The Curious Case To Restore Parler 🌐
January 31, 2021
One of the more frustrating misconceptions about internet policy and Terms of Service (TOS) enforcement is the mistaken notion that persons working for technology companies are somehow elitist, crunchy-granola eating, left-wing hippies who simply seek to silence conservative voices. That is so far from reality it is physically painful to hear. Policy makers and legal operations professionals are dedicated to balance. They are masterful at weighing multiple perspectives and multivariate analysis; carefully weaving all applicable factors into their ultimate decisions. Following recent events and top news headlines, more than a handful of folks reached-out to ask me about censorship, and so...
Dedicated some time to listen, read, understand, ask, empathize, and seek resolution toward a fair-and-balanced outcome. The topic starts with brief notes on suspending Donald Trump's social media accounts and proceeds to focus on Parler's subsequent disappearance from the internet.
The following is one meditation on the topic; ideas to consider. This is not necessarily reflect opinion nor final stance on the complex, ongoing, and ever-evolving topic.
It started in the final days of Donald Trump’s Presidency. Top social media companies finally suspended Donald's accounts. Action was long overdue. For far too long, Donald Trump peddled baseless conspiracy theories, disinformation, and misinformation on topics ranging from election fraud to the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to President Obama's birth certificate. Rather unfortunate tech companies chose the most convenient time (for themselves) to take enforcement action. On a busy Friday evening, 5pm Pacific, overshadowed by news headlines about the recent ‘insurrection’ and ‘impeachment’, Silicon Valley grew a miniature backbone. Click, click, click, suspended.
Nevertheless, credit given for finally doing the right thing in enforcing their own policies. Not easy work to convince the C-Suite to be bold. And yet, this policy enforcement should not ever be regarded as bold; companies made good on enforcing their own policies, which they do thousands of times per day. Companies are merely now consistent with prior decisions to suspend other serial violators including Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones for repeated violations of Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. So, while it’s never too late to do the right thing, urge large-companies to think deeper about policy enforcement and be braver, faster.
On January 10, 2021, Parler, the popular conservative-leaning alternative to Twitter, disappeared entirely. In the span of a few hours, Parler was removed from several online platforms spanning the Google Play Store, Apple App store, and disconnected from domain host Amazon Web Services (AWS). In an ill-advised move one can only assume arose from frustration and desperation, Parler proceeded to sue Amazon. In short order, Amazon’s legal response correctly points-out, as have others, Parler’s case rings hollow.
Amazon’s rebuttal illuminates several of Parler’s issues; most notably: content moderation and legal compliance can make or break a social media company. Writing policies for a company to enforce on millions of humans is challenging, actually enforcing those policies at scale for millions of humans and bots is yet even more challenging. To complicate matters, communicating policy decisions across internal- and external channels while simultaneously responding to an existing backlog of complaints and simultaneously fielding new inbound reports is beyond difficult; it’s borderline impossible.
Take into account most teams working in the vast arena of Trust & Safety and legal compliance notoriously lack software engineering resources for their jobs. Parler is likely no exception, and so Parler’s situation begins to become clearer, for me; all judgments aside.
Amazon’s legal response appears to confirm the suspicion. It notes that, at the time of suspension, Parler was in receipt of over 20,000 open / pending complaints to moderate content. Jaws ought to be fitting the floor right about now -- that number is staggering. Accordingly, it seems fair to estimate Parler was between 1-2 weeks behind schedule; perhaps even 2-4 weeks behind schedule -- and that’s just to moderate content. To complicate matters, it’s a safe bet that law enforcement (State and Federal) all across the U.S. was sending a substantial volume of requests to Parler requesting user data, related to incriminating posts leading up to the illegal events on January 6th. In sum, Parler seems to have been swamped with work, potentially to a paralyzing degree. For that reason, several platforms blocked them.
Amazon’s legal response highlights something rather obvious: Parler was never actually a free-speech utopia. At least not to the extent most Parler users misunderstood. Experienced content moderators know this, but for posterity, recommend folks use the Wayback Machine to (re)review Parler’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
Principle #1 of Parler’s Community Guidelines states the following:
“Parler will not knowingly allow itself to be used as a tool for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts. We will remove reported member content that a reasonable and objective observer would believe constitutes or evidences such activity. We may also remove the accounts of members who use our platform in this way.”
Principle #1 is Parler’s warning, close as one can expect them to forecast: ‘Hey, please do not be boneheads and organize an insurrection or do anything horrible with our Service’. Users either did not read or comprehend or care about Principle #1. No doubt, Parler would be compelled to remove content and provide law enforcement with data. Larger, more interesting question is just how much content was removed by Parler and how much User data was provided for the period spanning summer 2020 - January 10, 2021. Hope to see Parler's inaugural Transparency Report in 2021.
All of this to say -- Parler’s suspension and removal actually appears to have been the correct policy action taken by Google, Apple, and Amazon’s AWS on January 10, 2021. Now, three weeks later, the proper policy decision for Google, Apple, and Amazon might be to now prepare to restore Parler. Yes, to restore parler. Perhaps sometime in February/March.
Parler v2.0: You may be raising an eyebrow right now, wondering, "Why the heck would anybody want Parler to return?" or simply hurling a slew of choice obscenities in my direction for suggesting the possibility; fair enough. Can imagine at minimum these debates underway inside tech companies, discussing potential to restore Parler:
First, every living person deserves a safe space to talk, learn, grow, and mature. One will not deviate from this position. Consider Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states:
“everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Parler’s existence and availability, seems to coexists in harmony with the entirety of the UDHR; particularly Articles 1, 7, 18, 26(2), and 27. To be clear, Parler has a reciprocal obligation to the larger community. Parler is responsible for making good-faith efforts to abide by all applicable rules, laws, and societal norms.
Second, Parler’s participation in technology can foster innovation. Parler is uniquely situated to offer technological and social benefits to the public. On the technology side, Parler’s niche user base could provide organic feedback which potentially influences the broader technology industry in the form of products, features, and/or patents. Beyond mere technological innovation, Parler could offer social benefits to the larger public. If both sides of the political spectrum can agree on anything, it is the existence of an ideological divide. At best, Parler could help bridge some of the persistent ideological gaps in society. Again, so long as dialogue is fruitful and complies with applicable rules, laws, and societal norms.
Finally, Parler alone should decide its own fate (sink or swim). In one scenario [A]: Parler returns, elects to not enforce its content moderation obligations yet again, and is removed permanently. Fine, it sinks but at least it has decided its own fate. In another scenario [B]: Parler returns, fulfills its content moderation obligations, and survives for years to come with a healthy User base. Fine, it swims. In yet another scenario [C]: Parler returns, fulfills its content moderation obligations and, organically, Users decide they prefer some other social media service. Fine, Parler sinks. Either scenario A, B, or C is preferable to the existing state of affairs where some third-party corporation (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.) decides to keep Parler disappeared from the web.
It remains my sincere belief that neither Google or Apple nor Amazon or Judge wish to be held responsible for the ultimate fate of Parler.
If Parler does not return, some other clone service will simply pop-up in its absence. Perhaps wiser to view Parler as monolith; symbolic of the broader experiment in conservative social media. Best for Google, Apple, and Amazon AWS to allow Parler’s return with vastly improved content moderation policies and service-level agreements, in accordance with State and Federal laws, and the same expectations we place on all existing social media platforms. Conservative conversation should exist in plain sight, open to online debate, not fragmented across the dark web.
For these reasons, I do believe Google, Apple, and Amazon might restore Parler. If/when this occurs, perhaps we should applaud the decision. As explained herein, such a decision might reflect sound policy enforcement and fair business decisions.
In the meantime, fully expect some changes within parler; specifically policy updates and/or organizational changes.
Peace & Love, Worldwide ✌🏼❤️🌍
- anthony