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I simply don't care. Sure, there's slippery slope arguments and discussions to be had about who gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable speech. Right now t

I simply don't care. Sure, there's slippery slope arguments and discussions to be had about who gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable speech. Right now though there's a small group of people looking to cause harm and damage using tools that barely existed 10 years ago and our laws won't keep up. Antisemitism and racism have no place in the world and private companies have no business profiting from its proliferation. Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share their views? Crack on. I will use my limited resources and time on this planet to cry for someone else.

pstuart 6y ago
While I loath "think of the children!" arguments, I'll lower myself to one here. Imagine that Parler was a site dedicated to child pornography. Would anybody be complaining about it being shut down them? Hopefully not. My point is that what Parler represented was equally odious. It's a hate speech platform and hate speech should not be tolerated.
- Closi 6y ago
  Well hosting and distributing child pornography is illegal, while hosting other people’s hate speech isn’t. And how is hosting hate speech “equally odious” to hosting photos of abused children anyway?! You can use the same argument to abolish all free speech, just by claiming that anything your opponent says is equal to abusing children.
  - Clubber 6y ago
    He's using hyperbole to make the argument an emotional one rather than using reason. I'm not sure if he even knows he's doing it or not, the tactic of hyperbole has become so prevalent in today's political discussions.
    - pstuart 6y ago
      We're on the precipice of a civil war that's being fanned by this hate speech. I wish it were hyperbole.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    This is about morality, not legality (which is often perverted anyway). Hate speech translates into hateful actions, case in point was on display in the US Capitol last week. This is challenging territory but to frame this as a free speech issue without acknowledging that there are limits to such is not being entirely honest about the matter.
    - Closi 6y ago
      > This is about morality, not legality (which is often perverted anyway). Well this is exactly the issue here - because unless you believe in moral absolutism, why are these tech companies suddenly the arbiter of morality?
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  Totally different thing.
- bsirkia 6y ago
  I think this is generally right. We tend to focus on the one side of the slippery slope which is "descent into an Orwellian dystopia", but the other side of the logical extreme is what, that no matter what private companies aren't allowed to remove and censor certain things on their forums? Like you said, if there were an app where 90% of the conversation was about child pornography, no one would cry "1984" if it's removed by Apple. So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
  - Clubber 6y ago
    >So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control. It obviously is. It started with child pornography which most everyone can agree on banning, now you are suggesting we apply the same ban to political discussion. That's the definition of a slippery slope in action.
    - pstuart 6y ago
      Not banning political discussion, it's about not supporting hate speech. Parler wasn't banned, the market decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
      - Closi 6y ago
        > The market decided they wanted nothing to do with it. I don't think this means what you think it means, because it doesn't appear true. The market usually means 'the free market' i.e. raw consumer demand - 'are people buying it?', 'vote with your wallet' e.t.c., By all accounts it looked like the market did want it - because they had a rapidly growing user base. Left to the free market, Parler would have continued. The market does not mean the CEO's of other tech companies want nothing to do with it. It also does not mean that popular opinion is that it's bad.
- pc86 6y ago
  You do need a better argument, because you're changing the entire point of the platform. One is speech - maybe hate, maybe political, maybe both - and one is distribution of illegal products of child abuse. They're not the same thing. They're not "equally odious" and honestly it's pretty gross you'd even pretend they are.
chaostheory 6y ago
You will care when the other side is able to do the same thing to us. I'm not necessarily talking about racists either. This seems great until it's used against us.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  Who exactly is us, though? For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN. The leftists I know (actual leftists, not the USA's conflation of centrist ideals with leftism) are all already very intimate with getting targeted and censored. Who is the "us" whose unfiltered work/speech/views have always been guaranteed a platform?
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    For that specific comment, "us" refers to people who do not like racists or anyone in support of storming our nation's capital. Can't say I like parler either. However, I will defend their right of free speech and expression. > For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN. You shouldn't rely on memory. It tends to fail everyone. Search engines are better https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636487
qez 6y ago
> Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share their views? Crack on. No, they should not be doing that. It shouldn't even be legal for Silicon Valley to do that. I don't care that you describe the people being censored as having negative traits, that is your political opinion.
- pc86 6y ago
  Why shouldn't it be legal? What right do you have to say to AWS "you have to host my website?" I am a free speech absolutist but that doesn't mean you have a right to force others to endorse, host, or amplify your speech. Just that you shouldn't go to jail for it.
  - neilwilson 6y ago
    That's fine when there are alternatives. The fact that Parler isn't back online shows that there is an oligopoly in place. The point of the first amendment in the first place was to stop those with overwhelming political power preventing those they didn't like from speaking. What this entire episode has shown is that capitalism's ability to offer alternatives is being stymied by network effects. In the USA that used to bring out the Anti-Trust big stick. Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have breached legislation passed by the country and has been found guilty of that in a court of law after due process. It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
    - Closi 6y ago
      > It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be. Due process is inefficient and slow compared to letting unelected mega-corps determine what other businesses can exist and what speech can and can't be heard. Imagine how awful a system with a 'burden-of-proof' and 'oversight' would be compared to just trusting the invisible hand of the market and profit motives determine the optimum course of action! Adam Smith proved that it would all work out fine anyway - there was a graph with some curves that proved it I think. Now if only we had a way to merge all these mega-companies into one, bigger super-mega-corp. Imagine how much better that would be! Hopefully over time with market consolidation we can achieve anything.
pc86 6y ago
The world is better without Parler, and it will be better if the most vicious from that platform have trouble finding megaphones for their atrocious speech. Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single entities - whether that's AWS, or Facebook, or even larger entities such as "Silicon Valley" that are grouped by ideology - that you may agree with today, but not tomorrow.
- Closi 6y ago
  > Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single entities Great, now what's that technology that lets my domain be split between two entities again so I can't get deplatformed?
  - maxehmookau 6y ago
    Buy two domains? Host your own DNS server. Use Tor. There's plenty of ways to get around supposed censorship, rightly or wrongly. You don't need AWS.
    - Closi 6y ago
      Ok, so the barrier to entry to building a business is now that I need to get all my customers to be aware of two domains, get all my customers to use Tor and to host my own DNS (presumably in a makeshift datacenter in my bedroom?). Great, thanks.
      - maxehmookau 6y ago
        Yeah, if what you're doing means that no private business wants to do business with you then the bar to doing what you're doing is higher. Fine by me.
  - pc86 6y ago
    DNS.
- deleted 6y ago
valvar 6y ago
Just remember to not complain if eventually the tables are turned and your preferred political team is getting this treatment.
- maxehmookau 6y ago
  I absolutely will complain. As parler's members are doing now. Nobody is saying they have no right to speech. AWS is just saying they don't have the right to speech on their turf.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  People on the left (and right) have been booted off platforms for years, so I don't know about "eventually".
  - valvar 6y ago
    The systematic suppression through denial of critical infrastructure is pretty novel, though.
    - filleduchaos 6y ago
      Is it? I don't think so. On the contrary, people have generally been smart enough to not do business with companies that won't want to do business with them (for example, nobody is really sure where the various [\d]chans are hosted, and Pornhub self-hosts). There are any number of actually competent people on the left, the right and orthogonal to politics that aren't visibly getting denied "critical infrastructure" because they simply knew better than to use it in the first place; what we are really witnessing is rather entitled people realising they're not guaranteed a ready-made popular platform (whether for an individual's speech or for an app's deployment). The lack of guarantee of a platform itself is far from news.
    - watwut 6y ago
      The fact is, right wing is present on Twitter, Facebook, reddit just fine. What is not present are their radical wings, which were kicked away just like leftist violent radicals. Difference is that at least so far, mainstream left is ok with those being kicked.
protonimitate 6y ago
HN users have read 1984 one too many times. It is possible to think that SV has too much power AND that they still have the right to deem what is acceptable on their own services. You can be entitled to free speech without being entitled to a platform or an audience. Despite how much HN loves to bash on SV big tech, this isn't 1984 and there are plenty of other ways to spread hate if that's what you really want to support. I'm growing really weary from all the slippery-slope/everything-is-being-censored/what-aboutism alarmist arguments. There is quite a large spectrum between "any and all speech is acceptable, on the platform of your choosing" and "total censorship". Let's stop pretending its a binary choice.
- chmod600 6y ago
  It's not a slippery slope any more. We already fell off and it just happens that the immediate casualty is Parler. But real victims are not far behind (in fact, they already exist, they are just not important enough).
  - deltaeerie 6y ago
    What is your evidence for this claim?
chmod600 6y ago
It's not about crying for Parler. It's legitimate concern that we have passed new thresholds of power, that the power can be exercised, and there's not much anyone affected can do about it. Furthermore, it's disturbing how much those in power think -- and act -- alike. Isn't it weird that nobody has really broken ranks here?
RIMR 6y ago
I agree with you 100%. There is absolutely no reason to care. Nothing we're seeing from these tech companies is a threat to our liberties. Getting banned from Twitter for violating the ToS is not censorship. Getting your Twitter clone kicked off of AWS for violating the ToS is not censorship. Companies refusing to do business with you on ethical grounds is not censorship. Anyone calling what we're seeing this week "censorship" is carrying water for fascists.
grej 6y ago
I think (hope) everyone would agree that antisemitism and racism have no place in the world. And it's easy not to care when you earnestly believe the ends justify the means. But in practice, the risk is that these labels will be applied much more liberally by self-interested parties precisely because they are unquestionably bad and hard to refute. If power hungry forces have access to a weapon which can be used to shut down discourse with no due process, it will most assuredly be used and create undesirable outcomes. IMO we should all take issue with the ability of a small oligopoly to take these actions without any legal due process or recourse. History shows us that this kind of power without restriction in the hands of very few will lead to abuses.

pstuart 6y ago

While I loath "think of the children!" arguments, I'll lower myself to one here. Imagine that Parler was a site dedicated to child pornography. Would anybody be complaining about it being shut down them? Hopefully not. My point is that what Parler represented was equally odious. It's a hate speech platform and hate speech should not be tolerated.

Closi 6y ago
Well hosting and distributing child pornography is illegal, while hosting other people’s hate speech isn’t. And how is hosting hate speech “equally odious” to hosting photos of abused children anyway?! You can use the same argument to abolish all free speech, just by claiming that anything your opponent says is equal to abusing children.
- Clubber 6y ago
  He's using hyperbole to make the argument an emotional one rather than using reason. I'm not sure if he even knows he's doing it or not, the tactic of hyperbole has become so prevalent in today's political discussions.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    We're on the precipice of a civil war that's being fanned by this hate speech. I wish it were hyperbole.
- pstuart 6y ago
  This is about morality, not legality (which is often perverted anyway). Hate speech translates into hateful actions, case in point was on display in the US Capitol last week. This is challenging territory but to frame this as a free speech issue without acknowledging that there are limits to such is not being entirely honest about the matter.
  - Closi 6y ago
    > This is about morality, not legality (which is often perverted anyway). Well this is exactly the issue here - because unless you believe in moral absolutism, why are these tech companies suddenly the arbiter of morality?
Synaesthesia 6y ago
Totally different thing.
bsirkia 6y ago
I think this is generally right. We tend to focus on the one side of the slippery slope which is "descent into an Orwellian dystopia", but the other side of the logical extreme is what, that no matter what private companies aren't allowed to remove and censor certain things on their forums? Like you said, if there were an app where 90% of the conversation was about child pornography, no one would cry "1984" if it's removed by Apple. So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
- Clubber 6y ago
  >So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control. It obviously is. It started with child pornography which most everyone can agree on banning, now you are suggesting we apply the same ban to political discussion. That's the definition of a slippery slope in action.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    Not banning political discussion, it's about not supporting hate speech. Parler wasn't banned, the market decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
    - Closi 6y ago
      > The market decided they wanted nothing to do with it. I don't think this means what you think it means, because it doesn't appear true. The market usually means 'the free market' i.e. raw consumer demand - 'are people buying it?', 'vote with your wallet' e.t.c., By all accounts it looked like the market did want it - because they had a rapidly growing user base. Left to the free market, Parler would have continued. The market does not mean the CEO's of other tech companies want nothing to do with it. It also does not mean that popular opinion is that it's bad.
pc86 6y ago
You do need a better argument, because you're changing the entire point of the platform. One is speech - maybe hate, maybe political, maybe both - and one is distribution of illegal products of child abuse. They're not the same thing. They're not "equally odious" and honestly it's pretty gross you'd even pretend they are.

chaostheory 6y ago

You will care when the other side is able to do the same thing to us. I'm not necessarily talking about racists either. This seems great until it's used against us.

filleduchaos 6y ago
Who exactly is us, though? For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN. The leftists I know (actual leftists, not the USA's conflation of centrist ideals with leftism) are all already very intimate with getting targeted and censored. Who is the "us" whose unfiltered work/speech/views have always been guaranteed a platform?
- chaostheory 6y ago
  For that specific comment, "us" refers to people who do not like racists or anyone in support of storming our nation's capital. Can't say I like parler either. However, I will defend their right of free speech and expression. > For example, I don't recall FOSTA/SESTA and its ramifications generating anywhere close to this level of breathless outrage on HN. You shouldn't rely on memory. It tends to fail everyone. Search engines are better https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636487

qez 6y ago

> Silicon Valley wants to use its power to make it harder for people with those views to meet, organize and share their views? Crack on. No, they should not be doing that. It shouldn't even be legal for Silicon Valley to do that. I don't care that you describe the people being censored as having negative traits, that is your political opinion.

pc86 6y ago
Why shouldn't it be legal? What right do you have to say to AWS "you have to host my website?" I am a free speech absolutist but that doesn't mean you have a right to force others to endorse, host, or amplify your speech. Just that you shouldn't go to jail for it.
- neilwilson 6y ago
  That's fine when there are alternatives. The fact that Parler isn't back online shows that there is an oligopoly in place. The point of the first amendment in the first place was to stop those with overwhelming political power preventing those they didn't like from speaking. What this entire episode has shown is that capitalism's ability to offer alternatives is being stymied by network effects. In the USA that used to bring out the Anti-Trust big stick. Parler can be shut down when it has been shown to have breached legislation passed by the country and has been found guilty of that in a court of law after due process. It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be.
  - Closi 6y ago
    > It's not just free speech that is at issue here. It is innocent until proven guilty and due process. All of which are Human Rights issues. Or at least used to be. Due process is inefficient and slow compared to letting unelected mega-corps determine what other businesses can exist and what speech can and can't be heard. Imagine how awful a system with a 'burden-of-proof' and 'oversight' would be compared to just trusting the invisible hand of the market and profit motives determine the optimum course of action! Adam Smith proved that it would all work out fine anyway - there was a graph with some curves that proved it I think. Now if only we had a way to merge all these mega-companies into one, bigger super-mega-corp. Imagine how much better that would be! Hopefully over time with market consolidation we can achieve anything.

pc86 6y ago

The world is better without Parler, and it will be better if the most vicious from that platform have trouble finding megaphones for their atrocious speech. Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single entities - whether that's AWS, or Facebook, or even larger entities such as "Silicon Valley" that are grouped by ideology - that you may agree with today, but not tomorrow.

Closi 6y ago
> Buuuuuut I hope the larger community takes this as a cautionary tale about being completely beholden to single entities Great, now what's that technology that lets my domain be split between two entities again so I can't get deplatformed?
- maxehmookau 6y ago
  Buy two domains? Host your own DNS server. Use Tor. There's plenty of ways to get around supposed censorship, rightly or wrongly. You don't need AWS.
  - Closi 6y ago
    Ok, so the barrier to entry to building a business is now that I need to get all my customers to be aware of two domains, get all my customers to use Tor and to host my own DNS (presumably in a makeshift datacenter in my bedroom?). Great, thanks.
    - maxehmookau 6y ago
      Yeah, if what you're doing means that no private business wants to do business with you then the bar to doing what you're doing is higher. Fine by me.
- pc86 6y ago
  DNS.
deleted 6y ago

valvar 6y ago

Just remember to not complain if eventually the tables are turned and your preferred political team is getting this treatment.

maxehmookau 6y ago
I absolutely will complain. As parler's members are doing now. Nobody is saying they have no right to speech. AWS is just saying they don't have the right to speech on their turf.
filleduchaos 6y ago
People on the left (and right) have been booted off platforms for years, so I don't know about "eventually".
- valvar 6y ago
  The systematic suppression through denial of critical infrastructure is pretty novel, though.
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    Is it? I don't think so. On the contrary, people have generally been smart enough to not do business with companies that won't want to do business with them (for example, nobody is really sure where the various [\d]chans are hosted, and Pornhub self-hosts). There are any number of actually competent people on the left, the right and orthogonal to politics that aren't visibly getting denied "critical infrastructure" because they simply knew better than to use it in the first place; what we are really witnessing is rather entitled people realising they're not guaranteed a ready-made popular platform (whether for an individual's speech or for an app's deployment). The lack of guarantee of a platform itself is far from news.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The fact is, right wing is present on Twitter, Facebook, reddit just fine. What is not present are their radical wings, which were kicked away just like leftist violent radicals. Difference is that at least so far, mainstream left is ok with those being kicked.

protonimitate 6y ago

HN users have read 1984 one too many times. It is possible to think that SV has too much power AND that they still have the right to deem what is acceptable on their own services. You can be entitled to free speech without being entitled to a platform or an audience. Despite how much HN loves to bash on SV big tech, this isn't 1984 and there are plenty of other ways to spread hate if that's what you really want to support. I'm growing really weary from all the slippery-slope/everything-is-being-censored/what-aboutism alarmist arguments. There is quite a large spectrum between "any and all speech is acceptable, on the platform of your choosing" and "total censorship". Let's stop pretending its a binary choice.

chmod600 6y ago
It's not a slippery slope any more. We already fell off and it just happens that the immediate casualty is Parler. But real victims are not far behind (in fact, they already exist, they are just not important enough).
- deltaeerie 6y ago
  What is your evidence for this claim?

chmod600 6y ago

It's not about crying for Parler. It's legitimate concern that we have passed new thresholds of power, that the power can be exercised, and there's not much anyone affected can do about it. Furthermore, it's disturbing how much those in power think -- and act -- alike. Isn't it weird that nobody has really broken ranks here?

RIMR 6y ago

I agree with you 100%. There is absolutely no reason to care. Nothing we're seeing from these tech companies is a threat to our liberties. Getting banned from Twitter for violating the ToS is not censorship. Getting your Twitter clone kicked off of AWS for violating the ToS is not censorship. Companies refusing to do business with you on ethical grounds is not censorship. Anyone calling what we're seeing this week "censorship" is carrying water for fascists.

grej 6y ago

I think (hope) everyone would agree that antisemitism and racism have no place in the world. And it's easy not to care when you earnestly believe the ends justify the means. But in practice, the risk is that these labels will be applied much more liberally by self-interested parties precisely because they are unquestionably bad and hard to refute. If power hungry forces have access to a weapon which can be used to shut down discourse with no due process, it will most assuredly be used and create undesirable outcomes. IMO we should all take issue with the ability of a small oligopoly to take these actions without any legal due process or recourse. History shows us that this kind of power without restriction in the hands of very few will lead to abuses.