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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

#251

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.

I imagine a good part of that is because he led a brigade of followers that would go out and harass other users.

if that's true, that rule should be applied to everyone, not only milo.

there are more right and left-wing fringe users that love to brigade other users.

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

#252
post #77

And it's true. Case in point: the gun emoticon.

By the way, it's stupid that we still can't have user-defined emoticons. We could have enriched our online culture with a flourishing set of shared emoticons by now!

I have no problem sending arbitrary images to my friends on both iPhone and Android platforms, over a number of different protocols including SMS. What's the problem?

"Shared emoticons" sounds like what you really want is a way to channel community defined imagery into a palette of images. There are in fact ways to do that now, usually called "stickers".

I'd never want just anyone to be able to define new Unicode targets. We'd soon be overrun with Ricks because idiots.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The problem is that it assumes that language is fixed. However, the correct way is to make emojis freely definable, so that the emoji language will continue to develop; of course, the unfortunate side-effect for character set maintainers would be that they have to expand the set in order to incorporate the new parts of the language. But that is their problem; you can't force a population to use a limited set of…

> you can't force a population to use a limited set of symbols. It's called an "alphabet".

I think the point was "you can't force a population to use a limited set of symbols [that can't be used to express an arbitrary idea]".

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

#254
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

> Post an article in r/politics about anything positive Trump has done and you'll get a ban.

Do you have any proof of that claim?

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't you want them to know that it's OK to space out vaccines... Because it's not. Spacing them out means they're getting some later, leaving them vulnerable longer. It also lends false credence to the idea that they're dangerous. In many cases, it may also mean kids miss out on the later doses, because repeated doctor visits to administer them may be unaffordable (copays) or difficult (scheduling, transpor…

I do not agree with anything that you said. However, it is an argument and a basis for a discussion. You state that such a discussion should not occur, and that those new parents should not have access to those (including our pediatrician, by the way) who state that the current schedule is much too aggressive and can safely be spaced out. Denying new parents the opportunity for such a discussion is pure and simple ar…

Your anti-vax ideas are in the same neighborhood as flat earthers; yeah, we all get that you really really believe it, but that don't make it any more real than the pancake earth model.

The word I like to describe all of this stuff is scientism -- it looks like science, feels like knowledge, but it's just well-formed nonsense.

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

#256

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…

that concept of 'boxes' is pretty interesting -- is there a way for me to check that for myself without handing them a wad of cash? i rarely use facebook aside from messenger (because getting friends and family to use something like telegram/signal/etc is a pain in the ass when fb just works) but i've had it for about 8 years now so it'd be interesting to see how accurate of a profile they've built on me

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

#257
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is like a blueprint, codifying rules in an effort to maintain a stable society. Some of these rules, IMHO, are absurd, but many you'd come to the same conclusion without faith as with it.

But again, to claim that "The Bible said so" is a logical argument is absurd on it's face. Yet, that's what you see many conservatives leaning on

Yes, it's a bit of a mental shortcut that doesn't advance the argument much.

They mostly agree with their understanding of the Bible, so extend the benefit of the doubt to issues they don't yet understand.

Similar to supporting a policy because your favorite politician supports it.

Every time I've dug into some divisive issue I see core rational arguments on both sides along with these faith based cop outs or short sighted emotional appeals.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The term I am used to seeing is “filter bubble”.

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

#259

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…

Whether product design or technical/mathematical, isn't that just saying that we have a problem of companies treating consumers as an aggregate userbase that they can train once against instead of everyone being a bit different?

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

#260
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[citation needed]

Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...

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