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The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the

The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders. I'm not worried about some moustache-twirling plot where tech companies effectively become the illuminati. I'm only slightly worried about politicians using the threat of regulation (e.g. revoking Section 230) to leverage companies into prohibiting things they don't like, or content favorable to opponents. I don't think many politicians would do this - the risk that this manipulation gets discovered and publicized is probably too great. What I'm most worried about is good-intentioned censorship that further divides and alienates large sections of our society. These bans play directly into the narrative that leftist tech companies are excluding and pushing out conservative voices, and it's having the opposite effect of what is intended. For instance, suppressing allegations of fraud is likely having the opposite effect: it's triggering a reaction along the lines of, "well clearly there's something afoot, otherwise why would these companies be deliberately shutting down talk of fraud?". Who here has ever held a view and was banned from a forum, or told to stop by the forum's authorities, (electronic or otherwise) for that view? Did it make you change said view, or did it make you even more entrenched and suspicious of the authority that issued the ban? That's what I'm most worried about: companies ostracizing certain groups or topics with the intention of curbing extremism, but to the effect of fostering ever greater extremism.

kitkat_new 6y ago
nice try blaming the lefties
- manfredo 6y ago
  I don't really blame the companies doing the bans. In fact, if I were in their position I'd probably do the same thing. The pressure to do something would probably outweigh my suspicions that the bans are ultimately counterproductive. If I were to place blame on something, it'd have to be the increasing conflation of hosting content with approving or agreeing with said content. E.G. Facebook gets decried as a conservative echo chamber by left leaning people who point at right wing content they find offensive or extreme. And then it gets decried as a leftist echo chamber by right leaning people who see left wing content on the platform they find extreme and objectionable. In reality people should see that Facebook is a platform, and the content on Facebook is made up of individual people's views. It's a mirror of society. If we see something we don't like we should talk to the people we see in the mirror, not ask the mirror to hide them.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN, and please don't use this site for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do those things, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. The idea here is thoughtful conversation on topics of intellectual curiosity. Please stick to that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
    > regardless of which ideology they're for or against I can't see the post you're replying to but the post it's replying to is insinuating that half the US electorate is seditious. Propagandized beyond belief. It's almost funny.
brayhite 6y ago
I don’t think the goal of banning these folks is to change the banned person’s mind. It’s to slow down the spread of the banned person’s rhetoric. To your suggestion that folks who witness the ban take place suspecting “there’s something afoot”, while that could be right, I’d bet that’s a much smaller number than the number of folks who would’ve otherwise seen the rhetoric and came around to agreeing with it, if not reinforcing their own.
- manfredo 6y ago
  I agree that the goal is to curb the spread of such views, not so much to change the minds of those who already harbor them. But I still think it's having the opposite effect. The streisand effect is real and likely playing out here. Thanks to this ban, a lot of people are wondering if the claims of electoral fraud were actually disproven or if evidence of legitimate fraud was suppressed. The bans make it very easy to appeal to uncertainty: you can't find evidence of fraud not because fraud didn't happen but because the evidence of fraud was purged.
  - pindab0ter 6y ago
    How does the ‘purging’ of a social media platform equate to purging evidence of fraud? If there is evidence of fraud this may be shared but would not solely exist on a social media platform. Unless fraudeurs would openly discuss these matters, of course.
    - manfredo 6y ago
      Dropping Parler is part of a broader trend of eliminating content claiming electoral fraud: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/youtube-says-it-will-suspend-channels-claiming-widespread-voter-fraud.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/youtube-says-it-will-suspend...
- igetspam 6y ago
  I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal for those companies is to not lose business over this. This is the free market at its best. Market pressure has made the math pretty simple: if N customers won't do business with my company because we do business with Abhorrent Co and the potential revenue loss from losing those N companies is greater than the revenue I generate from Abhorrent Co, then drop Abhorrent Co. If any of those companies felt the ethical/moral value of Parler was more valuable than the lost revenue, they wouldn't drop them. Obviously that's not the case. The moral here is pretty simple: don't be a Nazi.
dredmorbius 6y ago
If sedition and insurrection are being planned, advocated, and organised on your site and you continuously claim it's no big deal, you might find yourself with legal and national security concerns and pressures, and not merely business partner TOU/AUP prroblems.
- loudtieblahblah 6y ago
  Major tech companies don't have a problem when their platforms are used to organize the burning of cities, the take over of police precincts
voisin 6y ago
I think at least some of the discomfort you (and I) are feeling with this is due to the fact that these private companies made exceptions to their terms of use for so long, that now that they suddenly enforce them, it feels capricious. They should have banned Trump for violating their terms years ago, but they gave him a pass and now they’ve revoked that pass. As long as there are unambiguous rules that are evenly enforced regardless of what political position you happen to hold, I have no problem with it.
jhanschoo 6y ago
> The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders. Historically, for a forum with nationwide reach, you were nevertheless reliant on periodicals and newspapers and their editors, or running your own publishing. If there was a will, there's still a way: sites like The Pirate Bay, Library Genesis, and WikiLeaks still find a way to stay up; and they definitely run their own servers though of course there's more that's needed. That kind of effort is what one must be prepared for. It can likely find friendly vendors if willing to look beyond US companies.
- winston_smith 6y ago
  Wikileaks is a pretty grim example to include in that list.
athriren 6y ago
nazis should not have platforms and private enterprise is well within its rights to decide that this time they will side against the fascists instead of making the completion of the holocaust more efficient, like they did last time. i understand the form of this argument, but parler was literally a place where the primary purpose was to discuss how to rid america of people like me. i don’t know why my existence is up for negotiation in society. whatever parler’s initial intent it became primarily a place for disaffected right wing radicalization up to and including advocating the eradication of my family from the earth.
andreskytt 6y ago
What exactly prevents them from setting up their own servers in a cold room somewhere?
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. Parler's app was pulled from apple, google, and their hosting at AWS got pulled. Under the 'reasoning' that people are violating rules on their platform. That doesnt really make sense. Whereas if you look at it from a 'big tech censorship' point of view. That's what's happening. Very clear that's what's happening. Even wikipedia has banned conservatives. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama Could you show me where on that wiki page they show any of his scandals? Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, Fast and Furious, Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server, Obamagate, etc? Kind of interesting how Obama's wiki page doesnt list ANY of his scandals. Whereas trump's page was clearly not written by any republican.

kitkat_new 6y ago

nice try blaming the lefties

manfredo 6y ago
I don't really blame the companies doing the bans. In fact, if I were in their position I'd probably do the same thing. The pressure to do something would probably outweigh my suspicions that the bans are ultimately counterproductive. If I were to place blame on something, it'd have to be the increasing conflation of hosting content with approving or agreeing with said content. E.G. Facebook gets decried as a conservative echo chamber by left leaning people who point at right wing content they find offensive or extreme. And then it gets decried as a leftist echo chamber by right leaning people who see left wing content on the platform they find extreme and objectionable. In reality people should see that Facebook is a platform, and the content on Facebook is made up of individual people's views. It's a mirror of society. If we see something we don't like we should talk to the people we see in the mirror, not ask the mirror to hide them.
dang 6y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN, and please don't use this site for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do those things, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. The idea here is thoughtful conversation on topics of intellectual curiosity. Please stick to that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  > regardless of which ideology they're for or against I can't see the post you're replying to but the post it's replying to is insinuating that half the US electorate is seditious. Propagandized beyond belief. It's almost funny.

brayhite 6y ago

I don’t think the goal of banning these folks is to change the banned person’s mind. It’s to slow down the spread of the banned person’s rhetoric. To your suggestion that folks who witness the ban take place suspecting “there’s something afoot”, while that could be right, I’d bet that’s a much smaller number than the number of folks who would’ve otherwise seen the rhetoric and came around to agreeing with it, if not reinforcing their own.

manfredo 6y ago
I agree that the goal is to curb the spread of such views, not so much to change the minds of those who already harbor them. But I still think it's having the opposite effect. The streisand effect is real and likely playing out here. Thanks to this ban, a lot of people are wondering if the claims of electoral fraud were actually disproven or if evidence of legitimate fraud was suppressed. The bans make it very easy to appeal to uncertainty: you can't find evidence of fraud not because fraud didn't happen but because the evidence of fraud was purged.
- pindab0ter 6y ago
  How does the ‘purging’ of a social media platform equate to purging evidence of fraud? If there is evidence of fraud this may be shared but would not solely exist on a social media platform. Unless fraudeurs would openly discuss these matters, of course.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Dropping Parler is part of a broader trend of eliminating content claiming electoral fraud: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/youtube-says-it-will-suspend-channels-claiming-widespread-voter-fraud.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/youtube-says-it-will-suspend...
igetspam 6y ago
I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal for those companies is to not lose business over this. This is the free market at its best. Market pressure has made the math pretty simple: if N customers won't do business with my company because we do business with Abhorrent Co and the potential revenue loss from losing those N companies is greater than the revenue I generate from Abhorrent Co, then drop Abhorrent Co. If any of those companies felt the ethical/moral value of Parler was more valuable than the lost revenue, they wouldn't drop them. Obviously that's not the case. The moral here is pretty simple: don't be a Nazi.

dredmorbius 6y ago

If sedition and insurrection are being planned, advocated, and organised on your site and you continuously claim it's no big deal, you might find yourself with legal and national security concerns and pressures, and not merely business partner TOU/AUP prroblems.

loudtieblahblah 6y ago
Major tech companies don't have a problem when their platforms are used to organize the burning of cities, the take over of police precincts

voisin 6y ago

I think at least some of the discomfort you (and I) are feeling with this is due to the fact that these private companies made exceptions to their terms of use for so long, that now that they suddenly enforce them, it feels capricious. They should have banned Trump for violating their terms years ago, but they gave him a pass and now they’ve revoked that pass. As long as there are unambiguous rules that are evenly enforced regardless of what political position you happen to hold, I have no problem with it.

jhanschoo 6y ago

> The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. I never used Parler, and I really don't care about the fact that it's gone. But the way that a handful of private companies effectively decides who gets to reach an audience and who doesn't is deeply troubling. We're increasingly becoming a world where what is and isn't allowed in the public sphere is controlled by a handful of corporate leaders. Historically, for a forum with nationwide reach, you were nevertheless reliant on periodicals and newspapers and their editors, or running your own publishing. If there was a will, there's still a way: sites like The Pirate Bay, Library Genesis, and WikiLeaks still find a way to stay up; and they definitely run their own servers though of course there's more that's needed. That kind of effort is what one must be prepared for. It can likely find friendly vendors if willing to look beyond US companies.

winston_smith 6y ago
Wikileaks is a pretty grim example to include in that list.

athriren 6y ago

nazis should not have platforms and private enterprise is well within its rights to decide that this time they will side against the fascists instead of making the completion of the holocaust more efficient, like they did last time. i understand the form of this argument, but parler was literally a place where the primary purpose was to discuss how to rid america of people like me. i don’t know why my existence is up for negotiation in society. whatever parler’s initial intent it became primarily a place for disaffected right wing radicalization up to and including advocating the eradication of my family from the earth.

andreskytt 6y ago

What exactly prevents them from setting up their own servers in a cold room somewhere?

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

>The way this forum was purged from the internet is making me uncomfortable. Parler's app was pulled from apple, google, and their hosting at AWS got pulled. Under the 'reasoning' that people are violating rules on their platform. That doesnt really make sense. Whereas if you look at it from a 'big tech censorship' point of view. That's what's happening. Very clear that's what's happening. Even wikipedia has banned conservatives. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama Could you show me where on that wiki page they show any of his scandals? Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, Fast and Furious, Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server, Obamagate, etc? Kind of interesting how Obama's wiki page doesnt list ANY of his scandals. Whereas trump's page was clearly not written by any republican.