Parler CEO John Matze Says Company's Board Fired Him (axios.com) 268
John Matze, CEO and co-founder of far-right friendly social media platform Parler, said on LinkedIn Wednesday that he has been terminated. Axios reports: Parler has been at the center of controversy since Amazon Web Services, Apple and Google unplugged the network last month for its lack of content moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In a memo obtained by Fox News, Matze said that the company's board of directors, controlled by Republican political donor Rebekah Mercer, terminated him last Friday. He did not participate in the decision, and the reason for the firing remains unknown.
"Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed," Matze wrote. "For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation." "I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands." Matze will take a few weeks off before looking for new opportunities, he told Parler colleagues.
"Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed," Matze wrote. "For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation." "I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands." Matze will take a few weeks off before looking for new opportunities, he told Parler colleagues.
Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Interesting)
In this case, he "implemented a system of content moderation that he believed was more effective." Clearly it was not. The results are many, but speaking just to the context of Parler itself, the result was they lost access to their core infrastructure platforms and their name and brand is utter garbage across the country. Many people had never heard of Parler before this, but now they have and that's not the best impression to make. This directly affects the prospects of the owners to find a financial return on their investment.
For the shareholders to have an exit that is even within the range of what they made, they need to signal a new direction that changes the brand entirely. That means, new leadership at the top.
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
You can replace most CEOs with a magic 8 ball and get similar results. They get massive retirement packages even if they do fuck up. So fail all you want to and still get millions of dollars on the way out. Has there ever been an out of work CEO that no one would hire?
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Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah they're *that* talented.
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:2)
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Funny)
John Matze is not Tim Cook.
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you assume there's a free market?
For example, incestuous boards of directors are a huge problem. "I'm on the board where you're CEO, and you're on the board where I'm CEO. Let's give each other raises!!" Other board members vote against it? Well then their board won't approve their raise.
Market failures like this leads to inflation of the market rate for CEOs, and now their total compensation vastly outstrips their value.
You citing Steve Jobs and Tim Cook doesn't mean Carly Fiorina, Marissa Meyer, Bob Nardelli, and a host of other crappy CEOs did not receive massive compensation packages for their ineptitude.
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Lee Iaccoca is perhaps the prime example of what the modern executive strives to be. Widely credited with saving Chrysler by introducing the Chrysler mini-van corporate boards were falling all over each other to have him on board. The reality is his entire "success" was a fiction.
President Jimmy Carter saved Chrysler by 1) guaranteeing their bonds, 2) committing to purchase all Federal government vehicles exclusively from Chrysler for 10 years, and 3) purchasing a ridiculous number of tanks from the Chrys
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Interesting)
Skipping vacations shows a lack of planning and leadership.
It's like Jeff Bezos in his dismissal letter, he talked about how much he likes working, "tap-dancing in to work." OK, but how much did the people working for him enjoy it?
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:3, Informative)
Jeff was crazy good and demonstrated strong business sense. The people below him were S level and basically mini-jeffs.
There was a time when the company was very management lean and I was basically three levels below Jeff. I also worked for a director as an IC at that time.
Here is the thing most directors will not admit (Thank you Mr Brown). At that point in their careers they have forgotten completely how to manage ICs and even worse is low level ics.
Thankfully I have not required a manager in my career an
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He had the sense to plaster kindle all over the front page for years and lose millions in ad revenue.
Was that sensible?
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there are terrible CEOs out there, but generally the output I have seen from them is phenomenal
Must not be looking hard.
For every Jeff Bezos there's a dozen Marissa Meyers. They don't get nearly as much fawning media coverage, but they do get massive compensation packages as they drive their company into the ground.
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s a special gem that one and even in my circles people defend her. They say what else would she have done but throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.
I am not convinced at all on that one.
I still suspect she put in a lot of hours, but they were not well spent.
I will ask you what my friends asked me. What would you have done to save the company?
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A bunch of long-shot acquisitions to save the company is a bad plan. Selling them off cheap when your lack of plan doesn't produce a quick fortune isn't exactly good either.
Another example is abandoning your differentiators to "focus on your core business" after Google has consumed that business. Not a good idea.
Flailing about because you have no plan doesn't mean you now have a plan, or that no plan is possible. It means you don't know what you're doing.
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"They get massive retirement packages even if they do fuck up", that's the opposite of random. If you can predict outcomes perfectly, doesn't it mean you understand it on some level?
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The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. -- Thomas Sowell"
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Informative)
their name and brand is utter garbage across the country
Choose any topic and some people loathe it while at the same time others love it. A lot of people love Parler and feel it is a champion of all the good things in the world. This is why free speech is important, because what you think is not necessarily what others think, and everyone deserves a voice.
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
Well which do you want, free speech, or ensuring that everyone has a voice? Unregulated speech leads to oppression [wikipedia.org], just as unregulated markets lead to monopolies.
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Well which do you want, free speech, or ensuring that everyone has a voice?
Your plan to ensure that everyone has a voice is suppress free speech? That seems logical to you?
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Insightful)
This has long been observed on forums. If you allow the most toxic members to take over soon everyone else leaves. Banning the most toxic members increases overall participation.
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So what position are you advocating for? Either you believe it, or you don't.
It's obvious that sometimes we have to limit freedoms for some to maximize freedom for all. The only thing we really disagree on in general is where and when to draw the line.
Almost everyone draws it at "before you harm me" but they have different definitions of "harm" so even that's fuzzy...
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Well which do you want, free speech, or ensuring that everyone has a voice? Unregulated speech leads to oppression [wikipedia.org],
You seem to have made a rather large claim there with no supporting evidence. The wiki link you sent discusses a philosophical argument, it is neither evidence nor a proof.
just as unregulated markets lead to monopolies.
A = B therefore C = D. Cool.
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with most of what you wrote wanted to point out one thing:
their name and brand is utter garbage across the country
Choose any topic and some people loathe it while at the same time others love it. A lot of people love Parler and feel it is a champion of all the good things in the world. This is why free speech is important, because what you think is not necessarily what others think, and everyone deserves a voice.
If what you think is "lets ignore facts and kill people" then the rest of us are going to make you shut up.
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It's the reason there are still people here
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If what you think is "lets ignore facts and kill people"
I don't think that.
then the rest of us are going to make you shut up.
Who is 'us' in this story? Maybe someone will shut 'you' up?
This is the problem with censorship, people only like it when they're the ones who get to decide.
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If what you think is "lets ignore facts and kill people"
I don't think that.
then the rest of us are going to make you shut up.
Who is 'us' in this story? Maybe someone will shut 'you' up?
This is the problem with censorship, people only like it when they're the ones who get to decide.
"IF"--> what you think is "lets ignore facts and kill people"
Quote me correctly , you didn't even include an ellipsis
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, if you go to the town square and start screaming about something unpopular, you will be shunned. You can test it by picking an unpopular subject, lets say pedophilia, and testing it.
You could also do like Top Gear did and drive around the South with pro-gay stuff written all over your vehicle. They stopped due to threats and actions
Re: Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:3)
If that were true Twitter would have been kicked off the app stores for the still ongoing riots that were planned there and have now killed upwards of 30 people since last summer. Twitter finally closed four antifa accounts a week ago that they had known about for months. Sorry, thereâ(TM)s a big double standard here.
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Did crazy people jump on with a bunch of garbage and coordinate a crazed mob to attack the Capitol? Yes. Did the CEO instigate that through his direct actions? No. Did P
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Your point is kind of off-topic.
I did clearly point out the reason for my post, specifically your one line about brand perception which I disagree with.
They should have seen it and recognized the risk to the corporation. They didn't. Therefore, he's gone.
Which I agree with. What I disagree with is that just because you or (insert group of people here) think it's trash, doesn't mean that view is universally or widely held. My wife for example (my litmus test) has no idea what Parler is, so I think the most common view of Parler in the general population is "What's that?". For context, this [arabist.net]
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what you think is not necessarily what others think, and everyone deserves a voice.
unless you're trying to use that voice on Parler, and try to speak about things to the left of Steve King.
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A lot of people love Parler and feel it is a champion of all the good things in the world
Sure. "Good" things like white hoods, burning torches and nooses.
Parler is a cesspool of intolerance, grievance culture and conspiracy theories, nothing more. The asshole of the internet.
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Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the CEO has one job, and one job only: they are expected by the owners to make the company a success and grow shareholder value
I firmly believe that most problems we have with corporate America are rooted in this belief. Yeah, that's pretty much how most people view the position of CEO—but should we?
Look how ridiculous "shareholder value" is. The whole Gamestop brouhaha of the past week is an example of how this type of value can fluctuate at the arbitrary whims of traders. Toyota is the biggest car company, but Tesla is valued the most.
Personally, I think a good CEO is one who ensures that employees are well taken care off. One who is concerned with his customers and community. I might be more inclined to agree with your job description of CEOs if you had used the word stakeholder, but why do shareholders deserve to be prioritized above employee? Most shareholders did not purchase their stock from the corporation. They bought them off the open market. So they really haven't "invested" in the company at all. They're just playing a casino game where they're actually likely to win.
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First of all, the CEO has one job, and one job only: they are expected by the owners to make the company a success and grow shareholder value
I firmly believe that most problems we have with corporate America are rooted in this belief. Yeah, that's pretty much how most people view the position of CEO—but should we?
Look how ridiculous "shareholder value" is. The whole Gamestop brouhaha of the past week is an example of how this type of value can fluctuate at the arbitrary whims of traders. Toyota is the biggest car company, but Tesla is valued the most.
Personally, I think a good CEO is one who ensures that employees are well taken care off. One who is concerned with his customers and community. I might be more inclined to agree with your job description of CEOs if you had used the word stakeholder, but why do shareholders deserve to be prioritized above employee? Most shareholders did not purchase their stock from the corporation. They bought them off the open market. So they really haven't "invested" in the company at all. They're just playing a casino game where they're actually likely to win.
Take care of the little people and your profits can grow well beyond the short sighted foolishness that is the profit-at-any-cost model.
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Personally, I think a good CEO is one who ensures that employees are well taken care off.
I recommend Costco as an example of a company that does this well.
I also recommend IBM's traditional priority list as pattern for how to do it: "customers first, employees second, shareholders third."
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Given it's the Mercers, this guy was no doubt terminated for not being evil enough.
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Yes, I can see you have read your textbooks, but has it occurred to you that Rebekah Mercer maybe has goals with funding Parler that aren't merely making money directly from it?
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When you have some children misbehaving, putting an end to it isn't censorship. Or it is and it's good parenting.
Court filings in the Amazon lawsuit disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Parler was never a free speech platform, they were a right wing, pro-corporate platform (the latter due to the tremendous amounts of cash pumped into them by the Mercer family). Parler was perfectly Ok with censorship if it fit into that vision.
And had they put the slightest effort into clamping down on the violent extremists that would've been fine. But had they done that they'd have lost the majority of their users since, well, that's what people were there for. Parler existed and thrived as a place for people banned from Twitter, Facebook and 4chan to call home. The only lower rung on the internet was 8chan, who also lost their hosting provider because they failed to control violent extremists.
Re:Court filings in the Amazon lawsuit disagree (Score:5, Informative)
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But you already made up your mind long before you even read my comment much less thought of clicking on my li
Re:Court filings in the Amazon lawsuit disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
You know you could at least click the link before commenting.
He's defending Parler; do you really think facts are his forte?
Re:Court filings in the Amazon lawsuit disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not to hard to figure out why he was let go (Score:4, Insightful)
His fail was not directing their technical staff to make sure they were easily portable to something besides Amazon. It would have been a good idea to prepare for old school self hosting as well.
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Far right guy should expect this (Score:4, Funny)
You got fired eh John? Ain't that a shame. Had you been far left, you might have a union to talk to, to help you fight unfair termination and get your job back. But hey, it's a free country: unchecked capitalism, employment at will baby. Don't worry, the market will sort you out in no time bubba.
Re:Far right guy should expect this (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the market will sort you out in no time ...
Pretty sure it already/just did.
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You're a real rocket surgeon aren't you. The CEO wouldn't be a member of the union.
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Of course, in this case Matze is likely philosophically opposed to being in a union, but that doesn't invalidate the idea overall.
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You got fired eh John? Ain't that a shame. Had you been far left, you might have a union to talk to, to help you fight unfair termination and get your job back. But hey, it's a free country: unchecked capitalism, employment at will baby. Don't worry, the market will sort you out in no time bubba.
Pretty sure unions aren't "far left"
Never forget what Americans call "far left" the rest of the world calls center left.
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You'd just tell him to build his own union. No one would join.
Then if enough join, you'd steal the IP addresses behind his unions site.
Because you support free speech so much.
Re: Far right guy should expect this (Score:5, Funny)
Old Russian Saying: If you are so smart, why are you so poor?
Parler is offline (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Parler is offline (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they haven't read Art Of The Deal?
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Maybe they haven't read Art Of The Deal?
Pretty sure Trump hasn't read it either (it was ghost written by Tony Schwartz) ... :-)
Donald is still waiting for the pop-up version to come out.
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Trump's admitted several times he never read it.
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That still doesn't explain why they don't just set up some servers and have a hard IP.
Maybe they don't have any motherfuckin' money?
Matze said in an interview on June 29, 2020 that the business was not profitable. As of January 2021 Parler had not received any known venture capital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Maybe they don't have any motherfuckin' money?
Which I find odd. In their circles, and in their situation, wouldn't you expect them to pass around the hat and ask their supporters for money? It works from Trump.
Parler should be very valuable (Score:2)
With mainstream becoming ever more censorous, there is a very nice niece for a site for right wing rat bags. Probably much bigger than than the market for aged geeks on Slashdot.
Parlor hit gold when AWS kicked them off because they got the lime light. However, they apparently were stupid enough to base their software on AWS tools.
They need to get up quickly, Just a basic bulletin board will do for starters. They probably need to register several Parler domains, including parler.ru. And they will probab
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Maybe they should ask Trump or the my pillow guy for some funds.
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Maybe they should ask Trump or the my pillow guy for some funds.
Or at least some golf hats and pillows.
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Have you seen their product? Their dev team isn't exactly groundbreaking.
It's pretty clear they slapped together something using AWS-only platforms. It's going to take a while to refactor that, or figure out how to set up the non-Amazon almost-alikes.
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Just use one of the many free forum software packages that are available on every LAMP hoster. Good enough to start with.
It's the Mercer family (Score:3)
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Parler isn't in it to make money. Parler is there as an instrument of the far right to rouse the trailer trash to do violence against decent society.
Free speech? (Score:2, Insightful)
They also apparently collect phone numbers, so that put me off too. I hope the next CEO has better principles.
Re: Free speech? (Score:3, Informative)
I had an account for a week or two before they went offline to check it out. They kicked off spammers. During my short time there I didn't see a single left leaning political post that wasn't an obvious mindless troll or copy paste spam from Twitter.
Who are all these well spoken left learners who got booted? Got some screenshots of what they got booted for?
Free speech doesn't protect copy paste spam memes and other content free noise.
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Thanks for giving your perspective, though I think even trolls and copy-paste leftist memes should be allowed. Perhaps a leftist can chime in now who can verify they were booted off Parlor unfairly.
Naw, never booted, never posted. I laid low, just there for opposition research.
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Sure [techdirt.com]. Though you need to use archives to speculate what exactly triggered Parler, because Parler didn't give justifications for bans.
security code: 1eed40e2e8767433ac49b02127526716c88966039933452a22dc9812f78cefec
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hah i didn't even notice his name - neutral party right? ;)
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I can't recall there being any of that but I might have just missed it.
Do you have anything supporting that this was done?
Enterprise Security FTW (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it 'Far Right?' (Score:2)
this sounds more like the established players labeling a neutral party who refused to comply with their demands so that emotional people leave their thinking at the door.
Prime sources! (Score:3)
Strange morals (Score:2)
Parler (Score:3)
Not surprising. The age-old argument of free speech finally affected them. You can say what you like, but nobody has to give you a platform from which to say it.
They didn't have their own platform. Their platform provider warned them and then threw them off. They even tried to put in censorship themselves because they knew that to not do so would be worse for them. And then nobody would touch them to provide a platform. They couldn't even build their own without risking being disconnected by their provider, I imagine.
Ironically, if they were smaller they could probably have bounced around providers quite happily for a few years, but their own popularity killed them - with providers pre-emptively telling them that they wouldn't allow them to use their services.
Did they not get their Russian hosting up and running? That country which is the last bastion of free speech?!
The fact that they were running on AWS and thought they could just do what they liked on there, in the face of presidential levels of publicity, was always ridiculous. And they didn't even have a backup plan or anything elsewhere.
I'm not sad to see them go - most especially because all the racists fled Twitter because of censorship while making massive fusses about how they wouldn't ever be back, ended up on Parler, and are now basically de-platformed.
Eventually some replacement will pop up, probably some decentralised thing, and they'll do it again but the more niche we keep such idiots, the better. It's just astounding that Parler were just using AWS without even thinking, didn't have a backup plan or redundancy, attracted huge attention, and couldn't get anything running quite enough to capitalise on the publicity.
The app-store bans were inevitable, too. Not sure why you'd ever rely on an app-store for such an app, people would be willing to install such a thing from a third-party if you just said that Google/Apple would censor you if you tried it. Hell, just a web-interface is all that's strictly necessary anyway.
As the Piratebay guys pointed out, they were just playing amateur hour, they could have stayed up in some fashion if they'd known what they were doing or planned even a jot.
But to lose the entire ability to run the service, probably most of your (non-paying) customers, be down for months, have no backup plan, attract worldwide attention and be known as the harbour or racists and terrorists is just about the best way to tank a commercial enterprise.
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Not surprising. The age-old argument of free speech finally affected them. You can say what you like, but nobody has to give you a platform from which to say it.
Sure, nobody has to sell their services to companies that they don't agree with politically or for other reasons. Parler lost, no question about that - and they should have had a backup plan. But Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon will in my estimation also lose big on this as well although the effects will much more diffuse and slower to emerge:
1. People around the world have become much more aware of the power and desire of US big tech to control the public narratives.
2. People around the world d
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
"far-right friendly" seems a little dishonest when the point of the site is that anyone is welcome regarless of political stance.
Except it didn't. Almost as soon as some people signed up and toyed with the MAGA crowd, they were banned [newsweek.com]. Parler's previous TOS said they could ban you even if you followed the rules.
Parler was well known for banning people who didn't toe the far right line, who made aspersions against the con artist, or who criticized Republicans in general.
You, and Parler itself, can claim all it wants that it welcomes everyone regardless of political stance, but actions speak louder than words.
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No one ever said free speech meant unlimited speech.
Yes, they have, including on here. There were multiple howls of protest when the con artist was first temporarily banned then permanently banned from Twitter. The same with some of his goons who were spewing outright lies. Their point was free speech meant that anyone could anything they wanted and you shouldn't not allow them to be heard.
And so what if someone was copying pasting something in every thread? It's no worse than hearing the anti-vaxxers/an
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But people were not banned for "copy-pasta spam trolling". They were banned for, among other things, disagreeing with the site's intended far right audience and criticizing Parler itself. Things Parler should have tolerated if they believed what they pretended to believe.
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So deliberate trolls were not tolerated.
Which is hypocritical, because parler's user base is mostly made up of deliberate trolls... who got kicked off of other services for trolling, and so they went to the site that claimed to celebrate free expression, and then... closed accounts.
But not all of the accounts were trolling. Some of them were just people who argued with the lusers in the parler. They not only couldn't tolerate trolling, they couldn't tolerate dissent.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
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It's just another fringe echo chamber.
Which is what most people want out of their political forums. No one goes on the internet to debate politics to have their own beliefs changes, it's all about the misguided belief that someone else out there can be brought around to your way of seeing things. Probably those mythical undecided voters they always seem to go on about on the news. Methinks those folks are too uninterested in politics to be on political forums to begin with.
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It's just another fringe echo chamber.
Which is what most people want out of their political forums. No one goes on the internet to debate politics to have their own beliefs changes, it's all about the misguided belief that someone else out there can be brought around to your way of seeing things. Probably those mythical undecided voters they always seem to go on about on the news. Methinks those folks are too uninterested in politics to be on political forums to begin with.
I don't agree.
Many people do want to debate politics to get their views challenged. But they prefer much of this debate to occur with people in a spectrum around their own beliefs since their goal is test whether they should adjust their beliefs to one side or the other - not whether they should switch from being a socialist to being a libertarian or the other way around. The reason is simply that debating with people with entirely basic assumptions about society that you firmly believe are false (and vice
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"far-right friendly" seems a little dishonest when the point of the site is that anyone is welcome regarless of political stance.
Parler was for "free speech" with respect to political ideology in the same way FoxNews is "fair and balanced:
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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I remember the old slashdot from before it was sold to DHI and then BIZX - back before it was recognised as an 'influential' site and we started getting more content I can only call 'politicised' and the comments sections became more moderated with obvious manipulation of visibility.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Real people who aren't fucking idiots realize that "far right" doesn't mean "disagree with me". Real people understand that "far right" means shit like "storm the capital", "Jew space lasers", racism, and religious nut jobs along with individuals who pander to any of these. Or those who run their political party in alignment with these ideals, or those who do nothing to to prevent violence and idiocy from controlling their party narrative. Or those who outright support the horseshit. See a pattern?
Yes I do. The side that wants to lie, cheat, steal, murder, and commit sedition to win at ANY cost is upset if someone , anyone tells them they can't. In fact if you attempt to tell any of them that any of this is wrong they will call you a member of Antifa or a leftist, and that you are trying to "cancel" them.
I'd go out on a limb and say that most people with an IQ over 120 are only siding with this ideology for personal gain.
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Trevor Noah on TDS noted that it would have been far easier (and cheaper) to start the fires with a match ...
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Insanity is not on the left-right spectrum. You can have insane left-wingers. Marianne Williamson, for example. Note that she has done a lot of legitimately good stuff... but she's still a nut, because she thinks you can hope and pray your way to a desired end. She has that particular belief in common with a lot of the right-wing nutters.
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If everyone who disagrees with you calls you far right, maybe you are far right.
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At the risk of seeming insensitive,
Let's see, one party to your comment is a known real person going through a difficult period in their life, and the other party is ... cybersquid.
Something tells me you're not really taking much of a risk.
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