Because the people there are far right. When you go to a website and the first thing you see is calls to murder jewish people and the n-word repeated ad nauseam, all but the far right decide to just leave. The end result is that gab/parler/etc don't become places where all speech exists but instead places where extreme racism, homophobia, and sexism suck the oxygen away from everything else.
Neither of the things you claim are tolerated on either platform. I suspect you've never looked for yourself.
Gab looks like a version of Facebook that's mostly populated by Christian conservatives. Parler looks like a version of twitter that's mostly populated (or was, before) by Christian conservatives with a small side of some conspiracy theories.
Christian conservatives don't subscribe to the beliefs you think they do.
And ironically enough, Parler, the bastion of "free speech" was happily banning people who were critical of right wingers or did not participate in the right-wing group think on their network.
After rallying against liberals being "snowflakes" and needing "safe-spaces", Parler ironically enough ended up being just that for the extreme right.
Lol, yup, I was just thinking that after I posted. /r/conservative is hilarious in that they rail against censorship and free speech issues and yet basically self censor so strongly that only "flaired" (someone vetted to be part of the group-think) users are allowed to post in pretty much all discussions. And even flaired users who dare to oppose the group-think are quickly banned. The cognitive dissonance on that subreddit is quite amazing.
I don’t think they have much of a choice. When I’ve gone there after large news events and they have unflaired people able to post it turns in to /r/politics 2.0.
I have seen discussions there from people on both sides of the political spectrum where neither side was downvoted to oblivion, which is more than you can say for most of Reddit.
This is irrelevant: you're just making the exact argument that they are ridiculing and claiming to not need about "safe spaces".
That's the point: they complain about everyone else except when it happens to them, and then suddenly it's totally just and necessary. As though the reason women, gays, lesbians, transgender, black, mexican etc. communities don't have their own spaces for the exact reason that otherwise they would be brigaded by no end of people who felt just overly necessary to drop in and talk about how they think none of their problems are valid.
/r/conservative isn't ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively, it's ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively by people who continuously argue that moderation anywhere else is an assault on free speech and wholly unnecessary.
It doesn't help that seemingly half the content posted there is made up. Whenever they open the floodgates their narratives get torn to pieces by people that actually know what they're talking about.
Truth isn't welcomed there. For instance, you will be banned for simply stating that Trump lost the election
Except /r/conservative never claimed to be unbiased. After people started brigading and posting threats (examples are occasionally shown by moderators) they had to tighten up their moderation.
In contrast, /r/politics claims to be about general politics but most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted.
> most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted
As Reddit has a user base that comes from the US less than 50%, this might have to do with the fact that the Overton window shifted so far to the right there that the opinions of AOC or Bernie would count as center-right pretty much everywhere else in the western world, with the Republicans being off the charts lunatic extremist right.
AOC/Bernie economic policy may count as centrist by European standards simply because the US is as a baseline much more right-leaning/libertarian and the big econ-left project is to establish a welfare state, which already exists in Europe. (There are rightwing arguments for a welfare state type of solution, but those are contignent on other things being true first, ie. something more ethnostate-y)
But that's not the only relevant dimension of policy:
Culture matters, and they are not remotely rightwing on culture.
The direction they want to move the country in matters, and they definitely don't want to move the country rightward either.
Right leaning content is downvoted because the US population leans left.
The centrist view, the average American, would be considered a leftist by conservatives. This is why they think they're getting brigaded everywhere. They are. Their beliefs are unpopular.
The only reason the US Republican party is viable while being so far right is structural voting advantages. That's why they've lost the popular vote almost every time for 30+ years. That's why 50% of senators are Republican when only ~43% of the populations votes R.
On the internet where these artificial advantages aren't present it's much more obvious that Republican policy is broadly unpopular, and conservative opinion is the minority. Or more accurately, the moderate left is actually the center, and the average Republican is substantially far right.
Your comment would make sense if Reddit and r/politics is an accurate description of the US population.
But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that.
And when I browsed r/politics during the 2016 and 2020 election seasons, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was the favored candidate by Redditors. However, more moderate politicians like Clinton and Biden actually won the nominations.
And the popular vote count is a reflection of the Electoral College process...if elections were actually decided on the popular vote, campaign strategies would be focused more on cities than rural areas shifting the results.
Redditors lean farther left than the average american. The average internet user is also left of the average american because they trend younger.
But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the user base is large enough to revert to the mean.
And campaign focus outside of urban cores would mean that the average American is even farther left than they appear to be.
Biden is farther right than the average Democrat because he needed to be to win. The structural advantages to Conservatives means the Democratic party needs to run centrist candidates.
In comparison, the same advantages mean the Republican party can still win with extreme right wing candidates. For example, Trump was the first president that never hit 50% approval rating but it was still high enough for him to win and do okay during his second campaign.
This explanation ignores the cabal of moderators which controls all political subreddits, as well as the fact that /r/politics and /r/worldnews are regularly ridiculed in the rest of reddit for being Bernie-Central, to the poinnt that posting about other candidates on the left gets you called a traitor.
Anyway that's why I get my politics on /r/anime_titties.
I'm saying internet wide. There's almost 20% more democrats than republicans nationwide. And since young people use internet more, it could be much higher ratio on the net.
If 2/3 of US internet users are left of conservatives, that's why they get downvoted to hell anywhere outside their safe spaces. IMO the crazy moderators on reddit are a result of the left lean, not the cause.
No, websites have different cultures, so each one isn't a proportionate sample of all internet users.
Reddit leaned a lot more right/libertarian before nearly all coservative subreddits were systematically banned under spez and Pao. Spez also enacted more subtle censorship like algorithmic tweaks to keep t_d out off the front page and eventually the creation of /r/popular to keep similarly "undesirable" subreddits from the front page.
Show me a single mainstream website where conservatives don't REEEE about censorship. You won't find one. Because any website large enough to capture a few percent of worldwide web traffic leans left. Because the English speaking world leans left and the republican party is a hard right structure.
The truth means nothing to those that wont listen. The Republican party is a far right monstrosity. The democrats in US are a right leaning party for all practical purposes. Hell, Biden said he would be fine running with a Republican VP.
By curiosity I've looked on Gab and I don't see any content you mention. Yes, there is something about protests against banning guns, some celebrities teaming up to support Trump, etc., which is considered to be "far right" but I haven't seen anything you mention.
I might have missed that obviously during my five minutes of browsing there, as a result, if they really call for murdering Jews, could you provide a link to such resource - calling to murder someone is a crime in the US, so such link would be a good evidence for prosecution.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/ is a community that tries to collect and highlight the fringes of communities like Parler, that's a good place to start.
This is a false depiction. I haven’t used Parler much but checked it out a few times and did not encounter a single piece of content advocating violence, talking about Jewish people, using the n word, or partaking in any kind of racism. Your claim that these are repeated ad nauseum suggests you never actually visited any of these sites and are just criticizing them without basis.
"Hate Speech" as you call it, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected speech under the US Constitution, and thus (if also not a threat of violence, doxxing, or similar) is permitted on Gab.
I have no problem with platforms allowing any and all speech, since it actually just allows stupid speakers to beclown themselves.
Free speech is the most liberal idea there is - as Voltaire famously said, "I may disagree with everything you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I would agree that this was not really the case on Parler though one could find a couple accounts like that. Gab has been a little more extreme but the worst by far was Voat.
