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This is a horrible argument. Not only is is factually untrue on nearly every count, it's not even an accurate analogy, even if it were true. You can't buy gun

This is a horrible argument. Not only is is factually untrue on nearly every count, it's not even an accurate analogy, even if it were true. You can't buy guns on Amazon for the same reason you can't buy tobacco, liquor, lottery tickets, or cars on Amazon. Because these are all things which are regulated by the government in such a way as to be incompatible with Amazon's logistics and purchasing setup and customer experience. You can buy all of those things online (except lottery tickets), but just not on Amazon. Since Amazon sells other alcoholic beverages, they're hardly taking a moral stance about the dangers of alcoholism. They sell tobacco accessories so they're hardly taking a moral stance against tobacco, they sell parts for cars so they're surely not against private vehicle ownership, and yes, they even sell tactical gear and gun accessories (although crucially not gun parts... any more). The reason you can buy a set of knives on Amazon and not a Glock is that knives aren't regulated with more than 84000 conflicting laws between different state, county, and municipal jurisdictions across the US, including differing restrictions on transfer and shipping, and knives do not have federal regulations requiring background checks. Regardless of your personal opinion around private firearms ownership, you should surely be able to see that the analogy you've presented is patently absurd.

brewdad 6y ago
You were so close...Try thinking about why guns, tobacco, liquor, etc. are regulated by the government while kitchen knives aren't. You'll get there.
- tristor 6y ago
  It essentially doesn't matter /why/ guns, tobacco, liquor, etc. are regulated by the government. That reasoning has no bearing on why Amazon doesn't sell them. Amazon is not a moral agent, it's one of the largest corporations in the world with a profit imperative to expand into as many product categories as possible in its goal to dominate e-commerce. Those government regulations make those product types conflict with Amazon's way of doing business and complying with those regulations reduces profit margins to a level where these products are unattractive to offer. There's a moral-political argument which can be made, sure, but that argument isn't the basis for why Amazon doesn't offer these products, and /that/ was the assertion underlying the grandparent's analogy. It's simply false.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Substitute Amazon for local pharmacy, grocery store, or gas station. Look, the point isn’t to talk about gun rights. The point is that Parler was the toxic runoff from 4chan, Facebook, and the parts of Reddit it deemed too toxic to keep. Facebook is 99.9% reposting of random memes. It’s 0.1% is doing a lot of harm, but by and large it isn’t obviously designed to be a white supremacy platform, it just happens to be used that way by a decent number of people. And that’s my point: guns are designed to kill things, not to cut salad. Knives are designed to be tools that are more often than not used for peaceful cooking, and sometimes misused to cause harm. Trying to turn this into a “guns don’t kill people” debate is pointless. It’s outside the scope of the analogy of why Parler was seen as a harmful thing while Facebook wasn’t.
    - tristor 6y ago
      I think rather than trying argue your original analogy was relevant and useful, you should instead simply admit that it was a bad analogy using an (intentionally or not) inflammatory and afactual comparison that detracts and distracts from the point you are trying to make. It's pretty clear that you're trying to make the point that Facebook is a platform for mostly benign things which as an ancillary has functionality that can be used by extremists, while Parler is specifically a platform built for extremists. You're doing a pretty bad job of trying to make that point by over-focusing on a bad analogy. I'm not sure that's actually accurate. I think it's strongly debatable as to whether or not Facebook ever had any positive intents as a platform. Arguably, Facebook started as a way for predatory men on college campuses to stalk attractive women and comment on their bodies, which I'd be hard pressed to classify as a positive intent. Developing from that, Facebook has taken as many actions as possible to drive user engagement, including actively spying on their users to do so. Not only is the spying itself user-hostile, but the actions taken to drive user engagement seem to greatly emphasize and create rage, lust, fear, and other negative emotions in their user base. I'd be hard-pressed to classify any of this as positive intent. I think you'll have a difficult time, regardless of the analogy you try to shoe-horn into place, arguing that Facebook suffers from unintended consequences when their ragebaiting mechanisms lead to political extremism and violence, and that Parler was intending that a platform designed for free speech resulted in extremism. Probably the best argument in your favor would be to focus on Parler's genesis story, which seems to strongly indicate that it too was not formed for positive intents. I think a mostly honest take is that both platforms are negative in both their intentions and their outcomes and are directly toxic for a functioning democratic society. The only real difference between Parler and Facebook is that Facebook is socially entrenched and has a massive global user base and the revenue/wealth that comes from that, and Parler doesn't.

brewdad 6y ago

You were so close...Try thinking about why guns, tobacco, liquor, etc. are regulated by the government while kitchen knives aren't. You'll get there.

tristor 6y ago
It essentially doesn't matter /why/ guns, tobacco, liquor, etc. are regulated by the government. That reasoning has no bearing on why Amazon doesn't sell them. Amazon is not a moral agent, it's one of the largest corporations in the world with a profit imperative to expand into as many product categories as possible in its goal to dominate e-commerce. Those government regulations make those product types conflict with Amazon's way of doing business and complying with those regulations reduces profit margins to a level where these products are unattractive to offer. There's a moral-political argument which can be made, sure, but that argument isn't the basis for why Amazon doesn't offer these products, and /that/ was the assertion underlying the grandparent's analogy. It's simply false.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Substitute Amazon for local pharmacy, grocery store, or gas station. Look, the point isn’t to talk about gun rights. The point is that Parler was the toxic runoff from 4chan, Facebook, and the parts of Reddit it deemed too toxic to keep. Facebook is 99.9% reposting of random memes. It’s 0.1% is doing a lot of harm, but by and large it isn’t obviously designed to be a white supremacy platform, it just happens to be used that way by a decent number of people. And that’s my point: guns are designed to kill things, not to cut salad. Knives are designed to be tools that are more often than not used for peaceful cooking, and sometimes misused to cause harm. Trying to turn this into a “guns don’t kill people” debate is pointless. It’s outside the scope of the analogy of why Parler was seen as a harmful thing while Facebook wasn’t.
  - tristor 6y ago
    I think rather than trying argue your original analogy was relevant and useful, you should instead simply admit that it was a bad analogy using an (intentionally or not) inflammatory and afactual comparison that detracts and distracts from the point you are trying to make. It's pretty clear that you're trying to make the point that Facebook is a platform for mostly benign things which as an ancillary has functionality that can be used by extremists, while Parler is specifically a platform built for extremists. You're doing a pretty bad job of trying to make that point by over-focusing on a bad analogy. I'm not sure that's actually accurate. I think it's strongly debatable as to whether or not Facebook ever had any positive intents as a platform. Arguably, Facebook started as a way for predatory men on college campuses to stalk attractive women and comment on their bodies, which I'd be hard pressed to classify as a positive intent. Developing from that, Facebook has taken as many actions as possible to drive user engagement, including actively spying on their users to do so. Not only is the spying itself user-hostile, but the actions taken to drive user engagement seem to greatly emphasize and create rage, lust, fear, and other negative emotions in their user base. I'd be hard-pressed to classify any of this as positive intent. I think you'll have a difficult time, regardless of the analogy you try to shoe-horn into place, arguing that Facebook suffers from unintended consequences when their ragebaiting mechanisms lead to political extremism and violence, and that Parler was intending that a platform designed for free speech resulted in extremism. Probably the best argument in your favor would be to focus on Parler's genesis story, which seems to strongly indicate that it too was not formed for positive intents. I think a mostly honest take is that both platforms are negative in both their intentions and their outcomes and are directly toxic for a functioning democratic society. The only real difference between Parler and Facebook is that Facebook is socially entrenched and has a massive global user base and the revenue/wealth that comes from that, and Parler doesn't.