Replies

FreeRepublic’s days are numbered.

Very unlikely, for a few reasons:

Free Republic does not have shareholders

Apple, Amazon, and Google did not drop Parler because Parler is conservative. They dropped Parler because Parler is full of people explicitly calling for violence against people in government, and they refused to moderate that content. These publicly held companies are legally obligated to protect shareholder value and limit corporate liability, and can be sued by their shareholders if they do not. Parler's refusal to moderate their content was going to lead to lost revenue for Apple (hardware, apps), Amazon (AWS, ads), and Google (ads). Allowing Parler to remain on their platforms would be cut and dry fiduciary irresponsibility, and class action would result in short order. This problem only gets worse if Section 230 is repealed (see below).

Free Republic moderates its user-generated content

Anyone who was reading Free Republic during the previous administration will remember that Free Republic's staff will, from time to time, remind people that threatening to kill the President is illegal and draws the scrutiny of the Secret Service. Additionally, posts which violate Free Republic's terms of service (which are there to protect the site from being taken down by litigious liberals) are quickly deleted. Parler did not enforce its own stated terms of service, and when asked to do so by Apple as a condition of their placement in the App Store, they actively refused to do so.

Free Republic is not deployed in the cloud

As part of Free Republic's independence, they do not use cloud computing or (I think?) traditional web hosting. I'm pretty sure they own the hardware that the site runs on, and the only services they consume are physical datacenter hosting and ISP connectivity. Gab, as I understand it, also owns their own hardware, which is why they are still online (albeit having to rapidly expand their hardware to accommodate the influx of Twitter and Parler refugees). Connectivity and hosting are much lower level services, and companies who provide them are clearly protected by Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. If you get rid of Section 230, every internet entity that allows commentary, and every entity who hosts them, will become liable for the content generated by their users. If you think there's a purge going on now, repeal Section 230 and watch how fast the sites disappear.

Free Republic's staff is politically homogeneous

Twitter eventually began suspending conservatives who breached their terms of service repeatedly not because they were told to do so by the government, but because a very significant percentage of their employees threatened to quit if they didn't. This is obviously not going to be a problem for Free Republic or Gab, both of which were founded by and for conservatives, and are staffed by people with conservative beliefs.

This is about corporate entities protecting themselves from liability. This is very similar to what happened with Fox News, Newsmax, and Dominion. Particularly in the case of Fox, the most popular cable news channel in the country who undoubtedly retain some of the best lawyers in the country, were compelled on a dime to acknowledge that they had been peddling fantasies and falsehoods, to the point of rebutting their own reporting and opinion content to protect the company from liability.

Parler didn't get censored, nor did anyone's First Amendment rights get infringed. Both of those things require action by the government, which did not occur here. We are still absolutely free to engage in political speech, as demonstrated by Free Republic, Fox News, Gab, Newsmax, etc. This is about market forces - the invisible hand of market capitalism - not government power. "Let the market decide" has been our mantra for decades; "government should not be picking winners and losers", etc. That's what is happening here: Parler was bad for Amazon, Apple, and Google's bottom line. You may not like it, but that's how business is done in America. Anything else would be, well, communism, and I for one would much rather have the market solve this problem, as opposed to the heavy, intrusive hand of the federal government.

Parler got lazy and complacent, gorging itself on short term success and ignoring the future. It's not surprising that they went down like this. Free Republic and Gab are, and remain, vigilant, and that vigilance is being rewarded with success.

Please consider donating to the Q1 2021 Freepathon today! Now more than ever we need to keep Free Republic financially independent!