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False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim That Social Media Censors Conservatives
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoWow, this is why the left needs to pay more attention to the right. This whole premise completely misunderstands the issue.
- gumby 6y agoI wouldn't call it "misunderstanding". It's like the "christianity is under attack in the USA" meme. If you can adopt the victim status people's (at least in the USA) sympathy for the underdog will help you. The clever thing about this is the general lack of censorship provides a greater opportunity to complain about it!
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoYou’d be wrong, and you’re making the same error.
- mandis 6y agoYeah this article's claim is going to be extremely hard to swallow. The report reads like a textbook example of cherry picking data and surveys to suit their agenda.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoWhen an entire political ideology for a major political party has shifted from lower taxes and increased individual freedom to fascist conspiracy theories based on misinformation it’s hard to swallow how you don’t agree with deplatforming those espousing such hate. Prior to January 6 it wasn’t as clear what we were dealing with. Afterwards it was clear the same monsters of yesteryear reared their heads.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y agoSo basically social media isn't censoring conservatives _and_ they deserve it too. Right.
- ttt0 6y agoTo summarize where we're at right now: questioning the validity of elections is fascism and hate speech. I get that people might not believe those claims, but just let that sink in and enjoy the future you chose.
- mindslight 6y agoRepeating the same "questioning" that has been scrutinized and litigated for three months can only be in bad faith, pointing to a different purpose. If you're genuinely unsure, learn how to understand legal briefs.
- ttt0 6y agoOkay, so questioning the validity of elections in bad faith is fascism and hate speech. I have nothing to complain about then. Thanks for your insightful input.
- mindslight 6y agoYes, that is the straightforward answer to your question in the context of current events. I'm sorry that you don't like it. I'm sure you have plenty to complain about. Getting derailed by mass media narratives is not the way to have your actual gripes taken seriously. It's just another system of control.
- ttt0 6y agoYour answer is dishonest at best, you're trying to portray it as if they waited until it was "justified" to censor people. And that's not what happened, Twitter was banning people on the election night. Some of it was legitimate information, that was later confirmed by the media. And I know that you'd like to imagine that along the information they were posting "#StopTheSteal" and "#QAnon" and that's what got them banned, but no, it was just straightforward reporting, without any commentary. You know, something you'd normally expect from a journalist, but in our brave new world we don't believe in those standards anymore. What's funny is that most of the actual, obvious misinformation got away with a slap on the wrist (fact-check warnings) and they let it stay up. But since we never care what happens to the little guy, how about the NYPost getting locked out of their Twitter account for publishing the Hunter story? They said it was a Russian disinformation campaign and it was in bad faith too. And guess what, in that case it wasn't. So go ahead, make all the rationalizations how this is fine and see how this will work out for you, when they will come up with fake stories to justify murdering millions of people in a new war and you'll get silenced and get smeared as a fascist if you try to question it.
- monopoledance 6y ago> The report reads like a textbook example of cherry picking data and surveys to suit their agenda. Can you elaborate on this? How did you come to that conclusion? Cherry picking, publication bias and so on, are not self-evident but need to be proven. It's not like logical fallacies.
- echelon 6y agoI am a liberal, but jump to defend free speech as the FSF would. You only need to look at Parler to see that narratives are being enforced. My worry is that when we stop standing up for free speech, eventually we'll find our own speech under attack.
- sheepdestroyer 6y agoI think it's healthy for social networks to curb the spread of fake news. Unfortunately for conservatives, reality has a well known liberal bias.
- theflyinghorse 6y ago> reality has a well known liberal bias. I can't seem to make sense from this statement. How can reality possible have a political ideology bias? Political ideologies are interpretations of reality in a constant dialogue, are they not?
- zentiggr 6y agoI think GP is implying that current conservative opinions are tending to diverge further and further from an actual agenda and are instead diverging into conspiracy theories, racism and worse. Edit: autocorrect fixes
- AnHonestComment 6y agoConservatives would say liberals are experiencing that and projecting. As evidence: - Democrats are campaigning to overturn civil rights laws and introduce government racism, most recently in California. - Democrats have effectively dismantled women’s sports because their ideology rejects sexual dimorphism in mammals/apes. - Democrats spent several years investigating what seems to be a hoax by Hilary Clinton. - Democrats are coordinating with the media and technology companies to silence their political rivals — a fusion of corporation and party commonly called “fascism”. - Democrats have supported armed rioting for 7 months by far left militias, killing dozens and burning cities across the country. Etc.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoThe claim that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" was created by Stephen Colbert in the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner. The full context was talking about Bush's approval ratings: > "Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias ... Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, [...] because 32 percent means it's two-thirds empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash." It's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that liberals are more grounded in reality than conservatives.
- ttt0 6y ago> But there’s no evidence that Twitter intentionally shadow banned Republicans or anyone else. Rather, Twitter said it experienced a technical glitch which caused some 600,000 accounts including those of some Democratic politicians—not to be auto-suggested when people searched for them. > The problem grew out of Twitter’s efforts beginning more than a year earlier to remove or down-rank low-quality and harassing accounts. What apparently happened was that large numbers of these disfavored accounts had inter acted with the Republican politicians’ accounts. This caused Twitter’s search system not to auto-suggest the Republicans, the company said. The malfunction, which never had to do with bias against politicians of either party, was fixed within 24 hours. 40 But the claims of partisanship related to the episode have continued to echo years later. So, they're not shadow-banning anyone, but they're shadow-banning. Nice gaslighting.
- webmaven 6y ago> So, they're not shadow-banning anyone, but they're shadow-banning. Nice gaslighting. How is an account not showing up in auto-suggest a shadow-ban?
- joshuakelly 6y agoHere's a direct link: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b6df958f8370af3217d4178/t/6011e68dec2c7013d3caf3cb/1611785871154/NYU+False+Accusation+report_FINAL.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b6df958f8370af3217d4... Not particularly insightful from what I can glean, and essentially boils down to "Twitter isn't particularly transparent about banning therefore we can't say much about it". That's fine, agnosticism about it is a defensible position. I'm a little skeptical when an academic report is presented in a magazine-style layout with "fancy" graphics and a dearth of substantive data though. That kind of thing is typical of think tanks and "policy recommendations", which are designed for maximal persuasion instead of maximal analysis.
- elliekelly 6y ago> NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights Something about this name is just weird to me. Maybe because they're putting "business" before "human rights"? Or maybe because it makes it seem like "business rights" and "human rights" are somehow similar? Or equal even? I'm not sure what it is that rubs me the wrong way but the name just feels totally out of touch and it doesn't tell me anything about the center's purpose.
- kapnobatairza 6y agoAs an NYU Stern MBA, I can tell you that the Human Rights courses definitely have a weird vibe. It often felt like I was being talked out of business world...
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- OnlyRepliesToBS 6y ago.
- gavanwoolery 6y agoI would not say it is "unfounded" - but rather that censorship is ill-defined, at least in the public eye. We have come up with words that are easier to swallow like "deplatforming" and "fact checking." Censorship occurs in many forms, and not all of it is directly blocking access to speech (IMO). There is a common misconception that censorship can only occur at the public (government) level, but not the private level. As per Wikipedia: "Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies." There is also the issue of orthodox views and orthodox privilege (as per Paul Graham's explanation). Many conservative views are not orthodox to the point where you can be canceled for merely quoting someone else or citing facts (yes, both have happened in the past). So there is some form of self-censorship (this is related to "social cooling" IIRC). I think it all boils down to this: which side supports censorship and which side condemns it? There you will find your answer on who is more adversely affected by censorship. Note: this is not a left or right issue, historically speaking. For example, look back to McCarthyism.
- mancerayder 6y agoI think it's fair to say the target of the censorship actions are non-mainstream views more broadly. I agree with you we've been overly conditioned to worry about government censorship and not private platform censorship, and yet the former have elected leaders while the latter are unaccountable to the public. That was in a sense Merkel's shock and public criticisms of the deplatforming actions. It's ironic because the criticism wasn't that there was censorship, it was that private companies were allowed to do it and not government. Who is right, the American laissez-faire pro-corporate/neoliberal philosophy or the traditional European approach that wants government to have that duty?
- gavanwoolery 6y agoSomeone else on HN (I cannot recall who), stated something along the lines of (paraphrasing): "Centralized power can be abused in the hands of the government or the private sector [via monopolies]" Whether or not you agree, I thought this was an elegant way of phrasing it. The cure, IMO, is to ensure that both ultimately answer to the people, although I have no idea how that is practically enforced.
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- engineer_22 6y agoBy the current rules of the game corporate censorship is not off-limits. Corporate censorship is legal. Therefore, whether the censorship is justified, or not, there is also room for accusations of impropriety. Ergo: where there is room for accusations, there accusations will go. The fact that leadership at Big Tech Companies tend to publicly espouse liberal ideas paints a big bullseye for conservatives to shoot at. If a regulatory structure were put in place to guarantee playform access and place explicit limits on platformed speech it would help us achieve fair and free discourse without the cries about censorship.
- opwieurposiu 6y agoThis paper glosses over the censorship of a sitting president by claiming it was justified. Justification is a red herring. Blocking communications is censorship, regardless of justification.
- ceph_ 6y agoBut their not doing it because he's a republican which is the constant refrain heard. They did it because he incited violent insurrection. If anything they let him break their own rules for far too long before actually taking action. The persecution narrative being pushed in conservative media is ridiculous.
- WalterSear 6y agoSilencing someone who is yelling fire in a crowded theater, when there is an irrefutable lack of a fire, is not censorship. Since the person is not actually disseminating information, no information is being censored.
- tzs 6y agoI think that a big part of it comes from trying to map a multidimensional belief space down to a one dimensional belief space (left to right, or liberal to conservative), combined with the US having a de facto two party system. If your beliefs aren't actually particularly aligned with either the Democrats or the Republicans on most issues (or even on many issues), you are still arguably better off supporting whichever of them is the least objectionable of the two rather than supporting a third party. So let's say Bob is a COVID conspiracy theorist believer, and is spreading falsehoods about the virus and the vaccine, and gets suspended or banned from some social media site for violating their misinformation policy. Bob may actually align more with Democrats than Republicans on most issues, but Bob's biggest immediate concern is that he thinks COVID and the vaccination program is just cover to inject microchips for nefarious purposes. Bob sure as heck ain't gonna be voting for Biden. Biden made a big deal during the campaign that the government was not being forceful enough in its anti-COVID measures and he would change that. Bob is going to feel his chances of avoiding getting chipped are better under Trump. So you look at Bob's other social media posts, and sure enough, he's endorsed Trump, and so Bob gets counted as a conservative being censored by social media. If we had a voting system like ranked choice which does not greatly disfavor third parties, Bob would be a member of some third party. If you looked at his social media to see who he supported, the top spot on his ranking would be the candidate from some anti-vaccination party.