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

Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

floatingsheep.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#91

Post by arrrg »

crusso wrote: post #84
arrrg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the people who voted for Romney because he is white? What kind of question is that even? Suddenly when it's a black guy THAT'S the issue. How brain dead. Wanting your kid to have positive black role models is not racist, no. That's a not very sophisticated but very valid and certainly not racist reason for voting for Obama that's entirely based on race.

Wanting your kid to have positive black role models is not racist, no. Voting for or against someone because of the color of his skin is racist by definition. You don't get to choose which color. I imagine that you'd want to choose some particular definition of racism that meets your semantic needs, but that's not how this whole "logical use of language" thing works. Not teaching your kid that character and political…

Then I guess I love being a racist. Yay for racism! It's super-awesome.

Check your motherfucking privilege.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#92

Post by omaranto »

Claudus wrote: post #58
nhebb wrote: post #27

The problem I have with this is that it is needlessly stirring racial divides. 395 tweets out of ~120 million voters? Come on, do something positive for our country like mapping out the tweets of people still needing help from Sandy.

I have the exact same problem, I'm sure that there are many racists in our country, but this graphic is pretty garbage. 1) There are about 35 to 40 million Americans on Twitter, (15% of the 78.1% of online Americans). 2) Does the percentage of twitter users per state factor into this, it seems not. 3) " A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of t…

The reason the quote in 3) makes no sense is that it's wrong. :) The article gives a correct explanation in a footnote:

    The formula for this location quotient is

    (# of Hate Tweets in State / # of Hate Tweets in USA) 
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    (# of ALL Tweets in State / # of ALL Tweets in USA)

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#93

Post by bryanl »

Speaking as a black person, I can see cases where racist tweets would have been flagged, but weren't really racist. A black person (in some circles) could say, "Damn, that nigger Obama was reelected!" Is this racist? In this case, the use of "nigger" could be a term of endearment. It would have still been flagged during this survey.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#94

Post by cobrausn »

Anechoic wrote: post #87
cobrausn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did make his case - 395 racist tweets out of 120 million voters is practically background noise. You should expect all manner of extreme behavior on a sample size that large.

Again, that 395 number is not the total number of tweets, it's the number of tweets that included geolocation data. That 395 was likely a subset of the total number of racist tweets.

And if it were 1,000? 5,000? 25,000? You're still talking epsilon-level percentages here.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#95

Post by tankbot »

Claudus wrote: post #58
nhebb wrote: post #27

The problem I have with this is that it is needlessly stirring racial divides. 395 tweets out of ~120 million voters? Come on, do something positive for our country like mapping out the tweets of people still needing help from Sandy.

I have the exact same problem, I'm sure that there are many racists in our country, but this graphic is pretty garbage. 1) There are about 35 to 40 million Americans on Twitter, (15% of the 78.1% of online Americans). 2) Does the percentage of twitter users per state factor into this, it seems not. 3) " A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of t…

RE: #4

No, it's not racist. It's just ignorant. Everyone knows George Bush (along with all humans) is not a monkey, but an ape. Specifically an African ape. Knowing this makes racism a pretty humorous topic.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#96

Post by Karunamon »

crusso wrote: post #75
chez17 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is any less hateful about them? Has anyone suggested otherwise? Seriously, has anyone made the argument that a death threat is ok? This is the typical response of "look the other side does it to!". On top of it, the tweet you linked to has nothing to do with racism, just stupid partisanship. If you're so concerned about that, write your own blog post. >The problem I have with the lack of objectivity on racism i…

Seriously, has anyone made the argument that a death threat is ok? Arguments made by omission can be just as powerful as those made by commission. This is the typical response of "look the other side does it to!". That's entirely my point. That "typical response" is not logically unfounded. It's a rationale for behavior based upon the correct perception of hypocrisy. This is why intellectual integrity is IMPORTANT. I…

> It's a rationale for behavior based upon the correct perception of hypocrisy.

"The other side does it too" is not a rationale. It didn't work with your mom when you were 6, and it doesn't work in the real world either.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#97

Post by josephlord »

no_more_death wrote: post #80
nhebb wrote: post #27

The problem I have with this is that it is needlessly stirring racial divides. 395 tweets out of ~120 million voters? Come on, do something positive for our country like mapping out the tweets of people still needing help from Sandy.

One thing to take into account: A lot of racists probably are technologically backward and don't use Twitter. Another thing: I'm sure that a lot of racist tweets were NOT detected by their methodology. Still, it's true that racism is mostly in the past, particularly in conservative circles. I have met a couple of older people who were racist. They wouldn't use the n-word, but they would speak in somewhat stiff terms…

"Still, it's true that racism is mostly in the past,..."

I hope you are right but that is bold prediction about the future path of humanity.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#98

Post by 1123581321 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #90
Claudus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact same problem, I'm sure that there are many racists in our country, but this graphic is pretty garbage. 1) There are about 35 to 40 million Americans on Twitter, (15% of the 78.1% of online Americans). 2) Does the percentage of twitter users per state factor into this, it seems not. 3) " A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of t…

Why do you respond when you can't even be bothered to read TFA? The criteria used to find the tweets was very clearly described in footnote 1. Regarding your #4: just shut up.

Would you please edit your #4 response to be more informative and thoughtful, or remove it? It is currently incendiary and not helpful, and as someone who has exchanged emails with you privately in the past (financial industry software opportunities) I know you can write something better here.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#99

Post by jdunck »

cobrausn wrote: post #94
Anechoic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, that 395 number is not the total number of tweets, it's the number of tweets that included geolocation data. That 395 was likely a subset of the total number of racist tweets.

And if it were 1,000? 5,000? 25,000? You're still talking epsilon-level percentages here.

In some previous twitter work, I've seen geo-located tweets at about 2-3% of all tweets (assuming no bias), so charitably 19750 racist tweets here.

Which is to say, I agree with you.

Re: Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election

#100

Post by crusso »

Karunamon wrote: post #96
crusso wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, has anyone made the argument that a death threat is ok? Arguments made by omission can be just as powerful as those made by commission. This is the typical response of "look the other side does it to!". That's entirely my point. That "typical response" is not logically unfounded. It's a rationale for behavior based upon the correct perception of hypocrisy. This is why intellectual integrity is IMPORTANT. I…

> It's a rationale for behavior based upon the correct perception of hypocrisy. "The other side does it too" is not a rationale. It didn't work with your mom when you were 6, and it doesn't work in the real world either.

You're confusing an excuse your mom didn't like with an actual rationale. A rationale is a reason for someone to do something. It's empirically the reason given for this kind of behavior in many situations.

We may not like that reason or think it's fundamentally the most mature way to behave - but it's still a reason. If you're saying it's illogical, it's not, game theory says that this kind of self-protective behavior is very logical when competing with other actors that are also being self-protective.

Post reply on HN