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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

#231

Post by s73v3r_ »

6cd6beb wrote: post #172
nascar_is_bad wrote: post #61

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.

>Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.

The one they were responding to wasn't that civil itself.

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

#232

Post by IIAOPSW »

soundwave106 wrote: post #139
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.

There's two angles to this: general crowd psychology, and how social media tailors the news feed in response to it. In the old Internet (forums and Usenet), sure, there was crowd psychology too. There always is. However, these social media designs were far less prone to hiding unpopular opinions. As a general rule, unless you had an overtly strict moderator or something, you could read posts with unpopular opinions,…

you can see the buried comments on reddit. They are at the bottom of the thread. You can even sort by controversial or worst.

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

#233

Post by s73v3r_ »

scottlocklin wrote: post #199
erikpukinskis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Most parsimonious explanation; conservative adherence to old fashioned liberalism (aka "I disagree with what you say, but fight for your right to say it" kinds of sentiments), which is no longer really a part of the left.

That's provably false; see the NFL players protesting before games for a pretty good example.

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

#234

Post by s73v3r_ »

dingo_bat wrote: post #198
geofft wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your point was, "It is if you allow the other side to do exactly the same, as noted in the linked article." The other side is not doing exactly the same. The other side never intended to do exactly the same, and for good measure, the CEO promised that if they did, they would be prevented from doing so, too. You are now making the claim that, if side X exhibits behavior A, and opposing side Y exhibits behavior B,…

> The other side is not doing exactly the same. The other side wanted a custom icon. They got it. The content of the icon is irrelevant to the question "did twitter censor political views not shared by the CEO?" The answer is "yes", regardless of the content of the icon granted to the other side.

"The content of the icon is irrelevant to the question"

It absolutely, most certainly is not. The content is quite vital to the decision.

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

#235

Post by s73v3r_ »

dingo_bat wrote: post #195
ceejayoz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's zero evidence of that here. "No attack ads" isn't the same thing as "no anti-Hillary attack ads". If you can cite the Hillary campaign getting a custom emoji for an anti-Trump hashtag, do so.

> "No attack ads" isn't the same thing as "no anti-Hillary attack ads". Irrelevant. Twitter denied them a custom icon whereas allowed their opposition to have one. The content of the icon has no bearing on the matter. It's censorship. That is twitter's choice but it is still censorship, based on the CEO's politics.

You cannot keep claiming that the content is irrelevant just because that's the only way your argument makes sense.

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

#236

Post by dahdum »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #142
dahdum wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic.

Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.

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

#237

Post by ghettoimp »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #182
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That's flat out false; conservatives get offended all the time. Remember the "War on Christmas"?

Definitely. Generating outrage is the bread and butter of outlets like Fox News, talk radio, etc. Sadly many left-leaning outlets seem to be pursuing the same model, because clicks.

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

#238

Post by diggernet »

Declanomous wrote: post #175
nsxwolf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once in awhile Facebook decides I shouldn't be friends with someone anymore and suppresses all of their posts from my feed. I start to wonder what's happened to them, so I make a point of searching for their page and find that they've been posting daily. Things I would have been interested to see and would have commented on.

It's entirely possible that Facebook found that your comments caused less engagement for other people on Facebook, and therefore doesn't want you to comment. It's also possible that Facebook determined that this person has substantially different politics than you, and has put you in different 'boxes'. You can actually check what groups Facebook thinks you belong in. For instance, Facebook thinks my peer group is 'St…

So Facebook is forcing you into an echo chamber against your will. Awesome.

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

#239

Post by pvg »

JackCh wrote: post #230
pvg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do. They move other comments off the page entirely.

Maybe it's indicative of which sort of conversations I choose to participate in, but I rarely see comment sections go beyond the page fold. Supposing we take your argument seriously though, comments past the page fold which also have their contrast lowered to the point of illegibility are certainly censored even moreso.

It only takes a dozen short comments or so even on a giant screen. And yes, almost everything is censorship if you redefine censorship to mean any random irksome thing.

Incidentally, I do think the way the comment fading works is pointedly user-hating and dumb (it's traditionally dumb, though!), but it's not really censorship. More generally, since we're talking about taking things seriously, framing forum irritants as some sort of oppression is a solid way to ensure few people take you seriously.

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

#240

Post by IIAOPSW »

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.

This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.

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