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Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

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Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#271

Post by geofft »

throwit992 wrote: post #138

I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio). There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social scie…

> Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social sciences skew more than 14-1 liberal to conservative (and that universities have not always been so skewed).

This seems to be measured by "Democrat" vs. "Republican". An alternative hypothesis is that mainstream American political views have skewed strongly towards the right in recent decades, but that shift did not touch the academy, and also that America became more prominent in research in recent decades (so more researchers labeled themselves by American political parties).

Anecdotally, it seems like there's a liberal/conservative split within the Democratic party, exemplified by Sanders/Hillary. I wonder what you get if you figure out some good way to quantify that, and then redo the statistics.

This is only frightening if you think that there's a lot of ideological conformity within the label "Democrat", or that the specific ideologies with the label "Republican" need representation. There are probably good arguments for those, but they're not completely obvious.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#272

Post by welanes »

yomly wrote: post #215
popmystack wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the specific case of conservative politics, why does it matter that it's so skewed? I have absolutely no issue with, in this specific case, conservative politics not receiving much attention. I would liken it to not giving "flat earthers", blatant racists, and charlatans air time (excuse the hyperbole, hopefully the point was understood). While I agree that ideological conformity is a problem, I think it's a sympt…

Funny that you should mention flat earthers - when Galileo published his works proposed a heliocentric system, he was tried for heresy. I'm sure at the time, the Church were confident they were right about the matter and therefore had no qualms in suppressing Galileo's claims. Freedom of information and opinion is what drives progress. Should conservative opinions be wrong, then there is no fear in giving them a plat…

> Given that they are feared, suggests that the jury is still out on whether their opinions are categorically wrong, or even whether the opposing opinion is categorically right. In this case, it will be free discussion which will enable us as a society to converge on the correct path.

Spot on.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#273

Post by jandrese »

basch wrote: post #222
jandrese wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, without some concrete examples it's hard to know exactly what is going on here. That said, Facebook is certainly not coming out of this smelling like roses. The "Top Stories" mode is horrible, and Facebook tries really really hard to force you into it, especially on mobile. IMHO it is going to be the death of them in the long term. When they're yet another Friendster/MySpace/etc... this is what I'm going to poi…

when did myspace algorithmically autosort news stories? the products arent even in the same category.

In terms of now defunct social networks...

Ok, Myspace isn't technically dead, but its heyday is definitely over.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#274

Post by popmystack »

SFLemonade wrote: post #246
popmystack wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the specific case of conservative politics, why does it matter that it's so skewed? I have absolutely no issue with, in this specific case, conservative politics not receiving much attention. I would liken it to not giving "flat earthers", blatant racists, and charlatans air time (excuse the hyperbole, hopefully the point was understood). While I agree that ideological conformity is a problem, I think it's a sympt…

This is a big problem that I've been seeing a lot lately: Liberals and Progressives thinking that they're absolutely right and just, and as such, they should censor those that they perceive as not being right or just. But who is the judge here? How do we really know what is absolutely right or just? Censorship of any kind is inherently dangerous and detrimental to true progress. Aren't equality, open-mindedness, and…

Literally no one has suggested that we silence opponents. I am not sure how you are confusing me and facebook's curation system not giving attention to certain sources and positions based on their credibility and integrity with actively preventing people from speaking.

Whether your statement is based on disingenuous confusion or simple ignorance doesn't matter at this point because you've made your own post largely irrelevant and quite frankly it ticked me off a little bit that this string of non-sense keeps getting repeated as if it's some defense of rational, critical thought when it's the furthest thing from it at the moment.

All positions and view points cannot get equal play time in the larger conversation -- it would be noisy and a waste of time and ultimately be detrimental to progress. That is not censorship.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#275

Post by SFLemonade »

pj_mukh wrote: post #221
throwit992 wrote: post #138

I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio). There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social scie…

This "seems" like an American phenomenon. As a liberal, I can have a fully formed debate with a British Conservative, A Canadian conservative, a European conservative (sans latent Nazism), however the dominant American conservative seems to be operating on a completely different plain and set of assumptions. I find it extremely difficult to relate to and debate the American conservative. In general, if an american (c…

Many American liberals are just as hard-headed and difficult to debate with. The Overton Window has shifted in the past couple years and the original leftists are now centrists. America has become radically polarized and the radical liberals and just as dangerous and closed-minded as the radical conservatives.

You should also bear in mind that you're commenting on an article where liberals deliberately censored conservative news media. That doesn't do much to support your assertions.

The fact that the American leftist view would be considered centrist in most other countries (like, for example, the nordic countries) is essentially meaningless. Just because "left" takes on different meanings or extremes in different parts of the world doesn't mean that the US is behind or should become more left. To compare US politics to those of Finland, Switzerland, or even Canada is completely absurd. We are a fundamentally different people, system, land mass, you name it. Our political system must take that into account.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#276

Post by NOSHSHNACKERS »

throwit992 wrote: post #138

I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio). There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social scie…

Its based on faulty logic. The human mind has a bias against its own biases

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#277

Post by basch »

jandrese wrote: post #273
basch wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when did myspace algorithmically autosort news stories? the products arent even in the same category.

In terms of now defunct social networks... Ok, Myspace isn't technically dead, but its heyday is definitely over.

but youre comparing two completely different products that get lumped into the same "social network" category, when really the have very little in common anymore.

myspace had profiles, that was it.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#278

Post by nibs »

pklausler wrote: post #262
nibs wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever breached the subject of intelligence/IQ science, evolutionary biology or being pro-GMO with "progressive" "educated" "liberals" before? Systemic blind spots exist on both sides of the political spectrum.

All the time. I love arguing about GMOs with people whose diets consist of anything that wasn't available in the wild 10,000 years ago. And don't get me started on vaccinations.

How did I leave out vaccines? Anti-vaccine is the pinnical of anti-science rhetoric. Although it seems to be slowing down.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#279

Post by dang »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #150
Mendenhall wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. "Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively."

Try posting a link to a Breitbart story here on HN. It's silently suppressed. Doesn't even appear in 'new'. Whereas links to rt.com are welcome. That's just how things are, comrade! :) My previous rant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11518592

breitbart.com is banned, not for being right wing but for being overly sensational. Plenty of comparable left-wing sites are also banned, and plenty of right-wing sites aren't banned (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nationalreview.com). This isn't an ideological call.

rt.com is penalized but not banned because occasionally good stories show up there. That's true of most media sites on HN, though the weight of the penalty varies. Again not an ideological call.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#280

Post by dang »

angersock wrote: post #116

Mmmm...yes....truly those backwards conservatives don't have any real news. /me swirls whiskey and tips fedora Seriously, do you even recognize how condescending you sound?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11661014 and marked it off-topic.
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