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      ‘Ordinary Citizens’ Turned Rioters on Jan. 6

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      More from our inbox:Republican Contempt for Voting RightsParler’s Free Speech PrinciplesI’ll Take the Jefferson StatueThe Transition From DrivingI Keep My Files on Paper, Not in the Cloud  Joseph RushmoreTo the Editor:Re “90 Seconds of Rage on the Capitol Steps” (front page, Oct. 17):This is one of the best pieces of reporting on the Jan. 6 riot to appear in some time. The role of Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other committed insurrectionists and troublemakers is easy to understand in connection with the day’s events. The ability of seemingly ordinary, heretofore law-abiding citizens to be swept along in something like this, to the point of violently attacking police officers, is what needs our more considered attention.Donald Trump continues to hold rallies and deliver semi-coherent rants rooted in lies and fantasies. He remains a menace to American democracy, world peace and fundamental human decency.But perhaps we should worry less about the man at the microphone and more about the crowds that continue to cheer him even after all that has come before. Especially after all that has come before.W.T. KoltekLouisville, OhioTo the Editor:What are we to conclude about the insurrection participants you profiled? Their family members, friends and neighbors were quoted as saying that these were nice, giving and very helpful people. Some of the participants stated that they just wanted to be in the rally or to see President Donald Trump.Did they have a short circuit in their brains that made them participate in the riot? Is there some kind of contradiction between their lives back home and their violent behavior on Jan. 6?Not at all. We should not be distracted by the attempts to portray these participants as just ordinary folk. Some of them brought or used other items as weapons, as well as communication devices for coordinating their efforts. These participants engaged in a violent attempt to subvert our democracy and injure or kill our elected officials, as well as the police protectors of our nation’s democratic process and buildings.Actions have consequences. They are responsible for their behavior and must be brought to justice. No niceness can save them from judicial remedies.Robert RosofskyMilton, Mass.To the Editor:This article is chilling because it is likely that Donald Trump, if he becomes president again, would grant a blanket pardon to these and other so-called “patriots” for any federal crimes arising out of the Jan. 6 riots.The article notes that prosecutors and congressional investigators are looking into how “seemingly average citizens — duped by a political lie, goaded by their leaders and swept up in a frenzied throng — can unite in breathtaking acts of brutality.” This statement evokes Kristallnacht and the horror that followed.Donald Trump did goad this group. What these “ordinary citizens” are capable of in the thrall of a demagogue is frightening.Mr. Trump has learned this from Jan. 6. And from past Republican inaction, he’s also learned, and would certainly come into office believing, that the rule of law does not apply to him. That power and mind-set in the hands of this petulant little man are a true danger.Gary H. LevinFort Washington, Pa.Republican Contempt for Voting RightsProtesters demonstrate in support of voting rights on Tuesday in Washington.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Voting Rights Impasse Puts Pressure on Filibuster,” by Carl Hulse (news analysis, Oct. 21):The Senate’s failure to pass the Freedom to Vote Act is a cynical corrosion of democratic values. The act would limit partisan gerrymandering, require disclosure of very large campaign contributions and increase election security. These common-sense safeguards are foundational to a functional democracy.Fortunately, my senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, supported the act. But every Republican senator who blocked it — representing a minority of voters — demonstrates contempt for the system they’re elected to defend.Sarah RichardsonNew YorkParler’s Free Speech Principles Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Hey Parler, My Blue City Isn’t Turning Red,” by Margaret Renkl (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Oct. 18):Parler, a social media platform committed to free speech and to the preservation of a digital “town square,” has recently moved its headquarters to Nashville. Ms. Renkl’s premise is that Parler mistook Nashville to be a right-wing haven, and she zeroes in on my assertion that “Tennessee shares Parler’s vision of individual liberty and free expression.” Ms. Renkl wrongly suggests that these principles are somehow exclusive to those on the political right.At Parler, we draw our inspiration from the Constitution — not the Republican Party’s platform — and we defend the American principle of free speech, which, as far as we are aware, is a principle that transcends party politics and is valued on both the left and the right. Or at least it used to be.It is telling that so many on the left believe that “free expression” and “individual liberty” are code words for “conservative.” Worthy of discussion, isn’t it?George FarmerNashvilleThe writer is the chief executive of Parler.I’ll Take the Jefferson Statue  Dave Sanders for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Jefferson Knocked Off Pedestal in New York Council Chamber” (front page, Oct. 19):Thomas Jefferson was a man of his era who, like all men in all eras, did not always live his ideals. Those ideals — that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that the only legitimate government is by consent of the people — are the cornerstones of every modern democracy, including our own.They have enabled our nation to evolve from a society in which slavery was tolerated into one in which, for most Americans, civil and human rights are paramount.The framers’ vision, and the nation that they founded based on an idea, eclipse the frailties that marked Jefferson and his contemporaries as human beings.As James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”If the New-York Historical Society does not accept the City Council’s Thomas Jefferson statue, the city is welcome to relocate it on my front lawn.Rita C. TobinChappaqua, N.Y.The Transition From Driving Gracia LamTo the Editor:Thanks to Jane E. Brody for her thoughtful column “Keeping Older Drivers Protected on the Road” (Personal Health, Oct. 19).One additional point: To help ease the transition from driving, carefully choose where you live. If possible, pick a location where you can walk (or bike) to many of the places you want or need to go to: stores, doctors, cafes, the library, parks and so on. This will enable you to have a healthier and more pleasant life.And, for those now in your 40s and 50s, think ahead. Move to that more walkable neighborhood before you’re old.David W. SearsBethesda, Md.I Keep My Files on Paper, Not in the Cloud Sophia Foster-DiminoTo the Editor:Re “The Case for Filing Cabinets,” by Pamela Paul (Opinion guest essay, Sunday, Oct. 17):Two phrases from this article — “digitally functional people” and “special I.T. skills” — do not describe this senior citizen who finds file cabinets indispensable.I have an active two-drawer file cabinet that is used daily and culled yearly around tax time or when I need room for additions. My genealogy files contain original documents, pictures and even a braid of hair cut from an ancestor’s head circa 1863 — and my own personal and professional history to pass on to my progeny.My late son was a systems analyst with superior I.T. skills. Our difficulty in accessing his encrypted files in the cloud made his scraps of paper and his voluminous paper files crucial in settling his estate.So I will continue to file away without trying to remember passwords, or relying on internet service, which was out the other day.V.E. FranceWhite Plains, N.Y. More

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      Hey Parler, Nashville Isn’t Turning Red

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      NASHVILLE — When NPR’s tech reporter, Bobby Allyn, tweeted last week that the social media site Parler was moving its headquarters from Nevada to Nashville, a single word came to my mind — a word this newspaper will not publish, no matter that it is the only word in the English language truly appropriate to the situation.Parler’s chief executive, George Farmer, offered some reasons for moving the company. “Tennessee has great weather, an abundance of Southern hospitality, wonderful music and barbecue,” he wrote in an email announcement. “Even more than that, though, Tennessee shares Parler’s vision of individual liberty and free expression.”Founded in 2018 as a less regulated alternative to Facebook and Twitter, Parler is an online place where high-profile right-wing commentators and political figures can promulgate lies and conspiracy theories without interference. Though the company notified the F.B.I. about threats of violence in advance of the insurrection on Jan. 6, and has since added algorithms to detect posts calling directly for violence, it was nonetheless Parler’s vision of “free expression” that helped bring about the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by homegrown terrorists.The craven Republicans running Tennessee might share that vision of liberty, but Nashville definitely does not. Nashville, according to NBC News, is “a big blue dot in a deep red state.” That fact should tell you all you need to know about the relationship between this city and our state government. You likely know this dynamic already because it exists in virtually every major city or college town in every gerrymandered state governed by Republicans: Think Oxford, Miss.; Atlanta, Ga.; Birmingham, Ala.; Lexington, Ky.; Austin, Texas.; Chapel Hill, N.C.What you might not know is that Nashville is also in the midst of a convulsive identity crisis, unsure whether it wants to remain Music City or become something more like a tech incubator or a health care center or a financial services hub. Or maybe just the place where bridesmaids come to get drunk in the street.A midsize city on its way to becoming a big city can be all these things at once, of course, especially if it is a midsize city that is growing deliberately, in ways that do not displace its low-income residents or its work force. Especially if it is a midsize city that is investing in its public schools and building out its infrastructure to accommodate its meteoric growth.Nashville is doing those things poorly, if at all, and some of the blame for this paralysis can be laid at the feet of state government, which frequently passes pre-emptive laws or issues pre-emptive executive orders designed to tie the hands of Nashville leaders. The very last thing this city needs is to become the headquarters of a social media site favored by the right-wingers who are most poisoned by lies and hatred and fear.The truth is that high-profile members of the far right have been moving to Middle Tennessee since long before Parler announced its impending relocation. As the Nashville Scene’s Steven Hale noted when the conservative media celebrity Ben Shapiro decided to move the headquarters of The Daily Wire, the media company he co-founded, from Los Angeles to Nashville: “Look, we try hard to ignore these people,” Hale wrote. Nevertheless, here they are.And it’s not just celebrities who are moving to town. The coronavirus pandemic taught a lot of people that they can work wherever they want to work, and increasingly where people seem to want to work is in a state with no income tax. In my neighborhood alone, we have newcomers from Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and a bunch of other places I can’t name because I haven’t met the new people yet. A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two new neighborhood children on bicycles. “Are you from Nashville?” the first child asked. “I’m from Des Moines,” the other kid said.We are hospitable people here in Tennessee, it’s true, and we do have great music and barbecue. But Mr. Farmer should know that Tennessee’s “great weather” includes six of the 18 billion-dollar weather disasters to hit the U.S. this year — catastrophic weather events triggered by a changing climate that many on his site deny exists. More

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      How Jason Miller Is Trying to Get Trump Back on the Internet

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      Social media has felt quieter without the constant ALL CAPS fury of Donald Trump, but Jason Miller is trying to change that.Miller, who was the former president’s longtime aide and spokesman, recently took a new gig running a social media platform called Gettr, which claims to be a haven from censorship and cancel culture. It may sound a little like Parler 2.0, but the game-changer for Gettr — which has a little under two million users — would be if Miller can get Trump to create an account and get back online.[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Miller how he intends to get Trump to log on. She challenges him on his claims that Twitter and Facebook are out to censor conservatives and presses him about how content moderation works on his platform. They also discuss the question on everyone’s mind: Is Trump likely to run again in 2024?(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Joe RachaThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza ; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa. More

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      Trump May Start a Social Network. Here’s My Advice.

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      Recast your past failures as successes, engage in meaningless optics, and other tips from the Silicon Valley playbook.So Donald Trump wants to start a social network and become a tech mogul?Lucky for him, I am an expert in all things digital, and I’m willing to help. Tech is hard stuff, and new ventures should be attempted with extreme care, especially by those whose history of entrepreneurship is littered with the carcasses of, say, Trump Steaks.Or Trump Water. Or Trump University. Or Trump magazine. Or Trump Casinos. Or Trump Mortgages. Or Trump Airlines. Or Trump Vodka. Or the Trump pandemic response. Or, of course, the 2020 Trump presidential campaign.So, Mr. Trump, here’s my advice.Right from the start, I advise you to embrace your myriad failures as if they’re your best friends. Every failed venture actually went exactly as planned. Give up your distaste for being called a “loser.” Drop your tendency to blame others. Quit falling back on conspiracy theories — which even Sydney “The Kraken” Powell is bailing on.Instead, use one of Silicon Valley’s favorite excuses for its mistakes, that old Thomas Edison trope: You didn’t fail, but found 10,000 ways that didn’t work. Even if “fail” and “don’t work” are the same thing, in tech these are seen as a badge of honor rather than as a sign that you are terrible at executing a business plan and engage in only meaningless optics.Which brings us to my next point: Engage in meaningless optics. In Silicon Valley, what people perceive is just as valuable as anything that is actually valuable.You think 5,000 Beeple JPEGs are worth $70 million? Well, I have a Jack Dorsey tweet for $2.9 million you might want to consider.Luckily, this fits right in your wheelhouse — a talent that you have displayed in spades since the beginnings of your career.Edison also said that “genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” I might rephrase that for your entry into tech by saying, genius is 1 percent instigation and 99 percent perfidy.Instigation and perfidy, in fact, make the perfect formula for a modern-day social network, so you are already well on your way, given your skill set.Baseless conspiracies? Check. Incessant lies? Check. Crazy ALL-CAP declarations designed to foment anger? Check. Self-aggrandizing though badly spelled streams that actually reveal a profound lack of self-esteem? Check. Link-baiting hateful memes? Double check. Inciting violence over election fraud with both explicit and cryptic messages to your base, in order to get them to think they should attack the Capitol, like, for real? Checkmate — especially if you are former Vice President Mike Pence!As for Mr. Pence, you must get him to sign on to your platform, along with all the other right-wingers who groveled to you when you were on Twitter.And that doesn’t mean just the Florida member of the House of Representatives Matt Gaetz, who I assume will do that on any platform, but the whole passel of them, from Ted Cruz to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Marco Rubio to your current nemesis, Mitch McConnell. And, also, wait for it … folks like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as all those Hollywood celebs who hate-tweet at you, and, of course, all the fake media.To have an effective social network, you need the whole gang there in order to reach the blessed perfect formula: Enragement equals engagement. You didn’t start the fire — well, maybe you did — but you definitely need to keep stoking it.It might be challenging to get all of the complex tech to actually work. A social network requires a lot of it, including servers, apps and content moderation tools. You’ll need a whole army of geeks whom you’ll have to pay real money. (If you don’t, they will cyberhack you back to Queens.)And since all of this will be quite pricey, I suppose you could take over the pretty much defunct Parler. Its previous chief executive said in an interview with me that the platform wasn’t responsible for any of the post-presidential-election chaos, and that got the service thrown off all kinds of back-end platforms run by Google, Apple and Amazon.Still, Parler may be on life support, but the tech is already built — and the platform is already full of deplorables, or, um, “patriots,” who happen to believe more in QAnon wingnut ideas than in the Constitution.Also, you should think about having a fresh kombucha station at HQ.As for your future competitors … Twitter has seen its shares rise sharply since it tossed you off for life. You still might get a reprieve over at Facebook, where an oversight board is contemplating your fate. We’ll see what the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, decides after the board makes a ruling.Keep in mind, Mr. Zuckerberg really is the most powerful man in the world; that was even the case when you were in the Oval Office. And while he once bear-hugged your administration, he is now sidling up to President Biden.Try to ignore that and learn to like your fellow tech moguls. You will be on their side. You’ll have to learn to love Section 230 — part of a 1996 law that shields companies from liability for what is said on their platforms — and abandon efforts to get rid of it (as you tried by executive order), since it will protect whatever toxic flood you unleash on your social media site.Which brings me to my last point: the name. It’s critical — and I am not sure how to approach it.Avoid MeinSpace and InstaGraft, for obvious reasons. The narcissist in you might go for The_Donald, which you might now be able to use, since Reddit banned the 800,000-member forum with that name for violating its rules against harassment, hate speech, content manipulation and more. (Sounds like just the kind of folks you like and who like you.)Personally, if you go this direction, I would use your name in a more creative way. My suggestion: Trumpet.Trumpets are brash and loud, and they’re often badly played and tinny. Right on brand, I’d say.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. More

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      Why Is Big Tech Policing Free Speech? Because the Government Isn’t

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightCredit…Illustration by Hudson ChristieFeatureWhy Is Big Tech Policing Free Speech? Because the Government Isn’tDeplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken — but not in the way his supporters think.Credit…Illustration by Hudson ChristieSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. “If you can say it on the streets of New York,” promised the company’s chief executive, John Matze, in a June CNBC interview, “you can say it on Parler.”The giants of social media — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram — had more stringent rules. And while they still amplified huge amounts of far-right content, they had started using warning labels and deletions to clamp down on misinformation about Covid-19 and false claims of electoral fraud, including in posts by President Trump. Conservative figures, including Senator Ted Cruz, Eric Trump and Sean Hannity, grew increasingly critical of the sites and beckoned followers to join them on Parler, whose investors include the right-wing activist and heiress Rebekah Mercer. The format was like Twitter’s, but with only two clear rules: no criminal activity and no spam or bots. On Parler, you could say what you wanted without being, as conservatives complained, “silenced.”After the election, as Trump sought to overturn his defeat with a barrage of false claims, Matze made a classic First Amendment argument for letting the disinformation stand: More speech is better. Let the marketplace of ideas run without interference. “If you don’t censor, if you don’t — you just let him do what he wants, then the public can judge for themselves,” Matze said of Trump’s Twitter account on the New York Times podcast “Sway.” “Just sit there and say: ‘Hey, that’s what he said. What do you guys think?’”Matze was speaking to the host of “Sway,” Kara Swisher, on Jan. 7 — the day after Trump told supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and fight congressional certification of the Electoral College vote. In the chaos that followed Trump’s speech, the American marketplace of ideas clearly failed. Protecting democracy, for Trump loyalists, had become a cry to subvert and even destroy it. And while Americans’ freedoms of speech and the press were vital to exposing this assault, they were also among its causes. Right-wing media helped seed destabilizing lies; elected officials helped them grow; and the democratizing power of social media spread them, steadily, from one node to the next.Social media sites effectively function as the public square where people debate the issues of the day. But the platforms are actually more like privately owned malls: They make and enforce rules to keep their spaces tolerable, and unlike the government, they’re not obligated to provide all the freedom of speech offered by the First Amendment. Like the bouncers at a bar, they are free to boot anyone or anything they consider disruptive. In the days after Jan. 6, they swiftly cracked down on whole channels and accounts associated with the violence. Reddit removed the r/DonaldTrump subreddit. YouTube tightened its policy on posting videos that called the outcome of the election into doubt. TikTok took down posts with hashtags like #stormthecapitol. Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump’s account, and Twitter — which, like Facebook, had spent years making some exceptions to its rules for the president — took his account away permanently.Parler, true to its stated principles, did none of this. But it had a weak point: It was dependent on other private companies to operate. In the days after the Capitol assault, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores. Then Amazon Web Services stopped hosting Parler, effectively cutting off its plumbing. Parler sued, but it had agreed, in its contract, not to host content that “may be harmful to others”; having promised the streets of New York, it was actually bound by the rules of a kindergarten playground. In a court filing, Amazon provided samples of about 100 posts it had notified Parler were in violation of its contract in the weeks before the Capitol assault. “Fry ’em up,” one said, with a list of targets that included Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. “We are coming for you and you will know it.” On Jan. 21, a judge denied Parler’s demand to reinstate Amazon’s services.It’s unlikely the volume of incendiary content on Parler could rival that of Twitter or Facebook, where groups had openly planned for Jan. 6. But Parler is the one that went dark. A platform built to challenge the oligopoly of its giant rivals was deplatformed by other giants, in a demonstration of how easily they, too, could block speech at will.Over all, the deplatforming after Jan. 6 had the feeling of an emergency response to a wave of lies nearly drowning our democracy. For years, many tech companies had invoked the American ethos of free speech while letting disinformation and incitement spread abroad, even when it led to terrible violence. Now they leapt to action as if, with America in trouble, American ideals no longer applied. Parler eventually turned to overseas web-hosting services to get back online.“We couldn’t beat you in the war of ideas and discourse, so we’re pulling your mic” — that’s how Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, put it, in expressing ambivalence about the moves. It seemed curiously easier to take on Trump and his allies in the wake of Democrats’ victories in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, giving them control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House. (Press officers for Twitter and Facebook said no election outcome influenced the companies’ decision.) And in setting an example that might be applied to the speech of the other groups — foreign dissidents, sex-worker activists, Black Lives Matter organizers — the deplatforming takes on an ominous cast.Fadi Quran, a campaign director for the global human rights group Avaaz, told me he, too, found the precedent worrying. “Although the steps may have been necessary to protect American lives against violence,” he said, “they are a reminder of the power big tech has over our information infrastructure. This infrastructure should be governed by deliberative democratic processes.”But what would those democratic processes be? Americans have a deep and abiding suspicion of letting the state regulate speech. At the moment, tech companies are filling the vacuum created by that fear. But do we really want to trust a handful of chief executives with policing spaces that have become essential parts of democratic discourse? We are uncomfortable with government doing it; we are uncomfortable with Silicon Valley doing it. But we are also uncomfortable with nobody doing it at all. This is a hard place to be — or, perhaps, two rocks and a hard place.When Twitter banned Trump, he found a seemingly unlikely defender: Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who criticized the decision as a “problematic” breach of the right to free speech. This wasn’t necessarily because Merkel considered the content of Trump’s speech defensible. The deplatforming troubled her because it came from a private company; instead, she said through a spokesman, the United States should have a law restricting online incitement, like the one Germany passed in 2017 to prevent the dissemination of hate speech and fake news stories.Among democracies, the United States stands out for its faith that free speech is the right from which all other freedoms flow. European countries are more apt to fight destabilizing lies by balancing free speech with other rights. It’s an approach informed by the history of fascism and the memory of how propaganda, lies and the scapegoating of minorities can sweep authoritarian leaders to power. Many nations shield themselves from such anti-pluralistic ideas. In Canada, it’s a criminal offense to publicly incite hatred “against any identifiable group.” South Africa prosecutes people for uttering certain racial slurs. A number of countries in Europe treat Nazism as a unique evil, making it a crime to deny the Holocaust.In the United States, laws like these surely wouldn’t survive Supreme Court review, given the current understanding of the First Amendment — an understanding that comes out of our country’s history and our own brushes with suppressing dissent. The First Amendment did not prevent the administration of John Adams from prosecuting more than a dozen newspaper editors for seditious libel or the Socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs from being convicted of sedition over a speech, before a peaceful crowd, opposing involvement in World War I. In 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of Communist Party leaders for “conspiring” to advocate the overthrow of the government, though the evidence showed only that they had met to discuss their ideological beliefs.It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Supreme Court enduringly embraced the vision of the First Amendment expressed, decades earlier, in a dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas.” In Brandenburg v. Ohio, that meant protecting the speech of a Ku Klux Klan leader at a 1964 rally, setting a high bar for punishing inflammatory words. Brandenburg “wildly overprotects free speech from any logical standpoint,” the University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone points out. “But the court learned from experience to guard against a worse evil: the government using its power to silence its enemies.”This era’s concept of free speech still differed from today’s in one crucial way: The court was willing to press private entities to ensure they allowed different voices to be heard. As another University of Chicago law professor, Genevieve Lakier, wrote in a law-review article last year, a hallmark of the 1960s was the court’s “sensitivity to the threat that economic, social and political inequality posed” to public debate. As a result, the court sometimes required private property owners, like TV broadcasters, to grant access to speakers they wanted to keep out.But the court shifted again, Lakier says, toward interpreting the First Amendment “as a grant of almost total freedom” for private owners to decide who could speak through their outlets. In 1974, it struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers that criticized the character of political candidates to offer them space to reply. Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his opinion for the majority, recognized that barriers to entry in the newspaper market meant this placed the power to shape public opinion “in few hands.” But in his view, there was little the government could do about it..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Traditionally, conservatives have favored that libertarian approach: Let owners decide how their property is used. That’s changing now that they find their speech running afoul of tech-company rules. “Listen to me, America, we were wiped out,” the right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, an investor in Parler, said in a Fox News interview after Amazon pulled its services. “And to all the geniuses out there, too, saying this is a private company, it’s not a First Amendment fight — really, it’s not?” The law that prevents the government from censoring speech should still apply, he said, because “these companies are more powerful than a de facto government.” You needn’t sympathize with him to see the hit Parler took as the modern equivalent of, in Burger’s terms, disliking one newspaper and taking the trouble to start your own, only to find no one will sell you ink to print it.One problem with private companies’ holding the ability to deplatform any speaker is that they’re in no way insulated from politics — from accusations of bias to advertiser boycotts to employee walkouts. Facebook is a business, driven by profit and with no legal obligation to explain its decisions the way a court or regulatory body would. Why, for example, hasn’t Facebook suspended the accounts of other leaders who have used the platform to spread lies and bolster their power, like the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte? A spokesman said suspending Trump was “a response to a specific situation based on risk” — but so is every decision, and the risks can be just as high overseas.“It’s really media and public pressure that is the difference between Trump coming down and Duterte staying up,” says Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “But the winds of public opinion are a terrible basis for free-speech decisions! Maybe it seems like it’s working right now. But in the longer run, how do you think unpopular dissidents and minorities will fare?”Deplatforming works, at least in the short term. There are indications that in the weeks after the platforms cleaned house — with Twitter suspending not just Trump but some 70,000 accounts, including many QAnon influencers — conversations about election fraud decreased significantly across several sites. After Facebook reintroduced a scoring system to promote news sources based on its judgment of their quality, the list of top performers, usually filled by hyperpartisan sources, featured CNN, NPR and local news outlets.But there’s no reason to think the healthier information climate will last. The very features that make social media so potent work both to the benefit and the detriment of democracy. YouTube, for instance, changed its recommendation algorithm in 2019, after researchers and reporters (including Kevin Roose at The New York Times) showed how it pushed some users toward radicalizing content. It’s also telling that, since the election, Facebook has stopped recommending civic groups for people to join. After Jan. 6, the researcher Aric Toler at Bellingcat surfaced a cheery video, automatically created by Facebook to promote its groups, which imposed the tagline “community means a lot” over images of a militia brandishing weapons and a photo of Robert Gieswein, who has since been charged in the assault on the Capitol. “I’m afraid that the technology has upended the possibility of a well-functioning, responsible speech environment,” the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith says. “It used to be we had masses of speech in a reasonable range, and some extreme speech we could tolerate. Now we have a lot more extreme speech coming from lots of outlets and mouthpieces, and it’s more injurious and harder to regulate.”For decades, tech companies mostly responded to such criticism with proud free-speech absolutism. But external pressures, and the absence of any other force to contain users, gradually dragged them into the expensive and burdensome role of policing their domains. Facebook, for one, now has legions of low-paid workers reviewing posts flagged as harmful, a task gruesome enough that the company has agreed to pay $52 million in mental-health compensation to settle a lawsuit by more than 10,000 moderators.Perhaps because it’s so easy to question their motives, some executives have taken to begging for mercy. “We are facing something that feels impossible,” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, while being grilled by Congress last year. And Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has agreed with lawmakers that the company has too much power over speech. Two weeks after suspending Trump, Facebook said its new oversight board, an independent group of 20 international experts, would review the decision, with the power to make a binding ruling.Zuckerberg and Dorsey have also suggested openness to government regulation that would hold platforms to external standards. That might include, for example, requiring rules for slowing the spread of disinformation from known offenders. European lawmakers, with their more skeptical free-speech tradition (and lack of allegiance to American tech companies), have proposed requiring platforms to show how their recommendations work and giving users more control over them, as has been done in the realm of privacy. Steps like these seem better suited to combating misinformation than eliminating, as is often suggested, the immunity platforms currently enjoy from lawsuits, which directly affects only a narrow range of cases, mostly involving defamation.There is no consensus on a path forward, but there is precedent for some intervention. When radio and television radically altered the information landscape, Congress passed laws to foster competition, local control and public broadcasting. From the 1930s until the 1980s, anyone with a broadcast license had to operate in the “public interest” — and starting in 1949, that explicitly included exposing audiences to multiple points of view in policy debates. The court let the elected branches balance the rights of private ownership with the collective good of pluralism.This model coincided with relatively high levels of trust in media and low levels of political polarization. That arrangement has been rare in American history. It’s hard to imagine a return to it. But it’s worth remembering that radio and TV also induced fear and concern, and our democracy adapted and thrived. The First Amendment of the era aided us. The guarantee of free speech is for democracy; it is worth little, in the end, apart from it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesHouse Moves to Remove TrumpHow Impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free SpeechThe app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler was set to go dark on Monday.John Matze, chief executive of the alternative social networking app Parler, has said the app welcomes free speech. Credit…Fox News, via YouTubeJack Nicas and Jan. 10, 2021Updated 10:15 p.m. ETFrom the start, John Matze had positioned Parler as a “free speech” social network where people could mostly say whatever they wanted. It was a bet that had recently paid off big as millions of President Trump’s supporters, fed up with what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, flocked to Parler instead.On the app, which had become a top download on Apple’s App Store, discussions over politics had ramped up. But so had conspiracy theories that falsely said the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, with users urging aggressive demonstrations last week when Congress met to certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.Those calls for violence soon came back to haunt Mr. Matze, 27, a software engineer from Las Vegas and Parler’s chief executive. By Saturday night, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon said it would no longer host the site on its computing services, saying it had not sufficiently policed posts that incited violence and crime. As a result, Parler was set to disappear from the web on Monday.That set off a furious effort to keep Parler online. Mr. Matze said on Sunday that he was racing to save the data of Parler’s roughly 15 million users from Amazon’s computers. He was also calling company after company to find one willing to support Parler with hundreds of computer servers.“I believe Amazon, Google, Apple worked together to try and ensure they don’t have competition,” Mr. Matze said on Parler late Saturday. “They will NOT win! We are the worlds last hope for free speech and free information.” He said the app would probably shut down “for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch.”Credit…ScreenshotParler’s plight immediately drew condemnation from those on the right, who compared the big tech companies to authoritarian overlords. Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, told Fox News on Sunday that “Republicans have no way to communicate” and asked his followers to text him to stay in touch. Lou Dobbs, the right-wing commentator, wrote on Parler that the app had a strong antitrust case against the tech companies amid such “perilous times.”Parler has now become a test case in a renewed national debate over free speech on the internet and whether tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have too much power. That debate has intensified since Mr. Trump was barred from posting on Twitter and Facebook last week after a violent mob, urged on by the president and his social media posts, stormed the Capitol.For years, Facebook and Twitter had defended people’s ability to speak freely on their sites, while Amazon, Apple, Google and others had stayed mostly hands-off with apps like Parler. That allowed misinformation and falsehoods to flow across online networks.A screenshot of Mr. Matze’s Parler profile.Users can choose whom to follow on Parler.Credit…ScreenshotThe tech companies’ actions last week to limit such toxic content with Mr. Trump and Parler have been applauded by liberals and others. But the moves also focused attention on the power of these private enterprises to decide who stays online and who doesn’t. And the timing struck some as politically convenient, with Mr. Biden set to take office on Jan. 20 and Democrats gaining control of Congress.The tech companies’ newly proactive approach also provides grist for Mr. Trump in the waning days of his administration. Even as he faces another potential impeachment, Mr. Trump is expected to try stoking anger at Twitter, Facebook and others this week, potentially as a launchpad for competing with Silicon Valley head on when he leaves the White House. After he was barred from Twitter, Mr. Trump said in a statement that he would “look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was understandable that no company wanted to be associated with the “repellent speech” that encouraged the breaching of the Capitol. But he said Parler’s situation was troubling.That was because Apple’s and Google’s removal of Parler from their app stores and Amazon’s halting its web hosting went beyond what Twitter or Facebook do when they curtail a user’s account or their posts, he said. “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet,” he said.In earlier statements, Apple, Amazon and Google said that they had warned Parler about the violent posts on its site and that it had not done enough to consistently remove them. The companies said they required sites like Parler to systematically enforce their rules. They declined to comment further on Sunday.Tech companies pulling support for certain websites is not new. In 2018, Gab, another alternative to Facebook and Twitter that is popular among the far right, was forced offline after it lost support from other companies, including PayPal and GoDaddy, because it had hosted anti-Semitic posts by a man who shot and killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Gab later came back online with the help of a Seattle company, Epik, which hosts other far-right websites.Even if Parler goes dark, right-wing personalities like Mr. Nunes who have built followings on the app do not lack other communication channels. Many still have ample followings on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which welcome any user who doesn’t violate their rules, which prohibit threatening violence or posting hate speech.Parler was founded in 2018 by Mr. Matze and a fellow programmer, one of several social-media upstarts that aimed to capitalize on the growing anger of Mr. Trump’s supporters with Silicon Valley. But Parler had a significant advantage: money. Rebekah Mercer, one of Mr. Trump’s largest donors, helped bankroll the site. Other investors include Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and Fox News pundit. It plans to eventually make money by selling ads.The app is essentially a Twitter clone. It enables people to broadcast messages — known as “parleys,” not “tweets” — to followers. Users can also comment on and “echo” — not “retweet” — other users’ posts. When signing up for a new account, people are asked to select their favorite color and are urged to choose from a list of conservative voices to follow, including Mr. Nunes, the Fox News host Sean Hannity and the actress Kirstie Alley.These “influencers” dominate the experience on the site. On Sunday, the Parler newsfeed was a stream of their angry “parleys,” railing at Big Tech and pleading with their followers to follow them elsewhere.“Please sign up for my daily newsletter today, before the tech totalitarians ban everything,” wrote Mr. Bongino, who also controls one of Facebook’s most popular pages.Messages on Parler from Mr. Matze.Parler’s list of top personalities.Parler grew slowly until early 2020, when Twitter began labeling Mr. Trump’s tweets as inaccurate and some of his supporters joined Parler in protest. After November’s election, Parler grew even more quickly as Facebook and Twitter clamped down on false claims that the vote had been rigged. So many users signed up that, at times, they overloaded the company’s systems and forced it to pause new registrations.In total, people downloaded Parler’s app more than 10 million times last year, with 80 percent in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, the app data firm.Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss, leading to a rampage that left five people dead. The rally was planned on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. On Parler, people posted advice on which streets to take to avoid the police; some posted about carrying guns inside the Capitol.In an interview with The New York Times hours after the mob stormed the Capitol, Mr. Matze said, “I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform, considering we’re a neutral town square that just adheres to the law.”But on Friday, Apple and Google told Parler that it needed to more consistently remove posts that encouraged violence. By Saturday, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores, limiting its ability to reach new users on virtually all of the world’s smartphones.“There is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.”Late Saturday, Amazon told Parler that it would need to find a new place to host its site. Amazon said it had sent Parler 98 examples of posts on its site that encouraged violence, but many remained online.“We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” Amazon said.Amazon was scheduled to pull its support for Parler just before midnight Sunday on the West Coast. Amazon said it would preserve Parler’s data so it could move it to other computer servers.“It’s devastating,” Mr. Matze told Fox News on Sunday. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day.” He said he was struggling to find another company to host Parler’s website.But Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that the app had heard from several companies that wanted to help. He declined to name them.“What Parler will look like a month from now, I can’t tell you,” he said. “But Parler will not be gone.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More