[dilap]

I think a better analogy is saying, oh, you've banned newspapers, but who cares, you can still talk to people in person.

Which is to say, it's true, & that's a good thing, but that doesn't mean that the censorship itself isn't bad.

The most effective, most powerful communication medium that exists right now is native apps for social networks on smartphones. If 100% of that medium is controlled and censored by two companies, that means those two companies exert a massive influence on what kinds of communication society as a whole will have.

If you believe in the general principle of free speech (not just strict legal interpretations of say the 1A), that's not a good thing.

[chrispeel]

Nonsense.

The better analogy is that the newspaper has banned certain people who have written articles inciting violence.

Or maybe an even better analogy: the movie theater has taken the microphone away from the person telling those in the crowded movie theater to start punching each other.

[freedomben]

Do you think only Trump himself has been affected by this? Even just on topic for this forum they're talking about an app used by thousands (or more, I honestly have no idea since I don't use Parler) of people. Do you think all of those people have incited violence? What about Parler itself? All inciting violence?

[chrispeel]

They can side load Parler. All the stupid violence-inciting peeps can still talk to each other and incite violence, just not so easily

[valuearb]

I think you mean to say that if you aren’t allowed to walk into anyone else’s home or business, and yell your opinions into their face, your rights to free speech have somehow been infringed.

My analogy is far more accurate than your tortured newspaper analogy. Parlour still gets to publish unrestricted as a web site and as web apps, it just doesn’t get free distribution, marketing and hosting from Google or Apple.

[ibejoeb]

> you can still talk to people in person

That's practically illegal now, too. What a time to be alive...

[russianbandit]

Evil genius! Move to ban in person communication, control all the virtual communication mediums.

[amanaplanacanal]

Can’t tell if you are joking or if you really believe this.

[stjohnswarts]

If a newspaper is promoting killing and owning the libs and overthrowing the government it has gone from reporting the news to promoting death and violence which has never been acceptable for the free press.

[throwaway314158]

> If 100% of that medium is controlled and censored by two companies

Except you can sideload on Android.

[dilap]

That's a good point actually. I'm on iPhone; is distributing software via side-loading on Android actually practicle, or is it such a pain that it becomes non-workable in practice?

[nyuszika7h]

Yeah, on Android it's much simpler. On iOS it's still doable using AltStore, it just requires you to be on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer at least once a week to keep sideloaded apps active.

[Can_Not]

It is practical actually, it's like downloading an exe or dmg with maybe an extra security hurdle (settings -> enable installing apps from $X). Plus you could make your own play store clone like F-droid and I think amazon made their own, too.

[dilap]

OK, that actually makes me much more sympathetic to Google exercising a lot of editorial control of the Play store.