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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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. "Negative attacks", as defined by you, are still free speech. Twitter is free to censor it, but we should point it out as censorship.

No, we absolutely should not point it out as censorship, because it has not met the bar.

By your logic, taking down a post of someone being doxxed is also censorship.

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

#212
I talked to an ex-twitter employee I met in Ireland at bar. He told me very candidly that twitter employees loathed Milo Yiannopolous and were actively trying to figure out any way to ban him. Not a fan of Milo, but there are clearly agendas which can't be extricated from politics.

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

#213

Lack of trust is a bullshit argument. It's basically the Conspiracy Fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... Is there any evidence to support this assertion and that Facebook isn't merely showing you information that is palatable to you? (Note that this greatly expands the use of this fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance ) I think we all have to answer these ques…

>Lack of trust is a bullshit argument. It's basically the Conspiracy Fallacy

Or you know, what actual real life and political experience points to, and labelling it "conspiracy" is the "jumping to conclusions fallacy".

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

#214
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data backs you up on that, with Democrats ranking empathy much higher when making arguments. That fact almost proves the point OP was making though, when your argument is emotion based offense at hostile views comes naturally.

But now you're trying to make it seem like conservatives tend to more apply logic in their arguments. Considering a lot of their arguments come from religion, I can't agree with that.

But attacking people on the basis of their faith (which is not a protected status at all) is a perfectly logical and reasonable way to engage in public discourse.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I disagree completely. My view is that the facts and data do not support the leftists' position, so when free discussion of the women or diversity in STEM issue(s) takes place, their arguments do not fare well. And leftists generally seek to suppress any expression of ideas that run counter to their own, so they kill the discussion altogether through flagging or downvoting. And then they engage in all sorts of sophistry to justify their suppression of free discussion.

[Downvoters: QED! ;-)]

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

#216
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have no idea if any of those conversations even happened.

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

#218

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…

> the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture

It's a common misconception, but HN users are overwhelmingly not in the Bay Area. When I looked at this a few months ago, the number was about 10%. (Actually between 5% and 14% depending on how you count.)

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. I disagree completely. My view is that the facts and data do not support the leftists' position, so when free discussion of the women or diversity…

Please (re-)read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Comments like this rightly get downvoted and flagged for being unsubstantive, flamebait, ideological battle, and going on about downvotes. Then of course people complain that it's their politics which are being censored.

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

#220

I can't stand the fact that organizations hide behind "algorithms" as an excuse for every unintended side-effect. It's no surprise that algorithms create an information bubble for us. I like to use music as an example: the best music recommendations I've ever received have been from friends. I'll describe music I'm listening to and like, and they'll recommend something for me. I'd say 50% of the time I find it unobje…

>We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content. I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set. I believe what you are seeing is an accommodation for the average person. Most people aren't adventurous, and it makes business sense to get algos working for th…

>Most people aren't adventurous

I would say most people aren't adventurous in everything except their interests, which they are very adventurous in. The problem is that there will always be more people with a meh feeling toward a random subject than people with a genuine intrest in it, and a brute force ML algorithem trained by just throwing unholy amounts of generic personal data at it before being being relased on the giant mashup of random subjects that make up something like youtube won't catch that nuance

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