The Parler ban has become somewhat of a Rorschach test for one’s political beliefs, with the American left generally supporting it as a triumph of free enterprise and the American right generally denouncing it as a step towards authoritarianism.
I thought it would be interesting to see how Chinese-speaking Twitter users viewed the ban. Most native Chinese speakers on Twitter belong to one of several groups. Many are from Hong Kong or Taiwan, which constantly have their freedoms threatened by the Chinese Communist Party. Some live in China, where Twitter is banned, and access the platform across the Great Firewall with a VPN. Others are part of the international Chinese diaspora, meaning they likely have family and or friends in China. By virtue of their proximity to the world’s most powerful dictatorship, members of these groups have a more concrete understanding of authoritarianism than non-Chinese Americans do. Most of us in America have never experienced authoritarian government or anything close to it.
Below I share the results of a survey I did on Twitter of my Chinese-language followers and translate some of their reactions to the Parler ban.
But first I will outline my own position: the coordinated assassination of Parler — by Google & Apple, which removed the application from their stores, and by Amazon, which very suddenly ceased provision of hosting services — is extremely concerning.
I say this having lived in China, a proper dictatorship, for four years. There is something unmistakably dictatorial and dystopian about a tech oligopoly being able to kill off a competitor with little more than a few keystrokes to a chorus of applause from the supposedly liberal contingent of the American populace.
I am concerned about the Parler assassination for the following reasons:
An online environment dominated by monopolies lends itself to government control and censorship. China understands this. This is one of the reasons that the Chinese government has allowed a single messaging application, WeChat, to achieve virtual monopoly status in the country. China has 1.4 billion people and 1.17 billion WeChat users. Getting nearly everyone on a single platform vastly simplifies the government’s task of digital surveillance.
Although Apple, Google, and Amazon are under investigation for monopolistic practices, they clearly have no misgivings about flagrantly deploying their monopoly powers to kill a competitor. The assassination of Parler is a massive middle finger to the monopoly investigation and the government regulators undertaking it.
The ban happened in the same week that these tech monopolies unabashedly announced that they are more powerful than the American president. Trump wanted to ban TikTok for months and failed. TikTok and all the others banned him within a few hours. Any politician with aims to take on the tech monopolies has been put on notice.
The tech monopolies are run by people, and people have political biases. These companies—Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, etc—are headquartered in America’s most liberal cities. By simple virtue of geography, their employees will skew heavily towards one end of the political spectrum. Additionally, these companies don’t seem shy about hiring people with a past life in Democrat party politics (see here and here).
The part of this affair I find most unsettling is the extent to which the target of this corporate assassination—a so-called Free Speech version of Twitter embraced primarily by conservatives—has got liberals, who until yesterday supported breaking up Big Tech, sounding like Any Rand free-market capitalists. “I am in favor of allowing corporations to make decisions without government regulation” is common reply to my concern over the Parler ban. The collective about face on the issue of taking on tech monopolies stems entirely from the fact that these monopolies are, at present, targeting the left’s political opponents. Such short-sightedness will not end well.
In today’s America, to raise the alarm about Parler’s forced disappearance is to invite a host of insults: fascist apologist, pro-coup, pro-white supremacy, etc. The people who hurl these insults around should take a moment to listen to Chinese speakers, many of whom are highly critical of the authoritarian government in China, cherish the democratic West for the freedoms it affords, and are decidedly not white supremacists.
I did a survey of my Chinese-speaking Twitter followers and found that the vast majority of them (83.5%) are worried by the events surrounding Parler’s disappearance from the Internet.
First, a bit about my followers. The majority of my Twitter followers are either Chinese language speakers, or Chinese-English bilingual. On the whole they lean conservative, but I get plenty of shit from the extreme of both sides. For example, when I expressed that it was time to accept the fact that Trump lost the 2020 election, I was blocked by several hundred people and shamed by just as many. Below is a good example of what that looked like:
“BULLSHIT! Today you’ve revealed that you’re not just stupid, you’re also a bad person.”
I point this out in order to illustrate that the 5,000+ respondents to the survey above are not some mob of Trump fanatics. Many people first assume that anyone criticizing the Parler ban is doing so from a pro-Trump position.
Rather, I posit that most of the survey respondents were concerned by Parler’s demise because they see it as a harbinger of free speech restrictions in America. People who do not have freedom of speech—or have experienced life without it—are generally the ones who value it most.
Below is a selection of comments and translations explaining the reasons for their collective concern.
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“The logic is pretty simple. If media and technology giants join forces in monopoly, they can completely silence anyone they don’t like, or even install a loyal puppet as the nation’s president. Some people seem very happy with what’s happened to Parler, probably because they have never thought about what will happen to them when they become targets.”
Yes, 100%.
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“Trump couldn’t ban WeChat and TikTok after half a year. But they took care of Parler in three days.”
This person echoes the sentiment I expressed above, that the tech monopolies are more powerful than any politician in America and are growing increasingly bold about wielding that power.
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“The logic behind the ban is set on a presupposition that all users of a certain social media platform are easily manipulated, violent people. First, no individual nor organization should have the power to unilaterally make this judgment. Secondly, this overlooks the possibility of individual free will.”
“Parler users are all incapable of thinking for themselves, so they should not have the right to use Parler.” I agree with this commenter in that I don’t think Apple / Amazon / Google should have the right to make this judgment.
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“This is an issue of power boundaries and social consensus. When there is a divergence in consensus, should those in power be able to freely impose their ideology? Or are they obligated to take the role of a neutral mediator? We all know to be on guard when government has this power, but what if the power belongs to private companies? For Amazon AWS and Apple App Store, should we define them as private companies or social infrastructure?”
If you are from China, you have experienced a world in which the government is able to control the narrative 100% of the time and you’ve grown wary of this power. You likely don’t want to see this power slip into the hands of private companies, which are even less accountable than democratically elected leaders.
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“I’m very worried! Any time there is a move to ban free speech, it is always done deceptively, under the pretext of good reasons. I don’t think this is merely a corporate action by the tech monopolies—I think there are political forces at play behind the decision. If things continue along in this direction we may end up with single-party dominance. By the time Americans wake up to this, it may be too late to reverse course. Hong Kong is a good lesson.”
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“I am not worried only about this. Of more concern is that America seems to be losing the spirit of constitutionalism on which the country is founded. If America, the world’s beacon of freedom, ceases to shine, the global society will regress to a much more primitive place.
Although the First Amendment as written in the late 1700s certainly does not guarantee the right to use Parler, I think the founders would be appalled by the notion of an ink monopoly refusing to supply product to a newspaper with different ideological leanings. Amazon denying web services to Parler is roughly equivalent. If not a violation of the law, it is a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment.
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“Monopolies joining forces to kill off small companies is frightening enough.
Even if Parler's views on freedom of speech are different from theirs, it doesn’t give them (Amazon/Google/Apple) a reason to “prosecute” and mete out punishment on Parler.
If a small company can be killed off today for having different ideological views, how do we guarantee that tomorrow another small company won’t be banned over conflicting economic interests?
What if monopolies like Amazon and Google collude with Biden government?”
What if they decided to collude with any government?
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“It seems that Big Tech companies united to shut down a small startup. It’s criminal. Sooner or later, these monopolies need to be broken up, or their power will be too big to control.”
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Taking this kind of action makes the Left seem petty. But the Right also needs to think about why the right-leaning media platforms cannot accumulate same-size audience.”
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“This looks like an "anti-right movement" launched by the Democratic Party. This movement will cause many people their jobs. The Mayor of New York said that those who were in DC demonstrating on Jan. 6th should be fired from government jobs.
This kind of approach is almost the same as that of Beijing government.”
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“The Silicon Valley Cartel controls the Internet and censors others [who oppose them], dodging responsibility under the protections [afforded by Section 230]. Wouldn’t you be worried?”
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“I believe Chinese readers will be quite worried—we have all seen this movie before.”
If you live or lived in a culture of censorship and authoritarianism, it takes about 1.2 seconds to realize that Amazon et. al. have way more power than we should want them to have.
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“This follows the same logic of China’s civil war between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek. At that time, leftists and big companies supported Mao against Chiang. After Mao ascended to power, he nationalized the big companies and sent the owners to death or prison.”
I don’t see such a grim end in sight for the CEOs America’s tech monopolies, but I do see their companies becoming increasingly irresistible targets for influence operations by the political parties.
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“These tech giants look like private companies, but together they are more powerful than any public/government entity. It's really worrisome.”
I worry, too, about private companies that have taken on some of the responsibilities of elected officials, but have none of the accountability inherent in the democratic process.
In summary, if you think concern over the Parler ban is somehow indicative of white supremacist / pro-Trump / anti-democratic (small “d”) leanings, I hope that the comments above will lead you to re-think your position.
Simply put, if you are concerned about authoritarianism, whether red or blue, the Parler ban should concern you.
Kevin and friends - Parler was not shut down to silence unpopular speech. It was shut down because many Apple and Google (and many others) believed that the January 6th attack on the US Government (a shocking crime) was planned in online forums. The group that planned it was known to use Parler. This group was expected to plan future attacks (at Biden's inauguration, for example). That is why Parler was delisted - to make it harder for a criminal group to meet and plan future crimes similar to Jan 6.
The people who planned the attacks could still post their comments on all other social media (if they were not vulgar or threatening in what they posted) - the speech and ideas were not blocked, but the private meeting place to plan a crime was blocked.