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The important fact that this community is lost on, is the fact that it doesn't really matter what Facebook, Google or Twitter are actually responsible for. The

The important fact that this community is lost on, is the fact that it doesn't really matter what Facebook, Google or Twitter are actually responsible for. The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels of popular support (search twitter on the fec.gov [1]) - and the Democratic Party is now responsible for regulating Silicon Valley makes it chilling when the demands for censorship by the Democratic Party are followed. The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with. [1] https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-research-public-records/individual-contributions/ https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-res...

birdyrooster 6y ago
It's too bad that Republicans can't change their platform at all to become more popular so that Democrats have competition. Republicans have a duty to their nation to provide a counter balance of power and they cannot use dogmatism as an excuse for staying put.
- justinzollars 6y ago
  I'm in the camp that the Republicans are toast. The people in power today will never give it up. Especially with such power.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    Aren't the Republicans in power today? Who else can they blame for losing it, but themselves? They knew who Trump was all along [1], but they stuck by him nevertheless. There are bound to be consequences for that kind of poor judgment. 1: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-trump/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-tr...
  - majormajor 6y ago
    There's less of a media monoculture today than there was in an 80s and 90s, when the Republican perception of media persecution and bias really started to accelerate. Basically all of the resulting right-wing media empires that were built still exist! I'm unsympathetic to the "we need a right-wing social network where our death threats don't have to get moderated" argument, so let's see if a few more attempts that are in more good faith get blocked by Apple before I care too much there... The problem with how far these big chunks of their voter base have gone into extremism is that it really undermines their complaints about being treated unfairly. If I'd predicted even a year ago that people would get shot storming the capital over unsubstantiated claims of fraud that Trump himself had stirred for the better part of a year I'd have been mocked even by "moderate" Republicans as having "trump derangment syndrome" and told I was being unfair to Trump by assuming he would act so badly... and yet here we are. At some point we have to start dealing with Trump, and his base, for who they actually are now, not just in idealistic terms of "Repubs and Dems are the same, just on opposite sides."
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I’m in the camp that the Republicans are toast. The people in power today will never give it up. The people in power today in the Federal government are the Republicans, with the exception of the House of Representatives.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
    Except for the Senate run-off and of course the White House, the Republicans actually were quite successful in the 2020 election; they took back 9-10 seats in the House, flipped one Senate seat, and won many state and local elections. It may be that the people in power will make it harder in the future for the opposition party to win, but at a grassroots level there is still substantial traction for a moderate/conservative party.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      “there is still substantial traction for a moderate/conservative party” which the Republican Party has actively been moving away from since Newt Gingrich intensified the obstructionist power politics that both parties are on rails about.
      - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
        Trump foreign policy was to stay out of armed conflict and that's about as moderate a policy as you can get.
        germinalphrase 6y ago
        Which is an atypical position for a member of his party, nor does it contradict the rhetorical and political hardening that had taken place since the 90’s.
  - dang 6y ago
    Would you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? That is the line at which we ban accounts, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for, namely curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- bzb6 6y ago
  Republicans won an election and almost won this last one, they aren’t really that impopular, or at least not impopular enough to pretend they don’t exist
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    I think the issue is that both parties are empty husks. They don’t represent anyone outside special interests and party machinery. They neglect their duty. Congress doesn’t engage in deliberation anymore. So we end up ping ponging between two rats circling the drain. Their relative popularity is meaningless given how unpopular all of them are.
  - zapita 6y ago
    The current situation can accurately be described as minority rule. Republican voters are greatly over-represented at every level of government. They get more state representatives and senators per voter than average; more representatives and senators in DC; more presidents; more judge appointments. In practice that means everyone else - voters who don’t vote republicans - are getting screwed out of fair representation. And the trend is only accelerating because each incremental increase in power is leveraged to entrench minority rule. For example: - Conservative supreme court suspended the Voting Rights Act, freeing states to deploy previously illegal voter suppression tactics against Black voters. - Senate majority leveraged to pack federal courts with partisan judges, making it harder to challenge voter suppression in court. - State legislature majorities leveraged to deploy extreme gerrymandering, further entrenching unrepresentative seats in the US house of representatives. - State legislature majorities leveraged to weaken voter protection laws, and lower the requirements for transparency in campaign financing. This in turn entrenches an electoral advantage in both state and federal elections (which are run by states). - Leverage state executive power to further weaken voter suppression. A recent example of this is the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, where the Republican secretary of state was also a candidate, and purged record numbers of voters from the rolls in majority democrat districts; warned the public about a “suspected hacking attempt by the democratic party” on the official government website; oversaw record numbers of voters turned away in democratic districts; etc. In summary, the data shows that Republicans are simply not popular enough to justify their current hold of power. They owe their victories to a systematic strategy of minority rule, which is inherently anti-democratic.
- majormajor 6y ago
  The Electoral College and Senate are the worst thing for the Republican party and the country because it makes "radicalize a minority of the population" a viable strategy compared to "offer something to everyone."
zapita 6y ago
That’s a bold claim. Care to provide evidence to support it?
- dylan604 6y ago
  The evidence is hosted on Parler. Oh, wait. I'm exhausted of these conspiracy theories of "the other side doesn't like me", and offering absolutely zero proof/evidence of their claims. "Somebody did something I don't agree with, so there must be a hidden agenda." The problem is that anyone that believes in these conspiracies will absolutely not listen to counter-evidence. To them, it is all just part of the cover up. I'm not saying give up trying to counter them, but it is absolutely tiring. Edit: Hit submit too soon
- middleclick 6y ago
  Said person is a Trump supporter. Check out his Twitter. Don't expect facts. People who are downvoting me: did you upvote his comment where he presented no evidence of censorship by Democrats and just passed it as a statement?
  - whateveracct 6y ago
    this is HN - contrarians don't need to love Trump to love complaining and arguing
  - bargl 6y ago
    middleclick - Your original comment was fairly clearly against HN guidelines for posting. Your comment about votes is also against their guidelines (I feel for you I've broken this from time to time myself). If you'd commented on the substance of the person's argument instead of attacking them personally based on ideology, I think your comment would have done much better. You could have even presented evidence from the persons twitter feed on this topic and used that to further clarify their opinion and how you felt their opinion in more context was wrong.
austhrow743 6y ago
There's overwhelming support in an irrational loyalty to a person or brand sense and then there's overwhelming support in the most people would choose a mediocre meal over eating poo sense. The latter doesn't seem to be a problem and also looks to be the case here.
middleclick 6y ago
> The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with. Quite the hyperbole without any evidence. Where is the evidence that they have demanded for censorship? Or have done so in the past where a democrat has censored a social media website? Absolutely none.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 0xy 6y ago
  Countless Democrats directly called for censorship, even before the alleged incitement. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549859/twitter-suspend-donald-trump-election-votes-misleading-information https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549859/twitter-suspend-...
  - middleclick 6y ago
    Just one account, for Donald Trump. That's it. That too because of the hateful content that was being posted. Have they called out for censorship of things that were critical of them? No? Did they have a committee to investigate that? Did they meet for dinners with Facebook executives? Oh wait, the Republicans were the one that did that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JeremyBanks 6y ago
Dang, can you please expel these dangerous and repulsive people? ^
belimawr 6y ago
Partisan support for certain industries and business interests is not new. Are you also up in arms that extractive/energy industries lean Republican?
1helloworld1 6y ago
"The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with" - that's quite a leap. Isn't it Trump and the republicans who want to repel Section 230 so that all websites are forced to moderate content? Let's not forget foxnews - the most watched cable news in the United States. It has been spewing republican propaganda since 1996, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Democrats want to repeal Section 230 for the opposite reason as the Republicans, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-biden-nytimes-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b... where Biden directly calls for this. Not that that helps the original poster's point. The Democrats have been mad at FB and Twitter for much longer than the Republicans have!
- briantakita 6y ago
  The thing is the websites are not moderate fairly thus editorial decisions are made. "Hang Mike Pence" is allowed to trend on Twitter but "1984" is not allowed to tend on Twitter. Facebook & Twitter stream violent acts & allow violent rhetoric from certain political groups but not others. Fox News has been moving left & was the first network to call Arizona for Biden very early as a suppression tactic. Conservatives are moving to Newsmax, OAN, & independent journalist outfits.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    > Fox News has been moving left & was the first network to call Arizona for Biden very early as a suppression tactic. This is nonsensical. How is a call after after voting has ended a "suppression tactic"? The talking point you're probably looking for is "polls were skewed intentionally as a suppression tactic" but even that's not so compelling given 2012's miss in most of the late polling in favor of Romney.
    - briantakita 6y ago
offby37years 6y ago
This should be worryingly obvious, with former Democratic Party staffers filling FAANG ranks, e.g. Andy Stone who is now Facebook’s policy communications manager: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebook-twitter-google-can-t-be-good-censors-of-politics https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebo... And former FAANG execs filling the Biden transition team, e.g. Zaid Zaid, Christopher Upperman, Rachel Lieber, Deon Scott: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-facebook-ethics-424000 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-fa... https://twitter.com/StevenOverly/status/1337545418838831104 https://twitter.com/StevenOverly/status/1337545418838831104
subsubzero 6y ago
I think big tech is heading for a rough, dark time, once trump is out and vaccines are widely available I think a large majority of folks will not be glued to their screens consuming media. I know for myself I plan on taking a huge break from news. Expect netflix use to drop like a rock, along with amazon usage, people will be excited to go into stores again. Facebook is looking at antitrust issues regardless of what happens, (FTC, every state is suing it). Also I think you will have investors cycle money out of that sector, especially if the economy picks up and Biden/the Fed decide to raise rates.
afavour 6y ago
And yet, the top 10 posts on Facebook yesterday: 1. Franklin Graham 2. Dan Bongino 3. Fox News 4. Ben Shapiro 5. Dan Bongino 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Dan Bongino 8. TWICE 9. The New York Times 10. Ben Shapiro Source: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/1349393317952253952?s=21 https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/134939331795225395... If FB was overwhelmingly left leaning, why are almost all of its most popular posts from right wing outlets? You’re extrapolating a lot here. Silicon Valley employees support Democrats, therefore any censorship Silicon Valley firms do is at the orders of the Democratic Party? Show the evidence of that. Ignoring what the (largely powerless) ground level employees of the tech giants do, the chief execs of these companies lobby both Democrats and Republicans. No matter who is in power, money talks. I suspect that’s why even though there’s a huge amount of evidence that folks like Ben Shapiro have violated FB rules for gaming the feed there has been no action taken. FB has spent the last four years courting Republicans, now they’ll court Democrats. That’s the real problem but it’s certainly easier to pretend it’s a party-specific problem that would solved if only the other people were in charge.
scythe 6y ago
>The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports Democratic politicians. But Silicon Valley is also one of the most welcoming ears for the kinds of reforms that would upend the current party system, to wit proportional representation and non-plurality voting. That's a pretty big asterisk: nobody in North Korea can get away with promoting reforms that would destroy the party system! It's also worth noting that the reason that Silicon Valley appears to, by their silence, always support the status quo, is because the tech companies know you hate them. Having the motto "Don't be evil" implies an understood risk of being evil. FANGMOAT knows that if they support any dramatic reform, there is a severe risk of a backlash effect that reduces support for that reform. As such, the idea that tech companies serve as a power projection mechanism for the Democratic Party is in my opinion a coincidence of temporarily aligned motives and not a true ideological alliance. Tech company employees support the Democrats for a variety of reasons, but, in particular, many become pro-immigrant by meeting a few of them and most understand that climate science is not a conspiracy.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  could knowing they are hated be a chicken or egg problem, maybe they are hated because they know what they are doing is supporting entrenched interests while pretending to be virtuous.
  - scythe 6y ago
    No, tech companies aren't disliked for their politics. That's like saying they're disliked for their style of dress (suits were as much a symbol of the detached elite as hoodies are today!). It's their money and their influence on the wider culture by way of spending. It's practically guaranteed to create resentment regardless of what the preferences are simply because it is inevitably a force being exerted on people's lives. Then of course there are the actual harmful effects of social media on human beings as distinguished from supposed communist infiltration. That generates plenty of resentment as well. Then there's the fact that in many cases tech companies make products that are ultimately used by employers to track and control their employees ("business intelligence") and which serve as opaque arbiters of things like paychecks, time clocks and tax forms. This isn't Google, of course, but tech companies serve as a mascot for the digital revolution at large, hence the mythology surrounding Bill Gates. Many if not most of the annoyances of computerization get blamed on the tech industry, fairly or not.

birdyrooster 6y ago

It's too bad that Republicans can't change their platform at all to become more popular so that Democrats have competition. Republicans have a duty to their nation to provide a counter balance of power and they cannot use dogmatism as an excuse for staying put.

justinzollars 6y ago
I'm in the camp that the Republicans are toast. The people in power today will never give it up. Especially with such power.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  Aren't the Republicans in power today? Who else can they blame for losing it, but themselves? They knew who Trump was all along [1], but they stuck by him nevertheless. There are bound to be consequences for that kind of poor judgment. 1: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-trump/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-tr...
- majormajor 6y ago
  There's less of a media monoculture today than there was in an 80s and 90s, when the Republican perception of media persecution and bias really started to accelerate. Basically all of the resulting right-wing media empires that were built still exist! I'm unsympathetic to the "we need a right-wing social network where our death threats don't have to get moderated" argument, so let's see if a few more attempts that are in more good faith get blocked by Apple before I care too much there... The problem with how far these big chunks of their voter base have gone into extremism is that it really undermines their complaints about being treated unfairly. If I'd predicted even a year ago that people would get shot storming the capital over unsubstantiated claims of fraud that Trump himself had stirred for the better part of a year I'd have been mocked even by "moderate" Republicans as having "trump derangment syndrome" and told I was being unfair to Trump by assuming he would act so badly... and yet here we are. At some point we have to start dealing with Trump, and his base, for who they actually are now, not just in idealistic terms of "Repubs and Dems are the same, just on opposite sides."
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I’m in the camp that the Republicans are toast. The people in power today will never give it up. The people in power today in the Federal government are the Republicans, with the exception of the House of Representatives.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  Except for the Senate run-off and of course the White House, the Republicans actually were quite successful in the 2020 election; they took back 9-10 seats in the House, flipped one Senate seat, and won many state and local elections. It may be that the people in power will make it harder in the future for the opposition party to win, but at a grassroots level there is still substantial traction for a moderate/conservative party.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    “there is still substantial traction for a moderate/conservative party” which the Republican Party has actively been moving away from since Newt Gingrich intensified the obstructionist power politics that both parties are on rails about.
    - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
      Trump foreign policy was to stay out of armed conflict and that's about as moderate a policy as you can get.
      - germinalphrase 6y ago
        Which is an atypical position for a member of his party, nor does it contradict the rhetorical and political hardening that had taken place since the 90’s.
- dang 6y ago
  Would you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? That is the line at which we ban accounts, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for, namely curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
bzb6 6y ago
Republicans won an election and almost won this last one, they aren’t really that impopular, or at least not impopular enough to pretend they don’t exist
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  I think the issue is that both parties are empty husks. They don’t represent anyone outside special interests and party machinery. They neglect their duty. Congress doesn’t engage in deliberation anymore. So we end up ping ponging between two rats circling the drain. Their relative popularity is meaningless given how unpopular all of them are.
- zapita 6y ago
  The current situation can accurately be described as minority rule. Republican voters are greatly over-represented at every level of government. They get more state representatives and senators per voter than average; more representatives and senators in DC; more presidents; more judge appointments. In practice that means everyone else - voters who don’t vote republicans - are getting screwed out of fair representation. And the trend is only accelerating because each incremental increase in power is leveraged to entrench minority rule. For example: - Conservative supreme court suspended the Voting Rights Act, freeing states to deploy previously illegal voter suppression tactics against Black voters. - Senate majority leveraged to pack federal courts with partisan judges, making it harder to challenge voter suppression in court. - State legislature majorities leveraged to deploy extreme gerrymandering, further entrenching unrepresentative seats in the US house of representatives. - State legislature majorities leveraged to weaken voter protection laws, and lower the requirements for transparency in campaign financing. This in turn entrenches an electoral advantage in both state and federal elections (which are run by states). - Leverage state executive power to further weaken voter suppression. A recent example of this is the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, where the Republican secretary of state was also a candidate, and purged record numbers of voters from the rolls in majority democrat districts; warned the public about a “suspected hacking attempt by the democratic party” on the official government website; oversaw record numbers of voters turned away in democratic districts; etc. In summary, the data shows that Republicans are simply not popular enough to justify their current hold of power. They owe their victories to a systematic strategy of minority rule, which is inherently anti-democratic.
majormajor 6y ago
The Electoral College and Senate are the worst thing for the Republican party and the country because it makes "radicalize a minority of the population" a viable strategy compared to "offer something to everyone."

zapita 6y ago

That’s a bold claim. Care to provide evidence to support it?

dylan604 6y ago
The evidence is hosted on Parler. Oh, wait. I'm exhausted of these conspiracy theories of "the other side doesn't like me", and offering absolutely zero proof/evidence of their claims. "Somebody did something I don't agree with, so there must be a hidden agenda." The problem is that anyone that believes in these conspiracies will absolutely not listen to counter-evidence. To them, it is all just part of the cover up. I'm not saying give up trying to counter them, but it is absolutely tiring. Edit: Hit submit too soon
middleclick 6y ago
Said person is a Trump supporter. Check out his Twitter. Don't expect facts. People who are downvoting me: did you upvote his comment where he presented no evidence of censorship by Democrats and just passed it as a statement?
- whateveracct 6y ago
  this is HN - contrarians don't need to love Trump to love complaining and arguing
- bargl 6y ago
  middleclick - Your original comment was fairly clearly against HN guidelines for posting. Your comment about votes is also against their guidelines (I feel for you I've broken this from time to time myself). If you'd commented on the substance of the person's argument instead of attacking them personally based on ideology, I think your comment would have done much better. You could have even presented evidence from the persons twitter feed on this topic and used that to further clarify their opinion and how you felt their opinion in more context was wrong.

austhrow743 6y ago

There's overwhelming support in an irrational loyalty to a person or brand sense and then there's overwhelming support in the most people would choose a mediocre meal over eating poo sense. The latter doesn't seem to be a problem and also looks to be the case here.

middleclick 6y ago

> The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with. Quite the hyperbole without any evidence. Where is the evidence that they have demanded for censorship? Or have done so in the past where a democrat has censored a social media website? Absolutely none.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
0xy 6y ago
Countless Democrats directly called for censorship, even before the alleged incitement. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549859/twitter-suspend-donald-trump-election-votes-misleading-information https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549859/twitter-suspend-...
- middleclick 6y ago
  Just one account, for Donald Trump. That's it. That too because of the hateful content that was being posted. Have they called out for censorship of things that were critical of them? No? Did they have a committee to investigate that? Did they meet for dinners with Facebook executives? Oh wait, the Republicans were the one that did that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JeremyBanks 6y ago

Dang, can you please expel these dangerous and repulsive people? ^

belimawr 6y ago

Partisan support for certain industries and business interests is not new. Are you also up in arms that extractive/energy industries lean Republican?

1helloworld1 6y ago

"The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with" - that's quite a leap. Isn't it Trump and the republicans who want to repel Section 230 so that all websites are forced to moderate content? Let's not forget foxnews - the most watched cable news in the United States. It has been spewing republican propaganda since 1996, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

majormajor 6y ago
Democrats want to repeal Section 230 for the opposite reason as the Republicans, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-biden-nytimes-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b... where Biden directly calls for this. Not that that helps the original poster's point. The Democrats have been mad at FB and Twitter for much longer than the Republicans have!
briantakita 6y ago
The thing is the websites are not moderate fairly thus editorial decisions are made. "Hang Mike Pence" is allowed to trend on Twitter but "1984" is not allowed to tend on Twitter. Facebook & Twitter stream violent acts & allow violent rhetoric from certain political groups but not others. Fox News has been moving left & was the first network to call Arizona for Biden very early as a suppression tactic. Conservatives are moving to Newsmax, OAN, & independent journalist outfits.
- majormajor 6y ago
  > Fox News has been moving left & was the first network to call Arizona for Biden very early as a suppression tactic. This is nonsensical. How is a call after after voting has ended a "suppression tactic"? The talking point you're probably looking for is "polls were skewed intentionally as a suppression tactic" but even that's not so compelling given 2012's miss in most of the late polling in favor of Romney.
  - briantakita 6y ago

offby37years 6y ago

This should be worryingly obvious, with former Democratic Party staffers filling FAANG ranks, e.g. Andy Stone who is now Facebook’s policy communications manager: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebook-twitter-google-can-t-be-good-censors-of-politics https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebo... And former FAANG execs filling the Biden transition team, e.g. Zaid Zaid, Christopher Upperman, Rachel Lieber, Deon Scott: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-facebook-ethics-424000 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-fa... https://twitter.com/StevenOverly/status/1337545418838831104 https://twitter.com/StevenOverly/status/1337545418838831104

subsubzero 6y ago

I think big tech is heading for a rough, dark time, once trump is out and vaccines are widely available I think a large majority of folks will not be glued to their screens consuming media. I know for myself I plan on taking a huge break from news. Expect netflix use to drop like a rock, along with amazon usage, people will be excited to go into stores again. Facebook is looking at antitrust issues regardless of what happens, (FTC, every state is suing it). Also I think you will have investors cycle money out of that sector, especially if the economy picks up and Biden/the Fed decide to raise rates.

afavour 6y ago

And yet, the top 10 posts on Facebook yesterday: 1. Franklin Graham 2. Dan Bongino 3. Fox News 4. Ben Shapiro 5. Dan Bongino 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Dan Bongino 8. TWICE 9. The New York Times 10. Ben Shapiro Source: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/1349393317952253952?s=21 https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/134939331795225395... If FB was overwhelmingly left leaning, why are almost all of its most popular posts from right wing outlets? You’re extrapolating a lot here. Silicon Valley employees support Democrats, therefore any censorship Silicon Valley firms do is at the orders of the Democratic Party? Show the evidence of that. Ignoring what the (largely powerless) ground level employees of the tech giants do, the chief execs of these companies lobby both Democrats and Republicans. No matter who is in power, money talks. I suspect that’s why even though there’s a huge amount of evidence that folks like Ben Shapiro have violated FB rules for gaming the feed there has been no action taken. FB has spent the last four years courting Republicans, now they’ll court Democrats. That’s the real problem but it’s certainly easier to pretend it’s a party-specific problem that would solved if only the other people were in charge.

scythe 6y ago

>The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports Democratic politicians. But Silicon Valley is also one of the most welcoming ears for the kinds of reforms that would upend the current party system, to wit proportional representation and non-plurality voting. That's a pretty big asterisk: nobody in North Korea can get away with promoting reforms that would destroy the party system! It's also worth noting that the reason that Silicon Valley appears to, by their silence, always support the status quo, is because the tech companies know you hate them. Having the motto "Don't be evil" implies an understood risk of being evil. FANGMOAT knows that if they support any dramatic reform, there is a severe risk of a backlash effect that reduces support for that reform. As such, the idea that tech companies serve as a power projection mechanism for the Democratic Party is in my opinion a coincidence of temporarily aligned motives and not a true ideological alliance. Tech company employees support the Democrats for a variety of reasons, but, in particular, many become pro-immigrant by meeting a few of them and most understand that climate science is not a conspiracy.

Avicebron 6y ago
could knowing they are hated be a chicken or egg problem, maybe they are hated because they know what they are doing is supporting entrenched interests while pretending to be virtuous.
- scythe 6y ago
  No, tech companies aren't disliked for their politics. That's like saying they're disliked for their style of dress (suits were as much a symbol of the detached elite as hoodies are today!). It's their money and their influence on the wider culture by way of spending. It's practically guaranteed to create resentment regardless of what the preferences are simply because it is inevitably a force being exerted on people's lives. Then of course there are the actual harmful effects of social media on human beings as distinguished from supposed communist infiltration. That generates plenty of resentment as well. Then there's the fact that in many cases tech companies make products that are ultimately used by employers to track and control their employees ("business intelligence") and which serve as opaque arbiters of things like paychecks, time clocks and tax forms. This isn't Google, of course, but tech companies serve as a mascot for the digital revolution at large, hence the mythology surrounding Bill Gates. Many if not most of the annoyances of computerization get blamed on the tech industry, fairly or not.