We now live in 1984, & it's even worse than Orwell imagined.
Parler, a simple free speech platform has been snuffed out in 24 hours not by government, but by big tech that wields more power than even them.
They have silenced a sitting president & destroyed a competitor in 48 hours & are above the law as the United States gov sits by and claps like seals for them.
Free speech is dead, censorship is now fully applauded by the most powerful nation on earth, & it makes me sick to stomach.
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I'm not sure Parler is the app to take a stance in defending but to each their own. Free speech isn't dead, it's just difficult on big platforms that have extremely transparent since the beginning about censorship and political bias -- I genuinely have no idea why just now people are getting mad about this. You "read" the terms, you agreed to them, you've seen how transparent they've been about it, you know the political standing of the owner and devs, what else are you really looking for
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Would it be great to have a platform with no censorship? Sure! But that isn't as simple as people make it out to be. The reality is that these companies are liable for many of their user's actions if they go unmoderated, and things like storming the capital are extremely serious and have to be actioned against. Free speech, while nice, has never been an option at any point in history really, not if you were a citizen, a ruler, whomever. Just now people have a platform to complain about it.
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@ThreeBadgersInATrenchcoat I think this "free speech" issue people discuss is somewhat weird. It was never desirable to allow people to say whatever they want, no matter what it is and AFAIK no country even tries to.
Also free speech on privately-owned platforms is quite another cup of tea, no?
I don't think trying to popularize a platform like Mastodon is good either, it just worsens masto and makes it so nobody really wins. People just need to become less addicted to social media. I knew people who genuinely had 14h on Twitter per day (not an exaggeration.) People like that will get politically swayed just by seeing the same anti-trump or pro-trump stuff no matter what platform they're on. Also things like Masto certainly won't scale well with the public, at least theoretically
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