Parler, Web Hosts, and Masterpiece Cakes

 

Parler lost its rented server space with Amazon Web Services.  Parler also found its phone apps booted off the Apple and Google app stores.  This is not the “destruction” of Parler – not unless Parler was on such shaky ground that it cannot be rebuilt.  This is certainly hamstringing it, but if this is a “death sentence”, then it is one that is easily overcome with cold hard cash (would that the Reaper were so easily fended off on more fleshly concerns).  We need perspective here, and an honest reckoning of what happened, how, and why.  We also need to yet again yank the plank from our own eye, for it was just a short while ago that we were adamantly defending another business for refusing paying clientele: I speak of none other than Masterpiece Cakes.

First, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way – understanding how Parler was built, and how it planned to make money for its creators (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it was all charity work) is key to understanding its demise.  Web sites have to be located on computers.  You can make a website on your laptop and share it with the rest of the internet if you want.  Users just would need to know the numerical address in either IPV4 or IPV6 to find it.  If you want to make it easier to find then you would have to register a domain name, and then map that domain name to your server address.  Now suppose your little website got really popular because its topic was fun and lovable – let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your website was all about your pet bird.  If you had just a residential internet connection, after a point your neighbors would start to complain that traffic to your laptop was killing their own connections.  Plus, your laptop has limited processing power to keep serving page views out – and your addition of a little bird forum doubled traffic to the point where your laptop’s cooling fan failed from overuse.  How do you fix these issues?

You scale up.  You either pay your local ISP for a better connection that’s isolated from the neighborhood’s shared node, and has more bandwidth, or you take your overworked laptop somewhere that has a better hookup.  And you replace the laptop with a server.  Maybe several in a cluster that appear as one to outsiders (after all, you’ve got bird videos now too, and a bird podcast, and a bird supply store).  You also need a moderator because you found your forum was being used to orchestrate illegal bird smuggling.  Maybe, instead of spending all that money on equipment, you rent server space elsewhere – a web host who has an entire server farm just for this purpose- that way you can still run it from your home.  But now, you no longer control your data – not fully.  And it turns out the server host has some other rules in place too.

For one, this host says that he’s not going to accept liability for anything illegal with his clients’ websites, and he’s not going to act as relay (a forwarder) to porn sites, terrorist sites, animal cruelty, etc.  Your moderator took care of the smuggling ring, but there’s a bird furry group that’s gotten weird, and (for reasons you cannot fathom) the image of Tweety Bird, once innocuous, has taken on a meme life of its own as a symbol for an unsavory political group.  Your host notices that a lot of inbound traffic to your site is being relayed from some of these Tweety Bird groups, and warns you to deal with it or he’ll boot you.

The final straw was when several Bird Liberation Front affiliated members spent a long and seedy weekend warning about a coming war on Kentucky Fried Chicken and Tyson Chicken, and come Monday one of them shot two fast-food workers and tried to deep fry their shoes.  The headlines wrote themselves: “Bird Brained Brawler, Egged On To Deep Fry Footwear.”  Your host canceled your service.  Do you have the (ahem) nest egg to now buy your own servers to get going again?

Unfair?  Maybe, but you can hardly blame the web host for not wanting the liability or the publicity.  Writ larger, this is Parler’s situation.  They were built from the beginning on rented webspace through Amazon – they never controlled their own hardware.  Worse for them, they relied heavily on creating a site that was primarily geared towards mobile access, through apps. Both their cloud host and the ecosystem for their apps come with all manner of terms and conditions under which they would do business.

Parler billed itself as being some sort of center for “free speech”, with hardly anything in the way of content moderation or dreaded “censorship”.  From its launch, therefore, Parler was immediately peopled not just with users wanting to get away from the moral censoriousness of Twitter, but with all manner of other users – folks that would make Alex Jones look like the voice of cool reason.  And such people did as such people do and began to trade in conspiracy theories – QAnon and more besides.  Forbes noted over the weekend that the planning did, in fact, occur on Parler and other platforms.  Parler had been warned repeatedly in the past months to deal with what AWS was seeing go across its servers, and had been warned by both Apple and Google that their app would be removed at some point.  The storming of the Capitol, whose pre-planning was evident on Parler, was the last straw, making “at some point” into “right now”.

Parler made its choice not to moderate – I can tell you from my own time here as a moderator that moderation is necessary.  Most users of Ricochet never saw the posts and members who would show up and start dropping racist and anti-semitic rants, or used their image libraries to stash pornography (Max has seen this), because they were eliminated quickly.  You could deride that as “censorship” if you will – if you are determined to treat “censorship” as a universally dirty word.

But then again, wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes engaged in a different sort of “censorship”?  Wasn’t Masterpiece Cakes honored for exercising their right not to serve clientele in ways found unconscionable?  The persistent lunatic who kept suing Masterpiece at one time demanded a satanic cake with protruding sex toys.  If we honor Masterpiece Cakes for refusing such clientele, why are Amazon, Apple, and Google condemned for refusing Parler’s business?  For that is what they have done.

The lunatic who wanted the pornographic cakes in Colorado, we insisted, had every right to bake his own (quite literally) damned cake.  By the same token, only money is hindering Parler from buying its own servers and internet connections, and firing it all back up again.  As for the app stores?  How long has Ricochet run without an app?  And has anyone heard of jailbreaking IOS or sideloading apps on Android phones?

If Parler failed to examine the risks to its strategy when they started, that’s their problem.  They wanted to become immediately as large as Twitter, but lacked the capital to do so.  I’ve seen that sort of failure before in other businesses – we call it vaporware.  Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon all started small, with narrowly defined markets and concepts, then grew from that base.  They also learned on the way (and are still learning) through both failures and successes (anyone remember Google Circles?).  Anyone hoping to unseat them should be prepared to do the same.  Parler tried to jump in at the deep end without knowing how to swim, in a pool they didn’t own, while allowing others to dirty the pool.  Now they’ve been thrown out.  That’s business.

And nobody should be compelled to do business with them.  Not unless you want Masterpiece Cakes to also bake pornographic cakes for a vengeful madman.

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  1. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):
    They indulged the Russian collusion narrative long after it was disproven (to say the least).

    Ricochet still tolerates it among their Reagan Level members.

    • #61
  2. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    A great analogy and a great post. It needed to be said. Not everyone is going to thank you for it, but many of us will. Thanks, SkipSul.

    It absolutely needed to be said.

    It’s a common error in thinking, when people aim to compete with some popular product or service they’ve come to dislike or find wanting, that they must therefore immediately imitate their competitor at the same scale and splash. But if they lack the capital*, the expertise, and the battle scars, all they will create is a shoddy impersonation that is often worse than what they were trying to displace.

    *And a solid rule of thumb in raising capital is this: Study how much money you will need on equipment, personnel, facilities, supplies, etc. Figure out what your expenses will be from day one, and your revenue streams, and plot out various curves over the coming months and years so that you have a rough idea of how long you’ll be losing money after you start before you hit break even and actually start making money. This should give you a rough idea of how much starting capital you need. Now….

    Take a hard look at that figure. Remember it. Hold onto it. Laugh maniacally and throw all that planning in the trash, then take that figure you memorized and quadruple it. And pray.

    If I would have written my business plan in 1970 my company would not have existed. No PhCheese.

    • #62
  3. HankRhody Freelance Philosopher Contributor
    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher
    @HankRhody

    PHCheese (View Comment):

    If I would have written my business plan in 1970 my company would not have existed. No PhCheese.

    Terribly off topic, but I think that Keyens charlatan was actually onto something with his whole idea of ‘animal spirits.’ I don’t know if it’s possible to start a business without massive unwarranted optimism.

    • #63
  4. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):

    PHCheese (View Comment):

    If I would have written my business plan in 1970 my company would not have existed. No PhCheese.

    Terribly off topic, but I think that Keyens charlatan was actually onto something with his whole idea of ‘animal spirits.’ I don’t know if it’s possible to start a business without massive unwarranted optimism.

    It is.  Dogged pessimism works too, keeps you grounded.

    • #64
  5. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Darin Johnson (View Comment):
    I probably agree, but does it matter when they all act in concert? And could they be a danger even if they aren’t a monopoly by some technical definition?

    Yep, the FTC calls colluding among competitors to exclude a third party to be a violation of antitrust law. Specifically, the Sherman Antitrust act and the FTC act. The Federal Trade Commission Act bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” The Supreme Court has said that all violations of the Sherman Act also violate the FTC Act. Thus, although the FTC does not technically enforce the Sherman Act, it can bring cases under the FTC Act against the same kinds of activities that violate the Sherman Act.

    Here is a helpful website.

     

    • #65
  6. Cal Lawton Inactive
    Cal Lawton
    @CalLawton

    By that logic we need to ban the airline the troublemakers few in to DC on. Or ban Greyhound if they rode the bus, or Ford or Mazda if they drove themselves. Close McDonalds because they stopped on the way for a Big Mac. Oh, and AT&T or Verizon have gotta go if they talked on the phone.

    Facebook was jiggered with to effect national elections in 2008 and 2016, and its apps are available. Don’t tell me Seattle, Portland, Louisville, or Minneapolis riots didn’t have comms through Facebook. YouTube and Twitch should be banned for relaying real-time video of law enforcement positions and response postures to malicious actors in those same firey, but mostly peaceful, riots.

    I wonder how much child porn has been viewed in Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android?

    Apple, Google, and Amazon have conspired to suppress the civil rights of Parler and Gab users with “unmoderated comms of conspirators” as a suckers pretext.

    Every one of these companies exist because of the foundational argument that the flow of information and ideas should be free. I’m all about the rule of law, but these prigs need to get their stories straight.

    • #66
  7. Darin Johnson Member
    Darin Johnson
    @user_648569

    Instugator (View Comment):

    Darin Johnson (View Comment):
    I probably agree, but does it matter when they all act in concert? And could they be a danger even if they aren’t a monopoly by some technical definition?

    Yep, the FTC calls colluding among competitors to exclude a third party to be a violation of antitrust law. Specifically, the Sherman Antitrust act and the FTC act. The Federal Trade Commission Act bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”…

    Just so.  It’s broader than you’d think.  Whether it ought to be so broad — from a conservative view — is a question.  But since SkipSul is so focused on the “is” element (i.e., may AWS ban Parler?) this is pretty relevant.  The answer might be, no.

    • #67
  8. Tyrion Lannister Inactive
    Tyrion Lannister
    @TyrionLannister

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Well said, Skip. I don’t see how anyone can argue with your position.

    Well argued Skip. However I am going to take issue. The difference, to me, is that there are dozens of other bakers beside Masterpiece to whom one could go. Does the same apply to the Google and Apple Store? Is there a genuine alternative to Amazon Web Services? I’d contend that the monopoly power of these companies and their collusion on this issue makes a world of difference.

    And as regards your argument about limiting liability…isn’t that why section 203 exists? Does that not already limit Twitter/Amazon/Google liability?

    I heard just now in Ben Shapiro that Amazon owns half the server space, Microsoft owns 16%, google 4%, and the rest are a bunch of small companies.  You run into issues with small server space such as upload speeds I believe.  For me the larger issue it appears for Parler is that phone apps are the vast majority of social media business.  I read that Twitter gets 85% of their business from phones.  Apple and android are banning Parler’s app- it probably won’t be able to survive without phone support. Apple has 49% market share of phones,  and to my knowledge there is no way to add parler without the app store.

    • #68
  9. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Cal Lawton (View Comment):
    By that logic we need to ban the airline the troublemakers few in

    You miss the point, and the analogy.  This would be more akin to the airlines themselves refusing to knowingly fly in people who were conspiring to commit crimes*, or fast food places shutting down and not serving people in riot zones, etc.

    *There are, however, credible accusations that the airlines were refusing to fly people out afterwards, claiming they were disrupting service, etc.  This should be settled with a few lawsuits and payments due to over-eager flight attendants.

    • #69
  10. ape2ag Member
    ape2ag
    @ape2ag

    Visa just blacklisted Gab.

    • #70
  11. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Instugator (View Comment):

    Darin Johnson (View Comment):
    I probably agree, but does it matter when they all act in concert? And could they be a danger even if they aren’t a monopoly by some technical definition?

    Yep, the FTC calls colluding among competitors to exclude a third party to be a violation of antitrust law. Specifically, the Sherman Antitrust act and the FTC act. The Federal Trade Commission Act bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” The Supreme Court has said that all violations of the Sherman Act also violate the FTC Act. Thus, although the FTC does not technically enforce the Sherman Act, it can bring cases under the FTC Act against the same kinds of activities that violate the Sherman Act.

    Here is a helpful website.

     

    Collusion is tough to prove – there is a high legal bar.  And in the case of web hosts, they all have a credible defense in that their own existing other clients have threatened these hosts with withdrawal of business.

    Think about this way:

    A would-be customer comes to me demanding I design and manufacture a widget.  I’ve dealt with this company before, and it didn’t go well.  Moreover this company has a reputation in the industry for questionable ethical practices (they’ve had several out of court settlements from lawsuits ranging from patent violations to contract breaking).  This widget they’ve demanded I make looks like it might violate a patent held by one of their competitors – one whom I already serve.  I choose to no-bid the job because if I took it, I know for certain I would lose existing business (the worst kind to lose, BTW) and then be sued.  

    My 2 nearest competitors also no-bid the job for the same reasons.  

    Have we colluded?

    No, we haven’t.  We’ve all decided to avoid this one account, for the same reasons.  But we decided independently of each other.

    • #71
  12. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    ape2ag (View Comment):

    Visa just blacklisted Gab.

    Financial services are another matter, rather distinct from web hosting. 

    For the last 4 years, people have been warning Trump and the Republican party that banking restrictions were being used, with questionable* legality, against firearms OEMs, and against other companies, who were making perfectly legal products.

    4 years.  

    Longer, really, when you consider the Obama administration began turning the screws earlier than that, and New York State went trigger-happy with blackmailing prosecutions.

    Did Trump pay any attention?  Nope.

    Did Republicans in Congress pay any attention?  Nope.

    Parler stands accused of facilitating illegal activities.

    Were the gun OEMs, or other organizations blackballed by Visa and banks?  No.  Just socially undesireable activities and beliefs.

    Where are the lawsuits?  Where was the Congressional actions?  Where were Trump’s EOs on this?  

    Nothing but a deafening silence.

    *Questionable here is just a euphemism for “Not a legal leg to stand on”.

    • #72
  13. HankRhody Freelance Philosopher Contributor
    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher
    @HankRhody

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Where are the lawsuits? Where was the Congressional actions? Where were Trump’s EOs on this?

    Nothing but a deafening silence.

    Same problem here as with the “Trump should have had a legal team in place and ready to fight election fraud well before Nov. 3” argument. An incompetent or nonexistent defense does not prove the offense’s point.

    • #73
  14. Darin Johnson Member
    Darin Johnson
    @user_648569

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Think about this way:

    A would-be customer comes to me demanding I design and manufacture a widget…. This widget they’ve demanded I make looks like it might violate a patent held by one of their competitors – one whom I already serve. I choose to no-bid the job because if I took it, I know for certain I would lose existing business… and then be sued.

    My 2 nearest competitors also no-bid the job for the same reasons.

    Have we colluded?

    No, we haven’t. We’ve all decided to avoid this one account, for the same reasons. But we decided independently of each other.

    A better analogy would be if your existing client and clients of your 2 nearest competitors pressure you to no-bid because they didn’t like the widget-designer’s politics.  Or maybe he’s black.  Or a Muslim.  Or gay.  You might all independently knuckle under, and it might not be collusion, but you’d forgive someone who didn’t nominate you for a Profiles in Courage Award.

    My view is consistent: a) I don’t like bullies, and b) free speech has value beyond the fact that it’s in the Bill of Rights.  So we Americans should a) boo AWS (or their customers) for being bullies, and b) maybe hold our nose and “support” Parler because it’s the latest victim of this tired bait-and-switch.

    • #74
  15. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    This is a very poor analogy.  As pointed out previously, it disregards issues of monopoly and market power.

    This is a long-established exception to the general rule, which gives a business owner the right to refuse service.  The exception was recognized at common law to apply to businesses such as common carriers (meaning transportation services, like ferrymen) and innkeepers.  It would be interesting to hear Prof. Epstein discuss the issue, as it apparently stretches back to Roman law.  Here is an article with a brief discussion.

    We figured out how to deal with these issues in the mid-to-late 19th Century, if not earlier.  We know how to regulate public utilities, and how to control firms with market power.

    The question has been whether to treat internet platforms, and similar businesses, in the same way.  The strong libertarian position, taken in the OP, is to apply a rule of free market absolutism.  I do not agree with that rule.  I do agree that it should be the general presumption, until a significant problem is demonstrated.

    I think that we’ve been seeing a serious problem develop with the big tech companies, for several years.

     

    • #75
  16. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Cal Lawton (View Comment):
    By that logic we need to ban the airline the troublemakers few in

    You miss the point, and the analogy. This would be more akin to the airlines themselves refusing to knowingly fly in people who were conspiring to commit crimes*, or fast food places shutting down and not serving people in riot zones, etc.

    *There are, however, credible accusations that the airlines were refusing to fly people out afterwards, claiming they were disrupting service, etc. This should be settled with a few lawsuits and payments due to over-eager flight attendants.

    No, with this analogy, it’s more like an airline cancelling its contract with a travel agency business because a handful of the customers of the travel agency turned out to be criminals.

    • #76
  17. David March Coolidge
    David March
    @ToryWarWriter

    Everything I have heard is that Parler will be back up in 48 hours.  They were very foolish to rent space on Amazon though.  There are tons of other places that would gladly host them and apparently will.  My suggest server farms in Russia for the ultimate irony.

    • #77
  18. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Darin Johnson (View Comment):

    Okay, you don’t agree that the “ought” question is relevant. Why not? Your answer is that Parler deserves to be banned for exactly the reasons AWS claims they are banning them. 

    That’s possible. But it’s naive to take the word of Big Tech on that. They are selective about whom they attack. Antifa’s websites are still going strong, as Andy Ngo helpfully reminds us.

    Where are Antifa’s websites hosted though?  Probably not on AWS.  Stuff like that ends up in low buck server farms, or on offshore server farms, or somebody’s web server in a basement by way of a few VPNs and relays to disguise the location.

    I haven’t addressed the question of whether Parler ought to have been banned because I do not see the question as terribly important.  Frankly their business model was stupid and risky for what they were doing, and their attitude from the get go was arrogant and entitled.  For that alone, whether they ought to have been banned is something of a side issue to the business side, and on that I say “They had it coming like all the other old dot.com bubble companies.”

    I’ve seen that attitude with start-ups in my own industry – some rich investor gets what he thinks is a boatload of money (it isn’t nearly enough) and swaggers in with splashy adds denouncing “the old ways” of the established brands, either buys a derelict factory in an old rust belt town, or spends a fortune on erecting a monument to his own ego (you can tell it’s unserious – the building is way too nice), and cons a bunch of people into ordering his “revolutionary new [insert buzz terms here] built in [insert rust belt town or middle of nowhere farm town] with [insert favorite ethical BS terms here – pride, ethics, green-tech, recycled kale smoothies] for the future!”

    Then with his full order book and now empty bank book, he swaggers around yelling at employees to hurry up and actually engineer something before the reaper comes, and avoiding collection calls from the suppliers he’s stiffed, and the final act is him fobbing off the entire steaming pile on some other idiot “Angel Investor” who finds that the most valuable things in the still not working factory are light fixtures and the marketing department’s budget.

    • #78
  19. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    If Parler didn’t wear such short skirts, maybe it wouldn’t get raped.

    • #79
  20. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    David March (View Comment):

    Everything I have heard is that Parler will be back up in 48 hours. They were very foolish to rent space on Amazon though. There are tons of other places that would gladly host them and apparently will. My suggest server farms in Russia for the ultimate irony.

    That would hilarious.  Probably cheaper too.  Also, totally unsecure.

    • #80
  21. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Cal Lawton (View Comment):
    By that logic we need to ban the airline the troublemakers few in

    You miss the point, and the analogy. This would be more akin to the airlines themselves refusing to knowingly fly in people who were conspiring to commit crimes*, or fast food places shutting down and not serving people in riot zones, etc.

    *There are, however, credible accusations that the airlines were refusing to fly people out afterwards, claiming they were disrupting service, etc. This should be settled with a few lawsuits and payments due to over-eager flight attendants.

    No, with this analogy, it’s more like an airline cancelling its contract with a travel agency business because a handful of the customers of the travel agency turned out to be criminals.

    Good point – much better analogy.

    • #81
  22. FloppyDisk90 Member
    FloppyDisk90
    @FloppyDisk90

    Instugator (View Comment):

    HeavyWater (View Comment):
    A monopoly is when the government prohibits competitors.

    Nope, incomplete answer.

    See the breakup of AT&T

    Pffffftttttt.

    I think the more nuanced analysis is that in the absence of barriers to entry monopolies can’t exist and in much/most of the history there is a strong case to be made that when barriers to entry exist they are usually the result of government action, typically through regulation, cf. the Communications Act of 1934.

    • #82
  23. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    If Parler didn’t wear such short skirts, maybe it wouldn’t get raped.

    If Parler hadn’t gotten drunk and slept around night after night, it might have a credible claim it was raped.

    • #83
  24. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    If Parler didn’t wear such short skirts, maybe it wouldn’t get raped.

    If Parler hadn’t gotten drunk and slept around night after night, it might have a credible claim it was raped.

    All those free speech advocates are just asking for it.

    • #84
  25. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    If Parler didn’t wear such short skirts, maybe it wouldn’t get raped.

    If Parler hadn’t gotten drunk and slept around night after night, it might have a credible claim it was raped.

    Same thing with more words to it. 

    • #85
  26. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    The problem I have with the deplatforming movement by Big Tech is that it is basically discriminatory against those with a particular point of view. (The result, which is a digression from my main point, is troubling: on these ubiquitous platforms, no one will answer the accusations that are made about conservatives and Republicans.)

    The idea that they are a publisher rather than a platform open to the public is what allows them to do this. But I think it is the same thing at this point as a privately owned restaurant not allowing minorities or Democrats into the restaurant.

    Of course, Republicans are not recognized in the civil rights acts of 1964 and onward–or are they? From the Economic Employment Opportunity Policy statement [emphasis mine]:

    As the Archivist of the United States, I am fully committed to the fundamental principles and laws of equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment. The law requires that everyone have equal opportunities regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or transgender status), age (over 40), disability, genetic information, retaliation for engaging in Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) activity, marital status, political affiliation, and status as a parent.

    I know these rules apply to housing. I wonder if they apply to people being admitted to private-sector businesses?

    Ricochet is safe because it uses a code of conduct that applies equally to everyone. People are not rejected for membership based on their political affiliation. They are banned for not complying with the code of conduct they were given and agreed to when they joined. And they are given several warnings. And there is evidence on file somewhere of the rules they broke.

    I wonder how these other platforms are handling this. Did they warn their customers? Did they deplatform them for violations of a code of conduct that is in writing somewhere?

    • #86
  27. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    The Orthodox Church is going to get the exact same treatment as Parler. After all, the Orthodox churches communicate “hate speech” and “harmful” ideas regarding human sexuality. Parler tried to be the responsible free speech platform, clearly defining their standards as aligning with U.S. law on speech. They tried to occupy a middle ground between Twitter and Gab.

    Keep defending the left’s assault on all the rest of the right of center population which you may not like and might like to have suppressed. They are also coming for you, and you will have no one left to support you.

    • #87
  28. lowtech redneck Coolidge
    lowtech redneck
    @lowtech redneck

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):
    This also seems like a Section 230 debate on another level; much like we’ve been complaining about Twitter for banning content they arbitrarily deem objectionable, I don’t see why we can’t complain about Google & Apple banning services which provide content they deem objectionable.

    Not saying we cannot complain, but let’s keep the complaints proportionate and directed at the right issues.

    What is proportionate to the marketplace of ideas being, for all practical purposes, controlled by politically connected Trusts who are actively seeking to silence conservatives in conjunction with the Democrat party, and slowly criminalizing those who resist?  

    When a twitter competitor with a significant and exponentially growing demand has to not only create a different product (fair enough) but also their own web hosting services, their own banks and credit card companies, and their own ad hosting services, in order to avoid monopolistic collusion towards shutting them down for moderation practices which, at worst. are no worse than the companies they are competing against, that is simply a willfully designed and sustained market failure for the purposes of persecuting political and cultural dissent.

    And before anyone starts, ‘whataboutism’ is not a diversion, its the very means by which rights are violated in illiberal regimes.  If you don’t act when arbitrary violations of equal protection under the law is directed at those you don’t like, its too late to act when its applied to you.

     

    • #88
  29. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    The Orthodox Church is going to get the exact same treatment as Parler. After all, the Orthodox churches communicate “hate speech” and “harmful” ideas regarding human sexuality. Parler tried to be the responsible free speech platform, clearly defining their standards as aligning with U.S. law on speech. They tried to occupy a middle ground between Twitter and Gab.

    Keep defending the left’s assault on all the rest of the right of center population which you may not like and might like to have suppressed. They are also coming for you, and you will have no one left to support you.

    Uh huh.

    *checks history books*

    Looks like we have done that before.

    • #89
  30. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    MarciN (View Comment):
    I wonder how these other platforms are handling this. Did they warn their customers? Did they deplatform them for violations of a code of conduct that is in writing somewhere

    Parler has been warned for months.  It has been in the news.

    • #90
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