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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

#71

Post by glitchc »

oconnor663 wrote: post #62
glitchc wrote: post #51

Everyone at one point has made a comment that has been downvoted or moderated out of existence. The rejection sticks in your mind. Effectively, that is censorship.

If we end up saying downvotes = censorship, then "censorship" is fine. The natural reaction of "uh oh, censorship is bad, we should be careful about that" only makes sense if we're careful about how we use the word.

Downvoting falls under soft censorship. The term is loaded and has many contexts. Wiki has a good article, it's worth a read.

And to those downvoting this discussion, thank you for proving my point.

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

#72

Post by criley2 »

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.

That article isn't a "smoking gun", it's quite literally biased propaganda by a paid member of a campaign!

A blog post (not journalism!) by a paid member of a political campaign infamous for its loose relationship with fact and truth, quoting other paid members of the Campaign, to push a particular message that the campaign has been aggressively pushing...

I mean, dude, what the fuck. How can you call what is literally campaign propaganda produced by two members of a partisan campaign PR department a "smoking gun"?

I'm at a loss for words. What is happening to Hacker News?

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

#73

Post by jackfoxy »

nascar_is_bad wrote: post #50
josteink wrote: post #27

I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives. Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.

[flagged]

The benefits of vaccines overwhelm the problems, and yes, the anti-vaccine quackery of the last couple decades has made legitimate discussion impossible. It's a similar situation to states' rights, a term which 160 years ago the violent, racist yahoos of the confederacy and their supporters forever poisoned, despite it being a concise descriptive term for lots of legitimate issues.

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

#74

Post by moduspol »

nascar_is_bad wrote: post #61
moduspol wrote: post #59

I lean conservative, but to be honest, I assign only a small portion of the blame to social media giants. Their office areas and leadership certainly lean left-wing, but I don't think that's the main issue. I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. As a result, even an entirely neutral algorithm focused on retention / user satisfaction will…

> I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. More likely to have empathy is another way to phrase that.

“More capable of selective application of empathy” is how I’d describe it usually, but that’s neither here nor there.

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

#75

Post by TaylorAlexander »

threatofrain wrote: post #63
josteink wrote: post #27

I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives. Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.

I thought there's some pretty robust discussion about people who feel shafted by diversity initiatives. I do feel that anyone who speaks in a hot-headed way gets penalized on Hacker News, and I think that's great. There were a few big recent HN discussions on the matter -- are there clear instances of what you mean on the whole?

It seems to me that there’s some middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture but they’re not being rude or hot headed, and yet their genuine questions get downvoted.

I do think there’s some kind of “you can’t discuss that” attitudes on here about certain topics. Diversity stuff is an area I can imagine reasonable and even good comments getting downvoted. Sadly I don’t have any sources, but this is my intuition after reading HN regularly.

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

#76

Post by scythe »

josteink wrote: post #27

I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives. Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.

HN and other "distributed moderation" sites tend to quell any discussion that a fraction of the userbase strongly dislikes. Most people don't vote on most comments, so highly motivated people have more say on a particular topic. In some cases, this is a correction mechanism, such as when people with physics education downvote the proponents of fringe theories; in other cases, it may hide useful information, such as in a debate about morality or a similar less certain topic that people acquire strong opinions about without having such high confidence.

However, I find it hard to justify calling this "censorship" because it is the site working as intended. Controversial topics are avoided because the goal of the site is ultimately recreational. There are many things you can't discuss on HN because the userbase just isn't interested, but nobody would argue that HN censors discussions of, say, the hardcore music scene in the Bay Area.

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

#78

Post by glitchc »

stephengillie wrote: post #58
glitchc wrote: post #51

Everyone at one point has made a comment that has been downvoted or moderated out of existence. The rejection sticks in your mind. Effectively, that is censorship.

You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.

Would you assume I'm right-wing if I do not use politically correct terminology? Will slowing down change my world-view or simply the language I use to express it?

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

#79

Post by throwaway69777 »

This 100% happens. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2014/11/26/how-miria... When this^ woman was murdered, I attempted to post on Facebook: "I bet this woman was not a terrorist." to which I was told the attempt failed. After troubleshooting, such as trying again or posting something else, I felt very deceived.

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

#80

Post by mc32 »

pavlov wrote: post #39
josteink wrote: post #27

I can fully believe that. Try for instance to have a discussion here on hacker news about the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives. Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.

HN is not owned by a social media giant, so this grievance doesn’t appear to have much to do with the article.

I think that’s the wrong question to imply. What it is is an illustration of how big media behaves due to its own implicit ad well as explicit biases. Of course HN isn’t mainstream, but it also experiences some of the same symptoms.
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