The biggest companies in the world worked together to destroy President Trump and upstart free-speech platform Parler. You can love Trump, hate Trump, or be extremely conflicted about Trump, but you can't deny the fact that the richest, most powerful corporations in the world have claimed the right and power to decide who can speak and who can't. What's playing out is completely bizarre.
As Silicon Valley censorship radically escalated over the past several months -- banning pre-election reporting by The New York Post about the Biden family, denouncing and deleting multiple posts from the U.S. President and then terminating his access altogether, mass-removal of right-wing accounts -- so many people migrated to Parler that it was catapulted to the number one spot on the list of most-downloaded apps on the Apple Play Store, the sole and exclusive means which iPhone users have to download apps. "Overall, the app was the 10th most downloaded social media app in 2020 with 8.1 million new installs," reported TechCrunch.It looked as if Parler had proven critics of Silicon Valley monopolistic power wrong. Their success showed that it was possible after all to create a new social media platform to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And they did so by doing exactly what Silicon Valley defenders long insisted should be done: if you don't like the rules imposed by tech giants, go create your own platform with different rules.
But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies -- Amazon, Google and Apple -- abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.
If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
Big Brother claims that Trump and Parler are inciting violence, but the truth is that the Capitol Hill riot was planned on Facebook and Twitter. (I condemn all political violence in America.)
The pretext for singling out Parler is that some people have posted threats there, which is a violation of Parler policy. There is no claim that the riot at the Capitol on January 6 was coordinated through Parler -- not even Apple, in its letter terminating services, made that claim. USA Today, citing other sources, gave examples of calls for violence prior to the Capitol Hill riot -- on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and a single video on Parler:Violent rhetoric including threats against elected officials and police officers flooded all social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube, not just online forums popular with extremists.....On Facebook, pages and private and public groups urged civil war if Democrats were not arrested for election interference, alleged police officers were assisting "Antifa" and claimed "Antifa" members were impersonating "patriots" at the Capitol. A video encouraged protesters to bring pepper spray, tear gas, batons, tasers and knives.
A Facebook page called Red-State Secession shared addresses of "enemies" including members of Congress. One post urged people to prepare "to use force to defend civilization." Facebook removed the page Wednesday.
Even the president of anti-conservative Media Matters points to Facebook as the main organizing site:
Facebook had much bigger role in creating conditions that led to as well as organizing for January 6 event. We tracked people using FB to organize attendees to bring guns to the Jan 6 event. FB did nothing.So why aren't Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit being deplatformed? Why are they picking on Parler? [...]
So the claim that Parler represents some unique risk to safety is a lie. It's a lie driven by politics, exploiting the justifiable national outrage at the Capitol Hill riot to purge political rivals through unprecedended collusion among the internet oligopolies, furthered by isolation tactics to cut Parler off from legal and other services.
To top it off, Twitter just had the balls to write this.
The response to Twitter has been widespread mockery, as it should be. Will the people behind this behavior come to realize that they've cast themselves as the villains?
As Princess Leia told Grand Moff Tarkin right before the destruction of Alderaan: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Tarkin didn't care about public sentiment because he believed he could force submission through fear. He destroyed Parler Alderaan as a warning to any other uppity planets that might object to Imperial domination.
While we're making Star Wars references, remember that Obi-Wan Kenobi told Darth Vader: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Well... Gab has already brought Trump back from the dead.
Gab CEO completely backed up President Trump's Twitter account before it was deleted and recreated him on Gab! What's even more impressive is he did this while traffic was up 700% and under attack from leftists. Gab is currently having servers upgraded to handle the large influx in traffic but we're told it should stabilize soon.
Will he be more powerful than we can possibly imagine? (I hope not.)
The Left doesn't realize that it's reifying -- acting out -- making real -- bringing into existence -- an instance of the Hero's Journey, and they've cast Trump as the Hero (e.g., Simba) and themselves as the Tyrannical King (e.g., Scar). Note: I'm not saying Trump's a Hero -- the Left is putting him into that role. I'm not saying the Left is the Tyrannical King -- they're taking that role on themselves. I can only speculate why the Left is doing this, but it looks like a foolish plan.
