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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

#331

Post by kebman »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #284
Andrex wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that what's happening in Yemen, just but its nature, is a turn-off for most of FB's user base?

Yes and that’s the rub. Previously a journalist decided what stories people should hear. Now an algorithm tuned to people’s engagement levels decides what we should see. It may have the effect of burying important stories that make people uncomfortable, which a journalist might not do. Just because people would rather not know about Yemen doesn’t mean we’re better off if people don’t know about Yemen.

Previously people just turned off stuff like that, or went lalalalalalalalalal!

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

#332

Post by Jordrok »

ryanx435 wrote: post #321
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #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.

I met Milo one time. We had a few beers and discussed an investment opportunity. When he isn't playing his troll persona he is actually a very intelligent and reasonable person.

What kind of person deliberately goes out of their way to discard that supposed intelligence and reasonability and replace it with such poisonous, hateful vitriol?

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

#333

Post by burfog »

prolikewhoa wrote: post #248
pmarreck wrote: post #128

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…

>Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag, which originated with Wikileaks’ publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairma…

I like how they justify it by claiming that the tweets were automated. How so? I saw lots of real humans complaining that their tweets were blocked.

I think the logic goes like this: "We wouldn't tweet that. Nobody we know would tweet anything like that. Therefore, this is not from real people." Maybe the Twitter employees need to get out a bit more, perhaps taking a lengthy visit to rural Oklahoma or West Virginia.

There may be some feelings of guilt here. To deal with that, just claim that the tweets aren't from real people.

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

#334

Post by denkmoon »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #24

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.

I think the difference between this and censorship is in the case of censorship, even someone explicitly searching for the content won't find it. This is just a case of [a persons] posts not being "algorithmically tasty" enough.

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

#335

Post by denkmoon »

Jordrok wrote: post #332
ryanx435 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met Milo one time. We had a few beers and discussed an investment opportunity. When he isn't playing his troll persona he is actually a very intelligent and reasonable person.

What kind of person deliberately goes out of their way to discard that supposed intelligence and reasonability and replace it with such poisonous, hateful vitriol?

A person who enjoys attention, fame (whether it is fame or infamy), and the perks that go along with it. His antics certainly haven't had a negative effect on his finances and lifestyle from what I can tell.

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

#336

Post by throwaway724b »

eropple wrote: post #91
orbifold wrote: post #69

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.

> You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist. At the bottom? Fear of the other; in the United States, fear of the other rooted particularly in racism. Because it's not "nationalism" here--a disease by itself, but a controllable one. It's white supremacism , given nicer clothes by calling it "white nationalism" for some godforsaken reason, peddled by leaders who wa…

[flagged]

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

#337

Post by amelius »

thanatropism wrote: post #194
amelius wrote: post #111

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".

... which would not exist if people could not define their own symbols.

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

#338

Post by [deleted] »

moduspol wrote: post #106
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”.

As a conservative: What causes it is that you basically have to retreat completely from society to avoid seeing opposing views. I'd have to avoid all the late night shows, most newspapers and TV news stations, and most social media. It doesn't take long to get inoculated. As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas being reinforced. > There seems to be an idea that the things t…

[deleted]

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

#339

Post by JackCh »

pvg wrote: post #239
JackCh wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that describing a system which deliberately suppresses the legibility of posts you've already scrolled to see as 'soft censorship' is an unreasonable "redefinition" of censorship. If you disagree, I suppose I consider you unreasonable.

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

#340

Post by nailer »

18pfsmt wrote: post #325
otterley wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter could have easily banned him, and others like him, if they had the will to. It’s their platform and they’re free to exclude anyone they like. The fact that they don’t is, in my view, rooted simply in a desire to remain neutral in an attempt to prevent their MAU growth from declining and resulting in lower advertising income and less attractiveness to investors. In other words, it’s a business decision. Twitte…

Perhaps you were just not aware? "In July 2016 he was permanently banned from Twitter for what the company cited as "inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others", referring to a harassment campaign against actor Leslie Jones and others."

The weird thing is Milo was apparently removed not for his own specific tweets being mean to Leslie Jones, but because he has lots of followers and he's apparently responsible for their actions. Which is bizarre: Beyoncé fans often harass Taylor Swift but that doesn't make Beyoncé responsible for the actions of others.

Meanwhile Peter Fonda has spent this week making death threats and still has an active account.

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