How was it different from Facebook? Plenty of hate there, for months, why aren't they shutdown?
Just listen to the Parler executives account of what happened. Contrary to all the nonsense being spewed by ideologues, Parler did have a moderation policy that prohibited incitement to violence, and they did enforce it, but it was neither perfect nor instantaneous (since, by deliberate choice, only humans were involved). They also complied to the requests from the three tech titans, but of course that did not matter, their fate was sealed before the first letter was sent.
This is a moment of astonishing hypocrisy and terrible abuse of power. Silicon Valley has proven to half of America that the system is rigged beyond recourse, and for a number of those Americans that might be the straw that breaks the camels back, leading them into radicalization and terrorism. It would be very wise for all of us in tech, in any position of influence, to urge calm and dialogue and to provide space for all speech that is not urging violence. We are not children to throw away our country because of a single deranged fool. We need to show to the country that tech is not an instrument available to only those of a certain ideological bent and that we can talk and sort out our differences without violence or repression.
Parler was created to be a place where the alt-right could freely spout their lies without fear of censorship. Facebook has that, but it's not the reason the platform exists. The intent is completely different.
People digging into Parler found out that all new users were shadowbanned by default until a group of like-minded moderators reviewed and approved their posts.
These moderators were overwhelmingly MAGA/Trump supporters, so I'm sure you can guess what kind of posts they expected to see before they unblocked a new user.
This was all shared/revealed on Twitter, so take it as "evidence" with whatever grain of salt you like, but people didn't just make up these claims about what Parler was..
So while perhaps Parler claimed to be a place for open debate and unrestricted ideas, it is seems that was just a thin cover for their much more focused goal of being a home for all this extremist right-wing talk in America.
Thanks, I took a look. It is not the most coherent presentation but I can see there were examples of crappy posts in there, but so there are everywhere else. The AWS letter made the most reasonable argument and it amounted to an indictment of Parler's technical ability to keep manual moderation working in the face of increasing traffic. Whether that really was the problem or just a virtue display from Amazon is unclear to me.
Vice also published a good summary of the stuff that was scraped from Parler when their SaaS providers went down, but most of it is based on interview with the Twitter user above.
Do you even hear yourself? AWS banning Parlor will cause radicalization and terrorism? You are blaming AWS for the violence, not the sites refusing to moderate and the people doing it?
I guess shutting down mosques that promoted terrorism led to more terrorism?
Analogies are fun, but here's a better one. What do you think would happen if you bombed to rubble a mosque that for the most part is frequented by regular people but occasionally is visited by terrorists? For the sake of fairness let's assume you first gave the mosque 24 hours to put in a place a system that you are confident will prevent any terrorist from coming through the door.
Just listen to the Parler executives account of what happened. Contrary to all the nonsense being spewed by ideologues, Parler did have a moderation policy that prohibited incitement to violence, and they did enforce it, but it was neither perfect nor instantaneous (since, by deliberate choice, only humans were involved). They also complied to the requests from the three tech titans, but of course that did not matter, their fate was sealed before the first letter was sent.
This is a moment of astonishing hypocrisy and terrible abuse of power. Silicon Valley has proven to half of America that the system is rigged beyond recourse, and for a number of those Americans that might be the straw that breaks the camels back, leading them into radicalization and terrorism. It would be very wise for all of us in tech, in any position of influence, to urge calm and dialogue and to provide space for all speech that is not urging violence. We are not children to throw away our country because of a single deranged fool. We need to show to the country that tech is not an instrument available to only those of a certain ideological bent and that we can talk and sort out our differences without violence or repression.