It's unclear exactly what these graphs are showing. The axes are not labeled well - why does "relative" frequency matter? From my reading of this post, all the author is saying is that the rate of those posts went up over time, relative to themselves. But if they're still an exceedingly rare occurrence, that tells a different story. How frequently were they appearing overall? What percentage of all Parler users posted messages calling for violence explicitly? What percentage of all Parler posts did the same? These are the questions that matter more in my opinion.
Until then, this claim seems like a leap:
> It is clear that Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians to spread virally on the platform, either through gross negligence or willing ignorance.
The recent NYT article that appeared on HN (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...) mentions examples of posts being moderated and removed. So there is a non-zero amount of moderation happening, apparently? Let's also keep in mind, Parler is a 30-person company. How can they keep up with the deluge of traffic they received? If the answer to censored speech is "go make your own social network" but then people turn around to deplatform a small social network that does not have the funding, monetization, or staffing of a megacorp like Twitter or Facebook, then there is no viable competition for the big players. They not only have the competitive moat of network effects, they also are able to collude with each other to kill any new competition.
And if these companies like Facebook and Twitter face no realistic competition, we should recognize that they are simply public utilities operating the digital public town square on the public's behalf. As such, they must be held to a higher standard and required to carry all speech that isn't illegal.
Until then, this claim seems like a leap:
> It is clear that Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians to spread virally on the platform, either through gross negligence or willing ignorance.
The recent NYT article that appeared on HN (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-p...) mentions examples of posts being moderated and removed. So there is a non-zero amount of moderation happening, apparently? Let's also keep in mind, Parler is a 30-person company. How can they keep up with the deluge of traffic they received? If the answer to censored speech is "go make your own social network" but then people turn around to deplatform a small social network that does not have the funding, monetization, or staffing of a megacorp like Twitter or Facebook, then there is no viable competition for the big players. They not only have the competitive moat of network effects, they also are able to collude with each other to kill any new competition.
And if these companies like Facebook and Twitter face no realistic competition, we should recognize that they are simply public utilities operating the digital public town square on the public's behalf. As such, they must be held to a higher standard and required to carry all speech that isn't illegal.