3 ms·

Your guess is as good as mine. Personally, I think the free speech issue is an albatross. What’s much more concerning to me is Twitter arbitrarily “fact checkin

Your guess is as good as mine. Personally, I think the free speech issue is an albatross. What’s much more concerning to me is Twitter arbitrarily “fact checking” Trump’s tweets, but nobody else’s. More generally, the systemic bias tends to lean against conservative voices far more often than liberal voices. There are numerous examples of double standards in terms of who is banned or censored from platforms, or even who/what shows up in the search results. Search “Joe Biden creepy” on google, and then search the same thing on Bing. Why are the results so different? Try sending a private message on Facebook containing the string “joebiden.info.” Why won’t it send?

rexer 6y ago
Genuine question: what do you think of Twitter selectively applying their ToS to Trump?
- coder4life 6y ago
  Anyone else would have already been banned, so this is kid gloves
lallysingh 6y ago
Woah man, woah. That's crazy. And now They are wearing masks to force us all to get barcodes on our necks to prove we belong to the beast. The ads all really just say Obey.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Google invests more in making sure that it has quality search results, and the algorithms are just different. Not really that complicated. The NY Post is a low quality tabloid that is just a step above the Enquirer, for example.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  I have a hard time believing that the results page for “Joe Biden creepy” is not at least semi-manually curated. For example, none of the “creepy” videos that show up are the most comprehensive versions of the clips someone would want to watch to inform themselves of what somebody is referring to when calling him creepy. It’s also not hard for me to believe Google would take such action, given the political makeup of their employees, and the fact that they have been recorded suggesting their commitment to making Trump a “blip” in history. It’s also worth noting that was only one example I cited. It doesn’t change the fact that Twitter has only ever “fact checked” Trump (by linking to CNN), and that Facebook prohibits you from sending links to JoeBiden.info in private messages. Are these not clear examples of bias? You can make the argument that these companies have the right to as much bias as they want on their own platforms. But you cannot in good faith make the argument that such bias does not exist, or that it’s some conspiracy theory to suggest that it does.
  - sammalloy 6y ago
    Here’s the thing: most of us here don’t really care about left or right. We care about good and bad ideas. And for the most part, the Republicans espouse really bad ideas, so bad in fact, that reasonable people vocally call them out on these bad ideas. You and others misperceive this attention as “bias”. Why? It’s simple. Studies of conservatives show that they prefer authoritarianism and unquestioning loyalty over competency and expertise. When their loyalty to an idea, a leader, or a political ideology is questioned, it undermines their worldview. So the “bias” you are really describing, is just good old fashioned critical thinking, which by its very design, confronts and questions authority, and upholds values of openness, tolerance, and free inquiry—the bane of conservatism. All you have to do is come up with good ideas. It’s that simple.
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      Thanks for telling me what I prefer. Critical thinking is great. We should all do it. Just because I agree with that doesn’t mean I want or need some company to do the “critical thinking” for me. In fact, the things you’re defending tend to get in the way of critical thinking. It’s hard to apply critical thought with incomplete information, which is what tends to be available when news agencies apply selection bias to which stories they report, or search engines remove results they deem derogatory, or social media platforms forbid sending links in private messages.
      - sammalloy 6y ago
        Are you arguing that the factchecking and verification filters Facebook, and now Twitter, are currently using, somehow impede free inquiry? We should be tolerant, but we should not tolerate intolerance. More to the point, we should not tolerate false news, hoaxes, or conspiracy theories intended to mislead or cause harm. Sadly, conservatives have come to /depend/ on that kind of “fact suppression” to sway people over to their side. We saw it with the rise of birtherism, with the hate-fueled advent of the Tea Party, and in the tribal nativism that led to the election of Trump. You raise the “incomplete information” tactic, which denialists on both the left and the right depend upon. Climate denialists say we shouldn’t mitigate because we don’t have enough data or they argue that the data is suspect. We know, and we have consensus. Do we need more information about the 18,000 lies Trump has spread already? Facebook and Twitter are already on record (and off record per the WSJ article yesterday) showing that they gave the benefit of the doubt to conservatives because algorithms were consistently selecting their rhetoric as problematic. Twitter wouldn’t filter out the Nazis, for example, because it also targeted Republican politicians.
- warrenm 6y ago
  >Google invests more in making sure that it has quality search results Define "quality" You may find Google results more to your personal liking Yet others will find Other Search Engine™ has "better" results
tensor 6y ago
If conservatives are so hurt by tech companies then why does Trump owe his presidency to Cambridge Analytics and Facebook?
sammalloy 6y ago
> More generally, the systemic bias tends to lean against conservative voices far more often than liberal voices. This is a popular, but baseless conspiracy theory. The myth of social media anti-conservative bias refuses to die https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/platform-bias.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/platform-bias.php
dylan-m 6y ago
Who else's tweets are they going to fact check? The Dalai Lama? They have to start somewhere, and a guy who's using their service to spread disinformation about vote by mail in a blatant attempt to rally his base around contesting an election if it doesn't go his way - hours after terrorizing the surviving family of a political staffer for no obvious reason (again with no basis on fact) - seems like a great place to start. Especially if your company isn't (completely) run by invertebrates. Twitter handed Trump a bullhorn. They didn't need to, but they did. For purely business reasons, I'm sure. But they _own_ that bullhorn, and they can take it away whenever they like. "Just business," his TV character would say. I can make a website right now; donaldtrumpcantposthere.com; and I can put a little chat room there and people can type whatever they want and maybe it'll show up, but you know what? Whoever posts there, I can do whatever I want with it. I might get in trouble for _other_ things (facilitating online bullying, distributing copyrighted material, etc.), but "free speech" is not one of them. That's how it works when you deal with private corporations. Don't like it? Move to China :b
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  How about UFO sightings? Bigfoot? Debunked Russian Conspiracy tweets by Adam Schiff?
- dekhn 6y ago
  I'd be fine with Twitter fact checking the Dalai Lama. For example, his most recent tweet says "When this blue planet is viewed from space, there are no national boundaries to be seen." Here's a photo from space of the India-Pakistan border: https://qz.com/india/516864/the-india-pakistan-border-is-so-closely-guarded-that-it-can-be-seen-from-space/ https://qz.com/india/516864/the-india-pakistan-border-is-so-... Assuming that's not a fake photo (or that this one is: https://time.com/4780003/international-borders-from-space/ https://time.com/4780003/international-borders-from-space/), I would say that sufficient evidence exists to say that what the Dalai Lama stated is factually incorrect.
  - dylan-m 6y ago
    My point is his factually incorrect statements are generally innocuous, whereas the same statement by the _President of the United States_ is much more of a problem. I think it's unreasonable to expect Twitter to regurgitate such dangerous statements uncritically. The slippery slope thing or the "why do anything if it isn't perfect" thing needn't enter into this: Donald Trump's Twitter account is an objectively different problem than the Dalai Lama's Twitter account. (That's a really cool picture, by the way!).

rexer 6y ago

Genuine question: what do you think of Twitter selectively applying their ToS to Trump?

coder4life 6y ago
Anyone else would have already been banned, so this is kid gloves

lallysingh 6y ago

Woah man, woah. That's crazy. And now They are wearing masks to force us all to get barcodes on our necks to prove we belong to the beast. The ads all really just say Obey.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

Google invests more in making sure that it has quality search results, and the algorithms are just different. Not really that complicated. The NY Post is a low quality tabloid that is just a step above the Enquirer, for example.

TechBro8615 6y ago
I have a hard time believing that the results page for “Joe Biden creepy” is not at least semi-manually curated. For example, none of the “creepy” videos that show up are the most comprehensive versions of the clips someone would want to watch to inform themselves of what somebody is referring to when calling him creepy. It’s also not hard for me to believe Google would take such action, given the political makeup of their employees, and the fact that they have been recorded suggesting their commitment to making Trump a “blip” in history. It’s also worth noting that was only one example I cited. It doesn’t change the fact that Twitter has only ever “fact checked” Trump (by linking to CNN), and that Facebook prohibits you from sending links to JoeBiden.info in private messages. Are these not clear examples of bias? You can make the argument that these companies have the right to as much bias as they want on their own platforms. But you cannot in good faith make the argument that such bias does not exist, or that it’s some conspiracy theory to suggest that it does.
- sammalloy 6y ago
  Here’s the thing: most of us here don’t really care about left or right. We care about good and bad ideas. And for the most part, the Republicans espouse really bad ideas, so bad in fact, that reasonable people vocally call them out on these bad ideas. You and others misperceive this attention as “bias”. Why? It’s simple. Studies of conservatives show that they prefer authoritarianism and unquestioning loyalty over competency and expertise. When their loyalty to an idea, a leader, or a political ideology is questioned, it undermines their worldview. So the “bias” you are really describing, is just good old fashioned critical thinking, which by its very design, confronts and questions authority, and upholds values of openness, tolerance, and free inquiry—the bane of conservatism. All you have to do is come up with good ideas. It’s that simple.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Thanks for telling me what I prefer. Critical thinking is great. We should all do it. Just because I agree with that doesn’t mean I want or need some company to do the “critical thinking” for me. In fact, the things you’re defending tend to get in the way of critical thinking. It’s hard to apply critical thought with incomplete information, which is what tends to be available when news agencies apply selection bias to which stories they report, or search engines remove results they deem derogatory, or social media platforms forbid sending links in private messages.
    - sammalloy 6y ago
      Are you arguing that the factchecking and verification filters Facebook, and now Twitter, are currently using, somehow impede free inquiry? We should be tolerant, but we should not tolerate intolerance. More to the point, we should not tolerate false news, hoaxes, or conspiracy theories intended to mislead or cause harm. Sadly, conservatives have come to /depend/ on that kind of “fact suppression” to sway people over to their side. We saw it with the rise of birtherism, with the hate-fueled advent of the Tea Party, and in the tribal nativism that led to the election of Trump. You raise the “incomplete information” tactic, which denialists on both the left and the right depend upon. Climate denialists say we shouldn’t mitigate because we don’t have enough data or they argue that the data is suspect. We know, and we have consensus. Do we need more information about the 18,000 lies Trump has spread already? Facebook and Twitter are already on record (and off record per the WSJ article yesterday) showing that they gave the benefit of the doubt to conservatives because algorithms were consistently selecting their rhetoric as problematic. Twitter wouldn’t filter out the Nazis, for example, because it also targeted Republican politicians.
warrenm 6y ago
>Google invests more in making sure that it has quality search results Define "quality" You may find Google results more to your personal liking Yet others will find Other Search Engine™ has "better" results

tensor 6y ago

If conservatives are so hurt by tech companies then why does Trump owe his presidency to Cambridge Analytics and Facebook?

sammalloy 6y ago

> More generally, the systemic bias tends to lean against conservative voices far more often than liberal voices. This is a popular, but baseless conspiracy theory. The myth of social media anti-conservative bias refuses to die https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/platform-bias.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/platform-bias.php

dylan-m 6y ago

Who else's tweets are they going to fact check? The Dalai Lama? They have to start somewhere, and a guy who's using their service to spread disinformation about vote by mail in a blatant attempt to rally his base around contesting an election if it doesn't go his way - hours after terrorizing the surviving family of a political staffer for no obvious reason (again with no basis on fact) - seems like a great place to start. Especially if your company isn't (completely) run by invertebrates. Twitter handed Trump a bullhorn. They didn't need to, but they did. For purely business reasons, I'm sure. But they _own_ that bullhorn, and they can take it away whenever they like. "Just business," his TV character would say. I can make a website right now; donaldtrumpcantposthere.com; and I can put a little chat room there and people can type whatever they want and maybe it'll show up, but you know what? Whoever posts there, I can do whatever I want with it. I might get in trouble for _other_ things (facilitating online bullying, distributing copyrighted material, etc.), but "free speech" is not one of them. That's how it works when you deal with private corporations. Don't like it? Move to China :b

Fjolsvith 6y ago
How about UFO sightings? Bigfoot? Debunked Russian Conspiracy tweets by Adam Schiff?
dekhn 6y ago
I'd be fine with Twitter fact checking the Dalai Lama. For example, his most recent tweet says "When this blue planet is viewed from space, there are no national boundaries to be seen." Here's a photo from space of the India-Pakistan border: https://qz.com/india/516864/the-india-pakistan-border-is-so-closely-guarded-that-it-can-be-seen-from-space/ https://qz.com/india/516864/the-india-pakistan-border-is-so-... Assuming that's not a fake photo (or that this one is: https://time.com/4780003/international-borders-from-space/ https://time.com/4780003/international-borders-from-space/), I would say that sufficient evidence exists to say that what the Dalai Lama stated is factually incorrect.
- dylan-m 6y ago
  My point is his factually incorrect statements are generally innocuous, whereas the same statement by the _President of the United States_ is much more of a problem. I think it's unreasonable to expect Twitter to regurgitate such dangerous statements uncritically. The slippery slope thing or the "why do anything if it isn't perfect" thing needn't enter into this: Donald Trump's Twitter account is an objectively different problem than the Dalai Lama's Twitter account. (That's a really cool picture, by the way!).