As I thought. The idea that antitrust would apply in this circumstance when (1) Parler is not a competitor, and (2) it appears evident that Parler has gone against Amazon's guidelines was silly. I even linked earlier in the thread sources that showed how Amazon had attempted to work with Parler to keep them on the platform (i.e.: Amazon wants their business, so asked Parler to provide an actionable proposal to improve moderation), but Parler was unable to fulfill Amazon's requests. That said, I think the case with Parler does open up discussions on best practices for content moderation on social media, especially given how we've previously seen how lack of moderation can have dire consequences (i.e.: Facebook's role in the Rohingya genocide).
Sylvanas didn't even win the popular vote, she was elected by an indirect election of representatives. #NotMyWarchief
To be fair, it seems that QAnon conspiracy theorists, having watched Election->Inauguration transpire and...Trump "allowing" himself to lose (their mindset not mine), many of them are disheartened.
Example
Example
Example
Example
And these forums are a great example. Many of the big names over the last four years have stopped coming for a variety of reasons.
There are levels of resistance to reality, but nobody's immune. No matter how much you say "the Earth is flat" you can't reach the edge. At some point, the, um, less batshit insane of these people have either accepted reality or possibly just decided it's a fight they can't fight anymore.
Granted, this will make the remaining diehards that much more unstable and dangerous. These people so resistant to reality that they think everyone is the enemy except them could do something destructive or violent. The only silver lining is, when you're that fucking insane, you tend to make mistakes like crossed wires or buying from undercover FBI agents. Related: forcing more and more of these whackjobs into fewer and fewer channels makes them easier to spot and monitor.
But as for "The Plan" we're seeing that even they don't know what it is anymore. They had all their hopes on "Trump will legally still be in the White House" and not only has that failed, Trump has gone silent (see previous post in another thread).
The real problem with the conspiracy theory insane mindset is, and oddly enough South Park explained this better than the Joker, people generally speaking want to believe in The Plan. They want to believe that there's a large, powerful organization that's in control and making things run smoothly, even if "smoothly" has events like 9/11. What makes conspiracy theorists insane is that large, powerful force is typically fictional. Right now, the large, powerful force that runs the show is...the American people and their duefully chosen elected officials. The Plan is the Constitution. For some, that's not the large, powerful force they wanted, but at least they acknowledge it's real and will accept it. For some, they thought it was Trump's cult, until they saw they weren't in charge, and are spending their days hiding in their bunker, crying into their single scoop of ice cream, but that's about it. For some, and hopefully few, this is part of some Grand Master Plan and they'll be looking for instructions in everything from anonymous Parler posts claiming to have authority to ingredient labels on Spaghetti-O's cans. And they're the ones we need to be cautious with.
Uh oh.
This reminds me of something that happened a few days ago. My sister texted me, to say that my mother (I stopped speaking to her a couple years ago) called her in an agitated state. She had apparently been banned from Facebook for her conspiracy theory posts. So, she created another account, and that got banned, as well. Apparently, my mother was pissed that Facebook was taking her away from her kids and the posts they made about her "grandbabies." She demanded that my sister and brothers move over to Parler, so they could be a family again, without the socialists at Facebook trying to control them. They needed to move to Parler, so that they could stay away from all the brainwashing that the liberals are pushing (10 years ago, my mother was a huge liberal).
Well, my sister said she wasn't leaving, and maybe my mother should just stop posting conspiracy theories. She told my sister that she's as terrible as I am, and demanded she stop telling her own mother how to live her life. To my sister's credit, she said, "fine," and hung up the phone. My sister has more patience than I do, but even she's fucking done with that nonsense. because of her radicalism, my mother has lost access to half of her grandchildren. This is the cost that these conspiracy theorists shitheads must pay.
I think the real "nuance" you might actually be in search for is why the ToS seems more rigid when applied to right-wing standpoints, or their extreme end, and a lot more malleable when it comes to people less identified with it. Say, the Ayatollah Khomeini or the Minister Louis Farrakhan if we're talking Twitter. The NY Post Ban (way more concerning than the Trump ban if you ask me) for misinformation, but not stuff like Holocaust denial and Uyghur detention denial go free (same on hacked materials posting). They rarely even get the scare label below them. One questioning McConnell's re-election result still survive.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the more center-left people don't care about right-wing accounts being more policed and selectively enforced because they agree with the action and feel like the January 6th violence was inevitable going back 2016. The tech bros are also unlikely to go after them (and y'all here), since the corporations have trended towards appeasing left-wing journalistic outlets. You gotta go full-Antifa and full-doxxing to get some flak.
LOL "why won't people on our QAnon website do some basic fact-checking on their claims" is about as funny as it can get.
"You are better than this".
Press X to doubt.
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I also feel like we're glossing over the bit where the "500th dimensional chess move" they were expecting generally consisted of Trump declaring martial law and publicly executing his enemies.
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So to recap, they were worried that a social media site (which like all social media sites is set up as a honeypot to harvest your personal data for sale to advertisers, or indeed anyone willing to pay) might allow the Chinese government to harvest your personal data, fortunately Trump orchestrated a deal (full of grift obviously) to move operations to America so that the US government would instead be the one harvesting your personal data.
But then they flocked to a website run by Cambridge Analytica, who used to illegally harvest personal data via dodgy Facebook apps (Facebook being another social media site who even more transparently harvests your personal data for sale), who required you to add a lot of personal data like social security numbers and other forms of ID in order to join, and when that got denied service for hosting an attack on their own country, they moved to a new version of the same site set up by the KGB in order to harvest their personal data.
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Except for websites like this one that twist the site rules into a pretzel to avoid banning obvious bad faith posters, making sure to always give right wingers special treatment because otherwise they'd lose a shitload of teen edgelord gamer traffic. Which unfortunately for the medium, all game sites are plagued with.
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The US's legal history is hilariously bad on the topic of incitement. The case that established the current rule, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), was about a KKK leader who gave a speech in front of a burning cross about getting revenge on the niggers and Jews. The court found that this was not sufficiently clear as incitement. You can't make this shit up.
So yeah you can pretty much get away with murder in the US when it comes to incitement. However, swear on national TV? Ooh brother, the First Amendment won't help you there.
More intelligent users of the Twitter platforms tend to not be as obvious about their rule-breaking. But there are certainly cases where Twitter and Facebook can crack down harder.
That said, pretending like the American Right-wing is under threat, or under far more scrutiny than any other group, is a woefully ignorant viewpoint. Social media websites have been walking on eggshells around far-right extremism for years, and in that time right-wingers STILL cried about it. It's like when the Republican party harped on and cried about the IRS cracking down on right-wing political groups because they fined a handful of right-wing groups, completely disregarding the fact that the IRS fined way more left-wing groups in that same year.
Right-wing media figures just like to complain and pretend that they're being victimised whenever they have to reap what they've been sowing for ages.
Pretty much exactly this. When your entire political platform is based entirely around upsetting other people and worshipping the wealthy, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. Conservatives don't want to tax the wealthy because they believe the wealthy earned their way there, and every conservative sees themselves as becoming rich EVENTUALLY. Then when they realize they'll NEVER get there it starts to dawn on them just how much they fucked themselves into poverty.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
Massive citation needed here. I've seen the exact opposite: right-wing extremism was actioned quicker and more universally than equivalent posts from left-wingers for the last six years or so I've been watching. Like the IRS story, Left Wing groups tried to say they were the real victims, but never obtained the same level of scrutiny, or delays. It's just a propagandistic talking point to look at bulk approvals and allege that is the same topic. But left-wing groups want to take the victimhood trophy and bend the conversation to suit their means. I'd pick better examples.
Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight...itute_v._Trump
Good enough?Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-05205 (S.D.N.Y.) is a lawsuit filed on July 11, 2017 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and decided May 23, 2018. The plaintiffs, Philip N. Cohen, Eugene Gu, Holly Figueroa O'Reilly, Nicholas Pappas, Joseph M. Papp, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and Brandon Neely, are a group of Twitter users blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump's personal @realDonaldTrump account. They allege that this account constitutes a public forum, and that blocking access to it is a violation of their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit also names as defendants White House press secretary Sean Spicer and social media director Dan Scavino.
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
Maybe you'd like to pick a different example than the current crackdown to point out how conservatives are unjustly moderated. Just because they suddenly have to suffer the consequences of their rulebreaking doesn't mean they're under attack.
"Victimhood trophy" projection is strong within the right-wing circles. The IRS mismanagement of the late 00's crossed party lines, but Republicans like to cry a whole lot more. American conservatism is propped up on a perpetual victimhood complex, their followers being constantly fearful of enemies that are in broad terms both incredibly threatening and pathetically weak at the same time.
If you want to claim that conservatives are suffering harsher punishment for their actions on social media, feel free to come at us with studies.
As things stand, it simply looks like conservative people have a harder time sticking to very simple ToS that state you shouldn't harass people based on their ethnicities or sexual orientation, or use racially discriminatory language. For some reason some fringe groups really struggle with this.
I suppose I might be wrong. I guess the reason why intellectual vacuums like Tim Pool and Ben "WAP" Shapiro currently dominate the Youtube political space, in terms of viewership, is because Google is simply so partisan and left-leaning.
Boo-hoo.
If you know a place is a source of intel that can be used to prevent things.. why take it down? monitor the hell out of it, vs sending them to other means of communication you might not be able to monitor as easily
Member: Dragon Flight Alpha Club, Member since 7/20/22