Parler Referred Violent Content to the FBI 50 Times, Angering Users (msn.com) 175
Parler confirmed Saturday that it had referred dozens of violent posts to America's Federal Bureau of Investigation, reports Newsweek. But even after a blog post explaining its reasons, "some of the platform's users were less than impressed."
Parler, which faced significant backlash in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, referred violent content to the FBI at least 50 times prior to the pro-Trump riot, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The social media site shared a link to the article, drawing backlash from some members of the online platform. Parler has built its platform by positioning itself as being opposed to censorship and staunchly in favor of free speech.
"In reaction to yesterday's news stories, some users have raised questions about the practice of referring violent or inciting content to law enforcement. The First Amendment does not protect violence inciting speech, nor the planning of violent acts. Such content violates Parler's TOS. Any violent content shared with law enforcement was posted publicly and brought to our attention primarily via user reporting. And, as it is posted publicly, it can properly be referred to law enforcement by anyone. Parler remains steadfast in protecting your right to free speech," Parler posted on Saturday in response to criticism.
But some users of the site were still unhappy with Parler's decision.
"I don't like snitches," user MelodySuarez wrote in response to the explanation.
Users "vented their fury at the site's apparent willingness to report its users despite its pitch of protecting free speech," Newsweek reported in an earlier article.
"Parler is a fraud," one user had complained.
"In reaction to yesterday's news stories, some users have raised questions about the practice of referring violent or inciting content to law enforcement. The First Amendment does not protect violence inciting speech, nor the planning of violent acts. Such content violates Parler's TOS. Any violent content shared with law enforcement was posted publicly and brought to our attention primarily via user reporting. And, as it is posted publicly, it can properly be referred to law enforcement by anyone. Parler remains steadfast in protecting your right to free speech," Parler posted on Saturday in response to criticism.
But some users of the site were still unhappy with Parler's decision.
"I don't like snitches," user MelodySuarez wrote in response to the explanation.
Users "vented their fury at the site's apparent willingness to report its users despite its pitch of protecting free speech," Newsweek reported in an earlier article.
"Parler is a fraud," one user had complained.
No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
No surprise, Parler users have in general always confused the right to free speech with the right to break the law and not suffer any consequences for it.
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise there (Score:4, Informative)
Most Americans in general don't understand that free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
I'd also add that it's also fairly common for the same sort of folks to not understand that the "free" part doesn't mean gratis, either. You don't have a right to jump up on stage and use Taylor Swift's microphone, barge into your local TV affiliate and get in front of their camera, or start canvassing the other patrons inside Walmart. Perhaps as a less dramatic example, you also don't have any sort of God-given right to force someone else to host your message on their webserver, for free.
I've said it before, it works the same as the 2nd amendment: you have a right to own a gun, but Smith and Wesson is under no obligation to provide you with one free of charge. In the same way people with more money can buy and own more guns, if you've got more money you can afford to broadcast your speech to a wider audience. Welcome to capitalism.
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"As long as you can shout it in an abandoned basement in Wyoming once every second Saturday of the month you're not TRULY silenced!"
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There is no "freedom to not by silenced by the people who you wish would listen to you."
None at all. There is no freedom to be heard; only freedom to speak.
Re:No surprise there (Score:4)
The ones complaining about "Free Speech" want to strip it away from everyone else.
They argue from the perspective that they have the right to speak, and no one else has the right to speak or react in response.
"Cancel culture" is free speech in action - it's the speech of other people who do not like what you are saying. It's also not remotely new. There's a long history [theoutline.com] of conservatives "canceling" things.
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
You are free to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater. You are not free from the consequences of your actions. That is Adulting, 101. The Supreme Court covered it in 1919: "Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: âoeThe most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.â"
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Informative)
You are not free from the consequences of your actions.
If you suffer "consequences" (punishment) for speaking, you don't have freedom of speech. Even North Koreans can speak. Once.
The Supreme Court covered it in 1919: "Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: âoeThe most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.â"
In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled in Schenck v. US [wikipedia.org] that the defendants could be imprisoned for handing out leaflets opposing the draft since that was "obviously" the same as shouting fire in a crowded theater.
The defendants went to prison, were abused by pro-war guards, and died.
So there is a long history of misusing the "shouting fire in a theater" analogy to suppress unpopular speech.
Oliver Wendell Holmes later regretted making the analogy and felt that the Schenck ruling was the biggest mistake of his career.
Schenck was later overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio [wikipedia.org].
Re:No surprise there (Score:4, Insightful)
If you suffer "consequences" (punishment) for speaking, you don't have freedom of speech.
I'm assuming that you're referring to things such as being cancelled/ridiculed/ostracized by other citizens for unpopular speech, since the 1A makes it bona fide unconstitutional for the government to do such things.
Well, sorry, but free speech is reciprocal. You're free to say something unpopular/inane, and I'm free to call it out as such and/or decide I want to spend my money elsewhere because you've soured my opinion of your business. That's just free speech working as intended, and probably why back in the day parents used to tell their kids "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
And this confuses a lot of people proudly calling for free speech while holding a grade school idea of what that means. Civics education in America is sorely lacking, probably because of all the effort of getting rid of unnecessary education and focusing only on actual job skills like reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic. Growing up, a course in the constitution was mandatory for graduation in junior high school, and civics was mandatory in high school, and throughout from 1st grade on up history was required.
And yet in America there is a woeful lack of knowledge about history, or the American form of government, or its system of laws. As such it's a perennial comedy in some late night shows to display how immigrants know more about our history and government than native born Americans.
Re:No surprise there (Score:4, Insightful)
It's so irritating to remember when we could have a nuanced conversation about free speech and how important it is to have the ability to freely speak our minds, and then this new wave of "free speech" advocates comes along and it boils down to they want to say the N word with a hard R or say they want to kill the jews and hide behind "freedom of speech". Okay, you can do those things, but your reprehensible ideas aren't free from consequence. You want to say the N word with a hard R because you're an edgy racist? Great. Do it. And I'm free to fire your ass, complain to your manager, whatever. These people really are fucking deplorable and if they get driven back to the dregs of stormfront that's fine by me.
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It's ironic that the school of rock did more to educate young people on how government works that most schools did, and I'm from a generation that actually had those civics classes that were dumbed down so your average athlete and cheerleader who didn't care about education at all could pass the class.
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"If the mob does it, it's okay!" Well why does everyone still whine about "racism?" The government isn't doing it anymore. Can't private citizens impose consequences for skin color? Or is that different?
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
If you suffer "consequences" (punishment) for speaking, you don't have freedom of speech. Even North Koreans can speak. Once.
If you suffer consequences for robbing someone at gunpoint, do you also not have a right to bear arms? The simple fact is, you can say things such as: "apologize to me for disrespecting me or I'll kill you" or "I have a gun, put all the money in the bag or I start shooting" or, "nice store you have here, be a real pity if it were to burn down in the middle of the night, can I interest you in a protection plan to stop that from happening?" or "you hate your spouse and I hate my spouse, I'll murder your spouse for you while you appear in public to give yourself an alibi and then you do the same for me." or "Hello, I'm from Visa Mastercard Discover American Express account services, we've seen some fraudulent activity on your account, please provide me with your account number so we can verify it." or "I'm agent Smith with the FBI, I'm going to need you to get in the car!"
All of those are technically just speech, but they can all be crimes. In order: assault, bank robbery, extortion/racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, impersonating a federal officer/kidnapping. Do you really think it should be legal for people to do any of these things. Is it really ok to, for example, demand that someone grovel before you for daring to, for example "looking at me funny" by threatening to murder them? It's all fine right up to the point where someone actually gets murdered? If the police run in during a bank robbery and it turns out the bank robber does not really have a weapon and therefore could not have carried out their threat, was there no crime? Or what if they did have a gun in their car and the specific threat was that they would go and get their gun and then come back in shooting? Is threatening businesses to pay for your "protection" ok? Conspiracy to murder? Trying to defraud people? For that matter, once you have someone's credit card info is using it to buy gift cards to launder their money online not technically just a form of speech? You're just typing and clicking on buttons like "I agree to the terms and conditions", etc. and isn't that just a form of speech? Is telling someone that you're an FBI agent and they have to come with you in your car or go to federal prison not just speech? How happy do you think parents who ran up and rescued their child from getting into a fake FBI agents car will be to be told by the police that the fake FBI agent didn't actually commit a crime because it was just speech?
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really the problem with libertarian free speech extremists, they don't genuinely believe in free speech, they just want to break the law and get away with it.
They day I believe any of them genuinely believe in absolute free speech is the day one of them stops using a spam filter and follows through in phone scams and so forth to hear what the scammer has to say. Get to the point where the scammer asks for money? Better not hang up, that would be censorship you know!
No one, not one person on earth genuinely supports absolute free speech, and not one country or constitution offers it. It's a fantasy created by people too dumb to think in the many shades of grey between the simplistic black and white they pose.
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In this particular case, this was absolutely political speech rather than dangerous speech. So the analogy relating it to yelling fire in a crowded theater was clearly not appropriate. A more apt example would be calling in a bomb threat perhaps; it's merely speech without action, and yet illegal.
"Consequences" here mean social ones (Score:4, Insightful)
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As a private individual, you even have the right not to associate with people based on their skin color. It's only when you go beyond your individual right that you run into laws about it, eg. when you operate a business open to the public and decide that the business, not just you personally, won't associate with people based on their skin color.
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If you suffer "consequences" (punishment) for speaking, you don't have freedom of speech.
There are several tens of thousands of people in prison because they confessed who wish to retain you for their appeals. Where should we send them?
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It's called accessory after the fact. If someone anyone reports a violent post, one threatening actual violence, than they are legally caught, they must legally forward that to the appropriate agency if they feel that the report made by one of their users to them was a valid threat of violence. Actually violence not some weird interpretation of violent adjacent but not actually threatening violence. Hence why so few reported, forum users especially the more problematic ones make all sorts of silly statement
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Some states make everybody a mandatory reporter in some instances.
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Please, google this topic a bit. You're spectacularly wrong.
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And yet perjury is illegal, libel is illegal, death threats are illegal....
If there is more to something than the speech itself, then you can't make it about speech alone. Otherwise you could make just about anything into a speech issue. "No, officer - that wasn't murder. I was carving a work of art with my knife. That's free speech."
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I just love being modded down for posting the actual text. It gets people so angry.
Re:No surprise there (Score:4, Interesting)
I just love being modded down for posting the actual text. It gets people so angry.
You're modded down for not adding anything to the discussion. Just pasting the text without any clarification or insight leaves people with no knowledge of constitutional law to draw all forms of misinterpretation. Even in the late 1700's there was dispute over how "the freedom of speech" should be interpreted. I could provide my amateur knowledge in this area, but it should be enough to bring up that even when the founding fathers were arguing over the reach of the freedom of speech they tended to argue over states' rights and not unlimited freedom of speech. Everyone (or at least almost everyone) agreed speech such as libel could still be restricted; the Republicans of the era just felt those laws should be left up to the states.
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So funny. Where in the first amendment does it state about freedom of speech does not allow reporting crimes to the feds? Anyone complaining about snitches clearly is not on the up and up, especially when snitching to a democratic government as opposed to a dictatorship (oh wait, we were on the road to becoming a dictatorship, so maybe that was their concern...).
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I do not understand why everyone on Parlor got upset.
Parlor was just using its' freedom of speech to report the threats.
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I actually read TFA because I was curious what they were actually saying and...curiously, slashdot doesn't mention that there were people on parler who spoke in support of reporting it, even though TFA does.
Though this whole thing is just another one of those lame articles reporting on stupid shit that happened on social media because they don't have any real news to report.
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If one wants the entire story one would RTFA. A summary is not meant to deliver the entire content of the article, it's a summary of what the editor thought were the salient points.
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And as for the consequences: Go to a bar in Texas, filled with Texans, and tell them that people only carry guns because they have problems with their dicks being too small, and they think having a gun makes up for a small dick. Most people will _know_ that kind of speech will have consequences.
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They're at a loss to deal with people who are using their freedoms granted by the USA to advocate for the abolition of the USA.
Rather, I'd argue they have deluded themselves into thinking that they get to define what the USA is.
crossed a line (Score:2)
crossed a neighborhood watch. (Score:2)
Hmmm, so does this mean everyone's fear of neighbors snitching on them to the government isn't really going to happen for...reasons?
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That's hardly anything, in America we're more worried about self styled neighborhood watch shooting us for looking like we don't belong there.
rabbids (Score:3)
And what about speech that clearly does violate laws?
What is the "intended circle" on a platform that is free of charge and open to the public?
I wonder how bad these 50 posts that Parler reported must have been for them to take the extreme step of reporting them to law enfo
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privacy is a very important part of free speech.
If you have any expectation of privacy, then a social network is not the right place to express your thoughts. Neither is Gmail, or most other communication systems on the internet unless you actually look for a privacy-centric solution (run your own e-mail server, encrypt everything, etc.).
If you want privacy, it's probably not a good idea to use a platform that is expressly designed to prevent it.
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Parler on the other hand is not a secret discussion in the bar about unionization. Parler is a public forum where any and all can join and there is zero expectation whatsoever (by a reasonable person) that conversations there will be secret.
Any complaints can be taken up with a highly conservative set of judges who claim to be staunchly for law and order and no namby pamby liberal coddling of criminals, then see what they think. You're far more likely to get the ACLU to side with your argument than the AC
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Most people who threaten to kill don't kill anyone but some do and some go out and kill several people. Would you not want the FBI to talk to people that might go on to kill a bunch of people?
Egging on other people to kill did actually lead to people causing deaths at the capital this year. Do you think it's ok to try to persuade people to murder other people?
Why would you expect a corporation not to report people breaking the law? Why would you expect a corporation to aid/abet by allowing law breaking on t
Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
"Parler is a fraud," one user had complained.
When you call everything and everyone else a fraud because they no longer fit your world view, maybe you’re the fraud.
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Some people live in the Matrix: everything is fake, rigged, and/or bugged.
Fun fact (Score:5, Interesting)
I get that what I just wrote sounds extreme, like I'm trolling. I'm not. There's pretty clear evidence Trump, Sessions & Barr pulled back on investigating White Supremacist terrorist organizations despite the fact that they've quiet literally killed more Americans than Muslim extremists (and that's with 9/11's death toll).
This is one of those "fuck around and find out" scenarios where we do *not* want to fuck around. Letting literal National Socialists (/. won't let me use the "N" word) swim is not going to end well for anyone.
Re:Fun fact (Score:4, Interesting)
Western Civilization Chauvanists. Ie, it's pro-European descent in all but actual name. Thus, the western european civilization is superior to all other civilizations of all time, multi culturalism is an affront to the superiority of western european civilization, and everyone must assimilate and stop keeping around their bizarre foreign practices (except for the bizarre foreign practices that originated in western europe). Proud Boys is the style of racism that hides the racism to be more acceptable while recruiting. Cuban descent is also western european descent usually; the lighter skinned you are in Cuba the better off you are. I have not seen much crossover between Proud Boys and their shouting that black lives do matter.
Funny thing is there is no "Western Civilization" (Score:2)
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The FBI isn't going to look the other way while violent extremists foment coups.
Oh? Did they arrest the violent Antifa people throwing rocks at people outside the Oregon State Capitol yesterday then?
Yes, they did. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
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200 armed rioters and 3 people were arrested?
Sure, that sounds like a robust police response. Shit, do you have any reliable sources? MSN can't even get right their plagiarism of Andy Ngo - he said that the man with the gun was arrested despite being a victim of the violence, not part of perpetrating it.
(He was also apparently not arrested, but Ngo couldn't know that at the time. MSN could.)
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"doing billions in damage"
I think someone has no idea what a billion is.
Violent assholes get what they deserve (Score:2, Interesting)
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missing the point
I SAID: "I don't like Parler". This also follows that I think the entire GOP are a bunch of assholes (with a very few exceptions), but AT LEAST they're not covering up the violent assholes plotting violent asshole shit against citizens or the government. They're helping get the violent extremist assholes off the street and into holding cells; I'm okay with that.
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This is why you leave these things up (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why no services like Parler should ever be shut down. Why would you turn off such a great pipeline of potential problem people that you can tell the FBI about?
Now all the people that Parler might have warned about are doing whatever in a far more nondescript way, mostly undetectable.
Any time subversive elements of a society speak out in public, your only reaction should be to let them speak and take notes, not shut them down and wonder in five years where in the hell all these subversives came from.
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The events of Jan. 6 were planned on Facebook, much more so than Parler. Should facebook be shut down? Summer riots were also planned on facebook and twitter.
Notably absent (Score:4, Insightful)
More to the point, when you post calling for others to join you in going to the capital armed so you can shoot up the place when your guy loses the election, the problem being reported isn't your speech - it's the violent crime you have described your specific intent to commit. If I tell strangers on the street about my specific intent to rob the bank across the street at a specified time, I don't think anyone is going to be mad about them reporting it. Even an attorney, who has an almost absolute obligation not to reveal client communications, is allowed to disclose to law enforcement if their client is planning to commit a crime reasonably certain to result in serious injury or death.
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It's Parler's house they're visiting, and they're not even neighbors.
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Shhhh, you're not supposed to notice that Parler got cancelled for.. having the same policies as every other social media site and actually enforcing them better.
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How many people does Twitter refer to the FBI for threatening to riot?
You make the assumption in your post that it's zero. Where's your data?
Free speech is awesome (Score:2)
You have the right to say stupid shit - and be held accountable for it.
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Yeah, but is it worth a life ruining in response?
Depends what you say. Some things yes, some things now.
Like all other aspects of reality, it's complicated.
My first thought upon ready this: (Score:2)
1. Post your shit for all to see (Score:2)
2. Complain when feds see it
3. Profit!
In 2018 I think, a pedestrian was run down on a crosswalk in Boston. The cops interviewed a kid they thought did it, but let him go since he didn't confess and they had no evidence to do anything.
The kid gets out of the police station, sees a tv news crew, and flat out confesses to running the guy down because he didn't get out of the way of his car fast enough. The cops see the interview, and arrest him for murder.
https://www.boston.com/news/lo... [boston.com]
Not that simple (Score:4, Informative)
US caselaw on the First Amendment defines a limit on the right incite violence. Speech that is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action, is not protected but mere advocacy of violence is protected.
Parler would have been reporting speech that their lawyers conculded would result in a clear and present danger, and so would be illegal. It is right that they should report this.
I don't like snitches (Score:2)
Obviously, these Parlor people are idiots... (Score:3)
Second, what these shit for brains don't get is that the whole concept of free speech doesn't pertain to those of private companies. The Constitution strictly says this about free speech under Bill of Rights, Amendment 1.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
At no point did Congress prevent you from saying a damn thing, Parlor did. They are not Congress, they are a private entity just like Facebook and Twitter and when it comes to telling you what you can and can't do on their site, they have every damn right to do so. It is their site, their community. Don't like the rules, tough shit. The Constitution doesn't protect you in this instance no matter how much you want to whine about it.
And last but not least, the protests in Washington, DC were anything but peaceful. They were a violent and absolutely not covered under Bill of Rights, Amendment 1 since it specifically says "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" which what happened in DC isn't even within a galactic parsec of being peaceful.
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The main thing they don't get is when they get "canceled", thats other people using free speech.
They seem to believe that they should have free speech, but no one else should.
violent threats are not free speech (Score:2)
Actions require Consequences
liability (Score:2)
Parlor has the responsibility to report any possible threat that seems to be real. If not, lawyers will have a nice payday if those threats become reality.
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:4, Funny)
In the spirit of making up numbers I say they reported at least 3000 in the six months leading up to the election.
Who else would like to pick an arbitrary figure out of their asses?
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Oh! Me, ME!
Facebook reported over 9000 posts in the 42 months leading up to the election.
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Facebook reported over 9000 posts in the 42 months leading up to the election.
Over 9000!!! [wikipedia.org]
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And also 42 [wikipedia.org].
Thank you. [imgur.com]
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing that Facebook also didn't report violent posts from Santa's elves, the Illuminati, or the folks who run the jewish orbital lasers.
Both liberals and moderates have this odd hangup; we only tend to report things which exist. For example, this is why no liberal reported the massive election fraud in 2020 which, much like the emperors new clothes, only some "special" people can see.
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's rich after spending 4 years claiming the President is a Russian spy who stole the election...
I never heard anyone accuse him of being a spy. Patsy? Yes.
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this. He's not bright enough to be a spy, and I don't recall people saying he was a spy.
So, rather than fighting your straw man, let's try what was actually alleged: Donald Trump's campaign wanted help from Russia to win the 2016 election, and Russia tried to help Donald Trump (and tried to hurt Hillary) in the 2016 election.
Proof? For the first part: At the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr, Kushner, Manafort, and several Russians with ties to Putin, the Trump people asked for dirt on Hillary. This is as reported by Don Jr.
For the second part: Every intelligence agency in the west has said that Russia tried to help Trump in 2016. Every one in the US, in the UK, all throughout Europe, in Israel: every one. It's rare that every expert agrees on anything, but on this they are united.
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the second part: Every intelligence agency in the west has said that Russia tried to help Trump in 2016. Every one in the US, in the UK, all throughout Europe, in Israel: every one. It's rare that every expert agrees on anything, but on this they are united.
For the simple reason that it was a no fucks given operation by Russian intelligence. They didn't give a rat's ass who knew their preferences in the 2016 election. Quite the opposite. They were doing it blatantly openly because they knew Trump already. They knew how to play him and they knew it had to be blatant for him to even be aware it was happening. They posted their Facebook posts in support of Trump from well known Russian IP addresses entirely on purpose, to make sure it would be trivially easy to verify where the posts were coming from. It's not like Russian intelligence doesn't know how to use a Swedish VPN.
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The KGB called them useful idiots back in the day.
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Yes, this. He's not bright enough to be a spy, and I don't recall people saying he was a spy.
Of course no one said that. That fucker is dumb as bricks, and anyone who couldn't see that was in love with their position in his cult of personality.
So, rather than fighting your straw man,
their straw man. I don't subscribe to that braindead horse shit ;)
I think he's trying to conflate the claims that the Russians interfered on Trump's behalf with the suspicion that it was actively coordinated between the 2 parties, which I'll admit, I was surprised that we didn't find evidence that it was.
Then again, that comes back to Trump being a fuckin
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That's rich after spending 4 years claiming the President is a Russian spy who stole the election...
Was this the first or second election he got less votes for?
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That's rich after spending 4 years claiming the President is a Russian spy who stole the election.
That was never the claim. The claims were that Russians interfered in the election in a disinformation campaign, and that that Trump and associates had undisclosed Russian connections. Both of those have been proven to be true.
Re: How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except you're completely wrong. Abrams wasn't talking about fraud, she was talking about disenfranchisement. Her point was that minorities were prevented from voting in the first place by election laws that make it more difficult for poor, young, and black voters than they do for rich, old, and white voters (those are six distinct groups, to be clear). This is true, of course, and now that Republicans took a hit, they're trying their hardest to make it even more difficult for poor, young, and black voters to vote. Clinton likewise didn't claim voter fraud, she claimed, correctly, that Trump lost the popular vote even though he secured the Electoral College. This essentially disenfranchised the Clinton voters in blue states in favor of Trump voters in red states. This is undeniably what happened. Clinton argues that we should get rid of the Electoral College and just use the popular vote, because no one should get extra voting power by virtue of living in an unpopulous state. Trump, on the other hand, has claimed voter fraud is rampant for the last ever because he thinks he's too popular to lose the popular vote. His point seems to be that any vote total that doesn't have him winning in a landslide must be wrong because he's so awesome that no one could possibly vote against him. This is obviously stupid and wrong. Furthermore, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and never has been. No Democrat has claimed so. Only Republicans claim that and only because they're afraid that if everyone was allowed to vote, they're never win an election again. Hence their desire to make voting more difficult and to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. For further details, look to who's trying to purge voter rolls and disenfranchise felons.
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Going back to my original point: we have a conservative reporting something false: "Stacy Abrams says she lost because of election fraud". And we have a moderate or liberal reporting something true: "Abrams was talking about disenfranchisement not fraud".
Dammit, conservatives, how hard is it to check facts? Being a gullible fool is not a requirement, it's a choice. Please choose something else.
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying that voter suppression does not exist?
In Georgia, some locations have no lines at the polls; some locations have multi-hour wait times. Do you dispute this? In my home state of Pennsylvania we tend to have polling locations with roughly equal numbers of voters, so either everyone has lines or (the usual case) nobody has long lines (we get lines of 10-20 minutes during peak times).
In Georgia, some places had virtually no lines, and some places had 5+ hour waits. Would you agree that a 5 hour wait would discourage many people from voting? I'm very pro-voting; I use vacation time to work at my local polling place every primary and election day, but if I had to wait more than an hour to vote, I'd be discouraged.
Hmm, what's a synonym for "discouraging people from voting"?
The last piece: multiple studies show that long lines in Georgia are primarily in poorer non-white areas, while the short or no lines are in richer white areas. Fortunately, you can avoid the lines by voting early or by mail-in voting, though I suspect that if Georgia were to pass a bill to reduce early and mail-in voting, that could reasonably fall in the same category as long lines in "certain" places.
So, I'm curious: Do you think that making some people wait multiple hours in line to vote discourages them from voting?
Re:How many violent posts did Facebook report? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whataboutism.
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Double standards.
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does not mean you can get away with dismissing very valid comparisons with "whataboutism"
How are the comparisons valid?
If Facebook reported more violent posts, how does that change what Parler did? If Facebook reported fewer violent posts, how does that change what Parler did?
Pointing to another entity and saying "But they're bad too!!" doesn't make the one you support good.
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But officer, EVERYONE ELSE WAS SPEEDING TOO!!!
Yep, it's still illegal, you're still getting a ticket, AND you're an asshole for trying to excuse YOUR shit behavior by saying that someone else was also acting like shit. Grow up. My 8 year old is already past this stage in her development, what the hell is everyone else's excuse?
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Quick, deflect! Hey, look over there!
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How many violent posts by Antifa and other leftist organizations did Facebook report to the FBI?
Oh that's right, zero.
I would like to write a letter of complaint to this antifa organisation. Please provide me the address of their head office and the names of their executives. Thank you.
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Probably quite a few, now biden is elected and they're a liability.
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I love this definition: https://www.britannica.com/top... [britannica.com]
"secret intrigues"
Sounds so very British
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So you think Parler reported people to the FBI for not calling someone by their preferred pronoun?
The "media" isn't one entity, it's many different organizations. Some can be trusted more than others, making sweeping generalizations just shows your inability to judge these things
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Literally *any* social media site, right or left, partisan or not, mainstream or fringe, that is not filled with anything but a bunch of half-wit whining narcissists?
Slashdot. I mean, there's a reason we don't have profile pictures still.
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SlashDot is a social media site, moron.
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It's perfectly legal to be a Nazi in the US.
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You intentionally misrepresenting the pattern of events.
They did not report people, that's why they got their services shut off.
Now, they are doing it, because they don't want their replacement services to also get shut off.
It's not complicated.