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Will Parler Users Treat Its 'Glitch' That Hid Georgia Election Content The Same Way They Treated A Twitter Glitch?
from the hypocrites dept
"It's been absolutely fascinating -- though not at all surprising -- to watch a ton of Trumpists mentally struggling with the process of understanding the nature, importance, and necessity of content moderation online over the last few months via Parler. As you may recall, after whining about being moderated on sites like Twitter and Facebook, a bunch of Trump fans started using Parler, a site that was only recently revealed to have been cofounded by Rebekah Mercer (Parler fans like to claim that their users are migrating from Twitter to Parler, but most of them are still using Twitter, because Parler is mostly them preaching to the converted).
Parler's founders (including Mercer) and its biggest fans have been insisting that Parler stands for "free speech" and that unlike Twitter, it won't moderate content. Indeed, despite claiming that it would only moderate "based off the FCC and the Supreme court" (whatever the fuck that means), we knew that the site would end up doing much more moderation, just like every other social media site.
In fact, we highlighted how Parler seemed to be doing a speedrun through the content moderation lessons of every previous social media network that comes on the scene, promising to do no moderation at all, and then quickly discovering that that's impossible
"I find it hilarious that the same crew who insists that Twitter/Facebook are "censoring" them, immediately spins around and insists that it's totally obvious that Parler must remove "trolls, hate speech and harassment" without recognizing their own hypocrisy. . ."
Anyway, sooner or later we were going to have a controversy in which Parler moderation impacted their Trumpist-style supporters, rather than just the folks jumping in to troll. And that day is today.
NOTE: Last summer, we highlighted how Parler was banning trolls who were joining the platform just to make fun of Parler and its users. Hilariously, that post keeps getting comments every few days from Parler users saying things like "of course Parler has to ban you leftist trolls." Just a few examples from our comments. This guy says that he needs Parler as a sort of "safe space."
. . .The Daily Beast has an article giving some of the important background. A SuperPAC connected to convicted political scammer Roger Stone is trying to get people to write in Trump's name in the two Georgia Senate runoff elections:
The group, dubbed the Committee for American Sovereignty, unveiled a new website encouraging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump’s name in both of the upcoming Senate runoff elections, which could determine the party that controls the upper chamber during President-elect Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The PAC argued that doing so will show support for the president in addition to forcing Republicans to address the wild election-fraud conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters and members of his own legal team.
. . . Again, Parler has every right to moderate however it sees fit. And getting rid of trolls and assholes is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Also, glitches happen all the time. However, I find it amusing that once again, Parler is learning all the same lessons that Twitter learned over time -- and Parler's users (and employees) are demanding we give Parler the benefit of the doubt they never gave Twitter. So before Parler's fervent supporters rush into our comments to defend Parler, let me be clear: Parler has every right to do this. No one is mocking them for that. We're mocking them for (1) insisting that Parler wouldn't do this and (2) for the fact that you give Parler the benefit of the doubt that you refuse to give Twitter.
Filed Under: content moderation, georgia elections, glitch, roger stone, section 230, social media
Companies: parler, twitter
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