4 ms·

I have the exact same problem, I'm sure that there are many racists in our country, but this graphic is pretty garbage. 1) There are about 35 to 40 million Ame

by Claudus 14y ago

I have the exact same problem, I'm sure that there are many racists in our country, but this graphic is pretty garbage. 1) There are about 35 to 40 million Americans on Twitter, (15% of the 78.1% of online Americans). 2) Does the percentage of twitter users per state factor into this, it seems not. 3) "A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of tweets. Scores above 1.0 indicate that hate speech is more prevalent than all tweets". This makes no sense to me, unless a single tweet somehow counts multiple times, e.g. "obama monkey monkey monkey monkey". There are more racists tweets than tweets? How is that possible? 4) Is every instance of "monkey" racist? Is it racist to call George Bush a monkey? 5) Was context applied, or is simply using certain word combinations racist? Go to twitter and do the search yourself, many of the tweets are responses to racist tweets or not racist at all. I'm sure there are many racists in America, but this graphic is painting a very misleading picture.

jessedhillon 14y ago
Why do you respond when you can't even be bothered to read TFA? The criteria used to find the tweets was very clearly described in footnote 1. Regarding your #4: just shut up.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  Would you please edit your #4 response to be more informative and thoughtful, or remove it? It is currently incendiary and not helpful, and as someone who has exchanged emails with you privately in the past (financial industry software opportunities) I know you can write something better here.
  - jessedhillon 14y ago
    Yeah, it's not the most professional way to put things. The question itself is, frankly, ridiculous -- I only see two ways to parse it: 1) This person is asking for a philosophical discussion on the nature of semantics. Given the incendiary context here, if that is a sincere desire, I consider that to be sophistry. 2) This person is impossibly naive about society, the world and the state of current affairs. In this case they should be listening more and speaking less. At any rate, thank you for your comments and your faith in my abilities. I genuinely appreciate your not flaming me, however deserved, and expressing your concern calmly instead. However, although rash and inarticulate, stating my feelings the way I did communicates an emotional punch that my outline above doesn't. And although I do sometimes delete hastily-written comments, in this case I will leave my name it. I don't care much for people who can't see the forest for the trees on this issue. Arguing the semantics of racial epithets is, frankly, bullshit.
- dobro 14y ago
  >Regarding your #4: just shut up. The problem with racism is not that it targets people of color. It's that it targets them in order to treat them bad. The KKK wouldn't be any better if they targeted people blindly. So, I take offense with your behavior here: being rude to everybody and anybody is just as bad as being racist in a tweet. The arguments put forth in the parent comments seem perfectly valid. The sample is in the region of statistical noise, and as such gives very little information about the matter. Also, I believe that Twitter as a sampling space is flawed. E.g places like Mississippi and Alabama might have far more rampant racism than California, but be underrepresented in the category of "people with tweeter accounts" because of poverty rates.
omaranto 14y ago
The reason the quote in 3) makes no sense is that it's wrong. :) The article gives a correct explanation in a footnote: The formula for this location quotient is (# of Hate Tweets in State / # of Hate Tweets in USA) ------------------------------------------------------------ (# of ALL Tweets in State / # of ALL Tweets in USA)
tankbot 14y ago
RE: #4 No, it's not racist. It's just ignorant. Everyone knows George Bush (along with all humans) is not a monkey, but an ape. Specifically an African ape. Knowing this makes racism a pretty humorous topic.

by Claudus 14y ago

jessedhillon 14y ago

Why do you respond when you can't even be bothered to read TFA? The criteria used to find the tweets was very clearly described in footnote 1. Regarding your #4: just shut up.

1123581321 14y ago
Would you please edit your #4 response to be more informative and thoughtful, or remove it? It is currently incendiary and not helpful, and as someone who has exchanged emails with you privately in the past (financial industry software opportunities) I know you can write something better here.
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  Yeah, it's not the most professional way to put things. The question itself is, frankly, ridiculous -- I only see two ways to parse it: 1) This person is asking for a philosophical discussion on the nature of semantics. Given the incendiary context here, if that is a sincere desire, I consider that to be sophistry. 2) This person is impossibly naive about society, the world and the state of current affairs. In this case they should be listening more and speaking less. At any rate, thank you for your comments and your faith in my abilities. I genuinely appreciate your not flaming me, however deserved, and expressing your concern calmly instead. However, although rash and inarticulate, stating my feelings the way I did communicates an emotional punch that my outline above doesn't. And although I do sometimes delete hastily-written comments, in this case I will leave my name it. I don't care much for people who can't see the forest for the trees on this issue. Arguing the semantics of racial epithets is, frankly, bullshit.
dobro 14y ago
>Regarding your #4: just shut up. The problem with racism is not that it targets people of color. It's that it targets them in order to treat them bad. The KKK wouldn't be any better if they targeted people blindly. So, I take offense with your behavior here: being rude to everybody and anybody is just as bad as being racist in a tweet. The arguments put forth in the parent comments seem perfectly valid. The sample is in the region of statistical noise, and as such gives very little information about the matter. Also, I believe that Twitter as a sampling space is flawed. E.g places like Mississippi and Alabama might have far more rampant racism than California, but be underrepresented in the category of "people with tweeter accounts" because of poverty rates.

omaranto 14y ago

The reason the quote in 3) makes no sense is that it's wrong. :) The article gives a correct explanation in a footnote: The formula for this location quotient is (# of Hate Tweets in State / # of Hate Tweets in USA) ------------------------------------------------------------ (# of ALL Tweets in State / # of ALL Tweets in USA)

tankbot 14y ago

RE: #4 No, it's not racist. It's just ignorant. Everyone knows George Bush (along with all humans) is not a monkey, but an ape. Specifically an African ape. Knowing this makes racism a pretty humorous topic.