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For some more context about how Parler might not actually be free speech: "the lack of moderation on Parler is not the issue. they actually have very robust mo

For some more context about how Parler might not actually be free speech: "the lack of moderation on Parler is not the issue. they actually have very robust moderation tools and all new users start out shadowbanned until enough of their post get approved for rightthink by their user moderators" [0] "This is not an ad network. This is a system where their most "influential" users can get paid to post organic-looking sponsored content. Their CEO talks about it here" [1] [0] https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506 https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506 [1] https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1346565749977051136 https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1346565749977051136 https://cnbc.com/2020/07/02/how-parler-app-plans-to-make-money.html https://cnbc.com/2020/07/02/how-parler-app-plans-to-make-mon... EDIT: Updated the first tweet to include the full tweet. If Parler actually has robust and capable moderation tools, as documented by the person who led the effort to archive their entire site before it went down, it's worth noting Amazon's position as stated in the article: “Instead, this case is about Parler’s demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture and assassination of named public officials and private citizens.” [2] [2] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_4.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

seebetter 6y ago
Not sure what this means but Tim must had not been on Twitter last year. There was a moment that went on for 4+ months of wild endless violence against federal agents. We live in a conspiracy theory with neoliberal corporate racketeers proclaiming they’re saving us from the ill affects of their own corporate communication platforms for not the public but for woke leftists that vote for Democratic party establishment figures. Not Bernie, that guy’s a socialist and a threat to my 401k.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Also, IIRC there was an interview where the CEO talked about how he was banning "left wing trolls"[1], not to mention they obviously don't allow pornographic images (which are not, in the large, illegal). Parler is about free speech the same way Fox News is fair and balanced. They say that because that's what their target demographic wants to hear, not because there's any truth to the statement. [1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...
- seebetter 6y ago
  OnlyFans is a bigger threat to society than 10,000 Parlers.
  - shlant 6y ago
    what do you mean by this?
    - xwdv 6y ago
      He means to say OnlyFans contributes directly to the fraying of America’s moral fibers.
      - shlant 6y ago
        If that is what the OP was inferring: Personally, I think America is overly concerned with "moral integrity". Maybe it's due to the high Christian population. I think many European countries that are very sexually open such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark are doing just fine. I also think that OnlyFans is an important service that gives sex workers the power to work for themselves in their own homes as opposed to having to make a living through less safe options. Customers get more personalized content and sex workers get a higher percentage of their payments while avoiding potentially physically or emotionally abusive situations - seems like a win-win to me.
        xwdv 6y ago
        An America without concern for moral integrity would be a hellish place. People already lament about how American capitalism crushes souls and promotes rampant inequality, imagine if the last bits of moral obligation were to be removed. And “doing just fine” is still debatable.
        TulliusCicero 6y ago
        The more "moral America" of the past used to include beating up and arresting gay people at bars for the crime of being gay. Good riddance, I say.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Having robust moderation tools doesn't necessarily mean moderation there works well. You actually need enough people with the right policies using said tools. According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through. I don't necessarily think using volunteer mods is always a bad idea. But you have to be aware of the biases of your demographic, and in this case that means users who are likely to be tolerant of calls for violence, as long as they're targeted at 'bad people' (read: people with different political views).
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through. You also have to keep in mind that this was at a period of time when they were experiencing significant growth, and companies get behind when that happens as a rule. So they were permanently booted over what it would be completely reasonable to expect was a temporary problem.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    The article makes it clear that they weren't permanently booted. > Asked by Wallace whether Apple’s booting of Parler, which had become popular among Trump loyalists as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, would only serve to drive the app’s users “underground,” Cook responded, “Well, we’ve only suspended them, Chris. And so, if they get their moderation together, they would be back on there.” It would be nice if people commenting on an article actually read it.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      If we still had journalists, the most obvious follow up question is, "what are the moderation standards you've set that they need to meet, after which you will allow them back in?" I think most people (fairly in my opinion) see that as PR/legal talk and that the bar (much like AWS) is set so high that they'll never make it (nor could Twitter/Facebook/etc). If they want to go beyond PR/legal empty talk, they could provide a specific written standard. We could then evaluate it on its merits and compare it to other platforms to see if it's being evenly applied.
_red 6y ago
Good thing they were shut down. Lots and lots of wrongthink being expressed on that network. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
- akatechis 6y ago
  Just build your own internet, financial system, and government, goy.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    The internet is open. You can peer with whomever you like, that isn’t the problem. Pickup a few million $$$, peer with equinox and you have unfettered access to the internet. Fintech, use crypto. Don’t want government, then move to Christmas Island. It’s not impossible, thepiratebay is still accessible years after being banned. Instead of parroting 4chan memes maybe start investing in companies that align with your viewpoints
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Until Google or a backbone provider BGP announce that they own your IP ranges. And then add your site to SafeBrowsing. And then your domain provider suspends your domain. Sure. HN has been kind of absurd to watch on this topic over the past few years. At first it was, "if you don't like Twitter's policies build your own Twitter". So people did. Now it's literally build your own internet and smartphone ecosystem. I wonder if those people ever go back and re-visit their old positions to re-evaluate if it was reasonable.
  - vixen99 6y ago
    For anyone who doesn't know: Wiki: In modern Hebrew and Yiddish goy (/ ɡɔɪ /, Hebrew: גוי ‎, regular plural goyim / ˈɡɔɪ.ɪm /, גוים ‎ or גויים ‎) is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew. Through Yiddish, the word has been adopted into English (often pluralised as goys) also to mean gentile, sometimes with a pejorative sense.
- SirHound 6y ago
caseysoftware 6y ago
If you look at their suit against Amazon, linked in the article but here too: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_4.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... Parler notes 3 times AWS complained about specific messages and Parler removed all of them within 24 hours each time, some within a few hours and each time AWS noted they were satisfied. "Parler had no moderation!" and "Parler wouldn't moderate!" are clearly untrue. If the complaint is "not enough moderation" that could be legit. Regardless of your feeling on Parler, we NEED our legal system, contracts, and contract enforcement to be based on facts.
- derision 6y ago
  Sounds like the issue was AWS had to keep complaining, effectively using them as their moderation review, rather than doing it themselves
- freedomben 6y ago
  Parler's CEO was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her podcast a couple days ago, and if what he said is true, AWS is not being truthful. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but Parler is asking to release all the correspondence between the two companies, and AWS will not consent. It could very well just be standard legal best practice (since there is a lawsuit in progress), but it does give Parler some credibility. As soon as there is evidence I will re-evaluate where I can stand (not that it matters of course, but to me personally it does :-) Among the big mistruths from AWS alleged by Parler, Parler does do moderation. They have a company principle of not surveilling every single thing their users do and vacuuming up data on them (which I would think most on HN would praise). They have a group of about 600 moderators that review and take down reported posts. Over the last couple months given the in flux of new users and violent content, they did develop some machine learning tools that would identify potential violent posts and send them to a moderator for pre-approval. AWS told them that wasn't good enough. So Parler said, "how about we just use AWS Rekognition, your own product?" To which AWS said, "no, not good enough." I wonder, what is "good enough" to AWS? They clearly don't apply the same standard to Twitter. He also talked about how just a week prior the AWS rep was doing the standard AWS rep thing of, "we love you, what can we do to get you deeper into AWS ecosystem?" Per Parler's CEO, Amazon had previously been satisfied but suddenly after the capitol riot, nothing would satisfy them. It's remarkable to me how much disinformation there is out there over this. Although after the CentOS disinformation fiasco, I shouldn't be all that surprised. I hope they release all of the correspondence soon so we can know who is telling the truth. It is a matter of great consequence in my opinion.
tomp 6y ago
> until enough of their post get approved for rightthink People keep posting this bullshit tweet but it's not getting any less bullshit. From my previous reply [1]: > Based on the screenshot you linked to, their "moderation" categories are "spam", "ads", "impersonation", "defamation", "nudity", "pornography", "illegal", "terrorism", "trademark" and "threat". > Can you please explain how they use that to "ensure ideological conformity in their posts"? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomp&next=25731453 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomp&next=25731453

seebetter 6y ago

Not sure what this means but Tim must had not been on Twitter last year. There was a moment that went on for 4+ months of wild endless violence against federal agents. We live in a conspiracy theory with neoliberal corporate racketeers proclaiming they’re saving us from the ill affects of their own corporate communication platforms for not the public but for woke leftists that vote for Democratic party establishment figures. Not Bernie, that guy’s a socialist and a threat to my 401k.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Also, IIRC there was an interview where the CEO talked about how he was banning "left wing trolls"[1], not to mention they obviously don't allow pornographic images (which are not, in the large, illegal). Parler is about free speech the same way Fox News is fair and balanced. They say that because that's what their target demographic wants to hear, not because there's any truth to the statement. [1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-founder-explains-why-he-built-trumps-new-favorite-social-media-app/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...

seebetter 6y ago
OnlyFans is a bigger threat to society than 10,000 Parlers.
- shlant 6y ago
  what do you mean by this?
  - xwdv 6y ago
    He means to say OnlyFans contributes directly to the fraying of America’s moral fibers.
    - shlant 6y ago
      If that is what the OP was inferring: Personally, I think America is overly concerned with "moral integrity". Maybe it's due to the high Christian population. I think many European countries that are very sexually open such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark are doing just fine. I also think that OnlyFans is an important service that gives sex workers the power to work for themselves in their own homes as opposed to having to make a living through less safe options. Customers get more personalized content and sex workers get a higher percentage of their payments while avoiding potentially physically or emotionally abusive situations - seems like a win-win to me.
      - xwdv 6y ago
        An America without concern for moral integrity would be a hellish place. People already lament about how American capitalism crushes souls and promotes rampant inequality, imagine if the last bits of moral obligation were to be removed. And “doing just fine” is still debatable.
        TulliusCicero 6y ago
        The more "moral America" of the past used to include beating up and arresting gay people at bars for the crime of being gay. Good riddance, I say.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Having robust moderation tools doesn't necessarily mean moderation there works well. You actually need enough people with the right policies using said tools. According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through. I don't necessarily think using volunteer mods is always a bad idea. But you have to be aware of the biases of your demographic, and in this case that means users who are likely to be tolerant of calls for violence, as long as they're targeted at 'bad people' (read: people with different political views).

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> According to articles, Parler had some huge backlog of reports that they were planning on using volunteer mods to get through. You also have to keep in mind that this was at a period of time when they were experiencing significant growth, and companies get behind when that happens as a rule. So they were permanently booted over what it would be completely reasonable to expect was a temporary problem.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  The article makes it clear that they weren't permanently booted. > Asked by Wallace whether Apple’s booting of Parler, which had become popular among Trump loyalists as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, would only serve to drive the app’s users “underground,” Cook responded, “Well, we’ve only suspended them, Chris. And so, if they get their moderation together, they would be back on there.” It would be nice if people commenting on an article actually read it.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    If we still had journalists, the most obvious follow up question is, "what are the moderation standards you've set that they need to meet, after which you will allow them back in?" I think most people (fairly in my opinion) see that as PR/legal talk and that the bar (much like AWS) is set so high that they'll never make it (nor could Twitter/Facebook/etc). If they want to go beyond PR/legal empty talk, they could provide a specific written standard. We could then evaluate it on its merits and compare it to other platforms to see if it's being evenly applied.

_red 6y ago

Good thing they were shut down. Lots and lots of wrongthink being expressed on that network. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

akatechis 6y ago
Just build your own internet, financial system, and government, goy.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  The internet is open. You can peer with whomever you like, that isn’t the problem. Pickup a few million $$$, peer with equinox and you have unfettered access to the internet. Fintech, use crypto. Don’t want government, then move to Christmas Island. It’s not impossible, thepiratebay is still accessible years after being banned. Instead of parroting 4chan memes maybe start investing in companies that align with your viewpoints
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Until Google or a backbone provider BGP announce that they own your IP ranges. And then add your site to SafeBrowsing. And then your domain provider suspends your domain. Sure. HN has been kind of absurd to watch on this topic over the past few years. At first it was, "if you don't like Twitter's policies build your own Twitter". So people did. Now it's literally build your own internet and smartphone ecosystem. I wonder if those people ever go back and re-visit their old positions to re-evaluate if it was reasonable.
- vixen99 6y ago
  For anyone who doesn't know: Wiki: In modern Hebrew and Yiddish goy (/ ɡɔɪ /, Hebrew: גוי ‎, regular plural goyim / ˈɡɔɪ.ɪm /, גוים ‎ or גויים ‎) is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew. Through Yiddish, the word has been adopted into English (often pluralised as goys) also to mean gentile, sometimes with a pejorative sense.
SirHound 6y ago

caseysoftware 6y ago

If you look at their suit against Amazon, linked in the article but here too: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.10.0_4.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664... Parler notes 3 times AWS complained about specific messages and Parler removed all of them within 24 hours each time, some within a few hours and each time AWS noted they were satisfied. "Parler had no moderation!" and "Parler wouldn't moderate!" are clearly untrue. If the complaint is "not enough moderation" that could be legit. Regardless of your feeling on Parler, we NEED our legal system, contracts, and contract enforcement to be based on facts.

derision 6y ago
Sounds like the issue was AWS had to keep complaining, effectively using them as their moderation review, rather than doing it themselves
freedomben 6y ago
Parler's CEO was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her podcast a couple days ago, and if what he said is true, AWS is not being truthful. Of course we don't know who is telling the truth, but Parler is asking to release all the correspondence between the two companies, and AWS will not consent. It could very well just be standard legal best practice (since there is a lawsuit in progress), but it does give Parler some credibility. As soon as there is evidence I will re-evaluate where I can stand (not that it matters of course, but to me personally it does :-) Among the big mistruths from AWS alleged by Parler, Parler does do moderation. They have a company principle of not surveilling every single thing their users do and vacuuming up data on them (which I would think most on HN would praise). They have a group of about 600 moderators that review and take down reported posts. Over the last couple months given the in flux of new users and violent content, they did develop some machine learning tools that would identify potential violent posts and send them to a moderator for pre-approval. AWS told them that wasn't good enough. So Parler said, "how about we just use AWS Rekognition, your own product?" To which AWS said, "no, not good enough." I wonder, what is "good enough" to AWS? They clearly don't apply the same standard to Twitter. He also talked about how just a week prior the AWS rep was doing the standard AWS rep thing of, "we love you, what can we do to get you deeper into AWS ecosystem?" Per Parler's CEO, Amazon had previously been satisfied but suddenly after the capitol riot, nothing would satisfy them. It's remarkable to me how much disinformation there is out there over this. Although after the CentOS disinformation fiasco, I shouldn't be all that surprised. I hope they release all of the correspondence soon so we can know who is telling the truth. It is a matter of great consequence in my opinion.

tomp 6y ago

> until enough of their post get approved for rightthink People keep posting this bullshit tweet but it's not getting any less bullshit. From my previous reply [1]: > Based on the screenshot you linked to, their "moderation" categories are "spam", "ads", "impersonation", "defamation", "nudity", "pornography", "illegal", "terrorism", "trademark" and "threat". > Can you please explain how they use that to "ensure ideological conformity in their posts"? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomp&next=25731453 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomp&next=25731453