It seems the consensus in this thread is the justly moral superiority and the infallibility of the left over the always faulty right.
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
281–290 of 368 posts
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#282Do you believe facebook does this? It's a Gawker article.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659831 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of that might be that conservatives and moderates hear the liberal opinion expressed in so many out outlets that it is fairly easy to give an accurate answer where liberals hear what liberal outlets think conservatives think which is sensationalized to gain eyeballs. I was taught to be able to argue the other sides opinion as well because then you truly understand what you believe.
Or it could be due to the fact that the current conservative movement relies on deception to push it's agenda, which makes it difficult for the average lay person to even understand what they stand for. Tax cuts marketed as economic stimulus, attacks on regulations and consumer/environmental protections marketed as 'making government more efficient', racial oppression disguised as drug/crime laws, universal health ca…
It is pretty funny that in a thread about liberals not being able to accurately summarize conservative ideas you would ascribe to maliciousness a different opinion. You are behaving in the way that the study pointed out but you seem to be defending that position due to "deception" on the part of conservatives.
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 conse…
Point being, Facebook's audience is majority international and it most of all wants to make money. If you occam's razor this, Facebook is simply presenting people with what they want to hear (a well-proven phenomenon[1]). The report has shown nothing to prove that there is some sort of committee that decides which political stances facebook is going to shove down people's throats, but we know it has MULTIPLE groups trying to increase engagement. The international community believes that the American right is nuts, voila, Facebook selectively presents this as the dominant news. Click, click, click...PROFIT.
[1]:https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...)
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#285Earlier 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…
That's simply not how discourse works on a national scale. There are many things that can be given a platform but aren't because it'd be a waste of time. No one is afraid to give these things a platform, it's just pointless. Artificial platforming for the sake of having every imaginable view point with or without merit on the table would be a disaster.
No one is stopping people from having these opinions, speaking about them, or teaching those perspectives. Claiming that this is a cause of freedom of information and somehow making this analogous to Galileo (it's not, not even in the slightest) is absurdly silly.
If you are looking to defend rational discourse and freedom of thought, well, you're not doing that -- leveling out everything on a no-questions-asked baseline is ignorant and becomes borderline satire of unbiased rational thought at that point.
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who's Lincoln Chaffee? What this shows is the media has a positive bias towards Kasich and Sanders, neither of which were received as such by voters. What it also shows is media bias doesn't always win votes or elections.
> Who's Lincoln Chaffee? Exactly. > What this shows is the media has a positive bias towards Kasich and Sanders, neither of which were received as such by voters. No, what it shows is that the media writes way more articles about Clinton, positive and negative. Imagine the media writes 2 articles about Sanders, one negative and one positive. And then it writes 20 about Clinton, 11 negative and 9 positive. Who is it b…
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/15/11410160/hillary-clinton-media-...
has percentages. You are saying the media is biased towards no one, or has equal biases?
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> non-economics social sciences skew more than 14-1 liberal to conservative isn't it so for every science? I mean it is only natural that the conservative views are displaced by education and scientific knowledge. That is almost by definition.
Can you really not see the extreme bias in that statement?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conservatism
: belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society
: dislike of change or new ideas in a particular area
where is education - is learning of new by the ones being educated, and science is a discovery of new knowledge. Thus conservatism and education/science by definition can't occupy the same volume. Conservatism is compatible with only that education and knowledge which accidentally happen to confirm the established and traditional practices and beliefs which are already in place. ( in other words - they sometimes may agree on value, yet always differ on derivative, thus it is 2 completely different mental models)
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
There wasn't any evidence and there wasn't any implication from the article. It's very different from the VW scandal.
This does not imply a lack of evidence, though. The appropriate response would be to ask for a deeper inquiry. Otherwise you're just enabling scapegoating if you accept the first view without any question.
> The conservative curator described the omissions as a function of his colleagues’ judgements; there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.
The person who brought this to light - the one who not only experienced it themselves but also had the most complain about - says that it wasn't anything pushed down by management.
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "flat earthers", blatant racists, and charlatans air time (excuse the hyperbole, hopefully the point was understood). The point was understood, but differently than you intended. These terms seem to be used to reference the folks that would claim to hold the conservative viewpoint, but the terms themselves only further evidence the misunderstood viewpoint non-conservatives may have of conservatives, and that misund…
it's a lot easier exaggerating, belittling, and dismissing the "other" than it is challenging one's own positions.
Much like the majority of posts in your comment history?
Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
#290Quite interesting that two highly-active posts on this topic have been very rapidly removed from the frontpage. Clearly something the community would like to discuss; clearly something HN doesn't want discussed.
Remember HN has flame detection software, so highly commented stories can sometimes be driven down quickly. I guess you could email the mods if you really see something amiss. But to give them more work, but at least dang seems to be a very kind person and takes HN seriously.
HN even has show dead, so even off topic or blatantly inflammatory/rude/racist/etc comments can still be seen.