DDoS-Guard To Forfeit Internet Space Occupied By Parler (krebsonsecurity.com) 377
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: Parler, the beleaguered social network advertised as a "free speech" alternative to Facebook and Twitter, has had a tough month. Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their stores, and Amazon blocked the platform from using its hosting services. Parler has since found a home in DDoS-Guard, a Russian digital infrastructure company. But now it appears DDoS-Guard is about to be relieved of more than two-thirds of the Internet address space the company leases to clients -- including the Internet addresses currently occupied by Parler. The pending disruption for DDoS-Guard and Parler comes compliments of Ron Guilmette, a researcher who has made it something of a personal mission to de-platform conspiracy theorist and far-right groups.
This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:2)
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Funny)
deplatformed from planet Earth
Let me guess...you're one of them flat Earth people?
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:3)
I believe the suggestion is that someone will kill them. Not that they should.
Similarly, you might warn away someone from feeding alligators, not because you don't think alligators should be biting off the arms of people, but because alligators will - in fact - bite off the arms of people.
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Because secondary boycotts inside the Internet supply chain demolish the whole "My house, my rules" argument being pushed by the social media majors. If a single American activist we never heard of before can bully a tiny central American country into pulling IPs leased by a Russian corporation, it's a worse theft of free speech by the unaccountable than anything imagined by Qanon.
The limited resource at issue here is IPv4 addresses. Could this be the final push we need to implement iPv6?
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Bzzt! If you condemn something you yourself are doing, it's appropriate to point it out. Like telling everyone else to wear a mask when you don't.
This ain't a debate.
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You're only half right when you claim "whataboutism" is always a fallacy. It could be the fallacy of false equivalence, in which case you should show why the equivalence is false. Or it could be that you committed the fallacy of special pleading by adopting double standards, in which case crying "whataboutism" is an attempt to deflect from that hypocrisy.
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
If a single American activist we never heard of before can bully a tiny central American country into pulling IPs leased by a Russian corporation
Could you point out the bullying?
Guy is not a fan of 8chan, hosted by DDos-Guard.
Guy looked at what DDoS-Guard was going - they had a corporation in Belize, but didn't appear to have a physical presence. Physical presence is required to get an IP address in Belize.
Guy reported it to the appropriate authorities....in November. So this has nothing to do with dislike of Parler since DDoS-Guard wasn't involved with Parler at the time.
Authorities investigate, find that the company doesn't have a physical presence in Belize, and gives the company 30 days to fix it.
Company doesn't fix it.
Authorities yank IP addresses, that DDoS-Guard happens to have assigned to Parler months after the complaint was filed.
Krebs writes a clickbait headline, and it gets put on Slashdot.
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not there... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect a lot of organizations will be surprised to discover having an incorporated entity in a LANIC region isn't enough to qualify for IP space.
According to the article, DDoS has no presence in Belize whatsoever. They have no employees there, and they do not list Belize as one of the places where they do business.
Looks like the Belize location was a scam with no purpose other than to scoop up Belize iPv4 addresses.
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article, you'll notice that DDoS-Guard had fraudulently obtained a bunch of IP addresses assigned to Belize. They're losing those for that reason, not because they're hosting Parler. The person who reported that fraud did do so because they hosted Parler on one of those IP-addresses, but I guess if you deal with shady hosting companies, getting into situations like this is par for the course.
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Funny)
Parler for the course.
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fraudulent iPv4 addresses don't make the news (Score:5, Interesting)
That's fair enough and its hard to argue against them losing the IP block. Still this seems to be the equivalent of selective enforcement.
Not clear that it's selective enforcement. Revoking fraudulent iPv4 addresses doesn't make the news unless it's iPv4 addresses used by newsworthy site.
If you read the article all the way to the end, it quotes other examples of enforcement based on complaints from the same person, such as this one https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com]
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consider the enforcement (Score:3)
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
This situation is like:
"I threw a bunch of ragers at my old apartment and they evicted me. Since I was such a bad tenant, the only apartment I could find was one from a super shady landlord. The neighbors turned the landlord in for renting space he shouldn't have."
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"I threw a bunch of ragers at my old apartment and they evicted me. Since I was such a bad tenant, the only apartment I could find was one from a super shady landlord.
That's an awful analogy. Your rager would be spam, ddos, etc--you know, things that actually directly impact the landlord and other tenants. A better analogy would be "I was having some conversations with people in my apartment. My neighbors were constantly listening at the door. They didn't like the topic of our conversation, so they pressured my landlord to throw me out. Then, when I moved, my neighbors followed me to my new apartment and did everything they could to get me thrown out of there, as wel
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're organizing a riot, that's not free speech, that's criminal conspiracy. Stop elevating Trump-inspired sedition, white supremacy and general hate-fueled conspiracy into something its not. This is not noble discourse. George Lincoln Rockwell or David Duke look like scholars compared to the Trump crowd.
If you're going to engage in awful discourse, expect public hostility. The only thing you can expect is not to get jailed by the government, you have zero guarantees that people will engage in commerce with you.
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RTFA. The addresses being removed were fraudulently obtained. They will soon be replaced with legitimate addresses, anyway.
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World banks including ones in the United States got under a lot of pressure after they were found found out that they were funding terrorist after 9/11. For many of these banks, they mostly had a don't ask don't tell policy, they just had accounts for anyone with money.
Post 9/11 people (American Citizens ) and businesses even ones not related to terrorists organizations, had their accounts frozen for a while until they were cleared.
They were preventing a lot of American citizens access to their own money,
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edtice1559 babbled:
Up until now, I have argued in all of the slashdot threads that Apple, Google, AWS, et al have acted properly by not doing business with Parler. And, hopefully, most reputable companies will continue to not do business with the likes of Parler. On the other hand, internet addresses *are* more of a public utility. This seems like the equivalent of cutting off the water supply to their building. And although Parler is deplorable, I'm not sure that pulling IP addresses from hosting companies in response to whose content they choose to host is within the realm of acceptable responses.
Brian Krebs's actual report makes it clear that didn't happen. Like, at all.
What did happen is that Russia-based DDoS-Guard had fraudulently obtained 8,000+ IPv4 addresses from ARIN, by claiming to have a physical business presence in the Latin American market. The digital detective who discovered that fact reported it to ARIN, and apparently its independent investigation of his charges led it to revoke the assignment of those addresses to DDoS-Guard.
Just a routine clawback of increasingl
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Car analogy time!
I do agree that the internet is more like the roads to the town square and it gets very dubious denying internet access (i.e IP addresses) in this case, because that effectively is denying free speech.
However this isn't really that. In this case, Parler were trying to drive to the town square using their brother's stolen car. Given how reviled they are, them using their brother's car painted a huge target on the car and among the army of amertute sleuths someone indeed found the car was sto
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Insightful)
But imagine you lived in a town that passed a restriction on washing cars due to a drought. Everybody flagrantly violated it. And only Republicans were ticketed for the violation and had their water shut off. This really wouldn't be okay.
I agree: everything illegal with selective enforcement is terrible and great way of having legal discrimination. But I don't think this is it either. If in your situation imagine instead that the local authorities didn't have the resources to go looking for violators, but instead simply responded to complaints about violations.
If in this case a bunch of republicans pissed off their neighbors, then the neighbors would be motivated to dob them in. As a result, it would look like selective enforcement against republicans because only republicans get prosecuted, but actually it isn't. If some republicans dobbed in some democrats they'd get prosecuted too, it's just that never happened. And if it turns out no democrats are washing their cars, it's still not selective enforcement.
In this case, we don't have any evidence that LANIC is only enforcing rules against people hosting American Republican identifying websites. What they did do is enforce the rules against someone who got a huge swathe of addresses under false pretenses.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Interesting)
If I own a restaurant and somebody comes in and stands on their table and starts screaming conspiracy theories in a way that disturbs other patrons, I will ask them to stop. If they don't, I will ask them to leave. If they threaten violence, I will call the police. None of those are censorship. And I won't let them back in my restaurant. That's not censorship.
If I own a gun shop and somebody comes in and tells me they want to buy a gun for the purpose of murdering the Vice President and members of congress, refusing to sell them a gun is *not* censorship
On the other hand, if somebody stands on their front yard yelling conspiracy theories and the water company decides to turn off their service as punishment, that seems wholly inappropriate.
If you can't see the difference between these things, I'm afraid there really isn't much room for discussion.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, if somebody stands on their front yard yelling conspiracy theories and the water company decides to turn off their service as punishment, that seems wholly inappropriate.
Your analogy doesn't fit with what happened. The address-space which DDoS-guard used is only supposed to be available to entities with a physical presence in Belize. When LACNIC investigated they found that DDoS Guard Corp was just an incorporated paper-company with no employees in Belize which meant they didn't adhere to the TOS.
If you can't see the difference between these things, I'm afraid there really isn't much room for discussion.
First we must establish that the things we discuss are actually based on facts.
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Ed Tice for Congress (Score:5, Insightful)
[ Somebody tells Ed why they disagree with Ed ]
> Agreed. That's the downside of making a first post. Lots of good new facts have come out. Other parts of the discussion have been enlightening and this is less wrong than it initially seemed
Can we get some of this type of attitude in our leaders, please?
Fraud [Re: This might be a bridge too far] (Score:5, Informative)
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So if they hire one person in Belize to represent them in a coworking space, everybody becomes cool with the situation?
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Probably.
Take Malta for example, there are a lot of foreign companies that are incorporated there that doesn't have a physical presence there. The only requirement is that there MUST be at least one Maltese national on the board. There where actually Maltese companies that hired out "professional" board-members to companies that wanted to incorporate there.
Caveat: My information may be out of date, since it was 15 years ago I learned this.
Re:Fraud [Re: This might be a bridge too far] (Score:4, Interesting)
When the Panama Papers were exposed some random lawyer in the Bahamas was found to be on the board of (IIRC) over 1000 shell companies, they paid him something like $50 for each board membership.
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False. No one *looked* until a company entered a political issue. Had this been pointed out earlier and nothing to do with Parler I'm sure the response would have been identical, especially considering the hot property that is an IPv4 address and double especially considering companies genuinely don't like selling things under the pretense of fraud.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
And yet no one cared until issue became political.
The notice of revocation is dated 26th of November with a 3 month adjudication period. Turns out this didn't have anything to do with Parler.
Now I wonder who feels more silly, you for talking out of your arse, or you for not RTFA.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, if somebody stands on their front yard yelling conspiracy theories and the water company decides to turn off their service as punishment, that seems wholly inappropriate.
Except it's more like this:
Someone is standing in their front yard yelling conspiracy theories. This pisses you off so you go looking and find they've illegally tapped into the water main. You tell the water company because you're pissed off. Then the water company comes along and cuts them off because they illegally tapped into the water main.
That's not remotely inappropriate of the water company.
Was it a dick move on your part? That hardly seems the point: at this time if we're talking about "free speech" as in passing the bar of "not literally illegal", then it's hard to find fault with you arguably dickishly calling the water company because again that's not literally illegal.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Insightful)
Does noone remember the days of "I disagree with you vehemently, but will defend your right to say things i disagree with to the death". I do.
> If I own a restaurant and somebody comes in and stands on their table and starts screaming conspiracy theories in a way that disturbs other patrons, I will ask them to stop.
Its a website you dont have to visit or care about, not a restaurant where you cant help but hear the adjacent tables.
What you are defending is an arbitrary power to silence any voice, simply by applying a subjective label to it.
If you cant see how dangerous that double edged sword is, you are naive. If you do see it, then you are in favor of a central bureau of thought control.
This is not what the internet is about. If anything, the recent censorship binge only really highlights the failings of WWW/HTTP.
IPFS will solve this problem anyway, and make it defacto impossible to silence servers or censor content.
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If I own a restaurant and somebody comes in and stands on their table and starts screaming conspiracy theories in a way that disturbs other patrons, I will ask them to stop. If they don't, I will ask them to leave. If they threaten violence, I will call the police. None of those are censorship. And I won't let them back in my restaurant. That's not censorship.
In this case, it's more like some people come into your restaurant, and sit in the private room in the back. Some of your other patrons listen at the door, and decide they don't like what the group is talking about and complain to you. They tell you "we won't eat here anymore unless you get rid of these guys." You throw the private room group out of your restaurant.
Not suggesting you don't have the perfect right to do that, but let's be clear: messages boards are not the equivalent of a public disturbanc
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Insightful)
They tell you "we won't eat here anymore unless you get rid of these guys." You throw the private room group out of your restaurant.
Actually it sounds more like they tell you "hey we're happy to eat here but you realise those guys in the back are here fraudulently and you could get in trouble for serving them", and then you throw the private room group out of the restaurant.
DDos-Gaurd drew attention to itself and was found to be fraudulently sitting on IP addresses they weren't allowed to own. Nothing more. The only thing Parler did is make people look at that strange door in the corner of the restaurant.
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I don't understand the phrasing your question, though. Do you regularly see BLM and antifa members standing on tables at restaurants spouting conspiracy theories? Did you actually stay there a
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Repeating your same incorrect conclusions several times is not the same as being correct.
The revocation of DDoS-Guard's IP space began in November. Parler didn't inhabit that IP space until this month. So there is no possible way that this has anything to do with Parler in any way, shape, or form. (Unless the government hires actual clairvoyant fortune-tellers, in which case we all have much bigger problems.)
So stop blathering on about how you've proved your point when your point is not only un-proved, but
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, we *don't* have any type of prior restraint in the US. Parler *was* allowed to speak. They spoke. And then they paid consequences. If you actually read Parler's filings in their (laughable) suit against Amazon, they even talk about how much Amazon tried to work with them! We haven't seen anything (until now) that borders on concerning. And when it does border on problematic, those of us who have been making more nuanced arguments are willing to call that out.
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If you get lump Parler with every-a-hole that posted stuff on the platform than the same should be true for facebook, Twitter, and others.
Its believed acts of terrorism have been coordinated over Twitter as well and the result of those court cases was despite Twitters failure to prevent that they were not responsive. I don't recall if they were specifically hiding behind s230 on that one or not.
In any case there s230 and 1A probably does prevent the government from doing much about Parler, however it hasn'
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Insightful)
https://beta.documentcloud.org... [documentcloud.org]
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Congratulations on missing the point entirely. Yes I get it AWS has an AUP and Parler violated it. Guess what those AUPs are written to give Amazon the opportunity to find fault with just about anyone they decide they don't like and give them an out for kicking them on the platform. Its literally why they exist. The fact is it works they same EVERYWHERE else you could reasonable go to acquire the types of serves needed to run a site like Parler now short of having the budget to stand up your own datacente
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Insightful)
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Parler started their own restaurant. Patrons of their restaurant can. through the tech, choose to hear the rants or not.
The problems here are that, first, some patrons that never frequent that restaurant find the accusations of what is being yelled are sufficient to shut the place down. They never go there. They don't want the yelling they never hear to go on. Second, they are told that the yelling is encouraging terrible acts. True or not, it turns out many other restaurants also permit the sort of yelling
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> Guess what those AUPs are written to give Amazon the opportunity to find
> fault with just about anyone they decide they don't like and give them an out
> for kicking them on the platform
It is an actionable offense to threaten people, and not just verbally:
"In some situations, speech can even constitute a crime, such as in the case of criminal threats. A criminal threat, sometimes known as the terrorist threat, malicious harassment, or by other terms, occurs when someone threatens to kill or physic
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:5, Informative)
The notion you can just build your own platform is being dis-proven by Parler's example every day. If the market was truly open it might be different but its not controlled almost entirely by a handful of large players
OK, I'm going to call BS right there. Parler could have built its own platform, bought a pile of second hand servers and a SAN, got a set of IP addresses, and housed their entire operation in a two car garage. Plenty of the folks here on /. have done exactly that. They didn't do that instead they decided to host their entire operation on someone else's hardware because it was quick, easy, cheap, and the kind of people who would be required to operate that setup generally don't like working for morons.
It amazes me the number of people here who seem to think that paying GoDaddy or AWS is the only possible way to run a web site. This used to be a web site for techies, what happened?
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Simple minds require a world that is only absolutes.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:3)
Dunning-Krugered minds cannot handle somebody making an argument with a hyperbole for clarity's sake, yet think they are very smart.
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Repulsive speech is the tax that pays for free speech, that's how I see it.
Re:This might be a bridge too far (Score:4, Informative)
Other than the town square (and even that is debatable), you are free to make whatever speech you want. However, no one is required to give you a platform to do so. You can fee speech in your friend's home, but guess what, if they don't like what you're saying, they can kick you out and tell you to never come back. You can cry "censorship" all you want, but it's their home and they make the rules.
Just like actions, free speech has consequences. You are free to say whatever you want and the location you made that speech is free to exhibit whatever consequences of that speech. They can ignore it, they can tell you to be quiet, they can tell you to leave or they can tell you to leave and never come back. It's their place.
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The internet itself is the town square. Amazon, Google etc are more like the coffee shop facing the town square where everyone hangs out. You're free to say what you want on the internet, just like the town square but not in the businesses that border it.
Re: This might be a bridge too far (Score:3)
What if I want to freely express my fascism, you insensitive clod!?
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It's not an ad hominem. It's completely correctly pointing out that you spouted off without informing yourself.
Kind of like a typical Parler poster, come think of it (and no, that's not ad hominem either).
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Deplatforming doesn't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
All it does it have them go somewhere else, again and again and again. Think about how many piracy sites exist, and how many times you "take them down". Instead of screaming and shouting, Guilmette should be educating people away from falsehoods instead. If I state my opinion on an event and the first thing that happens is that I get attacked, I'm not going to think "I'm wrong", I'm going to think "What are you trying to hide?", attacking people for their beliefs only reinforces them and makes them push back.
What happens if an alt-right group that has taken extreme measures to have all of their speech be perfectly legal and constitutional goes to court and says "This man is waging a campaign of harassment against us, he is constantly attacking our platforms and we have broken no laws"? Remember Fred Phelps and his inbred spawn? Their entire MO was to provoke, provoke, and provoke and to wage war on anyone who dared to retaliate.
This isn't even getting into people enacting vigilante justice. "We're protecting the nation" is what those deluded terrorists at the capitol thought they were doing before they pussed out.
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People complain day in and day out about faults in a service, a product, or what have you and it falls on deaf ears, but it seems that if someone gets offended, even if it's a literal nobody, people start kowtowing even though the right to offend others is one of the cornerstones of free speech and freedom of the press, and people can be easily told "If you don't like the product, don't consume it". If it came out that there was a global conspiracy of blackmailers and extortionists pretending to be "concern
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Deplatforming absolutely does work, despite what your feels say.
Instead of screaming and shouting, Guilmette should be educating people away from falsehoods instead.
How is pointing out fraud "screaming and shouting"? Why are you trying (and abjectly failing) to conflate pointing out fraud with a responsibility for "educating people away from falsehoods"?
What happens if an alt-right group that has taken extreme measures to have all of their speech be perfectly legal and constitutional goes to court and says
What happens if an arbitrary /. Trump supporter pretending to be objective, sets up an entirely irrelevant and therefore useless strawman?
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I'm not talking about the fraud part, that's legitimate, I'm talking about the "Personal mission" part. Also I'm an Englishman and I vote Labor (Center-left) and regularly tear down posters put up by the Tories (Right) much to the chargin of my Scottish neighbors and extended family, and I'm glad Trump is out of office. The only thing his presidency has proven is that "anyone can be president" should be interpreted as a warning and not an encouragement.
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Re:Deplatforming doesn't work. (Score:4, Interesting)
Deplatforming, as we're calling it now, does work. The problem is you misunderstand the strategy. Of course, when they're kicked off one host, they'll pop-up somewhere else. However, each time they're taken offline their community fractures. Some leave, some start competing services, by preventing the community from congregating in a single place they are prevented from obtaining critical mass again.
A good comparison is looking at what happened in the Pirating world. ThePirateBay used to be the only to go to place for media. Then they were continually shutdown, moved around, shutdown, etc. During that time, the community largely fractured, now while the TPB is back, it is a shadow of its former self, and finding specific or rare media requires searching through a dozen or so various torrent sites.
The parler/right-wing community will face the same problem. Eventually, Parler will learn how to stay online, but by that time their community will have shifted among a dozen or so forums and apps.
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Deplatforming does work. You just had a nice quiet inauguration day. There are older examples too, people like Milo Yiannopoulos and websites like the Daily Stormer which have faded from prominence.
If deplatforming didn't work then people wouldn't complain about it so much, they would just ignore it.
As for your hypothetical court case, I imagine the court would say "sorry guys, this man is using his freedom of speech to criticise you and if other people react to that it's their freedom to do so, you have no
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Do not forget that this inauguration was after a literal domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, and the place was swarming with a large quantity of armed soldiers and during a pandemic that's keeping anyone with IQ above room temperature and a lack of concentrated genes home. Of course it was quiet. Also, do not forget that Daily Stormer was kicked off its services because they tried to claim their provider agreed with their message. That was what made their hosts say "Right, out you go."
Milo is just a r
Censorship again, amirite? (Score:3, Insightful)
Parler users used the site to foment a violent insurrection... which violated the Terms of Service of their hosting platforms by doing so... which resulted in them getting kicked off... they moved the hosting to an organisation controlled by a nation that's an enemy of their own... an organisation that hosts all sort of vile content like literal terrorists Hezbollah... and has now been shown to be fraudulently claiming IP address blocks.
These are the very same people who claim to be "patriots" from the party of "law and order", and that they are being "censored".
You're not fooling anyone, you cretinous traitors.
Re: Censorship again, amirite? (Score:2, Insightful)
So why has Hezbollah never been deplatformed? Is it because certain Congress people happen to agree and support their cause?
Re: Censorship again, amirite? (Score:5, Informative)
So why has Hezbollah never been deplatformed? Is it because certain Congress people happen to agree and support their cause?
It's not for lack of trying. Hezbollah just created a very sophisticated game of whack-a-mole for the US/Israeli forces trying to silence them because Hezbollah is just much more savvy about remaining platformed than the American ultra right regardless of how stupid Ben Shapiro and the rest of his ilk would have you think Hezbollah is. In fact Hezbollah is a very sophisticated para-military operation with an excellent propaganda arm that has proven capable of forcing all of Israel's security services to earn their pay and then do some unpaid overtime on top of that. Parlor on the other hand went on the Apple/Googel/Amazon app stores, voluntarily signed several Eulas that have entire chapters about threats and hate speech, and merrily started preaching about shooting Nancy Pelosi in the head, running her over with a truck and then lynching Mike Pence by hanging him off the balustrade in the capitol building. If Parler and their customers honestly thought they'd get to stay on the Apple/Googel/Amazon app stores for more than five minutes after that, Parler was way, way, way beyond naive.
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When Hezbollah storms the US Capitol I assure they will be deplatformed. While Amazon may play a part, the hard work will be done by the Air Force and the US Marine Corps and result in many new urban development opportunities in Lebanon.
Re:Censorship again, amirite? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parler users used the site to foment a violent insurrection...
Oh, FFS. The so-called "insurrection" was planned mostly on Facebook and Twitter, with Parler being distant n-th. FB is even trying to weasel out of blocking the account of the instigator-in-chief ( https://www.npr.org/2021/01/21... [npr.org] ). Why haven't the ISPs "deplatformed" the main culprits yet?
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Facebook goes to great lengths to "get things right" and they don't always succeed. Look at the article you linked. They have processes, procedures, and an oversight board to try to make sure they are doing the right thing. They spend an incredible amount of time, effort, and resources (as supported by your link)
On Parler, there was no attempt to moderate and the platform w
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This flawed argument has been made so many times, I have no idea why people continue to push it or, in this case, even mod it up.
This isn't a "flawed argument", this is the truth. Facebook and Twitter were the primary enablers of the "StopTheSteal" bullshit, and they did very little to counter it.
Facebook goes to great lengths to "get things right"
No, they don't. The problems they were criticized for during the 2016 election campaign went largely unaddressed, and this allowed the 2020 debacle.
Look at the article you linked. They have processes, procedures, and an oversight board to try to make sure they are doing the right thing.
On the contrary, they spend an insignificant amount of money (compared to their other costs, or to the damage they do, as you please) on a device that they use solely to deflect criticism, while
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Facebook and Twitter were the primary enablers of the "StopTheSteal" bullshit, and they did very little to counter it.
Fortunately they have acknowledged the error of their ways and made significant changes.
Right after Joe Biden won the election, threats of violence increased by an order of magnitude. And then there was an insurrection. Those things are not relevant at all?
*yawn*
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Well, I'm stupid and I'm not afraid to admit it, but please indulge me, explain it in simple English.
Why is the poorly funded underdog hit hard, but the behemots who are directly responsible for enabling the riots spared both from "deplatforming" and investigations?
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You misspelled Facebook. The majority of the organizing was done on Facebook. How's your feelings about shutting them down?
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By "The Left" do you mean nearly every hosting company on the planet? Nobody wants to deal with their toxic content and loony user base.
This wasn't directed AT Parler (Score:5, Informative)
It makes sense that the provider Parler fled to was a shady operation, so I wouldn't call it ENTIRELY a coincidence. But it is pretty much a coincidence.
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Because there are too many rules in the world that are not consistently enforced. Strictly enforcing them in some cases, but declining to enforce them in other cases, undermines predictability and the moral force of those rules. It encourages abuse and cliques rather than clear rules for behavior.
In the US the government grants free speech (Score:3)
The US government won’t restrict speech based on the first amendment and there is a solid argument that the new digital “town square” being 100% private (or close enough) means we are handing over modern free speech to corporations where monopolies become dangerous. Its against the first amendment spirit to be censored or blacklisted or whatever because someone like Jeff Bezos doesn’t like me. So the solution is simple: a town square is public . The government should host a social platform that guarantees freedom of speech as outlined in law. You would need to provide some kind of proof of who you are, as a citizen or resident of the US, but this would be private. You would have a unique ID you’re not allowed to change. There isn’t freedom from speech so the government would have the right to post for all to see provided it’s stripped of as much opinion and as fact rich as possible. No one can delete others speech, but you can still curate by filtering and each user can choose what to see.
This would guarantee freedom of speech while letting users have some privacy yet keep extremest groups at least somewhat tethered to reality. Also, it would remove bots, foreign actors, and most of the spam since accounts are authenticated to real Americans all without changes to corporate social media regulation.
The problem with parler is it was privately hidden away and when shut down we could have lost much of what was posted and prosecutors would be unable to easily hold people accountable for legitimate speech crimes, but if it was a public platform where you couldn’t delete speech there would be far better accounting when it comes to actual court cases. Let these people operate in the light under public scrutiny and penalty of law rather than try to hide and isolate themselves from repercussions. Not having to maximize profits means there wouldn’t be a push to engage people for clicks and $$ at any social cost and it might just be the boring alternative to much of the toxic social media pressures pretty much everyone complains about.
Okay quick question. (Score:2)
How did you originally hear about Parler, and what is the political slant of the source that told you about it?
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Because it was almost exclusively used by people in favour of the insurrection of january 6th. That makes it news. It's not that difficult.
Unless of course you're one of those barely thinking idiots (seriously, storming the Capitol whilst filming yourself and posting it on an insecure social media platform?!).
The social network advertised as a "free speech" (Score:2)
Parler, the beleaguered social network advertised as a "free speech" alternative to Facebook and Twitter, has had a tough month
Can we please raise community awareness and not refer to Parler as supporting free speech. They very specifically supported right-wing speech and banned any dissenting views.
For just one of many searchable examples: http://redwhiteandfyou.com/?p=14574 [redwhiteandfyou.com]
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I agree with your statement, and I don't care if they exist or not.
I do not agree with the constant untrue refrain of "Poor Parler, all they wanted to do was support free speech". They were heavily biased to the right and highly moderated what speech was allowed.
RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Behavior worthy of the 20th century fascists (Score:3)
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Clicked on there, knowing I'd be disappointed by Scott Adams' politics again, but hoping to at least see an entertaining new argument, even if it was wrong. Nope, Scott Adams gives us the usual "Um, Akshually, there were some very fine non-racist people marching alongside those torch-carrying, blood-and-soil-chanting Naz1s (some showed up to defend a symbol of the Confederacy)" argument, and then just tries to defibrillate that stillborn argument to life through sheer volume of nitpickery.
DISAPPOINTMENTCEPT
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If a person sits at a table and a n@z1 sits down at the same table and they do nothing, don't be surprised when the n@z1's buddies also sits down at the table. If that person at that point don't get up and leave it seems like that person is wholly okay with the situation and I find it very hard to believe that persons indignation when people in general thinks that everyone at the table are n@z1s.
TL;DR: Fuck you Scott Adams and the "very fine people" who sit at your table.
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Re:So, Guilmette hates liberty and democracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Things that are not political opinions:
- The earth is flat
- Vaccines do not work
- Trump won the 2020 election
Unfortunately some (or all) of such nonsense has real world ramifications when people start believing them. At some point society has to step in and put a stop to mass disinformation campaigns.