off social media, for example, and no one blinked an eye. Heck, Milo Yiannopoulos was deplatformed way back in 2016.
The thing that's news is that a significant percentage of a major US political party is now associated with a form of right wing extremism and wrapped up in a major conspiracy theory movement whose adherents are willing to commit violence in an attempt to subvert an election.
That's not at all true. If I recall the same thing happened to 8chan/8kun. Yet somehow they live on. If Parler has a market, they'll find a way.
That said, it sucks but, well, that's capitalism for ya.
What else would you suggest? Regulating these various companies such that the government gets to decide who can use their services?
Because if so, a) that would require new laws, b) it'd probably fall afoul of the first amendment, and c) it doesn't seem to align well with free market conservative ideology, and so should be opposed by the very users of Parler that are being affected by this.
Facebook ultimately started removing Holocaust denial content because it violated their harassment policy, not because it was illegal.
I think it's a non-sequitur.
But man, wow. I joined Parler several months ago and that's literally all my default feed was -- various flavors of right wing rage. Not all was violent or racist. Some were verified celebrities and right wing politicians; those tended to be rather mild.
But typing various slurs or words like "shoot" or "hang" into the search box returned some eye-watering results.
The difference between it and Twitter was not subtle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/ktwmje/this_is... is a concrete example of speech that would be banned from Twitter and Facebook. I think it's telling that there are 25k up votes.
What I'm getting at is, I understand Parler is generally a right-leaning platform, and therefore the types of "hate" will be right-leaning. Twitter is a generally left-leaning platform, so I would expect their type of hate to be generally left-leaning. So I think a tweet about e.g. storming the Capitol being banned on Twitter but not Parler isn't good evidence that Twitter is better. Because, for example, perhaps a violent Antifa tweet would be left alone on Twitter but censored on Parler. Perhaps some ML bot can quantity sentiment of tweets. That's the kind of evidence I would like to see.
If I start a new social media service, what are the objective measures I can use to ensure I'm moderating well and quickly enough? How should we allow this to interact with scale?
If a new startup goes from 10 to 10,000 users overnight, and 0.5% of users post offensive comments that first day, how long does that startup have to remove them all before they are designated as "bad"?
Also, how should we view overmoderation within this context? I think most people would find it injust and orwellian to ban a black sociology professor for posting an academic analysis of the use of the n-word through history, but I fear society is going to overcorrect.
I really dodged a bullet. Thank God for our tech overlords and their new Ministry of Truth. I can now sleep easy knowing that they are busy scouring the rest of the internet and it's marketplace of ideas for more doubleplusbadthink from which to shield me.