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Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing,

Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any sort) need moderation. Certain people have turned this fact on its head and want you to believe that "completely free speech" and "healthy communities" are compatible because they want to overrun healthy channels with their garbage.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe and serious than anything on Parler
- doggosphere 6y ago
  The actual reason for the war: an informant fed the government bad intel and the state looked the other way because they wanted a reason to invade Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    That is like saying the reason the bank was robbed was because it had so much money in it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strateg... The Bush administration officials who sold those lies to the public were zionist jews who had written this policy paper just 5 years before Bush appointed them into the government.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      PNAC has nothing Jewish about it and you’re a troll
  - drewmol 6y ago
    "the actual reason for the war...because they wanted a reason" Agreed.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). Actually, looking up the numbers right now, the total civilian death rate is perhaps 1 million at most, more likely somewhere in the 100,000s. Iraq Body Count gives ~200k civilian deaths; estimation from the number of internally-displaced peoples (basically figuring that displaced-to-dead ration is between 5:1 and 10:1) suggests a number more like ~700k civilian deaths. Extrapolating excess death counts suggest that the latter number is more accurate.
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    My bad, it's still far more than anyone on Parler is responsible for. Perhaps if you consider the fallout of the Iraq War (rise of ISIS, Syrian Civil War, etc.) you get more but the point is the same
- afavour 6y ago
  I see the parallel you're trying to draw here but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure the US was going to war in Iraq no matter what NYT said, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. The faulty NYT reporting gave the government a certain level of cover to allow them to do what they already planned to do. Parler was a forum for participants to discuss and actively plan sedition. And there's already violence threatened in the days around inauguration so it stands to reason it could have served the same role again.
- betterunix2 6y ago
  The NYT did not make the Iraq war possible. It did not facilitate planning the war. It did not play any role in convincing the Bush administration to go to war. Can we stop with the "whataboutism" already?
  - Reedx 6y ago
    They played a large role in selling the war to the public (manufacturing consent).
    - dontreact 6y ago
      When the state is lying, it is not easy for reporters to find out that they are lying. They printed what was at the time a bipartisan consensus which had formed on the basis of lies. So I guess they were involved, but the journalists in the organization in the time did not have the power or the information to swim against the currents of what was happening. Even if they had shut down their paper, we would have gone to war with Iraq. On the other hand, Parler has purposefully created a space for people to plan violence against the state, and refused requests to be more careful about moderating.
      - IncRnd 6y ago
        > They printed what was at the time a bipartisan consensus which had formed on the basis of lies. And that is why truth by consensus is not a good way for a reporter to report compared to actually investigating somethng beforehand.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        Have you ever seen anyone seriously defend what Judith Miller (et al.) actually did?
  - _pmf_ 6y ago
    Reframing pointing out hypocrisy as "whataboutism" is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.
- andrewmutz 6y ago
  The Iraq war is a great example because it highlights how rare this is. You had to go back 15 years to find an example of the mainstream media misleading people on this scale. It can be true that both: - The NYT deserves a lot of blame for the lead up to the iraq war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War) - Newspapers generally do a really good job of fact checking the articles they print
  - cogman10 6y ago
    There's a really good reason for that. Journalistic standards are a defense in court against lawsuits. The truth is a defense against Libel. But further, even just acting in good faith can be a defense against libel. It's only when you knowingly publish a false statement that you get in legal hot water. This is why Fox news and the like have been doing 180s on voter fraud lies. It's not because they have the best interest of the public at heart, it's because they are trying mitigate liability.
  - andrewclunn 6y ago
    And I supposed Epstein killed himself as well? Much more often the mainstream media simply "memory holes" things it doesn't want you to know about. I mean they certainly tried to get us into war with Syria (anyone remember the "reporter" who sniffed nerve gas?) The lies are blatant and unending, but we all know what side the bread is buttered on for tech start ups, which is why this "news aggregator" is such a laughable joke for anything related to politics.
  - reddog 6y ago
    >You had to go back 15 years to find an example of the mainstream media misleading people on this scale. Have you forgotten 3 years of the MSN saying Trump's presidency was illegitament because he stole the election by coluding with the Russians?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      I missed anyone on MSN(BC) saying his election was illegitimate. There were questions about it, for sure. There was the essentially incontrovertible fact that he won in the EC without winning the popular vote, which is an unfortunate feature of our system. That does lend a certain sense of "illegitimacy" but not in the sense of something illegal having happened, more a sense of "moral legitimacy". A few weeks after his election, the overwhelming majority of progressives accepted that Trump was the officially elected president of the USA. We didn't like it, but we accepted it. The issues regarding Russian interference were not centered on collusion, but on ... well, interference (which some believe went so far as to include actual collusion). Mueller's report and the Senate report did find conclusively that the Russians did interfere, and did so with the goal of getting Trump elected. Mueller said that they did not find evidence of active collaboration between the campaign and the Russians ... here's the current Wikipedia summary: >did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities". Investigators ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved and due to testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined. However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts Again, I recall essentially nobody in any position of power (certainly not elected Senators) saying the Trump's election was illegitimate. People did say that his election was aided by Russian interference (Mueller and the Senate investigation state this clearly), and that it was/is unfortunate to have a president elected without winning the popular vote.
mgkimsal 6y ago
I poked around on it some, and noticed something ... disturbing. I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?). The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants like that), and they all would throw "update your flash player!" malware popups. Next to each of these links on Parler were view counts - 207, 412, 897, etc - of people who'd clicked the link to view the article. I could not reply to the link with a comment like "this has malware" because... my account was not verified. Only 'badged/verified' accounts can comment on 'links'. AND... the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). This becomes incredibly lopsided "free speech" biased against moderating/critical voices. It was literally a field day for bots to post malware garbage and have thousands of victims per day, and no ability for people to warn others. On one 'article' I followed there were comments from people saying "I don't understand how Parler works" in the comments on the linked article. Indeed...
- explorigin 6y ago
  I was also curious about Parler but, when going to sign up, it asked for my phone number. Ummmm, no thank you. That kind of association is like going to a protest with your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.
  - sigotirandolas 6y ago
    I was able to sign up recently with a throwaway e-mail address and made up phone number. But I was also surprised it asked for it.
    - mgkimsal 6y ago
      I 'signed up' on the desktop version, but you can't the 'verify/badge' stuff is only available via the mobile app, AFAICT.
vorpalhex 6y ago
The censorship is for your own protection. Twitter doesn't have a leg to stand on when Iranian leadership has tweets literally calling for the genocide of Israel, or the CCP has tweets using ethnic slurs against Uigher peoples. Yet why is it that lack of censorship is fine and "healthy"? One of the things I do, generally, when there's a call to ban something is to actually go and check it out whether it's a site, a book or a movie. And Parler is overwhelmingly just conservative twitter - and just like actual twitter, it has some nasty and gross content. Yet nobody is suggesting we take twitter offline despite their repeated failures to police their own content.
- gedy 6y ago
  Yeah as a centrist, the double standards we are seeing is what concerns me the most. Instead of all violence and hatred is bad it's "well this is different because they are on our side", that's for "the right reasons", etc to read between the lines.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Twitter did act against a Chinese tweet about Uygurs the other day
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Which one?
    - causalmodels 6y ago
      The one where they were trying spin forced IUDs and sterilizations as a way to promote gender equity and reproductive health[1] [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-down-chinas-baby-making-machines-tweet-on-uighur-women/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-do...
- hackyhacky 6y ago
  Actually, Parler has been use to literally plan an overthrow of the US government. That's why it's banned. So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why they get taken more seriously. Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US. Too often, you can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. This time, we saw it in time. I commend these companies for taking a stand, despite the obvious backlash they'll suffer as a result.
minimuffins 6y ago
A reasonable comment was flagged and killed so I will repost it: > The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). > Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe and serious than anything on Parler The question is a good one. In the hope of avoiding a similar fate, I'll state the original implicit question explicitly: Where on earth does the authority come from, which authorizes Amazon, ostensibly a private corporation, to arbitrate ANYTHING to do with public speech? Beyond just, say, their raw power and the inability of anyone to stop them. It's truly shocking to me that so many people are celebrating this. Not just, "Yeah, it's an overreach but these are weird times," or something like this, but just totally, brain-shut-down, unwilling to think through future implications, etc. This sets a precedent for the very, very small number owners of core tech infrastructure--not just media platforms, but physical server infrastructure!--to decide what we all get to see, and ultimately what's right and wrong (right: endless war, wrong: right-wing insurrection, however inept). Even if you think it was a necessary move (I don't, but surely reasonable people will), if we want to be adults about politics, we have to grapple with it and take these kinds of questions very seriously, not just heap censorship on top of censorship, avoiding the question.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  France and Germany are making this point quite loudly now.
- room271 6y ago
  I agree, but a lot of the arguments made seem to hit the wrong target. The issue is not 'First Amendment' rights (this applies only to government, not private companies), but monopoly, which causes many problems - this being just one. (Although actually I think the specific decisions made here are the right ones.) Now, in practice, it might be more accurate to call these markets oligopolies (certainly cloud infrastructure is more this), but this still leaves a few companies with dramatic power over important parts of society. And monopoly is a problem for the government to solve; these companies aren't 'evil' (any more than most others at least, except in virtue of their size), and the lasting solution is not to try and shame them or call them out here or claim victimhood (as the right has done) - though exercising voice can work as a short term tactic sometimes.
bArray 6y ago
> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened > to have some disgusting content on it. You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter. > And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" > and social media do not mix. As with all free speech, it had legal limits, such as threats of violence. We can argue about how effective the moderation system was in Parler, but I know for a fact that they repeatedly removed material that broke the law.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  > You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter. No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
  - shuntress 6y ago
    I find it comical that the more egalitarian solution[0] to enabling widespread free speech is outright rejected by the typical Parler user with some indistinct shouting about government overreach, regulation, or "competition in the marketplace". [0] mentioned in the article: "I wish they[sic] were interoperable implementations of a protocol, rather than individual silos, but..."
  - bArray 6y ago
    That's just their word - I would want to see the exact reason they were banned. Perhaps they were playing the internet troll game of "see how quickly I can get banned for Twitter points". Some amount of context seems fair surely? Also the Parler system is that you essentially are sandboxed for a short period of time when you first join - if you get tonnes of negative responses you get removed. So the fact they got removed in the first 24 hours makes sense. So: No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous.
- 6y ago
hashbig 6y ago
I remember very well as a middle eastern how ISIS was freely allowed to use Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for recruitment and propaganda in 2015 and none of those platforms did anything about it. Also just today this story was on the front page in HN: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo... So spare us all the "No hate and violence on our platform" BS. Either you go after all hate and violence or you are just a hypocrite.
- Saint_Genet 6y ago
  What kind of world are you trying to advocate with comments like these? Just because you soiled the bed in the past you should just keep doing it?
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    A world where American lives aren't considered more valuable and "hate" and "inciting violence" is taken seriously when the victims aren't just American politicians.
- trsohmers 6y ago
  The US government asked Twitter and other social media sites not to ban certain groups of ISIS twitter accounts until they were able to gain enough information... afterwards Twitter had no problem deleting hundreds of thousands of ISIS/other extremist accounts en mass.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wilsynet 6y ago
  I mostly agree with this, that we should do more about hate and violence. And do it more consistently and transparently. To the best of my knowledge, YouTube tries hard to do this. And Twitter has been trying to do a better job at this. And Facebook hasn't been particularly good about doing this at all. If I am completely wrong about this, someone should set the record straight. Perhaps their position is evolving. I'd be curious to revisit the evolution of this problem 365 days from now and take another checkpoint.
lanevorockz 6y ago
Free Speech is such a disgusting thing we should never allow low IQ people to exist. Is that what you are saying ?
- santoshalper 6y ago
  Yeah man, obviously that is what we are trying to say. You got us, this is just a front for a giant eugenics conspiracy run by Big Tech. Get help.
- DickingAround 6y ago
  One of the tenets of this site is that we ask everyone to assume best intentions from everyone else.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
Who's next? Telegram?
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  Telegram has moderators and has complied with Apple’s demands in the past.
tomcam 6y ago
A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech. Our Supreme Court has already ruled that there's no Constitutional idea of "hate speech". The concept of freedom of speech is here to protect things that other people think are despicable. This whole deplatforming thing will have vast unintended consequences. It will hit people like you, because these movements always eat there own.
- EpicEng 6y ago
  >A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech Sure about that? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=... https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg
- driverdan 6y ago
  Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. A company can ban any speech they want. Plus there is speech that isn't protected, like certain violent threats, which is the biggest problem with Parler.
  - macinjosh 6y ago
    > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. Where did the parent comment mention the government? They referenced the concept of free speech. That is not the same thing as the first amendment which is what you are referring to.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources Of course it does! That’s like saying ethics don’t apply to corporations. If you meant the first amendment you would be correct but free speech is a long standing liberal ideal and is absolutely not the same thing nor is it what is being discussed in this context.
danmaz74 6y ago
In the early noughties I really believed that free speech online would work with just a very light moderation. We tried that approach with a rather small online community for an Italian political party where already all participants had pretty similar ideas. What I learned the hard way (as hard as having light PSTD) in the course of 3 years is that just doesn't work. You only need a handful of motivated people who won't stop at anything to push their agenda and narrative to create an extremely toxic environment which only favors the best liars and the most unprincipled people.
- r00fus 6y ago
  So to actually use the massive information and connection we get through the Internet, moderation is key. It's really a cultivation effort - otherwise your "idea garden" will be overrun with weeds and pests.
CivBase 6y ago
To be fair, any social media platform built on the idea of protecting free speech will be the only platform on which "disgusting content" can be posted. That means it will inherently have a disproportionately large amount of "disgusting content". And that's before considering the insane uphill battle any social media platform has to fight to become as popular as the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc - assuming the presence of "disgusting content" does not limit its ability to ever scale that much to begin with. Btw, I'm using the phrase "disgusting content" to quote the OP because I can't think of a more appropriate phrase, not to indicate sarcasm or cast doubt on the nature of the content. I've never been to Parler, but I trust that there was some pretty awful things being said there.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  It's not like this was some innocent small service that suddenly got taken over. Parler was built by Trump supporters for Trump supporters.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    Sure, but every Trump supporter I've talked to objects to what happened last Wednesday. Even if the Trump supporters I know are not representative of all Trump supporters, clearly not all of his supporters seek to commit or condone acts of violence. Just because the site was originally built for Trump supporters does not mean it was inherently built for "disgusting content".
cbozeman 6y ago
I really struggle with this. Most websites have block or mute buttons. So why is it we can't just use those? You see something you don't like, don't click on it. You see someone you don't like, just block or mute them. Almost every platform lets you choose the level, of lack thereof, of discourse you want to have with people with whom you disagree.
- MartinCron 6y ago
  You can't really "mute" a murderous mob that shows up at the capitol. This isn't about seeing stuff you don't like, this is about a platform being used to directly incite political violence.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    TBH physical security of vital structures like Capitol should not rely on someone's ability to moderate some platform. There are many other possible attackers who won't be coordinating themselves on social networks in the open. Capitol et al. should have robust enough security to keep most threats out, because some threats just won't be easily predictable in advance.
    - MartinCron 6y ago
      Regardless of how well the Capitol is guarded, inciting violence is still a crime. If I orchestrate a criminal conspiracy to rob Fort Knox, it is still a criminal conspiracy when it eventually fails.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    The Capitol has its own police (they're literally called, the Capitol Police). You can't mute them, but you can make it clear that any attempt to breach the Capitol will result in deadly force. And it should have.
throwawaysea 6y ago
> The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. I disagree with this. My experience with Parler was very limited, but from a quick glance, I was not able to find any call for violence. I'm sure it exists, but the sense I got is that the vast majority of content and accounts are simply posting conservative content. Do you have evidence that "disgusting content" (whatever that means) is its "reason for existing"? That seems like a self-serving editorial conclusion rather than something borne out by hard evidence.
nudpiedo 6y ago
so much politization in a single comment... the news often opens with disturbung content, and the world has many people who says daily pure garbage and we do not want to shut down any of those. Free speech is a fundamental part of western civilization, it cost us way too much to achieve it to just give it up like that. Stop with all those fallacies, they still worked on 2019 but not on 2021, at least not on HN.
deet 6y ago
I’ll address your second point: We do need to think about the precedents we are setting with respect to free speech. It’s possible that action might be needed in the short term to moderate these channels. But we must also consider the longer term in a world that is rapidly evolving. I’m less concerned about specific, currently existing platforms like Parler, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These “social media” platforms are mere trinkets and could go away and society would carry on. In moderating or completely dissolving them we lose little. I am more concerned about the nature of communication when the channels of communication are centrally controlled and/or controlled by private entities. We have no idea how digital communications will evolve or how important they could become. Our lives are increasingly become digital… Imagine a world 50 or 100 or X years from now when people never leave their homes (except perhaps through VR?) and nearly all human interaction is via digital means. There’s a good chance those digital means will be run by private entities. So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how those would be protected in the future, and that means being careful about what precedent we set today. Are we really willing to have all of our communication moderated or potentially terminated in a such a future? It’s true that we might need to take action in the present, but let’s not forget that we are simultaneously shaping our futures.
- neogodless 6y ago
  > So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how those would be protected in the future, and that means being careful about what precedent we set today. The doom may be inevitable. who knows? I don't mean to be a defeatist. But I would say if a single private entity (or alliance) did control all digital communication, any actions they took could be invisible to anyone that opposed them, assuming they had sufficiently advanced machine learning capable of preventing subversive communication. You would need alternative options for communication, digital or otherwise to have any hope of overcoming such a hypothetical scenario. My hope would be that we continue to have utilities such as phone lines, that internet would ultimately end up treated as a utility in the same sense as phone lines (especially if it completely replaces them, which is largely is doing), radio (just as ham radio operators believe in the importance of maintaining their systems), etc. And my other hope would be that we continue to legislate and enforce against monopolies, not just on capitalistic entities but especially on privately run communication channels.
xyzelement 6y ago
>> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. I don't know if that's true. I downloaded the app a few months ago to check it out. I followed some of the same folks I followed on Twitter (I guess you'd call them center-right?) and it was basically civil discourse about politics. I didn't see anything "disgusting" and I didn't work hard to avoid it. Granted I didn't spent a ton of time in the app and didn't explore deeply, but the claim that it was just filled to the gills with something terrible doesn't ring true to me. Unless the definition of disgusting is "someone who may not have voted for Biden" - but I don't share that definition and I don't think most sane people do.
macinjosh 6y ago
Many movies, music, and other forms of art are chock full of 'disgusting content'. Should we take those of the Internet? There are lunatics out there that will believe anything they read whether it is couched as fiction or not. Our right to say and read what we want cannot be determined by the lowest common denominator of what is 'acceptable'. That is how you arrive at an authoritarian monoculture, fast. The only correct response to disgusting speech is good speech used to tear it down. Both sides here, (I am not a part of either) have dug in so deep that they essentially live in two different realities or dimensions. When perception and the interpretation of the world differs so much between two groups there eventually becomes a point where they cannot coexist. This is where we are headed if we don't start trying to find common ground instead of the current environment of complete, unquestioned intolerance of the other. Self examination is what the world needs right now.
qez 6y ago
The term healthy is doing a lot of work for you. If you mean signal/noise ratio, then yes, and HN truly optimizes for that, so it makes sense that you're here. But HN doesn't optimize for total amount of signal, for example, buried underneath a lot of noise. Personally, I care about content a lot more than I care about "community."
sn_master 6y ago
"disgusting" like what? Can you give a few examples? (legit ask, not denying it)
- DataSceince123 6y ago
  disgusting is anything anti-lgbt, anti progressive, anything that is a bi-erasure or trans smear. Disgusting is that which marginalizes or unfairly imputes the character of a minority community whether black, jewish, or hispanic, since these voices are not adequately represented
  - sn_master 6y ago
    "jewish": Trump's own daughter and grandsons are Jewish. "black, hispanic": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc "anti-lgbt": Trump himself attended several gay marriages in public way before running for president, late 90s/early 00s. None of the examples Amazon or Twitter gave were anti-LGBT. Trump got 72 million votes. Statistically, there is 7 million LGBT atleast who voted for him.
DataSceince123 6y ago
for the record, disgusting should be anything anti LGBT, and that's why parler had to be eliminated
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  This is absolutely the kind of thing that should not be a red line for when you get banned off the internet. LGBT is still something people are going to debate for thousands of years. It's silly and shortsighted to think that people who are accepting of every strange idea to come out of LGBT (multiple genders, opting out of genders, etc.) are right and everyone who questions these concepts are wrong.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe and serious than anything on Parler

doggosphere 6y ago
The actual reason for the war: an informant fed the government bad intel and the state looked the other way because they wanted a reason to invade Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  That is like saying the reason the bank was robbed was because it had so much money in it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strateg... The Bush administration officials who sold those lies to the public were zionist jews who had written this policy paper just 5 years before Bush appointed them into the government.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    PNAC has nothing Jewish about it and you’re a troll
- drewmol 6y ago
  "the actual reason for the war...because they wanted a reason" Agreed.
jcranmer 6y ago
> which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). Actually, looking up the numbers right now, the total civilian death rate is perhaps 1 million at most, more likely somewhere in the 100,000s. Iraq Body Count gives ~200k civilian deaths; estimation from the number of internally-displaced peoples (basically figuring that displaced-to-dead ration is between 5:1 and 10:1) suggests a number more like ~700k civilian deaths. Extrapolating excess death counts suggest that the latter number is more accurate.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  My bad, it's still far more than anyone on Parler is responsible for. Perhaps if you consider the fallout of the Iraq War (rise of ISIS, Syrian Civil War, etc.) you get more but the point is the same
afavour 6y ago
I see the parallel you're trying to draw here but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure the US was going to war in Iraq no matter what NYT said, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. The faulty NYT reporting gave the government a certain level of cover to allow them to do what they already planned to do. Parler was a forum for participants to discuss and actively plan sedition. And there's already violence threatened in the days around inauguration so it stands to reason it could have served the same role again.
betterunix2 6y ago
The NYT did not make the Iraq war possible. It did not facilitate planning the war. It did not play any role in convincing the Bush administration to go to war. Can we stop with the "whataboutism" already?
- Reedx 6y ago
  They played a large role in selling the war to the public (manufacturing consent).
  - dontreact 6y ago
    When the state is lying, it is not easy for reporters to find out that they are lying. They printed what was at the time a bipartisan consensus which had formed on the basis of lies. So I guess they were involved, but the journalists in the organization in the time did not have the power or the information to swim against the currents of what was happening. Even if they had shut down their paper, we would have gone to war with Iraq. On the other hand, Parler has purposefully created a space for people to plan violence against the state, and refused requests to be more careful about moderating.
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      > They printed what was at the time a bipartisan consensus which had formed on the basis of lies. And that is why truth by consensus is not a good way for a reporter to report compared to actually investigating somethng beforehand.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        Have you ever seen anyone seriously defend what Judith Miller (et al.) actually did?
- _pmf_ 6y ago
  Reframing pointing out hypocrisy as "whataboutism" is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.
andrewmutz 6y ago
The Iraq war is a great example because it highlights how rare this is. You had to go back 15 years to find an example of the mainstream media misleading people on this scale. It can be true that both: - The NYT deserves a lot of blame for the lead up to the iraq war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War) - Newspapers generally do a really good job of fact checking the articles they print
- cogman10 6y ago
  There's a really good reason for that. Journalistic standards are a defense in court against lawsuits. The truth is a defense against Libel. But further, even just acting in good faith can be a defense against libel. It's only when you knowingly publish a false statement that you get in legal hot water. This is why Fox news and the like have been doing 180s on voter fraud lies. It's not because they have the best interest of the public at heart, it's because they are trying mitigate liability.
- andrewclunn 6y ago
  And I supposed Epstein killed himself as well? Much more often the mainstream media simply "memory holes" things it doesn't want you to know about. I mean they certainly tried to get us into war with Syria (anyone remember the "reporter" who sniffed nerve gas?) The lies are blatant and unending, but we all know what side the bread is buttered on for tech start ups, which is why this "news aggregator" is such a laughable joke for anything related to politics.
- reddog 6y ago
  >You had to go back 15 years to find an example of the mainstream media misleading people on this scale. Have you forgotten 3 years of the MSN saying Trump's presidency was illegitament because he stole the election by coluding with the Russians?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I missed anyone on MSN(BC) saying his election was illegitimate. There were questions about it, for sure. There was the essentially incontrovertible fact that he won in the EC without winning the popular vote, which is an unfortunate feature of our system. That does lend a certain sense of "illegitimacy" but not in the sense of something illegal having happened, more a sense of "moral legitimacy". A few weeks after his election, the overwhelming majority of progressives accepted that Trump was the officially elected president of the USA. We didn't like it, but we accepted it. The issues regarding Russian interference were not centered on collusion, but on ... well, interference (which some believe went so far as to include actual collusion). Mueller's report and the Senate report did find conclusively that the Russians did interfere, and did so with the goal of getting Trump elected. Mueller said that they did not find evidence of active collaboration between the campaign and the Russians ... here's the current Wikipedia summary: >did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities". Investigators ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved and due to testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined. However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts Again, I recall essentially nobody in any position of power (certainly not elected Senators) saying the Trump's election was illegitimate. People did say that his election was aided by Russian interference (Mueller and the Senate investigation state this clearly), and that it was/is unfortunate to have a president elected without winning the popular vote.

mgkimsal 6y ago

I poked around on it some, and noticed something ... disturbing. I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?). The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants like that), and they all would throw "update your flash player!" malware popups. Next to each of these links on Parler were view counts - 207, 412, 897, etc - of people who'd clicked the link to view the article. I could not reply to the link with a comment like "this has malware" because... my account was not verified. Only 'badged/verified' accounts can comment on 'links'. AND... the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). This becomes incredibly lopsided "free speech" biased against moderating/critical voices. It was literally a field day for bots to post malware garbage and have thousands of victims per day, and no ability for people to warn others. On one 'article' I followed there were comments from people saying "I don't understand how Parler works" in the comments on the linked article. Indeed...

explorigin 6y ago
I was also curious about Parler but, when going to sign up, it asked for my phone number. Ummmm, no thank you. That kind of association is like going to a protest with your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.
- sigotirandolas 6y ago
  I was able to sign up recently with a throwaway e-mail address and made up phone number. But I was also surprised it asked for it.
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    I 'signed up' on the desktop version, but you can't the 'verify/badge' stuff is only available via the mobile app, AFAICT.

vorpalhex 6y ago

The censorship is for your own protection. Twitter doesn't have a leg to stand on when Iranian leadership has tweets literally calling for the genocide of Israel, or the CCP has tweets using ethnic slurs against Uigher peoples. Yet why is it that lack of censorship is fine and "healthy"? One of the things I do, generally, when there's a call to ban something is to actually go and check it out whether it's a site, a book or a movie. And Parler is overwhelmingly just conservative twitter - and just like actual twitter, it has some nasty and gross content. Yet nobody is suggesting we take twitter offline despite their repeated failures to police their own content.

gedy 6y ago
Yeah as a centrist, the double standards we are seeing is what concerns me the most. Instead of all violence and hatred is bad it's "well this is different because they are on our side", that's for "the right reasons", etc to read between the lines.
selimthegrim 6y ago
Twitter did act against a Chinese tweet about Uygurs the other day
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Which one?
  - causalmodels 6y ago
    The one where they were trying spin forced IUDs and sterilizations as a way to promote gender equity and reproductive health[1] [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-down-chinas-baby-making-machines-tweet-on-uighur-women/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-do...
hackyhacky 6y ago
Actually, Parler has been use to literally plan an overthrow of the US government. That's why it's banned. So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why they get taken more seriously. Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US. Too often, you can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. This time, we saw it in time. I commend these companies for taking a stand, despite the obvious backlash they'll suffer as a result.

minimuffins 6y ago

A reasonable comment was flagged and killed so I will repost it: > The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them innocent). > Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe and serious than anything on Parler The question is a good one. In the hope of avoiding a similar fate, I'll state the original implicit question explicitly: Where on earth does the authority come from, which authorizes Amazon, ostensibly a private corporation, to arbitrate ANYTHING to do with public speech? Beyond just, say, their raw power and the inability of anyone to stop them. It's truly shocking to me that so many people are celebrating this. Not just, "Yeah, it's an overreach but these are weird times," or something like this, but just totally, brain-shut-down, unwilling to think through future implications, etc. This sets a precedent for the very, very small number owners of core tech infrastructure--not just media platforms, but physical server infrastructure!--to decide what we all get to see, and ultimately what's right and wrong (right: endless war, wrong: right-wing insurrection, however inept). Even if you think it was a necessary move (I don't, but surely reasonable people will), if we want to be adults about politics, we have to grapple with it and take these kinds of questions very seriously, not just heap censorship on top of censorship, avoiding the question.

robertlagrant 6y ago
France and Germany are making this point quite loudly now.
room271 6y ago
I agree, but a lot of the arguments made seem to hit the wrong target. The issue is not 'First Amendment' rights (this applies only to government, not private companies), but monopoly, which causes many problems - this being just one. (Although actually I think the specific decisions made here are the right ones.) Now, in practice, it might be more accurate to call these markets oligopolies (certainly cloud infrastructure is more this), but this still leaves a few companies with dramatic power over important parts of society. And monopoly is a problem for the government to solve; these companies aren't 'evil' (any more than most others at least, except in virtue of their size), and the lasting solution is not to try and shame them or call them out here or claim victimhood (as the right has done) - though exercising voice can work as a short term tactic sometimes.

bArray 6y ago

> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened > to have some disgusting content on it. You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter. > And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" > and social media do not mix. As with all free speech, it had legal limits, such as threats of violence. We can argue about how effective the moderation system was in Parler, but I know for a fact that they repeatedly removed material that broke the law.

santoshalper 6y ago
> You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter. No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...
- shuntress 6y ago
  I find it comical that the more egalitarian solution[0] to enabling widespread free speech is outright rejected by the typical Parler user with some indistinct shouting about government overreach, regulation, or "competition in the marketplace". [0] mentioned in the article: "I wish they[sic] were interoperable implementations of a protocol, rather than individual silos, but..."
- bArray 6y ago
  That's just their word - I would want to see the exact reason they were banned. Perhaps they were playing the internet troll game of "see how quickly I can get banned for Twitter points". Some amount of context seems fair surely? Also the Parler system is that you essentially are sandboxed for a short period of time when you first join - if you get tonnes of negative responses you get removed. So the fact they got removed in the first 24 hours makes sense. So: No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more credulous.
6y ago

hashbig 6y ago

I remember very well as a middle eastern how ISIS was freely allowed to use Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for recruitment and propaganda in 2015 and none of those platforms did anything about it. Also just today this story was on the front page in HN: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo... So spare us all the "No hate and violence on our platform" BS. Either you go after all hate and violence or you are just a hypocrite.

Saint_Genet 6y ago
What kind of world are you trying to advocate with comments like these? Just because you soiled the bed in the past you should just keep doing it?
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  A world where American lives aren't considered more valuable and "hate" and "inciting violence" is taken seriously when the victims aren't just American politicians.
trsohmers 6y ago
The US government asked Twitter and other social media sites not to ban certain groups of ISIS twitter accounts until they were able to gain enough information... afterwards Twitter had no problem deleting hundreds of thousands of ISIS/other extremist accounts en mass.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wilsynet 6y ago
I mostly agree with this, that we should do more about hate and violence. And do it more consistently and transparently. To the best of my knowledge, YouTube tries hard to do this. And Twitter has been trying to do a better job at this. And Facebook hasn't been particularly good about doing this at all. If I am completely wrong about this, someone should set the record straight. Perhaps their position is evolving. I'd be curious to revisit the evolution of this problem 365 days from now and take another checkpoint.

lanevorockz 6y ago

Free Speech is such a disgusting thing we should never allow low IQ people to exist. Is that what you are saying ?

santoshalper 6y ago
Yeah man, obviously that is what we are trying to say. You got us, this is just a front for a giant eugenics conspiracy run by Big Tech. Get help.
DickingAround 6y ago
One of the tenets of this site is that we ask everyone to assume best intentions from everyone else.

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

Who's next? Telegram?

kayodelycaon 6y ago
Telegram has moderators and has complied with Apple’s demands in the past.

tomcam 6y ago

A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech. Our Supreme Court has already ruled that there's no Constitutional idea of "hate speech". The concept of freedom of speech is here to protect things that other people think are despicable. This whole deplatforming thing will have vast unintended consequences. It will hit people like you, because these movements always eat there own.

EpicEng 6y ago
>A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech Sure about that? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=... https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg
driverdan 6y ago
Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. A company can ban any speech they want. Plus there is speech that isn't protected, like certain violent threats, which is the biggest problem with Parler.
- macinjosh 6y ago
  > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. Where did the parent comment mention the government? They referenced the concept of free speech. That is not the same thing as the first amendment which is what you are referring to.
- jjcon 6y ago
  > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources Of course it does! That’s like saying ethics don’t apply to corporations. If you meant the first amendment you would be correct but free speech is a long standing liberal ideal and is absolutely not the same thing nor is it what is being discussed in this context.

danmaz74 6y ago

In the early noughties I really believed that free speech online would work with just a very light moderation. We tried that approach with a rather small online community for an Italian political party where already all participants had pretty similar ideas. What I learned the hard way (as hard as having light PSTD) in the course of 3 years is that just doesn't work. You only need a handful of motivated people who won't stop at anything to push their agenda and narrative to create an extremely toxic environment which only favors the best liars and the most unprincipled people.

r00fus 6y ago
So to actually use the massive information and connection we get through the Internet, moderation is key. It's really a cultivation effort - otherwise your "idea garden" will be overrun with weeds and pests.

CivBase 6y ago

To be fair, any social media platform built on the idea of protecting free speech will be the only platform on which "disgusting content" can be posted. That means it will inherently have a disproportionately large amount of "disgusting content". And that's before considering the insane uphill battle any social media platform has to fight to become as popular as the likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc - assuming the presence of "disgusting content" does not limit its ability to ever scale that much to begin with. Btw, I'm using the phrase "disgusting content" to quote the OP because I can't think of a more appropriate phrase, not to indicate sarcasm or cast doubt on the nature of the content. I've never been to Parler, but I trust that there was some pretty awful things being said there.

DangerousPie 6y ago
It's not like this was some innocent small service that suddenly got taken over. Parler was built by Trump supporters for Trump supporters.
- CivBase 6y ago
  Sure, but every Trump supporter I've talked to objects to what happened last Wednesday. Even if the Trump supporters I know are not representative of all Trump supporters, clearly not all of his supporters seek to commit or condone acts of violence. Just because the site was originally built for Trump supporters does not mean it was inherently built for "disgusting content".

cbozeman 6y ago

I really struggle with this. Most websites have block or mute buttons. So why is it we can't just use those? You see something you don't like, don't click on it. You see someone you don't like, just block or mute them. Almost every platform lets you choose the level, of lack thereof, of discourse you want to have with people with whom you disagree.

MartinCron 6y ago
You can't really "mute" a murderous mob that shows up at the capitol. This isn't about seeing stuff you don't like, this is about a platform being used to directly incite political violence.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  TBH physical security of vital structures like Capitol should not rely on someone's ability to moderate some platform. There are many other possible attackers who won't be coordinating themselves on social networks in the open. Capitol et al. should have robust enough security to keep most threats out, because some threats just won't be easily predictable in advance.
  - MartinCron 6y ago
    Regardless of how well the Capitol is guarded, inciting violence is still a crime. If I orchestrate a criminal conspiracy to rob Fort Knox, it is still a criminal conspiracy when it eventually fails.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  The Capitol has its own police (they're literally called, the Capitol Police). You can't mute them, but you can make it clear that any attempt to breach the Capitol will result in deadly force. And it should have.

throwawaysea 6y ago

> The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. I disagree with this. My experience with Parler was very limited, but from a quick glance, I was not able to find any call for violence. I'm sure it exists, but the sense I got is that the vast majority of content and accounts are simply posting conservative content. Do you have evidence that "disgusting content" (whatever that means) is its "reason for existing"? That seems like a self-serving editorial conclusion rather than something borne out by hard evidence.

nudpiedo 6y ago

so much politization in a single comment... the news often opens with disturbung content, and the world has many people who says daily pure garbage and we do not want to shut down any of those. Free speech is a fundamental part of western civilization, it cost us way too much to achieve it to just give it up like that. Stop with all those fallacies, they still worked on 2019 but not on 2021, at least not on HN.

deet 6y ago

I’ll address your second point: We do need to think about the precedents we are setting with respect to free speech. It’s possible that action might be needed in the short term to moderate these channels. But we must also consider the longer term in a world that is rapidly evolving. I’m less concerned about specific, currently existing platforms like Parler, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These “social media” platforms are mere trinkets and could go away and society would carry on. In moderating or completely dissolving them we lose little. I am more concerned about the nature of communication when the channels of communication are centrally controlled and/or controlled by private entities. We have no idea how digital communications will evolve or how important they could become. Our lives are increasingly become digital… Imagine a world 50 or 100 or X years from now when people never leave their homes (except perhaps through VR?) and nearly all human interaction is via digital means. There’s a good chance those digital means will be run by private entities. So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how those would be protected in the future, and that means being careful about what precedent we set today. Are we really willing to have all of our communication moderated or potentially terminated in a such a future? It’s true that we might need to take action in the present, but let’s not forget that we are simultaneously shaping our futures.

neogodless 6y ago
> So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how those would be protected in the future, and that means being careful about what precedent we set today. The doom may be inevitable. who knows? I don't mean to be a defeatist. But I would say if a single private entity (or alliance) did control all digital communication, any actions they took could be invisible to anyone that opposed them, assuming they had sufficiently advanced machine learning capable of preventing subversive communication. You would need alternative options for communication, digital or otherwise to have any hope of overcoming such a hypothetical scenario. My hope would be that we continue to have utilities such as phone lines, that internet would ultimately end up treated as a utility in the same sense as phone lines (especially if it completely replaces them, which is largely is doing), radio (just as ham radio operators believe in the importance of maintaining their systems), etc. And my other hope would be that we continue to legislate and enforce against monopolies, not just on capitalistic entities but especially on privately run communication channels.

xyzelement 6y ago

>> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. I don't know if that's true. I downloaded the app a few months ago to check it out. I followed some of the same folks I followed on Twitter (I guess you'd call them center-right?) and it was basically civil discourse about politics. I didn't see anything "disgusting" and I didn't work hard to avoid it. Granted I didn't spent a ton of time in the app and didn't explore deeply, but the claim that it was just filled to the gills with something terrible doesn't ring true to me. Unless the definition of disgusting is "someone who may not have voted for Biden" - but I don't share that definition and I don't think most sane people do.

macinjosh 6y ago

Many movies, music, and other forms of art are chock full of 'disgusting content'. Should we take those of the Internet? There are lunatics out there that will believe anything they read whether it is couched as fiction or not. Our right to say and read what we want cannot be determined by the lowest common denominator of what is 'acceptable'. That is how you arrive at an authoritarian monoculture, fast. The only correct response to disgusting speech is good speech used to tear it down. Both sides here, (I am not a part of either) have dug in so deep that they essentially live in two different realities or dimensions. When perception and the interpretation of the world differs so much between two groups there eventually becomes a point where they cannot coexist. This is where we are headed if we don't start trying to find common ground instead of the current environment of complete, unquestioned intolerance of the other. Self examination is what the world needs right now.

qez 6y ago

The term healthy is doing a lot of work for you. If you mean signal/noise ratio, then yes, and HN truly optimizes for that, so it makes sense that you're here. But HN doesn't optimize for total amount of signal, for example, buried underneath a lot of noise. Personally, I care about content a lot more than I care about "community."

sn_master 6y ago

"disgusting" like what? Can you give a few examples? (legit ask, not denying it)

DataSceince123 6y ago
disgusting is anything anti-lgbt, anti progressive, anything that is a bi-erasure or trans smear. Disgusting is that which marginalizes or unfairly imputes the character of a minority community whether black, jewish, or hispanic, since these voices are not adequately represented
- sn_master 6y ago
  "jewish": Trump's own daughter and grandsons are Jewish. "black, hispanic": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc "anti-lgbt": Trump himself attended several gay marriages in public way before running for president, late 90s/early 00s. None of the examples Amazon or Twitter gave were anti-LGBT. Trump got 72 million votes. Statistically, there is 7 million LGBT atleast who voted for him.

DataSceince123 6y ago

for the record, disgusting should be anything anti LGBT, and that's why parler had to be eliminated

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
This is absolutely the kind of thing that should not be a red line for when you get banned off the internet. LGBT is still something people are going to debate for thousands of years. It's silly and shortsighted to think that people who are accepting of every strange idea to come out of LGBT (multiple genders, opting out of genders, etc.) are right and everyone who questions these concepts are wrong.