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Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

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Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#21

Post by praha14 »

minikites wrote: post #6
ebikelaw wrote: post #4

A bit of both-sides-ism here. The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint, despite the fact that these companies have bent over backwards to accommodate those views and to give them platforms. Meanwhile only a small fraction of Democrats believe this is very likely, and they aren’t strongly sure about which side is benefiting from the supposed bias.

There's also lots of evidence to the contrary: Twitter refuses to ban self-identified Nazis who incite violence but there are dozens of instances of people getting banned for saying mean insults to those same Nazis.

Who’s an example?

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#23

Post by wolco »

geofft wrote: post #10
wolco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness they ban gun related content like gun ads and the leaders of the giants have personally come out in favor of liberal ideals.

I think there's a pretty clear distinction between advertising and organic speech, and also a pretty clear distinction between wanting to restrict how other people use your platform and simply having views of your own.

Advertising is a form of speech.

Restricting the platform is their right. But the issue is people believing they are being censored and by banning certain ads they reenforce that viewpoint.

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#24

Post by JKCalhoun »

When a friend posts on Facebook and it doesn't show up in my feed that's FB making a call as to what to show me.

Why? Because algorithms.

Maybe "censorship" is a strong word in this instance — do we prefer "selective disclosure"?

Regardless, not what I signed up for. Deleted FB.

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#25

Post by praha14 »

[deleted] wrote: post #19
someguydave wrote: post #3

The interesting aspect is that conservatives think that it is very likely that social media sites censor their views at a rate double that of liberals. Even if the social media companies were strictly neutral in the matter, it's pretty common for conservatives to encounter left-wing hostility and censorship from other users of social media sites.

[deleted]

>Statistics have a well-known liberal bias.

Especially FBI crime statistics.

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#26

Post by trisimix »

geofft wrote: post #10
wolco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness they ban gun related content like gun ads and the leaders of the giants have personally come out in favor of liberal ideals.

I think there's a pretty clear distinction between advertising and organic speech, and also a pretty clear distinction between wanting to restrict how other people use your platform and simply having views of your own.

Somewhat unrelated. Advertisers dont want their to be a clear distinction anymore. Hell pretty soon the most effective marketing strategy wont be shameless plugs but offhanded ones. Ones that sneak in like oh hey yeah I was using x the other day and it helped me with y. Once gun manufactuers catch up it might look something like: popular social media user offhandedly mentions purchase of lgun, posts some pictures firing gun, learning gun safety, talks about how much fun they had. Itll be hard to censor and I wouldnt be shocked.

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#28

Post by geofft »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #12

This article seems to be a smoking gun... https://medium.com/@garycoby/twitter-restricts-trump-eb7e48c... Note that there are plenty of other custom icons that Twitter allows.

I don't think refusal to allow a custom emoji with a hashtag is censorship - they didn't ban the hashtag. Custom emoji are a business/marketing/advertising thing, and if we want to restrict the ability of private businesses to decline advertising deals with other private businesses for any reason at all (including "we just don't like you"), that's a whole different conversation, and one I suspect many conservatives will not be pleased with the outcome of.

As the article says, this move cost Twitter millions in revenue. If you don't have the ability to just choose not to make money because you're not interested in the transaction, you don't actually control the company, the public does.

Re: Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views

#29

Post by ebikelaw »

frockington wrote: post #15
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's pretty common for conservatives to encounter ... censorship from other users of social media sites How, exactly? Is Facebook doling out admin privileges to random users? Or are we confusing "receive criticism" with "censorship" here?

Post an article in r/politics about anything positive Trump has done and you'll get a ban. On Facebook, a similar phenomenon might occur due to liberal users reporting conservative ideas they don't agree with as hate speech. Disclaimer: I'm not very familiar with how Facebook works so I could be way off

Being banned by a user-moderated forum is not equivalent to being censored by a social media platform.
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