There's an awful lot of people (not all typically crazies or grifters) who hold the opinion that the Trump twitter ban is the start of some harmful corporate purge. The end game of cancel culture with dangerous ramifications. My natural reaction is that this is nonsense given the events of the last few days, but I'm beginning to question everything. Can anybody weigh in?

Conservatives claiming the sky is falling and the commies are coming? When hasn't that been the case

Maybe the internet does need some more oversight. It appears as a society we weren't ready for its immense influence.

Right now companies are just protecting their brand, no mainstream company wants be the ones who allowed terrorists to openly plot and recruit. And it is almost guaranteed that this will happen and we know how they do it from past cases (Boogaloo attacks, Gretchen kidnapping / assassination plot etc). Parler has almost no moderation, and is therefore especially weak to such extremism.

More moderate Conservatives should be more worried about how easily their movement has been infected with right-wing extremism. The MAGA-crowd at the Capitol had no problem with standing together with white supremacists openly wearing Nazi propaganda.

The attempt to portray it as an attack on conservatism is just silly. But of course, a lot of mainstream politicans and pundits have played with fire and extremism for a long time, and portraying themselves as “mere conservatives” is a rhetoric ploy to garner political support.

If I was a conservative right now, I would look to those conservative voices which have openly stood against this extremism. They might not have had the farthest reach, but they are out there. Considering they have also stood against the tide of an extremely popular ideological leader (Trump) and his harassing mob, that shows backbone.

I'll add to the above with something I said prior.

These Social Media companies and their predictive AI's know far more about us then they would ever feel comfortable with society knowing.

The data sets are so massive now that they can predict not just what you might buy (their original intent) but also your mood. They realized they can actually manipulate your mood and manipulate your thought patterns to convince you, you might need something (purchase or other).

It was after the Arab Spring and again just prior to the 2016 Hilary/Donald election they realized how much impact they could have on directing (influencing) people towards a political end. Something they looked to do nothing more than monetize at the start.

But now they realize this may be more like King Maker type power. Or even King Assassin power.

I think they know (and Twitter basically said) that all the data they are seeing is culminating or leading to a series of future attacks. They can see the passions of the peons rising to the level of 'buy'. They are about to execute on their transaction. And they see DJT, DonJr, and a few others pulling those strings.

They could sit quiet and do nothing and if/when it happens and rumours get out from inside FB or Twitter about what they knew or could predict they will be called before a Congressional or Senate committee to testify.

How do you think history would regard them if they said 'ya our data was predicting it but we ignored it and did nothing'?

They waited too long. Their algorithms have done enough damage which can't be undone

A point to consider is also that Parler is a very aggressive data-mining tool, probably far more so than its mainstream competitors. Remember it was funded by Mercer, who also funded the Cambridge Analytica debacle, one of the worst cases of big data political interference in recent years.

Loss of access to such datasets is probably worrisome to conservative campaigns, which have relied more and more heavily on such tactics in recent years.

In a way, you could argue that it is an attack on conservatism - but only because conservatism has been (hopefully temporarily) taken over by extremists.

I would at the very least say that conservatism as digital politics has become dependent on the drive and user engagement of extremists. That is not at all to say that “conservatives are extremists“, but their digital eco-system is aided by such extremism.

Conservatism has gone «narrow», depending on voter engagement instead of including broader views. The intense drive and engagement of extremists on the right have been part of making that succesful.

This phenomena is (as of yet) not prevalent on the other side of the fence I think. Left-wing factions generally loathe moderates. The more extreme ones might be cut some unfortunate political slack as potential voters, but there is not much of an eco-system crossover.

Yeah, I went very simplistic in that take. I of course also don't mean that all conservatives are extremists; I would hope that the vast majority are not. But they've allowed extremists to take the lead and effectively speak for them, and so when steps are taken to attack this extremism, it appears to be, or perhaps even has become, an attack on a much broader group of conservatives, because they have chosen to engage in similar tactics and use the same tools as the extremists.

eh, the "big tech" has been doing this for years. while shutting up Trump is proly the right thing to do, it def wont be great if they decide to censor a lot more often. and it will certainly be used against the leftists and the marginalized.

Yep. People might support it when it goes their way but allowing so much power in the hands of a few corporations or individuals will bite us in the bum big time. Once it matures it will more often be the likes of Murdoch in control again rather than anyone liberal

Regulations has to be the answer.

of all the batshit things youve posted in this thread, this one wins.

AP has made an article detailing the timeline of the attack and events known so far. It is quite a read.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-tr...957e773ac99971

womp womp

Should be interesting how long the site (parler) is gone.

Can they get hosting stuff from another country like Russia, Poland etc etc ?

Cloudflare does not good? Surprised they're not already on it.

Where can I find more stuff like this?

Time-frame is unclear. Yes, they can get hosting elsewhere, there is no government sanction or anything like that. I guess there is a market for it now, so either they will get hosting, they will surface under a new name or a similar service will crop. There is also sites like gab and services like Telegram, always popular with extremists. If people want to discuss extremist plots, there is certainly not a lack of options. There is also the deep web if you feel truly oppressed, where you can platform dark web sites and there is nothing that can stop that.

What set Parler apart was that it was a somewhat successful amalgamation of right-wing extremists with mainstream "conservatives", which is basically the right-wing fringe's wet dream and as many "conservative" politicians found out, also a nice place to recruit some very loyal supporters (with the caveat that they might at some point lynch you). But I don't know how mainstream it could have gotten, these very loosely moderated or completely unmoderated sites tend to be anything but "family friendly" or safe for work.

Do you think the probability of legislation on big tech is more likely if they ban trump or if they don't?

A journalism in my country says the "risk" of legislation is higher if twitter DOESN'T ban Trump. I think it's the opposite.

I've said it before. This is a very difficult question and people are way to hard on Social Media for not have an immediate answer.

I want everyone to imagine a world now were Rupert Murdoch and his empire has won the Social Media eyeballs from the start with a monopolist like empire. His strategic buys of MySpace and Yahoo, to get in the game worked and he brought the right people in and it took off. It is now aligned with his Fox Empire.

And instead of Trump and his crazies being labeled the extremists it is those who would 'support the stealing of an American election' who are demonised and labeled the extremists. And as US citizens who did not support another term of Trump (especially if he overturned an election) took to the street, it was them and any one who gave them voice who was being silenced on social media.

And I am not arguing against silencing any one person wh breaks TOS as that is fine. I am saying be careful in asking Social Media to be the sole arbiter of what should be permitted and what is not permissable.

I must correct myself here since I was jumping to conclusions. After some research I have seen tech experts saying that the migration of Amazon Web Services for Parler is likely not straightforward, and it would be a very time-consuming and resource-intensive process - to the point that they had doubts it could re-surface intact.

That site is now shutdown. I was reluctant to post it anyway for fear of spreading it or mistakenly being seen as in favor of it. There are unregulated dark places on the web, not the main social media sites, where this stuff could be posted for sure.

Interesting fiction. Anything goes.

Yep. I've been saying the same thing.

I'd go a bio further and say that social media cannot provide the answers to regulating social media. It has to be based on government regulation.