Parler Banned .. Gun Forums Next?

[4Freedom]

By Amazon shutting down Parler and Google and Apple removing them from their app markets, they are effectively banning free speech and forcing Americans to live under controlled and authoritarian censorship not much different than was done by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and other dictators of our world.

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg , Jack Dorsey and Tim Cook have become the Adolf Hitlers of our modern world.

TOday, they will ban Parler because they say it promotes speech that they do not feel is acceptable. Tomorrow they will ban Orthodox Jews, Christians or Catholics from posting about their religion, because they will say that is not acceptable. Then , they will ban what you believe in because it goes against what they believe is acceptable to the ethnics of what they view as a "pure" society.

This is the beginning of the end of the Freedom of Speech in this country and now we are ruled by the authoritarian oligarch tech companies who have more money, power and authority than even governments of many foreign countries.

Just wait until the next mass shooting occurs or some promoted piece of media shows guns in a bad light. I don't doubt for a second that these tech giants with their power and authority they wield will ban all gun forums and anything pro 2nd Amendment related. To me, what we are seeing today is the beginning of the ends of our freedom of speech and expression.

We are truly now living in the age of technocracy where these tech giants how full control and authority over or communications, expression and will basically incriminate us for not submitting to their authority and a power that exceeds that of many governments.

Just as Adolf Hitler trusted JOseph Goebbels with promoting the message of the Nazi authoritarian regime, so are Fascists in our society have become very closely connected with these tech giants and they literally are behaving like the propaganda and communication wing of their party. Hitler knew well that when you control the media and the sources of communication , that you basically control the people and it was the most essential tool in indoctrinating German people and helping the Nazi party rise to power and forcefully repressing anyone considered an enemy of the state. It was the indoctrination through social media (at the time newspaper, television, radio, movies) of hte people that help instigate the Holocaust and help an entire nation view another people as an enemy who had little right to even live. THis scares me, as I lost many relatives in the Holocaust and to me what I see is a repeat , but at a global scale.

America seems to want to become worse than China, Iran and Nazi Germany in its censorship and control of speech, belief and expression.

This is fascism plain and simple and if anyone, especially those in RKBA community is not alarmed by this censorship and control over our freedoms and being at the mercy of the ethics of these companies. Yes, they claim these are private companies and we are bound to their terms of service. However, there is a fine line between what a business should be allowed to dictate and what can become a threat to our constitutional freedoms and liberties. These companies have way too much control over our channels of communication and there should be a line drawn to how much control they can have, especially since they own a good portion of the internet servers and channels.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that if these companies control all our means of communication that we soon will not have a voice and our entire society will be spoon fed propaganda from these authoritative sources who seem to become more controlling and dictating every year. Now we have "FACT CHECKS" and posts from people these companies do not agree with are labelled as "FALSE" and we are forced to view media sources they deem "APPROPRIATE AND AS FACT SOURCES". Why not let the people decide for themselves? Why do these companies have so much power and authority as to be able to defame, dictate and attack the material posted by its users , yet cannot face legal repercussions like the rest of us "peasants" would if we did the same?

SCARY TIMES AHEAD FOR FREEDOM

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[No_Regerts]

We didn't need space force. We needed net force!

 

[ma96782]

A *certain university will even teach people HOW TO do alot of stuff like?

Israel National News - University offers 'How to Overthrow the State' course focused on Marxist revolutionaries

"We should not be surprised by violence and looting in our streets, or calls to abolish whole swaths of law enforcement, when we ask students to plan their own governmental coups."

Anyone wanna take a guess as to what will count for "extra credit"?

*I wonder, how many more universities will pick up on this?

Aloha, Mark

PS....as to the free speech issue. Have you taken a look at what has already taken place at/in the universities?

(7) Free Speech: Colleges in the Crossfire | Moving Upstream - YouTube

 

[The Heretic]

Not carrying the app in their app store is not banning them. Many stores stopped carrying magazines Penthouse, Playboy, etc.

Amazon is a bit different; they provide cloud and hosting services. That makes it hard for an online media org to publish online, but again, it isn't banning them from the internet; the org can standup their own cloud services, many orgs do and often it is actually less expensive to do so once the org sets up their private cloud. What is problematic is when a service provider terminates the service unexpectedly.

As for gun forums - yes, theoretically, it could happen to a gun forum - but I doubt it would happen to this one.

 

[HaveGun]

But... Capitalism!

What happens when the majority of the market supports and demands "woke" businesses? What happens when the majority of consumers not only accept limited speech, but demand that conservatives be silenced? That is pure capitalism. It is a double-edged sword and when a majority of consumers choose evil over good, then this is what you get.

 

[4Freedom]

Not carrying the app in their app store is not banning them. Many stores stopped carrying magazines Penthouse, Playboy, etc.

Amazon is a bit different; they provide cloud and hosting services. That makes it hard for an online media org to publish online, but again, it isn't banning them from the internet; the org can standup their own cloud services, many orgs do and often it is actually less expensive to do so once the org sets up their private cloud. What is problematic is when a service provider terminates the service unexpectedly.

As for gun forums - yes, theoretically, it could happen to a gun forum - but I doubt it would happen to this one.

The Heretic, I understand all about this. I am actually transitioning from being an application developer and trying to get into DevOps and posibly a Cloud Solutions Architect/hybrid Back-End developer of sorts.
I know its ironic, but I am also striving to get my AWS SOlutions Architect certificate soon. It's not easy putting food on the table in DevOps or in software industry itself if you do not utilize one of the three major cloud platforms. Even Heroku is being hosted over AWS. Going to AliBaba and supporting China is hardly a great alternative.

My problem , however, is the influence of cloud platforms, especially AWS, Azure and GCP are expanding and I feel the private cloud and private internet is losing their footprint. Also, I could see in the future that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc will buy up many of these private companies and expand their influence over the internet (Anti-Trust potential) to the extent that there will be a very small number of options for what we consider private cloud now. Because, even if you are using a company like Liquid Web , GoDaddy, etc, many of them are even migrating their infrastructure to AWS platforms as Level II providers, since it saves them on operation and costs of maintaining facilities and servers.

I do think there will be some resolve as by them cutting off 100,000,000+ Americans from their source of information and censoring their speech, there will be a lot of money, investment, funds and hopefully some legal muscle available to allow for a large company the size of Parler to operate outside the influence of the major tech companies. I think a company like Parler will need a lot of outside investment to build their own data center to host their platform. Hopefully, they can find a reliable vendor, but when the media starts blasting GoDaddy, LiquidWeb or any other provider as the "enemy" for hosting them, will they get the boot there as well? Building their own data centers would be a very costly venture for them. But, I suppose if there is the demand and the resources i can be possible. Parler is definitely not your average company.

I was interviewing at a very large restaurant supply company that actually said they hosted their own data centers because of how large their operations were. Whether or not was actually true is subjective, but they were outside the public cloud sphere because they wanted to both save costs and have more control of any potential outage issues. I wouldn't doubt they were outsourcing their server operations to a third party company that they would not disclose.

 

[Member 5605]

Only a matter of time.
Besides, .onion sites can't be blocked.

 

[CamoDeafie]

I'd be okay if somehow... the entire internet got unplugged permanently Sure, we'd lose a lot of comms, networks, contact, etc but honestly,... going back to subscription services, paper/goods/newsletter mail services, that kind of thing might be better for us

Imagine the utter chaos if that were to happen to the generations who has only ever known the world with internet access

 

[4Freedom]

But... Capitalism!

What happens when the majority of the market supports and demands "woke" businesses? What happens when the majority of consumers not only accept limited speech, but demand that conservatives be silenced? That is pure capitalism. It is a double-edged sword and when a majority of consumers choose evil over good, then this is what you get.

You make good points.. However, to me the most essential aspect of our country is that we are a Constitutional Republic. Anything that threatens the sovereignty of our nation, our Bill of Rights and Constitution must be challenged.

There is also a gross double-standard and Amazon is way above the law compared to your average American company. Amazon had no problem with those inciting riots on the left-wing side and did not shut down any social media or websites as a result of that. However since these riots went against their own political ideologies they decided it was time to censor this platform. Since they were quoting their own terms of service, it could have been a viable discrimination lawsuit , citing that they did not enforce such rules on their other users. If you have a Terms of Service you are actually suppose to abide by it or else you should be suffering legal repercussions. Being a multi-billion dollar company with political influence and protection, good luck suing this company with anything but the largest of a class action lawsuit that would have to be supported by politicians and big donors for the legal fund.

If an American company is literally operating to destroy our nation's freedom and has control over the communication channels and I can go as far as even our means of distribution, food supply and can threaten the well-being of our citizens then there needs to be a line drawn.

What if the electric and water companies who have a monopoly over entire neighborhoods, cities, districts decide who and who not they can give their services to based on your political ideologies, religion or beliefs? Private companies right? I believe these are considered "utilities" and regulated by the government. I support small government regulation when it makes sense. What I am against is an excessive amount of government regulation. Don't think that one day these private companies cannot transform themselves into your government. Especially with the amount of money, lobbying , power and influence they have over our politicians. Capitalism can transform into Monarchy or Oligarchy.

What did Reagan do when air traffic controllers all went on strike? It's not a pretty situation. Sometimes we do need some government to step-in to protect our rights if certain businesses that are essential to the well-being of our society decide to circumvent these rules and harm our nation.

Sure, Amazon doesn't own the entire internet, but they own about 50% of it and growing along with the other major cloud providers Azure (Microsoft), GCP (Google).

Apple and Google control all the applications we can use on our phones. To me, that is another outlet of communication. Considering the monopolies and control they have over our smartphones (an essential means of communication), I do not know if they should have ultimate control over how we can use our phones. Also, by not allowing other app stores to operate they are effectively censoring people from using their mobile phones in a way their users wish. We now can only utilize our phones according to how Google and Apple say we can. Basically, we have no mobile freedom. For those of us before the smartphone generation, imagine if the phone companies told us who we are allowed to call and not call. Shouldn't phone companies dictate how we are allowed to use their service? I wonder if phone companies started blacklisting people based on their political beliefs and disabling their phones if people would support such means of "capitalism".

 

[made in china]

To be clear, Amazon AWS has NOT shut down Parler, YET. My Parler still works.

If you have an Android phone, non-Play Store apps can be installed using APK. I have several apps on my phone using APK.

However, if AWS takes action, yes Parler will be "shut down" until they find alternative servers (possibly servers in other countries).

I know of quite a few "anarcho-capitalist" and libertarian type people who have now found themselves having a tremendous amount in common with "conservatives". My opinion? Big tech is only going to make things worse. For themselves. They are NOT just pissing-off Trumpers and conservatives.

 

[CamoDeafie]

This could be an impetus for Congress to declare once and for all that freedom of speech doesn't really exist on the internet on the basis that one usually has to pay for the internet access Of course... the masses are gonna object strenously to that, but they have to be reminded bluntly... that they, as consumers have signed up voluntarily for whatever media service they use, and thus, they signed themselves over to be used as products for Big Tech and advertisers/corporations

 

[made in china]

BTW, this guy is an excellent watch, he is NOT a conservative, but he is very clear about what's going on with big tech, how conservatives are the victims, and basically anyone else who is not a prog-lib is also a victim of big tech (he also touches on Parler):

 

[made in china]

whoops!

 

[The Heretic]

The Heretic, I understand all about this. I am actually transitioning from being an application developer and trying to get into DevOps and posibly a Cloud Solutions Architect/hybrid Back-End developer of sorts.
I know its ironic, but I am also striving to get my AWS SOlutions Architect certificate soon. It's not easy putting food on the table in DevOps or in software industry itself if you do not utilize one of the three major cloud platforms. Even Heroku is being hosted over AWS. Going to AliBaba and supporting China is hardly a great alternative.

My problem , however, is the influence of cloud platforms, especially AWS, Azure and GCP are expanding and I feel the private cloud and private internet is losing their footprint. Also, I could see in the future that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc will buy up many of these private companies and expand their influence over the internet (Anti-Trust potential) to the extent that there will be a very small number of options for what we consider private cloud now. Because, even if you are using a company like Liquid Web , GoDaddy, etc, many of them are even migrating their infrastructure to AWS platforms as Level II providers, since it saves them on operation and costs of maintaining facilities and servers.

I know it isn't easy - didn't say it was. But it can be done. It takes a significant effort to standup a private cloud, but the larger orgs often do just that - the trend I have witnessed is that they use Amazon or Google (depending on which fits better) at first to handle the load as they are not sure how successful they will be. Also, the "public" cloud providers, especially the huge ones, usually have instances around the world to better handle latency and other issue related to location.

Then once they get a handle on their systems and load, they start bringing it in house, using something like Docker/Kubernetes/Azure/etc. and having their own data center/etc.

It is easier to use Amazon or Google, but having not being able to use them is not a death blow, it isn't being censored either.

Parler should have been (and maybe was?) ready for this given the nature of the content they hosted.

It isn't like there were not examples out there; Reddit went thru an evolution of having to get more control over their user's postings. Other media hosts have too.

 

[ma96782]

The Government knows best.....

How much $ you should be allowed to keep.
What you spend it on. (Govt approved products in the Market)
What your local public school(s) will be allowed to teach and what thoughts are correct for children.
The minimum amount of $ that your "entry level workers" should/will be paid.
What your health insurance must cover.
What kinds and amounts of emissions your machines are allowed to expel.
Etc, etc.....

Still having problems?

Don't worry because the.....
is working hard on getting you and the rest of the public ready for whatever NEW CHANGES are to come.

Aloha, Mark

PS....speaking about a PVT tech company/site placing a ban on some firearms content. Hummmm......remember what happened with certain firearms centric channels on YouTube? Rrrrrright.......the "snow flakes" must be protected.

So, having said all that....
YES, it's their site and they can make their rules. Though I'd expect that enforcement would be EVEN. Or, they face being "called out over it".

 

[Deerhurst]

So, you need an app for everything?

Just access it on your browser. Host a server for speech if you really want to get their nickers in a bundle.

 

[Alexx1401]

I think what Amazon is doing is GREAT. What so often happens with stuff like this is they just spread it. Parler was like a small fire in grass. Many had never heard of it or tried it. Giants like amazon, google, facebook felt threatened and they react by trying to stamp out the little fire. All they are doing is spreading it. The more they do this the more people hear of this, then want to see what all the fuss is about. Parler may go dark for a short time. They will find another host. The more the tech giants try to silence people the more they convince those who have long laughed at this that there really is a deep state kind of thing going on. I hope the tech giants just keep it up, they are doing us a huge favor.

 

[ma96782]

Parler executive speaks out following Google app store ban, threats from Apple - YouTube

Aloha, Mark

 

[RobMa]

A *certain university will even teach people HOW TO do alot of stuff like?

Israel National News - University offers 'How to Overthrow the State' course focused on Marxist revolutionaries



Anyone wanna take a guess as to what will count for "extra credit"?

*I wonder, how many more universities will pick up on this?

Aloha, Mark

PS....as to the free speech issue. Have you taken a look at what has already taken place at/in the universities?

(7) Free Speech: Colleges in the Crossfire | Moving Upstream - YouTube

I was threatened with expulsion if I did not include my preferred pronoun in my introduction to the class I was taking...
They did not lay off until I threatened to sue them and contact the local news...

 

[Dinglenutz]

It is easier to use Amazon or Google, but having not being able to use them is not a death blow, it isn't being censored either.

Censorship is what the likes of Twitface and Flitter are up to. Amazon is up to a much more subtle game, where they are claiming that Parler has violated the terms of their contract by allowing illegal speech. This is probably not true; Parler has terms of service that prohibit illegal speech.

There is a bit of a difference of opinion about the law, or more likely Amazon is not willing to risk the blowback they would get if they grew a backbone and defended Parler's free speech.

As for forums that claim to be complaint with DMCA section 230, they are required to meet certain standards to avail themselves of those protections; censoring only "in good faith" is part of that. Yes they have the right to run their business as they see fit, but the American people are not required to continue to grant a company that's acting as an editor immunity from their editorial choices. If the big social media companies insist on using their platforms to express their opinions, they should rightfully face the consequences of that choice.