Ten days ago, when the media called Biden "President-elect" and Biden began focusing on the White House team this week, Trump was still tweeting "he won, I didn't lose, see you in court" entanglement. It's better to go over it and announce that you will run for the presidency in 2024 than the two old men. )
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Wang Wang
Source / silicon rabbit race
Technology companies in Silicon Valley, especially social platforms, are on thin ice during the election season. While busy dealing with the fake news on the platform, and at the same time being controversial because of standing in line or not standing in line, it can be said that it is a dilemma. However, a previously unknown social app Parler took the opportunity to rise and reap a wave of traffic.
Founded in 2018, the number of downloads of Parler, which was launched in 2018, surged by 980000 from November 3 to 8 this year (during election week), and ranked first on both IOS app store and Google play. The vast majority of these nearly 1 million people have the same identity tag: conservative supporters.
Stop the Steal
It's a group of people who believe they're treated differently.
According to a Pew poll this year, 73% of Americans think social platforms will deliberately censor political views they don't support, especially Republican members or supporters who favor Republicans: 90% of them think social platforms will censor political views, and 69% believe that big technology companies are more democratic.
That is to say, most conservatives believe that technology giants are using their power to mask conservative voices - though it may not be.
This view has intensified in recent years, finally pushing the small company Parler to the forefront during the 2020 election. One of the strongest fires is the stop the steel movement.
The stop the steel movement, which was launched on Facebook, was launched in response to trump's call to "stop the count" during the election. Facebook ruled the group "established around the illegitimate electoral process" and had a tendency to incite violence, and quickly banned it on November 5.
More than 300000 stop the steal members lost their positions. Turning to look at trump himself on twitter, he was also mercilessly limited by the platform. In their grief and indignation, a large number of users accused Facebook, twitter and other social media giants of unfair treatment while following the call of conservative opinion leaders to unload twitter and leave Parler.
At present, the Parler has more than 8 million users, most from the conservative camp.
KOLs active on it include the official account of Trump's campaign team, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, political commentator Sean Hannity (because trump is restricted, he appeals to netizens to leave twitter and go to Parler), talk show host mark Levin (Facebook blocked for "sharing fake news many times"), and Internet celebrity anchor diamond and Silk (restricted by Facebook for sharing dangerous content), etc.
It is said that Parler also intends to invite trump himself to the platform after he leaves the White House.
Now Parler is basically a paradise for conservatives. Content and accounts that have been banned and restricted on Twitter and Facebook are usually revived on Parler shortly after, of course, the stop the steel campaign is among them.
There is no peaceful town square in the world
On the outside, there is no essential difference between the functions of Parler and twitter. Through the description on the official website, we can still see a lot of clues.
Parler defines himself as "the town square of the world". Here, users can freely and openly express their opinions without fear of being "de platform"; regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age and religion, all users are treated equally by the platform and can "be themselves" to their heart's content.
At the same time, Parler also promises that the identity authentication process can prevent the robot zombie numbers from running wild (in fact, uploading real photos, driving licenses, etc.), and guarantee the privacy of users, and will not sell user information to third parties.
Of course, the most worth mentioning are "no deleting posts, no blocking" and "no algorithm push". Parler mentioned in the community guide that the platform will minimize the deletion and screening, and return the right to make judgment to the user; the platform will not interfere with the user's information flow - "and will not pretend to have the ability to do so" - but will provide a series of auxiliary tools for users to decide what content to watch and what not to see.
If you think about it, Parler's starting point is to target mainstream social media such as twitter and Facebook.
Parler didn't specifically explain it, but judging from the choice of words, sentences and pictures, it is indeed a conservative group who is more inclined to the tradition.
In recent years, there has been a growing distrust of social media, or technology companies with ubiquitous tentacles.
The most intuitive feeling is that there is no escape from privacy. Not only social media, but also search engines, chat tools, even map apps, photo apps, and input app, are probes to track your trend. As long as you type in or say the key words orally, nine out of ten, you will soon find that social platforms start to push you relevant advertisements frequently, and shopping websites will immediately and intimately guess what you like.
What's more, even if you turn off the camera, microphone, address book and other permissions, it is difficult to put an end to such a thing.
Coincidentally, in September, an instagram user in New Jersey sued Facebook, the parent company of instagram, for not actively launching itiPhoneIn the case of cameras, instagram is still secretly using camera features.
The two enterprises have made an explanation respectively. Whether they choose to believe or not depends on their opinions.
Even if you can turn a blind eye and let go of private topics, the false advertisements, junk messages and provocative remarks on social platforms can make you want to put down your mobile phone. The algorithms and standards that social platforms use to handle this kind of information are mysterious. With marketing numbers and robots everywhere, the platform seems to turn a blind eye. Users send a daily news, but they often find that they are followed by the sellers again. It's funny and funny.
Users' disappointment with social giants has given small companies opportunities. In recent years, a number of so-called twitter substitutes have emerged, almost all of which focus on "real free speech".
However, history tells us that the culture of harmony and fraternity is always fragile, especially when the user volume becomes larger and larger. Compared with other competitors, Parler, who suddenly broke the circle, came to this step first.
When the forest is big, all kinds of birds come. For example, those who are interested in the freedom of speech and want to free themselves, such as those who specially "go out" to ridicule and revile the Conservatives, such as those who deliberately create false news, cheat traffic and defraud money.
Since the election season, Parler's small team has had to work overtime to deal with the explosion of malicious information and hate speech, but the effect is not satisfactory. According to Jim Salter, a journalist who has experienced Parler, Parler is like a time machine. Under every topic, there is a lot of crudely low-cost junk information.
Because of the promise not to delete posts easily, when the false news rumors come to Parler himself, the founder of Parler just sends a rumor refuting tweet. At the same time, the fake news is allowed to continue to spread on teller. Then, according to the principle of freedom of speech, "it is up to the user to judge whether it is true or not". I don't know if the founder himself is embarrassed.
Over the past few months, John Matze, the 27 year old founder of Parler, should be able to realize that there is no quiet time, but the traffic is not there.
In June, it issued a statement on its own account, saying that the platform encourages freedom of speech, but there is also an inviolable bottom line. However, he and his team obviously underestimated the difficulty of guarding the baseline.
When they are really faced with a million level free speech, five or six community codes are far from enough. They have to force themselves to think about a large number of special and specific issues. It is a lot of work just to define sensitive words.
In a media interview, when asked how to determine whether n-word is illegal, John Matze obviously considered this question for the first time. After thinking about it, he gave a not simple answer - if he intends to implement this rule, Parler's audit team will be busy.
Romantic town square only exists in the ideal, and the operation rules of the real world are always complex. At that point, we still have to face the problems that Twitter has faced and is facing.
So it's late to hit the face. Some users found that the official account of the trump campaign seems to be using robots, sending campaign ads about every 30 minutes, and copying the same copy in the comments of many ordinary users.
Some users complained to the official, but no reply was received. In addition, many left leaning people tried to express their support for the Democratic Party and against the Republican Party on Parler, which were soon cancelled. In short, whether intentionally or unintentionally, Parler's Liberal Democratic and unbiased signboard has basically fallen to pieces.
A previously publicized cyber escape
With regard to the general election and Parler's exit, critics tend to pay more attention to the division of left and right positions in American society and the polarization of public opinion on social media. In this incident, there is another thing worthy of our attention, that is, why many people think that the Silicon Valley technology giants who claim to be "free speech party and free speech faction" for many years are no longer free?
About ten years ago, it was our honeymoon with social media. People find that social media is not only a decentralized Internet, but also an important driving force for public issues. But in recent years, criticism from the government and the public has been rampant.
As long as you pay close attention to it, whether in English or in Chinese, there is a mysterious word: capital.
"Capital" can boost a person's popularity or suppress him until his social death; "capital" can not only mercilessly manipulate puppets, but also influence ordinary people's choices imperceptibly. It can be said that in the cognition of many netizens, the word with unclear direction is basically equivalent to a behind the scenes boss with all hands and eyes.
It is an open secret that social media and big capital are deeply bound. Even large social platforms themselves have become emerging capital forces because they master data and algorithms. If the pervasive personalized advertising can be tolerated, then Cambridge analysis of the incident is really making the public angry.
The capital and the elite form an alliance of attack and defense, and care and influence the life and death of ordinary people, but ordinary people can't do anything about it. This situation is extremely disgusted by ordinary netizens regardless of their positions. In recent years, there have been frequent campaigns to offload social media and protest the monopoly of technology giants.
In a sensitive and tense time like the general election, people's distrust of social media has been rekindled. Although it is said that the main crowd of this "escape" is conservatives, the starting point is misunderstanding and prejudice, but to some extent, it does express the people's yearning to get out of the control of the giants.
Parler isn't good enough, but it's a temporary haven.
There are coincidences and companies that have made profits in this election. However, the crude and primitive features of this early app due to its lack of strong technology are just bonus items for some people. Just like city workers, they can't help but go to the border town to purify their souls. After staying in the magnificent Skynet of technology giants for a long time, they always want to find a quiet little corner to breathe.
Even so, it doesn't mean that parlers are more "just" than twitter and Facebook.
The freedom that Parler shows now is mainly because the platform is small enough. With the expansion of users and the increase of influence, if they still want to mix in the mainstream market, will Parler bear the social responsibility and accept the supervision of the public? This is an issue that Silicon Valley's big companies have been trying to balance over the past decade, and it is also a dispute over the amendment of the 230 exemption clause of the communication code act.
Moreover, from the perspective of public opinion ecology, de algorithmization can not solve the problems of information cocoon room and filtering bubble. In short, before the advent of social media, would we have read all the newspapers to grasp the whole picture of an event and always pursue impartiality, impartiality and objectivity?
In 2010, Eli Pariser put forward "filter bubble" in "don't let algorithm control you". It refers to the recommendation algorithm that provides filtered results for personalized search
Facebook is 16 years old and Twitter is 14 years old, and they almost shape the image of the modern Internet. As their bodies grew larger and larger, the young dragon slaughterers did not know when they had the appearance of a dragon.
As time goes by, a new dragon butcher appears again. As for the company itself, it's not clear whether the company will really compete with Twitter and start a new social era.
However, this small wave is like a mirror, reflecting the complex and multifaceted social reality. This previously publicized cyber escape may just be the beginning, and the activities of reflecting on technology and resisting capital will not stop for a long time.
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