I was more sympathetic towards Parler until I saw a screenshot of a post calling journalists "soft targets" that are "fair game" and to be "stopped by any means necessary."
My understanding is that in Parler, posts are moderated by a jury of five peers. But if that jury is just as extreme as the poster advocating murdering journalists, what then?
Section 230 doesn't provide a safe harbor for criminal speech like advocating or planning violence. There has to be a second moderation channel to keep that from happening, or Parler should be liable as an accessory for violent crimes planned in the open on its platform.
I'd wash my hands of them if they're that negligent.
Was that screenshot legit or fake news? I don’t believe anything these days. If it’s legit, was the post taken down. That kind of text sounds actually illegal and against the Parler TOS
Also a screenshot doesn't mean anything. I am sure you can take millions of screenshots of people saying bad things on facebook. It doesn't mean that the platform is not moderated, just that the moderation didn't catch those specific examples. If we apply that standard, twitter and facebook must be closed immediately, no remedy.
You should check r/ParlerWatch, plenty of screenshots without account names blurred so you can go verify yourself that the DC Capitol raid was planned months in advance and violence was in the plan. They're currently planning a round 2 and 3 for the 17th and the inauguration. From what I've seen it's not being removed. Most posts are not from unknown low follower accounts.
I don’t get how you can cry for free speech and ban anyone on the app who doesn’t follow the party line. There is no arguing or debating with these people.
I got banned from the Donald subreddit for saying the aclu does a lot of good things. It wasn’t spam. It wasn’t even controversial.
Congrats, you've discovered doublethink. As someone who values rationality, it truly is maddening to witness. But extremists don't use words like we use words.
Doublethink is more common with extremists regardless of bent, but what we are seeing is doublethink and eager consumption of propaganda, along with gaslighting the other side and accusing them of exactly the same. It is toxic and wears you down.
Banning people who are calling for blowing up the capitol and hanging various politicians from the walls of the capitol building is not banning free speech, it's banning threats and treason. There's a huge difference. No one is banning a person for cursing a politician, they're banning threats of bodily harm of journalists, public figures, etc. Parler needs to moderate that garbage and they aren't. AWS shouldn't have to host that stuff in the name of free speech.
I got banned there in 2016 when someone said the left was being hypocritical for criticizing Trump’s call to make flag burning illegal but ignoring that Clinton had authored a bill to criminalize flag burning when she was a Senator.
My offense? I looked up the bill, which did indeed criminalize some flag burning and was indeed authored by her, and posted that in a comment there, along with the official bill summary and a link to the full bill.
I got banned from /r/conservative for agreeing with Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush on some issues, favoring a market based approach over regulation. I did not point explicitly mention Reagan or Bush, and the moderators nailed me for these far left opinions!
Perhaps OP means that the term itself is confusing and emotionally laden. It was popularized by liars baselessly accusing the mainstream media that their stories were made up.
Does "fake news" refer to news stories that are complete made up? Contain mistakes? Or that are true but that you simply don't like?
Or does "fake news" refer to the act of baselessly accusing a reasonably researched story that in fact is probably accurate?
One of Trump's greatest successes has been to co-opt the term away from it's first popularized meaning: fabricated articles created (e.g. by a teenager in Macedonia) for the primary purpose of capturing views and add clicks.
Any institution small or large is capable of fake news or lying by omission. Many of the large institutions are at the will of their corporate sponsors or the political leaning of their consumers/subscribers. The bottom line is all that matters.
Actually I know I do when I say it. Mainstream news is fine if you avoid the opinion stuff. Just approach it looking for details and facts and weed out the opinion. Trump ruined "fake news" as a descriptor by claiming that all news other than news which supports him was "fake news"
Sorry, there is always fake news in the world until we have a journalism uprising and awakening.
I meant that it was exceptionally rare to call anything fake news until some evidence was provided. That trust in journalism has been systematically eroded by President Trump and his party.
Rather than calling something fake news, you could sign up for a parker account yourself and have a browser of the content present there to make your own opinion. Calling something fake news is the equivalent of acusing everyone who disagrees with you an alt right scum.
I did not call it fake news. I asked if what you saw was legit or fake news. I was expecting your answer would be “yes I looked into it” or “no I’m not sure”
I’ve just seen so many online lies I don’t trust anything any more. I am not accusing you of anything.
I don’t disagree with your above claim of people trying to get a rise out of others with inflammatory speech online. I have seen it too but... it sounds like the rest of your argument is very politically motivated (and anecdotal).
Parler does have the TOS that you speak of, but the Parler CEO also says that Parler is “just a neutral town square that just adheres to the law” and leaves moderation to volunteers and takes no responsibility for what’s posted.
> My understanding is that in Parler, posts are moderated by a jury of five peers. But if that jury is just as extreme as the poster advocating murdering journalists, what then?
We’ve entered new territory. When you look at analogues to this situation, Islamic radicals, mass shooters in America being mostly white men, both of the broader groups (Muslims, white Americans) can easily say those fringe actors are the 0.000001%. Even those that might support the fringe actors in the broader group would still only represent a small percentage.
The rioters in this case, if they are the fringe of the broader Republican base, visually looked significant. This is nothing like ‘oh, yeah that’s just one crazy nut’. In the broader group, the percentage that sympathizes with this fringe is high, with the most official accounting of this number being the actual 75 million Americans that voted for Trump.
The one thing that I’ve noticed on the HN convos is that space is being made for parler and those that use it, unintentionally.
It seems that not many people have been to parler, and very few links to screen shots or other evidence is available.
Unfortunately - and this really is just what usually happens - the noble arguments for free speech get converted into a shield to add respectability to parler and hate speech.
And if the trend continues, more political or even subversive content starts appearing in the sub, at just the angle to take advantage of the blind spots of forum goers.
It’s happening here, I’m seeming that dumb path finding algo for indoctrination playing out over the past three threads.
I had a conversation with a friend about this, I asked him what Parler is like and on a scale of 1-10 how extreme it was. He said it depended and that there was some perfectly normal content but that the number of clicks to get to a more radical place and thus start to see the extreme side and potentially be radicalized was much shorter than say Reddit. His supporting evidence that one of the first suggested places to follow you see when you signup is the OANN.
I'm not personally comfortable with the easy bake radicalizing from that so to speak and is what pushed me over the edge in being okay with the ban. We wouldn't tolerate a place where it was easy to breed other types of extremism why is this any different was my thought.
> Parler actively removes people who bring in the “liberal” point of view.
Isn’t this what is happening to conservative voices? Further do you have evidence of this?
Do you know there’s gaming and other non political content on Parler? It was born out of politics so the majority of content is still focused around it.
Why don’t you see it for yourself instead of letting your imagination run wild?
I have been on Parler, briefly to validate all the claims of constant, unabated, hate speech and found nothing of the sort. Will I continue to use it? Unlikely, but I don’t use social media. I wouldn’t call it hotbed of right wing extremists though.
So sounds exactly like Twitter then ? I feel that most of HN has never visited the fringe ultra-liberal anarchist side of Twitter. Of-course the stuff they say never comes in the news 24x7.
Basically, a lot of folks are asking: Why are we censored, when they aren't ? Why the extraordinary double standards? When someone talks about peaceful protesting and is banned for incitement for violence, why is someone calling for explicit murder allowed on Twitter (with accompanying graphical images).
How many of the people attending the protest actually entered or attempted to enter the Capitol building? Out of those that did how many were actively seeking to cause trouble and how many were just following the crowd and looking around? If you look at the facts for yourself and don’t rely on other people’s opinions you’ll see more clearly.
You can see the “violent few” drag and beat an officer to death. You can see and hear the surrounding mob cheer themselves on. So how many people need to witness a murder in progress before doing anything about it?
This isn’t an election or popularity contest; 18% of Republicans in favor of armed insurrection and coup is quite significant, ranging into the millions of people.
At this point I have to ask, what compromise do you suggest be made to these people? How do you compromise with people that were shouting "Hang Mike Pence" in front of some home-made gallows?
A compromise would have been performing a transparent audit in the disputed states, especially in counties where the counting stopped and resumed in the middle of the night.
You know, actually listen to and address their complaints instead of just saying 'you're a crazy conspiracy nut.'
There’s nothing to “audit?” They stopped and then resumed the next morning.
Believe it or not the elections law wasn’t created in October 2020; they’re a well-regulated and secure process. As evinced by no one being able to present any evidence of widespread fraudulent behavior even in states with GOP legislatures and Secretaries of State.
There's plenty to audit. Does the number of votes match the number of voters? Are there chain of custody records. Are there envelopes for the mailed ballots? Are all the mailed ballots actually registered voters, and were they actually mailed? Furthermore, what mechanism was used to ensure that voters did not double vote by voting both in person and via absentee?
There's been reports of thousands of votes not being counted or added to the transmitted counts in various jurisdictions. That means at least part of the system broke down.
No, that means the people reporting these massive numbers of votes not counted are liars.
There is ample statutory and regulatory provision in every state for processes that confirm every aspect of what you are questioning. It’s as if you know nothing about elections or election systems.
It means that the processes failed, weren't enforced, either willfully or negligently.
If someone is able to report the wrong number of total votes, it means all the controls in the process weren't followed or simply doesn't work. The burden of proof is on the people holding the election to prove it's valid. So far, 'certifying' results is a rubber stamp, there's no actual certification being done.
> A compromise would have been performing a transparent audit in the disputed states, especially in counties where the counting stopped and resumed in the middle of the night.
But it looks like this did happen? One example[1].
> You know, actually listen to and address their complaints instead of just saying 'you're a crazy conspiracy nut.'
There were attempts to address their complaints. Re ounts and audits took place. Those recounts and audits didn't change the result or uncover any further evidence of fraud. This didn't align with Trump's claims so his base dismissed it as lies. The interesting thing coming out of this is that they're now turning on the rest of the republican party who accept what their own observers are telling them.
I'd also like to point out that this was all happening while Trump was privately pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to 'find' him enough votes to win[2].
Uncovering fraud was never the motivation here, it's a cynical attempt at destroying trust in the election process in order to corrupt the result.
> There were attempts to address their complaints.
The complaints were not heard without first attempting to call to shame an entire group of 75mil people.
And your second source can be read a different way: “find the votes that existed that you shred”, he’s not saying make up the votes, he’s saying find the ones he believes they fraudulently shred. Part of the divide in this country is taking something like this, twisting the words to make a sensational title that’s then thrown at every moderate or conservative. Think about how much this has happened over the last 4 years.
> All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
How can this ever be read as "find the votes that existed that you shred"? Especially considering that he goes on to claim he won by "hundreds of thousands" of votes. Shouldn't he be interested in uncovering that massive fraud, therefore supporting his assertions that it actually happened?
> Part of the divide in this country is taking something like this, twisting the words to make a sensational title that’s then thrown at every moderate or conservative. Think about how much this has happened over the last 4 years.
Come on, Fox News has been doing this since the 90s. They literally posted an article suggesting their base drive their trucks into protestors[1].
> Here’s a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the way by cars and trucks,” wrote the article’s author. “Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years.
Those poor, innocent, conservatives being attacked by the thugs in the mainstream liberal media.
Note that Fox and Trump have pushed these people so far that even Fox has lost control of them, and are now branded "traitors" for anything other than tacit support of their worst behaviour. They were literally calling to hang their own Vice President just last week.
> How can this ever be read as "find the votes that existed that you shred"? Especially considering that he goes on to claim he won by "hundreds of thousands" of votes. Shouldn't he be interested in uncovering that massive fraud, therefore supporting his assertions that it actually happened?
Your unconscious bias against Trump is what is defining your interpretation of that exchange. A person not trying to find something wrong with everything he says will interpret it the way I did. Using your same logic, if he won by hundreds of thousands then why does 11,780 matter enough to commit a felony?
> Come on, Fox News has been doing this since the 90s. They literally posted an article suggesting their base drive their trucks into protestors[1].
And many have moved on from Fox News as a result. But the same can't be said for the left and CNN. Further, your still not tending to the divide, just jumping onto the problem and saying "me too".
> Those poor, innocent, conservatives being attacked by the thugs in the mainstream liberal media.
Great job
> Here’s a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the way by cars and trucks,” wrote the article’s author. “Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years.
Isn't this promoting violence? Why was the author not banned from the world?
> Note that Fox and Trump have pushed these people so far that even Fox has lost control of them, and are now branded "traitors" for anything other than tacit support of their worst behaviour. They were literally calling to hang their own Vice President just last week.
Quit pointing fingers. You want to blame Fox (again with Fox) and ignore the yelling and screaming the left did over the last 4 years. You want to ignore the forced conversions (that have always historically failed). You want to ignore cancel culture. And again, the left wants to take statements and twist them to make some outlandish point. It's only going to divide us more.
> Your unconscious bias against Trump is what is defining your interpretation of that exchange. A person not trying to find something wrong with everything he says will interpret it the way I did.
You made up a quote, putting words in his mouth. I quoted the man directly. Words that he uttered in a call to a Republican Secretary of State, in the middle of an audit of signatures that the Secretary of State had ordered at Trump's request.
> Using your same logic, if he won by hundreds of thousands then why does 11,780 matter enough to commit a felony?
In an amazing coincidence, 11,780 votes just happened to be the number of he needed to win the election. I'm sure you can come up with an explanation of how he just happened to randomly choose that number out of all the other ones.
My assertion is that he did not win at all, certainly not by hundreds of thousands of votes and that he was lying, as evidenced by the fact that he expresses no interest in having those fraudulently discounted votes found and that indeed no evidence whatsoever that he won by hundreds of thousands of votes has been produced.
> And many have moved on from Fox News as a result. But the same can't be said for the left and CNN. Further, your still not tending to the divide, just jumping onto the problem and saying "me too".
They moved on from Fox news to an even more extreme platform in OAN...
> Quit pointing fingers. You want to blame Fox (again with Fox) and ignore the yelling and screaming the left did over the last 4 years.
The left did not cause Trump to reject the results of the election, whip his base into a frenzy and send them to the capitol. Aren't you supposed to be the party of personal responsibility? "You made me do this" also hasn't been considered a very good excuse since domestic abuse went out of fashion in the 60s.
> You want to ignore the forced conversions (that have always historically failed).
I absolutely agree with you that gay conversion therapy is horrendous and should be outlawed.
> You want to ignore cancel culture.
I think there are discussions to be had about cancel culture, but that's not what is being screamed about. Right now Parler is the kid in the sandbox that threw sand in everyone's eyes and then got upset that no one wanted to play with them.
> And again, the left wants to take statements and twist them to make some outlandish point. It's only going to divide us more.
Your lack of introspection is getting absurd at this point. The right made concerted attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't even a US citizen. One of the people attempting to throw doubt on Obama's citizenship was Trump himself. What you're annoyed about is the fact you and your friends are no longer getting away with dog-whistling in an attempt to escaping the consequences of your actions:
When asked to condemn white supremacists Trump instead said:
> "The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the Left…,"
To the rioters who had occupied the capitol after hours of inciteful speech by Trump and his associates:
> "This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace, so go home, we love you, you’re very special."
These rioters had recently been calling for Trump's own Vice President, Mike Pence, to be hanged, they had bludgeoned an officer to death, and a woman had been killed while attempting to reach the members of congress in hiding. I'm sure that woman just wanted a nice chat with Mike Pence, or perhaps AOC. Sadly we'll never know.
We both know this situation wasn't caused by a single direct order, but rather a concerted campaign by Trump and the people around him who have spent months instilling a sense of fear in the minds of those who attended that rally. Fear that "evil democrats" and "the left" are out to "destroy democracy" by subverting the election that he "won".
Then on the day Congress was supposed to confirm the result they organised a rally of the people they'd stirred up and spent hours telling that they needed to "fight". The closest thing to a direct order was Giuliani during that rally:
> “Over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.” Mr Giuliani then suddenly yelled: "Let's have trial by combat!" to lacklustre cheers from the crowd.[1]
Despite the apparently lacklustre response, Trump then went on to direct the mob towards the Capitol where we all know what happened.
> We both know this situation wasn't caused by a single direct order
Well, we don't both know that. What you're offering is an opinion, your interpretation of things amounts to some sort of incitement. My opinion is this is a coordinated overreaction by the media to demonize a public figure. Nothing new about that, and offending someone's sensibilities isn't criminal.
> You made up a quote, putting words in his mouth. I quoted the man directly. Words that he uttered in a call to a Republican Secretary of State, in the middle of an audit of signatures that the Secretary of State had ordered at Trump's request.
What quote? I listened to the same call you posted. So which quote did I make up?
> In an amazing coincidence, 11,780 votes just happened to be the number of he needed to win the election. I'm sure you can come up with an explanation of how he just happened to randomly choose that number out of all the other ones.
OK, but the actual number of votes is irrelevant. It's still a felony requesting any fraud, not an amount over a certain threshold. So the actual number listed doesn't particularly matter, just the interpretation of the statements.
> They moved on from Fox news to an even more extreme platform in OAN...
Don't group the extremists and republicans together. Every single republican I know reads almost every news source. Most sticking to whatever news app is on their phone. So no, not OAN. Any source playing on your emotions for views should be called into question, regardless of which end of the spectrum your on. Both sides do this, the left and the right. But when it's pointed out on the left, nothing is done to stop the sensationalism.
> The left did not cause Trump to reject the results of the election, whip his base into a frenzy and send them to the capitol. Aren't you supposed to be the party of personal responsibility? "You made me do this" also hasn't been considered a very good excuse since domestic abuse went out of fashion in the 60s.
Actually this recently started with the lack of voter ID laws or enforcement, some years ago. This started the mistrust in elections, which is dangerous (and you see why now). If secure voting disenfranchises voters, then lets figure out how not to. Requiring you prove you can vote should be possible for the US given the resources we have.
> I absolutely agree with you that gay conversion therapy is horrendous and should be outlawed.
Sure! But not what I'm talking about. This type of forced conversion is the ones leaving moderates out of the discussion for fear of being canceled by the left. That's the forced conversion I'm talking about, become one of us or find a new life.
> Right now Parler is the kid in the sandbox that threw sand in everyone's eyes and then got upset that no one wanted to play with them.
How so? Have you been on Parler? Do you believe there are not examples of extremism on all platforms? Perhaps the discussion should be around some sort of regulated speech flagging engine so this sort of moderation isn't difficult? They do have a moderation team, and perhaps it's lacking. But in my brief experience with it, it's not the hate bed the left is painting it as.
> Your lack of introspection is getting absurd at this point. The right made concerted attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't even a US citizen. One of the people attempting to throw doubt on Obama's citizenship was Trump himself. What you're annoyed about is the fact you and your friends are no longer getting away with dog-whistling in an attempt to escaping the consequences of your actions:
Where exactly is my introspection lacking? Or what have I failed to introspect about? Are you assuming that I am a republican and applying other assumptions about my beliefs? I don't agree with that violence on Jan 6, and I don't agree that attacking where someone came from is right either. I also don't agree with the BLM / Antifa violence, which just happened again last weekend. If you want to "attack" someone, "attack" them in a formal debate. Stop the underhanded politics. Protest peacefully. Both sides.
The only people being shamed post-election were those lying about the election results. Most of Trump’s voters were not in a position to lie about that.
Trump and his circle of political enablers were, and this is the result. They should be shamed and continue to be shamed until and after legal actions against them are successful.
PS this “75 million” phrasing is utter propaganda, let’s talk about 82 million people rejecting this dangerous president and him continuing to make a case that his re-election is somehow more legitimate than a Biden win.
So you’re doing this right now. The entirety of Trumps voters were lying? Anytime we want voter reform it’s disenfranchisement right? The complaints still have not been heard. If the left keeps this up they will do nothing but push the divide more.
The complaints have been heard and dismissed for lack of evidence dozens of times in courtrooms across the country.
The president and his lawyers making a claim without presenting evidence is not grounds for overturning an election, full stop. They’re the ones who are lying, fomenting insurrection, and deserve to be shamed.
Edit: it seems an awful like parent can’t concede that fraud was not even alleged in the majority of Trump cases, and in nearly every case where it was originally alleged, the Trump team dropped the case.
How about you focus instead on securing the roster and less about widespread fraud. The system is built to be anonymous so finding evidence is not possible. The problem instead is people being on the roster when they shouldn’t. I know of 2 cases of this, one of which was in my immediate. Both instances an individual received a ballot but should not have. One of the individuals was not even a US citizen, yet they were registered to vote. Dems didn’t want voter IDs, don’t want voter reform because of “disenfranchisement”.
That is a secret ballot, not an anonymous ballot. The principle of one person, one vote is maintained by ensuring that each person — not anonymous — can cast one and only one vote, a secret vote, and that persons not eligible to vote — again, not anonymous — can cast none.
It’s interesting that you were adamant about fraud not happening, yet didn’t know the actual argument. Further not knowing our elections are anonymous shows that you’re just arguing a point you don’t know. This is what I meant by the left not listening. The assumption is the right is “uneducated” yet here we are explaining what the real problem is while reeducating you.
I’ll also add that they did this without a good enough reason too.
I know this is going to go against the media narrative about how reprehensible the riot was, and the reverence we must pay to Congress, but for the entirety of 2005-2020, Congress had record low approval ratings.
Last week we just visually saw the reality of storming congress (you may not even know it’s possible in your perceptions until you literally see it).
Well, people just saw it’s possible. Either base can find a lot more reasons to rile themselves up and go down there. So, I really don’t buy that Americans will by and large condemn the act, especially on the Republican side. Those polls are for sure under-tallied, Congress (and now particularly, a Democratic congress) is way too hated by the agitated right-wing, the once war mongering Bush nationalists, to the reimagined tea-party anti-Obama coalition, to the re-imagined anti-authoritarian Trump cohort, to the newly re-imagined ___________ (militant?).
My understanding is that in Parler, posts are moderated by a jury of five peers. But if that jury is just as extreme as the poster advocating murdering journalists, what then?
Section 230 doesn't provide a safe harbor for criminal speech like advocating or planning violence. There has to be a second moderation channel to keep that from happening, or Parler should be liable as an accessory for violent crimes planned in the open on its platform.
I'd wash my hands of them if they're that negligent.