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That's a pretty strange take of the political consequences of Big Tech power, especially the US 2016 election. Polling for that election put Trump at a low chan

That's a pretty strange take of the political consequences of Big Tech power, especially the US 2016 election. Polling for that election put Trump at a low chance of winning (FiveThirtyEight had it at ~30% IIRC), not practically impossible odds. I don't understand how bucking the statistical favorite is some kind of disastrous or unhealthy outcome. I also don't have any idea what that has to do with Big Tech. Big Tech did and continues to discriminate against right-wing/alt-right views* which you say leads to self-censorship, and that somehow led to an electoral outcome where the right-wing/alt-right candidate won; So Big Tech's corporate power is so immense & influential that it led to...the opposite outcome? I'm sure there's an argument there somewhere about the dangers of excessive corporate power but I can't make sense of your connection between Big Tech corporate power and your example of the 2016 election of the most anti-Big-Tech US president ever. * I'm assuming you're referring to right-wing/alt-right discrimination because I don't recall many significant examples in which Big Tech excluded people/partners from "entire swathes of tech, media or the economy" for left-wing views, but feel free to correct me!

efitz 5y ago
I think that we are in agreement. Clearly right leaning voters self censored in 2016, leading to an outcome that was opposite of what the polls predicted. How big tech relates to that is that it magnifies the tendency to self censor opinions that differ from the tech companies’ preferences.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  We definitely don't agree. The 2016 outcome was not the "opposite" of what polls predicted, it was simply the less likely outcome. Again, polling put Trump at low but plausible odds. If I tell you that you have a 30% chance of success and you succeed, that is not an "opposite" outcome. And your Big Tech self-censorship narrative has no discernable substance. Unusual levels of self-censorship would be reflected in unusual levels of polling error, but the actual polling error wasn't unusually high in 2016 [1]. Election polls aren't even conducted by Big Tech AFAIK and they don't have access to personally identifiable poll responses. Pretty hand-wavy and baseless to suggest that people were somehow afraid of Big Tech punishment based on anonymous third party polling. The Big Tech censorship issue centers almost entirely on user content submitted voluntarily on Big Tech platforms. [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-but-thats-pretty-normal/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-...

efitz 5y ago

I think that we are in agreement. Clearly right leaning voters self censored in 2016, leading to an outcome that was opposite of what the polls predicted. How big tech relates to that is that it magnifies the tendency to self censor opinions that differ from the tech companies’ preferences.

themacguffinman 5y ago
We definitely don't agree. The 2016 outcome was not the "opposite" of what polls predicted, it was simply the less likely outcome. Again, polling put Trump at low but plausible odds. If I tell you that you have a 30% chance of success and you succeed, that is not an "opposite" outcome. And your Big Tech self-censorship narrative has no discernable substance. Unusual levels of self-censorship would be reflected in unusual levels of polling error, but the actual polling error wasn't unusually high in 2016 [1]. Election polls aren't even conducted by Big Tech AFAIK and they don't have access to personally identifiable poll responses. Pretty hand-wavy and baseless to suggest that people were somehow afraid of Big Tech punishment based on anonymous third party polling. The Big Tech censorship issue centers almost entirely on user content submitted voluntarily on Big Tech platforms. [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-but-thats-pretty-normal/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-...