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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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ah, that famous empathy that only left-wing people seem to have :)

https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin

From Russia eh?

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

#142
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist. Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right.

My example would be prolifers, that requires pretty deep empathy for the unborn to override the natural empathy for the mothers.

Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.

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

#143

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.

feel exactly the same way and have been off for over a year without missing it

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everyone applies "selective empathy". People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns. In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.

This is the same sort of confusion that leads to ideas like "Blue Lives Matter." A life isn't inherently blue. A person isn't inherently a coal miner.

I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment.

It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture... > genuine questions get downvoted

The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques.

Whether every instance of "hi, I'm new here, why is affirmative action a good thing?" is actually bad faith, etc. is irrelevant.

Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion.

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

#146

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.

We’re witnessing the rise of fascism in America. There’s a massive disinformation campaign going on meant to erode faith in the rule of law and the democratic institutions that ensure limited government. Of course thinking people are hostile towards it. We should be.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Twitter is censoring based on the CEO's views. That's exactly my point.

Is there any evidence a #CrookedTrump hashtag/emoji would've been approved?

No, but there is evidence that Twitter is censoring certain icons based on their CEO's political leanings.

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

#148
post #72

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 litera…

It's a recounting of conversations and negotiations between executive level Twitter people and the ad agency.

Your response is overblown and strident.

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

#149
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not a custom icon as part of an attack ad calling one of the candidates a criminal. There is a subtle difference.

So Twitter is censoring based on the CEO's views. That's exactly my point.

You're saying that, because Twitter is not allowing a custom emoji who's entire reason for existing is to be a negative attack on someone, it's censorship?

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

#150

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…

Conservatives do seem to see themselves as people who don’t get offended. I wonder what causes that. There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.

I'd say that to be offended by something you have to believe that things ought not to be that way and the fact that they are can only be a personal attack on you carried out by some evil forces. This is not too rational, so yes, most conservatives do not get offended. (Another reason could be that idea of loving thy neighbor as he is, not as you believe he should be.)
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