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I lean conservative, but to be honest, I assign only a small portion of the blame to social media giants. Their office areas and leadership certainly lean left-

I lean conservative, but to be honest, I assign only a small portion of the blame to social media giants. Their office areas and leadership certainly lean left-wing, but I don't think that's the main issue. I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. As a result, even an entirely neutral algorithm focused on retention / user satisfaction will be more careful about showing right-leaning views to users who aren't obviously right-leaning. To me, it's tough to call that censorship. As a result, I see the issue more as a symptom of the real problem, but that's a lot tougher to solve.

nascar_is_bad 8y ago
> I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. More likely to have empathy is another way to phrase that.
- orbifold 8y ago
  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.
  - eropple 8y ago
    > 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 want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along. At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex. (And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)
    - hueving 8y ago
      Nationalism and white supremacism are not the same thing at all. Equating them and needlessly injecting race into it is bog standard Russian divisive propaganda.
      - eropple 8y ago
        In America, they are. Both are historical and current disasters; the icing on the cake of American white supremacism fueling American nationalism is extra gross, though. I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.
        hueving 8y ago
        Please try to rephrase that by actually saying something. I'm genuinely curious why you think that absurd equality is so obvious it requires no evidence.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway724b 8y ago
      There's nothing wrong with nationalism, or wanting to live on the same plot of land with people of your own race. The word nation is rooted in birth, stock, tribe, race. And there's nothing inherently wrong with White nationalism either. Or Jewish nationalism. Or German nationalism. Or Japanese, Indian, or African nationalism. Each nation has spilled much blood for its territory, and each race has a right to defend its existence and secure a future for its children. Alas, the experiment of multiculturalism in the U.S. and Europe has been a complete disaster. It has led to increasingly divided, low trust, and hateful societies. There were some good intentions behind multiculturalism, but there were also destructive intentions. The multiculturalists, the globalists, the corporate elite, the international communists -- whatever you want to call them -- have very good reasons for wanting to destroy racial, national, cultural, familial identities. They want atomized individuals, rootless, without a history and without a real identity, because atomized individuals do not have strong enough bonds with a people to resist being subjugated and controlled. Multiculturalism is a religion which preaches "diversity is our strength", but practices the destruction of diversity, of nationality, of race, of family. Those at the top have an agenda to consolidate power over a homogenized people who are easy to rule. At the bottom are the "educated" postmodern zealots who believe everyone is equal, everything is relative, and nothing is real. It's bullshit and now people know it, too.
  - dahdum 8y ago
    My example would be prolifers, that requires pretty deep empathy for the unborn to override the natural empathy for the mothers.
    - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
      Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.
      - dahdum 8y ago
        41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic. Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.
        lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
        [citation needed] Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-lost-faith-in-the-pro-life-movement.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...
        dahdum 8y ago
        It's not a false appeal, I genuinely believe the hasty generalization of the opposing side cheapens the argument for prochoice. That article was a good personal account which could definitely change minds.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "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." All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      By some measures, Clinton campaigned (slightly) to the right of Trump in the run-up to the general election: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 For the primaries, using similar measures at least, the Republicans all more or less clumped together to the right of Clinton.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        That article makes claims that are just not true. "Trump supported a decent minimum wage from the start, wants free education in state universities, has supported universal health care, consistently opposed the Transpacific Partnership Agreement and wants more bank regulation." He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation. So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        I think Trump has taken almost every conceivable position on every issue, so the claims in the article were presumably true for some particular moment of time.
- moduspol 8y ago
  “More capable of selective application of empathy” is how I’d describe it usually, but that’s neither here nor there.
  - hueving 8y ago
    Everyone applies "selective empathy". People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns. In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.
    - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
      Is that why Obama created a job retraining program for them? Because he cares very little for them? Or is it actually because he cares for them MORE than conservatives who want to lead them even further down the path of dependence on a dying industry.
    - geofft 8y ago
      This is the same sort of confusion that leads to ideas like "Blue Lives Matter." A life isn't inherently blue. A person isn't inherently a coal miner. I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment. It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.
      - hueving 8y ago
        It's a lack of empathy when they vote to end coal miner jobs without having job replacement though (which is exactly what Hillary promised for example). It's the same with people on the right with this immigration issue. They care about immigrants, but they care about rigid immigration policies to prevent "free-riders" even more. That's why you will find very few right-leaning people against legal immigrants as opposed to the many against illegal immigrants.
- hueving 8y ago
  If you're looking to troll, "more likely to be offended by rationality" is another way to phrase it.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    That's implying that conservative arguments are inherently more rational, which simply isn't the case. They have their own sources of argument that many would consider less rational. Religion, for one. Junk science, for another.
    - hueving 8y ago
      whoosh
- dahdum 8y ago
  The data backs you up on that, with Democrats ranking empathy much higher when making arguments. That fact almost proves the point OP was making though, when your argument is emotion based offense at hostile views comes naturally.
  - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
    Of course it does. That's why I just rephrased it for him in a way that isn't right-wing propaganda to maybe open his eyes. "liberals are easily offended" is just right wing spin of the clear fact that the left have always cared more about real people.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    But now you're trying to make it seem like conservatives tend to more apply logic in their arguments. Considering a lot of their arguments come from religion, I can't agree with that.
    - saas_co_de 8y ago
      But attacking people on the basis of their faith (which is not a protected status at all) is a perfectly logical and reasonable way to engage in public discourse.
      - slededit 8y ago
        Religion is one of the earliest protected classes. So early its enshrined directly in the constitution.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        I'm not attacking anyone. I'm calling out that faith based arguments are not made from a place of logic and reason.
        dahdum 8y ago
        Faith is like a blueprint, codifying rules in an effort to maintain a stable society. Some of these rules, IMHO, are absurd, but many you'd come to the same conclusion without faith as with it.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
  Ah, that famous empathy that only left-wing people seem to have :)
  - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
    https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin From Russia eh?
    - dang 8y ago
      All: attacking another user based on their nationality is totally not ok here, and we ban accounts that do it. We've banned this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
      Yep.
      - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
        All I need to know :) thanks. Execute the gays amirite?
        dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account for egregiously violating the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
        You're not much interested in real people, are you? :)
        dang 8y ago
        Could you please not do flamewars on HN? That commenter was way out of line to attack you based on nationality, and we've banned their account for trolling. But you also posted provocations in this thread, and we need people not to do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Your username is kind of interesting in light of your comment here. It kind of argues against your point...
- 6cd6beb 8y ago
  >Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    The one they were responding to wasn't that civil itself.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
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”.
- moduspol 8y ago
  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 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”. I'm sure that's a debate to be had--but to apply most applicably to this discussion, I mean "sufficiently offended to leave a website, stop watching a video, block something, report something, or otherwise feel like you've had a negative experience." The kind of things social media algorithms will pick up on.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    I think you’re misunderstanding what it’s like to lean left. You used the word “exclusively”... “As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas.” I think you’re making a strange assumption here: some of my conservative ideas are almost universally rejected by the media around me, therefore many liberals must feel all of their ideas are universally accepted by the media. That’s not true though. For example some liberals feel that capitalism is immoral. That idea is almost universally rejected in the media, and by most Americans. I think your point—that some ideas which are important to you are being suppressed—is important to raise. I care about those ideas and seek them out. (Although I’m conservative in many ways) But I think you really weaken your position in the debate by tacking on strong claims about how enfranchised leftists must feel in the media. The people who feel comfortable with the media are really neither left or right. They are people who feel comfortable with the status quo, who feel most happy when everyone agrees and actively move away from discord. Non-ideologues. These people are neither left nor right.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views" Considering "right leaning views" includes things like women should not have reproductive control over their bodies, trans people should not be able to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with, and gay people shouldn't be married, and people should have their children yanked away from them at the border, yes, I can very much see why they would be offended by that. You're not getting a lot of people being offended by the nuances of tax policy, for instance.
IIAOPSW 8y ago
>I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.
- moduspol 8y ago
  Well, we can debate the meaning of "offended," but for the purposes of this discussion, I mean "causing the user to react in a way perceived as negative for the end user experience and reflecting poorly in engagement metrics." As a conservative, it's tough to avoid seeing opposing points of view. You'd have to avoid all late night shows, nearly all TV stations and newspapers, and most social media. We're quite accustomed to seeing opposing views and if it actually bothered us seeing them, we'd be frustrated virtually all the time. Left-leaning people can quite easily participate in society without seeing opposing views. You can openly discuss even political activism at work without issue. Avoid Fox News and Breitbart and you're unlikely to see anything much different than what you already believe. Maybe "offended" isn't the right word, but I do think it's a contributing factor.
  - cblades 8y ago
    You do realize how regional this is right? I'm liberal and in a very red area. I have the exact opposite experience.
    - moduspol 8y ago
      Then I guess you're choosing to watch Fox News, read Breitbart, avoid any political discussion on here or Reddit, watch no late night or comedy TV shows, and work at a remarkably conservative workplace (especially for tech). Maybe you're choosing to read a more conservative local newspaper? Very little of this is regional because most media consumed is not regional, and most reporters and editors lean left.

nascar_is_bad 8y ago

> I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. More likely to have empathy is another way to phrase that.

orbifold 8y ago
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.
- eropple 8y ago
  > 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 want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along. At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex. (And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)
  - hueving 8y ago
    Nationalism and white supremacism are not the same thing at all. Equating them and needlessly injecting race into it is bog standard Russian divisive propaganda.
    - eropple 8y ago
      In America, they are. Both are historical and current disasters; the icing on the cake of American white supremacism fueling American nationalism is extra gross, though. I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.
      - hueving 8y ago
        Please try to rephrase that by actually saying something. I'm genuinely curious why you think that absurd equality is so obvious it requires no evidence.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway724b 8y ago
    There's nothing wrong with nationalism, or wanting to live on the same plot of land with people of your own race. The word nation is rooted in birth, stock, tribe, race. And there's nothing inherently wrong with White nationalism either. Or Jewish nationalism. Or German nationalism. Or Japanese, Indian, or African nationalism. Each nation has spilled much blood for its territory, and each race has a right to defend its existence and secure a future for its children. Alas, the experiment of multiculturalism in the U.S. and Europe has been a complete disaster. It has led to increasingly divided, low trust, and hateful societies. There were some good intentions behind multiculturalism, but there were also destructive intentions. The multiculturalists, the globalists, the corporate elite, the international communists -- whatever you want to call them -- have very good reasons for wanting to destroy racial, national, cultural, familial identities. They want atomized individuals, rootless, without a history and without a real identity, because atomized individuals do not have strong enough bonds with a people to resist being subjugated and controlled. Multiculturalism is a religion which preaches "diversity is our strength", but practices the destruction of diversity, of nationality, of race, of family. Those at the top have an agenda to consolidate power over a homogenized people who are easy to rule. At the bottom are the "educated" postmodern zealots who believe everyone is equal, everything is relative, and nothing is real. It's bullshit and now people know it, too.
- dahdum 8y ago
  My example would be prolifers, that requires pretty deep empathy for the unborn to override the natural empathy for the mothers.
  - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
    Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.
    - dahdum 8y ago
      41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic. Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.
      - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
        [citation needed] Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-lost-faith-in-the-pro-life-movement.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...
        dahdum 8y ago
        It's not a false appeal, I genuinely believe the hasty generalization of the opposing side cheapens the argument for prochoice. That article was a good personal account which could definitely change minds.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "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." All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    By some measures, Clinton campaigned (slightly) to the right of Trump in the run-up to the general election: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 For the primaries, using similar measures at least, the Republicans all more or less clumped together to the right of Clinton.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      That article makes claims that are just not true. "Trump supported a decent minimum wage from the start, wants free education in state universities, has supported universal health care, consistently opposed the Transpacific Partnership Agreement and wants more bank regulation." He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation. So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        I think Trump has taken almost every conceivable position on every issue, so the claims in the article were presumably true for some particular moment of time.
moduspol 8y ago
“More capable of selective application of empathy” is how I’d describe it usually, but that’s neither here nor there.
- hueving 8y ago
  Everyone applies "selective empathy". People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns. In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.
  - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
    Is that why Obama created a job retraining program for them? Because he cares very little for them? Or is it actually because he cares for them MORE than conservatives who want to lead them even further down the path of dependence on a dying industry.
  - geofft 8y ago
    This is the same sort of confusion that leads to ideas like "Blue Lives Matter." A life isn't inherently blue. A person isn't inherently a coal miner. I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment. It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.
    - hueving 8y ago
      It's a lack of empathy when they vote to end coal miner jobs without having job replacement though (which is exactly what Hillary promised for example). It's the same with people on the right with this immigration issue. They care about immigrants, but they care about rigid immigration policies to prevent "free-riders" even more. That's why you will find very few right-leaning people against legal immigrants as opposed to the many against illegal immigrants.
hueving 8y ago
If you're looking to troll, "more likely to be offended by rationality" is another way to phrase it.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  That's implying that conservative arguments are inherently more rational, which simply isn't the case. They have their own sources of argument that many would consider less rational. Religion, for one. Junk science, for another.
  - hueving 8y ago
    whoosh
dahdum 8y ago
The data backs you up on that, with Democrats ranking empathy much higher when making arguments. That fact almost proves the point OP was making though, when your argument is emotion based offense at hostile views comes naturally.
- nascar_is_bad 8y ago
  Of course it does. That's why I just rephrased it for him in a way that isn't right-wing propaganda to maybe open his eyes. "liberals are easily offended" is just right wing spin of the clear fact that the left have always cared more about real people.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  But now you're trying to make it seem like conservatives tend to more apply logic in their arguments. Considering a lot of their arguments come from religion, I can't agree with that.
  - saas_co_de 8y ago
    But attacking people on the basis of their faith (which is not a protected status at all) is a perfectly logical and reasonable way to engage in public discourse.
    - slededit 8y ago
      Religion is one of the earliest protected classes. So early its enshrined directly in the constitution.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      I'm not attacking anyone. I'm calling out that faith based arguments are not made from a place of logic and reason.
      - dahdum 8y ago
        Faith is like a blueprint, codifying rules in an effort to maintain a stable society. Some of these rules, IMHO, are absurd, but many you'd come to the same conclusion without faith as with it.
Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
Ah, that famous empathy that only left-wing people seem to have :)
- nascar_is_bad 8y ago
  https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin https://stackoverflow.com/users/478521/mikhail-edoshin From Russia eh?
  - dang 8y ago
    All: attacking another user based on their nationality is totally not ok here, and we ban accounts that do it. We've banned this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
    Yep.
    - nascar_is_bad 8y ago
      All I need to know :) thanks. Execute the gays amirite?
      - dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account for egregiously violating the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
        You're not much interested in real people, are you? :)
        dang 8y ago
        Could you please not do flamewars on HN? That commenter was way out of line to attack you based on nationality, and we've banned their account for trolling. But you also posted provocations in this thread, and we need people not to do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Your username is kind of interesting in light of your comment here. It kind of argues against your point...
6cd6beb 8y ago
>Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  The one they were responding to wasn't that civil itself.

erikpukinskis 8y ago

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”.

moduspol 8y ago
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 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”. I'm sure that's a debate to be had--but to apply most applicably to this discussion, I mean "sufficiently offended to leave a website, stop watching a video, block something, report something, or otherwise feel like you've had a negative experience." The kind of things social media algorithms will pick up on.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I think you’re misunderstanding what it’s like to lean left. You used the word “exclusively”... “As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas.” I think you’re making a strange assumption here: some of my conservative ideas are almost universally rejected by the media around me, therefore many liberals must feel all of their ideas are universally accepted by the media. That’s not true though. For example some liberals feel that capitalism is immoral. That idea is almost universally rejected in the media, and by most Americans. I think your point—that some ideas which are important to you are being suppressed—is important to raise. I care about those ideas and seek them out. (Although I’m conservative in many ways) But I think you really weaken your position in the debate by tacking on strong claims about how enfranchised leftists must feel in the media. The people who feel comfortable with the media are really neither left or right. They are people who feel comfortable with the status quo, who feel most happy when everyone agrees and actively move away from discord. Non-ideologues. These people are neither left nor right.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views" Considering "right leaning views" includes things like women should not have reproductive control over their bodies, trans people should not be able to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with, and gay people shouldn't be married, and people should have their children yanked away from them at the border, yes, I can very much see why they would be offended by that. You're not getting a lot of people being offended by the nuances of tax policy, for instance.

IIAOPSW 8y ago

>I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.

moduspol 8y ago
Well, we can debate the meaning of "offended," but for the purposes of this discussion, I mean "causing the user to react in a way perceived as negative for the end user experience and reflecting poorly in engagement metrics." As a conservative, it's tough to avoid seeing opposing points of view. You'd have to avoid all late night shows, nearly all TV stations and newspapers, and most social media. We're quite accustomed to seeing opposing views and if it actually bothered us seeing them, we'd be frustrated virtually all the time. Left-leaning people can quite easily participate in society without seeing opposing views. You can openly discuss even political activism at work without issue. Avoid Fox News and Breitbart and you're unlikely to see anything much different than what you already believe. Maybe "offended" isn't the right word, but I do think it's a contributing factor.
- cblades 8y ago
  You do realize how regional this is right? I'm liberal and in a very red area. I have the exact opposite experience.
  - moduspol 8y ago
    Then I guess you're choosing to watch Fox News, read Breitbart, avoid any political discussion on here or Reddit, watch no late night or comedy TV shows, and work at a remarkably conservative workplace (especially for tech). Maybe you're choosing to read a more conservative local newspaper? Very little of this is regional because most media consumed is not regional, and most reporters and editors lean left.