This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and public breakdown. If you haven't been following the news, West has spent the week saying increasingly unhinged things, not just about politics but about Pete Davidson, his wife, and (if I'm remembering right) his kids and the fake actor children that have been installed in his former home to corrupt them. He was interviewed for a show on Fox and a big chunk of what he said was edited out and later leaked; the "people at the Gap" knew about Uvalde, Kanye is now a Black Hebrew Israelite, &c. He's quite evidently sick, and these Parler people are scamming him.
Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech.<p>I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda.<p>The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.<p>Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.
How could an average outside observer distinguish between another's mental illness and a guy who's just a real out of the box thinker who might be wrong about many ideas but might also add value to the world by perceiving reality in an atypical way?<p>A lot of posters are claiming Kanye is mentally ill and unable to manage his own affairs. What is the direct evidence of this? And I don't simply mean "provide examples of opinions he's said that I don't understand or care for".<p>I think it's pretty dangerous to be labeling people involved in the national dialogue as mentally ill without a diagnosis, or at least some substantial and direct evidence. This label could be weaponized by an authoritarian political movement in a very dangerous way if that's the precedent we're using.
Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech. Can't make people listen to your speech. There's no protection against civil (ie, non governmental) action against your speech. You want freedom, host it your self and be prepared to accept the consequences and gains.<p>Go to Speakers Corner and have a go. Put up a website. Buy a TV/Radio station, or Internet provider.
I'm gonna be a contrarian here and say I'm genuinely excited to see what Yeezy does with the platform, assuming its not just a passing interest. For all his antics, his work in music and fashion is legit, and those two are a large reason people are on social media today.<p>If we required artists be 100% free of mental illness, we would not have Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama Yayoi, Michelangelo, Brian Wilson, etc. Let him be him, enjoy what he creates, and take it all with a grain of salt.
I think others may be missing the fact of why Kanye could be buying Parler<p>- Kanye just had his bank account closed by JP Morgan (for what appears to be his beliefs)<p><a href="https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/13/kanye-west-bank-jp-morgan-end-relationship-anti-semitic/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/13/kanye-west-bank-jp-morgan-end...</a><p>- Kanye was kicked off instagram & twitter<p><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-instagram-account-restricted-anti-semitic-1234607759/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-ins...</a><p>- It's still unclear exactly why both occurred. Supposedly it's antisemitism, but he also just wore a "white lives matter" shirt<p><a href="https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/kanye-west-defends-white-lives-matter-shirt-on-tucker-carlson/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/kanye-west-defends-white-lives...</a><p>The connection between all of this could lead someone to want to buy their own social media company.
> In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial<p>In my opinion controversy and political incorrectness are Okay. I don't think people should be too concerned about hurting others' feelings when discussing objective phenomena or expressing their own opinion (as long as they acknowledge their subjectivity) . Nevertheless obvious (although not to everyone) absurd, blatant lies and manipulations shouldn't be covered by the free speech umbrella. I wish people could correctly judge what they read themselves, taking what they read and what they feel critically, but many apparently can not.
Hey guys, I have an idea: why don't we try building free-speech protocols rather than free-speech platforms?<p>Humans are fallible. We like to think we could build something where people can talk freely, but if the ability to censor something we don't like is presented, at some point nearly everybody will take that action because they personally deem it necessary for some greater good.<p>Ultimately, protocols that cannot be altered or censored (at least without significant and difficult amounts of effort) are what are necessary to obtain true free speech.<p>There are some groups that are understanding this, and working accordingly. LBRY for example, says exactly this in their "what is LBRY" article:<p>> Building protocols, not platforms, is the best way to secure a free, open internet.<p>As long as people use centralized services that are susceptible to fallible human intervention, that fallibility will be acted upon.<p>Centralization was adequate back when the internet was first brewing. Many people had common interests, people were respectful of others' data often enough that encrypted network protocols weren't deemed necessary. Now, encryption is almost required because so many people have bad intentions. The internet has grown, and so have the amount of conflicting demographics using it.<p>Just as we had to adopt encryption on a wide scale to keep the internet usable, adopting decentralization at a wide scale will be too. And that includes making it easy enough for normies to access that they think nothing else of it, much like how they don't care what encryption is, as long as there's a lock icon in their search bar.
I think this makes sense from a business perspective. Social media is actually a surprisingly hard business to make money at - look at Twitter. It's only the superscale businesses that make good money - Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok. And the dynamic is that because these businesses are primarily making money through marketing they need to keep a fairly neutral brand in order to retain an advertiser friendly platform. So what's the alternative? The WashPo business model - find a wealthy benefactor who believes in the mission to fund it.<p>It doesn't necessarily have to be super expensive to run what is essentially a forum, especially if it's not going to hit massive scale. The only problem is that I don't think owning these platforms will give the kind of cultural relevance that these wealthy far-right types are chasing. So at some point they're going to lose interest and then you're back to the business model problem.
makes sense to own the means of communication, to shape the narrative.<p>Ye on Parler will present a pretty clear challenge to US norms of freedom of speech - he is a vocal anti-semite (whilst at the same time claiming to be Jewish)and I doubt very much that ownership of any platform will moderate his views.
Given that Parler is primarily associated with alt-right users, this purchase is quite amusing. Yet it underlines how the right to speak freely is under threat online and I am not sure if Billionaires further centralizing access is the right way forward.
I mean you can say “men are trash”, “white people are trash” and so on, but at the same time you are not allowed to say anything against jewish people or other people? Isn’t it kinda hypocritical? Maybe we should not allow toxic behavior at all and have a civil discourse about someone is feeling towards some group of people to allow him to change his mind? Personal attacks and hatred will not do any good this will only prove to that person that he is right.
There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm seeing. Everyone now seems to think free speech is too dangerous to try and promote anymore. It's been a shift over a couple years.<p>I'm not supporting Ye or any of his bullshit, but some of the comments on here are really chillingly authoritarian.<p>Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even if they or Kanye want it to, which I seriously doubt anyway. They don't "have it now" and they won't have it tomorrow either. Still, it's strange how HN flips so violently against free speech when the content is obviously offensive and low quality.<p>People need to be better stewards of their own beliefs, not simply shielded from malicious, dim or unsavory ones out there in public.<p>As an aside, I can't believe celebrities have the sway they do. Today's breed talks like such imbeciles; I have no idea how they keep people's interest.
You people are saying how that is crazy or Kanye has gone crazy, having a breakdown etc, but there is a method to the madness: He ran for president in 2020. He has been posturing himself as a conservative since a while. This move fits into that pattern and signals that he is going to go into GOP politics.
"Parler was later reinstated on both app stores after agreeing to more closely moderate posts"<p>Free speech, and by free they mean speech that they can control.
Same story from:
CNN Business - Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler - <a href="https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_ad4adf7e27837537f8b07523aba9659b" rel="nofollow">https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_ad4adf7e27837537f8b07523ab...</a>
Associated Press - Kanye West to buy conservative social media platform Parler - <a href="https://apnews.com/article/kanye-west-parler-5b1cbdb1f311ae9de70b3d4e247e6201" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/kanye-west-parler-5b1cbdb1f311ae9...</a>
Reuters - Kanye West to buy social media app Parler - <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/parler-be-acquired-by-kanye-west-2022-10-17/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/technology/parler-be-acquired-by-kan...</a>
IIRC Trump wouldn't join Parler unless it agreed (among other things) to censor his critics. This seems to be a pattern with Trump: he demands that people be more loyal to him personally than to any abstract principle (including free speech absolutism).
"Great Minds Discuss Ideas. Average Minds Discuss Events. Small Minds Discuss People."<p>I feel there's already disproportionate discussion here about a person and their cult of personality here. This doesn't feel quite in the spirit of HN. Even during the Elon Musk Twitter debacles there was still separate threads about the business dynamics and whether he is playing some kind of 4D chess. The attempts to quickly discredits Ye West's other accomplishment feels borderline like anti-blackness, except with the passive aggressive pretense of being concerned about his mental well-being. For example, Kanye West was part of the Fendi intern cohort which, as a former fashion design student myself, I find to be far more exclusive and prestigious than a Google internship (which I was offered). He's not just a musician but he's behind the scenes for making other established artists including Jay-Z and Beyonce, also billionaires. Even the title of the article being "Kanye West is buying Parler" feels disrespect when he said he goes by Ye, now. This is inconsistent with tech's community plight of respecting self-identification.<p>This is a community to talk about entrepreneurship, so let's talk about that. How are people jumping to the conclusion that he is being "scammed" without even knowing the terms of the deal? On that note, how much do you think this acquisition will go for? I noticed Parler has 3.3K ratings average 3 stars on the IOs App Store and Truth Social has 121k, averaging 4.5 stars. I will go out on a limb and question whether the 4D chess with Twitter and Parler will somehow involve Truth Social / DWAC.
Makes this tweet all the more relevant -
<a href="https://nitter.net/JudiciaryGOP/status/1578174670854975491" rel="nofollow">https://nitter.net/JudiciaryGOP/status/1578174670854975491</a>
Kanye has burnt a lot of bridges, but he still enjoys a healthy portion of popularity. A very different form of popularity to that of both Trump and Musk too.<p>Musk and Trump's audiences, I'll admit to guessing about this, are passionate for sure, but:<p>- In Trump's case, tech literacy is low, the average age is relatively high, and disposable time they have, is probably low<p>- Musk's audience is undoubtedly tech literate, but I would guess that the age demographic is similar to Trump's, and would further guess their disposable time is similar, if not lower (we nerds barely have time for HN!)<p>Kanye's audience though... They're young, and they already live online. I can't imagine it overtaking Twitter at any point in the future, but I can definitely imagine the venture gaining more traction than Trump's attempt. And that will encourage other similarly minded business people to support his venture.
The antidote for all who gain information via the Internet is to develop their common sense and critical thinking skills. We must know what to question and then, how to pull answers to form our judgements and our resulting actions. These skills need to be core to all education curriculum.<p>This is most critical for judgements that lead to consequential decisions and actions. Whether you love someone or hate them, those feelings lead to bad outcomes if not based on correct information and reasoning.
If you're an advisor/accountant/manger to Kanye, do you just shake your head and sigh when stuff like this happens?<p>Or maybe they don't give a damn because they are also financially benefiting from this guy's mental illness?
Absolute free speech platforms don't work for the majority of people because they have no way of constraining participants to the Overton Window.<p>It may be hard to understand for some, but there are topics that make people highly uncomfortable. These people prefer an environment that 'protects' them from fringe ideas.<p>The issue is, the 'Overton Enforcement' doesn't work when a large minority (say, 30% of users) has ideas considered highly controversial to the majority of users. Most people actually do want to live in a bubble most of the time so being exposed to these opinions undermines their sanity.<p>A 100% free speech platform could work fairly well though if it was sophisticated enough to understand what a user does and doesn't want to see and then only occasionally expose them to controversial content. Kind of like TikTok's 'for you' page but with less censorship. Or, perhaps, let users control their exposure directly. Twitter doesn't have the technical capability to pull this off though so they are stuck with occasionally infuriating large minorities of users.