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It's hard to ignore Twitter and Facebook. They're mega-platforms with many uses beyond politics (business, hobbies, family, etc). Whilst on there for non-polit

It's hard to ignore Twitter and Facebook. They're mega-platforms with many uses beyond politics (business, hobbies, family, etc). Whilst on there for non-political purposes, you can't in practice 'choose to ignore' the political speech you'd prefer to avoid, as it's made everybody an activist with a massive megaphone. Activism is shared and retweeted into your face relentlessly. If Big Tech as a whole has decided to wage war on 'red team' ideas (or other competing ideas, such as Unity 2020, banned from Twitter), there's a risk that they could transform a bad 2-party political system into a single-party monopoly, where the voters have no power at all. Things weren't good when old media (TV/newspapers) had all the power+influence. But at least there was some sort of balance. And if a new newspaper appeared, it couldn't be shut down entirely in <24hrs by the competition.

bilbo0s 6y ago
And if a new newspaper appeared, it couldn't be shut down entirely in <24hrs by the competition. It could if it had used printing presses owned by the competition. I'm assuming these old newspapers used either their own printing presses, or presses owned by independent printing shops. They used a little common sense and concluded that using printing presses owned by the NY Times was probably not a good long term strategy for a newspaper that wanted to compete against the NY Times. All I'm saying is, use your own printing presses, and you can't be shutdown. Run your own website, on your own server and no one will kick you off their servers. Nothing's really changed here, so I don't see a free speech issue.
- bluescrn 6y ago
  Buying your own servers is no use if you can't get them connected to the Internet. Next step, build your own Internet?
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    I see your point, and this raises the question of internet being a basic universal right. I think it is and I think the ISPs should be treated as such and thus unable to pick and choose what content we are served so if Parler buys their own servers and connects then they should be fine. I'm against the highest level of the stack so to speak having to be available to everyone such as Twitter, that would be us saying these companies are too critical to our way of life and forcing a private entity to do business with those it doesn't want to, which is not only dangerous but I believe simply not true if we foster the building of others and should be summarily changed or investigated as a new type of monopoly if we find (are finding?) that they are becoming too critical, centralizing is bad. I am also against people not being able to connect their services at the lower level of the stack to then build out their offering on the higher level of the stack though and that's where I think we need to regulate.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    How do you think Amazon connects to the internet? They have their own network, own peering agreements, etc etc etc. They didn't build the internet, they built their own "platform" by building out their own little corner of the internet. You want to be a "platform" like Amazon, but you don't want to build everything necessary for a "platform" to be a platform. That is the crux of the problem. If what you really want is simply free speech, well that's free. If all you really want is a website, well that's pretty cheap too, but maybe not free. But when you start talking about platforms, you have to pay to build the platform you want. Even a soapbox is not free, someone somewhere had to pay for it. You're complaining that building a platform is too expensive the same way someone a hundred years ago may have complained that buying the presses is too expensive. It makes no sense. If you want to print your own paper, you need the presses.
andrewprock 6y ago
On the contrary, it's quite easy to ignore Twitter and Facebook. I do it all day, every day, and it takes zero effort.

bilbo0s 6y ago

And if a new newspaper appeared, it couldn't be shut down entirely in <24hrs by the competition. It could if it had used printing presses owned by the competition. I'm assuming these old newspapers used either their own printing presses, or presses owned by independent printing shops. They used a little common sense and concluded that using printing presses owned by the NY Times was probably not a good long term strategy for a newspaper that wanted to compete against the NY Times. All I'm saying is, use your own printing presses, and you can't be shutdown. Run your own website, on your own server and no one will kick you off their servers. Nothing's really changed here, so I don't see a free speech issue.

bluescrn 6y ago
Buying your own servers is no use if you can't get them connected to the Internet. Next step, build your own Internet?
- Grimm1 6y ago
  I see your point, and this raises the question of internet being a basic universal right. I think it is and I think the ISPs should be treated as such and thus unable to pick and choose what content we are served so if Parler buys their own servers and connects then they should be fine. I'm against the highest level of the stack so to speak having to be available to everyone such as Twitter, that would be us saying these companies are too critical to our way of life and forcing a private entity to do business with those it doesn't want to, which is not only dangerous but I believe simply not true if we foster the building of others and should be summarily changed or investigated as a new type of monopoly if we find (are finding?) that they are becoming too critical, centralizing is bad. I am also against people not being able to connect their services at the lower level of the stack to then build out their offering on the higher level of the stack though and that's where I think we need to regulate.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  How do you think Amazon connects to the internet? They have their own network, own peering agreements, etc etc etc. They didn't build the internet, they built their own "platform" by building out their own little corner of the internet. You want to be a "platform" like Amazon, but you don't want to build everything necessary for a "platform" to be a platform. That is the crux of the problem. If what you really want is simply free speech, well that's free. If all you really want is a website, well that's pretty cheap too, but maybe not free. But when you start talking about platforms, you have to pay to build the platform you want. Even a soapbox is not free, someone somewhere had to pay for it. You're complaining that building a platform is too expensive the same way someone a hundred years ago may have complained that buying the presses is too expensive. It makes no sense. If you want to print your own paper, you need the presses.

andrewprock 6y ago

On the contrary, it's quite easy to ignore Twitter and Facebook. I do it all day, every day, and it takes zero effort.