4 ms·

> You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative IMO, it doesn't matter if the platform leans left as long as it fosters constructive and open discuss

> You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative IMO, it doesn't matter if the platform leans left as long as it fosters constructive and open discussion. You're correct that a lot of the heavy handed moderation (censorship?) is on popular communities that trend left, but that's just a money related trend imo. Companies want to make their product a "safe" platform for investors

creshal 10y ago
Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist? I hope we have Karl Marx' corpse wired up to a generator.
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  > Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist? It's not that it's leftist. It's that the people online tend to lean leftwards, and people investing in online communities want to grab the largest portion of the available population. I will say, however, that the left in the US (namely the Democratic party) certainly seems to be willing to pursue a lot in the name of money (like taking millions of dollars from corporate and financial lobbying), and a lot of leftists online are totally okay with creating echochambers (though that's certainly not their pursuit alone).
  - smsm42 10y ago
    I doubt however it goes that deep. I mean, your demographic premise is right, but there is more than ample right (whatever you want to mean by that word, really) online population. And I don't think anybody does a careful calculation of whether we should get this slant or that slant based on how many dollars it will bring us - even if it were possible (which I'm pretty sure it's not) nobody does that in practice. And, if you look at channels like Fox News, it has huge audience. Granted, online audience is different, but in this time and place, it's not that different. It's not 1990s anymore, using the internet is not for the elite anymore, no more than having a cellphone. Everybody now does that (not literally everybody but demographically pretty much all is covered). So, why many online communities lean leftwards? I'd say because their organizers/maintainers lean leftwards. Those are usually people that are young, frequently college or early post-college age, frequently with background in liberal arts - that demographics leans left. And those that don't lean the same way don't feel comfortable there (and modern college left made making people disagreeing with them feel unwelcome practically into a competition sport) and leave. That'd happen and does happen with no money consideration involved.
sergiotapia 10y ago
> but that's just a money related trend imo It's _much_ more insidious, but I'll leave it at that.
- pyre 10y ago
  You to realize the irony that in a discussion about constructive / objective / considerate discussion, you have posted something that is not very constructive.
pjc50 10y ago
It's about safety, but not so much of investors. You have a choice when running an English-language forum of whether to allow racism, homophobia, sexism and so on, and to what extent you'll give people the benefit of the doubt on those. If you do, then it's like spam, it will become the "default" content of the forum. If you don't, it will end up left-leaning as a "safe space". There are genuinely incompatible populations for audience/contributors and you have to pick one. (And if you have a hardline free speech policy where you refuse to delete anything, you'll end up hosting child porn. You have to have a deletion policy in order to have a functional forum.)

creshal 10y ago

Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist? I hope we have Karl Marx' corpse wired up to a generator.

hood_syntax 10y ago
> Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist? It's not that it's leftist. It's that the people online tend to lean leftwards, and people investing in online communities want to grab the largest portion of the available population. I will say, however, that the left in the US (namely the Democratic party) certainly seems to be willing to pursue a lot in the name of money (like taking millions of dollars from corporate and financial lobbying), and a lot of leftists online are totally okay with creating echochambers (though that's certainly not their pursuit alone).
- smsm42 10y ago
  I doubt however it goes that deep. I mean, your demographic premise is right, but there is more than ample right (whatever you want to mean by that word, really) online population. And I don't think anybody does a careful calculation of whether we should get this slant or that slant based on how many dollars it will bring us - even if it were possible (which I'm pretty sure it's not) nobody does that in practice. And, if you look at channels like Fox News, it has huge audience. Granted, online audience is different, but in this time and place, it's not that different. It's not 1990s anymore, using the internet is not for the elite anymore, no more than having a cellphone. Everybody now does that (not literally everybody but demographically pretty much all is covered). So, why many online communities lean leftwards? I'd say because their organizers/maintainers lean leftwards. Those are usually people that are young, frequently college or early post-college age, frequently with background in liberal arts - that demographics leans left. And those that don't lean the same way don't feel comfortable there (and modern college left made making people disagreeing with them feel unwelcome practically into a competition sport) and leave. That'd happen and does happen with no money consideration involved.

sergiotapia 10y ago

> but that's just a money related trend imo It's _much_ more insidious, but I'll leave it at that.

pyre 10y ago
You to realize the irony that in a discussion about constructive / objective / considerate discussion, you have posted something that is not very constructive.

pjc50 10y ago

It's about safety, but not so much of investors. You have a choice when running an English-language forum of whether to allow racism, homophobia, sexism and so on, and to what extent you'll give people the benefit of the doubt on those. If you do, then it's like spam, it will become the "default" content of the forum. If you don't, it will end up left-leaning as a "safe space". There are genuinely incompatible populations for audience/contributors and you have to pick one. (And if you have a hardline free speech policy where you refuse to delete anything, you'll end up hosting child porn. You have to have a deletion policy in order to have a functional forum.)