So... Parler is worse because there is _minimal_ moderation, but _no_ moderation is totally fine? That doesn't really seem consistent with any set of guiding principles.
I don’t use either service, but the critical difference in my mind is that telegram is point-to-point or point-to-small-number-of-points medium whereas Parler aspired to be a means of mass-communication.
In my mind, one holds a different level of accountability when sharing private thoughts with friends as opposed to when wielding an insurrectionist bullhorn.
No doubt radical groups are sustained by access to private encrypted messaging, but they cannot grow into the sort of movement that fuelled the attempted coup that took place on 6January without wielding the reigns of mass propaganda.
I am all for freedom of speech, but liberty is not a death pact. We can’t sit idle while this group, that very nearly interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, openly recruits and plans their next attack.
I think you have it exactly backwards. The actual violent intruders last week absolutely coordinated plans around bombs / guns / etc via DMs and small private groups.
The mass gathering was propagated via Twitter-style broadcasts sure, but not the actual violent plots. Those will effortlessly move onto Signal.
Many were almost certainly radicalised through social and alt-right mass media though. You can’t blame the opening at the end of the pipeline for the water coming out.
Furthermore, I was checking in on right wing sites like theDonald.win in the lead up to 6 jan. The loudest voices all argued that the Democratic Party had systemically rigged the election, constitutional remedies had failed them, so the only response available was to fertilise the tree of liberty.
I didn’t sneak into a private telegram group or discord server. This is what these people were saying openly on popular websites that anybody could wander into without so much as making an account.
The same was true of charlottesville, sure parts were undoubtedly organised secretly, but facists like Baked Alaska were live streaming the whole thing - complete with antisemitic commentary.
Saying something like “Refresh the tree of liberty” or “hang the traitors” etc. still doesn’t rise to the level of illegal speech or an imminent call to violence which is the standard under the law. In fact, if you were to claim language like that crosses the line we would have to pull books off library shelves because the same language has been used repeatedly by politicians in American History. I’ve also seen similar language used in reference to Trunp like “He will get what’s coming to him if he comes to our city” etc.
It’s distasteful but it’s legal and part of our political culture.
Distasteful speech is legal and so is kicking distasteful speech off your private platform. The primary limitation on what businesses can and can't do with who uses their platforms are that they need to avoid affecting protected classes.
If you think we need to protect MAGA supporters as a class, I just flat out disagree that there's any cause for it. That group of folks are largely already brimming with privilege that protects them (see walking away from storming the Capitol after killing multiple people).
If you think that the government should force private entities to not enforce consequences to speech they disagree with, I believe the government would struggle to prove that that doesn't itself impact the free speech rights of the private entities and it face immediate law suits to overturn such a law. The 1st amendment protects us from the government, not us from each other.
In the context of discrimination law, there is a commonly-held misunderstanding that "protected class" refers to a group of people, but actually, it refers to a classification.
A particular race is not a protected class. Race is a protected class.
Also keep in mind Parler and Gab were explicitly designed for the far right that claimed wasn't being treated fairly by Facebook and Twitter (which we now know is not factually correct).
> For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler.
> The article will be up shortly.
(The article is the one this discussion is attached to.)
"The data, obtained by a computer hacker through legal means ahead of Parler’s shutdown on Monday, offers a bird’s eye view of its users swarming the Capitol grounds after receiving encouragement from President Trump — and during a violent breach that sent lawmakers and Capitol Hill visitors scrambling amid gunshots and calls for their death. GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
Greenwald literally says in the twit you referenced that zero active Parler users were arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion.
Evidence says: "GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
https://gizmodo.com/parler-users-breached-deep-inside-u-s-ca...
"The data, obtained by a computer hacker through legal means ahead of Parler’s shutdown on Monday, offers a bird’s eye view of its users swarming the Capitol grounds after receiving encouragement from President Trump — and during a violent breach that sent lawmakers and Capitol Hill visitors scrambling amid gunshots and calls for their death. GPS coordinates taken from 618 Parler videos analyzed by Gizmodo has already been sought after by FBI as part of a sweeping nationwide search for potential suspects, at least 20 of whom are already in custody."
It only seems inconsistent because you are comparing apples and oranges, signal and telegram are in a different category entirely to parler and twitter.
