[tptacek]

It's a good question, but for the record, I'm fine with the line being somewhere before Parler, which is full of people plotting political assassinations.

This happened to Gab.ai, too, but it happened after one of those plotters committed a mass murder, one he advertised on Gab, at the Tree of Life synagogue.

[tidepod12]

I fully agree but it's getting increasingly hard to make this argument with a straight face given that the tech companies in question still host numerous other hate groups. Twitter still allows the leaders of the Taliban and the Nation of Islam to post.

It's clear that the "line" we're talking about is arbitrarily set for different groups based on some unknown criteria, and that IMO is part of the problem.

[michaericalribo]

I think the criterion is pretty clear: this stopped being a matter of speech or rhetoric, and started being a matter of real-world violence and unrest.

For the record, I think all extremists should be banned, including the Taliban and Iran.

[tidepod12]

Because the Taliban doesn't commit acts of real-world violence and unrest...?

[mbreese]

I'm guessing it's because they don't advertise^ plans for violence in public... or on Twitter.

Edit: ^specific plans

[tidepod12]

https://twitter.com/Zabehulah_M33/status/1346373559812300800

This is the official spokesman of the Taliban posting a propaganda video of a militant bragging about waging jihad.

https://twitter.com/Zabehulah_M33/status/1343458261459218432

This is another video (and also see part2 of the tweet, which is posted as a reply to this one) where militants holding guns talk about their plan to kill the government leaders of Afghanistan.

[Apocryphon]

These Silicon Valley-based corporations are no doubt highly ineffective at moderating content outside of a specific American, Anglophone context. Certainly the Rohingya know the fruits of their failure:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16574370

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296442

[michaericalribo]

Also, I don’t think it’s unreasonable—or even controversial—that we would hold the _president of the United States_ to a higher standard of conduct than the taliban. Especially with respect to the impact he has on the day to day operations of the US and the actions of tens of millions of Americans...

[tidepod12]

In the current context, we aren't talking about the president of the united states, we're talking about a bunch of random people on Parler.

But if your point is that government officials should be held to a higher standard than random, non-official peoples, I agree... which is why it seems like an arbitrary wrong to me that the official leaders of the Taliban are still able to post videos calling for the death of nonbelievers.

If, rather, your point is that we don't care about the Taliban because the ongoing deaths of thousands of people in Afghanistan is something that our society cares less about than the death of a handful of Americans... well, I suppose you're right, but I'm not sure how I feel about agreeing with that.

[michaericalribo]

You’re very right on two points^:

1. I’m getting mixed up vis a vis Parler vs Trump vs Twitter vs AWS vs the rest...and you’re right that it _is_ wrong for Twitter to give the Taliban a platform to spew vile shit. That said, I think the conduct of American officials is of much greater proximate concern than the Taliban off in Afghanistan...

2. ...but that doesn’t excuse senseless deaths of foreign people. It’s not surprising that Twitter aws et al are more responsive to active threats to American lives than Afghani lives, though it is disappointing—if it’s the case. But I’m not under the impression the Taliban is actively and publicly and widespreadly planning murder and riots on Twitter.

^at least these two, I’m not passing judgement on others.

[michaericalribo]

My apologies, I edited my comment but you responded before my update...

That said, a big difference is that the taliban are not actively inciting Americans to storm the capitol en masse.*

And there’s not much domestic debate that they’re a problem. My belief is Twitter was pushed to this extent by the fact that it’s the president of the US, an inherently credible figure with huge sway among American citizens.

*edit to add: by ‘actively’ I mean ‘successfully, across thousands of Americans.’ They both incite violence in the US, but so far only Trump et al have accomplished a riot in DC that killed police...

[chasd00]

you may think they should but they haven't. if there's not a huge wave of bans of the next few weeks then the hypocrisy will be impossible to ignore.

[ghaff]

The criteria seem pretty clear. The reputational (and other) risks to their business passed a certain, admittedly ill-defined, threshold. If enough of the "right" people raise a public stink about other individuals or groups, those will get dropped too.

[mahastore]

The line is very clear. We are not those people and we hold ourselves to a higher bar than them. We don't want to descend to their level. Hate for them shouldn't turn us into them.

[tidepod12]

I'm not sure who "we" is referring to, but if you're referring to America, the Nation of Islam is an American political/religious group based in Chicago that routinely calls for the death of Jewish people (they also advocate for the death of Asians, teach that all white people are satanic, and are anti-vaxxers). "We" already have descended to their level, and yet Twitter allows them to remain.

[mahastore]

Not "we" as in "all of us". Lets keep the psychos out.

[canofbars]

Yep I think its fine that parler is getting booted based on the content that is getting posted. Lets not pretend that all these companies are trying to squash people of a certain political group, they are simply banning users posting borderline illegal and violent content. You can quite easily use mainstream social media as long as you aren't posting about how someone should be beheaded.

[nostromo]

> You can quite easily use mainstream social media as long as you aren't posting about how someone should be beheaded.

https://thehill.com/sites/default/files/blogs/kathygriffintw...

[tptacek]

Literally no person in the entire world believed this was an appeal for people to behead Donald Trump.

[gfodor]

You’re a lot smarter than this, so my reaction to this is wondering why you would say this.

[tptacek]

Say more? I'm being sincere.

[gfodor]

There is absolutely no way you can be certain of the beliefs of the whole world in response to something. It’s hard enough to even feel confident you truly know the beliefs of a single person.

That alone is true, but this imagery itself is so grotesque that we ought to assume it led to a change in the degree of motive to cause harm. If you don’t believe me, consider a thought exercise where the identity of the person involved is exchanged with someone who did end up assassinated this way. Would it be reasonable to conclude this influenced it?

[adolph]

Here is a previous case of someone who took action that on the face of it was only egged on in hyperbolic political talk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...

[tptacek]

Can you cite a source on the connection between Kathy Griffin and the guy who shot Scalise?

[adolph]

As far as I know there isn't any documented. However your claim is "Literally no person in the entire world believed this was an appeal for people to behead Donald Trump." I think you are overstating the wide range of interpretations humans often have.

Like many assassins, the person who fired on a congressional sports practice did appear to be motivated by political animus that on the face of it would not include shooting up the players on a ball field. But that is what the person did. This is similar to the attempted assassination of the Arizona congressperson in response to the Alaskan politician's crosshair advertisements.

As a reasonable person it is difficult to understand that folks might not share your views because as a reasonable person one's views seem logical and well grounded. That is totally understandable.

[1MachineElf]

>You can quite easily use mainstream social media as long as you aren't posting about how someone should be beheaded.

Is that so? Curious, because I was seeing a lot of guillotine memes from leftists last month.

[tptacek]

When the leftists guillotine someone, this will become a more persuasive argument.

[adolph]

Ironically

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/jeff-bezos-guilloti...

[1MachineElf]

Dispite my disagreeing with you and feeling pretty shafted by the removal of Parler, don't take it personally - you're an open source contributer who has earned my respect.

[verwyrelevant]

Isn't the whole point of this "deplatforming" to stop incitement?

[tptacek]

Yes, after concrete evidence that the incitement is sincere, or being materially interpreted as sincere.

(For the record: I think the guillotine imagery is as offensive as the Pinochet helicopter stuff, which is to say, extraordinarily offensive, and I think less of anyone who uses it. That's easy for me to say though, because I'm also not a leftist.).

[acdha]

Did they name people, places, or times? A key factor in free speech legal cases is how credibly threatening something is — someone telling a friend “I’m going to strangle you!” after they get rickrolled is clearly not but someone saying “On <date>, we’re going to <place> to kill <politician>” is enough that the Secret Service might want to talk with you.

Another factor is the climate: nobody is using guillotines anywhere now but mass shootings are sadly common.

[DJPocari]

I agree that Parler should be shut down, but going forward I think we need to rely on court systems with due process (or some new alternative system that specifically addresses digital censorship). I’m afraid of this becoming the norm.

Public discourse increasingly relies on these corporate platforms. I don’t think everyone quite understands the implications of normalizing this behavior, and to me that’s frightening.

[UnpossibleJim]

To be clear, it isn't being shut down. A private company has chosen not to host it on its servers. They can invest in servers and host it themselves, if they so choose.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but it is an important distinction to make.

[DJPocari]

Sure that's possible, but what if their domain registrar disables their domain name? What if Verizon limits web traffic to and from the website? The idea that that could happen used to be far fetched, but now I wouldn't be surprised.

[quickthrowman]

Then perhaps letting people plot insurrection and violence against politicians and pretending you can’t moderate them isn’t a working business model.

[kristofferR]

AI moderation bots, here we come. And people complain about ContentID on Youtube...

[UnpossibleJim]

Domain registars seems a bit more of a sticky wicket. That is quite a bit more complex than simply hosting your own website, and I have no way around it and I'm unsure as to what the solution should be, TBH. I'd say it should be under governmental control, but they move at a snail's pace and I doubt they could handle the volume.

As for monitoring and throttling personal web traffic from our homes, that's long been an issue which is already an issue and not just with Verizon. EFF has brought suit in the courts, but to no avail, as of yet. So as for being far fetched, not only is it not, it's happening now. Comcast regularly throttles traffic to gaming sites/services during peak television hours. What's the difference?

[ip26]

Then they can find a registrar who wants their business.

[analogdreams]

where does it end though? do the critics then attack any org that colocates their servers, anyone that provides peering?

i find it quite shocking how quickly this is all coming, over a drummed up hysteria.

[dlp211]

Five people are dead and the heart of our democracy was invaded by a violent mob. There are no hysterics here.

[adolph]

Heart of democracy or historic conference center with attached offices?

If democracy does not beat in hearts of all and instead resides in an old building far away then truely its count of future days is not high.

[throwaway201103]

Hilarious how historic government symbols and tradition are suddenly cool again, after a summer of statues, monuments, and buildings being vandalized and toppled.

[Miner49er]

All the people who died chose to be there. It's not like bystanders died. They knew the risks going in. Plus, one died of stroke and another of a heart attack. Blaming those deaths on Parler is a little hysterical.

[analogdreams]

just keep pushing people into corners, surely that will help to calm things down.

[jcadam]

Well, personally, I'll never do business with AWS again, and I'll advocate against using them every place I work from now on (I already argue against using proprietary AWS services in order to keep things portable). Does that matter much to them? No, but I can only control what I do.

[tptacek]

For the record: I don't know if "shut down" is the optimal outcome. Credible moderation --- "no appeals to violence" --- would take it from dangerous to mere odiousness. But I don't know that anyone has a right to demand any private business host odious content, either.

But it's Parler's problem that they've hit this point with so little time to build credible moderation, not anybody else's. Me sowing, me reaping, &c &c.

[TylerE]

Do you really expect "credible moderation" given that giving the RWNJ's a home is their stated business plan?

(And no - it isn't free speech, they're quite happy to ban non-conservatives)

[tptacek]

I don't, but I'm just saying it could be done.

[amadeuspagel]

The fundamental question is not whether the line should be drawn before or after parler, but who should draw the line, who should decide what kind of websites are allowed to exist. We don't allow electricity providers to decide what kind of businesses are allowed to exist, similarly we should not allow hosting providers to decide what kind of websites are allowed to exist.

[paulnechifor]

Then Twitter should be banned too because it's full of calls for political assassinations: https://twitter.com/hashtag/assassinatetrump

[waffle_ss]

So Signal and Telegram should be banned as well from all IaaS, app stores etc. as well since Islamic terrorists have been shown to use them?

[beervirus]

Parler is also full of people who aren’t plotting assassinations. And there are plenty of terrorists on Twitter too, but nobody wants to talk about that.

[briantakita]

There's state sanctioned violence & there's uncontrolled violence. Authorities don't like competition, especially when they are on the take.