Where are the comments about how awful it is for people's private messages to be leaked? Or is this okay because the media told me these guys are the bad guys.
I'm not gonna lie: I find it very difficult to be upset by this when the site was a haven for people who want to mass executions for people like me. For me, the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs." It's hard to decide where to draw the line.
Should we still have due process in the external world? After all, the United States is a "safe haven" for people who talk about killing pretty much every minority group under the sun.
> the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs."
The line doesn't have to do with the infringement of privacy, it's about whether that infringement is being done by publicly sanctioned power, or the whim of the arbitrary, domineering power of private (tech) actors. Elizabeth Anderson has written quite well on this topic in "Private Government."
In the initial post about the Capitol being shut down,t here were people saying that everyone who broke into the capitol building needed to be tried for treason and executed, or saying that the police should have opened fire and killed anyone who broke in. The mods removed the comments, but HN isn't some paragon of virtue that isn't susceptible to the same calls for violence as any other site.
No, not really. It comes down to how you define "safe haven" - if violent groups are actively moderated and banned, then I don't think it can be called a safe haven. How does the rest of the internet equate to Parler in this respect?
I don't know what people think, we can't read their minds. All I know is if you wanted to find people who want mass executions in the US, Parler would be a safe place to find them, based on what we do know about them.
Facebook and Twitter have millions of people who want mass executions for all kinds of groups, a quick trip into Muslim areas of both services and you'll find moderate and right-wing versions that want execution for LGBTQ+ people. You can find the same desire for marginalization and extermination of other groups. Not every language and dialect has a huge team of moderators that review content and take the appropriate punitive action against malicious users.
I have a Parler account. I have a GAB account. I make accounts on all new social media platforms and communications services. Everyone should. Because you have no idea what platform might be the next Facebook, or which one is going to be the next MySpace.
I hear this a lot, but it makes no logical sense to me. I see a site that is (in)famous for being full of self-proclaimed right-wing "patriots" who are calling for violence against people due to political beliefs.
Someone then decide to associate with these people by joining the site. They may not personally post messages calling for violence, but are now associated with them. And the response is: well sure I'm in the group but I don't actually agree with any of this.
Then my question is: why did you join in the first place? If you don't agree with the most vocal 1% (I SERIOUSLY doubt that number after spending time perusing the site), and you don't denounce what they're saying, what do you expect others to think? We're supposed to read your mind that you're part of a "silent dissent" and just joined the site because...?
People were banned from facebook and twitter for calling for violence, if you switched sites specifically to follow that person I have a REAL tough time believing you don't support them.
Have to been on Reddit, specifically /r/politics? There are calls to violence all the time. Nobody bats an eye because it's calls to violence against the "bad guys."
I assume you've got some citations for that, right? I have been to r/politics and people get banned pretty quickly for calling for violence. I just went through the top 20 threads, and there isn't a single call for violence to be found.
Indeed. When evaluating reddit threads and content, its important to distinguish between highly upvoted and visible content, and content that was downvoted or deleted to oblivion. A -1000 call for violence in one subreddit is not equivalent to a +1000 call for violence in another.
I am not going to go through and find some examples but there have been calls for violence there. I remember the entire Sandman period of time with many people saying he "what a punchable face"....
Edit to add: Also what happens behind doors on invite only subreddits?
There is a German saying that goes something like "if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you've got a table with 11 Nazis.”
According to Wikipedia, there are 4,000,000 active Parler users.
You think you can assert with confidence that there are not 40,000 people with Parler accounts who want mass executions?
I'd like to think you're right, but I'm not as confident as you are.
Not after watching someone beat a Capitol Police officer to death with a flag pole flying the American Flag. People think they are defending their country against evil. Like me, apparently.
How many QAnon followers are there? How many believe the most outrageous claims? I would not be surprised if 40,000 do. Would you?
FWIW Wikipedia lists that number of users as of November 2020. It had a huge influx of users in December and obviously January, to the point that it was number 1 in the App Store before it got pulled. So the 4MM user number is probably very off.
Some of these are Verified users - Parler has their Drivers License and Social Security number, and yet they still felt secure in brazenly violating the law like this.
Hey, spoiler alert for people regarding that link -- there's some very strong, graphically violent language. Don't click if you're not in a good head space at the moment.
Since a "single post" has been provided by someone now, it would be nice to see you give them the decency and acknowledge it. There are so many comments here, and they all read in the same way, "well, what about..." and "show me proof" — only for someone to actually go and spend the time to respond, and then be ignored quietly. Discussions here (political ones) feel so childish, I wish we'd be better as a community on those.
Personally, when I discuss politics online I don't expect the other person to acknowledge anything. My audience is all the people on the fence lurking and reading and forming opinions on the topic.
Data, evidence? The threat is in giving the fascist terrorist 1% a microphone not that the other 99% happen to be listening. Parler was lax in policing that 1%.
You just jumped to a conclusion. In another comment in this article I specifically said only messages that are related to the commission of a crime should be released and everything else should be deleted.
> The threat is in giving the fascist terrorist 1% a microphone
The problem with fascist terrorists is not their rhetoric, it's their violence. Allow them to speak their mind and you lower their need for violent action and everyone else gets to show that their ideas are horribly flawed.
It's amusing to think that people seriously believe there are huge swathes of people just ripe to become neo-nazis because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote some tweets - how do you manage not to succumb to these rhetorical titans?
>It's amusing to think that people seriously believe there are huge swathes of people just ripe to become neo-nazis because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote some tweets - how do you manage not to succumb to these rhetorical titans?
Given that exactly this happened 90 years ago and caused the deaths of tens of millions, people are needless to say cautious.
You can't have Hitler without the Treaty of Versailles. He was just a catalyst to an incredibly punitive and emasculating treaty that scarred the psychology of the German people.
If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have eventually been someone else.
I'm going to side with the interpretations of history that are a tad more complex than "he gave a rousing speech, hence, genocide", and there are plenty of them.
You're purposefully being reductionist about this. People having their brains hit with racist or violent rhetoric over a long period of time will be changed by that. They human brain adapts to it's environment, expecting certain inputs and if it's receiving /pol light on Twitter then it starts to expect it.
On top of that, it's only a matter of time before they're linked to one of the many .win site that sprang up after Twitter purged the_donald and the Qanon people.
And again, people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find.
> You're purposefully being reductionist about this.
I'm really not, and I'd prefer if you started off responding to me by not (mis)characterising my intentions. I'm 100% sincere in my support of free speech and stand 100% behind my comment.
> People having their brains hit with racist or violent rhetoric over a long period of time will be changed by that
Yes, they will, which is why it's good to allow every voice and every kind of viewpoint a chance to be expressed and hence challenged. Unless you think that echo chambers are a good thing?
> people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find
Did they occur in places with high amounts of censorship or free speech? The Holocaust wasn't caused simply by one of Hitler's speeches, for example, it was also (among other things) primed by the rampant anti-semitic prejudice that came from the pulpit every Sunday for hundreds of years - which was unchallengable due to blasphemy laws.
Another "win" for the repression of speech someone in power doesn't like, eh?
There's a huge degree of just outright horseshit here.
I've been browsing /pol/ for years, hell almost decades. Its a great place to go to get an idea of just how fringe certain elements of society are becoming. I was actually actively browsing when QAnon was making his posts there.
I thought they were just as ridiculous and far-fetched then as I do now. People become radicalized largely because some condition in their life is lacking. For every single successful mechanical engineer that joins ISIS, there's 99 out-of-work coal miners and factory workers who storm the American capital.
Most people who have everything in their life going great don't end up extremists.
This is often brought up, mistakenly, as support for restricting speech based on speech alone when it says no such thing.
Popper draws a clear distinction between those who will have intolerant views but do not engage in violence, and those who do engage in violence. It is only the latter, in Popper's view, that must be restricted.
For what it's worth, I don't think that it is ok. I'm just acknowledging the conflict of feeling bad for innocents caught up in this and being glad that some real bad actors might be exposed.
My impressions is that everyone whinging about privacy with regards to giving seditionists and terrorists a space to coordinate and share misinformation after the biggest attack on the US since 9/11 are just being contrarian or are absolutist to a fault in their libertarian ideals (which I mostly share).
People minimizing this attack and not treating it like a legitimate 9/11 scale crisis for the US are not considering the propaganda win this is for extremist groups domestically and autocratic regimes internationally. Could this be a slippery slope? Sure, but it's not as slippery as the other side of the slope which goes right off a cliff.
There is still plenty of time/space to have debates about how to move forward from here with moderation and privacy on social networks, but for now we are in the middle of an insurrection that needs to be put down.
Also, should another attack take place couldn't platforms knowingly providing services to the capitol attackers find themselves liable for providing material support for terrorists? If I were managing risk at AWS that definitely be a major concern.
My POV, if we wouldn't have a problem doing it to ISIS after an attack on our Capitol, then we shouldn't have problem doing the same to QAnon and these "patriots".
>People minimizing this attack and not treating it like a legitimate 9/11 scale crisis
We're still getting groped by the TSA and wrapping up a war from the last time we had a 9/11 scale crisis. We were tricked into spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives invading a nation that had nothing to do with it and we gave some of the less savory government agencies a lot of power which they still have not returned.
I think the public is right to be hesitant to play the knee-jerk reaction game this time around considering how well it turned out last time.
I think there is a big difference between invading two countries and passing the PATRIOT act and the reaction we're seeing here.
All this "hold on and let's make sure we're not being too unfair to far-right extremists" while they actively recruit and plan more attacks sounds like an under-reaction from a fear of over-reacting.
> All this "hold on and let's make sure we're not being too unfair to far-right extremists" while they actively recruit and plan more attacks sounds like an under-reaction from a fear of over-reacting.
I think it is right to be worried about the ascendant tech industry being able to quash certain ideas before they have a chance to influence voters at the ballot box.
Just this past 3 months, we've seen true stories about Joe Biden's son banned from posting on social media, anti-Biden news outlets banned from posting, and now the president banned.
I vote straight democrat pretty much every time, so that is where my leanings lie, but I'm not going to shut my eyes as wealth inequality goes over the moon in the past 20 years and consolidated platforms owned by the hyper-wealthy increasingly control what news people even see.
To me, it is entirely inappropriate to be blasé about this point.
No, it is factually correct. They said 'since', not larger than. In the meantime, since 9/11 there have as far as I know it not been any larger attacks within the US on the United States itself. If you know of any then please correct me.
The Pulse nightclub is not typically associated with being a seat of government, though I don't doubt that people in government have been seated there.
On 9/11 there was a plan set in motion to crash a plane in to the Capitol, which only failed because of the bravery of the passengers in that plane. Incidentally, the very same Capitol self described 'patriots' broke into and vandalized last week.
I create a Parler account myself out of curiosity's sake. The platform had basically no moderation, and was rife with open calls to violence. It was absolutely serving as a recruitment & coordination site for domestic terrorism.
And now information about your account has been leaked, and will be lumped in with more nefarious accounts. I have a feeling that a significant number of people have similarly made accounts out of curiosity. I've had my parents and some less technically inclined friends recently ask me what Parler is because it's been in the news. These aren't people that fall under the alt-right categorization in the slightest, and they're also not people who would think to use fake information if they were signing up for something to see what it is like.
Even if the platform had terrible and dangerous content on it, we should avoid assuming that everybody on it supported that content, and we shouldn't celebrate their personal information being leaked.
I don't care if my personal information was leaked. I followed discussions, posted a comment or two like, "What evidence do you have for that?" There seemed to be tons of other accounts that did the same, along with accounts by obvious Lefts who were there to troll. I highly doubt there will be blowback for the kind of participation I did.
I am absolutely a privacy advocate. However, in the case where the continued existence of our democracy hinges on rooting out violent domestic terrorists, I am willing to make tradeoffs. At this point, you should think about Parler as a jihadi forum for rednecks.
I don't understand your claim that terrorists are a threat to our democracy. As long as most of the people in the country believe in democracy, the country will continue to have democracy.
The real threat to democracy is allowing leaders to stop following the democratic process. For example, on 02021-01-06, 147 congresspeople voted to throw out the votes from an entire state, even after their party had pursued the appropriate legal remedies [0]. Next time, they may succeed in throwing out votes. At that point, USA will be an oligarchy. This is the real threat to democracy.
Can you please explain how they were enabling the terrorists? Did the congresspeople get the Capitol Police to stand down? Even if they did, that is a separate thing from throwing out votes.
The country could have terrorist acts every day and still have democracy. Our congresspeople could have their meetings in an underground bunker, wear body armor all the time, and travel in armored vehicles, and it would still be democracy. Democracy means the people decide who has power.
Terrorists can use violence and may change some people minds, but they cannot destroy our democracy. Democracy exists in the minds of US voters.
The attack last Wednesday was literally successful in preventing a vote about an election and you can't fathom how terrorism is a threat to democracy? Imagine if those two quick-thinking staffers didn't grab the electoral votes and take them to the bunkers.
>>147 congresspeople voted to throw out the votes from an entire state, even after their party had pursued the appropriate legal remedies
Hey wait, they had the opportunity to vote their conscience on it? Does that mean they were Constitutionally empowered to raise and decide the question?
The USA is a republic, and explicitly not a democracy, said status having been debated early on and pure democracy was found seriously wanting in the qualities needed for a just and lasting society of free people.
No. The constitution does not allow them to throw out votes.
A republic is a form of democracy. Arguing semantics has no place in HN.
And "vote their conscience" is a weasel phrase. They had a duty to tally the votes, a procedure to follow. Some of them didn't want to follow the procedure. Changing the procedure requires a constitutional amendment, agreement from a supermajority of states. Regardless of their individual thoughts on the matter, the laws of the land do not allow them to vote to disregard the law.
And now there are folks right here in this thread who will assume the absolute worst about you and try to ruin your life. I wish you the best of luck in surviving this. This is why it's not reasonable to paint every account there as that of a terrorist.
Why would they? Because he did nothing? Or because he was 'present'? Accounts that monitor something are not going to run with the crowd in their act. See also: the historian who documented a lot of the mayhem on the 6th from inside the crowd.
Because they're not going to investigate all 4+ million Parler accounts to distinguish between those involved and those not. Many folks here are just assuming everyone on Parler was a terrorist or complicit in what happened. The poster's name and phone number are now lumped in with everyone else's. All we can hope is they made the effort to use fake information.
No one will be judged for having an account, because a lot of people were signed up just to monitor and watch. It is trivial to claim that you only signed up for that reason and to expect the claim to stick. If you happened to be frequently posting the chronicles of the elders of zion or talking about how you wanted to pursue an ammo box solution to a ballot box loss then you are going to have a lot more explaining to do.
> No one will be judged for having an account, because a lot of people were signed up just to monitor and watch.
Just like certain subreddits weren't banning people just for having posted in certain other subreddits, even if those posts were opposition posts, right?
I think you need to read more Jonathan Haidt, because research shows you're flat out wrong about this.
I've been seeing a lot of people claiming to have been in the Capitol (with the crowd) in a "journalism" capacity who also seem to spend the rest of their time openly and vocally supporting the conspiracy theories and groups that led to the riot. I've become very torn between the dual ideas that a) it's important for people to be covering these things and b) by nature of a protest, those people being in the crowd are tacitly (or openly) contributing their voices to that movement.
I think there's a difference between physically showing up at the Capitol during that event and being present for the whole thing (even if not entering the Capitol) versus just having an account on a site where some planning for the event took place. It seems to me that it would've been quite possible for a casual user of Parler -- or someone like the above poster who signed up as an observer -- to not even be aware of said planning. For instance, I'm pretty sure I have some family members who created Parler accounts in the past, and yet they called me up asking me what was going on at the Capitol and why, suggesting they were just as surprised/shocked as everyone else.
I think folks here are underestimating how many people just viewed Parler as a right-leaning Twitter and didn't realize how far some corners of it had went or were going.
People cannot post whatever they want on 4chan. On boards such as /g/, and /sci/, any off topic discussion is banned, including blatantly racist content. Other than that, there is free discussion that can be quite enlightening. And just because you choose to use a website does not mean you agree with the fringes. Just because you're a reddit user, and reddit has gore subreddits, are you into gore?
You make 4chan sounds like a utopia. Clearly you've never seen the revenge porn, gore, doxxing, etc that happens (or at least used to happen, havent been there in years) on b/.
why the hell would anyone go on /b/? Same reason no one goes to reddit/r/nsfl
And honestly, 4chan really is a utopia compared to orange reddit. Removing identities makes conversations less about how the individual appears and more about the substance of the topic.
reddit is the same thing. not all of 4chan is bad. not all of reddit is bad. but there is bad on both. it has nothing to do with the website it’s the format
I think it's also that unmoderated forums become a magnet for people who want to spew hate, rather than anonymity inherently leading regular people into such behavior (though maybe the former causes some of the latter).
Then you should be worried because your employer and family may discover that you were a member of Parler. The "I was just curious" defence might not be as convincing as you think.
LOL, this is as ridiculous as, "You were once handed a leaflet about the Nazi Party in 1937, therefore you are a Nazi."
If we don't move past this kind of absolute nonsense, you really will have a violent confrontation on your hands, because you're going to end up alienating millions.
The ramifications of this will absolutely set a record for the future as the inevitable reverse will happen.
People are forgetting that if they're ok with this sort of behavior now, it'll be difficult for them to argue-against or prevent the same behavior when their opposites are in control.
I think it’s actually a part of the plan. When the opposite party gains power in 4 years and does the same thing, you get to call them tyrants then, too. Clearly no one cares about being hypocritical anymore. All that matters is winning the media outrage battle of the moment.
Unfortunately it won’t be the same. The precedent will have been set and they’ll be able to ratchet it up to a new level. It’s going to be bad and I’m disgusted by how many people in here are cheering it on when it’s their side doing the kicking. Doxing, canceling, Twitter hate mobs, riot-protests, attacks on journalists, politically motivated violence. All becoming standard practice. Nobody cares as long as it’s their team scoring a goal. You’d have to be blind not to see where this is leading.
>The ramifications of this will absolutely set a record for the future as the inevitable reverse will happen.
Will happen? Try has happened. Partisan hacking has been a thing for a decade. Remember the DNC emails? Remember weev?
>People are forgetting that if they're ok with this sort of behavior now
What does it matter if I'm okay with it? Nobody consulted me before breaking into Parler. In fact, they didn't take my opinion into account at all. Sure, grey-hats are somewhat motivated by public opinion, but even Mitch McConnell gave a floor speech on Wednesday angry enough to incite a few keyboard taps.
>it'll be difficult for them to argue-against or prevent the same behavior
Because American politics consistently punishes hypocrisy, right?
Under the assumption people are remotely ingenuous I'd agree, but in recent years I think that ship has sailed. The means always justify the ends, and ideological consistency is apparently chalked up to a loser's game.
>People are forgetting that if they're ok with this sort of behavior now, it'll be difficult for them to argue-against or prevent the same behavior when their opposites are in control.
I'd argue the opposite: As the rank rhetorical hypocrisy on BLM-related protests vs. Trump protests shows, the marketplace of ideas has broken down and all that really matters is power. We're only a couple steps away from tech/media being able to dictate that we've always been at war with Eastasia, with a horde of willing partisans being eager to punish any sort of dissent on the matter. Being hypocritical is unimportant if you have the ability to mess with the lives of those who are too vocal in pointing out whatever hypocrisy. Most people are perfectly rational in not being willing to risk cancellation by speaking up.
It reminds me of Pascal's wager. How confident can one be that one's chosen political team will definitely win out in the long run? 90%? That seems very high, but even if you're 99% sure, are you willing to act in a way that will surely warrant retribution in the unlikely adverse scenario? Seems like a pretty dumb wager to make.
Just call everyone a terrorist and absolve your soul of any uneasiness you have with this. Surely this hyperbole hasn't been used in recent history to push authoritarian and unethical measures by state and private actors paving a golden road to hell.
Well what is your suggested response? I think the lack of calling out terrorism and fascism in this country have already resulted four years of "pushing authoritarian and unethical measures" by the US executive.
...these people are the authoritarians. They want to usher in some sort of bizarre "law and order" where they define what those things mean. They were literally beating police offers and saying "we're on your side" at the same time.
The amount of victimization through projection currently taking place is kind of shocking. I don't know of a single person that has been called a Terrorist for anything other than calling for violence against others. Why self-proclaimed "peaceful" conservatives continue to lump themselves in with white-supremacists and domestic terrorists is beyond me.
You can pretend that people are being persecuted for being a Republican but 30 seconds of fact checking will disprove that. In fact the only ones calling for violence against Republicans are those very same white supremacists and domestic terrorists because it seems that anyone that doesn't align with Donald Trump is somehow not a conservative. Mike Pence isn't a Republican? Really? I can't think of a politician much further right, and somehow he's no longer acceptable.
If your political belief system is "whatever Trump thinks this week" then maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you really stand for.
What I love about this comment is how politically ambiguous it is. You cant tell which “side” it’s arguing for which is exactly the point - the same argument can be used by both sides. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
It's trying to equate calling out actual terrorist acts carried by self-identified insurrectionists, with calling "Everyone" a terrorist.
No, we're not calling everyone a terrorist. Not even everyone on Parler, though clearly some were, and the service rules were set up to facilitate them planning their atrocities. We're calling these terrorists what they are. Pipe bombs and a dead policeman for goodness sake.
You're referring to 2024 when twitter will ban the NY Times for posting materials derived from the orange clown's taxes and the NY Post for posting materials derived from the President-elect's son's laptop?
Ah. Wait. They took one of these actions within an hour of it going up. :P I suppose it'll be no time at all until they take down the account of the person hacking Parler and live tweeting the content being discussed in this article... which they've been doing for that past ... 48 hours.
Since it's WARC and is going to end up on archive.org (archive.org is going to host it, but a different org 'archive team' are the ones who downloaded it), twitter isn't going to stop it from being posted since it's just going to show up as a link to web.archive.org. Arguably this isn't 'hacked data' since it's stuff that was wget'd and no security measure circumvention took place.
You don't consider exploiting 2fa fail-open being triggered by deplatforming by their 2fa provider being used to mass password reset accounts and vacuum up their private messages not a security circumvention?
What about using a arbitrary content type upload on their video subdomain to implement an XSS attack to allow them to download all videos, including ones sent privately between users?
Maybe because it's still being imported, but the archive.org team probably needs to review it and make it more widely available (ie. on web.archive.org).
Why did you include that “the media told me” part? It dramatically weakens your argument. If you think you’re right and are arguing in good faith, why add this throwaway strawman to imply that everybody who disagrees with you must be brainwashed by the media and not thinking for themselves?
Remember to blame the media, right. It helps flood the zone with misleading accusations. Racist fascists attacking a democratic institution while calling for blood are objectively bad guys. Full stop. If any of their private messages were used in planning and execution of that crime that is evidence on which they should be charged. That evidence will mostly be made public in the course of a trial. Everything else just delete.
I do feel terrible for those people. Parler needs to be held civilly liable for what they've done.
The real crime here is that Parler was collecting sensitive information above and beyond what most social providers were asking for and still made shoddy security decisions.
Within 20m of this post being made, this <7d account is complaining about other people not complaining about the leak of private messages, without actually complaining about that specific problem.
I don't think it's fair to lump everyone into a pile like that. I agree with the decision of tech companies not to host Parler and disagree with leaking its contents. The comments section on any forum is made of a variety of people with a variety of views. You shouldn't be looking at a web forum for consistency.
You can pretty easily see for yourself they are THE bad guys. There are calls for violence and white supremacist rhetoric ever way you turn. You really have to try hard to find the non horrible parts of that site.
You're slightly wrong by stressing "THE". They are SOME of the bad guys. Those weren't the only racially charged and violent riots that happened this year.
It's amazing isn't it? Principles, ethics.. all talk for a lot of people, situations like these show it. Watch them spin it as a good thing for humanity as a whole. Amazing.
I am reading this comment and I can't help but to chuckle. The reason I am saying is that can be read in several different ways and so does parent's post. We can just barely communicate with one another clearly so our proxy becomes 'who are you talking about exactly'.
We need better communication tools -- language seems to be failing us.
This was also a bad thing to do, since, presumably - some of it was intended to be private or hidden.
It will be interesting to see what the results of the content are. There have been many arguments implying that parler was "pretty normal". We can now empirically find out.
As others have noted, this is also a lesson in design and code priorities.
Was about to ask the same thing. My, how the story changes when it's on the other foot. This type of thing is exactly why we can't have noce things. Regardless of how you feel about the people in question, the fact is you've got people on the side of throwing even more fuel 9n the fire for stoking divisiveness and chaos. The sheer fraction of HN posters who show no apparent awareness of this is a bit offputting.
most of us are trying to reflect on whether this is 'private messages' or 'evidence of crimes'
I doubt anyone on HN would take seriously any other service turning over evidence of a crime to authorities because its 'private messages'. We might not like that it is there policy but we damn well would know it is their policy and not use services where it is technically possible to plan crimes?
Why is it awful? If something you say isn't end-to-end encrypted you should assume it could be made public. I wouldn't be upset if PMs from Twitter or FB were leaked either.
Ermm, people who are trying to violently and undemocratically install an authoritarian government while using slogans like “6 million was not enough” are literally nazis.
You’re gonna have to find another hyperbolically bad thing to accuse your opponents of fear mongering about.
You mean like that these group was "violently and undemocratically install an authoritarian government"? Did you feel much scared of the possibility of some dictatorship (as opposed to an act of protest in the congress)?
Second, even if they did seriously try to do that, heck, even if they succeeded in establishing an "authoritarian government", that wouldn't be enough to qualify them as "literally nazis".
We don't call all authoritarian government nazis. Just the ones that actually are nazist.
In fact, the most succesful ones we call "business as usual", with the Patriot Act, surveillance, several global wars, torture, etc...
Do you, like, not get the “6 million...” reference?
They also had functioning gallows, and a guy with a taser and zip ties running around in the Senate chamber just minutes after it was evacuated, and lots of “kill Mike Pence” shouting.
Some people were there to take selfies. Others were there to take hostages.
> that wouldn't be enough to qualify them as "literally nazis"
How about SS tattoos?
"6MWE" - "6 Million Wasn't Enough"
"1488"
"Camp Auschwitz"
All things seen in the group.
But I get it, still not nazis, neonazi, or other. I guess unless they were card-carrying, dues-paying members of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei?
Yeah, so? If a group of "neo-nazi" tags along, that makes everybody a neo-nazi (much less so, a nazi danger, as neonazi is more like a kind of "edgelord" archetype for far-right leaning people).
If a group had the hammer and sickle or Mao or whatever on their t-shirts on a democratic side protest would it make the people there "communists"?
Or would mean anything about some "danger" to the US of communism becoming installed?
US was, is, and will remain corporatist and capitalist. Democrats, Republicans, and Liberalists all agree on that, and even if they didn't, tough luck, it's not them that have the power, the corporatist elites do.
There is as much "danger" of a fascist coup as there is of a communist overtaking, or as there was of Obama being a radical pro-Black president or Trump "draining the swamp": zero.
The rest are talking points for masses with nothing better to do (and pundits that make money of it) to hit each other with.
> that wouldn't be enough to qualify them as "literally nazis"
Yes but the whole wishing to extend the holocaust and kill more jews thing makes them nazis
> Did you feel much scared of the possibility of some dictatorship
Why are you pretending this about some abstract threat of some vague unspecified dictatorship? If Trump had succeeded in his attempts at gaining a second term, when he lost by a landslide in the democratic and fair election, that would make him a dictator. And it was their goal to try to make that happen.
Peacefully assembling outside the capital with signs would be a protest. Breaking into the capital armed with guns and pipe bombs and zipties looking to take members of congress hostage, killing police that stood in the way, bringing a working gallows and chanting to hang the VP who presides over the senate, during the vote in which they are certifying the election, is an insurrection attempt.
I'm surprised to see how many people can not think for themselves but follow what media is telling them. I hope I don't do that myself but try to understand the matter and follow principles rather than sides.
What I'm surprised the most is that with these complex and not obvious questions (at least to me) people without any shadow of a doubt are certain that it is right for big tech to censor Trump, shut down parler and take political sides like it happened.
Maybe Trump is bad but at least i want to see his stupidity or his wrongdoing rather than other people to chew the news and feed me like im an infant.
To me these questions require philosophical debates and dialogue (even with myself) to understand f it is right for a company to impose their political worldview on their clients - I don't feel it is right.
But if others take these positions very easily, to me that is an indication that they got these ideas from somebody else rather than thought them through.
I think "citation needed" is appropriate here. If we are bringing US education system into this conversation, the sheer number of humanities ( and the people they apparently teach ) suggests the opposite of what your post suggests.
Dare I say, if more technical education was required, some of the issues in US could be, at least, ameliorated.
I have a feeling most of the professors in the Humanities departments would be not at all sympathetic to Parler or all the deplatforming happening around Donald Trump and his supporters. If anything they'd be broadcasting the Karl Popper "Paradox of Tolerance" as justification for everything that's been happening this week.
The find the whole narrative of dehumanising Trump supporters to be sick.
The memory of all the pathological mob like violence that occurred during the BLM movement which occurred worldwide should still be fresh in all of our memories. If only the actors who incited that violence were held to this same standard.
I arrived at that conclusion all on my own. Something a disappointingly large portion of Trump supporters seem to be unable to do. And last I checked, the truth is that conservative media is a much larger slice of "the media" than it would have you believe, I mean, except when it touts its ratings to anyone who will listen.
Yes it is. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. [1]
> Say unimaginably hateful shit, see how fast it takes to get punched in the mouth. Simple as that.
This is incredibly dangerous and short-sighted. I can tell you've likely never been in a fight, or very, very few.
People who think this way need to be very fucking careful with their rhetoric here, because while they think they might be the Billy Badass who'll set the world 'right', there's a lot of other Billy Badasses out there who might just jerk a knot in their ass, either temporarily or permanently.
You might want to take a more reasonable approach and figure out why someone feels the way they feel first.
i am really sad that hate speech is allowed in the US. i think it is shameful and dangerous. I have no comment on you telling that other guy to be very fucking careful
> i am really sad that hate speech is allowed in the US. i think it is shameful and dangerous.
Fortunately our founders realized how necessary speech is, especially speech we don't like. I'm waiting to see Noam Chomsky get canceled for saying, “Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
> I have no comment on you telling that other guy to be very fucking careful
He should be thankful, because I'm trying to save him from getting seriously injured - perhaps even killed one day. People who have a lot of experience fighting, especially having either seen or participated in fights outside of a controlled environment, will tell you just how incredibly dangerous it is to fight someone for whom you have no idea of their capabilities. You might have just picked a fight with someone with advanced combat training who will hand you your ass... even worse, you might have come upon someone with enough training you to seriously harm you, but not enough training to know how to exercise restraint.
You are far better served to try to de-escalate a situation than to actively jump in like your John Wick... because you're not. John Wicks of the world are only fighting when they have no other option.
No. These guys ARE the bad guys. Not "because the media said so". They are objectively the bad guys.
Parler's members are the rejects that couldn't survive on mainstream platforms due to their poor conduct. That userbase just planned and executed an attempt at insurrection against the US government.
The market overwhelmingly has agreed that Parler violated ethical standards egregiously enough that severing business ties is appropriate.
I fail to see the importance of these people's privacy in the wake of recent events. I also fail to have sympathy for people who trusted this hacked-together Twitter clone with their personal information.
Leaking this information sends a clear message: Extremism and violence are intolerable, and every possible means is at our disposal to fight back against it. That includes exposing violent extremists to the light of day.
> I fail to see the importance of these people's privacy in the wake of recent events. I also fail to have sympathy for people who trusted this hacked-together Twitter clone with their personal information.
Then I fail to have any sympathy and solidarity with you. You're just another violent extremist in my eyes, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend by a long shot.
I responded to someone who didn't even attempt to make the case how all users of Parler are "violent extremists", they just pulled out that broad brush to justify a transgression. That's intellectually so dishonest I see no functional difference between that and what one would criticize extremists for, and I don't see a meaningful difference between "not minding" a breach of someone's rights and committing it, so that's the violent bit.
> He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
But if you don't mind their use of "violent extremists" apropos nothing, no, I don't particularly "care to" explain myself to you for using the same phrase in response to them -- I just do it because I can. You could simply remove or ignore my re-using that phrase and my point would stand unchanged. Address the core of an argument, don't just play "gotcha" while ignoring the context and the woods for the trees.