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> foreign values Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree w

> foreign values Not even foreign values. Only subset of foreign values which are only shared by the Silicon Valley. Beyond that, half the US people disagree with Google/Apple/Twitter/Facebook’s non-neutral stance on politics, who weighed their full weight in censoring 50% of the political spectrum. I will not call it the pied piper because Uganda weighs nothing, but the GAFA’s politics are now visible as directly harmful in USA, with calls to leftist violence given full platform since 4 years while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum, and any country who lets them operate their ideological platform is doomed to live through the Congress event again. Good one, Uganda.

lallysingh 6y ago
50% isn't really the right number, is it? Where did you get it? If you're counting people's political beliefs, the popular vote is a good estimator.
- enedil 6y ago
  I think this was just an approximation. Nonetheless the order of magnitude is right.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Nearly half of the population on average votes Republican because their views align better with the red team but that doesn't mean every one of them is aligned with the far right that is more like 12% of the population not half.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  It’s a guess, and it’s certainly not split R/D in the US.
- amscanne 6y ago
  The popular vote is still ~50% in terms of party split — are you questioning the accuracy or precision of the parent’s 50% figure? Edit: I wish people downvoting this question would explain. I literally don’t understand and am asking for clarification.
  - tzs 6y ago
    He's questioning the claim that 50% of the political spectrum is being de-platformed. Most conservatives, like most liberals, never run afoul of the content rules of the major platforms.
bilbo0s 6y ago
A bit off topic, but I think one thing this week should have taught us all is that this whole liberal-conservative dichotomy does not encompass the entirety of the US population. There are an enormous number of people out there who don't really subscribe to either view. The assumption that if you're liberal you make up 50% of the population, or that if you're conservative you make up 50% of the population, can lead you to overestimate your strength and take woefully ill considered actions. Just putting that out there.
gameswithgo 6y ago
left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time, they just were not ever the president doing it so you don’t notice.
- njanirudh 6y ago
  This is a lie. I have seen so many people threaten the POTUS and talked about evading cops and support BLM riots without any regards to others.
- cabalamat 6y ago
  > left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time Yes they do, but a lot less that right leaning calls do, because social media companies lean leftwards. For example, Parler was recently kicked off of Google App store, and Apple and Amazon have also threatened to kick Parler off their app store and hosting platform. This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence. None of these companies would ever do the same to a mainstream (i.e. left leaning, because social media censors the right more than the left) social media platform because of left wing violent talk/threats. It's blatantly obvious that big tech is biased to the left. (I say this as someone who is fairly left-leaning, FWIW).
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    > This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence. This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings and everything to do with Parler's wildly inadequate content moderation combined with top users calling for the execution of public officials with impunity. Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning and has arguably just as many calls for violence, but they at least have a fully staffed moderation team.
    - cabalamat 6y ago
      > This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings I think we're going to have to agree to differ here. > Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning Really? It seems to me that just about all adults on on Facebook (I can only think offhand of one person I know IRL who isn't). Thus FB will have the same political composition as the population.
mullingitover 6y ago
> while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum Let's be clear: moderating/banning the accounts of a man and his supporters who invited tens of thousands of people to the United States Capitol, spent hours lying to them about the results of the election, and then weaponized them in an attempt to overthrow the US government is not a case of Twitter crossing some sort of threshold into tyranny. A grave crime was committed this week, and the wheels of the legal system are dysfunctional enough that the perpetrator wasn't arrested on the spot but instead allowed continued control of the US military and its nuclear weapon arsenal. Just because Twitter is able to act quickly outside the confines of the legal system doesn't mean we're descending into tech tyranny. I honestly don't want to hear another word about "leftist violence" or "the radical left" now that the right has unapologetically lined up behind the man who fomented a coup attempt.
- mc32 6y ago
  Ransacking through the capitol like imbeciles was very ill advised, but that’s not how a coup is executed. You need dedicated backers [cause oriented willing to sacrifice] high up in the armed forces as well as the intelligentsia. Rag tag groups do not execute coups. That’s a willful exaggeration and further evidence of how narratives tilt people’s thinking. This is the media and social media calling it that -they cannot help it. Are the armed forces classifying as a coup? It’s a ridiculous accusation. More of a coup attempt is the call for impeachment with two weeks left after the previous impeachment failed. It’s honestly sad.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    Honestly I feel bad for the people who were duped into doing the ransacking. They thought their leader was telling them the truth. The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.
    - tetrometal 6y ago
      > The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime. I cannot fathom why you keep saying this. Please present some evidence.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Big Tech platforms allowed pretty much everything until last week which crossed the line. Facebook's most viewed pages were all conservative and sometimes insanely violent discussions which I think should have been banned a long ago. The US Capitol attack was staged on Big Tech forums. Did you miss the part where 4 years of Trump on Twitter happened? Your opinion seems to be formed just recently, but you're making profound statements that ignore 99.99% of history. I am sorry, but this is an absurd and misplaced knee-jerk reaction and pooling it in to "Silicon Valley" culture. Silicon Valley culture dates back 50 years or more.
bmarquez 6y ago
If I was the leader of a country, why would I let Silicon Valley companies potentially censor my speech? Other authoritarian leaders are likely thinking "If Twitter can deplatform the President of the United States [which has more power than my smaller country], they have the power to deplatform me. Better reduce that risk and start blocking services to maintain control." Not saying it's right, but I understand their point of view.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  I imagine they were planning to do this before what happened in the US with Twitter banning Trump. Ethiopia shut off telecommunication with the province of Tigray when conflict heated up this year (it still may be cut off). According to the article, Uganda shut off communication (Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp) in Feb 2016. I think that because many of us are in the US and just witnessed Twitter banning Trump we are falling prey to recency bias [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  This is backwards. Governments block social media to prevent speech, not protect it.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  It is very strange to speak of a president being "deplatformed" If somewhere out there is a nation without their own government website for the president to speak on?
  - bmarquez 6y ago
    From the perspective of a hypothetical corrupt, authoritarian government, it's an issue of control. Of course they have their own websites. But the goal would be to promote the "official" point of view while suppressing the opposition, to maintain the illusion of broad support. It's not a free speech issue. And if the "official" point of view gets deplatformed, it's a risk to them. I'm hesitant to use VKontakte as a real-life example because I don't speak Russian, but according to Wikipedia VK had censorship issues until it was (supposedly) taken over by Putin-friendly people.
cabalamat 6y ago
Maybe Uganda (and other countries) will start thinking about replaceing US-run social media with home grown solutions. Given that open source and federated replacements for Twitter[1], Instagram[2], Reddit[3], YouTube[4] etc exist, this would not be a massive undertaking. 1: Mastodon, https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about 2: PixelFed, https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed 3: Lemmy, https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy 4: PeerTube, https://joinpeertube.org/en/ https://joinpeertube.org/en/
- oblio 6y ago
  It's probably a good idea, but how will they implement censorship?
  - cabalamat 6y ago
    Uganda, or the proposed new sites that would be set up?
    - oblio 6y ago
      Both.
      - cabalamat 6y ago
        The sites would presumably do it via their normal admin interfaces. The Ugandan government would find it a lot easier to censor a website based in their country than one based abroard.
wffurr 6y ago
Trump voters were only 75 million out of 245 million Americans over 18. That’s a lot less than half.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Ah the silent majority argument. The thing is people aren't getting censored for being fiscally conservative, being for tax breaks, being against abortion or any number of conservative values. People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements. Lets look at the events at the capital as a proxy. 12% of America support this behavior. This is well within the margin of error for the percentage that tacitly supports the idea that the white "race" is exceptional.
- illuminati1911 6y ago
  ” People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements.” Yet, last year Twitter and Reddit was full of BLM/Antifa supporters calling for and supporting cleansing of white people, republicans, Trump voters etc. without any kind of censorship. Also for past decade these platforms have been safe harbor for terrorist organizations, cartels, gangs, government media from countries that do extreme human rights violations etc. No problem there either except sometimes when the shitstorm get big enough. Apparently though some mentally unstable QAnon hillbillies stealing speakers stands are more extreme than countries and organizations involved in slavery, genocide, mass murder or terrorism.
alisonkisk 6y ago
"50% of the spectrum" is not censored. Some extent edges are. Most of the right-wing don't care about Trump and his fan clubs, they just care about whoever the Republican candidates are.
dang 6y ago
Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705107.

lallysingh 6y ago

50% isn't really the right number, is it? Where did you get it? If you're counting people's political beliefs, the popular vote is a good estimator.

enedil 6y ago
I think this was just an approximation. Nonetheless the order of magnitude is right.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Nearly half of the population on average votes Republican because their views align better with the red team but that doesn't mean every one of them is aligned with the far right that is more like 12% of the population not half.
tehwebguy 6y ago
It’s a guess, and it’s certainly not split R/D in the US.
amscanne 6y ago
The popular vote is still ~50% in terms of party split — are you questioning the accuracy or precision of the parent’s 50% figure? Edit: I wish people downvoting this question would explain. I literally don’t understand and am asking for clarification.
- tzs 6y ago
  He's questioning the claim that 50% of the political spectrum is being de-platformed. Most conservatives, like most liberals, never run afoul of the content rules of the major platforms.

bilbo0s 6y ago

A bit off topic, but I think one thing this week should have taught us all is that this whole liberal-conservative dichotomy does not encompass the entirety of the US population. There are an enormous number of people out there who don't really subscribe to either view. The assumption that if you're liberal you make up 50% of the population, or that if you're conservative you make up 50% of the population, can lead you to overestimate your strength and take woefully ill considered actions. Just putting that out there.

gameswithgo 6y ago

left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time, they just were not ever the president doing it so you don’t notice.

njanirudh 6y ago
This is a lie. I have seen so many people threaten the POTUS and talked about evading cops and support BLM riots without any regards to others.
cabalamat 6y ago
> left leaning calls to violence get banned on social media all the time Yes they do, but a lot less that right leaning calls do, because social media companies lean leftwards. For example, Parler was recently kicked off of Google App store, and Apple and Amazon have also threatened to kick Parler off their app store and hosting platform. This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence. None of these companies would ever do the same to a mainstream (i.e. left leaning, because social media censors the right more than the left) social media platform because of left wing violent talk/threats. It's blatantly obvious that big tech is biased to the left. (I say this as someone who is fairly left-leaning, FWIW).
- mullingitover 6y ago
  > This was because Parler leans right and some messages by some users encouraged violence. This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings and everything to do with Parler's wildly inadequate content moderation combined with top users calling for the execution of public officials with impunity. Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning and has arguably just as many calls for violence, but they at least have a fully staffed moderation team.
  - cabalamat 6y ago
    > This had nothing to do with Parler's political leanings I think we're going to have to agree to differ here. > Facebook's userbase is very right-leaning Really? It seems to me that just about all adults on on Facebook (I can only think offhand of one person I know IRL who isn't). Thus FB will have the same political composition as the population.

mullingitover 6y ago

> while censoring the 50% rest of the political spectrum Let's be clear: moderating/banning the accounts of a man and his supporters who invited tens of thousands of people to the United States Capitol, spent hours lying to them about the results of the election, and then weaponized them in an attempt to overthrow the US government is not a case of Twitter crossing some sort of threshold into tyranny. A grave crime was committed this week, and the wheels of the legal system are dysfunctional enough that the perpetrator wasn't arrested on the spot but instead allowed continued control of the US military and its nuclear weapon arsenal. Just because Twitter is able to act quickly outside the confines of the legal system doesn't mean we're descending into tech tyranny. I honestly don't want to hear another word about "leftist violence" or "the radical left" now that the right has unapologetically lined up behind the man who fomented a coup attempt.

mc32 6y ago
Ransacking through the capitol like imbeciles was very ill advised, but that’s not how a coup is executed. You need dedicated backers [cause oriented willing to sacrifice] high up in the armed forces as well as the intelligentsia. Rag tag groups do not execute coups. That’s a willful exaggeration and further evidence of how narratives tilt people’s thinking. This is the media and social media calling it that -they cannot help it. Are the armed forces classifying as a coup? It’s a ridiculous accusation. More of a coup attempt is the call for impeachment with two weeks left after the previous impeachment failed. It’s honestly sad.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  Honestly I feel bad for the people who were duped into doing the ransacking. They thought their leader was telling them the truth. The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.
  - tetrometal 6y ago
    > The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime. I cannot fathom why you keep saying this. Please present some evidence.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Big Tech platforms allowed pretty much everything until last week which crossed the line. Facebook's most viewed pages were all conservative and sometimes insanely violent discussions which I think should have been banned a long ago. The US Capitol attack was staged on Big Tech forums. Did you miss the part where 4 years of Trump on Twitter happened? Your opinion seems to be formed just recently, but you're making profound statements that ignore 99.99% of history. I am sorry, but this is an absurd and misplaced knee-jerk reaction and pooling it in to "Silicon Valley" culture. Silicon Valley culture dates back 50 years or more.

bmarquez 6y ago

If I was the leader of a country, why would I let Silicon Valley companies potentially censor my speech? Other authoritarian leaders are likely thinking "If Twitter can deplatform the President of the United States [which has more power than my smaller country], they have the power to deplatform me. Better reduce that risk and start blocking services to maintain control." Not saying it's right, but I understand their point of view.

jimkleiber 6y ago
I imagine they were planning to do this before what happened in the US with Twitter banning Trump. Ethiopia shut off telecommunication with the province of Tigray when conflict heated up this year (it still may be cut off). According to the article, Uganda shut off communication (Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp) in Feb 2016. I think that because many of us are in the US and just witnessed Twitter banning Trump we are falling prey to recency bias [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias
alisonkisk 6y ago
This is backwards. Governments block social media to prevent speech, not protect it.
michaelmrose 6y ago
It is very strange to speak of a president being "deplatformed" If somewhere out there is a nation without their own government website for the president to speak on?
- bmarquez 6y ago
  From the perspective of a hypothetical corrupt, authoritarian government, it's an issue of control. Of course they have their own websites. But the goal would be to promote the "official" point of view while suppressing the opposition, to maintain the illusion of broad support. It's not a free speech issue. And if the "official" point of view gets deplatformed, it's a risk to them. I'm hesitant to use VKontakte as a real-life example because I don't speak Russian, but according to Wikipedia VK had censorship issues until it was (supposedly) taken over by Putin-friendly people.

cabalamat 6y ago

Maybe Uganda (and other countries) will start thinking about replaceing US-run social media with home grown solutions. Given that open source and federated replacements for Twitter[1], Instagram[2], Reddit[3], YouTube[4] etc exist, this would not be a massive undertaking. 1: Mastodon, https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about 2: PixelFed, https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed 3: Lemmy, https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy 4: PeerTube, https://joinpeertube.org/en/ https://joinpeertube.org/en/

oblio 6y ago
It's probably a good idea, but how will they implement censorship?
- cabalamat 6y ago
  Uganda, or the proposed new sites that would be set up?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Both.
    - cabalamat 6y ago
      The sites would presumably do it via their normal admin interfaces. The Ugandan government would find it a lot easier to censor a website based in their country than one based abroard.

wffurr 6y ago

Trump voters were only 75 million out of 245 million Americans over 18. That’s a lot less than half.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Ah the silent majority argument. The thing is people aren't getting censored for being fiscally conservative, being for tax breaks, being against abortion or any number of conservative values. People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements. Lets look at the events at the capital as a proxy. 12% of America support this behavior. This is well within the margin of error for the percentage that tacitly supports the idea that the white "race" is exceptional.

illuminati1911 6y ago
” People are being shut down for being part of an offensive minority that supports extreme behaviors and statements.” Yet, last year Twitter and Reddit was full of BLM/Antifa supporters calling for and supporting cleansing of white people, republicans, Trump voters etc. without any kind of censorship. Also for past decade these platforms have been safe harbor for terrorist organizations, cartels, gangs, government media from countries that do extreme human rights violations etc. No problem there either except sometimes when the shitstorm get big enough. Apparently though some mentally unstable QAnon hillbillies stealing speakers stands are more extreme than countries and organizations involved in slavery, genocide, mass murder or terrorism.

alisonkisk 6y ago

"50% of the spectrum" is not censored. Some extent edges are. Most of the right-wing don't care about Trump and his fan clubs, they just care about whoever the Republican candidates are.

dang 6y ago

Please do not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705107.