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If people on an app continually call for violence and violate your TOS you can boot them off. Especially if the app in question has no good faith moderation of
by pcmoney 6y ago
If people on an app continually call for violence and violate your TOS you can boot them off. Especially if the app in question has no good faith moderation of content to meet your terms of service and their terms of service are either lacking or wink wink levels of enforcement.
You can have ANY political perspective you want! Lower taxes, raise taxes, immigration policy, school choice, charter schools WHATEVER! You just can’t have hate speech against protected classes or call for violence. If you have an issues with the protected classes then VOTE!!! Also debate on what should and shouldn’t be a protected class is also OK!
These companies exist to make money. They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. Aiding and abetting political violence is a sure fire way to hurt shareholder value. The market has judged that “pro violence” speech is to be de-monetized.
- MattGaiser 6y agoI suspect they could even have the hate speech against protected classes. Voat survived. 4chan survives. Numerous hateful websites survive. The KKK has websites. Parler was no better a week ago. These sites all get eliminated when they are tied to a violent attack.
- 015UUZn8aEvW 6y agoHow many violent attacks have resulted from activity on Facebook?
- woofcat 6y agoYeah, and 4Chan has about half a dozen mass killings to their name.
- joe_the_user 6y agoViolent attacks on seats of government do tend to get attention and extra sanctions, I think we can admit that.
- kart23 6y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 There have been tons of instances of mob killings incited on Facebook in other countries.
- shuckles 6y agoSeems like Facebook should play a bigger role in preventing that than it does.
- megous 6y agoProbably many. Especially in countries where organized lynching is still a thing. You can certainly find reports of people proudly sharing the videos of doing the lynching on social media. So I don't see why it wouldn't be organized via social media too.
- easterncalculus 6y agoI think the argument being made here is that Parler doesn't care as much as Facebook about bad things happening.
- samatman 6y agoOr uh, ahem, y'know, Twitter. How quickly we forget the Arab Spring.
- wbsun 6y agoAgreed. The bottom line is very clear: do not (directly) cause violent attack. The society is already bearing with them, they may even be able to indirectly cause violent attacks. You can't expect everyone to love everyone. But violence is the red line.
- curlyQueue 6y agoHow do you link (legally) hate speech (protected by constitution) -> “direct” violence -> individuals -> charges? Haven’t seen evidence of that in any of these cases, by companies, MSM, legal parties, or honest people—- especially when looking at riots earlier in the year.
- cl0ckt0wer 6y agoVoat didn't survive. 4chan is born again compared to its beginnings.
- pcmoney 6y agoYes hopefully this is people trying to do the “right” thing in the face of a tragedy (whether you think it is the right thing or not) However, even from a cynical pragmatist view the attack causes previously high engagement “viral” content that stirred controversy/discussion and most importantly ad views/clicks into something that advertisers will most likely refuse to allow their ads to be displayed alongside. It essentially shifted from financial asset to liability and so the companies dumped it...
- sgillen 6y agoMaybe just no hate speech in general? I'm not totally clear what a protected class means in this context. Like what would hate speech towards a non protected class look like? Edit: Thanks for correcting my ignorance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SteveNuts 6y agoIn the US, protected classes are well defined in law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
- sjtgraham 6y agoThe market didn't decide anything, it's not like any stock prices are reacting to this speech being allowed by these corporations or not. These decisions are made by a handful of unaccountable, anonymous people in closed rooms, hiding by the institutions they work for.
- aaomidi 6y agoYeah by the fact that the free market created these platforms and gave them power. Us on the left have been fucking telling everyone for years that these companies are dangerous but everyone else embraced them. These companies yanked the plug on many leftist communities and dozens of social media networks for sex workers. To this day VISA and Mastercard don't allow payments to come in if the website is mainly sex related. Where the hell was the outrage then? We begged people to support us and tell these companies to back off but no one did. The inaction of everyone has lead to this. Welcome to how "free market capitalism" actually just means dozens of small unaccountable governments with more power than hundreds of countries combined. You asked for this. Take it.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoMy only quibble with this is that “the left” is a bit broad — SESTA/FOSTA was bipartisan legislation unfortunately spearheaded by my Democratic representative, Carolyn Maloney. Other than that, this is spot on. Conservatives have been happy to tell everyone to let the free market decide, only to cry foul when the market makes a decision they don’t like. Turns out you can’t have it both ways.
- 18pfsmt 6y agoAs a big proponent of the free market, I think the problem stems from "sometimes free market." Also, it seems that these moves by tech companies are acting in unison (Apple, Google, Amazon) to the satisfaction of one political party (that just happens to have won 2 branches of the federal government).
- 6y ago
- o_p 6y ago>The market has judged that “pro violence” speech is to be de-monetized. No is just the rich elites who fear getting the rope (which they know its deserved) Liberal vs conservative is just divide and conquer
- mshanowitz 6y agoIt just happened to be that Google, Apple and Amazon all banned Parler within hours of each other, shortly after all the big social media companies banned President Trump, thus boosting Parler as an alternative social media platform. This is not about fiduciary duty, nor is it about legal liability, this is a Silicon Valley hivemind moving in unison, arguably as a result of unhealthy discourse on their own social medias.
- throwitaway1235 6y agoThe market has not judged "pro-violence" speech to be demonetized. Platforms sanction calls to violent riots from Black Lives Matter and Antifa. So this is all fully based on the political feelings of the platform. Edit "Platforms also sanction the use of violence by nation states".
- greatgirl 6y agoThat is the market deciding. Twitter's market is liberals and leftists, so twitter changes the platform based on their demand. If you don't like this, then you don't like free markets.
- throwitaway1235 6y agoI don't particularly like free markets but I have a very specific qualification for Twitter. If an American platform hosts public officials who use that platform for political purposes, then it should follow that all American citizens should have access to engage, comment and react. Public officials relying on private platforms for public policy purposes, fundraising etc seems absurd and grotesquely undemocratic.
- pcmoney 6y agoTwitter’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value like good capitalists without breaking laws. It isn’t breaking laws. It is making a bet that kicking of certain people will help the platform in the long run (same bet that AWS, Google etc are making) If your views are so fringe that the majority of the tech co’s are telling you to GTFO well then society as a majority is voting against you getting a bullhorn. Otherwise they would be worried about a boycott by users/advertisers. If you think the giants have misjudged then I am sure you could find funding for a competing site and infrastructure. Free market capitalism is about allocation of capital in a democratic society not about deciding what the rules of that should be that is the govts job. Please vote! Strongly agree on public officials using private platforms for policy, but they must have seen something attractive about it. Free people and whatnot...
- 6y ago
- hobby-coder-guy 6y ago“Hate speech against protected classes” Do you not see a problem here?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoI'm amazed that this is so difficult to understand especially on a site like this.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoIt's because people on this site are largely sympathetic to the views espoused on Parler. If this were something else, we would hear them railing about "property rights".
- MattGaiser 6y agoA lot of it hinges on judgement. What is a "good faith moderation" effort? That ambiguity would make many uncomfortable. It is very hard to write a clear set of rules about where the line is.
- wang_li 6y ago>You just can’t have hate speech against protected classes "hate" speech is fully protected by the US constitution. Though I have to ask where you got the idea that in a world where it's ok to ban hate speech the powers that be somehow decided to only ban it in the case of protected classes? What a strange morality.
- shuckles 6y agoThe Constitution does not impel corporations to provide a platform for hate speech. It is mostly about limits to government powers or rights of citizens vis-à-vis their government.
- 18pfsmt 6y agoAs a free market fundamentalist that usually gets massive pushback, I'm having trouble believing that most people making this argument normally promote free markets. It certainly seems politically slanted in a single direction. Either way, I hope more people join the Fediverse and get away from these walled-gardens.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> I'm having trouble believing that most people making this argument normally promote free markets I’m a staunch free marketer and First Amendment advocate. I think this is a freedom of assembly issue. Amazon should not be forced to assemble with these customers. If anything, this same group has fought for a more extreme version of this freedom through its don’t-sell-cakes-to-gays schtick. (To be clear, I support e.g. the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to speech. They say awful things. But they have the right to. If they started organising murders or lootings of gay-owned businesses, on the other hand, I would not consider their actions protected.)
- shuckles 6y agoI think an argument like this is consistent with free (i.e. few rules) markets. Isn't it the same argument as saying businesses should be allowed to refuse customers based on, say, sexual orientation? People may not agree with that and would want government to require businesses to serve some customers and, in this case, not others. However, I tend to think business and customer relationships should be voluntary as much as possible.
- kristofferR 6y agoYour whole second paragraph is incorrect, people posting that on Parley had their forum shut down. 99.99% of Parler is benign (often conservative) content, yet they are being shut out for having some of the wrong people around them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- asdf333 6y agoyou should read the amazon letter. basically most of their reports of this violence inciting stuff were ignored and stuff wasn’t taken down.
- kristofferR 6y agoThat doesn't matter though in the context of what I said above though, what someone else may post on HN or their moderation policies shouldn't impact my content or my access to it.
- pcmoney 6y agoAmazon is a private company and can do whatever it wants. It could ban apps that don’t use the oxford comma in written communication just for giggles. Parler repeatedly refused to take down TOS violating speech. As far as 99% vs 1%, well persecuting the majority for the actions of a minority is very “patriotic” and an american tradition just ask a muslim ;)
- pbourke 6y ago> The market has judged that “pro violence” speech is to be de-monetized. “The market” seems to reach this conclusion en masse immediately after it’s clear that the political and regulatory winds have changed. I don’t know much about Parler, and for the record am about as opposed to Donald Trump and his supporters as one can be. I view these moves by tech companies quite cynically.
- pcmoney 6y agoThey exist to maximize shareholder value within the bounds of the rules of law. I think you are right, content that was controversial and highly engaging/debated became a massive liability. When an asset becomes toxic you dump it.