[mozillalives]

All I’m going to say is that I’m all for free speech and setting fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler doesn’t want to do any content regulation then fine (though this should be any easy place to draw the line), but I can’t blame Amazon for saying “we don’t want that here”.

[munificent]

> I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech

This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host.

If an author's content is so toxic that advertisers won't be associated with it and thus hosts can't or won't afford to host it, that's on the author.

[Closi]

> This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host.

I'm in the UK, but the difference is that right now, these private companies control communication.

I'm not allowed outside my house and I live alone. I'm not even allowed outside to go and talk to friends - people are getting fined and arrested for just sitting on a park bench because of the latest lockdown. All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies. If they lock me out, I'm totally screwed. What is free speech if I can't talk to anyone? Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying?

So one could argue, that actually if we want free speech in the 21st century, and want to honour the intent of what it means to have free speech, there does need to be some protection here.

The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said - and I think the legislators would have been horrified!

[epistasis]

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square.

Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps?

Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses?

Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide audience. There are many. But no platform requires people to publish you. You have lost being able to yell in a public square, temporarily, due to public safety, but you haven't lost the ability to transmit speech that would have been acceptable in the public square.

So so so tired of these false equivalencies, and an unwillingness to engage with the type of speech that results in this. Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no.

Hell, AWS still hosts the publication that posted Bezos' dick pics! These shutdowns are not some sort of political censorship, these shutdowns are the natural result of speech that societies have determined not to be free.

[plutonorm]

All well and good. But say for instance you lived in nazi Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you have the right to say things that are outside of the overton window? You would not have the right, and your opinions would be spat upon. And yet they would be true and right for you. In your mind you would have every right to express yourself and undermine the government outside of democratic means.

The point is we can never know how far outside of what is "good" we currently circle. It is right that people with a belief strong enough to force them to action are forced to action. It is right that a state that believes itself true defends itself. It is all part of the process, all of it. Who the hell are you to know with certainty that you, specifically you, have the the eagle eyed vision to discern right from wrong? To somehow miraculously step outside of the tiny little context in which you live and know with 100% certainty that you are right.

You are the product of your surroundings, a container for thoughts passing through, a ghost in the machine. Don't be so God damned arrogant. You cannot know truth, you cannot know right. The world is unfolding as it should.

[avianlyric]

What exactly is your point, other than ad-hominem attacks?

OP made no claims to know that “good” is other than

> Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no.

Struggling to see a world that would consider incitements to violence as a “good” thing. I mean sure it’s possible, but so far away from our reality as to be entirely pointless as a basis for argument.

> nazi Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you have the right to say things that are outside of the overton window? You would not have the right, and your opinions would be spat upon.

What does Nazi Germany have to do with any of this? That was a government suppressing a minority population and invading Europe. Your not suggesting that AWS is about to attempt the same thing?

> It is right that people with a belief strong enough to force them to action are forced to action

Glad we agree that people at AWS who have a strong belief to drop Parler are allowed to act on those beliefs.

> The world is unfolding as it should.

Then what’s your problem? Are you saying that AWS deplatforming Parler is preventing the world from unfolding as it should?

[plutonorm]

> Then what’s your problem? Are you saying that AWS deplatforming Parler is preventing the world from unfolding as it should?

I'm annoyed with the histrionics. Making arguments from places of moral outrage. Of extreme emotion. Each looking at the other with righteous indignation. Unable to see that what they feel is what the other side is feeling. What is needed at a time like this is for people to step outside of themselves. To understand that they do not know everything, that there is more than one way to think and to live. To be humble. When their amygdala screams that the other is dangerous, that the other is alien and dark and inhuman... To breathe, to understand their own weaknesses and move forward from a place of humility.

[lolc]

Please, spare us the accusations of arrogance. If you think our interpretations are dubious, tell us why!

[epistasis]

Oh come on, this is a not very old debate, and within living memory of many of us we actually had to fight against the Nazis and then determine how best to prevent fascism from taking hold. This is the basic debate about government. This is why any technologist who hopes to influence the world should read deeply of history and the prior debates along these same lines.

The clearest guideline that I have seen is the Paradox of Tolerance, where we must stop some speech in order to make room for as many as possible. Fascists hate this, because fascists are the ones who demand total and perfect freedom to act and speak as the wish, up to the point of being allowed to perform violence on those whose speech they don't like. Which is why the fascists were chanting "Hang Pence" as they stormed the capitol.

Don't you dare try to accuse me of being arrogant for judging fascists, and don't you dare accuse me of trying to be the ultimate arbiter of good and evil. I can name fascists as unacceptable to society without being an ultimate arbiter.

We are in dangerous waters in the US, and all our words mean something right now. Will we fall for the lies of the fascists who say "let us violate all social norms with our speech, and we promise we woke take over with violence than force you to follow our norms with violence," or will we stand up to them and enable as open a society as we can?

[plutonorm]

So the slave holders who were all adamant that owning slaves was cool, they were totally right to not question their own views? They believed they were right. You believe you are right. Create a logical argument for me describing how you just know you are right.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "The clearest guideline that I have seen is the Paradox of Tolerance"

It never ceases to surprise me that people wave around the Paradox of Tolerance as if were an immutable law of physics rather than merely one philosopher's opinion among many.

[junon]

> If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square.

That's some Grade A corporate apologetics there. How can you assert this? Who decides what is going to get you "shut down in the public square"?

[epistasis]

Who determines what speech gets shut down in the public square? In the US, it's a mixture of courts and legislation setting laws and their interpretations, lawsuits establishing damages for certain types of speech, and then of course cops on the ground making individual decisions on a case by case basis and using violence or threat of violence to arrest people.

I am not sure how any of this is apologizing for corporations instead of any other aspect of our system though...

Edit: For the lawsuit aspect of shutting down speech, check out this very topical lawsuit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/11/cybersecu...

Even if this particular suit fails, I hope that it demonstrates that there are entire bodies of law set up to silence some forms of speech.

[unholiness]

> Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no

Right. Even the Post Office is not required to deliver pipe bombs.

The issue is that right now, that's not the standard. Amazon /hasn't/ taken down sites in the name of political censorship, but it /could/. The implications of that are important, and they're why I find it hard to be satisfied with justifications like "Amazon is a private company, they can do what they want".

[tsm_sf]

This is what everyone decided they wanted twenty years ago. Loss of public space was a huge topic of conversation, and the end consensus (IMHO) was that the internet itself was the public space and everyone was free to make something.

From that perspective this looks like a conversation about ease of access rather than free speech. Amazon's the only way to build something on Amazon, but nothing's stopping me from creating something myself.

I don't see being able to buy eyeballs on the cheap as a fundamental right. If you care enough, build it. If others care, they'll come.

[epistasis]

Right now, the US military could side with Trump, launch a fascist coup, start rounding up enemy politicians for assassination, and eliminate any freedom at all for anybody who doesn't who enough MAGA support publicly. They haven't, but they could, and it's happened frequently enough in other countries.

Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than the very very worst that Amazon could do, it's also far more likely at the moment.

So my question is, why the F are we even talking about Amazon? Because it's just a BS distraction from the elephant in the room.

It's time to stop engaging with sophistry and fight back the fascists that are trying to take away all our freedoms. And this big fear of big tech is exactly the type of distraction that lets fascism flourish enough to gain a stronghold.

[happythomist]

> Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than the very very worst that Amazon could do, it's also far more likely at the moment.

Politically motivated refusal of service by Amazon or other Silicon Valley firms is at least an order of magnitude more likely than any coup by the US military, much less a Trumpist one.

[blitz_skull]

I'm pretty sure violent rhetoric is an entire ocean apart from mailing literal bombs..

Or are we still on that "words are violence" thing? I can't keep up.

[sn_master]

If you're so tired by the incitement of violence, what do you think about what BLM did last year?

[StanislavPetrov]

>If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square.

That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainly very offensive according certain standards but hardly something that you wouldn't be allowed to say in the public park.

You can reasonably argue about the right of private corporations to choose to do business with who they want, but you cannot reasonably argue that people are only being silenced for explicitly illegal behavior that would also be illegal offline.

[StanislavPetrov]

The delusion and mania gripping the country is evident by the downvotes to the above post. It is beyond dispute that the standards used by tech companies to silence people go far beyond speech that violates the law. Reading the TOS of any of these tech companies will confirm this. Its rather astounding that otherwise intelligent and presumably literate people are so jarred by this statement of indisputable fact. Unfortunately its impossible to have a thoughtful, reasoned discussion about the free speech issues raised by recent events when so many are living in denial of reality.

[epistasis]

There's two different sorts of "you" here. There's the big platform of "you" that AWS shut down, that was shut down for the not-allowed-in-public-sphere speech.

Then there are the "you"s that are posting on individual platforms that get to choose their own standards of conduct. AWS stopped business with a platform that would not be allowed in the public square.

An individual that got banned for dead naming can just start another account anonymously, as far as I know.

[vkou]

If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say, personally attacking people, or posting links to pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced for my beliefs? Despite retaining access to hundreds of unmoderated channels by which I can communicate?

[StanislavPetrov]

>If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say, personally attacking people, or posting links to pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced for my beliefs?

That's completely unrelated to the issue at hand - whether or not you'd be able to ramble insanely or make personal attacks in a public park (you would).

[munificent]

> these private companies control communication.

I think verbs are important. Another way to say this is that these companies enable or provide communication.

Imagine that COVID-19 had hit in the 80s before we had all of this. It would have been miserable, isolating, tragic. But would it make sense to blame the tech companies we have now for not existing then? Would it have been someone's fault?

> All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies.

Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication.

That, of course, doesn't mean they are free from moral consequences or anything. But we are only beholden to them because they are providing us so much value.

> The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said

It was also authored in a time where "broadcasting" meant literally printing copies of pamphlets and physically depositing them in every town square you wanted to reach.

I don't know if we have any clue how the Founding Fathers of the US would have interpreted today's communication systems. I think we need principles that are designed for the structures we do have without necessarily assuming any at-the-time-excellent principle from the 1700s must be directly mapped to today's needs.

[Closi]

“Control communication” is intentional - Content is scanned to understand intent, promoted/demoted based on an invisible algorithm, and your communication can be labelled or shut down if you have a dissenting opinion. In-between your conversation political adverts are inserted, specifically tailored to your demographic data and personality profile (and rather than encouraging you to vote for the party, they are actually designed to disenfranchise you and make you not vote for anyone).

This isn’t a future dystopia - this all already happens on Facebook. And that’s why this involves a level of control over being a neutral communication channel.

> Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication.

Yes be thankful to mega corp. mega corp good. Mega corp has our interests at its heart.

[crazydoggers]

The difference with the phone companies is you’re talking one on one communication. Not a publishing platform which is what these social media services really are. You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group.

These are the same kinds of issues society dealt with, with the advent of radio and television, platforms that allowed small groups to reach out to very large groups of people with minimal effort.

Most countries have something like the FCC that regulates those platforms. Not only is it not permitted to incite violence in tv, even gross displays of real violence are censored, and even offensive speech. (For instance swearing).

Now we can have debates about the degree of that censorship, but the topics of free speech and first amendment rights have largely been settled.

If companies don’t self censor stuff that clearly 99% of society doesn’t like, then you’re going to see someone like the FCC or other government agencies step in. So what would you rather.

If someone like Parler or Gab wants to exists, they are free to at the moment, and they are also free to speak anything they want to whom ever they want. They just don’t get to force other people to support them in the process.

Coming from a family who’s relatives escaped from places which had true censorship, lack of any first amendment rights, the entitlement, and disconnect from reality in these arguments bothers me.

You do not have a protected right to a mass publication forum. That is not a first amendment right. You do have the right to establish such a platform if you wish to. But just like you had to buy you’re own printing press, you’ll have to buy your own internet infrastructure. And I and other groups of citizens (including companies made up of those citizens) also have a right not to listen to you and to throw your pamphlets in the trash.

And as a society, we have a right to limit free speech when it is very clearly only about hate and violence. You don’t get to call my house and tell me you’ll kill me for instance.

“ Under state criminal codes, which vary by state, it is an offense to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offense to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that belongs to a person.”

[a_band]

> You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group.

Does Signal run on AWS? If I can shut you down at the cloud level then I'm not sure these options will be available in the future. Someone is going to coordinate a protest/riot on Signal, screenshots will leak, then what happens?

[crazydoggers]

Well Signal is free and open source. So feel free to boot up some servers on any other platform, or your own hosting and run it from there. Maybe signal the foundation needs to pay more or move platforms to support the app and make it easy to install, but again, why would or should AWS, Google, Apple be forced to host them? Don't those companies have a first amendment right to block speech they don't like?

It's like walking into the mall or public place, and saying, "You have to broadcast this message to everyone because 'freedom of speech'"".

In fact it's better to assume that private companies have such ability anywhere in the world. Signal fosters more access to defy censorship precisely because it realizes that. Making the software open source is how you allow people who need such tools to have them available.

And honestly... you've got the airwaves. It's called radio. Shortwave, can reach halfway around the world.

Again, the entitlement to these services astounds me. The internet didn't exist 40 years ago.... and now somehow the ability to assault people with misinformation, provide unfettered access for propaganda from state actors, permit the dissemination of hate speech is being called a right??

It makes no sense, and is completely devoid of historical perspective.

[a_band]

Like it or not private companies currently have a monopoly on the communication infrastructure of our planet. There is no "public option" for AWS. If they have a monopoly (which Apple and Google clearly have on the app store), then it comes with specific obligations to not discriminate and a requirement to provide services to everyone equally. That's the price you pay for banning competition from the market.

If Apple and Google allowed alternative app stores in their ecosystem, then there would be no problem with them kicking off any apps for any reason under the sun.

The argument is more nuanced for AWS as there are viable private competitors. However, it is stunning that they would cancel their contract with a customer by giving them only 24 hours notice. It's making me seriously consider why I would trust AWS as a partner.

[GrinningFool]

> censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said

But you have to keep in mind the other side of that - the protections around freedom of speech were put in place at a time when it was inconceivable that a majority of people in the country had the ability to be seen and heard _by the majority of other people in the country_. In near real-time, anytime. And that they could do so in a way that meant often they did not have to accept any consequence for the wider-ranging effects of their words.

Separately I also have to wonder if the knowledge acquired as a result of that would have affected their framing. In particular the advances in psychology and group psychology, and in understanding how it's possible to use this instant mass communication to manipulate even people who are on guard against manipulation.

[mgkimsal]

> Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying?

Possibly, although... you're paying for your phone service. You're not paying for parler, facebook, twitter, etc.

[Closi]

Parler were paying for AWS.

[8note]

You can send a letter in the mail, can't you?

[Closi]

Oh great, that totally resolves the dystopian nightmare we might be heading for!

[scsilver]

I mean, the UK is still has vestigial Monarchal components as opposed to the US constitution which was built from the ground up with severe limits and federation of power. We'd likely see that distopia in england long before the US justice system can adjust itself to allow it.

[emtel]

Free speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing.

Free speech is a moral principle/ideal that exists independently of the US Constitution.

The First Amendment guarantees a certain form of free speech in the United States.

Private-sector censorship / restriction of speech is not in violation of the First Amendment. However, it may still amount to a restriction on free speech.

[munificent]

Fair, but in this case we're talking about a US company hosting another US company's data, so I think talking about free speech in the context of the First Amendment is reasonable.

[emtel]

It's not unreasonable, but I think it's incomplete. We may be headed towards a world in which private companies exert a great deal of control over what an individual can say. Not only by controlling communication platforms, but also by withholding employment from people who say certain things.

I don't want to join the argument about whether that's good or bad, but I think it's a huge mistake to simply say "It's consistent with the 1st amendment, therefore it's OK." If we're going to let private corporations use their market power to police individual speech, we need to have a real debate about what that means.

[inglor_cz]

The distinction between private and public sphere is not completely clear.

Let us say that a politician calls Mark Zuckerberg and asks him nicely to squish certain people, and MZ complies. Is that a First Amendment issue or not?

Or, let us say that a politician calls Mark Zuckerberg and offers him some concrete support (in an anti-trust case or taxation matters) for squishing certain people, and MZ takes up the offer. Is that a First Amendment issue or not?

The trouble with both scenarios is that they are certainly possible and hard to prove or disprove. That is one of the reasons why concentration of power in a few hands (even private ones) may translate into bad politics.

[munificent]

I agree with everything you say, but I don't see that "free speech" needs to be the hammer you use to drive in that nail. Concentration of power in the few is bad for many many reasons independent of free speech.

[travisoneill1]

When the government is threatening regulation against the private-sector because these companies don't censor, then I think this could potentially be considered a 1st amendment issue.

[randyrand]

Consider this - If the conservative farmers and distributers individually decided not serve the bay area anyone, they are well within their rights.

Political ideology is not protected, regardless of how important you perceive basic accommodations like shelter, food, or communication are.

[gameman144]

Now consider the scenario where all the large agriculture firms and distributors cut off the Bay Area. Sure, the Bay Area could start their own farms to meet that need, but I could hardly imagine the whole population living there saying "This is fine, they're well within their rights."

This feels to me like a situation of "fine for anyone to do, problematic for everyone to do". With political ideology not a protected class in many states, anyone is free to refuse service to an outspoken Democratic voter, but if a whole town did that it would be unthinkable. The specious answer of "just make your own business" wouldn't be practical in that scenario (are you going to start your own grocery, gas station, etc?).

To be clear, I'm not trying to make a defense of Parler; my understanding having never signed up is that it was an unmoderated cesspool.I am, however, trying to point out that the end result of individuals making totally reasonable and rational decisions within their rights can produce outcomes that most people would view as wrong.

[munificent]

> Now consider the scenario where all the large agriculture firms and distributors cut off the Bay Area.

Now consider that this exact scenario is currently affecting 23.5 million people in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

[gameman144]

This is a great example, I think it exemplifies the problem well. Individually, farmers/distributors absolutely have (and in my mind, should have) the right to avoid shipping to areas which would actively lose them money.

When everyone avoids those areas, though, bam: food desert.

I honestly don't know the right balance to strike here. On the one hand, I fervently believe that businesses shouldn't be forced to act against their interests. On the other hand, though, the sum of these individual actions produces an unacceptable outcome.

I'm sure there's some balance of regulation, incentives, and public-private partnerships that would strike a good balance here, but both the extreme solutions (Groceries can locate wherever they want vs. groceries have to establish branches in food deserts) seem to be totally unsatisfactory, at least in my mind.

[travisoneill1]

At the time the constitution was written "everyone" in any given industry was thousands of small businesses each of which was only subject to the public pressure of the people in the town in which they were based. So it was literally unthinkable that a whole industry could deny service to one person. I bet if the founders had envisioned an entity as powerful as Amazon, they would have written in constraints for private entities too.

[rcurry]

It’s not so much the farmers as it is truckers. CA has a lot of agriculture but some places like NYC have a very limited food supply. For some reason a lot of people have no idea how dependent they are on rural areas. I never forgot this tweet from some politician from out East who was flying back from Denver or somewhere and posted a picture of the ground below the airplane (farm fields with patterns from circular irrigation systems) and he says “No idea why the ground looks like that!”

[travisoneill1]

But since this action appears coordinated across major platforms and likely in response to political pressure from the now in power Democratic party (Amazon is being paid for hosting, so no advertisers fleeing issue), I think there now may be a real first amendment issue.

[aftbit]

>> free speech

> First Amendment

These things are different. First Amendment protections restrict the US government from censoring protected speech. Free speech is a broader concept that covers any restrictions upon speech, including restrictions that are legal in the US.

It seems that the right to free speech must be balanced against the harms that speech can cause, but I am tired of this meme that just because they're a private company, AWS et al should be able to block whatever they like. These tech companies have more power and knowledge than many governments of the previous century. We should be cautious advocating for a totally hands-off policy on how they use that power.

[disantlor]

are you not just highlighting the fact that there is a First Amendment right but not a broader "free speech" right, which is the very point people are trying to make.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

As far as posting online, people aren't allowed to post child porn - anywhere. You don't get to complain about your free speech, or about hosting companies not hosting your child porn.

In this case, it looks like they also don't want to host your death threats.

There was no line to begin with. Nothing was crossed. This isn't anything new.

[listenallyall]

The First Amendment, obviously, doesn't address TV or the internet but your statement "any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host" is false, television stations must adhere to the "equal time doctrine" and allot broadcasting time (the equivalent of hosting) to political candidates regardless of party affiliation or agenda. We also had a "fairness doctrine", the reinstatement of which had the support of many of today's prominent Democratic leaders (Pelosi, Durbin, Kerry).

Point is, the government has, multiple times, recognized the power of "big media" to suppress political speech, and acted to regulate that power.

[imgabe]

Parler was paying Amazon for hosting. Amazon wasn't doing it for free and hoping for ad revenue.

[amadeuspagel]

> Hosting and serving isn't free

What a pathetic excuse. It's not like Amazon was hosting parler for free.

[jorblumesea]

I don't think the people that end up on Parler have a strong grasp of constitutional law (no offense to anyone that does and uses app).

The general people that end up on that app are hardcore trending extremist and you're not going to find intelligent debate on the role of private companies and the government. It's probably closer to propaganda than it is a true social media site.

[trident5000]

There are plenty of extremists on Twitter and Facebook. Thats where the double standard is. People organized on twitter when they stormed the white house and the pres went into a bunker as an example. Facebook is accused of much worse in foreign countries currently.

The reason Parler was banned is because all these corporations are very aware they are under the anti-trust microscope. This was a favor to the new party in power in hopes of getting something back.

[a_band]

Absolutely, we all know that Twitter and Facebook have been far greater vehicles for the political unrest that's been growing for the last four years. Parler is a convenient scapegoat.

[jorblumesea]

While I absolutely agree with the idea that every social media has extremes, I completely disagree with the end conclusions.

Other social media services do not actively shape the debate through intense political moderation. There's no "Post tsar" the validates the political health of things that people host.

Meanwhile on Parler...

https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506

https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1346565749977051136

It's literally, a far right wing propaganda machine and any other interpretation of this is misinformed.

[trident5000]

Sounds like hyperbole to me. Again we can flip this to "twitter is a left wing extremist platform" quite easily by finding the right tweet snapshots and pointing to prior events. And nobody knows the exact algos or moderation mechanisms for any of the platforms, the screenshots you linked say essentially nothing even with whoever that person is narrating. Im not saying hes wrong, but I'm certainly not taking it at face value. On other platforms there are similar reward systems. Blue check-marks for instance, and shadow banning is obviously a thing.

[jorblumesea]

I don't think the argument isn't that other platforms don't have things like "verified" and "shadowbanned". It's the connotations attached to them. On Twitter, just about anyone can get verified. Shadowbanning requires a serious fuck up (for example, Trump was only banned after inciting a riot).

Seems that Parler has taken a very different approach. Attaching political goals and ideology to the business model of a social network.

Pretty good write up here: https://www.wired.com/story/parler-app-free-speech-influence...

[staunch]

Every private company in the U.S. is compelled by law to offer goods and services regardless of race, religion, etc.

Adding political affiliation to the list of protected classes probably makes sense. It seems odd that it's not on the list, doesn't it?

The bans we're seeing here are very clearly political. Parler is not breaking laws. It seems obvious that if Parler was being used by BLM to organize violent riots they would not get banned.

As usual, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Anyone simplifying this whole thing into good vs bad is behaving like a member of a tribal mob.

One thing that is certain is that private companies should not be the ones deciding these major cultural issues. The Supreme Court should resolve these issues.

[sterlind]

Link to the Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

Apparently Amazon sent them 98 examples of posts directly inciting violence, Parler replied with a proposal to manually moderate such posts with volunteers, and most of the posts Amazon gave as examples were still up (including some urging for systematic assassination or blowing up AWS data centers.)

[MisterBiggs]

All of those posts barely have any interaction or views so it doesn't seem like they are actually that big of an issue. Every social network has people saying crazy things.

[jtsiskin]

At first I very much agreed with you, all these posts have < 10 'likes', so it seems pretty unfair, as I'm sure you could find the same content on Twitter or Facebook.

However reading the exact complaint made me change my mind; they specifically provided them with content which they found to be inciting violence, and Parler took no action on them. If they actually wanted to remove them, at the bare minimum they could have at least removed the ones directly sent to them from their hosting provider. They also have no plan to moderate content themselves. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc all have report buttons which then trigger an employee to review the reported content, and Parler needed to at least say they had plans to do the same.

[sterlind]

exactly! Parler could have a report button with options like "Incitement to violence", "child porn", "other." Send the "other" reports to their manual jury system and have the rest reviewed for legality by staff. they've chosen not to, so they can go burn.

[sterlind]

the damning thing for Parler though is that they didn't remove those posts - which I remind you are illegal because they unambiguously incite violence - after AWS reported them. there is no excuse for Parler not to have removed those posts. they chose to ride or die with their jury moderation system, and died.

this isn't a 1A issue. incitement to violence is not protected by 1A - that's been settled by the Supreme Court. that's why I have no sympathy for Parler's plight. also note that they're not protected by section 230 - these posts are a criminal offense, akin to not removing child porn.

[Closi]

I know there is a subtlety here and I might be being pedantic, but I don't think it's illegal to host illegal speech.

And I don't think there is a legal obligation to censor other people's illegal speech.

And if it was, the buzzfeed article is presumably illegal too for hosting the same speech?

[oceanplexian]

If I could find 98 examples of users calling for violence on Twitter would you advocate for Twitter being de-platformed? Why or why not?

[r00fus]

Twitter has a program. At that point, it's about the upstream provider having some CYA on process and Twitter's ability to follow through.

Parler's response was a casual finger back to Amazon, and the response was a swift boot.

[Server6]

If Twitter wasn't willing to at least attempt to moderate then yes. What's going on here isn't new. Web hosting services have been dropping hate speech platforms and forums since the internet began.

The real problem is that is seems like the hate speech/Qanon wing of the right side of the political spectrum has the loudest voice and it's ruining it for actual conservatives.

[mgkimsal]

Perhaps if Parler had suggested they use mTurk to moderate, AWS might have given them a bit longer? What position would that have put Amazon in, if the moderation was being done via their service, but the end result of the moderation was still 'unacceptable'?

[abarringer]

oh com'n. As if twitter doesn't allow people to post stupid junk? Multiple accounts that posted "Kill all white women" "Today seems like a good day for another reminder that all republicans deserve to die" are still active along with plenty of other insane things. You can cherry pick bad stuff from any social media site.

[chickenpotpie]

Twitter puts an active effort into removing those posts. You can definitely make the case they don’t go far enough, but Parler did the bare minimum. You would have to cherry pick the reasonable content off that site.

[Karunamon]

Mea culpa: I had the completely wrong idea on this post. See down thread. I would delete this comment if I could.

Is that why "Hang Mike Pence" was allowed to trend with 14K tweets, and later that same day "Hang Pence" with 55K?[1]

I'd wager every penny I own that almost none of those people were banned or sanctioned in any way.

[1]: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1347791913806532609

[NineStarPoint]

Not only did twitter end up removing it, but it was a hashtag in response to a video from the protests of people yelling “Hang Mike Pence”, primarily not people actually calling for Mike Pence to be hanged. That I keep seeing this example being thrown around from conservative sources shows either a desire to argue in bad faith or a complete inability to research things beyond the absolute surface level. And it’s not like there aren’t other examples one could use to make reasonable complaints about censorship bias on twitter.

[Karunamon]

Did they actively remove it, or did it just age out of trending like everything does after a relatively short amount of time?

[debaserab2]

Shouldn't you be the one researching the argument you're supporting?

[chickenpotpie]

And then Twitter removed it. Could have been faster definitely, but Parler would have never taken it down at all.

[dagmx]

It was brought about because the insurrectionists were shouting that after posts on Parler called for it. Twitter then moderated and banned it.

You're really cutting out a ton of context here to fit a narrative. Parler was the source of the posts and parler would not moderate it.

[danso]

How many of those tweets were users commenting on news reports that the rioters were chanting "Hang Mike Pence"? https://twitter.com/search?q=hang%20mike%20pence&src=typed_q...

[jmull]

That argument doesn't hold water.

"Hang Mike Pence", as has been noted many times, was trending because people were discussing the videos showing Trump rioters chanting that.

People were not banned for using that phrase for the same reason you and I are not going to be banned/flagged for using it here: we aren't calling for violence and murder.

edit: previously called this a bad-faith argument, but that's not fair.

[anigbrowl]

as has been noted many times

A big problem on social networks (including right here on HN) is that it's very easy for people to behave disingenuously and ask questions to which they already know the answer.It's a very effective wayt o either spread misinformation or steal the time of people who are concerned about misinformation, because it's much cheaper to repeat a BS allegation than it is to debunk it.

Another problem (more peculiar but not unique to HN) is that calling out such behavior is often regarded as uncivil. To my mind disingenuity is far more uncivil; I prefer a rude truth to a polite lie.

[Karunamon]

Yet another problem is the common willful conflation of simply being wrong with bad faith or disingenuity. People generally won't correct themselves if they know they're going to get screamed at or dogpiled either way.

[MikeKusold]

If people are required to upload official identification before posting, why would you not want this site up? It seems like a low-effort honeypot by the FBI. Let all the radicalized people come, easily tie their online & offline identities together, then monitor them.

[oceanplexian]

Several tweets like this one from Khamenei are still up: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562

Is "The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance." not a call to violence?

If Trump had posted the same Tweet do you think Twitter would have removed it?

[amyjess]

A friend of mine got permanently suspended from twitter because she and a friend were bantering with each other and she made a joking threat. Her friend who the "threat" was directed at has tried to petition twitter to undo her suspension, but they've just ignored her.

Twitter regularly bans people for anything that smells of violence, even when the "threat" is one person joking with their friend.

[mistersquid]

> Her friend who the "threat" was directed at has tried to petition twitter to undo her suspension, but they've just ignored her.

Can you quote the specific threat issued, anonymized as appropriate?

[narcissismo]

It seems like you can see it all now, rather than having to cherry pick.

https://cybernews.com/news/70tb-of-parler-users-messages-vid...

I'd be interested in seeing the hate ratio between 70TB of that site's posts versus an equivalent volume of Twitter traffic.

[creatorbytes]

But that puts the burden on who defines hate. Similar to the issue with banning “hate speech”. Where’s the line?

We know the extremes, but the extremes aren’t the problem.

“Basketball is stupid” - hate speech targeting a minority demographic, thereby racist.

I wish the above was hyperbole, but there’s a non-zero group size of people in nearby college communities that would agree.

[tantalor]

The difference is some sites (Twitter) have policy and infrastructure for moderating spam/abuse, and some (Parler) do not.

[ketamine__]

According to Parler's CEO the easiest way to get banned is by posting "fuck you" or uploading pictures of poop. That is what he is focused on...

Source is Kara Swisher's interview with John Matze.

[tshaddox]

Those two examples are likely rhetorical and are (as far as I can tell) not intended to and extremely unlikely to incite violence, much less imminent violence. If there were, however, organized groups actually planning and carrying out killings, and those groups used those slogans as a rallying cry, then indeed people and groups distributing those slogans ought to be banned from social networks.

[arbitrage]

... that's not a counter argument, you realize that, right? Saying things like that shouldn't be sanctioned on twitter, either.

[e40]

I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform.

That, itself, is propaganda.

Here's the elephant in the room:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Quote:

Popper's paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

To my eye, that has been happened since 2016 and DJT took office.

[spamizbad]

What's interesting here is it's not really "the left" trying to shut it down: it's more like "People who believe in the civic religion of the United States" vs people who do not.

A ruthlessly self-interested left would benefit tremendously from the successful assassination of Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. It would be a galvanizing event that would ultimately turn most of the country against the Republican party. It would likely clear the way for younger, left-leaning Democratic leaders (AOC, Cori Bush), and it would eliminate a major contender for the 2024 presidential race. Biden would enter power with the same level of political capital as George W. Bush after 9/11.

[8ytecoder]

That's exactly I found Elon Musk's and Sam's tweets disappointing. There are very few free speech absolutists who support violence. This is not a case of whether we need moderation or not but rather "was this the right level of moderation". I can't really blame Twitter or even AWS for it.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1348688644173934593

[2] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1348699888209461249

[metiscus]

Are these platforms prohibited from removing unionization and strike organization activities? My fear is that the labor movement (which is just starting to make significant headway in some of these companies) will be the next targets. If the companies do not have to pay to host hateful content, are there legal protections for labor which may be seen as the next major threat by these companies?

[baron_harkonnen]

> the left trying to shut down free speech

People really have no idea what the "left" even is anymore do they?

I was once down voted here for mentioning that the NYTimes is not an extreme left wing publication. The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.

It's amazing to me that the media (not just Fox-news and co) has constructed this bizarre bogey-man of the left as some control hungry liberals. Those people certainly exist, but they aren't, by anyone who is engage in leftist politics and theory, remotely left.

Believe it or not people on the left have been critical of the growing role that corporations have in setting public policy for decades. Sure, centrist liberals my be cheering, but nobody on the left wants to see corporations be the unchecked regulators of society.

However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and then be surprised at all that large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.

The entire fact that the will of the people has no direct power over corporate action is exactly why the left doesn't like the perpetual growth of corporate power and of its deregulation.

The unfortunate conclusion of all this confusion for me is that this is clearly not political in the slightest. Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.

[manfredo]

> The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.

This is a very different characterization than what most people would offer.

The New York Times is a staunchly left publication, and the past few years have seen the few centrist people at the company driven out (e.g. Bari Weiss). It is definitely not "reviled by anyone on the left", it's by far one of the most widely read publications among liberals.

I say this as a lifelong Democrat and liberal. This seems like one of those statements that only olds true when one draws the line between the left and right such that the overwhelming majority (easily >90%) are categorized on the right.

> People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people.

Can you elaborate on what this is referring to? If you're talking about Coinbase, the company was asking employees to check their activism - of any political leaning - at the door. Not that people should be driven out. In fact, a big part of why this was well received is because often times activism in the company leads to employees trying to drive each other out.

[throwaways885]

> However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim that companies should drive out employees who disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power of the federal government and then be surprised at all that large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.

I wouldn't say these are in conflict. The biggest reason I oppose political movement in SV corporations is because I believe they'd become even more censorious than they are now. Today's corporations are evil to make money and protect their brand, but I don't want tomorrow's corporations to be evil for a political ideology.

[malwrar]

> However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about unchecked corporate power.

I think its because the ideal vision of people who like minimal regulation is that they don't really think of mega-rich monoliths that have a direct impact on how an entire country chooses to consume its information. At least for me, I was one one of the annoying "but they're a private business" people until my optics shifted from viewing the issue as someone with an entrepreneurial mindset to someone who sees power concentrating and now being flexed by a small collection of mega-rich monolithic advertising companies that also happen to be collected in the same geopolitical region and possibly have an ideological bias.

In other words I reconsidered my principles in light of new information--my posting history here even shows this evolution. FAATG's decisions about how to handle what happened at the Capitol have actually scared the hell out of me, even more so than if the protesters/rioters/insurrectionists had actually succeeded in doing any of the wild shit people keep saying they intended to do. Those companies collectively own the most effective ways to communicate with others as well as almost complete control on the supply chain to create new competitors. I don't want to live in a world where that power exists in the hands of anyone, especially one that is willing to take political action and whose executives and employees vote and donate for one party.

> Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't political because they don't have a value system at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and they feel is crushing them.

In the same post you lament people not knowing what the "left" is, you dismiss the right entirely as being comprised of nothing but valueless curmudgeons. This isn't meant to be a personal attack, I just want to point out the bias here in a fairly lazy jab at at least half the US since I've seen it a lot here the last few days. The right (and conservatives) do actually have a more coherent ideological standpoints than you assert, and I suggest digging into what they're saying. It'll be important now more than ever as we in Big Tech figure out how to deal with the massive class of people we've just alienated.

[_fnhr]

At least in the mainstream right wingers are the left wingers of yesterday. Two good examples are how free-speech and free-markets are considered right wing today.

[starkd]

But the prospect of a few powerful tech companies putting their competitors out of business should concern everyone. And there's no reason for such harsh measures.

[eins1234]

I totally get why people in the thread are raising the sentiment that free speech is a core tenant of a democractic society that is worth protecting, regardless if you're a private entity or a government.

However, democracy itself is actually an exceedingly fragile system, more so than many people realize. We have lived in a golden age for democracy for centuries now, but that actually only represents a tiny blip on the time scale of human existence, which naturally tends towards tyranny.

What we need to protect above anything else is the democratic systems and institutions that make free speech even possible at all. And sometimes that means placing restrictions on forms of speech that seek to destroy the very foundations on top of which free speech protections is built upon.

Without those limits on free speech, it'd be a very realistic possibility for those who are in fact against free speech to co-opt it to gain enough power to then turn around and abolish it. I think we'd all agree that would be the worst possible outcome, considering all the progress humanity has made on this front.

[gorgoiler]

Amazon taking down Parler is some dirty business. The fact that we might be ok with that, pragmatically, doesn’t detract from it being, at best, a morally dubious action.

In a state that protects speech, one shouldn’t stand by when default-web-megacorp does the censorship dirty work on our behalf.

Or maybe we do. If this is a once in a generation aberration then it can slide. Time will tell.

[at_a_remove]

"... looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles" is another way of saying "I ate the cherry pie made from the cherry-picking by the cherry-pickers." Buzzfeed is about as even-handed as the Norse god Tyr.

[quickthrowman]

“Buzzfeed News” and “Buzzfeed” are two distinct and separate organizations, with Buzzfeed News being a serious news-gathering organization.

[grahamburger]

The main thing I'm afraid of is that there will be a renewed push to make encryption illegal. Optimistically, I think the actions of these tech companies might help avoid that - if they had done nothing, it would be easier for politicians to demand the ability to take matters in to their own hands.

[gairhgfqiu]

Exactly, they can plan their attacks in a restaurant. But if restaurant owner knows that a group is planning an attack, then owner is held liable.

[d33lio]

I voted for Biden, but I can easily find thousands of examples of "threats" on Twitter coming from far left leaning accounts. Some even from verified accounts. I still love the fact that Twitter banned Anna Kachiyan of the Red Scare podcast, assuming it wasn't a mistake?

Companies bowing to play nice with the state is troubling regardless of your politics.

[charly187]

"looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles" isn't much better than looking at screenshots on facebook.