Parler removed from Google Play store

US law always seemed strange to me but why is discussions around violence and murder not covered under free speech? The countries that take free speech seriously allow you to freely speak about anything, as long as you don't break the law (inciting violence for example). Seems strange US would be so far behind on this but still see themselves as last bastion of free speech.

mytailorisrich• 6 years ago

My understanding is that what is not covered under free speech in the US are not "discussions around" violence and murder but actual "true threats" and calls to "imminent lawless action". Not quite the same.

jchw• 6 years ago

The US had freedom of speech encoded into the law in 1791. To this day I believe Australia has no explicit freedom of speech law. I am not a history buff but I suspect U.S. was in fact at one point ahead of the curve.

I believe there is an ebb and flow to fear and control exercised over speech, whether it be fear that the speech is dangerous or just objectionable in moral systems (violence, obscenity, etc.)

Some day we’ll probably be back at the other end, where the scrutiny is primarily aimed at what is disallowed rather than allowed. But, I think new media and their impact on society is always scary. It happened with books, radio, movies, TV, video games and it’s happening with social media and the internet. And with how well conspiracies and misinformation spreads online, it’s easy to see where the fear comes from. It is causing people who believe in the truth to prevail to begin to question themselves.

Exactly what is covered by the first amendment is very wishy-washy and US law is intentionally elastic, so there are probably some blurred lines as to what kinds of violent threats may cause something to no longer be considered protected speech.

(Of course: IANAL.)

beowulfey2• 6 years ago

Well, free speech through the First Amendment of our Constitution is only protected from interference from the government. Nothing is protected about private platforms. Google is free to implement whatever policies they want. Thus the point is kind of moot because this isn’t the government interfering with free speech at all.

If it were though, I think it would indeed be a tricky can of worms. Some aspects of “talking” about criminal activity are considered illegal: for example, Conspiracy to Commit Offense [1] makes it illegal to conspire to do criminal activity.

Freedom of Speech was really meant to protect people from being able to criticize the government without fear of being disappeared. Great article on the history of that clause here [2].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371

[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1_2_1/

kolinko• 6 years ago

I hope that long term there is some sort of a government oversight that manages actions like these...

three_seagrass3• 6 years ago

Apple gave Parler a 24 hr warning to come up with a moderation plan or they're banned, but it's likely Apple is more or less showboating for their current antitrust and anticompetitive lawsuits. They will probably ban them this weekend too.

yurielt6• 6 years ago

This is just insulting I don’t like the people on Trumps side however nobody that loves software and freedom should be in favour of corporations doing this honestly how did hackernews got filled with bootlickers baffles me

pera• 6 years ago

You are probably not aware of this but Parler is currently being used by hundreds, maybe thousands, of fanatic radicals to organise another violent insurrection on DC (on either January 19th or 20th), and there is literally zero moderation. I haven't seen this level of criminal organisation anywhere else on the internet before.

zz_throwaway_zz• 6 years ago

Interesting how opinion providers call Jan 6 a "violent insurrection" but the 6 months of riots with dozens killed, hundreds+ maimed, businesses burned, livelihoods destroyed, "mostly peaceful protests".

yurielt6• 6 years ago

You are probably not aware of this but Parler is currently being used by hundreds, maybe thousands, of fanatic radicals to organise another violent insurrection on DC (on either January 19th or 20th), and there is literally zero moderation.

Yeah and the internet is supposed to be like that I dont like them but letting them having their speech is prefereable to handing our asses to silicon valley tycoons

cdmckay• 6 years ago

No one is stopping them from side loading an APK of Parler.

yurielt6• 6 years ago

Yeah Amazon is they are offing the servers of Parler so an apk won’t do anything lol don’t be dishonest please you know the consequences result of removing things form the store

Daniel_sk• 6 years ago

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

yurielt6• 6 years ago

The paradox of tolerance has been debunked many many times and is a kids level attempt of trying to dissuade any “intolerant” views

tompagenet2• 6 years ago

Maybe, I don't know anything about it, but let's engage with curiosity and evidence here rather than simply referring to a point as "kids level"

galfarragem• 6 years ago

The real paradox is this idea once it justifies both sides and advocates a perennial dispute.

The answer to the question 'Who are the intolerants?' is by definition biased.

three_seagrass3• 6 years ago

Tolerance is not a terribly subjective concept.

beefield• 6 years ago

In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence.

Okay, I'll bite. I would be curious about the details of moderation policies of a couple of long-standing apps that display user-generated content. I mean, just to get an understanding which kind of policies are acceptable. Chrome and Firefox.

(To be clear, I am laughing at the wording. And maybe large unaccountable corporations are not the correct vehicles to come up with rules to moderate public discussion)

ajsnigrutin• 6 years ago

Well... don't give them ideas... "preparoved" domain lists in browsers on mobile might just be "the next thing". What's more worrying is, that a bunch of people wouldn't even notice (we've had a bunch of people call our ISPs support number, that "the internet is down" when facebook stopped working some time ago).

beowulfey2• 6 years ago

That’s a great point. I think the troublesome word is “display”. Maybe something more like “host”? Feels a bit like DMCA safe harbor all over again

akmarinov• 6 years ago

They’re all obviously jumping on to either get or avoid PR.

It’s also the reason why it was all roses and fine when he was threatening nuclear strikes to another nation, but when he doesn’t explicitly tell people to stop their insurrection - it’s all “threatening violence” and what not.

ceilingcorner2• 6 years ago

The cognitive dissonance on HN at play is frankly hilarious. One minute, Apple and Google are monopolistic abusers that should be broken up. The next, we’re actively cheering on selective enforcement of deliberately vague ethical standards and laws, simply because the other team is bad.

Downvote systems make this issue nearly impossible to discuss, so I’m not even sure why I’m posting this. All I can say is: fighting polarization starts with treating people you disagree with as fellow citizens and human beings, not as Others to be removed and excommunicated.

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

Remember that HN consists of millions of people now. There are plenty who would agree with you, myself included. But unless you put in effort to write substantive, thoughtful comments, your points will be lost. I encourage you to; it's worthwhile.

poisonborz• 6 years ago

But unless you put in effort to write substantive, thoughtful comments, your points will be lost.

This is really important. And one of the naturally occuring effects of this community, that makes me optimistic on this being possible on a larger scale as well, if done right.

mangamadaiyan• 6 years ago

In a sane world, maybe. The rot has set in too much to stem it. Also, what you say has to work both ways. You might be prepared to listen, but what do you get in return when the other side is not prepared to listen to you?

downandout• 6 years ago

To your point, I believe this is the year that decentralized social media will take off. Social media companies have proven that they can and will abuse their moderation powers to suppress free speech. In this case, it seems that they were emboldened to suppress conservative free speech by the Democratic wins in the 2020 election. What they don’t understand is that telling nearly 150 million people to shut up and sit down will have profound business consequences for them.

As decentralized solutions quickly flourish in response to their suppression efforts, they will learn the hard way that those who abuse their powers eventually lose them - whether the abuser is Donald Trump, Google, or Twitter. The technology exists to simply bypass and strip these platforms of the power and profits that come with being a gatekeeper. It’s been a long time coming.

ceilingcorner2• 6 years ago

Yes I think this is what will ultimately happen. The idea that millions of people will simply disappear / change their political views because corporations and the government said so is absurd. Anyone with the slightest exposure to rural American conservatism would know that. In fact, it’s almost a fantasy scenario, confirming whatever bizarre conspiracy theory of the week.

Absolutely the wrong way to solve this problem.

jgillich• 6 years ago

fighting polarization starts with treating people you disagree with as fellow citizens and human beings

So what if those people think you're subhuman and want you dead? This is the kind of talk that happens on these platforms every single day. You've just had a violent insurgence on your capitol and you still think the solution is to ask these people to be nice? It's CLEARLY not working, and it's time for social media to rid themselves of open calls for violence and the conspiracy theories that fuel them.

People on the left have also been suspended for similar issues, and rightly so. If your movement cannot remain on a platform without adhering to a policy as simple as "do not threaten violence", then your ideology has a fundamental problem and deserves to be banned to the fringes of the net.

Havoc• 6 years ago

This is just going to make them feel vindicated. Ie

see it’s an organized campaign (conspiracy?) to suppress the truth and freedom of speech. Deep state /qanon etc

convery• 6 years ago

Well, there was that study (Oxford IIRC) that found that Republicans get banned on Twitter 21:1 compared to Dems, Reddit is well known for purging right-leaning subs while allowing gov influence, VISA/mastercard forces patreon/gofundme to ban right-leaning users, Chase-bank shuts down the accounts of Proud Boys members, Cloudflare pulled all routing to a far-right website, recently-ish Dem lawmakers sent an open letter to Google that it would be in their best interest to de-rank/block right-leaning 'misinformation'/leaks (when anti-trust investigations were a hot topic). So while it's easy to say that "it's just individual groups/companies deciding to target the same groups at the same time", it's hard to argue that there's no organization between them.

What was the Game of Thrones quote; "when you tear out a man's tongue you're not proving him a liar; only that you are afraid of what he might say"?

throwaway4good3• 6 years ago

Alt-right people. Just get a Huawei phone; their Android variation allows easy loading of apps from third party sources ...

narrator• 6 years ago

All android phones let you sideload apps. It's a built in feature of Android.

throwaway4good3• 6 years ago

Huawei has heavily expanded that feature with their "Petal Search" in order to combat censorship from centralized American big tech.

This is really the phone you should get if you love freedom.

mtmail• 6 years ago

700 older comments when the original annoucement was made about 8h earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693742

throwaway4good3• 6 years ago

Alt-right people. Enough of this red pill / blue pill stuff. The relevant Matrix quote is this: What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?

libx• 6 years ago

Nazism equals national socialism.

This dictatorship is about international socialism. Either people awake or we get like the frog in boiling water.

RangerScience• 6 years ago

Ever notice how many political groups name themselves basically the opposite of what they actually are, or end up being?

People's Republic, Family Values, Pro-Life...

jfoster• 6 years ago

Hang on a sec, doesn't Google Chrome display user-generated content?

drno123• 6 years ago

So months of violent looting from the left and nothing; one afternoon of violent looting from the right and now extreme measures are taken?!?

stunt• 6 years ago

This is exactly how internet censorship started in countries like China and Iran. Nobody should have this power.

Iran used the same argument to block Telegram because a few groups were teaching people how to make coctel-molotov. But, Telegram was actively being used by peaceful protestors and other groups (real targets) as well. Blocking Telegram was condemned by the US and the EU.

Parler removed from Google Play store

Related Stories