by Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all dayHome, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Do we really want to live in a world where any contrary thought must be censored, stamped out, and prevented from seeing the light of day?
This is what I saw this morning when I went to open Parler. We knew that Amazon’s AWS service was planning to cut it off because they thought the content “dangerous”.
The effective disappearance of Parler shows the growing breadth and effect of efforts by big technology companies to restrict content they label as dangerous after last week’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Amazon had said in a letter to Parler over the weekend that it had seen a steady increase in violent content on the site and said Parler’s efforts to remove it were inadequate.
Violent content, my ass! It is clearly a move to suppress any dissenting or contrarian voices. If your argument is so weak that it cannot stand up to criticism, then it isn’t that much of an argument to begin with.
What the Big Tech oligarchs need to fear, and indeed we all should fear, is that by removing ways for people to be heard that someone, anyone, who has nothing left to lose will engage in lone wolf attacks. Communication and the ability to be heard serves a moderating influence. With that gone, grievances fester and they harden putting all of us at risk.