Gab rules, Parler drools.
Why Parler sucks, and why Gab is superior
I hate social media, but I’ve had accounts on Gab, Parler, and Twitter for about a year, so I’ve used them enough to get a feel for the usability and member engagement. I’ve been in the software development world in various capacities for almost thirty years, so I have some opinions on how things work in this space and what’s possible.At this point, sadly, I think Parler is a bad joke. If someone got me into meeting to hear a pitch for a conservative-friendly platform modeled after Parler, in 2020, I’d throw them out of my office and probably fire the person who set up the meeting. I’ve been supportive of Brad Parscale, but I have no idea what in the hell he’s thinking here.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and have nothing against Parler itself. I would love an alternative to Gab that would give the President another platform he could use to communicate with us, but right now, Gab seems to be the only platform that could accommodate the scale and functionality required by the President to move from Twitter.
As y’all no doubt are aware, I share this guy’s feelings about mainstream SM, so don’t have a dog in this fight myself. In fact, some of you folks might be wondering why I’m bothering with this topic at all, considering my complete disinterest in it. The next ‘graph will help explain.
Twitter is like the once-hard core rocker who used to play heavy-metal music and bang chicks all night, but ten years later is cruising the truck stop looking for a driver to blow to get a ride back to CHAZ. It’s sad to see what they’ve become.
Okay, I damned near busted a gut over that one. My overall apathy towards SM aside, I was casting idly about to find out whether I could replace Trump’s long-since-defunct Twitter feed over in the sidebar with Soopersekret’s Gab one. I had no idea whether it was possible to embed a Gab feed, honestly. And I still don’t, due to being sidetracked by the above post. I know you can’t embed individual Gab posts, so probably not.
Either way, sometime this evening I’ll either replace Trump’s unjustly-extinguished Twitter feed or remove it and leave that space unoccupied. There’s no point in leaving the dead feed up, so it’s gone in any event. I’ll likely have other site news over the next few days as well, some of which I’m pretty dang excited about. It’s been a rockin’ week so far, I must say.
Update! Okay, Trump feed gone, Trump Jr’s embedded. As Bill said when he did the same, Trump The Younger certainly isn’t Trump The Lesser; from what I’ve seen of the kid, he’s more pugnacious and unabashed than Trump is, which is saying something. Junior’s feed might very well, uhhh, Trump his old man’s.
Twitter is dead, so treat it appropriately.
Rule 230 or whatever they call it, where they can be publishers, but exempt from any liabilities for being publishers, is Unconstitutional.
Either you are a common carrier, in which case whatever is carried over your platform is the liability of the user, or you are a publisher, in which case you are responsible for everything that is carried over your platform.
We also have Constitutional issues for how the government handles free speech (and a common carrier and a publisher are different) in most instances.
For example, movies with content that are considered “inappropriate” for younger audiences can be restricted.
Now, I know libertarians can have disagreements over content, but I think most reasonable people can draw the line somewhere. For instance, Trans Story Hour, where children sit on the laps of Freaks, is probably beyond reasonable libertarian’s limits of what Liberty means.
Libertarianism is not a Freak Show Suicide Pact. If it is then I reject Libertarianism.