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Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

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Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#11

Post by naasking »

flangola7 wrote: post #8
cup wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that the site has gradually shifted right, but the Overton window has shifted right faster giving the illusion that it has gone left. Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/so…

That's a perfect summary of it!

On what issues has the Overton window shifted right?

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#12

Post by version_five »

There's a [dead] comment that I agree with, making the point that HN is mostly a tech website, and so it shouldn't be surprising that the stories are "neutral" relative to - I'd say orthogonal to - the (historical) left/right political spectrum. Mostly HN doesn't allow political stories - if you lurk on "new" you can find them, usually they don't get discussed or get flagged, but a normal user would just see some tech stuff.

The comments are a different story, I don't think I could pin down a clear average directional bias, but there are lots of different opinions, most of which get downweighted if they're too strong. But I don't think the comments are what the linked website is considering anyway.

A more moderate version of the other post: is lobste.rs politically biased?

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#13

Post by cupanimal »

cup wrote: post #7
dvt wrote: post #4

Imo, HN has moved from being moderately libertarian/right to today's slight liberal left slant as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies. I think the has also been an influx of non-US users over the past decade, which also tend to lean more left. I'd be curious to see if anyone else that's used this site regularly for the past 10+ y…

My impression is that the site has gradually shifted right, but the Overton window has shifted right faster giving the illusion that it has gone left. Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/so…

[dead]

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#15

Post by hgsgm »

Manuel_D wrote: post #6

It seems kind of invalid to try and apply a media bias score to social media. What's the media bias of Reddit? It's going to be very different comparing /r/WhitePeopleTwitter with /r/PoliticalCompassMemes. Similar deal with Wikipedia, bias is more on a page-by-page or contributor basis.

What are talking about? HN is not Reddit. MBFC doesn't report on Reddit. Wikipedia has editorial leadership and enforcement.

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#16

Post by hgsgm »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #10
Manuel_D wrote: post #6

It seems kind of invalid to try and apply a media bias score to social media. What's the media bias of Reddit? It's going to be very different comparing /r/WhitePeopleTwitter with /r/PoliticalCompassMemes. Similar deal with Wikipedia, bias is more on a page-by-page or contributor basis.

HN is essentially a single subreddit. But its a fairly specific/topical subreddit, where a left-right score is questionably meaningful.

Is 0 an invalid score?

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#17

Post by ryokeken »

dvt wrote: post #9
cup wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that the site has gradually shifted right, but the Overton window has shifted right faster giving the illusion that it has gone left. Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/so…

Yeah, this is actually a great point, and also a possible contributing factor.

dang it, off to pursue this rabbit hole of "wait,what's dat?"

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#18

Post by stephendause »

Manuel_D wrote: post #6

It seems kind of invalid to try and apply a media bias score to social media. What's the media bias of Reddit? It's going to be very different comparing /r/WhitePeopleTwitter with /r/PoliticalCompassMemes. Similar deal with Wikipedia, bias is more on a page-by-page or contributor basis.

I agree that it seems kind of invalid but only kind of. Any site that has an editorial policy and/or a ranking algorithm for what gets more views will have some forms of bias. I agree that in the case of reddit, it makes sense to evaluate each subreddit on its own. Also, if a page where users make submissions that mostly lean in one direction or another, that could be useful information to know.

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#19

Post by version_five »

cup wrote: post #7
dvt wrote: post #4

Imo, HN has moved from being moderately libertarian/right to today's slight liberal left slant as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies. I think the has also been an influx of non-US users over the past decade, which also tend to lean more left. I'd be curious to see if anyone else that's used this site regularly for the past 10+ y…

My impression is that the site has gradually shifted right, but the Overton window has shifted right faster giving the illusion that it has gone left. Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/so…

Are you saying the realm of acceptable things one can say had shifted to the right? I may have misunderstood because I've never heard that before. I can see that maybe one could claim the leftward shift has stopped and momentum is to the right, but I don't think the fever has broken yet, and I've never even heard anyone claim it has, outside of a few "tide is turning" twitter posts.

(I'm using left/right as I think they're commonly used now, the traditional split isn't really relevant)

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#20

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dvt wrote: post #4

Imo, HN has moved from being moderately libertarian/right to today's slight liberal left slant as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies. I think the has also been an influx of non-US users over the past decade, which also tend to lean more left. I'd be curious to see if anyone else that's used this site regularly for the past 10+ y…

I don't really agree with this. I think HN gets a pretty decent mix of all political viewpoints, just based on the percentage of times I see stuff that I agree with (politically) and the times I don't. If anything, the thing I really like is the stuff that feels blatantly tribal one way or the other is still consistently downvoted. To your specific points:

1. "as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies" I think that's a vast, and honestly unfair, over-simplification. I think a lot of folks have become genuinely disillusioned, and it really has nothing to do with changing with age (heck, if anything, I see young people as being more disillusioned than I am). For example, not speaking so much of any political change, but I certainly vastly underestimated how effective the Internet and social media would be as a tool of division. And I personally have some regret of some jobs I had that made this situation worse.

2. As HN has become more popular I've seen a large influx of more right leaning viewpoints. Of course, I think that's probably just because I consider myself more left/centrist, so it's hard for me to say if there has been a real change in direction, but I think I have seen more just blatant political takes, but again I still see informative, quality comments still bubble to the top most frequently.

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