https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993&p=3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993&p=4

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706993&p=5 ... and so on.

While I have you: if you're going to comment on this thread, or anywhere on HN, make sure you're up on the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. This is a site for curious, thoughtful conversation. It is not a site for political battle, snark, or name-calling. Why? Because those things destroy curious, thoughtful conversation.

This is one of those moments where we can either raise the bar or slide deeper into the hell realms. We're therefore raising the bar. Please use the site as intended: curious, thoughtful conversation, and be kind, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. If you can't do that (understandable, given what we're all living through), don't post until you can.

I'm banning significantly more accounts right now, especially those that have built up a track record of abusing HN. The bans are not based on political position, as anyone with the fortitude to slog through my posting history can see. No matter how right you are or feel you are, make sure you know what the rules are and follow them. In particular, do not use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. Not only is that not what the site is for, it destroys what it is for, so we have no choice but to ban accounts that do it—and so we are: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

I have strongly felt that the actions taken by these companies is morally and ethically the right thing to do, for any business and that is inconsistent with believing in true free speech. My line for free speech seems to lie in speech that incites violence or speech that discriminates against people for immutable characteristics of their person, both of which I know Parler harbors in abundance. I think there are simply some ideas that are too repugnant to not rebuke.

That said I don't like how centralized we've become on these existing platforms either. Monopoly on communication means it's too easy to let that window slide on what is acceptable speech to limit.

- Freedom of speech is of extremely high importance for any free society and should not be taken for granted

- Removing it in any capacity should be done with extreme care and free of any bias one way or another, with a lot of thought put into any future consequences

- Speech without a platform isn't speech at all

- Private companies' interest should have little, if any, control over the ability of the public to speak

- Just because a private company is legally allowed to do something, doesn't mean they should

- The marketability of speech (for financially or politically) should have no bearing on whether it's allowed or good

I don't know if all of this is being upheld. I think a lot of interests are at play here. I have no easy answers or even recommendations other than that everyone think about what objective barometers they really think makes speech allowable or not.

(Edit: list rendered real bad)

I know the problem is complex, but I think the solution to the problem was based on basic human impulses (And very American if I'd say so myself. Sorry), because simply deplatform the app will not actually convince it's users to leave it, it does not educate those people about what's right and wrong, and it opened a huge playground for the conspiracy theorist to play around.

All around, I think deplatforming is a bad solution to this problem.

EDIT: Clarify: I'm not here to support Parler (not even a bit), and I understand the deplatforming was for the immediate issue. However, I hope those who involved in the decision making could look for a better solution that would convince people to claim down and be rational. That's all.

...but it is exactly that isolation that create the bubble induced amplification of hate-speech.

If everyone was forced to exist on the same platform (as a though experiment) then hate-speech would have to co-exist with rational thinkers and their hateful ideas might not propagate much.

...but the moment you ban/deplatform/censor/etc... then they begin to form isolated groups with no counter-balance of rationality.

There is already no counter balance.

Breaking up their platforms into smaller pieces is actually helpful and will keep them from readily finding new members on the internet.

I’ve tried to have a calm and reasonable discourse with people who believe in things like QAnon, anti-vaccination theories, the “deep state”, GMO conspiracies, among others, and I’m a single voice among however many hundreds or thousands of others they are listening to. No amount of evidence or rational argument will sway these people because they are swimming in a sea of voices reinforcing their views.

I’m not sure if deplatforming is the right solution here but I also don’t know what the alternatives are. Should we let them keep espousing and spreading patently false information that is actually causing harm to society to a large audience and hope that people just ignore it? That doesn’t seem like a good solution, either.

I think that's a US thing. Other countries seem to be genuinely more rehabilitative. Looks like 55% of the state prison population is there for violent offenses: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

Handling non-violent offenders away from the violent ones might be a good start.

That being said, what do we do in this situation (which is a common one I see in these kinds of debates)?:

- Group A claims X.

- Person N asks Group A to provide evidence for their claim X.

- Group A cannot provide said evidence, or the evidence provided is unreliable/cannot be validated.

- Person N asks for additional evidence that the claim X made by Group A is true.

- Group A insists they are right and refuses to provide any additional evidence for claim X.

- Person N chooses to not believe Group A’s claim X due to a lack of evidence.

What’s the next step? Assuming good faith on the sides of both parties, how do you reach some sort of agreement or conclusion?

And what do we do when claim X made by Group A is one that leads to violence or other societal harms (such as an increase in death and suffering due to the spread of disease in the case of anti-vaccination theories)?

I don’t have a good answer, here. I desperately want to have rational and productive conversations with people with whom I disagree. But how do you avoid a deadlock situation like the above?

Recall my post that evidence cannot sway "person N".

*Btw, usually there are more then two sides: it's just stale majoritarian system which leaves people just two unsatisfactory choices in US.

But that assumes both sides are operating in good faith - it's pretty clear in the example that A are not (as are some sides in the real world.)

Not only is that game of whack-a-mole unsustainable, it will lead to the creation of un-silencible platforms. ...and if they are scalable they might become the new standard.

It will be pretty sad if social media platforms are ultimately displaced by the platforms created due to their censorship.

From a platform perspective, there isn't much difference between companies curtailing the use of their platforms to carry out violent activity and those platforms curtailing other illegal activities such as spamming or malware distribution.

We don't consider sending 1 million unsolicited emails free speech, and wouldn't consider a gang using reddit to co-ordinate free speech. Is there any difference for groups coordinating the violent overthrow of an elected democracy?

(1) Rationality is not a counterbalance to implacable, violent division when there is a fundamental conflict of value. Rationality is just ruthlessly optimized maximization of one's own utility function.

(2) For those things where rationality in principal could be a counterbalance, the problem is that people (all of them) are not rational (rationality is an abstract, unattainable ideal), and the ways in which certain people are irrational can minimize the effect of what partial rationality other people in the group they are incorporated into have.

When a group tries to exclude certain ideas from general conversation, it tends to be ideas whose expression is seen as indicateling one or both of (a) irreconcilable conflict of values with values that the rest of the groups sees as table stakes, and/or (b) incorrigible and toxic-to-the-group irrationality in assessment of reality and pursuit of values, whether or not these values are compatible with the group’s values.

So, in either case, the decision is not made in a lack of awareness that isolation removes, int he abstract, rationality as a counterbalance in the conflict between the core group and the excised group, it's is made instead because of the belief that rationality does not function as such a counterbalance with the concrete group targeted for excision, and indeed that the presence of that excised group mitigates the function rationality otherwise would serve as a counterbalance to conflicts within the core group.

The first such group that comes to mind is Heaven's Gate, which I think illustrates the opposite:

A brief reading of Wikipedia suggests to me that key members arrived in place via media attention, even though they spent significant other effort trying to recruit members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven's_Gate_(religious_group...

I'm not sure where the sitting is, but the ones radicalizing right now don't get a counter opinion.

Teaching with current level of science as hard baseline is already a place where some western countries like US fail (ie evolution vs creationism topic).

I don't think the change I mention is in direct interest of many governments, so its more like a pipe dream and an additional burden on parents to drill this into their kids.

- clarity: while not everything has a right or wrong answer, but lots of things do

- robustness: it's okay for people to disagree with you, and also for you to be wrong and learn from it

- reason: avoiding the standard fallacies

- agreeing to disagree: individuals you know/interact with and your relationships with them are more important than abstract tribes you may or may not belong to

How do you teach someone to self-analyze and understand where their problems are actually coming from? To question their own conclusions and rethink what they know?

Still, it's possible to improve the current education system, by a lot. The current "learn this, don't ask why" doesn't work, and to make it worse, parents can be just as uninformed and stubborn as their kids, so they'll come to school raising hell over their lil' precious' bad grades.

In the case of political discourse, that may improve the case around some 'fringe theory' concepts which add fuel to the fire, but it's not going to stop the core 'fire', which is driven by philosophy/ethics/metaphysics.

People need to be able to break the 'fourth wall' in these debates in order to question their philosophical biases, and empiricism-as-answer-to-all-problems is also a philosophical bias - eugenics was seen by many as 'scientific virtue' in the 1920s, as one obvious example

2. No speech limitations should be placed on online discussions unless it deviates away from rational debate.

3. Newsfeeds are sorted by popularity AND scientific accuracy.

4. All opinions about an issue, article, or topic are categorized and mapped on a spectrum. Meta data for quick analysis: how does my opinion compare to my peers?

As long as the Internet exist, ( not only the Web, but the Net ) you are only pushing these people to other places. And possibly to an invitation only sub group. They will form its circle in Telegram or other means of media. A bit slower than they first appeared. But the power of internet meant that movement is still relatively quick. And with the power of Hyperlink, news and information spread just as fast as they are in a single group.

So the platform isn't Facebook, Twitter or Youtube, It is the Internet. Or the name information super highway really describe the point better. Which sort of brings the question of regulating the internet but we wont go into that for now.

There is another point wroth mentioning. The making of decent fake news that cant be easily rebutted is far easier than the time and money required to spent for Fact Checking. Not to mention most people dont bother Fact Checking in the first place.

Having been on the other side of the fence with freedom of speech taken away, I agree with parent and grand parent;

Freedom of speech is of extremely high importance for any free society and should not be taken for granted

I think deplatforming is a bad solution to this problem.

I think the free speech issue may be a little overblown here. I would be really concerned if cable companies stop carrying Fox News, but I get that this is a slippery slope. However, I think at the end of the slippery slope is not really the end of free speech, but rather two completely separate echo chambers each with its own mega distribution channels.

For example, Democrat leadership could promise to hold another election immediately after the vaccination is complete. In addition, to persuade trump supporters, they could consider getting rid of mail-in ballots, and legislating a Democratic version of voter ID law.

It's the democratic solution as well. Democracy should be about appealing to the largest possible percentage of population, and shutting up the other side is not a democratic solution to the current US crisis.

Republicans don't like mail-in voting because it makes it a lot easier for the entire population to vote, and they have been spending the last few decades making it a lot harder for people who are not rich white suburbanites to vote.

[1] I am using "coerced" a bit loose here, I am including both "vote X, or else" as well as "if you vote X, I will give you this $SUM money". If it is by structure impossible to show that you complied, it is less likely that either will happen.

The chain makes the system completely and easily auditable. You can't easily game the system. Votes can be easily tallied and randomly sampled to ask voters if the votes match up.

As to repercussions, you already sign your ballots and register to vote. Because of this, there's pretty much no stopping government repercussions if they chose to take action.

Most importantly, it gets rid of all the election fraud debate.

Note that I am not saying that widespread fraud actually occurred in this election...there was no evidence of it, in large part because the laws were setup so that there wouldn’t be. But that isn’t really the point. It could have occurred and nobody could ever prove it, short of the perpetrators themselves coming forward to admit what they did.

Unless something changes before 2024, there is no longer any point in bothering to cast your vote. When anyone can vote without having to prove that they are eligible, and can do it remotely, it renders all votes meaningless.

However I think any pressure towards in-person voting MUST be accompanied by an expansion of rights in terms of how far polling places are from you, a national holiday where everyone gets the day off work, sizeable transportation stipends, etc. Without all of that, requiring people to vote in person is de facto disenfranchisment.

And furthermore, with regards to 2020, I disagree with you wholeheartedly. I think everyone had a right to no-contact voting this year due to COVID. It was a special set of circumstances.

With regard to 2020, the changes to the laws that occurred could have been entirely well-intentioned. They probably were. But those changes have led to the current crisis of confidence in the election results, and rightly so.

I can't find any evidence for this. Further, at least where I live, ballots are mailed to voters and include a control number that ensures only one vote is counted for that person.

Then there is the issue of dead people that have not been removed from the voter rolls. We know for a fact that in 2020, many of these were returned, filled out, likely by family members. That alone is an issue (example: https://youtu.be/CINHx-z9cbk ).

Here is an article with an overview of some of the laws that were changed/relaxed in 2020. Generally speaking, each relaxed restriction opens up more and more avenues for fraud:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/states-changed-rules-voting-...

You claim fraud and offer a video as proof. The video contradicts you. In it they explicitly say, a few times, there wasn't any fraud.

Further, at least in this election, voting and registering to vote were one in the same in many jurisdictions. Many states automatically sent out mail-in ballots to everyone that was registered. All that had to be done from there was to fill it out and send it in. Families of dead people sent in those ballots in many cases.

Registering to vote as someone else, or as an entirely fictional person, is absurdly easy in many jurisdictions. In California, for instance, one can skip any identity checks by simply marking two checkboxes: one indicating they have no ID, and one indicating they have no social security number [1]. Voila, you are now a registered voter. Combine this absurdity with automatically sent out mail-in ballots in many states, and you have a disaster waiting to happen.

[1] https://covr.sos.ca.gov/

The Republican Secretary of State ran an election audit in 2016 and found that, over 2+ million votes cast, around 50 or so were "fraudulent," most of those being cast by people who voted in Oregon and elsewhere.

Vote-by-mail is not problematic, if you consider the historical evidence provided by places that have been doing it for a while.

That is the party line, but you have no way of actually knowing that. The election audit to which you refer has no way of knowing how many votes were cast by identities that were simply invented because of the ease of registration in many states (which has now been combined with proactive sending of mail-in ballots, thanks to COVID). Sure, they can tie together people who voted in more than one state, but that isn’t the attack vector that anyone with any sense would use. Show me a good way of identifying brand new identities used to vote in states where there are easy ways to bypass ID requirements (such as California). There isn’t.

[1] https://covr.sos.ca.gov/

Consider that an investigation (that includes said identity check), concluding with a recount happens

• mandatory by design to a random small subset of voting districts

• everytime someone reports to the voting commission an indication or outright evidence of irregularities or fraud

• everytime there is a difference between head-to-head candidates smaller than a certain percentage

If GP is right and "nothing pans out", then that means that the CA Secretary of State web site is not an effective tool to commit voting fraud.

¹ A common analogue is: "I do not believe in gods. Theists can change my mind when they bring forth evidence that measures up to the extraordinary claim. In the last couple of thousands of years, this did not happen. Thus, I will live my life as if gods do not exist."

Absence from where? It is perfectly legal to not have an ID or social security number. Not having those things proves nothing. And nobody is going to track down everyone in the country with the same name and DOB that you selected and ask them if they are the Fred Wilson (example) that voted in California. People move all the time, so it wouldn’t be unusual if they went by the house and that person doesn’t live there.

The way that system is setup to accept voters without ID verification, there is not a way to legally disprove that the person with whatever name and DOB chosen does not exist (assuming more than 1 other person in the country shares those characteristics). Hence it would be impossible to legally prove that this invented person isn’t real.

I literally just showed how shockingly easy it is for anyone to invent California voters in a matter of seconds. That’s exceptional in my opinion. I could write a script that would register 10k of those in several minutes. But the more likely scenario is that I can’t be the only one that has realized this...nobody knows how many people are doing this once or a few times.

That is the whole point of this conversation - the possibility of incredibly easy, undetectable fraud renders all votes meaningless because we simply don’t know how much occurred and there is no way to find out because the rules are so loose. Until they are changed, it completely negates any point in voting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...

Could you clarify what you mean exactly with this. In my mind people should have a right to ignore speech they don't want to hear. Furthermore, the definition of a "platform" has become very diffuse with the advent of the internet. In the before times you were either in the newspaper most people read, or maybe on one of the handful of TV channels, or you basically did not have a platform beyond the people you could physically interact with. Whereas now you can have many options which all reach different kinds and amounts of people.

I have many vague feelings but maybe I can sum them up in the following, probably unhelpful, statement: people have a right to a platform that is equivalent to standing in a town square and yelling.

Whilst on there for non-political purposes, you can't in practice 'choose to ignore' the political speech you'd prefer to avoid, as it's made everybody an activist with a massive megaphone. Activism is shared and retweeted into your face relentlessly.

If Big Tech as a whole has decided to wage war on 'red team' ideas (or other competing ideas, such as Unity 2020, banned from Twitter), there's a risk that they could transform a bad 2-party political system into a single-party monopoly, where the voters have no power at all.

Things weren't good when old media (TV/newspapers) had all the power+influence. But at least there was some sort of balance. And if a new newspaper appeared, it couldn't be shut down entirely in <24hrs by the competition.

It could if it had used printing presses owned by the competition. I'm assuming these old newspapers used either their own printing presses, or presses owned by independent printing shops. They used a little common sense and concluded that using printing presses owned by the NY Times was probably not a good long term strategy for a newspaper that wanted to compete against the NY Times.

All I'm saying is, use your own printing presses, and you can't be shutdown. Run your own website, on your own server and no one will kick you off their servers. Nothing's really changed here, so I don't see a free speech issue.

They have their own network, own peering agreements, etc etc etc. They didn't build the internet, they built their own "platform" by building out their own little corner of the internet. You want to be a "platform" like Amazon, but you don't want to build everything necessary for a "platform" to be a platform. That is the crux of the problem. If what you really want is simply free speech, well that's free. If all you really want is a website, well that's pretty cheap too, but maybe not free. But when you start talking about platforms, you have to pay to build the platform you want. Even a soapbox is not free, someone somewhere had to pay for it.

You're complaining that building a platform is too expensive the same way someone a hundred years ago may have complained that buying the presses is too expensive. It makes no sense. If you want to print your own paper, you need the presses.

I'm against the highest level of the stack so to speak having to be available to everyone such as Twitter, that would be us saying these companies are too critical to our way of life and forcing a private entity to do business with those it doesn't want to, which is not only dangerous but I believe simply not true if we foster the building of others and should be summarily changed or investigated as a new type of monopoly if we find (are finding?) that they are becoming too critical, centralizing is bad.

I am also against people not being able to connect their services at the lower level of the stack to then build out their offering on the higher level of the stack though and that's where I think we need to regulate.

At the end of the day, I'm a strong supporter of free speech. But, it's up to the speaker to provide their own platform. If all they can manage is a literal soapbox in the town square, so be it. There is no fundamental right for a person's speech to be easily broadcast, nor is there a right for that speech to be heard or acknowledged.

As long as Twitter, Facebook, the NYT, and the WSJ are private entities, they also have their own rights. If we really want to prevent de-platforming, the solution seems to be categorizing media companies as some sort of utility. But, I don't really know what they would look like.

Yes it sucks your audience is limited but you are correct, people have a right to any platform they are able to create.

Also monopolies and oligopolies are what happens in unregulated capitalism. If frustrates me that the many of folks today who take issue with the tech giants have been pro deregulation, pro capitalism, and screaming about how afraid we should be because a boring sleepy vanilla POTUS is going to usher in socialism and communism... WTF is your solution then? Everyone can point out problems and evoke FUD.

Parler only went halfway there. They created a app/website. But, that's not an entire platform (as we see today). An entire platform in this context includes servers, fiber optic networks, routers, etc. If Parler wants to speak on the scale they envision, they can build their own infrastructure to do so. Yes, that's expensive, but it's also no different than the pre-internet era, where similar speech would be relegated to self-published fliers, because no newspaper or TV would carry the message.

Social media created a new type of platform. But people are forgetting that it also created a new and more vicious type of activism, too.

Maybe you could compare AWS to a haulage company, the equivalent of trucks distributing the newspapers. If Parler were to buy their own 'trucks' (servers), would they be able to drive freely on the 'roads' of the Internet? Or would nobody be willing to provide them a connection?

This argument is absurd and I feel in bad faith. We have public roads and you are free to travel on them to distribute your flyers. You still need permission to enter the premises of private owners though if you want to solicit or leave your property (flyer) on their property.

No, they didn't.

Parler set up a web site on AMAZON's platform, and it was subsequently shut down. If they had created their own platform with their own servers, they would still be running today.

What happens when registrars cut them off? No DNS routing for them until they build their own registrar? Will the point at which the segregated internet’s join become a DMZ guarded by both factions?

This entire app, and business, was shut down for a few bad actors. Traditionally you subpoena for info, but cancel culture stepped in again.

I don't think anyone, from Trump to Alex Jones, is asking to be able to force people to follow them on Twitter or youtube. But they should have a right to be there, and talk to people that have chosen to follow them, that's quite a different thing.

It boggles mind that we are trying to keep a high ground on free speech while the rug is being yanked away from our bottoms.

+ Free Speech. Not when you have millions deluded, angry, violent and ready to use any means to incite violence, take down gov, threaten governors and are trigger happy to exercise 2nd amendment rights. I’m terrified of these people.

I get it. Free speech is important, especially when you disagree with someone. This is how society progresses. You can have the free speech still, just make sure you don’t rally up people to take up arms on bogus claims. They’ve had their free speech chances to contest in court, have peaceful debates and be civilized.

r/conservative, as much as you disagree with them, is still ok and fine. They’re respectful for the most part.

My understanding is that in Parler, posts are moderated by a jury of five peers. But if that jury is just as extreme as the poster advocating murdering journalists, what then?

Section 230 doesn't provide a safe harbor for criminal speech like advocating or planning violence. There has to be a second moderation channel to keep that from happening, or Parler should be liable as an accessory for violent crimes planned in the open on its platform.

I'd wash my hands of them if they're that negligent.

I got banned from the Donald subreddit for saying the aclu does a lot of good things. It wasn’t spam. It wasn’t even controversial.

Doublethink is more common with extremists regardless of bent, but what we are seeing is doublethink and eager consumption of propaganda, along with gaslighting the other side and accusing them of exactly the same. It is toxic and wears you down.

My offense? I looked up the bill, which did indeed criminalize some flag burning and was indeed authored by her, and posted that in a comment there, along with the official bill summary and a link to the full bill.

I got banned from /r/conservative for agreeing with Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush on some issues, favoring a market based approach over regulation. I did not point explicitly mention Reagan or Bush, and the moderators nailed me for these far left opinions!

Does "fake news" refer to news stories that are complete made up? Contain mistakes? Or that are true but that you simply don't like? Or does "fake news" refer to the act of baselessly accusing a reasonably researched story that in fact is probably accurate?

I'm not in the US and people are incorporating that term in their everyday language.

I’ve just seen so many online lies I don’t trust anything any more. I am not accusing you of anything.

In other words, the TOS is effectively useless.

We’ve entered new territory. When you look at analogues to this situation, Islamic radicals, mass shooters in America being mostly white men, both of the broader groups (Muslims, white Americans) can easily say those fringe actors are the 0.000001%. Even those that might support the fringe actors in the broader group would still only represent a small percentage.

The rioters in this case, if they are the fringe of the broader Republican base, visually looked significant. This is nothing like ‘oh, yeah that’s just one crazy nut’. In the broader group, the percentage that sympathizes with this fringe is high, with the most official accounting of this number being the actual 75 million Americans that voted for Trump.

We are in no way talking about a fringe imho.

It seems that not many people have been to parler, and very few links to screen shots or other evidence is available.

Unfortunately - and this really is just what usually happens - the noble arguments for free speech get converted into a shield to add respectability to parler and hate speech.

And if the trend continues, more political or even subversive content starts appearing in the sub, at just the angle to take advantage of the blind spots of forum goers.

It’s happening here, I’m seeming that dumb path finding algo for indoctrination playing out over the past three threads.

I'm not personally comfortable with the easy bake radicalizing from that so to speak and is what pushed me over the edge in being okay with the ban. We wouldn't tolerate a place where it was easy to breed other types of extremism why is this any different was my thought.

They’ll translate it as “it’s not that bad”.

“It’s only a few steps away from OANN”

“That means the first bunch of stuff is normal people talking about conservative talking points.”

“Sure, not a place I’d like to hang out, but I’d see why it may need protection even if I may disagree, that’s what I’m trained to do.”

Yeah no.

Parler actively removes people who bring in the “liberal” point of view.

I’ll even grant, that removal by ideology is a necessary tool for political moderation.

But that still means that parler is an echo chamber, amplifying beliefs that the “election was stolen”, “democrats will destroy the country.”

Isn’t this what is happening to conservative voices? Further do you have evidence of this?

Do you know there’s gaming and other non political content on Parler? It was born out of politics so the majority of content is still focused around it.

Why don’t you see it for yourself instead of letting your imagination run wild?

I have been on Parler, briefly to validate all the claims of constant, unabated, hate speech and found nothing of the sort. Will I continue to use it? Unlikely, but I don’t use social media. I wouldn’t call it hotbed of right wing extremists though.

Basically, a lot of folks are asking: Why are we censored, when they aren't ? Why the extraordinary double standards? When someone talks about peaceful protesting and is banned for incitement for violence, why is someone calling for explicit murder allowed on Twitter (with accompanying graphical images).

Apply the rules equally, or not at all.

You can see the “violent few” drag and beat an officer to death. You can see and hear the surrounding mob cheer themselves on. So how many people need to witness a murder in progress before doing anything about it?

Yougov showed 45% support among Republicans: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio....

PBS/Marist poll, only 18%: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/533452-poll-18-percent-of-....

I don't see either side making any effect towards compromise.

At this point I have to ask, what compromise do you suggest be made to these people? How do you compromise with people that were shouting "Hang Mike Pence" in front of some home-made gallows?

You know, actually listen to and address their complaints instead of just saying 'you're a crazy conspiracy nut.'

Believe it or not the elections law wasn’t created in October 2020; they’re a well-regulated and secure process. As evinced by no one being able to present any evidence of widespread fraudulent behavior even in states with GOP legislatures and Secretaries of State.

There's been reports of thousands of votes not being counted or added to the transmitted counts in various jurisdictions. That means at least part of the system broke down.

There is ample statutory and regulatory provision in every state for processes that confirm every aspect of what you are questioning. It’s as if you know nothing about elections or election systems.

If someone is able to report the wrong number of total votes, it means all the controls in the process weren't followed or simply doesn't work. The burden of proof is on the people holding the election to prove it's valid. So far, 'certifying' results is a rubber stamp, there's no actual certification being done.

But it looks like this did happen? One example[1].

> You know, actually listen to and address their complaints instead of just saying 'you're a crazy conspiracy nut.'

There were attempts to address their complaints. Re ounts and audits took place. Those recounts and audits didn't change the result or uncover any further evidence of fraud. This didn't align with Trump's claims so his base dismissed it as lies. The interesting thing coming out of this is that they're now turning on the rest of the republican party who accept what their own observers are telling them.

I'd also like to point out that this was all happening while Trump was privately pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to 'find' him enough votes to win[2].

Uncovering fraud was never the motivation here, it's a cynical attempt at destroying trust in the election process in order to corrupt the result.

[1]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/trump-call-g...

The complaints were not heard without first attempting to call to shame an entire group of 75mil people.

And your second source can be read a different way: “find the votes that existed that you shred”, he’s not saying make up the votes, he’s saying find the ones he believes they fraudulently shred. Part of the divide in this country is taking something like this, twisting the words to make a sensational title that’s then thrown at every moderate or conservative. Think about how much this has happened over the last 4 years.

How can this ever be read as "find the votes that existed that you shred"? Especially considering that he goes on to claim he won by "hundreds of thousands" of votes. Shouldn't he be interested in uncovering that massive fraud, therefore supporting his assertions that it actually happened?

> Part of the divide in this country is taking something like this, twisting the words to make a sensational title that’s then thrown at every moderate or conservative. Think about how much this has happened over the last 4 years.

Come on, Fox News has been doing this since the 90s. They literally posted an article suggesting their base drive their trucks into protestors[1].

> Here’s a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the way by cars and trucks,” wrote the article’s author. “Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years.

Those poor, innocent, conservatives being attacked by the thugs in the mainstream liberal media.

Note that Fox and Trump have pushed these people so far that even Fox has lost control of them, and are now branded "traitors" for anything other than tacit support of their worst behaviour. They were literally calling to hang their own Vice President just last week.

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-quietly-deletes-artic...

Your unconscious bias against Trump is what is defining your interpretation of that exchange. A person not trying to find something wrong with everything he says will interpret it the way I did. Using your same logic, if he won by hundreds of thousands then why does 11,780 matter enough to commit a felony?

> Come on, Fox News has been doing this since the 90s. They literally posted an article suggesting their base drive their trucks into protestors[1].

And many have moved on from Fox News as a result. But the same can't be said for the left and CNN. Further, your still not tending to the divide, just jumping onto the problem and saying "me too".

> Those poor, innocent, conservatives being attacked by the thugs in the mainstream liberal media.

Great job > Here’s a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the way by cars and trucks,” wrote the article’s author. “Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years.

Isn't this promoting violence? Why was the author not banned from the world?

> Note that Fox and Trump have pushed these people so far that even Fox has lost control of them, and are now branded "traitors" for anything other than tacit support of their worst behaviour. They were literally calling to hang their own Vice President just last week.

Quit pointing fingers. You want to blame Fox (again with Fox) and ignore the yelling and screaming the left did over the last 4 years. You want to ignore the forced conversions (that have always historically failed). You want to ignore cancel culture. And again, the left wants to take statements and twist them to make some outlandish point. It's only going to divide us more.

You made up a quote, putting words in his mouth. I quoted the man directly. Words that he uttered in a call to a Republican Secretary of State, in the middle of an audit of signatures that the Secretary of State had ordered at Trump's request.

> Using your same logic, if he won by hundreds of thousands then why does 11,780 matter enough to commit a felony?

In an amazing coincidence, 11,780 votes just happened to be the number of he needed to win the election. I'm sure you can come up with an explanation of how he just happened to randomly choose that number out of all the other ones.

My assertion is that he did not win at all, certainly not by hundreds of thousands of votes and that he was lying, as evidenced by the fact that he expresses no interest in having those fraudulently discounted votes found and that indeed no evidence whatsoever that he won by hundreds of thousands of votes has been produced.

> And many have moved on from Fox News as a result. But the same can't be said for the left and CNN. Further, your still not tending to the divide, just jumping onto the problem and saying "me too".

They moved on from Fox news to an even more extreme platform in OAN...

> Quit pointing fingers. You want to blame Fox (again with Fox) and ignore the yelling and screaming the left did over the last 4 years.

The left did not cause Trump to reject the results of the election, whip his base into a frenzy and send them to the capitol. Aren't you supposed to be the party of personal responsibility? "You made me do this" also hasn't been considered a very good excuse since domestic abuse went out of fashion in the 60s.

> You want to ignore the forced conversions (that have always historically failed).

I absolutely agree with you that gay conversion therapy is horrendous and should be outlawed.

> You want to ignore cancel culture.

I think there are discussions to be had about cancel culture, but that's not what is being screamed about. Right now Parler is the kid in the sandbox that threw sand in everyone's eyes and then got upset that no one wanted to play with them.

> And again, the left wants to take statements and twist them to make some outlandish point. It's only going to divide us more.

Your lack of introspection is getting absurd at this point. The right made concerted attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't even a US citizen. One of the people attempting to throw doubt on Obama's citizenship was Trump himself. What you're annoyed about is the fact you and your friends are no longer getting away with dog-whistling in an attempt to escaping the consequences of your actions:

When asked to condemn white supremacists Trump instead said:

> "The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the Left…,"

To the rioters who had occupied the capitol after hours of inciteful speech by Trump and his associates: > "This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace, so go home, we love you, you’re very special."

These rioters had recently been calling for Trump's own Vice President, Mike Pence, to be hanged, they had bludgeoned an officer to death, and a woman had been killed while attempting to reach the members of congress in hiding. I'm sure that woman just wanted a nice chat with Mike Pence, or perhaps AOC. Sadly we'll never know.

Could you provide the exact quote for inciting the violence?

Then on the day Congress was supposed to confirm the result they organised a rally of the people they'd stirred up and spent hours telling that they needed to "fight". The closest thing to a direct order was Giuliani during that rally:

> “Over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.” Mr Giuliani then suddenly yelled: "Let's have trial by combat!" to lacklustre cheers from the crowd.[1]

Despite the apparently lacklustre response, Trump then went on to direct the mob towards the Capitol where we all know what happened.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...

Well, we don't both know that. What you're offering is an opinion, your interpretation of things amounts to some sort of incitement. My opinion is this is a coordinated overreaction by the media to demonize a public figure. Nothing new about that, and offending someone's sensibilities isn't criminal.

What quote? I listened to the same call you posted. So which quote did I make up?

> In an amazing coincidence, 11,780 votes just happened to be the number of he needed to win the election. I'm sure you can come up with an explanation of how he just happened to randomly choose that number out of all the other ones.

OK, but the actual number of votes is irrelevant. It's still a felony requesting any fraud, not an amount over a certain threshold. So the actual number listed doesn't particularly matter, just the interpretation of the statements.

> They moved on from Fox news to an even more extreme platform in OAN...

Don't group the extremists and republicans together. Every single republican I know reads almost every news source. Most sticking to whatever news app is on their phone. So no, not OAN. Any source playing on your emotions for views should be called into question, regardless of which end of the spectrum your on. Both sides do this, the left and the right. But when it's pointed out on the left, nothing is done to stop the sensationalism.

> The left did not cause Trump to reject the results of the election, whip his base into a frenzy and send them to the capitol. Aren't you supposed to be the party of personal responsibility? "You made me do this" also hasn't been considered a very good excuse since domestic abuse went out of fashion in the 60s.

Actually this recently started with the lack of voter ID laws or enforcement, some years ago. This started the mistrust in elections, which is dangerous (and you see why now). If secure voting disenfranchises voters, then lets figure out how not to. Requiring you prove you can vote should be possible for the US given the resources we have.

> I absolutely agree with you that gay conversion therapy is horrendous and should be outlawed.

Sure! But not what I'm talking about. This type of forced conversion is the ones leaving moderates out of the discussion for fear of being canceled by the left. That's the forced conversion I'm talking about, become one of us or find a new life.

> Right now Parler is the kid in the sandbox that threw sand in everyone's eyes and then got upset that no one wanted to play with them.

How so? Have you been on Parler? Do you believe there are not examples of extremism on all platforms? Perhaps the discussion should be around some sort of regulated speech flagging engine so this sort of moderation isn't difficult? They do have a moderation team, and perhaps it's lacking. But in my brief experience with it, it's not the hate bed the left is painting it as.

> Your lack of introspection is getting absurd at this point. The right made concerted attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't even a US citizen. One of the people attempting to throw doubt on Obama's citizenship was Trump himself. What you're annoyed about is the fact you and your friends are no longer getting away with dog-whistling in an attempt to escaping the consequences of your actions:

Where exactly is my introspection lacking? Or what have I failed to introspect about? Are you assuming that I am a republican and applying other assumptions about my beliefs? I don't agree with that violence on Jan 6, and I don't agree that attacking where someone came from is right either. I also don't agree with the BLM / Antifa violence, which just happened again last weekend. If you want to "attack" someone, "attack" them in a formal debate. Stop the underhanded politics. Protest peacefully. Both sides.

Trump and his circle of political enablers were, and this is the result. They should be shamed and continue to be shamed until and after legal actions against them are successful.

PS this “75 million” phrasing is utter propaganda, let’s talk about 82 million people rejecting this dangerous president and him continuing to make a case that his re-election is somehow more legitimate than a Biden win.

The president and his lawyers making a claim without presenting evidence is not grounds for overturning an election, full stop. They’re the ones who are lying, fomenting insurrection, and deserve to be shamed.

The people who believe them are unfortunate.

I know this is going to go against the media narrative about how reprehensible the riot was, and the reverence we must pay to Congress, but for the entirety of 2005-2020, Congress had record low approval ratings.

Last week we just visually saw the reality of storming congress (you may not even know it’s possible in your perceptions until you literally see it).

Well, people just saw it’s possible. Either base can find a lot more reasons to rile themselves up and go down there. So, I really don’t buy that Americans will by and large condemn the act, especially on the Republican side. Those polls are for sure under-tallied, Congress (and now particularly, a Democratic congress) is way too hated by the agitated right-wing, the once war mongering Bush nationalists, to the reimagined tea-party anti-Obama coalition, to the re-imagined anti-authoritarian Trump cohort, to the newly re-imagined ___________ (militant?).

Not a fringe my dear friends, an evolving force.

that is, your terror and mistrust are misplaced. let people talk, even disgustingly. let the world change (progress) in response. that's much better than bottled-up anger that explodes unpredictably and fractally.

Obviously these are all hypothetical scenarios and questions, but if the mob a few days ago had any aim and organization they would have clearly seized our government and they're being whipped into a frenzy by things like Parler to try it again on the 17th so I'm told.

I don't like our current system, but the slow decay gives us the ability to work towards the aims which you have stated on more preferable terms.

The sitting president directly used its office, power, platform to try to stop a democratic process, and launch/command an attack against a different branch of the government (the legislature). Even if that attack was purely symbolic. (... though calling it symbolic while people died is not entirely right.)

A radicalized subgroup of the fanaticized Trump cult used force to thwart a democratic process they deemed fake/undemocratic. And they managed to successfully pause that process for considerable amount of time.

Especially the stark contrast between the interaction of police and Trump cultists compared to police and BLM protesters points to an other serious problem.

...

That powerless group of people includes the sitting president, a bunch of senators and representatives, and they had a very very real chance of winning the election.

That same powerless group, at least a part of it that choose to do so, managed to basically stroll into the Capitol, loot it, and go away unharmed. (They got tear gassed eventually.) And this group included an elected state representative, various police officers, veterans, lawyers, and other not exactly powerless members of society.

This is about status, which is about perception. Conservative ideology is about social order, the status quo. This 'powerless group' wants to maintain their power, despite the results of the democratic process - which is designed to measure exactly that peacefully.

This is very much a thing. It's a serious ongoing thing. It has been ongoing forever though. And it's going to go on for ... well, probably forever too, but that only means other will have to expend energy to actively push that status quo toward a more fair equilibrium (or set-point).

politicians, however, are in such a position, though even that is a relatively remote possibility. luckily trump had no chance of retaining the presidency, by force or otherwise, mostly because he's too self-absorbed, and frankly stupid, to effectively consolidate power like xi jinping or putin did.

As a non American coming back from the holidaysplaying catch up on all this,

When did BLM/Antifa start liking to exercise their 2nd amendment rights by the millions? I know a lot of them were but I don't think it was anywhere more than thousands.

That's exactly what our tyrannical Russian government says about those who don't like Putin being in power for 20+ years. Thus, they limit our rights for free speech online, prosecute for extremism, deny us rights to peacefully gather and protest.

If you Americans go down this path any further, you'll too find yourself living under the tyrannical dictatorship no better than ours.

Oh, unfortunately, unlike you, we don't have 2nd amendment rights, so actually rebelling is harder. So I suggest you clinging to your guns as strong as you can: all points that you are going to need them.

The US government has nukes, but they still got their asses handed to them in Vietnam and struggled in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's true that if the feds truly want to squash an uprising they have the means to do it. But do they have the will to do it? At what cost? I can imagine a scenario where they'd be willing to use enough force to subdue unarmed citizens by not enough to subdue an armed uprising, which could escalate to civil war.

In short: there exists a scenario in which the second amendment enables the citizens to resist the government to an extent that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. Whether this is a good or bad thing is something you can decide for yourself.

Now assume half the military itself is sympathetic to the “rebels” and the government would have a difficult time containing any real insurgency.

The US government has made a lot of enemies over the decades, many of whom would be more than willing to provide modern weapons and explosives to the insurgents.

Though the US overwhelmed the Iraqi military quickly and decisively, it was a decade of constant roadside bombs, made with materials easily smuggled into the country and implemented with minimal training, that eventually wore down US morale and willingness to fight.

Finally, the US military is such a big business here, a good percentage of the population has had professional military training and combat experience.

That being said, there are, of course, a bunch of other examples of armed conflicts with the government that do not turn out well for the "citizens" when the government decides to violently pursue its goals (1985 MOVE bombing, Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc). But, I guess my point with all of this is that, for better or worse, the proliferation of guns in American society certainly does have an effect on the decision matrix of the government (even if the "citizen militia" ultimately does not stand a chance against a determined government response...

This is precisely the intended effect. Sure some wahoos think they could fully overthrow the military but for most it is about changing the calculus from "tyrannical takeover of unarmed populace with minimal resistance" to "uh oh, they are fighting back". This results in much more of a cause to rally around, feed into rebel propaganda, win over military members to the "just cause" which of course tips the balance, etc.

We saw what only a few hundreds of folks could do when parts of the normal defense are strangely absent. Imagine even a 30% defection.

If it was ever at that point, the military would not exist in its current form.

The "military" is not a monolith that would just suppress a revolt if it was that size and scope that it needed to. The Civil War in the U.S. had almost all of its Confederate soldiers come from the U.S. Army. The current leadership corps in the U.S. military is disproportionately Southern and conservative. They're not going to be going against their countrymen if it came to that, and no one is going to be nuking their own cities.

The protest wasn't the issue. Storming the capitol is the problem.

> If you Americans go down this path any further, you'll too find yourself living under the tyrannical dictatorship no better than ours.

In this case, we are trying to prevent a tyrannical dictator.

I do agree though that we are possibly entering a damned if we do, damned if we don't territory.

Andy gno and timcast IRL has been streaming news on these attacks and riots for just as many many months.

The people that did this have been ignored for a very long time and been watching government do nothing while their lives get ripped apart by a virus and a mob of people calling them racist for being white.

You people dont seem to understand you are just as bubbled as the right is.

Whatever delusional "wrongs" the Right feels they've suffered from the government doesn't come close to comparing to that. In a true Godwin's Law type fashion, even attempting a comparison might be enough to end the argument.

I didn't. You did.

I specifically said Portland, and yes, many of the people there involved were acting under the pretense of BLM but imo it was mostly just black bloc antifa being antifa. Portland antifa groups have a known and consistent history of this behavior, they've exploited BLM to amplify their attacks and they've used the support they received for doing so to embolden their actions.

They have literally stalked and murdered trump supporters in the street, they have shot people, and they have blinded and maimed anyone that gets in their way.

Blinding and maiming anyone that gets in their way sounds like they've blinded or maimed maybe 30k people in Portland by now?

There are no trials. Reinoehl was shot dead by police.

Blinding is commonly attempted with high powered lasers. They aim them at police and anyone filming after they speak code words to tell you to stop filming the crime about to take place.

They're maim anyone that refuses to bow down and say blacklives matter if confronted. It's huge bully tactics.

The whataboutisms/false equivalences from Trump supporters is annoying. I'm surprised you didn't bring up Hilary's emails, but I digress.

No one said the protest on the mall was a problem until Trump incited them to occupy the Capitol after priming the pump for months. Where are the politicians inciting the Portland protesters to insurrection?

I didn't say you did, I was simply presenting the facts and reasons these people have for their actions I don't condone or agree with them. I understand them, I've followed along on both sides of this and nobody is talking to anyone, the left is calling people racist for even questioning them and cancelling leftist media on the regular for being "alt right" whatever the hell that means.

I'm just not surprised this is the outcome. What else can you expect?

It's not whataboutism, I'm not using my example to say they have the right to do what they did, what I'm pointing out is that you can't have sustained >100 day riots in portland with the government not being allowed to intervene and expect anything fucking less than an amplified repeat.

Do people really believe anything those fake news spewing idiots say?

Andy gno is just a raw twitter feed full of riot porn. I don't think he's "fake news" and I'm glad he exists.

Tyrannical governments will always find a way to abuse the legal system.

Most people would be in favour of laws against corruption, but corruption charges are one of the most common ways that autocrats use to suppress opposition.

The problem now is your tech overlords, who have shown that they are very willing to silence and deplatform their political opponents, and who seems closely aligned with your new government. Good luck voting them out next time.

No, it really isn't, and this fear-mongering rhetoric is extremely unhelpful. There is bi-partisan support for antitrust actions towards these companies. If trump's (former?) followers are serious about breaking up big tech, they should stop repeating trump's baseless lies about how big tech is some sort of satanic radical leftist communist conspiracy, and get it on these bi-partisan lawsuits.

No it's actually the opposite -- by design, both parties are far too greedy and selfish and disorganized to do that on their own.

Perhaps we can talk again about this in 5 years. I sincerely hope you are right, actually, but the realist in me begs to differ.

Also I don't see how pandering to the government is always a win-win situation for big businesses in the US. The tech companies have their own interests which do not always align with either political party.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the US Constitution certainly doesn't rely on the lousy assumption that all winning politicians will be honest and all private companies will be "responsible", by some definition of responsible. It's more about leveraging self-interest to preserve a check and balance at all levels so that not a single power runs wild.

A tech platform doesn't have political opponents.

And there were no issues with voting ( there were some on a very small scale where most seem to be an attempt for Trump).

This is a good point. When Trump came to power populism was in full effect. There was Bernie on one side and Trump on the other of the same populism coin. Globalism, progress, etc... have left large swaths of the population behind.

I think many of these people know that QAnon spouts nonsense, but they are desperate in their personal situations. Healthcare is bankrupting people, they can't afford to send their kids to college if they can even afford kids, and housing has become out of reach for many. Until the downtrodden are addressed, QAnon isn't going anywhere.

QAnon, fascism, conservative ideology all have "social order" in common. QAnon of course drives it up to 11+, it's a full blown doomsday cult, with Trump being some kind of figurehead. And there's always something that threatens the status quo, their place in society. Immigrants, globalization, China, muslims, mexicans, antifa, gays, transgender frogs, liberal elites, uppity n....s.

Recommended long, but very insightful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

Naturally facts don't matter. You mentioned globalism, which indeed displaced many people from jobs, but this has always been ongoing. A hundred years ago this change was even more drastic. But back then this wasn't "weaponized". (Then the unions came, but then they too faded as technological changes dispersed big groups of homogeneous workers.) And now modern political parties try to play on these identities. (Mostly through candidates, as they locally present themselves, and naturally try to mobilize people.)

There's always someone who preferred the good old days, positive is subjective, or at least, subject to certain criteria, and even then, it's often multiple generations that pass before we know one way or another.

Then nothing's really changed. Before social media people would write letters to the editor or be interviewed on the radio or TV. Publication of said speech was always at the sole discretion of the platform holder.

With TV and newsprint, we had no platform at all, unless the media company shared our views or deemed our speech newsworthy. Even for innocuous speech.

With Twitter and Facebook, almost all of us have a platform that reaches potentially millions of eyeballs. That didn't exist 20 years ago - back then, we'd have to self-publish newsletters, or literally speak from a soap box in the town square.

That said, it is a balancing act, and I'm not certain where that balance point is (and it possibly moves over time too). But, the posts that have been shared from Parler were possibly illegal - they were planning armed sedition at best and a coup at worst - both of which are very much illegal and prosecutable. It wasn't just unsavory speech - it was illegal speech, that Parler itself refused to moderate.

Twitter still have plenty of calls to violence that are still up. As an example this one shared by tens of thousands of people.

https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1307107507131875330?s=2...

Right now you could as easily make an argument that the real danger to the democratic institutions are being lead by the big tech platforms. Either they become a publisher with responsibilities or they allow for this to happen.

Check out the Paradox of Tolerance, it’s very relevant to deciding on “free speech with / without limits”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

What proactive tolerances are we working with? Because the standard on A-A-G seems to be "we're only going to tolerate things we mostly agree with" - which is a faux tolerance. If they can't tolerate the speech of a sitting president then we haven't really reached the point where the paradox of tolerance is at play. That is routine intolerance. To be tolerant there has to be an element of putting up with things they genuinely disagree with.