We all know which side of the political fence controls most media and the stories about Parler and Gab are being reported in exactly they type of way that you would expect depending on who the outlet is that is telling the story.
While there is no doubt that Parler is a more attractive forum for those with conservative political viewpoints the left's constant media take on it being a "haven for alt-right groups or antisemitism" is not telling the full story. Parler, by their own admission allows freedom of speech and only censors illegal activities such as child pornography, drugs and weapons sales, and direct calls to violence. These sorts of things are illegal in a general sense so it is understandable why they would have this viewpoint. However, Parler does not exclude anyone from participation unless they break these rules and therefore, from what limited exposure I have had to it (I can't stay Twitter-type things) this leftist narrative that Parler is just for right-wing nutjobs is completely false.
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Now I want everyone to understand that while I do feature a few usual suspect names on here that the reporting on this app is going exactly the way that the overall narrative of whatever news outlet you can think of would go for just about anything else. For example, CNN and The Washington post (among many many others) call Parler a right-wing extremist platform that incites hate and is solely responsible for the violence at the Capitol (the last part is my words but you get the picture) and Fox, Breitbart, and OANN call the removal of Parler a massive infringement on free speech and akin to Kristallnacht, which is a ridiculous comparison since the actual Kristallnacht involved torching synagogues, vandalizing homes, and killing Jews- not just taking away an app they liked.
Let me summarize the coverage for you and save you some time
If your news source of choice is leftist or liberal: Parler-Baaaad, shutting it down was a good thing!
If your news source of choice is right-leaning or conservative: Shutting down Parler is an attack on free speech and is illegal!
Shutting down Parler by an obvious joint effort by left-dominated Silicon Valley tech giants is obviously exactly what happened. It is no coincidence that these things happened all at the same time but proving it in court is a different thing altogether.
It also is no coincidence that Twitter's stock dropped 12% resulting in an estimated loss of $5 billion. This media report was actually objective, and was nice to see. The various news outlets couldn't spin this because this abrupt drop in stock value was quite clearly a result of the near 90 million DJT followers who were upset that he was permanently banned and there is going to be a very real loss in revenue opportunities for Twitter when tens of millions of people suddenly leave their platform.
Their reasons for permanently banning him are retarded and not based in reality but to be honest with you I don't care. I am glad they banned him so we can get some competition for these apps that are run by arrogant a-holes and having alternatives for products is a good thing - it encourages innovation and gives people even more ways to completely waste their time arguing with strangers on the internet.
The same thing that happened to Parler is now happening to Gab, which is just a FB clone and since I don't use FB, I am not going to use Gab either, but there are a lot of people that are going to do so and once again, this is a GOOD THING. A few companies dominating the market, even though I think that said market is a stupid waste of time, is not something that I like to see happen. Competition and free markets will eventually sort this out. Parler will experience some difficulty in returning, and people are going to have to learn how to install apps without the assistance of Google's Play Store. God forbid people actually learn how to do something that involves more than a single click, right?
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THe real winners at the end of all of this are going to be Parler and Gab because there is a massive amount of interest in their various services that without these strange yet at least for now, completely legal moves on the part of Twitter and Facebook, most people wouldn't even know what TF either of these apps are.
Once they are back up and running people will start to diversify a bit and in my mind, this is a very good thing. Competition only makes the marketplace better in almost all instances so this is not dumb.
Until that time though, all the news media that you see about these two things is going to fall directly into the ever growing pile of...
Why can't we be the real winner?
The structural element parler, twitter and say Gab have in common is that they are all centralized and have an overarching owner of the company that own their product / platform.
Whilst I agree with you that Left reportage on Parler is a literal REEEE NAZI PLATFORM REEEE each and every time the Parler debacle is mentioned, It's a convenient scapegoat to gaslight as a hidey hole for terroristoroonies. Look at this pile of flaming garbage published today and their didactic chiding of anyone who even considers using a platform like Parler 'Down the rabbit hole': Trump backers seek online refuges after big tech backlash.
It's all self-perpetuated fluff, fear and lies that is being published now. Best to starve the beast by pulling out it's lifeblood and source of pulse, Globally disseminated Newswire services. News, Journalism and Investigative reporting has sunk to extreme lows this year and I don't think any more centralized social media platforms will offer a viable long term alternative. If Parler comes back, it will just continue being the inverse of Twitter with its user base, probably reaching millions of fake botnet sock accounts posting billions of posts a month of drivel like Twitter is now.
Heh yeah, that's why we have low uptake on here. The onboarding process isn't one click - mightily confusing for 99% of sheeple.
what a wonderful reply. I wish you would post your own articles more frequently. You have a gift my friend.
Hey, thank you. A nice surprise to read your reply and I do appreciate it :-) Been a bit rough and dark recently so to know that there's another person reading and appreciating the interaction is pretty spesh.
Everyone else is screaming at each other. Peace
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I had no intention of ever using Parler because I hated Twitter and never really understood why anyone used it... but what you said above about how we wouldn't even know about it if not for the controversy surrounding it, I think, is absolutely true.
Diversifying the marketplace is a win/win in my mind as well. Now if we could just convince a few of those people to come over here... right?
I don't know who was responsible but there were a few kind of big names that joined us on that "other" site that we spawned from, but their posts were just reposts of what they were doing on IG and FB and I suppose that is fine - if only a few of them would get over here I think it could be great for HIVE.
The onboarding process is too difficult on Hive for the average user. It has taken me a ton of effort just trying to get people through the signup process for Signal or Telegram and well, if they can't handle that, there is no chance they are going to use posting and active keys properly, or even understand what they are.
Tell me about it. I basically had to walk my few real life friends on here through the process by their hands. When the received the keys they were like "whoa dude, I'm not gonna remember these!"
That's kind of the point... save them somewhere safe... I can see my auties and uncles attempting to write the keys down on a piece of paper... smh
GAB is a Twitter like service. The Facebook alternative is https://www.minds.com.
And more importantly GAB is the older service and has already survived several de-platforming attempts and survived those. Unlike Parler I have no doubt that the battle hardened GAB team will prevail again.
Thanks for the correction. I don't use Gab but just poked around it on my mobile. I have no intention of using it but yes, I hope they can prevail. There should be alternatives to every product that exists including social media.