4 ms·

I wonder though. If all of the big social media sites appear to be "left leaning", maybe what you are really seeing is the center, and your calibration is off.

JimtheCoder 4y ago
Wouldn't the political orientation of the moderation teams be relevant here? If the moderators of all of these organizations were reflective of the general population, then maybe, but are they?
lprd 4y ago
I'm of the opinion that that spectrum has been artificially shifted quite a bit in the last 5 to 10 years. This push has led to a lot of political unrest and has resulted in drastic polarization.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I think wokism has been taken way to far to the point it tries to subvert freedom of speech, critical thinking, and reality. Almost half the country is NOT far left and no amount of guilt tripping in the media is going to change that, and I say that as a very left person. We have to compromise and be civil and the people in the middle need to go vote despite the fact that both parties seem to want to be polar opposites.
Auracle 4y ago
The internet is still a place if the young. High schoolers, college kids, and people without children all have more free time and very much lean left.
objetovoador 4y ago
> If all of the big social media sites appear to be "left leaning" > [...] your calibration is off Big social media moderation is systemically biased, for instance, Twitter is/was staffed overwhelmingly (at times almost exclusively) by people who support Democrats [1]. [1]: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D000067113 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D00006711...
- evgen 4y ago
  Yes, the reason those people support Democrats is that they are educated and live on the coast. Tell me where you live and what your level of education is and I am happy to place a very large bet on your political choices.
  - objetovoador 4y ago
    So you're admitting that basically this entire sector of the economy is a monoculture, but downplaying that there's any negative systemic bias cause that's somehow just a deterministic function of geography.
    - evgen 4y ago
      I am stating as a simple fact that education leads to a tendency to have a particular political affiliation given the current stances of the two major parties. This has nothing to do with a particular economic sector: college-educated truck drivers and college-educated lumberjacks would be the same. Reality has a well-known liberal bias so it turns out that this education-influenced tendency is more of a positive systemic bias than a negative one.
      - no-dr-onboard 4y ago
        > Reality has a well-known liberal bias That's a big claim in the middle of a totally different argument.
      - objetovoador 4y ago
        > education-influenced tendency is more of a positive systemic bias than a negative one If anything, there's evidence that education has a negative influence in ways you may not expect. I seem to recall Germany being the birthplace of the modern university, "Humboldt's Ideal," and we all know how they ended up. In fact, doctors in Germany were 7x more likely than the average citizen to join the Nazi party. [1] And the issue is more about disposition, the educated seem to have an extreme blind-spot because, as your argument evidences, they tend to think so highly of themselves. They also have the mental machinery capable of producing very enticing & sophisticated, but ultimately wrong justifications for horrible things. And in combination with a self-righteous moral self-concept, you're playing with some real fire. Read C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock, I'll quote: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252712000854 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
commandlinefan 4y ago
> social media sites appear to be "left leaning" The actual users always appear to be pretty evenly split - it's the moderation policies that are inevitably biased.

JimtheCoder 4y ago

Wouldn't the political orientation of the moderation teams be relevant here? If the moderators of all of these organizations were reflective of the general population, then maybe, but are they?

lprd 4y ago

I'm of the opinion that that spectrum has been artificially shifted quite a bit in the last 5 to 10 years. This push has led to a lot of political unrest and has resulted in drastic polarization.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
I think wokism has been taken way to far to the point it tries to subvert freedom of speech, critical thinking, and reality. Almost half the country is NOT far left and no amount of guilt tripping in the media is going to change that, and I say that as a very left person. We have to compromise and be civil and the people in the middle need to go vote despite the fact that both parties seem to want to be polar opposites.

Auracle 4y ago

The internet is still a place if the young. High schoolers, college kids, and people without children all have more free time and very much lean left.

objetovoador 4y ago

> If all of the big social media sites appear to be "left leaning" > [...] your calibration is off Big social media moderation is systemically biased, for instance, Twitter is/was staffed overwhelmingly (at times almost exclusively) by people who support Democrats [1]. [1]: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D000067113 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D00006711...

evgen 4y ago
Yes, the reason those people support Democrats is that they are educated and live on the coast. Tell me where you live and what your level of education is and I am happy to place a very large bet on your political choices.
- objetovoador 4y ago
  So you're admitting that basically this entire sector of the economy is a monoculture, but downplaying that there's any negative systemic bias cause that's somehow just a deterministic function of geography.
  - evgen 4y ago
    I am stating as a simple fact that education leads to a tendency to have a particular political affiliation given the current stances of the two major parties. This has nothing to do with a particular economic sector: college-educated truck drivers and college-educated lumberjacks would be the same. Reality has a well-known liberal bias so it turns out that this education-influenced tendency is more of a positive systemic bias than a negative one.
    - no-dr-onboard 4y ago
      > Reality has a well-known liberal bias That's a big claim in the middle of a totally different argument.
    - objetovoador 4y ago
      > education-influenced tendency is more of a positive systemic bias than a negative one If anything, there's evidence that education has a negative influence in ways you may not expect. I seem to recall Germany being the birthplace of the modern university, "Humboldt's Ideal," and we all know how they ended up. In fact, doctors in Germany were 7x more likely than the average citizen to join the Nazi party. [1] And the issue is more about disposition, the educated seem to have an extreme blind-spot because, as your argument evidences, they tend to think so highly of themselves. They also have the mental machinery capable of producing very enticing & sophisticated, but ultimately wrong justifications for horrible things. And in combination with a self-righteous moral self-concept, you're playing with some real fire. Read C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock, I'll quote: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252712000854 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

commandlinefan 4y ago

> social media sites appear to be "left leaning" The actual users always appear to be pretty evenly split - it's the moderation policies that are inevitably biased.