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Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used

Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, or something that should be regulated. Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored.

newacct583 6y ago
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. Then why are you posting that on a heavily-moderated discussion forum and not 8kun?
- uncoder0 6y ago
  Well funny you mention 8kun specifically it is down at the time of your comment. I find HN to be a good balance of moderation and open discussion. Like all platforms it has it's biases but, people are relatively civil and open to discussion which is commendable in the current climate of online discussion.
  - Krollifi 6y ago
    Some of the reasons HN is civil is that it covers a niche area and quickly flags things that are highly contraversial such as politics and race relations. I just checked and 8kun.top is up.
uncoder0 6y ago
>"Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored." I have yet to see any evidence that the capitol protest was planned primarily on Parler. I have seen plenty of evidence that it was planned primarily on Facebook (that has since been deleted/hidden by Facebook). You'd think if the goal was to punish or curtail such events Facebook would be getting at least similar treatment as Parler.
- smithza 6y ago
  Difference being that Facebook moderates content. This was the Apple complaint against Parler. Parler has publicly touted itself as the 4chan/8chan of social media apps. It is more that the culture of Parler is being rejected by the App Store gate keepers and not so much the vehicle enabling it.
  - eightysixfour 6y ago
    Parler absolutely moderated content - many went on and posted something left leaning and had their content quickly removed. It was moderated by ideology instead of by any attempt at "decency" though.
    - smithza 6y ago
      I haven't heard this. Can you point to examples of this?
      - _whiteCaps_ 6y ago
        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... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-space-for-trump-election-denial https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-space-fo... > Still, there is a set of community guidelines and a user agreement, which prohibits deliberately obscene usernames, pornography, and threats to kill others. Meaning even Parler’s free speech absolutists have some vague rules for what they deem as too offensive. “When you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,” wrote Matze during a consequential exchange on his site, shattering the hopes of conservatives and libertarians everywhere who dream of a social media site with a completely laissez-faire ToS.
Fellshard 6y ago
One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred on Parler, but rather tended to occur on FB. If you'd used Parler before it went down (I poked it months ago, before all this madness, and found it to be sorely lacking), you'd notice that it's a shoutcasting platform like Twitter, and is wholly unsuitable for any kind of event planning. At most, you could give messages saying to prepare for X at event Y, which is 'planning' of a sort, I suppose.
- MrMan 6y ago
  an assertion, not an observation
  - Fellshard 6y ago
    He provides some cursory anecdotal evidence to that effect in the article, at least. My only addition is observing the nature of the platform itself as also making it an unlikely venue for that activity. But people have used platforms for entirely unsuitable purposes before...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred on Parler No, that's one of his unsubstantiated claims that conveniently fits the ideological tirade he's been on since long before the events in question. Other journalists have pointed to planning on Parler, including citing specific posts.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Violent threats and incitement to violence occur on these platforms all the time. Some of this content is moderated. Much of it is not.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Sure. And that may indicate problems with those platforms. At a minimum, though, those platforms reacted against continued use by the same terrorists once it was unmistakably, publicly, concretely clear that they were a deadly serious threat.
useful 6y ago
Counterpoint: if tanks were the primary way to transport something obvious like a giant battle tank that were being used to kill people and attempt overthrow of the government. If the checkpoints setup couldn't catch enough of them to remove the danger, would you support shutdowns of the highway infrastructure until the checkpoints could stop them?
sanderjd 6y ago
From my perspective, your analogy fits for the internet backbone, but not for the fact pattern under discussion here. To stretch the analogy, I think AWS would be more like a really big network of private distribution centers where client businesses can drop off and pick up goods. I think those distribution centers would be well within their rights to refuse to serve clients who are trafficking "drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc".
nrmitchi 6y ago
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I very much disagree. Hate speech is just one example. "Speech" designed to terrorize, threaten, and incite action should not be "free". > Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. By this logic no one who is purposely inciting anything is even liable for the actions that they cause. "Leaders" will never face punishment, because they only say things, right? The line (or at least one of the lines) comes when speech is no longer an expression, but an instruction. It may be a tough line to draw, but that doesn't mean that the line shouldn't exist somewhere.
- trident5000 6y ago
  "hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years to silence people. The only things that are dangerous are when people actually act or are explicit and then we deal with them. This isnt Minority Report. Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. The only restrictions are explicit threats (someone is literally saying they are going to kill someone and names said person) Today the interpretation has morphed into whatever is unpopular or is 3 steps away from being an actual threat.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    I'm older than 5 years old. This isn't remotely true.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      time-frame admittedly was way off. I edited it.
  - eightysixfour 6y ago
    > Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. You're missing a part in this line that's very important, it should be "nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions from the government."
stephencoyner 6y ago
If there was a specific highway that was almost exclusively used by drug / human traffickers, and there was a mountain of evidence to prove that, it seems like we would really look into that road and add extra security or shut it down until we could get a plan together.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  By building a wall across it perhaps?
  - stephencoyner 6y ago
    Not what I was referring to at all, but I see where you’re going. I was just trying to make a point that this was removing a toxin from the app eco-system. Not a harmless player who did mostly good with a few “bad apples”
threatofrain 6y ago
But do you believe in free association? Is it okay that per Parler's CEO, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail services have also cancelled on them?
eightysixfour 6y ago
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. I think you should be free to say what you want and to think what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in that space. Here are three examples: (1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out? (2) You start a social media company and somehow a large contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it on the site unless it is breaking a law? (3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you want to be able to remove that? Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line? If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return? Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their regulation.
- ng12 6y ago
  Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability sway elections in democratic countries and help topple authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between #2 and #3.
- chmod600 6y ago
  It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the electric company? Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease to me.
vb6sp6 6y ago
Drug Lords in Mexico build roads to help them traffic narcotics and some law abiding people have access to them. The US built roads to enable commerce and some law breaking people have access to them. Intent matters
munificent 6y ago
> I think the speech part should always be 100% free. I don't think a claim like this is meaningful without a precise definition of "speech". And, consequently, I think you'll find any attempt to define which things are not "speech" ends up being functionality equivalent to dialing back from that theoretical 100%. In general, you can't have 100% freedom over any finite resource. If there's only one dessert in the fridge, you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it. If you presume that any meaningful "speech" has some non-zero audience size, then speakers are competing for the finite attention of other humans. You can't have perfect freedom for that.
- Domenic_S 6y ago
  > you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it. Schrodinger's pie - you both have 100% freedom to eat it until one of you actually does
buffington 6y ago
While I like the highway analogy, it only works if the places where "free speech" are being conducted are US owned , public infrastructure. A closer analogy would be private roads. If Amazon owned a series of private highways used solely for shipping goods, would we care if they stopped transporting items they didn't agree with on those Amazon owned highways? Forgive me if I'm repeating a common refrain here, but the words we say on Twitter, Parler, Facebook, and even HN aren't "free", spoken in a public place. They're owned by Twitter, Parler, Facebook and HN. Those companies can choose to do whatever they want, for better or worse.
- chrischattin 6y ago
  If that’s the case, they’re acting as publishers and should be liable for the content.
  - buffington 6y ago
    I don't disagree. But right now, it doesn't matter if I disagree or not. US law makes it very clear what responsibilities and rights publishers have. Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking. They are also allowed to restrict whatever they like, whether it's constitutionally protected or not.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking. No, it doesn't. It states that online systems with user generated content (and other users on such systems) aren't treated as publishers of what their users post, with some major exceptions related to civil liability related to sex trafficking and all criminal liability regardless of subject matter. Civil liability not deriving from status as a “publisher” is also not on its face, affected, though some courts have also applied 230, controversially, to immunize against notice-based civil liability that would apply to them as distributors, even if they aren't considered publishers.
downandout 6y ago
I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I wouldn’t say that the brainwashing has been on the part of the government. All of the efforts at limiting speech, at least recently, have come from private, left-leaning people and organizations. The general consensus seems to be that all speech that doesn’t endorse leftist political views is hate speech and should therefore be banned. I went on Parler, which I had never heard of before last week, just to see what the big deal was. I saw nothing endorsing violence, planning attacks, conspiracy theories, or hate speech. I saw a modern looking Twitter clone with similar, mundane conversations. I suppose I didn’t see much leftist banter, but that was the only real difference between it and Twitter. The idea that elite liberals with monopoly power colluded to strangle a site like this, simply because a percentage of its users likely voted a different way than they did, should be offensive to all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. It makes me fear for the future of democracy as a whole. Democracy cannot exist without the ability to debate.
boublepop 6y ago
There isn’t really anything related to free speech here. No one censored parler, let alone the government. Amazon and Apple didn’t even censor them, just refused to support their product because they failed to live up to the terms of service. The only element of free speech ironically was that Parler was found to censor left-leaning and moderate messages in its forum.
simias 6y ago
"Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this discussion. You can be convinced of something without being brainwashed. I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it, I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can lead to. Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't been brainwashed into. After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced. And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.
- etangent 6y ago
  > I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mob Imagine saying this in June 2020
  - _vertigo 6y ago
    Could you explain what you mean by this?
    - jacobolus 6y ago
      The implication is that the nationwide (and worldwide) Black Lives Matter protest marches in wake of George Floyd's death should have been prevented and their communications shut down, because the grandparent poster thinks that protesting police brutality and murder is illegitimate, but storming the US Capitol with the stated goal of overthrowing the government and extrajudicially executing the Vice President is just fine.
brlewis 6y ago
> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits Convince me. I have a side project that's intended to foster free speech, but I disallow advocating harm toward identifiable humans, except through process of law. Should this limit really be removed?
mindvirus 6y ago
If the primary use and purpose of highways was to commit crimes, and the people running them refused to do anything about it, then yes I'd question them or at least their management. I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut, but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before that harm occurs. With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms rather than causes.
- chrischattin 6y ago
  What if two groups of people both use the highways to commit crimes, but the moderators of the highways only enforce the rules on one group?
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    That's some sneaky language but this isn't a philosophical hypothetical. Parler hosted people calling for specific acts of violence and did hardly anything to moderate them. Those people were almost entirely right wing and you can see for yourself looking through the data dumps provided recently by a hacker or looking up articles about Parler. If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we saw on Parler.
    - chrischattin 6y ago
      Uhh, yeah. Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc. Edit to reply the post below: Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism. Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics. U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and calling for violence around the country this summer. Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it but not the other? There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as platforms under the assumption / intent that users create the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.
JudgeGroovyman 6y ago
No the internet is the highway infrastructure in this metaphor and no one is proposing to ban the internet. We are debating whether the hateful series of billboards and bulletin boards along the side of the road can be removed by monopolies or not.
ojbyrne 6y ago
You need a license to legally use the US highway system. It is patrolled by police who can stop you at any time and request your documents. You can have that license revoked for a variety of reasons. The highway has a crapton of regulations around how you can use it. Speed limits, rules against drunk driving, driving only in 1 direction, requiring your lights be on (in some places during the daytime). Nobody (almost) complains about limits on "free driving."
- pixl97 6y ago
  Yep, OPs entire argument is very poor and very much a strawman. If you start doing crazy stuff on the highway you will not only be stopped, but potentially fined and imprisoned.
- FredDollen 6y ago
  Right, now imagine only conservatives are having their licenses revoked for such violations.
tj-teej 6y ago
Free Speech does have limits though. If you're incarcerated for a felony you can't vote, if you go to a mall and start yelling obscenities you can be removed, if you make youtube videos on how to create pipebombs the US President can kill you in a drone strike without a public trial. The thing I think people miss when making the "this is an assault on free speech!" is that they think it's becoming a gray area, when in fact it has always been a gray area.
Jochim 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? The people responsible for those highways spend a lot of money preventing them being used for drug trafficking, blackmarket weapons etc. Parler actively refused to moderate right wing hate speech. > Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored. I have to ask, where then do you want the line to be drawn? How detailed does the plan have to be before it's nipped in the bud?
rpvnwnkl 6y ago
A better analogy would be landlord-tenant. AWS was the landlord here. Although they should have the right to evict Tenants under certain circumstances, we might all be better off if these evictions were legal proceedings, and could be documented and challenged in court.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Unlike the US highway system, Parler was specifically set up to encourage - or at least provide a haven for - insidious planning and hatred. So I don't see how your argument is convincing. Would you feel the same way if it had been Muslim terrorists in camo storming the Capitol, and they had organised on a Muslim site? Because no matter how this is being spun, that is literally comparable to what happened last week.
andrewljohnson 6y ago
If there were a US highway that was used primarily or disproportionately for crime, then the government would take some actions. Examples of this in practice are the checkpoint around El Paso in West Texas that checks for all sorts of contraband. And the agriculture checkpoint on Highway 80 between California and Nevada. In this analogy, Parler seems more like a single road used for lots of crime, while social media overall is the highway network that is more free.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  I don’t want to nitpick, but i’ve been thru the checkpoint east of el paso many times. It’s deeply racist. Here is how every interaction i’ve had goes: Checkpoint cop, looks at people in vehicle, sees they are all white, bored sounding asks “is everyone an american citizen?” Driver: “no, some of us are american and some are canadian.” Checkpoint cop, confused: “uhhh that’s alright, proceed” There purpose is supposedly to check for illegal cross border activity in the US and yet a car full of canadians doesn’t even blip their radar because it’s not actually about nationality it’s about race. Which is all to say that i believe your comment about that checkpoint being about contraband glosses over the real motivations. In the dozens of times i’ve been thru there all i’ve ever been asked about is citizenship, and it’s never mattered what the answer is because i am white.
  - newfriend 6y ago
    No, it's not. There aren't millions of Canadian citizens crossing the US-Mexico border illegally every year. There aren't tens of millions of Canadian citizens living illegally in the US. They are trying to stop the 99.999% of illegal aliens who are from Mexico and Central America from crossing the border, not the random Canadian who is basically guaranteed to be entering legally.
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      Because it’s a car full of white people, the border patrol and you assume that they’re “very likely to be entering legally”. There is a similar ratio of canadians legally and “illegally” living in the states as there are latinos living legally and “illegally”. But that aside, a car full of white people definitely gets treated differently at that checkpoint than a car full of latinos - and nobody EVER asked about “contraband” as originally suggested
tathougies 6y ago
Speech should have limits, but calling anything that took place on parler automatically 'hate speech' so contemptible that it ought to result in banning along with everything else on that site is ridiculous. There have been few instances of truly censorship-worthy speech over the past year, from either left or right.
- ArtDev 6y ago
  The content I saw on Parler was more akin to an ISIS recruitment website than just plain hate speech.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    I've been on parler for months. Stop exaggerating
toss1 6y ago
We have free speech. That means I can speak freely, and not be compelled to repeat or amplify what you/they/govt want me to say. Free speech is one thing, free amplification of speech at global scale is another To the highway analogy: Yes, highways can be used for crimes. And there are restrictions on highways to prevent crime, enforced by everything including local police, county sheriffs, state police, border patrol, and national guard when necessary. The Interstate highway system was built specifically for wartime transport of people and materials. One of the specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in 24 hours. You can get away with small crimes on the highways. However, if you try to wage your own war doing that, with significant numbers of your own fighters, you will be shut down pretty quickly. Similarly, we have free speech. I am also not required to amplify your speech. That would be compelled speech - your govt compelling me to speak what I do not want to say - just as bad as forbidding me to say what I want. Similarly, nothing should require any hosting provider to carry the propaganda for someone else's war, when they do not want to be a part of the war (and make no mistake, what was being planned on Parler is nothing short of war). No hosting provider should be required to carry, or be prevented from carrying porn either. Should the New York Times be required to carry David Duke's (fmr KKK Grand Wizard) screed on the benefits of racism, or should Fox be required to carry Bernie Sander's latest speech? This is no different from the press since Guttenberg. If you want free speech, speak If you want free amplification at scale, build your own press or find a friendly one.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Nit: One of the specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in 24 hours. All but certainly at least 48 hours or more. US Interstate 80 is 2899 miles terminus to terminus. At 60 mph, that is just over 48 hours continuous driving time. The "Cannonball Run" record is 26 hours 38 minutes. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-drive-record-set-amid-virus-shutdown-n1182011 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-... Even the 48 hour transit is optimistic for a military convoy. I suspect 4--6 days (96--144 hours) as a more realistic estimate. (I cannot find a reliable plaanning source or reference.) Otherwise, good points.
  - 6y ago
danaliv 6y ago
The highways are policed. Parler was not.
- garrettgrimsley 6y ago
  >The highways are policed. Parler was not. “And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings.” -TFA
SkyPuncher 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? IMO, this is literally a strawman argument. You're picking a very rare, extreme event and amplifying the importance of that event in an attempt to make an argument. Following the implication of your argument (that we don't worry about a rare even on an otherwise good system), we shouldn't even bat an eye at Parler being removed.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  It's by definition not a straw-man. He's not misconstruing the parent's point. He's making a comparing or extending it to another subject. It might be comically bad comparison but it's not a straw-man.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
If the highway system was created purpose or was majorly used for traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc., and the people running/building/profiting from the highways support trafficing drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. then I would not support the highway infrastructure.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
You can't post pirated content or child porn online - because you're either directly engaging in or enabling criminal behavior. If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime. And sure, this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it, and it's not the main value proposition of the platforms. The problem with Parler is that this was always where it was headed. It was built to serve people who would use it for this, and a significant portion of the content created and consumed was about this. There is also legitimate content available on Kick Ass Torrents. But the majority of the consumption is for things that are illegal in the US. So it gets the same treatment as Parler.
- coryfklein 6y ago
  > If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime. You are conflating Parler with it's users > this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it From the article: > And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
  - fphhotchips 6y ago
    You've made some good arguments throughout this thread, but this one in particular is disingenuous. You can't market yourself to people that were deplatformed specifically for inciting violence and then credibly mock surprise when those people begin inciting violence on your platform. By the time the limited number of moderators get around to deleting or hiding posts the damage is done, and everybody knows it.
    - coryfklein 6y ago
      A few things: 1. You either are unaware of the meaning of the word "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than I do. 2. Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform? 3. Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"? This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.
richardthered 6y ago
Nobody is proposing to remove the infrastructure itself. It's a question of who gets to decide who gets to _use_ the infrastructure. Imagine that you have a private company that manages all of the toll roads in a city. One day, this company decides that they no longer want John Smith to use their toll roads. John Smith is banned. Maybe John is a terrible person. Criminal convictions, DUIs, whatever. Regardless of that, should a private company have unilateral right to ban a customer? With no recourse? No appeal, no accountability? There is no elected official to vote out of office if you don't like it. There's no appeals court to hear your claim. John is just banned. He now has to drive an extra 30 minutes every day because he can't use the high-speed toll roads to get to work. Parler is problematic. For sure. And I'm a big believer in free speech, and that companies, in general, should be able to run their business however they want. However, there are limits. A sandwich shop can't refuse to serve a customer because they are black, for instance. But cake shops can refuse to serve customers if they are gay, as we recently learned from supreme court cases. I think that much of the issue here revolves around how much of a monopoly a company has. If my local sandwich shop doesn't want to serve me, because I'm a jerk, that's fine. I can just go to another shop down the street. I'm not that inconvenienced. But these massive tech companies have enormous ecosystems. They dominate their industries, and are often the only really viable choice in their markets. I see a constant stream of article about YouTubers that build a massive business with millions of followers, and then one day 'poof', Google kicks them off, and they have no recourse. Or the guy on Facebook that spent $47 million dollars in advertising over the years, and one day Facebook kicks him off, banned for life. No recourse, no appeal, no explanation, even. Apple and Google have absolute say over their app stores, and what is allowed. Companies can be ruined overnight because some algorithm tipped from the "ok" to "not ok" overnight. This is troubling.
option 6y ago
once you’ve lived in a totalitarian state, then you instantly agree with the comment “speech should always be 100% free”. It is just too important value to lose. As someone who was born and lived in USSR it pains me so much to see to many Americans willing to give up or restrict free speech...
- millbraebart 6y ago
  The hackers of the 90s would be laughing at the Bezo’s/Zuckerberg bootlickers on this site. Big tech and the feds used to be the evil empire, now over half this site want them to censor words that make them mad, and tuck them in at night for good measure. Bezos is reading this stuff and laughing his ass off, probably with a gaggle of prostitutes on a yacht in the Caribean somewhere.
mlyle 6y ago
> I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, So would you say, for instance, that we should be able to do an unlimited amount of discussion, planning, and coordination of an elected official's death. And it's only when one person takes a concrete action towards the plan that they should anyone be able to be arrested, and only that person? Because the rest is all protected speech?
- datahead 6y ago
  I found this [1] breakdown helpful to understand the legal position of this hypothetical. > unlimited [...] discussion, planning and coordination turns into evidence once "intent" and an "overt act" thresholds are crossed, for all involved. [1] https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/conspiracy.html https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/conspiracy.htm...
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Yes, this would certainly be naughty under current law, but perhaps not in a legal regime where "all speech is OK!" Note that the overt act need not be committed by the speaker, too. There's even ambiguity about elements of this in current law. If one were to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government, and begin running training exercises to help people prepare to overthrow the government at some unspecified future date--- it is unclear whether this is protected by the First Amendment. SCOTUS mentioned -- but did not address -- this problem in Stewart v McCoy (2002): ... While the requirement that the consequence be “imminent” is justified with respect to mere advocacy, the same justification does not necessarily adhere to some speech that performs a teaching function. As our cases have long identified, the First Amendment does not prevent restrictions on speech that have “clear support in public danger.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 (1945). Long range planning of criminal enterprises–which may include oral advice, training exercises, and perhaps the preparation of written materials–involves speech that should not be glibly characterized as mere “advocacy” and certainly may create significant public danger. Our cases have not yet considered whether, and if so to what extent, the First Amendment protects such instructional speech. Our denial of certiorari in this case should not be taken as an endorsement of the reasoning of the Court of Appeals.... https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-20.ZA.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-20.ZA.html
jarjoura 6y ago
Crossing a state line on a federal highway to commit an illegal act is a federal crime. Parler was given the opportunity to police itself, and they defiantly said, no. What other choice do these companies have? They can't just leave it ignore it, considering there was legitimate concern for the safety of other humans lives.
bentcorner 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? I've seen this kind of argument all too frequently in the last week. While I don't think the People Who Decide what is taken down to be infallible, I do think that we're all capable of making reasonable decisions here. Taking down a hate speech site obviously doesn't mean we need to delete the internet, or iPhones, or whatever else Parler users have in common with every other person who uses the internet. > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, or something that should be regulated. I strongly disagree. Apps and websites being taken down is not something new at all, and what happened to Parler is only notable because it impacted more people. There are many sites that are IMO righteously taken down. Our conversation should not be "should big tech control what we see online", but should be "where do we draw the line?".
trianglem 6y ago
I definitely think speech should have legislative limits. I like Germany’s model.
deedree 6y ago
In your comparison it's about what CAN be done with the highway. For the comparison to hold true it's more like we let them knowingly drive there while we're 100% aware where they are at that moment. So we could have acted on it but didn't and watched them do it. Threats, slander and misinformation where never part of free speech and never will be. Invoking "free speech" here is disingenuous. To go back to your comparison, if Parler - or anything similar - was like the highway we wouldn't know about what was going on. But we do, and it's inciting violence so it's basic human decency to stop it. Even apart from anything that a government would say. I don't get it, why are we still talking about this on HN.
triceratops 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? Are you equating social media with the US highway infrastructure? I have to disagree with you in that case. The Internet and ISPs are like the US highway infrastructure. Social media is like demanding your stuff be carried by a particular truck company. If you want social media to be public infrastructure, maybe the government should start a social media company.
totalZero 6y ago
Highways are a public utility. AWS is a private for-profit service. Drug trafficking and gun running are illegal activities. Generic Parler hate may not be illegal. Your argument does not establish an effective parallel between the things you are comparing.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  AWS has terms of service that are legally allowed to be broad and ambiguous. Violation of these terms of service is grounds for removal from their platform. AWS has sole authority over the adjudication of such violations and they are under no obligation to inform the client as to the reason behind their decision. If we want to limit the powers of these platforms, then Congress needs to pass laws limiting the scope of ToS and/or create a regulatory agency charged with adjudicating claims. There's no analogs or moral arguments necessary. Just the legal ones. And Congress has failed to take any action to invoke legal authority over these platforms and their ToS. Thus, the government has minimal control here.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    AWS sets its own terms because it is a business. A highway is funded in large part via taxation. The argument is a poor one because it draws parallels between things that are not parallel. There is no indication that (A) it serves the public interest for the government to forcibly alter business decisions, nor that (B) there is an existing legal basis upon which to do so.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ian-g 6y ago
Would the highway not be better equated to the internet itself? With AWS, Google Play store, iOS store as toll roads (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Gate Bridge etc...) and Parler, Facebook, HN etc... as car brands? Manufacturers can be forced to take all of their cars off the road for repair. Take Toyota or Waze. You might have an argument about iOS taking Parler off the store as an issue because you can't sideload, but you can directly install APKs onto Android. You can self-host Parler with physical servers. I guess I'm less bothered by this than a lot of folks cause one of my rules is basically "Be nice around other people's things and ask before you touch". AWS and the Android + iOS stores are other people's things. And Parler poked at a sore spot: being used to plan attacks
gigatexal 6y ago
The analogy of the highway system is apt. I never thought of it like that. That being said the Supreme Court has weighed in on what kinds of speech are protected under “free speech” and which aren’t. Overt calls for violence and such are not protected.
mcguire 6y ago
There are, and always have been, significant restrictions on using the highway system. It's absolutely not unrestricted. There are limits.
bun_at_work 6y ago
> I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. A trivial counterpoint is shouting fire in a theater, or other forms of inciting a riot.
blacklight 6y ago
I believe that there are two common and non-negotiable principles for any kind of freedom to apply: 1. Abuses and crimes should always be persecuted. I have read lots of posts on Parler, and ALL grounds for violent speech, radicalisation and terrorism apply to lots of them. I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. Those who use this kind of language MUST be made accountable of their words, just like we'd make ISIS supporters accountable of their words. It's not that just because they're white and Christian dudes that look like us we can condone them a bit more. And if a platform refuses to limit this language, then the whole platform must be taken down. 2. Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you are NOT free to do that. Parler has failed to guarantee both the non-negotiable freedoms when it comes to building a sustainable free speech framework, therefore it must be taken down. I really fail to see any contradiction in this. And keep in mind that the anarco-liberalist vision of free speech is something that has arisen only in the past couple of decades. The founding fathers of the liberal school thought (including Popper and Hayek), those who had REALLY seen how things in Europe ended up when unlimited freedom of speech is guaranteed also to fascist jerks, were well-aware that unconstrained freedom with no framework to contain fundamentalism is a threat to a tolerant society. "Being intolerant with the intolerant is a civic duty for a tolerant society that wants to preserve its values" (Popper)
- unanswered 6y ago
  > I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. And I've read posts on HN saying we should hang and quarter Trump supporters; should HN be wiped from the face of the earth?
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    I missed those I guess.
abc_lisper 6y ago
Let us be real. People who were using Parler were using it to plan violence. If not, no one is stopping them from using FB or Twitter or some other social network. There is no special love for Parlers rights except that it allows illegal activities not covered by free speech. People who are fighting this are using free speech as a blanket to do what they wish
juskrey 6y ago
Traffickers, when using the highway, do not make HQs at major intersections and rest zones and do multiply at will there. And if they do, they got banned for some time.
fsociety 6y ago
A highway doesn’t scale in the same way a social media site does. I disagree that this is brainwashing. We just don’t know how to cope with the internet’s scale and the answer is not clear..
johnchristopher 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? They get closed fast when the shit hits the fan though. So, where does the analogy leave us ?
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Is it censorship if law enforcement puts up a blockade to catch a suspected criminal? Is it censorship is law enforcement shuts down a section of highway due to safety issues?
smoe 6y ago
Not GP, but I would expect parts of the highway infrastructure where more crimes occur to be more closely monitored and controlled than others. I don't see how this is a black and white issue where you either should be in support or against the highway infrastructre. And since you mention drug trafficking, Personally, I think 100% of drugs should be legal and we have been brainwashed by the governments and media about their effects. But I realize that it is currently very much not the case where I live, so I have to be aware that my actions might have consequences and know I'm going to have a hard time to convience others of my view, so I might have to compromise to get anywhere. This should be in my opinion the main focus of democracy: to contiously tweak the system to what the current society agrees on in regards to living together instead of inisting on ideals. It just seems to me, that most democracies are not really fond of the idea of taking democracy actually seriosly.
dillondoyle 6y ago
But the US highway is policed (moderated), maybe too much (e.g. racial profiling in violation of a few constitutional amendments). Whereas Parlor intentionally created a system where there was virtually no/super biased moderation, and bragged about it as a core feature. It would be like if the various law enforcement that is tasked with keeping the drugs, trafficking etc you mention off the road, were instead staffed entirely by a group of a handful of these very same law breakers who obviously vote in their own illegal interests. And additionally the creators of the highway spoke to the NyTimes bragging about their setup, maybe even telling the public about specific highway routes for these criminals travel.
29athrowaway 6y ago
It is a bad analogy to compare Parler with a highway. If Twitter is a highway, Parler is a tunnel operated by drug cartels. What do you think about the Silk road? The onion website that operated strictly in Tor that was a marketplace used exclusively for crime? That is infrastructure too right? Should it be legal? Fuck no. Stop defending a lost cause. They got shut down because they tried to stage a coup by kidnapping senators in the Capitol. They failed, and it is a good thing that they failed, and it is a good thing they got censored. And it is great that more companies decide to do the same. Shut them down, all of them. Enough is enough. Have you ever been assaulted by a Trumper while minding your own business, just for being a minority? I have. These news make me happy. Adios, amigos... Your movement will never attain anything again.
_greim_ 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. This is a good thought experiment actually. I think typical Americans support policing all roads and highways, especially where stretches of road are known to be frequented by bad actors. If private corporations owned highway infrastructure and unilaterally decided to shut down segments of road in order to stop those bad actors, it should raise a lot of questions. I think this highlights the need for better legislation, not only to limit corporations ability to shut down services, but but to replace that with policing put in place by elected governance and based on laws that apply equally to everyone.
CyanLite2 6y ago
I'm perfectly fine with Parler being an outlet for conspiracy theories and such. Many people made good money off of Parler, and Parler made good money grifting off of delusional folks. All legal. Crazy? Probably. But definitely within the realm of "free speech". The line gets drawn when a platform is used as a base of coordination to overthrow a legitimately elected government and threaten violence against people. Not sure why that's so hard to grasp.
cynusx 6y ago
In europe, we long accepted that uncensored talk of hate speech which in practice is almost always racial hatred will lead to the eventual overthrow of democracies and therefore deserve to be censored. Is preserving democracy worth putting limits on free speech? I'd argue absolutely. People are animals.
flowerlad 6y ago
28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans. [1] If a significant chunk of the population hesitates to get vaccines then it has consequences for all of us, regardless of our beliefs. Lies and misinformation spread through social media should be kept in check by patrolling, just like our highways are patrolled. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648 https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648
oblib 6y ago
We have to consider the old adage about screaming "Fire" in a crowded theater. Unfettered free speech would dictate we can all do that anytime we want because free speech has no limits. Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action. That is where the line in free speech ends. The notion that the purveyor of technologies used to distribute speech that are incitements to imminent lawless action has no legal obligation in regards to the consequences is akin to saying a theater owner has no obligation to make sure a person who's repeatedly screamed "Fire!" and caused a stampede that injures people isn't allowed in their theater doesn't hold up. And it has ground at all to stand on if the theater owner actively pursues them and promotes they can do that in their theater. In this case, Parlor has essentially pursued and invited those who love to scream "Fire" and actively encourage them to use their service to do that. And in fact they used it to organize a mob and help plan a insurrection. And it did not matter to them that lies were being spread to fan the flames of hate, or who or how many might lose their lives as a result. Parlor is a prime example of the lowest form of capitalism. Little different than crack dealers. We cannot let them hide behind the noble goals of "Free Speech".
- offby37years 6y ago
  The cliché about "screaming fire in a crowded movie theater" misconstrues limits on the 1A. https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
lkbm 6y ago
This is a bad analogy. The highway is heavily policed to combat those things, and they're nowhere near a central use-case. I'm sure it was a small minority of Parler's activity that was death threats or planning/encouraging/inciting violence, but it seems like it was intentionally a safe-haven for those activities. The highway has criminal activity, but is not a safe haven for criminal activity. Parler appears to have been to an extent beyond what is generally considered acceptable.
d1zzy 6y ago
> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? As we've learned from the now settled case law on Bittorrent trackers & co, it is not sufficient for your infrastructure to make it possible to support legal uses, it is necessary to show that that is the vast majority of its uses.
toper-centage 6y ago
If there was a highway that was mostly used by drug cartels, blocking it would be a no brainer. That's not an adequate comparison. The problem is really that this is uncharted digital territory and, as always, our laws are too outdated to fit a digital world. Facebook/Twitter has enough money to flood a competitor social network with nazi spam, to bribe journalists to write about it and to push competition to destruction and still have hacker news and reddit applaud it. Not defending Parlor, but that is a very possible scenario.
tryauuum 6y ago
Your comment could be so much better without the highway analogy. Now there are people expanding it, indulging in thoughts like "wouldn't the digital equivalent of Toyota be XYZ...". I think comparisons suck, because people obviously come up with comparisons with the things that prove their point of view, while ignoring all other comparisons.
dmode 6y ago
I don't understand the comparison with US highway infrastructure. That infrastructure cannot be use to spread "crime" at rapid scale, leading to extreme degradation of society. The whole ISIS movement took advantage of lax enforcement and created a monster that will haunt was for decades. What's the equivalent for highway infrastructure ? Are drug dealers using it to spread addiction at rapid scale ?
dang 6y ago
This was a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748129 but I've detached this massive subthread in an attempt to spare our poor server. yes, we're working on it

newacct583 6y ago

> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. Then why are you posting that on a heavily-moderated discussion forum and not 8kun?

uncoder0 6y ago
Well funny you mention 8kun specifically it is down at the time of your comment. I find HN to be a good balance of moderation and open discussion. Like all platforms it has it's biases but, people are relatively civil and open to discussion which is commendable in the current climate of online discussion.
- Krollifi 6y ago
  Some of the reasons HN is civil is that it covers a niche area and quickly flags things that are highly contraversial such as politics and race relations. I just checked and 8kun.top is up.

uncoder0 6y ago

>"Obviously all of the insidious planning and hatred that presumably occurred on Parler is abhorrent. I think I can hate all of those things without believing that the site should be censored." I have yet to see any evidence that the capitol protest was planned primarily on Parler. I have seen plenty of evidence that it was planned primarily on Facebook (that has since been deleted/hidden by Facebook). You'd think if the goal was to punish or curtail such events Facebook would be getting at least similar treatment as Parler.

smithza 6y ago
Difference being that Facebook moderates content. This was the Apple complaint against Parler. Parler has publicly touted itself as the 4chan/8chan of social media apps. It is more that the culture of Parler is being rejected by the App Store gate keepers and not so much the vehicle enabling it.
- eightysixfour 6y ago
  Parler absolutely moderated content - many went on and posted something left leaning and had their content quickly removed. It was moderated by ideology instead of by any attempt at "decency" though.
  - smithza 6y ago
    I haven't heard this. Can you point to examples of this?
    - _whiteCaps_ 6y ago
      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... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-space-for-trump-election-denial https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-space-fo... > Still, there is a set of community guidelines and a user agreement, which prohibits deliberately obscene usernames, pornography, and threats to kill others. Meaning even Parler’s free speech absolutists have some vague rules for what they deem as too offensive. “When you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,” wrote Matze during a consequential exchange on his site, shattering the hopes of conservatives and libertarians everywhere who dream of a social media site with a completely laissez-faire ToS.

Fellshard 6y ago

One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred on Parler, but rather tended to occur on FB. If you'd used Parler before it went down (I poked it months ago, before all this madness, and found it to be sorely lacking), you'd notice that it's a shoutcasting platform like Twitter, and is wholly unsuitable for any kind of event planning. At most, you could give messages saying to prepare for X at event Y, which is 'planning' of a sort, I suppose.

MrMan 6y ago
an assertion, not an observation
- Fellshard 6y ago
  He provides some cursory anecdotal evidence to that effect in the article, at least. My only addition is observing the nature of the platform itself as also making it an unlikely venue for that activity. But people have used platforms for entirely unsuitable purposes before...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> One of Greenwald's observations was that no planning occurred on Parler No, that's one of his unsubstantiated claims that conveniently fits the ideological tirade he's been on since long before the events in question. Other journalists have pointed to planning on Parler, including citing specific posts.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Violent threats and incitement to violence occur on these platforms all the time. Some of this content is moderated. Much of it is not.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Planning also occurred on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Sure. And that may indicate problems with those platforms. At a minimum, though, those platforms reacted against continued use by the same terrorists once it was unmistakably, publicly, concretely clear that they were a deadly serious threat.

useful 6y ago

Counterpoint: if tanks were the primary way to transport something obvious like a giant battle tank that were being used to kill people and attempt overthrow of the government. If the checkpoints setup couldn't catch enough of them to remove the danger, would you support shutdowns of the highway infrastructure until the checkpoints could stop them?

sanderjd 6y ago

From my perspective, your analogy fits for the internet backbone, but not for the fact pattern under discussion here. To stretch the analogy, I think AWS would be more like a really big network of private distribution centers where client businesses can drop off and pick up goods. I think those distribution centers would be well within their rights to refuse to serve clients who are trafficking "drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc".

nrmitchi 6y ago

> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I very much disagree. Hate speech is just one example. "Speech" designed to terrorize, threaten, and incite action should not be "free". > Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. By this logic no one who is purposely inciting anything is even liable for the actions that they cause. "Leaders" will never face punishment, because they only say things, right? The line (or at least one of the lines) comes when speech is no longer an expression, but an instruction. It may be a tough line to draw, but that doesn't mean that the line shouldn't exist somewhere.

trident5000 6y ago
"hate speech" is a term that was coined in recent years to silence people. The only things that are dangerous are when people actually act or are explicit and then we deal with them. This isnt Minority Report. Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. The only restrictions are explicit threats (someone is literally saying they are going to kill someone and names said person) Today the interpretation has morphed into whatever is unpopular or is 3 steps away from being an actual threat.
- dhosek 6y ago
  I'm older than 5 years old. This isn't remotely true.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    time-frame admittedly was way off. I edited it.
- eightysixfour 6y ago
  > Free speech is meant to be nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions. You're missing a part in this line that's very important, it should be "nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions from the government."

stephencoyner 6y ago

If there was a specific highway that was almost exclusively used by drug / human traffickers, and there was a mountain of evidence to prove that, it seems like we would really look into that road and add extra security or shut it down until we could get a plan together.

throwaway316943 6y ago
By building a wall across it perhaps?
- stephencoyner 6y ago
  Not what I was referring to at all, but I see where you’re going. I was just trying to make a point that this was removing a toxin from the app eco-system. Not a harmless player who did mostly good with a few “bad apples”

threatofrain 6y ago

But do you believe in free association? Is it okay that per Parler's CEO, banks and payment providers, law firms, and mail services have also cancelled on them?

eightysixfour 6y ago

> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. I think you should be free to say what you want and to think what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in that space. Here are three examples: (1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out? (2) You start a social media company and somehow a large contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it on the site unless it is breaking a law? (3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you want to be able to remove that? Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line? If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return? Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their regulation.

ng12 6y ago
Well it's been proven that at #3 your site has the ability sway elections in democratic countries and help topple authoritarian regimes. So yes, the line is somewhere between #2 and #3.
chmod600 6y ago
It's complicated. If you own a giant bar, should you be able to close down a tiny bar next door because there is hate speech inside, because you happen to be friends with the electric company? Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  If you own a building and find out that the owners of a bar that rents space in your building are allowing a terrorist group to plan an insurrection, are you allowed to cancel the lease and evict them? Sure seems like a breach of lease to me.

vb6sp6 6y ago

Drug Lords in Mexico build roads to help them traffic narcotics and some law abiding people have access to them. The US built roads to enable commerce and some law breaking people have access to them. Intent matters

munificent 6y ago

> I think the speech part should always be 100% free. I don't think a claim like this is meaningful without a precise definition of "speech". And, consequently, I think you'll find any attempt to define which things are not "speech" ends up being functionality equivalent to dialing back from that theoretical 100%. In general, you can't have 100% freedom over any finite resource. If there's only one dessert in the fridge, you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it. If you presume that any meaningful "speech" has some non-zero audience size, then speakers are competing for the finite attention of other humans. You can't have perfect freedom for that.

Domenic_S 6y ago
> you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it. Schrodinger's pie - you both have 100% freedom to eat it until one of you actually does

buffington 6y ago

While I like the highway analogy, it only works if the places where "free speech" are being conducted are US owned , public infrastructure. A closer analogy would be private roads. If Amazon owned a series of private highways used solely for shipping goods, would we care if they stopped transporting items they didn't agree with on those Amazon owned highways? Forgive me if I'm repeating a common refrain here, but the words we say on Twitter, Parler, Facebook, and even HN aren't "free", spoken in a public place. They're owned by Twitter, Parler, Facebook and HN. Those companies can choose to do whatever they want, for better or worse.

chrischattin 6y ago
If that’s the case, they’re acting as publishers and should be liable for the content.
- buffington 6y ago
  I don't disagree. But right now, it doesn't matter if I disagree or not. US law makes it very clear what responsibilities and rights publishers have. Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking. They are also allowed to restrict whatever they like, whether it's constitutionally protected or not.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking. No, it doesn't. It states that online systems with user generated content (and other users on such systems) aren't treated as publishers of what their users post, with some major exceptions related to civil liability related to sex trafficking and all criminal liability regardless of subject matter. Civil liability not deriving from status as a “publisher” is also not on its face, affected, though some courts have also applied 230, controversially, to immunize against notice-based civil liability that would apply to them as distributors, even if they aren't considered publishers.

downandout 6y ago

I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I wouldn’t say that the brainwashing has been on the part of the government. All of the efforts at limiting speech, at least recently, have come from private, left-leaning people and organizations. The general consensus seems to be that all speech that doesn’t endorse leftist political views is hate speech and should therefore be banned. I went on Parler, which I had never heard of before last week, just to see what the big deal was. I saw nothing endorsing violence, planning attacks, conspiracy theories, or hate speech. I saw a modern looking Twitter clone with similar, mundane conversations. I suppose I didn’t see much leftist banter, but that was the only real difference between it and Twitter. The idea that elite liberals with monopoly power colluded to strangle a site like this, simply because a percentage of its users likely voted a different way than they did, should be offensive to all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. It makes me fear for the future of democracy as a whole. Democracy cannot exist without the ability to debate.

boublepop 6y ago

There isn’t really anything related to free speech here. No one censored parler, let alone the government. Amazon and Apple didn’t even censor them, just refused to support their product because they failed to live up to the terms of service. The only element of free speech ironically was that Parler was found to censor left-leaning and moderate messages in its forum.

simias 6y ago

"Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this discussion. You can be convinced of something without being brainwashed. I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it, I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can lead to. Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't been brainwashed into. After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced. And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.

etangent 6y ago
> I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mob Imagine saying this in June 2020
- _vertigo 6y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by this?
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    The implication is that the nationwide (and worldwide) Black Lives Matter protest marches in wake of George Floyd's death should have been prevented and their communications shut down, because the grandparent poster thinks that protesting police brutality and murder is illegitimate, but storming the US Capitol with the stated goal of overthrowing the government and extrajudicially executing the Vice President is just fine.

brlewis 6y ago

> I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits Convince me. I have a side project that's intended to foster free speech, but I disallow advocating harm toward identifiable humans, except through process of law. Should this limit really be removed?

mindvirus 6y ago

If the primary use and purpose of highways was to commit crimes, and the people running them refused to do anything about it, then yes I'd question them or at least their management. I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut, but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before that harm occurs. With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms rather than causes.

chrischattin 6y ago
What if two groups of people both use the highways to commit crimes, but the moderators of the highways only enforce the rules on one group?
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  That's some sneaky language but this isn't a philosophical hypothetical. Parler hosted people calling for specific acts of violence and did hardly anything to moderate them. Those people were almost entirely right wing and you can see for yourself looking through the data dumps provided recently by a hacker or looking up articles about Parler. If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we saw on Parler.
  - chrischattin 6y ago
    Uhh, yeah. Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc. Edit to reply the post below: Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism. Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics. U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and calling for violence around the country this summer. Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it but not the other? There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as platforms under the assumption / intent that users create the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.

JudgeGroovyman 6y ago

No the internet is the highway infrastructure in this metaphor and no one is proposing to ban the internet. We are debating whether the hateful series of billboards and bulletin boards along the side of the road can be removed by monopolies or not.

ojbyrne 6y ago

You need a license to legally use the US highway system. It is patrolled by police who can stop you at any time and request your documents. You can have that license revoked for a variety of reasons. The highway has a crapton of regulations around how you can use it. Speed limits, rules against drunk driving, driving only in 1 direction, requiring your lights be on (in some places during the daytime). Nobody (almost) complains about limits on "free driving."

pixl97 6y ago
Yep, OPs entire argument is very poor and very much a strawman. If you start doing crazy stuff on the highway you will not only be stopped, but potentially fined and imprisoned.
FredDollen 6y ago
Right, now imagine only conservatives are having their licenses revoked for such violations.

tj-teej 6y ago

Free Speech does have limits though. If you're incarcerated for a felony you can't vote, if you go to a mall and start yelling obscenities you can be removed, if you make youtube videos on how to create pipebombs the US President can kill you in a drone strike without a public trial. The thing I think people miss when making the "this is an assault on free speech!" is that they think it's becoming a gray area, when in fact it has always been a gray area.

Jochim 6y ago

rpvnwnkl 6y ago

A better analogy would be landlord-tenant. AWS was the landlord here. Although they should have the right to evict Tenants under certain circumstances, we might all be better off if these evictions were legal proceedings, and could be documented and challenged in court.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Unlike the US highway system, Parler was specifically set up to encourage - or at least provide a haven for - insidious planning and hatred. So I don't see how your argument is convincing. Would you feel the same way if it had been Muslim terrorists in camo storming the Capitol, and they had organised on a Muslim site? Because no matter how this is being spun, that is literally comparable to what happened last week.

andrewljohnson 6y ago

If there were a US highway that was used primarily or disproportionately for crime, then the government would take some actions. Examples of this in practice are the checkpoint around El Paso in West Texas that checks for all sorts of contraband. And the agriculture checkpoint on Highway 80 between California and Nevada. In this analogy, Parler seems more like a single road used for lots of crime, while social media overall is the highway network that is more free.

kennywinker 6y ago
I don’t want to nitpick, but i’ve been thru the checkpoint east of el paso many times. It’s deeply racist. Here is how every interaction i’ve had goes: Checkpoint cop, looks at people in vehicle, sees they are all white, bored sounding asks “is everyone an american citizen?” Driver: “no, some of us are american and some are canadian.” Checkpoint cop, confused: “uhhh that’s alright, proceed” There purpose is supposedly to check for illegal cross border activity in the US and yet a car full of canadians doesn’t even blip their radar because it’s not actually about nationality it’s about race. Which is all to say that i believe your comment about that checkpoint being about contraband glosses over the real motivations. In the dozens of times i’ve been thru there all i’ve ever been asked about is citizenship, and it’s never mattered what the answer is because i am white.
- newfriend 6y ago
  No, it's not. There aren't millions of Canadian citizens crossing the US-Mexico border illegally every year. There aren't tens of millions of Canadian citizens living illegally in the US. They are trying to stop the 99.999% of illegal aliens who are from Mexico and Central America from crossing the border, not the random Canadian who is basically guaranteed to be entering legally.
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    Because it’s a car full of white people, the border patrol and you assume that they’re “very likely to be entering legally”. There is a similar ratio of canadians legally and “illegally” living in the states as there are latinos living legally and “illegally”. But that aside, a car full of white people definitely gets treated differently at that checkpoint than a car full of latinos - and nobody EVER asked about “contraband” as originally suggested

tathougies 6y ago

Speech should have limits, but calling anything that took place on parler automatically 'hate speech' so contemptible that it ought to result in banning along with everything else on that site is ridiculous. There have been few instances of truly censorship-worthy speech over the past year, from either left or right.

ArtDev 6y ago
The content I saw on Parler was more akin to an ISIS recruitment website than just plain hate speech.
- tathougies 6y ago
  I've been on parler for months. Stop exaggerating

toss1 6y ago

We have free speech. That means I can speak freely, and not be compelled to repeat or amplify what you/they/govt want me to say. Free speech is one thing, free amplification of speech at global scale is another To the highway analogy: Yes, highways can be used for crimes. And there are restrictions on highways to prevent crime, enforced by everything including local police, county sheriffs, state police, border patrol, and national guard when necessary. The Interstate highway system was built specifically for wartime transport of people and materials. One of the specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in 24 hours. You can get away with small crimes on the highways. However, if you try to wage your own war doing that, with significant numbers of your own fighters, you will be shut down pretty quickly. Similarly, we have free speech. I am also not required to amplify your speech. That would be compelled speech - your govt compelling me to speak what I do not want to say - just as bad as forbidding me to say what I want. Similarly, nothing should require any hosting provider to carry the propaganda for someone else's war, when they do not want to be a part of the war (and make no mistake, what was being planned on Parler is nothing short of war). No hosting provider should be required to carry, or be prevented from carrying porn either. Should the New York Times be required to carry David Duke's (fmr KKK Grand Wizard) screed on the benefits of racism, or should Fox be required to carry Bernie Sander's latest speech? This is no different from the press since Guttenberg. If you want free speech, speak If you want free amplification at scale, build your own press or find a friendly one.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Nit: One of the specifications was to be able to move a division coast-coast in 24 hours. All but certainly at least 48 hours or more. US Interstate 80 is 2899 miles terminus to terminus. At 60 mph, that is just over 48 hours continuous driving time. The "Cannonball Run" record is 26 hours 38 minutes. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-drive-record-set-amid-virus-shutdown-n1182011 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-... Even the 48 hour transit is optimistic for a military convoy. I suspect 4--6 days (96--144 hours) as a more realistic estimate. (I cannot find a reliable plaanning source or reference.) Otherwise, good points.
- 6y ago

danaliv 6y ago

The highways are policed. Parler was not.

garrettgrimsley 6y ago
>The highways are policed. Parler was not. “And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings.” -TFA

SkyPuncher 6y ago

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
It's by definition not a straw-man. He's not misconstruing the parent's point. He's making a comparing or extending it to another subject. It might be comically bad comparison but it's not a straw-man.

thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago

If the highway system was created purpose or was majorly used for traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc., and the people running/building/profiting from the highways support trafficing drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. then I would not support the highway infrastructure.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

You can't post pirated content or child porn online - because you're either directly engaging in or enabling criminal behavior. If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime. And sure, this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it, and it's not the main value proposition of the platforms. The problem with Parler is that this was always where it was headed. It was built to serve people who would use it for this, and a significant portion of the content created and consumed was about this. There is also legitimate content available on Kick Ass Torrents. But the majority of the consumption is for things that are illegal in the US. So it gets the same treatment as Parler.

coryfklein 6y ago
> If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime. You are conflating Parler with it's users > this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it From the article: > And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
- fphhotchips 6y ago
  You've made some good arguments throughout this thread, but this one in particular is disingenuous. You can't market yourself to people that were deplatformed specifically for inciting violence and then credibly mock surprise when those people begin inciting violence on your platform. By the time the limited number of moderators get around to deleting or hiding posts the damage is done, and everybody knows it.
  - coryfklein 6y ago
    A few things: 1. You either are unaware of the meaning of the word "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than I do. 2. Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform? 3. Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"? This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.

richardthered 6y ago

Nobody is proposing to remove the infrastructure itself. It's a question of who gets to decide who gets to _use_ the infrastructure. Imagine that you have a private company that manages all of the toll roads in a city. One day, this company decides that they no longer want John Smith to use their toll roads. John Smith is banned. Maybe John is a terrible person. Criminal convictions, DUIs, whatever. Regardless of that, should a private company have unilateral right to ban a customer? With no recourse? No appeal, no accountability? There is no elected official to vote out of office if you don't like it. There's no appeals court to hear your claim. John is just banned. He now has to drive an extra 30 minutes every day because he can't use the high-speed toll roads to get to work. Parler is problematic. For sure. And I'm a big believer in free speech, and that companies, in general, should be able to run their business however they want. However, there are limits. A sandwich shop can't refuse to serve a customer because they are black, for instance. But cake shops can refuse to serve customers if they are gay, as we recently learned from supreme court cases. I think that much of the issue here revolves around how much of a monopoly a company has. If my local sandwich shop doesn't want to serve me, because I'm a jerk, that's fine. I can just go to another shop down the street. I'm not that inconvenienced. But these massive tech companies have enormous ecosystems. They dominate their industries, and are often the only really viable choice in their markets. I see a constant stream of article about YouTubers that build a massive business with millions of followers, and then one day 'poof', Google kicks them off, and they have no recourse. Or the guy on Facebook that spent $47 million dollars in advertising over the years, and one day Facebook kicks him off, banned for life. No recourse, no appeal, no explanation, even. Apple and Google have absolute say over their app stores, and what is allowed. Companies can be ruined overnight because some algorithm tipped from the "ok" to "not ok" overnight. This is troubling.

option 6y ago

once you’ve lived in a totalitarian state, then you instantly agree with the comment “speech should always be 100% free”. It is just too important value to lose. As someone who was born and lived in USSR it pains me so much to see to many Americans willing to give up or restrict free speech...

millbraebart 6y ago
The hackers of the 90s would be laughing at the Bezo’s/Zuckerberg bootlickers on this site. Big tech and the feds used to be the evil empire, now over half this site want them to censor words that make them mad, and tuck them in at night for good measure. Bezos is reading this stuff and laughing his ass off, probably with a gaggle of prostitutes on a yacht in the Caribean somewhere.

mlyle 6y ago

> I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, So would you say, for instance, that we should be able to do an unlimited amount of discussion, planning, and coordination of an elected official's death. And it's only when one person takes a concrete action towards the plan that they should anyone be able to be arrested, and only that person? Because the rest is all protected speech?

datahead 6y ago
I found this [1] breakdown helpful to understand the legal position of this hypothetical. > unlimited [...] discussion, planning and coordination turns into evidence once "intent" and an "overt act" thresholds are crossed, for all involved. [1] https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/conspiracy.html https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/conspiracy.htm...
- mlyle 6y ago
  Yes, this would certainly be naughty under current law, but perhaps not in a legal regime where "all speech is OK!" Note that the overt act need not be committed by the speaker, too. There's even ambiguity about elements of this in current law. If one were to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government, and begin running training exercises to help people prepare to overthrow the government at some unspecified future date--- it is unclear whether this is protected by the First Amendment. SCOTUS mentioned -- but did not address -- this problem in Stewart v McCoy (2002): ... While the requirement that the consequence be “imminent” is justified with respect to mere advocacy, the same justification does not necessarily adhere to some speech that performs a teaching function. As our cases have long identified, the First Amendment does not prevent restrictions on speech that have “clear support in public danger.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530 (1945). Long range planning of criminal enterprises–which may include oral advice, training exercises, and perhaps the preparation of written materials–involves speech that should not be glibly characterized as mere “advocacy” and certainly may create significant public danger. Our cases have not yet considered whether, and if so to what extent, the First Amendment protects such instructional speech. Our denial of certiorari in this case should not be taken as an endorsement of the reasoning of the Court of Appeals.... https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-20.ZA.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-20.ZA.html

jarjoura 6y ago

Crossing a state line on a federal highway to commit an illegal act is a federal crime. Parler was given the opportunity to police itself, and they defiantly said, no. What other choice do these companies have? They can't just leave it ignore it, considering there was legitimate concern for the safety of other humans lives.

bentcorner 6y ago

> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. It can be used to flee justice, evade police, abets vehicular manslaughter, etc. The list goes on and on. Is it even controversial to support the highway system as is? Do we loose sleep over it? I've seen this kind of argument all too frequently in the last week. While I don't think the People Who Decide what is taken down to be infallible, I do think that we're all capable of making reasonable decisions here. Taking down a hate speech site obviously doesn't mean we need to delete the internet, or iPhones, or whatever else Parler users have in common with every other person who uses the internet. > I feel like we've all been a bit brainwashed by the government in our notion that "free speech" must have limits. I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable. I just question whether or not the speech itself should be viewed as illegal, or something that should be regulated. I strongly disagree. Apps and websites being taken down is not something new at all, and what happened to Parler is only notable because it impacted more people. There are many sites that are IMO righteously taken down. Our conversation should not be "should big tech control what we see online", but should be "where do we draw the line?".

trianglem 6y ago

I definitely think speech should have legislative limits. I like Germany’s model.

deedree 6y ago

In your comparison it's about what CAN be done with the highway. For the comparison to hold true it's more like we let them knowingly drive there while we're 100% aware where they are at that moment. So we could have acted on it but didn't and watched them do it. Threats, slander and misinformation where never part of free speech and never will be. Invoking "free speech" here is disingenuous. To go back to your comparison, if Parler - or anything similar - was like the highway we wouldn't know about what was going on. But we do, and it's inciting violence so it's basic human decency to stop it. Even apart from anything that a government would say. I don't get it, why are we still talking about this on HN.

triceratops 6y ago

> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? Are you equating social media with the US highway infrastructure? I have to disagree with you in that case. The Internet and ISPs are like the US highway infrastructure. Social media is like demanding your stuff be carried by a particular truck company. If you want social media to be public infrastructure, maybe the government should start a social media company.

totalZero 6y ago

Highways are a public utility. AWS is a private for-profit service. Drug trafficking and gun running are illegal activities. Generic Parler hate may not be illegal. Your argument does not establish an effective parallel between the things you are comparing.

mywittyname 6y ago
AWS has terms of service that are legally allowed to be broad and ambiguous. Violation of these terms of service is grounds for removal from their platform. AWS has sole authority over the adjudication of such violations and they are under no obligation to inform the client as to the reason behind their decision. If we want to limit the powers of these platforms, then Congress needs to pass laws limiting the scope of ToS and/or create a regulatory agency charged with adjudicating claims. There's no analogs or moral arguments necessary. Just the legal ones. And Congress has failed to take any action to invoke legal authority over these platforms and their ToS. Thus, the government has minimal control here.
- totalZero 6y ago
  AWS sets its own terms because it is a business. A highway is funded in large part via taxation. The argument is a poor one because it draws parallels between things that are not parallel. There is no indication that (A) it serves the public interest for the government to forcibly alter business decisions, nor that (B) there is an existing legal basis upon which to do so.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ian-g 6y ago

Would the highway not be better equated to the internet itself? With AWS, Google Play store, iOS store as toll roads (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Gate Bridge etc...) and Parler, Facebook, HN etc... as car brands? Manufacturers can be forced to take all of their cars off the road for repair. Take Toyota or Waze. You might have an argument about iOS taking Parler off the store as an issue because you can't sideload, but you can directly install APKs onto Android. You can self-host Parler with physical servers. I guess I'm less bothered by this than a lot of folks cause one of my rules is basically "Be nice around other people's things and ask before you touch". AWS and the Android + iOS stores are other people's things. And Parler poked at a sore spot: being used to plan attacks

gigatexal 6y ago

The analogy of the highway system is apt. I never thought of it like that. That being said the Supreme Court has weighed in on what kinds of speech are protected under “free speech” and which aren’t. Overt calls for violence and such are not protected.

mcguire 6y ago

There are, and always have been, significant restrictions on using the highway system. It's absolutely not unrestricted. There are limits.

bun_at_work 6y ago

> I very much doubt that that is true. I think the speech part should always be 100% free. A trivial counterpoint is shouting fire in a theater, or other forms of inciting a riot.

blacklight 6y ago

I believe that there are two common and non-negotiable principles for any kind of freedom to apply: 1. Abuses and crimes should always be persecuted. I have read lots of posts on Parler, and ALL grounds for violent speech, radicalisation and terrorism apply to lots of them. I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. Those who use this kind of language MUST be made accountable of their words, just like we'd make ISIS supporters accountable of their words. It's not that just because they're white and Christian dudes that look like us we can condone them a bit more. And if a platform refuses to limit this language, then the whole platform must be taken down. 2. Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you are NOT free to do that. Parler has failed to guarantee both the non-negotiable freedoms when it comes to building a sustainable free speech framework, therefore it must be taken down. I really fail to see any contradiction in this. And keep in mind that the anarco-liberalist vision of free speech is something that has arisen only in the past couple of decades. The founding fathers of the liberal school thought (including Popper and Hayek), those who had REALLY seen how things in Europe ended up when unlimited freedom of speech is guaranteed also to fascist jerks, were well-aware that unconstrained freedom with no framework to contain fundamentalism is a threat to a tolerant society. "Being intolerant with the intolerant is a civic duty for a tolerant society that wants to preserve its values" (Popper)

unanswered 6y ago
> I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. And I've read posts on HN saying we should hang and quarter Trump supporters; should HN be wiped from the face of the earth?
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  I missed those I guess.

abc_lisper 6y ago

Let us be real. People who were using Parler were using it to plan violence. If not, no one is stopping them from using FB or Twitter or some other social network. There is no special love for Parlers rights except that it allows illegal activities not covered by free speech. People who are fighting this are using free speech as a blanket to do what they wish

juskrey 6y ago

Traffickers, when using the highway, do not make HQs at major intersections and rest zones and do multiply at will there. And if they do, they got banned for some time.

fsociety 6y ago

A highway doesn’t scale in the same way a social media site does. I disagree that this is brainwashing. We just don’t know how to cope with the internet’s scale and the answer is not clear..

johnchristopher 6y ago

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

Is it censorship if law enforcement puts up a blockade to catch a suspected criminal? Is it censorship is law enforcement shuts down a section of highway due to safety issues?

smoe 6y ago

Not GP, but I would expect parts of the highway infrastructure where more crimes occur to be more closely monitored and controlled than others. I don't see how this is a black and white issue where you either should be in support or against the highway infrastructre. And since you mention drug trafficking, Personally, I think 100% of drugs should be legal and we have been brainwashed by the governments and media about their effects. But I realize that it is currently very much not the case where I live, so I have to be aware that my actions might have consequences and know I'm going to have a hard time to convience others of my view, so I might have to compromise to get anywhere. This should be in my opinion the main focus of democracy: to contiously tweak the system to what the current society agrees on in regards to living together instead of inisting on ideals. It just seems to me, that most democracies are not really fond of the idea of taking democracy actually seriosly.

dillondoyle 6y ago

But the US highway is policed (moderated), maybe too much (e.g. racial profiling in violation of a few constitutional amendments). Whereas Parlor intentionally created a system where there was virtually no/super biased moderation, and bragged about it as a core feature. It would be like if the various law enforcement that is tasked with keeping the drugs, trafficking etc you mention off the road, were instead staffed entirely by a group of a handful of these very same law breakers who obviously vote in their own illegal interests. And additionally the creators of the highway spoke to the NyTimes bragging about their setup, maybe even telling the public about specific highway routes for these criminals travel.

29athrowaway 6y ago

It is a bad analogy to compare Parler with a highway. If Twitter is a highway, Parler is a tunnel operated by drug cartels. What do you think about the Silk road? The onion website that operated strictly in Tor that was a marketplace used exclusively for crime? That is infrastructure too right? Should it be legal? Fuck no. Stop defending a lost cause. They got shut down because they tried to stage a coup by kidnapping senators in the Capitol. They failed, and it is a good thing that they failed, and it is a good thing they got censored. And it is great that more companies decide to do the same. Shut them down, all of them. Enough is enough. Have you ever been assaulted by a Trumper while minding your own business, just for being a minority? I have. These news make me happy. Adios, amigos... Your movement will never attain anything again.

_greim_ 6y ago

> Curious if you feel torn supporting the US highway infrastructure? It can clearly be used for to traffic drugs, humans, blackmarket weapons, etc. This is a good thought experiment actually. I think typical Americans support policing all roads and highways, especially where stretches of road are known to be frequented by bad actors. If private corporations owned highway infrastructure and unilaterally decided to shut down segments of road in order to stop those bad actors, it should raise a lot of questions. I think this highlights the need for better legislation, not only to limit corporations ability to shut down services, but but to replace that with policing put in place by elected governance and based on laws that apply equally to everyone.

CyanLite2 6y ago

I'm perfectly fine with Parler being an outlet for conspiracy theories and such. Many people made good money off of Parler, and Parler made good money grifting off of delusional folks. All legal. Crazy? Probably. But definitely within the realm of "free speech". The line gets drawn when a platform is used as a base of coordination to overthrow a legitimately elected government and threaten violence against people. Not sure why that's so hard to grasp.

cynusx 6y ago

In europe, we long accepted that uncensored talk of hate speech which in practice is almost always racial hatred will lead to the eventual overthrow of democracies and therefore deserve to be censored. Is preserving democracy worth putting limits on free speech? I'd argue absolutely. People are animals.

flowerlad 6y ago

28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans. [1] If a significant chunk of the population hesitates to get vaccines then it has consequences for all of us, regardless of our beliefs. Lies and misinformation spread through social media should be kept in check by patrolling, just like our highways are patrolled. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648 https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648

oblib 6y ago

We have to consider the old adage about screaming "Fire" in a crowded theater. Unfettered free speech would dictate we can all do that anytime we want because free speech has no limits. Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action. That is where the line in free speech ends. The notion that the purveyor of technologies used to distribute speech that are incitements to imminent lawless action has no legal obligation in regards to the consequences is akin to saying a theater owner has no obligation to make sure a person who's repeatedly screamed "Fire!" and caused a stampede that injures people isn't allowed in their theater doesn't hold up. And it has ground at all to stand on if the theater owner actively pursues them and promotes they can do that in their theater. In this case, Parlor has essentially pursued and invited those who love to scream "Fire" and actively encourage them to use their service to do that. And in fact they used it to organize a mob and help plan a insurrection. And it did not matter to them that lies were being spread to fan the flames of hate, or who or how many might lose their lives as a result. Parlor is a prime example of the lowest form of capitalism. Little different than crack dealers. We cannot let them hide behind the noble goals of "Free Speech".

offby37years 6y ago
The cliché about "screaming fire in a crowded movie theater" misconstrues limits on the 1A. https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

lkbm 6y ago

This is a bad analogy. The highway is heavily policed to combat those things, and they're nowhere near a central use-case. I'm sure it was a small minority of Parler's activity that was death threats or planning/encouraging/inciting violence, but it seems like it was intentionally a safe-haven for those activities. The highway has criminal activity, but is not a safe haven for criminal activity. Parler appears to have been to an extent beyond what is generally considered acceptable.

d1zzy 6y ago

toper-centage 6y ago

If there was a highway that was mostly used by drug cartels, blocking it would be a no brainer. That's not an adequate comparison. The problem is really that this is uncharted digital territory and, as always, our laws are too outdated to fit a digital world. Facebook/Twitter has enough money to flood a competitor social network with nazi spam, to bribe journalists to write about it and to push competition to destruction and still have hacker news and reddit applaud it. Not defending Parlor, but that is a very possible scenario.

tryauuum 6y ago

Your comment could be so much better without the highway analogy. Now there are people expanding it, indulging in thoughts like "wouldn't the digital equivalent of Toyota be XYZ...". I think comparisons suck, because people obviously come up with comparisons with the things that prove their point of view, while ignoring all other comparisons.

dmode 6y ago

I don't understand the comparison with US highway infrastructure. That infrastructure cannot be use to spread "crime" at rapid scale, leading to extreme degradation of society. The whole ISIS movement took advantage of lax enforcement and created a monster that will haunt was for decades. What's the equivalent for highway infrastructure ? Are drug dealers using it to spread addiction at rapid scale ?

dang 6y ago

This was a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748129 but I've detached this massive subthread in an attempt to spare our poor server. yes, we're working on it