Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#171

Post by [deleted] »

Ashanmaril wrote: post #66
high_derivative wrote: post #58

Ahhh: 1. We must censor terror propaganda and child abuse to avoid harm & because it's the law 2. We must censor stormfront and the far right because it's the right thing to do 3. We must censor covid misinformation because it could kill people 4. We must selectively censor news reporting for political candidates we are aligned with because it's probably false. ---- we are here now 5. We must remove all news critical…

Woke people think they're Galileo but they're really the church The book burning going on lately is insane

[deleted]

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#172

Post by inglor_cz »

This is the Streisand effect in practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Here in Czechia we mostly concentrate on our outrageous Covid numbers of late, but this story about Twitter pulling down a NY Post article made it through into our local news.

If it stayed up, no one would have cared enough to write about it.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#173

Post by stefan_ »

rayiner wrote: post #161
mellosouls wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the liberal-run tech firms are biased against conservative news sources, I think it is only fair to point out that the list you link is compiled and presented by a conservative organisation that has apparently been under criticism for its own approach to covid reporting (see the wiki page; and yes, I think wikipedia seems often liberal-biased), and can not be considered a neutral voice in this part…

I would encourage folks to resist the urge to put up blinders based on the URL. Particularly where, as here, the source is just collecting publicly-available documents and links. You’re not being asked to trust the author’s synthesis of a bunch of facts. You can check the underlying links yourself. Obviously conservative organizations have more of an incentive to compile this sort of thing. That doesn’t make it in an…

This article literally has

>Twitter's technicality is a fig leaf to enable continued control of public discourse by an unelected private industry that is 9-to-1 in the tank for Democrats and can decide what Americans are allowed to know.

in the headline. Yes, thank you, I reject this authors "fact synthesis".

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#174

Post by vladvasiliu »

riffic wrote: post #158
zalkota wrote: post #106

Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax ... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.

> digital public square I don't know if you know this or not, but the technology exists for anyone to participate in a " digital public square " without use of the incumbent services (Facebook, Twitter, et cetera). These services are not the digital public square . They are private spaces (like a shopping mall.) it would be wholly incorrect to make that assumption.

The technology may well exist, but is it being used by a sufficient amount of people?

Just like if all people happen to congregate in a private mall for one reason or another, if someone's excluded from that mall it doesn't matter all that much that there are public parks where anyone can go if no one actually goes there.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#175

Post by iaw »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #59
taxicab wrote: post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? To censor the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? I mean all parties hold their hot stories to close to the election for the greatest impact, but Twitter is certainly not even trying to appear partisan at this moment. It's quite clear this is not "hacked information", and if it wore, then it would b…

I think we're seeing Twitter and Facebook draw a line in the sand about behaviors that cause damage. Note that Twitter and Facebook removed comments hoping for the worst when the president was diagnosed with Covid which they hadn't done for AOC or other liberals who were receiving death threats.

Things are changing, I don't think we can point to prior behavior of these companies as the line they're going to hold in the future.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#176

Post by inglor_cz »

vharuck wrote: post #121
Ashanmaril wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woke people think they're Galileo but they're really the church The book burning going on lately is insane

Everyone thinks they're Galileo. Who would ever stay with the side they think is wrong and cruel? History (i.e. future opinions) will assign the labels.

Galileos tend to work alone or almost alone.

If someone joins a mob against a single person, odds are that their self-identification as Galileo is ... unsound.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#177

Post by riffic »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #174
riffic wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> digital public square I don't know if you know this or not, but the technology exists for anyone to participate in a " digital public square " without use of the incumbent services (Facebook, Twitter, et cetera). These services are not the digital public square . They are private spaces (like a shopping mall.) it would be wholly incorrect to make that assumption.

The technology may well exist , but is it being used by a sufficient amount of people? Just like if all people happen to congregate in a private mall for one reason or another, if someone's excluded from that mall it doesn't matter all that much that there are public parks where anyone can go if no one actually goes there.

> but is it being used by a sufficient amount of people?

yes, it is. It's a pretty healthy and vibrant ecosystem (I'm referring to the W3C ActivityPub ecosystem here because I didn't mention it in the grandparent comment)

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#178

Post by CivBase »

cirgue wrote: post #85

Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.

> they should do more of this, not less

> The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is

How exactly will Twitter doing "more of this" result in "less people trust[ing] twitter popularity as an indication of importance"?

If anything, I think Twitter should just wear their bias on their sleave and stop pretending to be an open platform. Same goes for all social media.

There is no such thing as an unbiased disinformation watchdog. These are not public spaces with rights to freedom of expression. Distributed social media networks are the future.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#179

Post by technotony »

quantummkv wrote: post #31

Keep aside the accuracy of the NYPost story for a moment. With this move, Facebook and Twitter have effectively backed one political side over the other. Even if in the nitty-gritty they might not have, this is the perception that is sent out and is the perception that will be played to the hilt by the Trump camp. And timing of this is damning as well, with distrust of big tech and social media rising even before thi…

It depends what happens in congress. Trump might win the whitehouse, but lose congress. congress makes the rules around social media and breaking up big tech.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#180

Post by lanstin »

onepointsixC wrote: post #152
lanstin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is not the government. Support decentralized messaging and publication platforms if you don’t like big winners having too much power.

Yes. And unlike the Government, I an individual have no say in how Twitter operates. I have have no say in how Facebook operates. I have no say in how Google operates. Those three combine account for the overwhelming majority of the public square that is the internet. I cannot vote out the CEO of Twitter, Facebook, or Google because I think they are doing the wrong thing. This is worse, because individuals are powerl…

Ummm the early web is a counter example. Any one can publish a website. And a lot of the content that makes these monoliths popular is user generated - it could easily be captured by decentralized system. Put an Insta UI on email and make it cool.

The whole American system says it is ok for successful companies to grow large and powerful. I personally wouldn’t mind some anti-trust actions, but even better would be for people to prefer non-mass media. Visit my website and listen to the guitarist at the local bar and watch indie films and read good books rather than popular books. But others have other preferences.

Making real change is society is not the same as propagating memes or conspiracy theories - it takes time and effort and a lot of eyeball to eyeball persuasion. If you don’t like what Twitter is doing you can create a competitor, and make it popular. The difference is competition - if you persuade enough people, you can replace Twitter. If Twitter is anti-competitive then there is a legal recourse. If you fail to persuade people that twitters method of trying to encourage truth and virtue are bad, that is a fact of your social world. Try again or give up.

Post reply on HN