9 ms·

I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

81 points by formalsystems 6y ago

tsjq 6y ago
could've + should've + would've = didn't it is a shame , with so much of surveillance and the tax money gone into it, and yet this wasn't prevented.
- diragon 6y ago
  That probably means that either they're focusing on the wrong thing (muslims and lefties? I don't know) or that they actually did predict the events and did nothing for whatever reason.
- zepto 6y ago
  Perhaps the administration had good reasons for not making this a priority.
yeuxardents 6y ago
I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By creating even more and more internet bubbles, the 'regular people' do not even see what the 'irregular people' are up to anymore. They cannot talk them down from their ledge, there is no intercommunication now. By isolating people who moderates consider extreme, on either side, creates divided communities of extremism. This should seem like an obvious outcome. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...
- trianglem 6y ago
  What twisted rationalization. People will self segregate based on ideologies if given the option unless they are forced together. If anything having all the crazies segregated into one platform makes it easier to spot trouble.
  - yeuxardents 6y ago
    And yet that did not occur. You have all the crazies on 4chan too, did that enable law enforcement to stop the New Zealand Mosque shooter, who was a regular?
    - therm0 6y ago
      So just ignore the slew of other violent crimes that were prevented by federal law enforcement monitoring anonymous message boards?
      - yeuxardents 6y ago
        Thats not what I said.
    - trianglem 6y ago
      New Zealand shooter was on 8chan and he was a lone wolf. Those are not easy to prevent but a mass discussion of a large coordinated event definitely can be.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    People self segregate based on other characteristics, too, say nationality and language. Hence all the China Towns. There are even remnants of Czech communities in places like Texas that still dance polka and bake kolaches. And Czechs abroad generally assimilate fast. Yet racial diversity at universities and in corporations is highly sought after and supported by all kinds of measures. Perhaps political diversity should be added into the mix. It would be consistent.
    - swirepe 6y ago
- Barrin92 6y ago
  the crowd sourcing and eyes of regular people could have predicted it anyhow, and many people did in fact do just that simply by reading Parler or 4chan and taking threats seriously. See for example Arieh Kovler, 21 December 2020: "On January 6, armed Trumpist militias will be rallying in DC, at Trump's orders. It's highly likely that they'll try to storm the Capitol after it certifies Joe Biden's win. I don't think this has sunk in yet.[...] To be clear here, I don't think the 3%ers, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers or boogaloo types are going to seize the Capitol. But some of them are going try. And people will die." https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1341016471795843080?s=20 https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1341016471795843080?s... Don't spin this into some borderline gas-lightning argument about letting more of these people run rampart on platforms, this is a result of not taking far-right extremism seriously. If these people faced the full force of the law and state like ISIS-propagandists do you would not see them try to storm (and succeed) to occupy a federal building.
  - loraa 6y ago
    Very similar to the antifa rhetoric that we have seen over the past few years. I am not sure how alt-left is good and alt-right is bad when it seems that rioters are all assholes.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Anyone watching the protests of 2020 can predict a protest in 2021.
  - yeuxardents 6y ago
    gas-lightning, now thats something that might be cool The Internet is not real life, just because someone wrote something somewhere means nothing. It could just as well be russian bloggers writing the same inflaming crap . We need to be able to know whats what.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      >The Internet is not real life, just because someone wrote something somewhere means nothing sure but how is letting them on twitter helping with that, are there fewer russian trolls on twitter? These dedicated sites are literally 100% concentrated insight into these communities Authorities in particular, I'm supposed to believe the folks at Homeland Security can't go to Parler and do some open-source intelligence and we need to let the trolls on Facebook instead? It's not like we accidentally pushed the perps into the scary darknet and need the IT guys from CSI, they were literally announcing this stunt proudly to the world, I just don't follow the argument at all. In fact if the riot hadn't been successful I'd have said Parler is a honeypot because people registering with their ID posting openly that they're starting an insurrection is just too absurd.
- me_again 6y ago
  I'm curious: anyone feel they have ever successfully "talked someone down from a ledge" in an online forum in this way? Presumably it must happen but it seems vanishingly rare.
  - ballenf 6y ago
    You see it here on HN all the time. An inflammatory post gets scolded/graciously questioned and the person retracts/apologizes/softens. Not every time, but a lot. But HN might be unique in that regard? Or maybe there's just a scale beyond which it doesn't work?
    - freebuju 6y ago
      There's a stark difference between the audience here at HN and say 8ch or even the taken down Parler. Most users here you can reason with, can't say much for extremists. Also the crowd over there won't give you the mic unless you feed them what they want to hear. They troop to these hidden places for a specific reason(s).
    - formalsystems 6y ago
      I believe HN is unique in this regard. I myself have been both scolded and graciously questioned by HN users on my writing, and it is always done in such a concise and well-written way. I am honestly completely new to writing anything online, and consider myself fortunate that there is a community of highly intellectual people willing to take the time to give my writing succinct criticism, without feeling the need to attack me personally. It has also made me aware of how well-researched many HN user's opinions are on both sides. My opinions have largely been formed in conversations with young people of the liberal city I live in. They will cheer at anything that attacks whoever they see as their opponents, regardless of the research quality or partisan tone behind them. I have received a far greater range of perspective from brilliant HN users on both sides, which has prompted me to take a step back and re-evaluate how I am writing about this incendiary topic.
  - yeuxardents 6y ago
    I do feel so, yes. The internet is not real life. Comments of people you know may lead to real life conversations, and yes, myself and others have come to common ground after being on extreme sides based on internet comments.
- numlock86 6y ago
  > The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. > By creating even more and more internet bubbles, the 'regular people' do not even see what the 'irregular people' are up to anymore. They cannot talk them down from their ledge, there is no intercommunication now. What kept 'regular people' from hopping on 8ch and stopping Christchurch by talking him down? Fun fact: The whole thing was well known in advance and even observed online by law enforcement. Point is, the argument doesn't hold up. Bubble or not, things like these are accessible in every way for almost everyone. The problem is that it's not taken seriously. This has nothing to do with isolation. Simply no one cares, that's what it is. There is just too much of this on the internet at any time. Are you supposed to go after every hate comment? How would that work? It doesn't. It's just too much, even with regularly banning people.
  - yeuxardents 6y ago
    >What kept 'regular people' from hopping on 8ch and stopping Christchurch by talking him down? Fun fact: The whole thing was well known in advance and even observed online by law enforcement. What kept 'regular people' from hopping onto a widely derided and supposedly extremist platform, where threats of exposure of ones personal life simply for being there stopped them from noticing extremism? Are you sure that is a good argument? Firstly, almost no average FB or TW user knows of those forums, let alone the ones that do being willing to also 'go there' given all the stigma. My point still is, if you force these people into places like that, where their plans are easily observable, and 99% of people wont go there then it will fester in silence. Whereas the other potential is..sunlight. Let them say their statements in the sunlight, rather than ban them. 1. Family or friends will banter them down 2. Friends of friends will bring them to center rather than extreme (on EITHER side) 3. its one place rather than 35 distinct forums for LEO to follow.
    - mullingitover 6y ago
      > My point still is, if you force these people into places like that, where their plans are easily observable, and 99% of people wont go there then it will fester in silence. Good. Better they fester in silence in a place where they can be observed and reported to authorities when they cross the line. Without a popular, legitimate, high traffic platform that allows them to influence a mass audience the cancer doesn't metastasize. I can't banter my own mother into giving up whatever conspiracy theory crosses her path. There are so many people with equally poor fact-checking and critical thinking skills that they form their own festering bubbles on popular platforms. The bigger the bubbles, the more extreme they get, and now the end result is a confederacy of deluded, violent extremists sacking the capitol. We're lucky it wasn't worse, but this might be a dress rehearsal for far more violence if we don't get a better grip.
- deleted 6y ago
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- watwut 6y ago
  > been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech This is lie. Social networks were not banning for "simply slightly disagreeable speech".
  - hanselot 6y ago
    Youtube bans OMB. However, they don't ban making deepfakes of OMB and subsequently presenting said deepfakes as real. Why are the folks in DC panicking so hard if he is already on the way out? Can you feel the energy in the air? Soon.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  Sunlight really isn't the best disinfectant. By allowing extremist content unhindered on your site, you are giving them a platform, you are helping them reach more people. You are in fact helping them boost their signal, rather than adhering to some ideal that ordinary people can somehow talk down extremists. You cannot reason with a true believer. You cannot use facts to debate someone for whom the entire concept of facts is fluid and nebulous, something that only matters when they can twist it to their own ends. If you let extremists run free on your site, they will take over the narrative and infest every community they can. It is impossible to debate someone who doesn't care about truth, lies or facts. They will spin a web of arguments that is impossible to counter, because they are not bound by what is real. The people who try to counter-argue have to stick to facts, so they get bogged down in sealioning, gish galloping, bad-faith arguments and outright trolling. The end result is that by engaging the extremists, you allow them to repeat their arguments ad nauseum while you try to counter-argue with facts, but those take time to look up and state coherently, whereas the extremist can just make up lies as they go. It doesn't matter for them, what matters is that they appear to have all the arguments and that they appear to have the upper hand, because all that matters is projecting power. The best way to get rid of extremists online is to ban them from your community.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    This is empirically the correct approach
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    You said it better than me. All of the Parler-Ban-Survivors-Club posts intentionally neglect that it was their content, rhetoric and real world actions that lead to it being shown the door. And Parler was created because the people that populated it as you mentioned, were impervious to facts but would engage in endless bad faith arguments over and over again.
  - formalsystems 6y ago
    This is valuable insight which anecdotally I agree with completely. Plenty of people got onto Parler from time-to-time and tried to throw in some reason and facts. They were silenced/ignored as quickly as those trying to throw lies/misinformation into Twitter discourse. I'm taking a step back to think deeper on this before throwing out an impulsive personal opinion one way or another on this. I'd like to do some deep NLP analysis on comment threads to automate processing/understanding of the discourse.
- deleted 6y ago
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- tpoacher 6y ago
  Worse still. You want to cause trouble? All you need to do is open an account in your enemy's platform and start being a publicly visible asshole under its badge. I'm not claiming a "bad apples are always planted" conspiracy theory, but it does worry me how easy it is to do so and create a destructive narrative if you really wanted to. Whereas if you're just trolling in a general platform, most likely outcome is that you'll get called out for it from both sides and that's about it.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    No one is going to buy the argument of "bad apples" on Parler. It was designed because the bad apples were getting regulated on your standard platform.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    Create a new account, post some shit, immediately screenshot it, and share the picture on your real Twitter account. Takes 1 minute of time, and has a chance to be shared by media.
- ashneo76 6y ago
  You're gaslighting. Storming the capitol and threatening the lives of senators isn't the same as protesting to be heard. BLM protestors didn't show up with a guillotine
  - yesTheyDid 6y ago
    They most certainly did though. This was setup in front of the mayor's house in Portland OR: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658 https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658 — I am starting to question if people do not realize this activity has been going on for many months in cities across the country. Why the media kept this relatively quiet (now and previously) is beyond comprehension for most people aware at this point. The media is divided and therefore, our people are also divided. If two people can’t agree what/when/if past events occurred, how can anyone discuss, much less agree on the current events? In other words, perhaps people should consider that any opinions formed re: politics were likely formed from/by the media they consumed. If we know the media has lately been “one-sided” (yet coming from all sides), perhaps we should be a bit more vigilant to not make assumptions about “another side” if we are unwilling to look at that side - outside the lens of the “great filter”. IIRC, the great filter is what Elon Musk calls it, at least that’s my understanding of the meaning. The instant outrage of today - solely based on what the media is presenting - is at the very least - a possible attack vector for outside or even internal forces. It is my opinion that folks need to better understand this before becoming immediately outraged. It’s up to a person to determine what side they want to present to others politically, but having an understanding that most people won’t review “all sides” before discussion can help keep “toxicity” in-check upon the inevitable disagreement that will come after posting any political statement. This is why it’s an attack vector, and why the attack works. It works based on the likelihood that most won’t even look, yet will make assertions as if they did.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      Hey, when my side brings the guillotines it is completely different from when your side brings the guillotines, how dare you suggest that there is any similarity between their behaviors? Yours are the guillotines of hate, ours are the guillotines of love and tolerance!
- formalsystems 6y ago
  Thank you for your insight on this. The tremendous collective insight of the HN community has led me to realize I need to do far more research before inserting my opinions into these writings (or simply not insert them at all), and I am rewriting all my analysis in Python with ready-to-download datasets so any claim is reproducible and verifiable by anyone. I truly did not expect this level of attention and take the responsibility to put out correct information seriously.
exporectomy 6y ago
No, you don't get to retrospectively pretend you could have predicted something after it happened. No amount of graphs can make up for the fact that he's cherry picked an event that actually happened then went on a fishing expedition.
- dang 6y ago
  This comment was about the submitted title, "We could have predicted the events of January 6th from Parler's data". The submitter changed it to "Violent hashtag frequencies in Parler", which is now also the title of the article. I've since changed it to the first sentence, which feels (to me at least) more neutral, and have turned off the flags on the post.
- deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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mikewarot 6y ago
Many people are reconsidering the way we socially network. I propose making each person directly responsible for what the post, and their hosting.... but layered on top of that is a creative commons license so other people can repost, review, comment, markup, etc. We need to take back the web.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Take anonymity away from people to give the power back to... people? I don’t see this benefiting anyone other than web trackers.
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    Anonymity is an illusion, and it encourages bad behavior, much like road rage. Arbitrary censorship is the larger issue. If I do something illegal, it shouldn't take down everyone I ever happened to chat with, or who read or liked something I wrote once... even the Godwin's law protagonist had a few good ideas mixed in with his assured evil. Free exchange of legal speech shouldn't arbitrarily be squelched because some corporation decides their advertisers wouldn't like it. For example, a few years ago there was a great machining set of videos in which an M-16 lower receiver was machined out of a billet of Aluminum. Youtube decided that anything like that had to go, not for legal reasons, just because of... you know... whim. There was nothing wrong with the video series, it didn't promote violence, it was just a well done documentation of all the tips and setups required to do a tricky bit of work. The replacement that seems to be safe (for now) is to machine model steam engines and lathes from casting kits. Cool, but far less useful in learning the real thing. [update] The idea of learning by watching is a lot less powerful when whole areas of study are excluded randomly, for "reasons" that are never fully explained. If someone decided that hashtables and binary trees should be hidden from view, could you really teach computer science without them? It's a filter bubble of the worst sort. It keeps you from even learning what you don't know, because it can't be safely mentioned.
roenxi 6y ago
Gallows are a time-honoured protest prop (eg, [0]), one being present isn't really the manifestation of gross negligence that this post wants to make it out to be [1]. This is not a very interesting post. Yeah you could predict that there was going to be a protest from Parler. There would have been people saying "hey, there is a rally on the 6th, lets go there and show our support". [0] https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2019/11/climate-activists-plan-to-erect-gallows-outside-victoria-times-colonist-building-tomorrow/ https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2019/11/climate-activists-plan-... [1] Refering to "Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians ... through gross negligence or willing ignorance. This idea manifested itself in the gallows erected outside the US Capitol on January 6th.
- 99_00 6y ago
  Exactly. It's nothing. Just as this is nothing: ‘OFF WITH HIS HEAD’ Black Lives Matter protesters put Trump effigy in a GUILLOTINE outside White House https://www.the-sun.com/news/1384275/protesters-trump-effigy-guillotine-white-house/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/1384275/protesters-trump-effigy... Both sides do it. Both sides fein outrage and disgust at the other side doing it.
  - zaq1 6y ago
    Tabloids are not credible.
    - coffexx 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 Here, from someone on the ground that night, you can clearly see St. John's Episcopal Church in the videos. The tabloid was reporting correctly. The fact these sorts of things, including all the other violence and destruction going on at the time, were either ignored wholesale or played down by mainstream news sources, while also being actively encouraged in the next breath ought to be a source of shame for them. The country spent the last year being gas-lit. Its no surprise at all why many people on the right distrust them.
monoclechris 6y ago
Discussion of hanging politicians regularly occurs on Twitter and as long as it isn't one particular side of the argument the posts rarely get disciplined in any meaningful way.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Sparking violence in peaceful protests to justify retaliation and bring them down is a known tactic used extensively. If you've been paying attention for the last few years, the same is being done with online communities.
kortilla 6y ago
It’s a good thing Parler has been taken down so we don’t have to worry about people having these thoughts anymore /s
throwawaysea 6y ago
It's unclear exactly what these graphs are showing. The axes are not labeled well - why does "relative" frequency matter? From my reading of this post, all the author is saying is that the rate of those posts went up over time, relative to themselves. But if they're still an exceedingly rare occurrence, that tells a different story. How frequently were they appearing overall? What percentage of all Parler users posted messages calling for violence explicitly? What percentage of all Parler posts did the same? These are the questions that matter more in my opinion. Until then, this claim seems like a leap: > It is clear that Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians to spread virally on the platform, either through gross negligence or willing ignorance. The recent NYT article that appeared on HN (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-parler.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...) mentions examples of posts being moderated and removed. So there is a non-zero amount of moderation happening, apparently? Let's also keep in mind, Parler is a 30-person company. How can they keep up with the deluge of traffic they received? If the answer to censored speech is "go make your own social network" but then people turn around to deplatform a small social network that does not have the funding, monetization, or staffing of a megacorp like Twitter or Facebook, then there is no viable competition for the big players. They not only have the competitive moat of network effects, they also are able to collude with each other to kill any new competition. And if these companies like Facebook and Twitter face no realistic competition, we should recognize that they are simply public utilities operating the digital public town square on the public's behalf. As such, they must be held to a higher standard and required to carry all speech that isn't illegal.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Also, kudos to this author for not logging personal information: > there is panic among the ex-Parler community that all their data, even private/deleted posts, have been scraped and archived — it has, just not by me. Furthermore, Parler did not follow industry standards in obfuscating EXIF metadata from uploaded images, so millions of users had their exact location logged. However, I am stunned that Twitter still has not taken down the tweets from @donk_enby, the person whom this post mentions with the location logging (example: https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1348294151712944128 https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1348294151712944128). This account has been sharing datasets with the private information of all those Parley users widely and archiving it all over the place. Isn't this textbook irresponsible disclosure of personal information? Doesn't this violate all the rules of Twitter for doxxing? I've submitted several reports at https://help.twitter.com/forms/private_information https://help.twitter.com/forms/private_information but it seems no one at Twitter cares about preventing privacy leaks and doxxing when it concerns their political enemies.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
xkcd.com/1357/

81 points by formalsystems 6y ago

tsjq 6y ago

could've + should've + would've = didn't it is a shame , with so much of surveillance and the tax money gone into it, and yet this wasn't prevented.

diragon 6y ago
That probably means that either they're focusing on the wrong thing (muslims and lefties? I don't know) or that they actually did predict the events and did nothing for whatever reason.
zepto 6y ago
Perhaps the administration had good reasons for not making this a priority.

yeuxardents 6y ago

I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By creating even more and more internet bubbles, the 'regular people' do not even see what the 'irregular people' are up to anymore. They cannot talk them down from their ledge, there is no intercommunication now. By isolating people who moderates consider extreme, on either side, creates divided communities of extremism. This should seem like an obvious outcome. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...

trianglem 6y ago
What twisted rationalization. People will self segregate based on ideologies if given the option unless they are forced together. If anything having all the crazies segregated into one platform makes it easier to spot trouble.
- yeuxardents 6y ago
  And yet that did not occur. You have all the crazies on 4chan too, did that enable law enforcement to stop the New Zealand Mosque shooter, who was a regular?
  - therm0 6y ago
    So just ignore the slew of other violent crimes that were prevented by federal law enforcement monitoring anonymous message boards?
    - yeuxardents 6y ago
      Thats not what I said.
  - trianglem 6y ago
    New Zealand shooter was on 8chan and he was a lone wolf. Those are not easy to prevent but a mass discussion of a large coordinated event definitely can be.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  People self segregate based on other characteristics, too, say nationality and language. Hence all the China Towns. There are even remnants of Czech communities in places like Texas that still dance polka and bake kolaches. And Czechs abroad generally assimilate fast. Yet racial diversity at universities and in corporations is highly sought after and supported by all kinds of measures. Perhaps political diversity should be added into the mix. It would be consistent.
  - swirepe 6y ago
Barrin92 6y ago
the crowd sourcing and eyes of regular people could have predicted it anyhow, and many people did in fact do just that simply by reading Parler or 4chan and taking threats seriously. See for example Arieh Kovler, 21 December 2020: "On January 6, armed Trumpist militias will be rallying in DC, at Trump's orders. It's highly likely that they'll try to storm the Capitol after it certifies Joe Biden's win. I don't think this has sunk in yet.[...] To be clear here, I don't think the 3%ers, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers or boogaloo types are going to seize the Capitol. But some of them are going try. And people will die." https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1341016471795843080?s=20 https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1341016471795843080?s... Don't spin this into some borderline gas-lightning argument about letting more of these people run rampart on platforms, this is a result of not taking far-right extremism seriously. If these people faced the full force of the law and state like ISIS-propagandists do you would not see them try to storm (and succeed) to occupy a federal building.
- loraa 6y ago
  Very similar to the antifa rhetoric that we have seen over the past few years. I am not sure how alt-left is good and alt-right is bad when it seems that rioters are all assholes.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Anyone watching the protests of 2020 can predict a protest in 2021.
- yeuxardents 6y ago
  gas-lightning, now thats something that might be cool The Internet is not real life, just because someone wrote something somewhere means nothing. It could just as well be russian bloggers writing the same inflaming crap . We need to be able to know whats what.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >The Internet is not real life, just because someone wrote something somewhere means nothing sure but how is letting them on twitter helping with that, are there fewer russian trolls on twitter? These dedicated sites are literally 100% concentrated insight into these communities Authorities in particular, I'm supposed to believe the folks at Homeland Security can't go to Parler and do some open-source intelligence and we need to let the trolls on Facebook instead? It's not like we accidentally pushed the perps into the scary darknet and need the IT guys from CSI, they were literally announcing this stunt proudly to the world, I just don't follow the argument at all. In fact if the riot hadn't been successful I'd have said Parler is a honeypot because people registering with their ID posting openly that they're starting an insurrection is just too absurd.
me_again 6y ago
I'm curious: anyone feel they have ever successfully "talked someone down from a ledge" in an online forum in this way? Presumably it must happen but it seems vanishingly rare.
- ballenf 6y ago
  You see it here on HN all the time. An inflammatory post gets scolded/graciously questioned and the person retracts/apologizes/softens. Not every time, but a lot. But HN might be unique in that regard? Or maybe there's just a scale beyond which it doesn't work?
  - freebuju 6y ago
    There's a stark difference between the audience here at HN and say 8ch or even the taken down Parler. Most users here you can reason with, can't say much for extremists. Also the crowd over there won't give you the mic unless you feed them what they want to hear. They troop to these hidden places for a specific reason(s).
  - formalsystems 6y ago
    I believe HN is unique in this regard. I myself have been both scolded and graciously questioned by HN users on my writing, and it is always done in such a concise and well-written way. I am honestly completely new to writing anything online, and consider myself fortunate that there is a community of highly intellectual people willing to take the time to give my writing succinct criticism, without feeling the need to attack me personally. It has also made me aware of how well-researched many HN user's opinions are on both sides. My opinions have largely been formed in conversations with young people of the liberal city I live in. They will cheer at anything that attacks whoever they see as their opponents, regardless of the research quality or partisan tone behind them. I have received a far greater range of perspective from brilliant HN users on both sides, which has prompted me to take a step back and re-evaluate how I am writing about this incendiary topic.
- yeuxardents 6y ago
  I do feel so, yes. The internet is not real life. Comments of people you know may lead to real life conversations, and yes, myself and others have come to common ground after being on extreme sides based on internet comments.
numlock86 6y ago
> The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. > By creating even more and more internet bubbles, the 'regular people' do not even see what the 'irregular people' are up to anymore. They cannot talk them down from their ledge, there is no intercommunication now. What kept 'regular people' from hopping on 8ch and stopping Christchurch by talking him down? Fun fact: The whole thing was well known in advance and even observed online by law enforcement. Point is, the argument doesn't hold up. Bubble or not, things like these are accessible in every way for almost everyone. The problem is that it's not taken seriously. This has nothing to do with isolation. Simply no one cares, that's what it is. There is just too much of this on the internet at any time. Are you supposed to go after every hate comment? How would that work? It doesn't. It's just too much, even with regularly banning people.
- yeuxardents 6y ago
  >What kept 'regular people' from hopping on 8ch and stopping Christchurch by talking him down? Fun fact: The whole thing was well known in advance and even observed online by law enforcement. What kept 'regular people' from hopping onto a widely derided and supposedly extremist platform, where threats of exposure of ones personal life simply for being there stopped them from noticing extremism? Are you sure that is a good argument? Firstly, almost no average FB or TW user knows of those forums, let alone the ones that do being willing to also 'go there' given all the stigma. My point still is, if you force these people into places like that, where their plans are easily observable, and 99% of people wont go there then it will fester in silence. Whereas the other potential is..sunlight. Let them say their statements in the sunlight, rather than ban them. 1. Family or friends will banter them down 2. Friends of friends will bring them to center rather than extreme (on EITHER side) 3. its one place rather than 35 distinct forums for LEO to follow.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    > My point still is, if you force these people into places like that, where their plans are easily observable, and 99% of people wont go there then it will fester in silence. Good. Better they fester in silence in a place where they can be observed and reported to authorities when they cross the line. Without a popular, legitimate, high traffic platform that allows them to influence a mass audience the cancer doesn't metastasize. I can't banter my own mother into giving up whatever conspiracy theory crosses her path. There are so many people with equally poor fact-checking and critical thinking skills that they form their own festering bubbles on popular platforms. The bigger the bubbles, the more extreme they get, and now the end result is a confederacy of deluded, violent extremists sacking the capitol. We're lucky it wasn't worse, but this might be a dress rehearsal for far more violence if we don't get a better grip.
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watwut 6y ago
> been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech This is lie. Social networks were not banning for "simply slightly disagreeable speech".
- hanselot 6y ago
  Youtube bans OMB. However, they don't ban making deepfakes of OMB and subsequently presenting said deepfakes as real. Why are the folks in DC panicking so hard if he is already on the way out? Can you feel the energy in the air? Soon.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
Sunlight really isn't the best disinfectant. By allowing extremist content unhindered on your site, you are giving them a platform, you are helping them reach more people. You are in fact helping them boost their signal, rather than adhering to some ideal that ordinary people can somehow talk down extremists. You cannot reason with a true believer. You cannot use facts to debate someone for whom the entire concept of facts is fluid and nebulous, something that only matters when they can twist it to their own ends. If you let extremists run free on your site, they will take over the narrative and infest every community they can. It is impossible to debate someone who doesn't care about truth, lies or facts. They will spin a web of arguments that is impossible to counter, because they are not bound by what is real. The people who try to counter-argue have to stick to facts, so they get bogged down in sealioning, gish galloping, bad-faith arguments and outright trolling. The end result is that by engaging the extremists, you allow them to repeat their arguments ad nauseum while you try to counter-argue with facts, but those take time to look up and state coherently, whereas the extremist can just make up lies as they go. It doesn't matter for them, what matters is that they appear to have all the arguments and that they appear to have the upper hand, because all that matters is projecting power. The best way to get rid of extremists online is to ban them from your community.
- MrMan 6y ago
  This is empirically the correct approach
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  You said it better than me. All of the Parler-Ban-Survivors-Club posts intentionally neglect that it was their content, rhetoric and real world actions that lead to it being shown the door. And Parler was created because the people that populated it as you mentioned, were impervious to facts but would engage in endless bad faith arguments over and over again.
- formalsystems 6y ago
  This is valuable insight which anecdotally I agree with completely. Plenty of people got onto Parler from time-to-time and tried to throw in some reason and facts. They were silenced/ignored as quickly as those trying to throw lies/misinformation into Twitter discourse. I'm taking a step back to think deeper on this before throwing out an impulsive personal opinion one way or another on this. I'd like to do some deep NLP analysis on comment threads to automate processing/understanding of the discourse.
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tpoacher 6y ago
Worse still. You want to cause trouble? All you need to do is open an account in your enemy's platform and start being a publicly visible asshole under its badge. I'm not claiming a "bad apples are always planted" conspiracy theory, but it does worry me how easy it is to do so and create a destructive narrative if you really wanted to. Whereas if you're just trolling in a general platform, most likely outcome is that you'll get called out for it from both sides and that's about it.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  No one is going to buy the argument of "bad apples" on Parler. It was designed because the bad apples were getting regulated on your standard platform.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Create a new account, post some shit, immediately screenshot it, and share the picture on your real Twitter account. Takes 1 minute of time, and has a chance to be shared by media.
ashneo76 6y ago
You're gaslighting. Storming the capitol and threatening the lives of senators isn't the same as protesting to be heard. BLM protestors didn't show up with a guillotine
- yesTheyDid 6y ago
  They most certainly did though. This was setup in front of the mayor's house in Portland OR: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658 https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1297421944799686658 — I am starting to question if people do not realize this activity has been going on for many months in cities across the country. Why the media kept this relatively quiet (now and previously) is beyond comprehension for most people aware at this point. The media is divided and therefore, our people are also divided. If two people can’t agree what/when/if past events occurred, how can anyone discuss, much less agree on the current events? In other words, perhaps people should consider that any opinions formed re: politics were likely formed from/by the media they consumed. If we know the media has lately been “one-sided” (yet coming from all sides), perhaps we should be a bit more vigilant to not make assumptions about “another side” if we are unwilling to look at that side - outside the lens of the “great filter”. IIRC, the great filter is what Elon Musk calls it, at least that’s my understanding of the meaning. The instant outrage of today - solely based on what the media is presenting - is at the very least - a possible attack vector for outside or even internal forces. It is my opinion that folks need to better understand this before becoming immediately outraged. It’s up to a person to determine what side they want to present to others politically, but having an understanding that most people won’t review “all sides” before discussion can help keep “toxicity” in-check upon the inevitable disagreement that will come after posting any political statement. This is why it’s an attack vector, and why the attack works. It works based on the likelihood that most won’t even look, yet will make assertions as if they did.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    Hey, when my side brings the guillotines it is completely different from when your side brings the guillotines, how dare you suggest that there is any similarity between their behaviors? Yours are the guillotines of hate, ours are the guillotines of love and tolerance!
formalsystems 6y ago
Thank you for your insight on this. The tremendous collective insight of the HN community has led me to realize I need to do far more research before inserting my opinions into these writings (or simply not insert them at all), and I am rewriting all my analysis in Python with ready-to-download datasets so any claim is reproducible and verifiable by anyone. I truly did not expect this level of attention and take the responsibility to put out correct information seriously.

exporectomy 6y ago

No, you don't get to retrospectively pretend you could have predicted something after it happened. No amount of graphs can make up for the fact that he's cherry picked an event that actually happened then went on a fishing expedition.

dang 6y ago
This comment was about the submitted title, "We could have predicted the events of January 6th from Parler's data". The submitter changed it to "Violent hashtag frequencies in Parler", which is now also the title of the article. I've since changed it to the first sentence, which feels (to me at least) more neutral, and have turned off the flags on the post.
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mikewarot 6y ago

Many people are reconsidering the way we socially network. I propose making each person directly responsible for what the post, and their hosting.... but layered on top of that is a creative commons license so other people can repost, review, comment, markup, etc. We need to take back the web.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Take anonymity away from people to give the power back to... people? I don’t see this benefiting anyone other than web trackers.
- mikewarot 6y ago
  Anonymity is an illusion, and it encourages bad behavior, much like road rage. Arbitrary censorship is the larger issue. If I do something illegal, it shouldn't take down everyone I ever happened to chat with, or who read or liked something I wrote once... even the Godwin's law protagonist had a few good ideas mixed in with his assured evil. Free exchange of legal speech shouldn't arbitrarily be squelched because some corporation decides their advertisers wouldn't like it. For example, a few years ago there was a great machining set of videos in which an M-16 lower receiver was machined out of a billet of Aluminum. Youtube decided that anything like that had to go, not for legal reasons, just because of... you know... whim. There was nothing wrong with the video series, it didn't promote violence, it was just a well done documentation of all the tips and setups required to do a tricky bit of work. The replacement that seems to be safe (for now) is to machine model steam engines and lathes from casting kits. Cool, but far less useful in learning the real thing. [update] The idea of learning by watching is a lot less powerful when whole areas of study are excluded randomly, for "reasons" that are never fully explained. If someone decided that hashtables and binary trees should be hidden from view, could you really teach computer science without them? It's a filter bubble of the worst sort. It keeps you from even learning what you don't know, because it can't be safely mentioned.

roenxi 6y ago

Gallows are a time-honoured protest prop (eg, [0]), one being present isn't really the manifestation of gross negligence that this post wants to make it out to be [1]. This is not a very interesting post. Yeah you could predict that there was going to be a protest from Parler. There would have been people saying "hey, there is a rally on the 6th, lets go there and show our support". [0] https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2019/11/climate-activists-plan-to-erect-gallows-outside-victoria-times-colonist-building-tomorrow/ https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2019/11/climate-activists-plan-... [1] Refering to "Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians ... through gross negligence or willing ignorance. This idea manifested itself in the gallows erected outside the US Capitol on January 6th.

99_00 6y ago
Exactly. It's nothing. Just as this is nothing: ‘OFF WITH HIS HEAD’ Black Lives Matter protesters put Trump effigy in a GUILLOTINE outside White House https://www.the-sun.com/news/1384275/protesters-trump-effigy-guillotine-white-house/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/1384275/protesters-trump-effigy... Both sides do it. Both sides fein outrage and disgust at the other side doing it.
- zaq1 6y ago
  Tabloids are not credible.
  - coffexx 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 Here, from someone on the ground that night, you can clearly see St. John's Episcopal Church in the videos. The tabloid was reporting correctly. The fact these sorts of things, including all the other violence and destruction going on at the time, were either ignored wholesale or played down by mainstream news sources, while also being actively encouraged in the next breath ought to be a source of shame for them. The country spent the last year being gas-lit. Its no surprise at all why many people on the right distrust them.

monoclechris 6y ago

Discussion of hanging politicians regularly occurs on Twitter and as long as it isn't one particular side of the argument the posts rarely get disciplined in any meaningful way.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Sparking violence in peaceful protests to justify retaliation and bring them down is a known tactic used extensively. If you've been paying attention for the last few years, the same is being done with online communities.

kortilla 6y ago

It’s a good thing Parler has been taken down so we don’t have to worry about people having these thoughts anymore /s

throwawaysea 6y ago

It's unclear exactly what these graphs are showing. The axes are not labeled well - why does "relative" frequency matter? From my reading of this post, all the author is saying is that the rate of those posts went up over time, relative to themselves. But if they're still an exceedingly rare occurrence, that tells a different story. How frequently were they appearing overall? What percentage of all Parler users posted messages calling for violence explicitly? What percentage of all Parler posts did the same? These are the questions that matter more in my opinion. Until then, this claim seems like a leap: > It is clear that Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians to spread virally on the platform, either through gross negligence or willing ignorance. The recent NYT article that appeared on HN (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-parler.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...) mentions examples of posts being moderated and removed. So there is a non-zero amount of moderation happening, apparently? Let's also keep in mind, Parler is a 30-person company. How can they keep up with the deluge of traffic they received? If the answer to censored speech is "go make your own social network" but then people turn around to deplatform a small social network that does not have the funding, monetization, or staffing of a megacorp like Twitter or Facebook, then there is no viable competition for the big players. They not only have the competitive moat of network effects, they also are able to collude with each other to kill any new competition. And if these companies like Facebook and Twitter face no realistic competition, we should recognize that they are simply public utilities operating the digital public town square on the public's behalf. As such, they must be held to a higher standard and required to carry all speech that isn't illegal.

throwawaysea 6y ago
Also, kudos to this author for not logging personal information: > there is panic among the ex-Parler community that all their data, even private/deleted posts, have been scraped and archived — it has, just not by me. Furthermore, Parler did not follow industry standards in obfuscating EXIF metadata from uploaded images, so millions of users had their exact location logged. However, I am stunned that Twitter still has not taken down the tweets from @donk_enby, the person whom this post mentions with the location logging (example: https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1348294151712944128 https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1348294151712944128). This account has been sharing datasets with the private information of all those Parley users widely and archiving it all over the place. Isn't this textbook irresponsible disclosure of personal information? Doesn't this violate all the rules of Twitter for doxxing? I've submitted several reports at https://help.twitter.com/forms/private_information https://help.twitter.com/forms/private_information but it seems no one at Twitter cares about preventing privacy leaks and doxxing when it concerns their political enemies.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

xkcd.com/1357/