Politics And Current Events

[Gaucho]

lolol

[Nuge]

We’re also seeing the beginnings of a society that has totally forgotten how to communicate without social media. The reliance on this technology in this country is scary.

[NTP66]

lolol

[shafnutz05]

We’re also seeing the beginnings of a society that has totally forgotten how to communicate without social media. The reliance on this technology in this country is scary.

Agreed. I miss the 90s so much. Were some people crazy then? Of course. But they were largely isolated and had no influence outside of their counter spot at the neighborhood coffee shop. Everyone gets a platform now.

To go back to a "simpler" time...

[Troy Loney]

But they are already living in an alternate reality. How is telling them that Trump has lied to them for 4 years going to make it any better?

How will banning Parler make anything any better? Will all of those folks say, "Whelp, Google/Apple says we can't get Parler from the App Store any more, so let's just call everything off"? There are plenty of private web forums (you know, like this one) and endless options for digital chat, text messages, emails, and even (God forbid) phone calls can spread the word just fine. It also seems to me that if people are for the sake of argument planning violence, then the police, FBI, etc. might like them to be stupid enough to do it on a public social-media platform rather than be driven to private ones. As Elizabeth Brown said on Reason today:

Attaching magical significance and responsibilities to particular platforms may make people feel like they're Doing Something to address a confusing and distressing situation, and it may hit at entities that mainstream politicians and their tribes love to loathe anyway. But it doesn't address any root causes of the phenomenon that distress people, and it leaves American politics mired in an eternal game of whack-a-mole with communication facilitators that simply squelches the speech rights of law-abiding people while distracting from the hard work of addressing the underlying issues that drove that communication.

https://reason.com/2021/01/07/dont-give ... ng-policy/

Outcast the fringe lunatics seems like a logical course of action that should have been taken years ago.

Make it a bit of a challenge for these folks to spread their idiotic beliefs. But, not surprising to see reason take this position, considering the brand of social outcasts that get enthralled with libertarianism

[Freddy Rumsen]

There is an interesting overlap between the Alex Jones/Militia Right part of the internet and the BLM crowd on Twitter who are sure Wednesday was a false flag/inside job.

[Freddy Rumsen]

But they are already living in an alternate reality. How is telling them that Trump has lied to them for 4 years going to make it any better?

How will banning Parler make anything any better? Will all of those folks say, "Whelp, Google/Apple says we can't get Parler from the App Store any more, so let's just call everything off"? There are plenty of private web forums (you know, like this one) and endless options for digital chat, text messages, emails, and even (God forbid) phone calls can spread the word just fine. It also seems to me that if people are for the sake of argument planning violence, then the police, FBI, etc. might like them to be stupid enough to do it on a public social-media platform rather than be driven to private ones. As Elizabeth Brown said on Reason today:

Attaching magical significance and responsibilities to particular platforms may make people feel like they're Doing Something to address a confusing and distressing situation, and it may hit at entities that mainstream politicians and their tribes love to loathe anyway. But it doesn't address any root causes of the phenomenon that distress people, and it leaves American politics mired in an eternal game of whack-a-mole with communication facilitators that simply squelches the speech rights of law-abiding people while distracting from the hard work of addressing the underlying issues that drove that communication.

https://reason.com/2021/01/07/dont-give ... ng-policy/

Outcast the fringe lunatics seems like a logical course of action that should have been taken years ago.

Make it a bit of a challenge for these folks to spread their idiotic beliefs. But, not surprising to see reason take this position, considering the brand of social outcasts that get enthralled with libertarianism

You get the point that Alex Jones hasn't lost any audience despite being deplatformed from all the "acceptable" outlets?

That people got their message out before the internet was invented?

To Shyster's other point all this does is give keyboard warriors on the Left an opportunity to say "look we did a thing! Aren't we special." Yet these tech companies like Apple and Google, and Twitter make their money off a genocidal regime in Beijing, not just on the letting concentration camp workers make their products, but in the consumer end as well. Something like half of Apple's revenue is out of Red China, and then they get to have their kit made for nothing.

But they should totes be the moral police on acceptable online behavior.

[NTP66]

Boo hoo.

[shmenguin]

If I was someone newly interested in breaking into congress and trying to overthrow the government and I wanted to go meet other people like me, I would go to Parler and the_donald first. And I wouldn’t know where to go 2nd. It’s not as if there’s an existing robust infrastructure that will automatically usher people into the backup plan. This will directly help save lives and is not at all a free speech issue or a situation where we need to centralize these people’s discourse.

[shmenguin]

“What if they just go somewhere else”...ok, that’s a workable situation. They aren’t paying for vpns and dark web browsers. The fbi is also on it, btw.

“What if they kill more people in aN insurrection plan that was coordinated on a social media platform on Apple devices”...not particularly workable.

[tjand72]

Business as usual.

[Freddy Rumsen]

How would you not know where to go 2nd? Like is this people's first interaction with the world wide web?

I mean I'm still on a couple e-mail chain groups on Yahoo. There are like a bazillion ways to communicate online, or as Shyster notes with telephones.

[Gaucho]

or ravens

[willeyeam]

You can access it via the web right? This seems like much ado about nothing really. It's Google and Apple protecting themselves, not censoring speech

[NAN]

You can access it via the web right? This seems like much ado about nothing really. It's Google and Apple protecting themselves, not censuring speech

I agree with this.

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

If people like Alex Jones hadn't been given a platform to begin with or they were removed soon after they started, then maybe they don't have as big as an audience. It might now be too little too late, but hopefully these moves prevent additional idiots from gaining an audience and stop the spread of hate and disinformation.

[count2infinity]

If it wasn’t Alex Jones it would have been someone else. There’s an appetite for bullsh*t. Someone will feed them.

[NTP66]

Nobody should be catering to these cretins. The time for being spineless is over.

[Troy Loney]

If it wasn’t Alex Jones it would have been someone else. There’s an appetite for bullsh*t. Someone will feed them.

A crazed fringe is not new, there are elements of the internet that allow for these unhinged masses to spread and indoctrinate faster. I am more on the kick them off Twitter, and not that interested in what happens to Parler. That is just Twitter for 4- Chan people, I would just hope that the doj targets the app in light of the open planning that took place, that will change the platform enough.

But just saying that “oh, they’ll go to 4 Chan or whatever”, that is plenty sufficient. The issue isn’t about the fringe all finding themselves, it’s about the fringe collecting more followers, if they can’t do that at the places normal people and impressions morons linger, then they remain their normal meaningless, crank selves

[Troy Loney]

Please ban me! Lol

[NTP66]

Oh no, not Meghan.

[shmenguin]

Maybe pausing to remind ourselves that the Capitol was over taken by a mob of insurrectionists who planned on executing political rivals like 5 minutes ago, and there’s a stated, strong motivation to do the same again in a week or so. Maybe that’s a good thing to frame this discussion around rather than platitudes about speech suppression and “they’re gonna do it anyway” isms.

Dire times. Drastic times. Seems like an appropriate response to cut off communication networks for terrorist organizations. Of course if you think this is all just so over dramatic, none of this resonates.

[Troy Loney]

Maybe pausing to remind ourselves that the Capitol was over taken by a mob of insurrectionists who planned on executing political rivals like 5 minutes ago, and there’s a stated, strong motivation to do the same again in a week or so. Maybe that’s a good thing to frame this discussion around rather than platitudes about speech suppression and “they’re gonna do it anyway” isms.

Dire times. Drastic times. Seems like an appropriate response to cut off communication networks for terrorist organizations. Of course if you think this is all just so over dramatic, none of this resonates.

The whole "free speech" debate spectrum from Glenn Greenwald and the far-left to the free speech patriots is so god damned idiotic, in every sense. From Hawley calling it Orwellian that his book deal got cancelled, to every time twitter censors something Glenn Greenwald calling it the end of civil society, to every single thing Bari Weiss has ever said.

Yes, it's bad when a twitter mob, or a campus mob shames someone, or shouts down a speaker, but aren't those people just exercising their "free speech" to shout at you? Free speech has nothing to do with any of this, there's no guaranty that people aren't going to shout at you for saying something that makes them angry. So, can we just flush all the free speech zealots down a toilet to restart the conversation about what exactly the consequences for free expression are?

[obhave]

Business as usual.

Is he on Parlor already? I imagine he is going to make his way there of not and that's the company he has been talking to.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

You can access it via the web right? This seems like much ado about nothing really. It's Google and Apple protecting themselves, not censoring speech

The cool thing about Android is you can download the binary file for the app outside of the Google Play store and install it manually (just have to download the .apk file) but I don’t think these morons have the intelligence to figure this out