The interesting aspect is that conservatives think that it is very likely that social media sites censor their views at a rate double that of liberals. Even if the social media companies were strictly neutral in the matter, it's pretty common for conservatives to encounter left-wing hostility and censorship from other users of social media sites.
Post an article in r/politics about anything positive Trump has done and you'll get a ban. On Facebook, a similar phenomenon might occur due to liberal users reporting conservative ideas they don't agree with as hate speech.
Disclaimer: I'm not very familiar with how Facebook works so I could be way off
If it is an actual Facebook employee, I can definitely see why conservatives would think that. The active encouragement of civil disobedience by liberal leaders is probably more than enough confirmation to conservatives of this behavior. I;m not saying this behavior is /is notoccurring, just why some people might think that it does
See, for example, the slide about "female drivers", "black children", and "white men" - Facebook's policies (via some pretty odd logic, IMO) protect posts about "white men", but not "black children". A liberal bastion, they're not.
> One document trains content reviewers on how to apply the company’s global hate speech algorithm. The slide identifies three groups: female drivers, black children and white men. It asks: Which group is protected from hate speech? The correct answer: white men.
> The reason is that Facebook deletes curses, slurs, calls for violence and several other types of attacks only when they are directed at “protected categories”—based on race, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation and serious disability/disease. It gives users broader latitude when they write about “subsets” of protected categories. White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected. (The exact rules are in the slide show below.)
I don’t like Facebook and I rarely use it anymore but this set of examples seems a bit contrived I think.
Would it not be the same the other way around because of the subset rule? Black women would be protected whereas male drivers and white children would not?
It may well be the case that one of the biggest practical problems with US politics is that large numbers of conservatives simply do not understand what censorship and robust debate look like, and think that deep disagreement from other people like themselves means their rights are being violated.
Sometimes there’s a bit more nuance, but it does tend to come down to this. Often flagging mechanics are pointed to as censorship, or anything which falls short of engaging with someone in debate is censorship. In most cases there’s a lack of understanding that just as they have a right to say something, other people have a right to respond with a flag, or not respond at all. Freedom of expression doesn’t imply an obligation to debate everyone on every point. I’m not censoring an anti-vaxxer by flagging and moving on, I don’t owe them a debate. The government isn’t allowed to interfere in the right of anti-vaxxers to spew, and also in my right to call them morons, or a social media site’s right shut the whole conversation down.
Too often “free speech” is a messy and conflated concept used to basically argue against anyone being told to shut up. Various arguments about the size or dominance of a social media platform are often used to try and get them covered like the government under the 1st amendment. Then if all that fails, the argument switches to free speech as a vague principle rather than a legal right.
To be fair, it isn’t just conservatives who seem to feel this way either. Americans in general just seem, on average, not to understand this issue as well as they think they do.
It is a core tenet of Liberalism (in the actual sense of the word) that yes, free speech does mean that you have a right for your ideas to be engaged.
Moreover people like Mill or Popper would argue people have a duty to engage every idea, because that's how the open society works.
The reduction of free speech to the first amendment and to State censorship is a modern american barbarism that is as absurd as it is baseless in either its historical roots or its application by any free judiciary, including the American one.
Telling people to shut up because their ideas are unpopular is and always will be illiberal.
People have a right to be illiberal, liberal, and everything in between. People have a right to hew to the thinking of Mill and Popper, or ignore it. That’s also an aspect of freedom of thought, and consequent expression. You’re also free not to like it, and I’m free not to care.
Certainly. But free speech is an inherently liberal position by definition, construction and history.
You're free to think that it's all bunk and tyranny of the majority is just fine. Many people do.
I'd just like it to be clear to everyone that such an opinion is being against free speech.
Because what greatly annoys me is when people try to claim that they advocate a "reasonable" version of free speech when they simply oppose it. Or indeed try to claim that their censorious position is a liberal one.
Which I am not at all accusing you of incidentally.
My perception (and apparently that of those asked in the survey) is that conservative opinion gets a disproportionate amount of "I just flag it and move on" treatment.
I would wager a large sum of money that if left-wing opinion were treated in the same way there would be much whining about minority rights and the importance of an individual's free speech from the left.
People feel entitled to be wrong. Like the vaccines thing.
Surely you have that one crazy person pm your facebook spouting crap about autism and the MRR and everyone flipping out at them.
That person is feeling 'censored'.
And now every other person is a 'bot' or a Russian troll.
The exact same way it happens on this site: users flag, system automatically responds, moderators might also respond, and if they do, typically it is to confirm censorship that has already begun.
My understanding of Facebook flagging is that repeated flags move it up in the queue, but do not initiate automated removal. So, if 500 people flag your post about fluffy unicorns as a death threat, it'll be checked in a few minutes instead of a week from now, but it'll likely be reviewed as OK and remain up the entire time.
Even if the social media companies were strictly neutral in the matter
That's probably a big contributor to the perception.
The leaders of many of the big tech companies are very public in their support of certain views, and steer their companies to publicly support those views, as well. So it makes sense for people with differing views to believe that that companies which don't share their views would be against them.
If the tech companies were to focus solely on being good technology companies and not trying to re-shape society, the public might have a different perception.
We’re witnessing the rise of fascism in America. There’s a massive disinformation campaign going on meant to erode faith in the rule of law and the democratic institutions that ensure limited government. Of course thinking people are hostile towards it. We should be.
"it's pretty common for conservatives to encounter left-wing hostility and censorship from other users of social media sites."
Other users can't censor. That's not an ability they have.
And really, the only hostility I've seen targeted at conservative views are those viewpoints that decide that certain people shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else. And I can very much understand that, if you were told that you couldn't marry the person you loved, or even that you shouldn't be allowed to exist in public, you'd be quite hostile to the people who spout those viewpoints too.
A bit of both-sides-ism here. The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint, despite the fact that these companies have bent over backwards to accommodate those views and to give them platforms. Meanwhile only a small fraction of Democrats believe this is very likely, and they aren’t strongly sure about which side is benefiting from the supposed bias.
There's also lots of evidence to the contrary: Twitter refuses to ban self-identified Nazis who incite violence but there are dozens of instances of people getting banned for saying mean insults to those same Nazis.
Making Nazis out to be just a more extreme form of the Republican viewpoint is hardly a good way to engage in discussion about a politically sensitive topic.
I think there's a pretty clear distinction between advertising and organic speech, and also a pretty clear distinction between wanting to restrict how other people use your platform and simply having views of your own.
Restricting the platform is their right. But the issue is people believing they are being censored and by banning certain ads they reenforce that viewpoint.
Somewhat unrelated. Advertisers dont want their to be a clear distinction anymore. Hell pretty soon the most effective marketing strategy wont be shameless plugs but offhanded ones. Ones that sneak in like oh hey yeah I was using x the other day and it helped me with y. Once gun manufactuers catch up it might look something like: popular social media user offhandedly mentions purchase of lgun, posts some pictures firing gun, learning gun safety, talks about how much fun they had. Itll be hard to censor and I wouldnt be shocked.
This is already similar to how a lot of gun culture videos on YouTube operate. Go watch Hickhock45. Guy just shoots and chats about guns in a casual, mostly non-political manner. He’s really popular and the whole shebang is one big (indirect) advertisment for various firearms.
Yeah, like a Smith and Wesson could really have helped those guys in that office and/or school that day. Hey, btw, I saw they had a sale at the local gun store for only 99.99. Use this promo code, and you can probably get an additional 50% off. 0x7361726361736d
> The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint, despite the fact that these companies have bent over backwards to accommodate those views and to give them platforms.
However, that belief isn't totally without basis. Facebook fired its entire trending topics curation team [1], after allegations that its members suppressed conservative stories [2]. Even though Facebook denied that any ideological suppression took place, their actions in firing the team could be interpreted as confirming them, especially considering how badly their algorithm performed without human oversight afterwards.
> The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint
To me it looks like the polls say that they believe these companies censor content, and that these companies also lean left. Nothing about their viewpoints.
I don't think refusal to allow a custom emoji with a hashtag is censorship - they didn't ban the hashtag. Custom emoji are a business/marketing/advertising thing, and if we want to restrict the ability of private businesses to decline advertising deals with other private businesses for any reason at all (including "we just don't like you"), that's a whole different conversation, and one I suspect many conservatives will not be pleased with the outcome of.
As the article says, this move cost Twitter millions in revenue. If you don't have the ability to just choose not to make money because you're not interested in the transaction, you don't actually control the company, the public does.
"No attack ads" isn't the same thing as "no anti-Hillary attack ads". If you can cite the Hillary campaign getting a custom emoji for an anti-Trump hashtag, do so.
> "No attack ads" isn't the same thing as "no anti-Hillary attack ads".
Irrelevant. Twitter denied them a custom icon whereas allowed their opposition to have one. The content of the icon has no bearing on the matter. It's censorship. That is twitter's choice but it is still censorship, based on the CEO's politics.
You're saying that, because Twitter is not allowing a custom emoji who's entire reason for existing is to be a negative attack on someone, it's censorship?
No, your point was, "It is if you allow the other side to do exactly the same, as noted in the linked article."
The other side is not doing exactly the same. The other side never intended to do exactly the same, and for good measure, the CEO promised that if they did, they would be prevented from doing so, too.
You are now making the claim that, if side X exhibits behavior A, and opposing side Y exhibits behavior B, it is no longer legitimate to compare behaviors A and B - whatever the behaviors are, they are exactly the same simply because they're held by opposing sides.
The other side wanted a custom icon. They got it. The content of the icon is irrelevant to the question "did twitter censor political views not shared by the CEO?" The answer is "yes", regardless of the content of the icon granted to the other side.
The content is important though because it's precisely why they weren't allowed the hashtag.
They were allowed other hashtags that didn't have the same negative "attack ad" approach so it doesn't look like politically motivated bias so much as them just not wanting to promote negative attack ads on their platform.
You can call it censorship. That's fair. But it's unfair to call it bias or politically motivated censorship.
The cited example in the linked article is the same side - it's a screenshot of the Republican National Convention hashtag.
I suspect it was approved because #RNCinCLE isn't an attack/allegation on someone else. I also believe it was a Twitter-initiated hashtag, not one bought by the RNC.
I similarly suspect the Hillary Campaign would've seen an application to add an emoji to #DumpTrump rejected. Hell, Pepsi probably can't sponsor a #CokeSucks one.
> However, both DNC and RNC conventions had custom emojis this cycle and they did not use disclaimers.
> But, the only other campaign large enough to have this type of deal would have been the Clinton campaign and my contacts inside TW informed me that they did not have one in place. So basically, “cancelling for all political campaigns” really meant cancelling ONLY for Donald J. Trump’s campaign.
The DNC and RNC both got custom mascot emojis for their hashtags, and the Trump campaign did not get a #CrookedHillary emoji, nor did the Clinton campaign get (or ask for) a similar anti-Trump emoji. So the other side was quite clearly not allowed to do the exact same, nor did they even ask to do the exact same.
Not exactly the same. I don't think any Democratic organizations tried to associate some Donald Trump hashtag with a dumpster fire or anything like that.
Are there examples of Democrat-funded attack ads like this with hashtags that Twitter allowed icons for?
EDIT: I ask because this is an example of an attack ad targeted to an individual candidate rather than a general promotion or political concept, which I can see why Twitter wouldn't necessarily want to promote.
The issue is more it being approved at lower levels, but CEO Jack Dorsey directly killing it: an example of bias at the very top.
Any ad that directly mentions the opposing candidate, no matter how polite, is an attack ad. And there is no guidance from ANY regulatory authority that I can see, that bans, discourages, or even regulates them.
It still isn't an example of bias. It's just an example of Twitter not having clear internal policies and coordination for dealing with sensitive issues.
Which, frankly, has been an issue that plagues them on both sides of the political divide.
That article isn't a "smoking gun", it's quite literally biased propaganda by a paid member of a campaign!
A blog post (not journalism!) by a paid member of a political campaign infamous for its loose relationship with fact and truth, quoting other paid members of the Campaign, to push a particular message that the campaign has been aggressively pushing...
I mean, dude, what the fuck. How can you call what is literally campaign propaganda produced by two members of a partisan campaign PR department a "smoking gun"?
I'm at a loss for words. What is happening to Hacker News?
Just to be clear; members of the party controlling all 3 branches of government and putting children in internment camps is mad about not getting an icon from a website. Got it.
Once in awhile Facebook decides I shouldn't be friends with someone anymore and suppresses all of their posts from my feed. I start to wonder what's happened to them, so I make a point of searching for their page and find that they've been posting daily. Things I would have been interested to see and would have commented on.
It's entirely possible that Facebook found that your comments caused less engagement for other people on Facebook, and therefore doesn't want you to comment.
It's also possible that Facebook determined that this person has substantially different politics than you, and has put you in different 'boxes'. You can actually check what groups Facebook thinks you belong in. For instance, Facebook thinks my peer group is 'Starting Adult Life', and my US Political Stance is 'very liberal'.
(Facebook also thinks I work in a production occupation, like mining, or lumber, which couldn't be further from the truth, which explains all the ads for industrial equipment)
I went to high school in a really conservative place, and I'm friends with a lot of people who have wildly different views on religion and politics. A few years ago I stopped seeing their posts, even if I added them to the group of people I see first on Facebook. Meanwhile, I started seeing a ton of posts from people who I barely knew in college, presumably because their 'beliefs' were much closer to mine.
I'm extremely cynical, and I find dogmatic people of similar beliefs as annoying as people whose beliefs I disagree with, and my Facebook feed became a personal hell of dogmatism, especially leading up to the 2016 election. As a result I check Facebook at most once a week. It's entirely possible that leaving the platform improved the experience for some of my more conservative peers from high school, who no longer have to see my posts on the walls of mutual friends.
that concept of 'boxes' is pretty interesting -- is there a way for me to check that for myself without handing them a wad of cash? i rarely use facebook aside from messenger (because getting friends and family to use something like telegram/signal/etc is a pain in the ass when fb just works) but i've had it for about 8 years now so it'd be interesting to see how accurate of a profile they've built on me
Wow, the amount facebook knows about me is staggering little.
The four groups I’m in are
all related to using a mobile device or wi-fi.
I’m pleasantly surprised but it appears deleting all of my content, unfollowing every person on my feed, not logging in except on incognito windows and very infrequently at best, and using ad blockers has effectively stymied facebook’s ability to establish a good notion of who I am beyond the most extreme basics.
I still use messenger although I try to use encrypted messages when I can, but they don’t mine that for advertising information according to their user policy. Not sure if they mine it for anything else.
Honestly though, as William Wrigley Jr once wrote, "When two men always agree, one of them is unnecessary." I have one friend that I disagree with about literally everything, and I respect him a lot because every discussion we have is thoughtful, and my ideas and beliefs are better for having discussed them with him.
Anyways, your political bent is probably based on what types of posts you've read or liked, or even who has liked your comments, even if they were apolitical.
I love how you worded this and illustrated your point. I think you're exactly right. I joined Facebook to be connected to the people I wanted to see, not people they want me to see. I barely log in anymore for this reason.
Facebook randomly began notifying several friends every time I "liked" something they were opposed to -- finally addressed the resultant unfriending in person only to find out that the FB algorhythm decided to create its on brand of contentiousness among users. Does anyone think this was an accient?
I think the difference between this and censorship is in the case of censorship, even someone explicitly searching for the content won't find it. This is just a case of [a persons] posts not being "algorithmically tasty" enough.
It is owned by a Silicon Valley VC giant, while not directly media it is steered by big money. However I think HN is moderated relatively well, but I can see how some people might think it's being gamed/controlled/censored by self interest (I don't)
I think that’s the wrong question to imply. What it is is an illustration of how big media behaves due to its own implicit ad well as explicit biases. Of course HN isn’t mainstream, but it also experiences some of the same symptoms.
I am actually surprised by what appears to be HN's explicit censorship of this topic.
Just two days ago this NYT editorial [1] was on the front page of HN with 20+ upvotes IIRC, and before there were more than 1 or 2 comments the post was deleted and unviewable. (And didn't show up as flagged either -- just totally deleted.)
I'm not sure how many people on HN are aware of what appears to be admin censorship of this topic. And it's not like it's some incendiary blog post -- it's an Op-Ed from the nation's traditional "newspaper of record", part of the national conversation, and relevant to our industry.
I believe you're mistaken. Do you know that item ids are just incrementing integers? We're making it bloody hard on ourselves to get away with censorship that way.
I don't believe that it is hacker news admins that are doing the censorship. There is a flag feature and any post that is flagged is automatically hidden. There is a dedicated contingent of users that will flag anything that goes against their narrative.
This happens for articles that discuss China, diversity, etc.
It would be prudent to let "controversial" subjects stand before the court of public opinion rather than be automatically censored, regardless of how riled up the comments section can get.
Hm, what if it was "anything goes" but buttons to hid things you personally find offensive? If you analysed enough hide-clicks you could perhaps start to softly predict what to hide automatically for that person. By softly I mean blurring it, and not hiding it outright. I actually kind of like the Fb filter allowing quite disturbing material, but blurring it and in effect telling you that, "Hey, you might not want to see this, but it's here if you change your mind." Oftentimes I just scroll past those, because - wow - I really don't need stuff like that in my life, and I'm grown up enough to make that decision for myself. On so select occasions I still look at them, for reasons. But then I at least had a reason! So it's beyond complaining, and I can really only thank myself for looking at it, if I didn't like it after all.
That's about what I would expect. It's about the same as discussing the less fortunate side of vaccines, which I would hope is buried as quickly as possible for obvious reasons.
Why? People on HN skew towards being young enough to be having babies. Why wouldn't you want them to know that it's OK to space out vaccines instead of conforming to the schedule that is pushed on them?
> Why wouldn't you want them to know that it's OK to space out vaccines...
Because it's not.
Spacing them out means they're getting some later, leaving them vulnerable longer. It also lends false credence to the idea that they're dangerous. In many cases, it may also mean kids miss out on the later doses, because repeated doctor visits to administer them may be unaffordable (copays) or difficult (scheduling, transportation, etc.). Multiple visits for shots also exposes them to germy pediatrician waiting rooms more frequently.
I do not agree with anything that you said. However, it is an argument and a basis for a discussion.
You state that such a discussion should not occur, and that those new parents should not have access to those (including our pediatrician, by the way) who state that the current schedule is much too aggressive and can safely be spaced out.
Denying new parents the opportunity for such a discussion is pure and simple arrogance and it does nobody any good except the egos of those who engage in that censorship.
---------------------
Whackadoodles. Nice. The arrogance is strong in this one.
Your own linked article (about not a study, but merely a survey whose demographics and actual questions are hidden from us) states that parents concerns should not be dismissed. This is a discussion about censorship, and you've shown yourself only too willing to engage in it.
> And while nearly 90% thought that such spacing out of the immunizations would put the children, and the community at risk of spreading infectious diseases like measles, 37% said they agreed to do so often or always.
(There are also a smattering of whackadoodles in any profession...)
Your anti-vax ideas are in the same neighborhood as flat earthers; yeah, we all get that you really really believe it, but that don't make it any more real than the pancake earth model.
The word I like to describe all of this stuff is scientism -- it looks like science, feels like knowledge, but it's just well-formed nonsense.
The benefits of vaccines overwhelm the problems, and yes, the anti-vaccine quackery of the last couple decades has made legitimate discussion impossible. It's a similar situation to states' rights, a term which 160 years ago the violent, racist yahoos of the confederacy and their supporters forever poisoned, despite it being a concise descriptive term for lots of legitimate issues.
Lol. I think that has a little more to do with the topic riling up the angsty trolls who tend to turn otherwise normal conversations into internet dumpster-fires. Not to mention it's easier to blame some boogyman for ideas that challenge your own, rather than taking accountability for an unrealistic or dissonant worldview.
FB/Twitter and HN aren't really comparable here. HN does topic moderation; FB and Twitter do not. There's a lot of room for subtlety here -- you could argue that topic moderation is done in a biased way that ends up behaving like censorship, for example -- but the discussion definitely won't go anywhere if it doesn't make a good faith effort to avoid equating those two things.
I thought there's some pretty robust discussion about people who feel shafted by diversity initiatives. I do feel that anyone who speaks in a hot-headed way gets penalized on Hacker News, and I think that's great. There were a few big recent HN discussions on the matter -- are there clear instances of what you mean on the whole?
It seems to me that there’s some middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture but they’re not being rude or hot headed, and yet their genuine questions get downvoted.
I do think there’s some kind of “you can’t discuss that” attitudes on here about certain topics. Diversity stuff is an area I can imagine reasonable and even good comments getting downvoted. Sadly I don’t have any sources, but this is my intuition after reading HN regularly.
In and of themselves, no. However, I think an argument could be made for the visual suppression of posts, which occurs after too many downvotes have been given, being a form of soft censorship. The information is still broadcast but it's made impossible to read unless I copy/paste it or tilt my screen to an extreme angle.
Maybe it's indicative of which sort of conversations I choose to participate in, but I rarely see comment sections go beyond the page fold.
Supposing we take your argument seriously though, comments past the page fold which also have their contrast lowered to the point of illegibility are certainly censored even moreso.
It only takes a dozen short comments or so even on a giant screen. And yes, almost everything is censorship if you redefine censorship to mean any random irksome thing.
Incidentally, I do think the way the comment fading works is pointedly user-hating and dumb (it's traditionally dumb, though!), but it's not really censorship. More generally, since we're talking about taking things seriously, framing forum irritants as some sort of oppression is a solid way to ensure few people take you seriously.
I don't think that describing a system which deliberately suppresses the legibility of posts you've already scrolled to see as 'soft censorship' is an unreasonable "redefinition" of censorship. If you disagree, I suppose I consider you unreasonable.
There's a 'showdead' flag you can turn on in the prefs, that will show you stuff that has been flagged to death. When in the very rare cases something gets moderated in a comment (like removing someone's private info), there's a moderator comment saying so.
I recently wrote a comment in response to a post here with the title, "Why Women Don't Code?". The post itself was, I think, on the front page and received 104 upvotes. My comment was along the lines of, "we don't know why women don't code (preference vs culture) but [anecdote] and I personally lean towards the preference angle." My comment was down voted twice but afterwards appeared to gain traction with more than a dozen upvotes.
That topic in particular (gender in STEM, feminist topics, etc.) I find is usually a no-go zone anywhere else on the net unless you have a specific opinion abut it, but on HN it wasn't censored and I felt comfortable expressing an opinion.
It's sometimes hit and miss. I think sometimes posts on certain hot-topic political issues are downvoted because many people come here for tech related stuff and don't want to see anything else-- especially that which leads to an unwinable argument.
> middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture... > genuine questions get downvoted
The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques.
Whether every instance of "hi, I'm new here, why is affirmative action a good thing?" is actually bad faith, etc. is irrelevant.
Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion.
There are a good amount of people who are "asking" those questions in bad faith. And, after a while, it gets exhausting to those who get bombarded with those questions. And those doing that in bad faith know it. It's kinda like a DDOS attack on them.
> Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion.
I disagree completely. My view is that the facts and data do not support the leftists' position, so when free discussion of the women or diversity in STEM issue(s) takes place, their arguments do not fare well. And leftists generally seek to suppress any expression of ideas that run counter to their own, so they kill the discussion altogether through flagging or downvoting. And then they engage in all sorts of sophistry to justify their suppression of free discussion.
Comments like this rightly get downvoted and flagged for being unsubstantive, flamebait, ideological battle, and going on about downvotes. Then of course people complain that it's their politics which are being censored.
What I'm most excited about with Kennedy's replacement is seeing affirmative action finally get the axe. Many, many people think that the erosion of meritocracy is a bad thing even for the groups it's intended to benefit.
I really have a hard time coming up with a field outside of pro sports that is more meritocratic than tech. The assault on that in the name of "diversity" is morally repulsive, and I'll be very happy to see racial discrimination outlawed.
Anyone who claims to have been exposed to "microagressions" simply because they have been talking to people of a different view-point, are exactly the people who need more "microagressions".
This kinda thing here is exactly what is killing the current political left. I honestly think they mean well, but with stuff like this it's hard to take them seriously.
Had they only harmed themselves, it might not have been that bad, but they are simultaneously and ruining a generation of youngsters by teaching them that this is kinda behaviour is normal.
I disagree. I think a lot of people not familiar with the term micro aggression think it’s all stupid. But I have been feeling as though I understand better what people mean when they use the term micro aggression. They’re talking about people being rude, inconsiderate, or mean and not even realizing it. And the term micro aggression is used to communicate that they feel uncomfortable and they want the other to recognize that and change their behavior.
I think if someone is making you feel uncomfortable you have every right to tell them. Now if they decide not to change that’s up to them, and you two may choose not to have a relationship moving forward, but it’s okay to share how you feel and ask for change.
However some people decide they are the victim of aggression and they then yell at the other person, and that’s obviously absurd. If you don’t want people to be aggressive at you, don’t be aggressive at them.
But what you’re proposing is that, when someone is feeling uncomfortable, we should make them more uncomfortable. I think that’s shitty behavior and I don’t believe it is helpful. Do you?
What should we do when someone is feeling uncomfortable simply because someone else is has an opposing political view?
Feeling disgust at an political view is a well established medical phenomenon. It trigger the same brain region as smelling rotten food, garbage and contaminated water. How would we go about to prevent triggering this reaction?
>> middle area where the person doesn’t understand Bay Area culture... genuine questions get downvoted
>The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques.
Those things - I don't understand or currently agree with your view, so it's a "bad faith question" - are Bay Area culture.
In the rest of the adult world, it's OK to not share your opinion before asking questions.
It's a common misconception, but HN users are overwhelmingly not in the Bay Area. When I looked at this a few months ago, the number was about 10%. (Actually between 5% and 14% depending on how you count.)
I’ve observed a similar phenomena on articles about the wrongdoings of the US government. Well cited high quality articles about historical or contemporary US aggression overseas disappear quickly even when they had been getting upvotes.
I noticed a similar trend on Facebook. My posts about the tragedy occurring right now in Yemen got almost no traffic on Facebook, despite being worded and cited similarly to my other popular posts.
Yes and that’s the rub. Previously a journalist decided what stories people should hear. Now an algorithm tuned to people’s engagement levels decides what we should see. It may have the effect of burying important stories that make people uncomfortable, which a journalist might not do. Just because people would rather not know about Yemen doesn’t mean we’re better off if people don’t know about Yemen.
HN and other "distributed moderation" sites tend to quell any discussion that a fraction of the userbase strongly dislikes. Most people don't vote on most comments, so highly motivated people have more say on a particular topic. In some cases, this is a correction mechanism, such as when people with physics education downvote the proponents of fringe theories; in other cases, it may hide useful information, such as in a debate about morality or a similar less certain topic that people acquire strong opinions about without having such high confidence.
However, I find it hard to justify calling this "censorship" because it is the site working as intended. Controversial topics are avoided because the goal of the site is ultimately recreational. There are many things you can't discuss on HN because the userbase just isn't interested, but nobody would argue that HN censors discussions of, say, the hardcore music scene in the Bay Area.
I’m not sure which bias you specifically mean. But in case it’s a pro-diversity sentiment you believe to be seeing, let me assure you: HN is the only social circle where I can /still/ find people insisting “affirmative action is racism”.
There's two angles to this: general crowd psychology, and how social media tailors the news feed in response to it.
In the old Internet (forums and Usenet), sure, there was crowd psychology too. There always is.
However, these social media designs were far less prone to hiding unpopular opinions. As a general rule, unless you had an overtly strict moderator or something, you could read posts with unpopular opinions, even if the "crowd" disagreed.
Big social media sites (Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc.) in contrast use algorithmic reordering, shuffling, and tweaking of your feeds / timelines / etc. Likes / retweets / etc. are one component to what gets displayed on your feed. The net result here is that unpopular opinions are often effectively "silenced". IMHO this leads to a negative and polarizing effect.
I can't call it 100% censorship though. It's different. On most social networks, you are free to, say, start your own little space (a subreddit or your own Twitter space and whatnot) where, say, the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives are discussed. Unless the subject strays into TOS violation territory, you can probably say what you want. However, there's a good chance in said subreddit (in this polarized environment and considering crowd psychology) that it is the positive side of diversity initiatives that are downvoted to oblivion. And the reverse is true as well. Basically, crowd psychology and the binary like/retweet system ensures that no one hears what the "other side" has to say. Maybe it's a "dark pattern" of sort? Tweak the emotions of the user in the right way, not the wrong way, and they might spend a bit longer looking at that advertisement...
Hacker News doesn't feel as "bad" to me as the bigger social networks for some reason -- I'm not a big fan of upvote/downvote systems, obviously, but at least HN includes tools like the showdead option that's pretty easy to enable. There was a large discussion about diversity initiatives during relevant stories (the James Damore memo for instance), but for others, I know that some of the "crowd" here is wary of overtly political articles period, favoring only pure tech articles. So you are going to get some front page selection bias against articles of a "political" nature.
Usenet's classic problem was that it amplified the most extreme voices in any conversation. Extreme voices and unpopular opinions are different things. You can be extremely polite in expressing an unpopular opinion, and get upvoted on HN.
As I recall, Usenet took freedom of expression to the extreme and a few trolls ruined it. I remember one who referred to himself as Archimedes Plutonium and would spam the discussion of specific science and programming topics with wild discourses claiming the Plutonium atom was god. The turned whole newsfeeds into spam. I believe this is where the comment "Don't feed the trolls" came from. I am all for civil, productive discussion where ideas are refined. There is a time and a place to say, "This is off topic and not producing a productive dialog, so take it elsewhere."
> By the way, it's stupid that we still can't have user-defined [emojis].
Emojis should have only been embedded user-defined pngs. I know I'm being cranky and old, but I feel our character sets shouldn't have been used to encode novel cute pictures.
Yes. The problem is that it assumes that language is fixed. However, the correct way is to make emojis freely definable, so that the emoji language will continue to develop; of course, the unfortunate side-effect for character set maintainers would be that they have to expand the set in order to incorporate the new parts of the language. But that is their problem; you can't force a population to use a limited set of symbols.
Nope. You basically want inline emojis, in Whatsapp, because that's the most popular messaging service. And you want to be able to click other people's emojis and save them to your own emoji library.
I have no problem sending arbitrary images to my friends on both iPhone and Android platforms, over a number of different protocols including SMS. What's the problem?
"Shared emoticons" sounds like what you really want is a way to channel community defined imagery into a palette of images. There are in fact ways to do that now, usually called "stickers".
I'd never want just anyone to be able to define new Unicode targets. We'd soon be overrun with Ricks because idiots.
Could do with some examples of said views so we could see whether it's a false equivalence, or whether some of the "views" in fact comprise incitement to violence etc.
Note that there is no "true neutral" in this world; neutrality itself is a political position that helps certain people and hinders others.
Like it or not (I don't), he was expressing his political opinions, albeit in a tactless way. Social media is overrun with much worse garbage and people are not banned for such.
At the end of the day, is anyone really surprised that these platforms censor/filter content in any way?
Where did the assumption of an un-biased platform come from? These companies are in the business of making money, as much as they preach about 'making a difference in the world', they will always default to whatever gains the most public favor and generates the most revenue.
I am actually surprised by the statistics, I had assumed that less people thought they were being censored. Although this presents an opposite problem, if everyone thinks they are being censored then they can claim the real truth is being 'censored'.
Everyone at one point has made a comment that has been downvoted or moderated out of existence. The rejection sticks in your mind. Effectively, that is censorship.
Would you assume I'm right-wing if I do not use politically correct terminology? Will slowing down change my world-view or simply the language I use to express it?
It wasn't directed at your post, sorry. It's the rate-limit response HN gives - users who are "slow-banned" see it on posting more than 1 post every 5 minutes. Another form of censorship, as others can post when you cannot.
As to your specific points:
> Would you assume I'm right-wing if I do not use politically correct terminology?
Frankly, yes. Politically correct speech appears to be today's shibboleth[0].
> Will slowing down change my world-view or simply the language I use to express it?
Slowing down a poster will reduce their ability to express their viewpoint, diluting it among other posters.
I think you misread that post. He was quoting HN's forced cooldown that's imposed if the system thinks you're in some sort of heated flamewar. I assume he means to suggest this is a form of soft censorship tied into the internet points system (which is to say, it seems like he's agreeing with you.)
Oh I see. Did not realize, thank you for pointing that out. I was merely trying to have a philosophical discussion by taking a controversial viewpoint.
If we end up saying downvotes = censorship, then "censorship" is fine. The natural reaction of "uh oh, censorship is bad, we should be careful about that" only makes sense if we're careful about how we use the word.
Maybe you take internet points entirely too seriously. If you find that getting downvoted has emotionally wounded you, I recommend abandoning all your accounts and creating new ones with zero karma (presumably much less than your old ones.) This will teach you to disassociate internet points from your sense of self-worth.
It's funny how it's automatically about me when I was making a general statement :). Of course you feel self-righteous and above the fray, but really, you are human like the rest of us.
Most people are unable to decouple their sense of self-worth from the public perception of themselves. It takes a great deal of introspection and self-discipline to detach in the manner described, and even then, it stings at first before the brain kicks in to post-hoc rationalize the response. It's how human beings are wired and a few years of deep thought are not going to change millenia of evolutionary responses.
The expectation that there is no moderation is what confuses me. FB and others don’t have any obligation to provide a soap box to users. Advertisers are usually a different story.
"If it feels bad it's censorship" is not a particularly useful definition of 'censorship'. It should give you pause that most messageboard complaints about 'censorship' revolve around it - you never see someone passionately argue how their top comment (with page-consuming thread hanging off it) is 'censoring' other viewpoints.
Downvoting and moderation are censorship though. If people dismiss your views out of hand without a rational response, such as a downvote or comment deleted by a moderator, the hurt feelings are natural because it's an action without a rationale (no mens rea).
Why would someone complain about their comment being the top comment? They are the most popular person at that point.
So if you're the most popular person thereby 'censoring' other comments, that's not censorship? It's only censorship if it feels bad? What about the people who feel bad their comment isn't the top comment? I'm in violent agreement that feeling bad feels... bad. It's just that's not what we normally call censorship, if the term is to have any semblance of an objective meaning.
"Downvoting and moderation are censorship though. If people dismiss your views out of hand without a rational response, such as a downvote or comment deleted by a moderator, the hurt feelings are natural because it's an action without a rationale (no mens rea)."
But doesn't that imply that you're entitled to a response? And why would you say there's no rationale? It might not be a rationale that you like, but there certainly is one; your post was either violating the guidelines or wasn't contributing to the conversation.
"Why would someone complain about their comment being the top comment? They are the most popular person at that point."
That viewpoint is part of the problem; votes aren't supposed to be about popularity.
Censorship would be actions initiated by the mods/owners of the forum... it could be fake downvotes, but usually it is much worst then that (shadowban, etc...)
There's a ton of liberal west coast idealists on HN who pretty much hate anyone who isn't exactly like them or who they don't understand. They think they're better than everyone else with their Macs and their pure functional programming.
These people can only exist in a bubble though. Most people outside that bubble are laughing at them.
There is great confusion on the scope and purpose of the First Amendment in play here.
Secondly, media is drilling down on two toxic ideas:
always two sides to every story
, and
objectivity, claim of no bias.
These things combine to present ordinary Americans with the expectation of objective media and free speech everywhere.
A side effect is a surrender of critical thought in return for unwarranted trust.
The remedy should be to evaluate all of this with a critical eye and help people understand there is always bias, and how they can and shoild be using diverse sources to stay informed.
I lean conservative, but to be honest, I assign only a small portion of the blame to social media giants. Their office areas and leadership certainly lean left-wing, but I don't think that's the main issue.
I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. As a result, even an entirely neutral algorithm focused on retention / user satisfaction will be more careful about showing right-leaning views to users who aren't obviously right-leaning. To me, it's tough to call that censorship.
As a result, I see the issue more as a symptom of the real problem, but that's a lot tougher to solve.
You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist. Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right.
> You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist.
At the bottom? Fear of the other; in the United States, fear of the other rooted particularly in racism. Because it's not "nationalism" here--a disease by itself, but a controllable one. It's white supremacism, given nicer clothes by calling it "white nationalism" for some godforsaken reason, peddled by leaders who want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along.
At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex.
(And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)
Nationalism and white supremacism are not the same thing at all. Equating them and needlessly injecting race into it is bog standard Russian divisive propaganda.
In America, they are. Both are historical and current disasters; the icing on the cake of American white supremacism fueling American nationalism is extra gross, though.
I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.
Please try to rephrase that by actually saying something. I'm genuinely curious why you think that absurd equality is so obvious it requires no evidence.
There's nothing wrong with nationalism, or wanting to live on the same plot of land with people of your own race. The word nation is rooted in birth, stock, tribe, race.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with White nationalism either. Or Jewish nationalism. Or German nationalism. Or Japanese, Indian, or African nationalism. Each nation has spilled much blood for its territory, and each race has a right to defend its existence and secure a future for its children.
Alas, the experiment of multiculturalism in the U.S. and Europe has been a complete disaster. It has led to increasingly divided, low trust, and hateful societies. There were some good intentions behind multiculturalism, but there were also destructive intentions.
The multiculturalists, the globalists, the corporate elite, the international communists -- whatever you want to call them -- have very good reasons for wanting to destroy racial, national, cultural, familial identities. They want atomized individuals, rootless, without a history and without a real identity, because atomized individuals do not have strong enough bonds with a people to resist being subjugated and controlled.
Multiculturalism is a religion which preaches "diversity is our strength", but practices the destruction of diversity, of nationality, of race, of family.
Those at the top have an agenda to consolidate power over a homogenized people who are easy to rule. At the bottom are the "educated" postmodern zealots who believe everyone is equal, everything is relative, and nothing is real.
Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.
41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic.
Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.
"Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right."
All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?
That article makes claims that are just not true. "Trump supported a decent minimum wage from the start, wants free education in state universities, has supported universal health care, consistently opposed the Transpacific Partnership Agreement and wants more bank regulation."
He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation.
So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.
I think Trump has taken almost every conceivable position on every issue, so the claims in the article were presumably true for some particular moment of time.
Everyone applies "selective empathy". People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns.
In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.
Is that why Obama created a job retraining program for them? Because he cares very little for them? Or is it actually because he cares for them MORE than conservatives who want to lead them even further down the path of dependence on a dying industry.
This is the same sort of confusion that leads to ideas like "Blue Lives Matter." A life isn't inherently blue. A person isn't inherently a coal miner.
I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment.
It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.
It's a lack of empathy when they vote to end coal miner jobs without having job replacement though (which is exactly what Hillary promised for example).
It's the same with people on the right with this immigration issue. They care about immigrants, but they care about rigid immigration policies to prevent "free-riders" even more. That's why you will find very few right-leaning people against legal immigrants as opposed to the many against illegal immigrants.
> People on the left in the US care very little about employees of coal miners, oil companies, etc because of larger environmental concerns.
Or to be more honest, they think white rural Americans dying of drug overdoses is funny. I mean these stupid rednecks deserve it right? Fewer white births than deaths in many states? (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-populat...)
It's about fucking time!
Now I'm being a bit unfair to the left here partly because I'm more pissed at them, as I'm a liberal who would have thought this was "my team" just a few years ago. Of course there are people that would say all that and probably worse regardless of their politics. But something seems very wrong. IMO it's been a long time since this large of a number of people on either side truly think their political opposition ought to be killed. I've seen people on the left say Trump voters should be shot, he should be assassinated, etc., and I've seen similar shit coming out of the right as well. Not even on the internet; I have heard this things IRL. Maybe modern society/technology has done something really fucked to our empathy? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been like this as long as I've been alive.
That's implying that conservative arguments are inherently more rational, which simply isn't the case. They have their own sources of argument that many would consider less rational. Religion, for one. Junk science, for another.
But now you're trying to make it seem like conservatives tend to more apply logic in their arguments. Considering a lot of their arguments come from religion, I can't agree with that.
But attacking people on the basis of their faith (which is not a protected status at all) is a perfectly logical and reasonable way to engage in public discourse.
Yes, it's a bit of a mental shortcut that doesn't advance the argument much.
They mostly agree with their understanding of the Bible, so extend the benefit of the doubt to issues they don't yet understand.
Similar to supporting a policy because your favorite politician supports it.
Every time I've dug into some divisive issue I see core rational arguments on both sides along with these faith based cop outs or short sighted emotional appeals.
Could you please not do flamewars on HN? That commenter was way out of line to attack you based on nationality, and we've banned their account for trolling. But you also posted provocations in this thread, and we need people not to do that.
>Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.
Conservatives do seem to see themselves as people who don’t get offended.
I wonder what causes that.
There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.
As a conservative: What causes it is that you basically have to retreat completely from society to avoid seeing opposing views.
I'd have to avoid all the late night shows, most newspapers and TV news stations, and most social media. It doesn't take long to get inoculated. As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas being reinforced.
> There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.
I'm sure that's a debate to be had--but to apply most applicably to this discussion, I mean "sufficiently offended to leave a website, stop watching a video, block something, report something, or otherwise feel like you've had a negative experience." The kind of things social media algorithms will pick up on.
I think you’re misunderstanding what it’s like to lean left.
You used the word “exclusively”... “As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas.”
I think you’re making a strange assumption here: some of my conservative ideas are almost universally rejected by the media around me, therefore many liberals must feel all of their ideas are universally accepted by the media.
That’s not true though. For example some liberals feel that capitalism is immoral. That idea is almost universally rejected in the media, and by most Americans.
I think your point—that some ideas which are important to you are being suppressed—is important to raise. I care about those ideas and seek them out. (Although I’m conservative in many ways)
But I think you really weaken your position in the debate by tacking on strong claims about how enfranchised leftists must feel in the media.
The people who feel comfortable with the media are really neither left or right. They are people who feel comfortable with the status quo, who feel most happy when everyone agrees and actively move away from discord. Non-ideologues. These people are neither left nor right.
I'd say that to be offended by something you have to believe that things ought not to be that way and the fact that they are can only be a personal attack on you carried out by some evil forces. This is not too rational, so yes, most conservatives do not get offended. (Another reason could be that idea of loving thy neighbor as he is, not as you believe he should be.)
Definitely. Generating outrage is the bread and butter of outlets like Fox News, talk radio, etc. Sadly many left-leaning outlets seem to be pursuing the same model, because clicks.
Most parsimonious explanation; conservative adherence to old fashioned liberalism (aka "I disagree with what you say, but fight for your right to say it" kinds of sentiments), which is no longer really a part of the left.
"I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views"
Considering "right leaning views" includes things like women should not have reproductive control over their bodies, trans people should not be able to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with, and gay people shouldn't be married, and people should have their children yanked away from them at the border, yes, I can very much see why they would be offended by that.
You're not getting a lot of people being offended by the nuances of tax policy, for instance.
>I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views.
This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.
Well, we can debate the meaning of "offended," but for the purposes of this discussion, I mean "causing the user to react in a way perceived as negative for the end user experience and reflecting poorly in engagement metrics."
As a conservative, it's tough to avoid seeing opposing points of view. You'd have to avoid all late night shows, nearly all TV stations and newspapers, and most social media. We're quite accustomed to seeing opposing views and if it actually bothered us seeing them, we'd be frustrated virtually all the time.
Left-leaning people can quite easily participate in society without seeing opposing views. You can openly discuss even political activism at work without issue. Avoid Fox News and Breitbart and you're unlikely to see anything much different than what you already believe.
Maybe "offended" isn't the right word, but I do think it's a contributing factor.
Then I guess you're choosing to watch Fox News, read Breitbart, avoid any political discussion on here or Reddit, watch no late night or comedy TV shows, and work at a remarkably conservative workplace (especially for tech). Maybe you're choosing to read a more conservative local newspaper?
Very little of this is regional because most media consumed is not regional, and most reporters and editors lean left.
This 100% happens.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2014/11/26/how-miria...
When this^ woman was murdered, I attempted to post on Facebook: "I bet this woman was not a terrorist." to which I was told the attempt failed.
After troubleshooting, such as trying again or posting something else, I felt very deceived.
I mean.. that's an anecdote which could have a myriad of technical explanations. I wouldn't immediately jump to the assumption that facebook is blocking select users from sharing links from a respected newspaper because they don't like the content of the article for some reason (why would they even block this article in specific?)
* washingtonpost is behind a GDPR paywall (for me at least), it took a few attempts even for the link preview to load when I tried posting that
* 99.9999% uptime of web APIs is not 100%, fb servers really could have been having trouble reaching washingtonpost
* I was able to share that post fine (once the link preview finally loaded properly), so WFM..?
Yes but they could state those in the error message. They don't so people are left to their own conclusions on why things were blocked. Especially if you're not technically savvy, the reason why something isn't submitted is because someone physical human blocked you from submitting it. I can't count the number of times people hated on game servers being laggy simply blaming it as the company trying to save money by using cheap servers when the actual cause is likely any number of network congestion issues.
This isn't opinion, it's provable fact. Twitter and Facebook were on a tear last year, actively shutting down the accounts of conservative pundits, under the guise of rules violations, while turning a blind eye to the same actions from pundits and personalities on the left.
I can't stand the fact that organizations hide behind "algorithms" as an excuse for every unintended side-effect.
It's no surprise that algorithms create an information bubble for us. I like to use music as an example: the best music recommendations I've ever received have been from friends. I'll describe music I'm listening to and like, and they'll recommend something for me. I'd say 50% of the time I find it unobjectionable, 30% of the time I hate it, and 20% of the time I love it.
Sites have been trying to replicate this functionality using algorithms for a well over a decade. Last.fm used to be a great way for me find music. As far as I could tell, it would just pick music from people who listened to the same artists as you. I'd say I found 30% of the music unobjectionable, 50% of the music terrible, and 20% of the music great. Functionally, this was remarkably similar to my friends recommending me music, because I only care about the music I loved.
Over time their algorithm got 'better' and nearly stopped recommending music I disliked, however I found that it mostly just recommended me music that was in the unobjectionable middle ground of 'meh'. I stopped looking for music on Last.fm because it stopped giving me music I loved.
We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content. Machine learning lacks the ability to deal with the nuances surrounding controversial or challenging content. It never takes the leap of faith that a person would when recommending you something.
I am really interested to see how this all plays out over the next few years, because I think people are beginning to realize they are addicted to the perpetual stream of 'good enough' content. The network effect will probably protect Facebook for the time being, I assume the first sites affected will be content-driven, like YouTube.
Of course, XKCD addressed the issues I have with algorithms far better than I could ever hope to:
>We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content.
I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set. I believe what you are seeing is an accommodation for the average person. Most people aren't adventurous, and it makes business sense to get algos working for the middle majority than to cater to tail ends.
It also, IMO, makes content at places like youtube less technical and more clickbaity. But again I believe this is somewhat intentional.
>> We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content.
> I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set. I believe what you are seeing is an accommodation for the average person. Most people aren't adventurous, and it makes business sense to get algos working for the middle majority than to cater to tail ends.
You literally just said the same thing the GP did while ostensibly disagreeing with him: ML curated content caters to the lowest common denominator - i.e. the content that most people would be okay with.
Would that mean more rock and less bluegrass? (I'm kidding, of course)
In all seriousness though, the problem probably is the data set to a certain extent. I am pretty adventurous, true, but at the same time I think the problem is that regardless of what data we collect, we only have the ability to determine if something is inoffensive.
All you need to do is look at a site that aggregates reviews like Yelp or Amazon, and read some reviews. 95% of reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars, and it's obvious from reading the text that the rating is meaningless. "I ordered the wrong item by mistake, 1 star" "Food is overpriced, but the bathrooms are clean and wait staff is attractive, 5 stars."
I find star ratings most useful because people who rate things 2-4 stars generally have the most nuanced and productive things to say about the product, and actually rate things what they think they should be rated, rather than using the rating system as a vote for "rate this higher/lower."
I don't think it's possible to actually come up with good recommendations based on user-reported like/dislike rating. It's not wrong for a user to dislike a song because it reminds them of an ex, but using that as a basis for a recommendation to someone else is entirely useless.
Systems like Rotten Tomatoes works really well in this regard, but almost has the opposite problem, which is that it tends to underrate movies with broad appeal, but that's generally not a problem since users will be exposed to those movies anyways.
I would say most people aren't adventurous in everything except their interests, which they are very adventurous in. The problem is that there will always be more people with a meh feeling toward a random subject than people with a genuine intrest in it, and a brute force ML algorithem trained by just throwing unholy amounts of generic personal data at it before being being relased on the giant mashup of random subjects that make up something like youtube won't catch that nuance
Whether product design or technical/mathematical, isn't that just saying that we have a problem of companies treating consumers as an aggregate userbase that they can train once against instead of everyone being a bit different?
>I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set.
Ehhh... mathematically, most ML methods basically assume that the underlying data and label manifolds should be smooth (in the real analysis sense). Sharply peaked output distributions, small mountains of "loved it!" surrounded by valleys of "ugh", are hard to work with for many models, compared to a wavy surface between "ok" and "ok, I guess".
Is there any evidence to support this assertion and that Facebook isn't merely showing you information that is palatable to you? (Note that this greatly expands the use of this fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance)
I think we all have to answer these questions first:
1) Are you comfortable with receiving information that is true, or even mostly true, but that which is distasteful to you personally?
2) If so, do you wish to impose this expectation on everyone else?
Of course there is a minimum standard - but the problem is to have effective censors you need to give them a degree of leeway/self-judgement and in a politically charged environment this will lead to bias.
> Is there any evidence to support this assertion and that Facebook isn't merely showing you information that is palatable to you?
I'm not sure why intent matters. The point is I can't turn it off and see all the information if I wanted to. My access to information is being artificially restricted.
> 2) If so, do you wish to impose this expectation on everyone else?
This is completely unnecessary. Just need an option in preferences: Use algorithmic feed [Yes] [No].
Edit: Like privacy, this is another case where the ad-driven business model is in conflict with the best interests of the user. Ad-supported algorithmic feeds optimize not for truth, educational value, or even user happiness, but for engagement. This often means eliciting a strong emotional reaction - positive or negative. In effect algorithmic feeds create the informational equivalent of how grocery stores put high-margin junk and processed foods in the high traffic areas. They want you to buy this stuff - your health be damned.
>Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag, which originated with Wikileaks’ publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account. The core of the hashtag was propagated by Wikileaks, whose account sent out a series of 118 original Tweets containing variants on the hashtag #PodestaEmails referencing the daily installments of the emails released on the Wikileaks website. In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches. As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Twitter openly admits to censorship. They censored legitimate journalism for political reasons.
Where is the "argumentum-ad-nauseam bullshit"? I'm didn't post this to argue about politics or what your political beliefs are, just that they do in fact, censor.
The thing about Hillary’s emails was COMPLETELY INFLATED by her opposition, since she was not the first person by a long shot to use a private email server. Inflation = distortion = bullshit.
Again, I wasn't here to debate your political opinions, I was just simply pointing out that Twitter does censor, and providing a US .gov sourced example.
I like how they justify it by claiming that the tweets were automated. How so? I saw lots of real humans complaining that their tweets were blocked.
I think the logic goes like this: "We wouldn't tweet that. Nobody we know would tweet anything like that. Therefore, this is not from real people." Maybe the Twitter employees need to get out a bit more, perhaps taking a lengthy visit to rural Oklahoma or West Virginia.
There may be some feelings of guilt here. To deal with that, just claim that the tweets aren't from real people.
Case in point is that consumers are more than happy to be given custom-tailored feeds that filter content they agree with (or that the provider's algorithm THINKS they agree with).
If this was not true, Vero would have taken off instead of falling flat.
Social media is pretty much broken at this point. The idea was to increase reach and communication. Instead we've got people grouped into thought bubbles and echo chambers. I'd argue that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are causing more harm to society at this point than any potential benefit they provide.
Never heard of Vero. It’s a mistake to think that sites/apps find success by having better features. Especially in social media, the network effect is the only thing that determines who lives and dies.
Consider this: There are other apps that you haven't heard of, with communities completely secluded from the Fb/twit/goog environment, and nobody's complaining that they are bubbleified.
- the Gun Emoji censorship was only the beginning but clearly intends to define the ideologically playing field by limiting the ideas people can express
- Those who believe that "hate speech" should be censored will likely view the censorship in place as legitimate. However, "hate speech" is typically allowed against Whites (they are considered "oppressors" and because of power imbalances, it's different for them ... ). The phrase "Hate Speech" is used to ban speech that did not violate previous norms against violence / obscenity but is nonetheless considered subversive.
- Facebook contracted with the "mainstream media" and recently eliminated its "trending" feature after left-wing criticism that they did not censor conservative so-called "fake news" that helped Trump win election. Apple is similarly contracting with predominantly left-wing "mainstream media" outlets to stock its human-curated i.e. censored News App.
- Youtube and likely others work with ADL / SPLC to use ML to algorithmically flag and ban "hate speech" content.
Here is a ranking of the subreddits ADL flagged in "Hate comments count by subreddit":
- White rights
- Mens rights
- the Donald
- Ask Trump Supporters
- Republican
- Conspiracy
- Guns are Cool
- New Right
- 2016 Elections
- Censorship
- First Amendment
- Nazi Hunting
- 911 Truth
- Good Cop Free Donut
They appear to be very focused on right-wing "hate" and not much on the left.
... the OHI model captures the experience of hate speech online – it does not define hate speech [it's based on subjective manual flaggers rather than explicit criteria]
...the D-Lab is identifying strategies to scale the process for labeling comments.
While there is still a long way to go with artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions, ADL and the D-Lab believe these technologies can go a long way to curbing online hate speech. [i.e., we hope ML-automated censorship will be effective].
The ADL’s long standing mission has been to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all...the Online Hate Index will help us do just that.
- Youtube demonetized, suspended, and terminated numerous gun channels in recent months
- Pervasive political censorship of controversial but nonviolent "alt-right" ideas, e.g. Twitter and Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer and crowdfunding. Certainly neither constitutes "incitement" under the first amendment standard of Brandenburg v. Ohio "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
- While private organizations are not bound by the first amendment, one could reasonably consider their removal of political speech that in public is protected by f...
408 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadHow, exactly? Is Facebook doling out admin privileges to random users? Or are we confusing "receive criticism" with "censorship" here?
That's no more "censorship" than me unfriending you on Facebook would be.
> On Facebook, a similar phenomenon might occur due to liberal users reporting conservative ideas they don't agree with as hate speech.
That'll put it in a review queue, upon which Facebook employees make a decision. If it gets deleted, it's because you violated Facebook's rules.
It's more complicated than that, though. It takes more than just a report to get someone's content deleted.
Take a look at the examples from their moderator training:
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-cens...
See, for example, the slide about "female drivers", "black children", and "white men" - Facebook's policies (via some pretty odd logic, IMO) protect posts about "white men", but not "black children". A liberal bastion, they're not.
> One document trains content reviewers on how to apply the company’s global hate speech algorithm. The slide identifies three groups: female drivers, black children and white men. It asks: Which group is protected from hate speech? The correct answer: white men.
> The reason is that Facebook deletes curses, slurs, calls for violence and several other types of attacks only when they are directed at “protected categories”—based on race, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation and serious disability/disease. It gives users broader latitude when they write about “subsets” of protected categories. White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected. (The exact rules are in the slide show below.)
Would it not be the same the other way around because of the subset rule? Black women would be protected whereas male drivers and white children would not?
Do you have any proof of that claim?
Too often “free speech” is a messy and conflated concept used to basically argue against anyone being told to shut up. Various arguments about the size or dominance of a social media platform are often used to try and get them covered like the government under the 1st amendment. Then if all that fails, the argument switches to free speech as a vague principle rather than a legal right.
To be fair, it isn’t just conservatives who seem to feel this way either. Americans in general just seem, on average, not to understand this issue as well as they think they do.
Moreover people like Mill or Popper would argue people have a duty to engage every idea, because that's how the open society works.
The reduction of free speech to the first amendment and to State censorship is a modern american barbarism that is as absurd as it is baseless in either its historical roots or its application by any free judiciary, including the American one.
Telling people to shut up because their ideas are unpopular is and always will be illiberal.
You're free to think that it's all bunk and tyranny of the majority is just fine. Many people do.
I'd just like it to be clear to everyone that such an opinion is being against free speech. Because what greatly annoys me is when people try to claim that they advocate a "reasonable" version of free speech when they simply oppose it. Or indeed try to claim that their censorious position is a liberal one.
Which I am not at all accusing you of incidentally.
I would wager a large sum of money that if left-wing opinion were treated in the same way there would be much whining about minority rights and the importance of an individual's free speech from the left.
Maybe not, but on some sites you are abusing your privileges as a moderator by behaving this way.
That person is feeling 'censored'.
And now every other person is a 'bot' or a Russian troll.
That's probably a big contributor to the perception.
The leaders of many of the big tech companies are very public in their support of certain views, and steer their companies to publicly support those views, as well. So it makes sense for people with differing views to believe that that companies which don't share their views would be against them.
If the tech companies were to focus solely on being good technology companies and not trying to re-shape society, the public might have a different perception.
Especially FBI crime statistics.
Other users can't censor. That's not an ability they have.
And really, the only hostility I've seen targeted at conservative views are those viewpoints that decide that certain people shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else. And I can very much understand that, if you were told that you couldn't marry the person you loved, or even that you shouldn't be allowed to exist in public, you'd be quite hostile to the people who spout those viewpoints too.
Restricting the platform is their right. But the issue is people believing they are being censored and by banning certain ads they reenforce that viewpoint.
However, that belief isn't totally without basis. Facebook fired its entire trending topics curation team [1], after allegations that its members suppressed conservative stories [2]. Even though Facebook denied that any ideological suppression took place, their actions in firing the team could be interpreted as confirming them, especially considering how badly their algorithm performed without human oversight afterwards.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-...
[2] https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-sup...
To me it looks like the polls say that they believe these companies censor content, and that these companies also lean left. Nothing about their viewpoints.
Note that there are plenty of other custom icons that Twitter allows.
As the article says, this move cost Twitter millions in revenue. If you don't have the ability to just choose not to make money because you're not interested in the transaction, you don't actually control the company, the public does.
It is if you allow the other side to do exactly the same, as noted in the linked article.
"No attack ads" isn't the same thing as "no anti-Hillary attack ads". If you can cite the Hillary campaign getting a custom emoji for an anti-Trump hashtag, do so.
Irrelevant. Twitter denied them a custom icon whereas allowed their opposition to have one. The content of the icon has no bearing on the matter. It's censorship. That is twitter's choice but it is still censorship, based on the CEO's politics.
This is NOT TRUE.
Click the article. Look at the screenshot. It clearly shows the Republican National Convention was afforded a custom emoji.
You've fallen for some propaganda.
If the Clinton campaign ran an ad that was targeting Trump in a similarly negative way and Twitter allowed that, then it would be bias.
But so far I haven't seen that counterexample.
By your logic, taking down a post of someone being doxxed is also censorship.
The other side is not doing exactly the same. The other side never intended to do exactly the same, and for good measure, the CEO promised that if they did, they would be prevented from doing so, too.
You are now making the claim that, if side X exhibits behavior A, and opposing side Y exhibits behavior B, it is no longer legitimate to compare behaviors A and B - whatever the behaviors are, they are exactly the same simply because they're held by opposing sides.
The other side wanted a custom icon. They got it. The content of the icon is irrelevant to the question "did twitter censor political views not shared by the CEO?" The answer is "yes", regardless of the content of the icon granted to the other side.
They were allowed other hashtags that didn't have the same negative "attack ad" approach so it doesn't look like politically motivated bias so much as them just not wanting to promote negative attack ads on their platform.
You can call it censorship. That's fair. But it's unfair to call it bias or politically motivated censorship.
It absolutely, most certainly is not. The content is quite vital to the decision.
I suspect it was approved because #RNCinCLE isn't an attack/allegation on someone else. I also believe it was a Twitter-initiated hashtag, not one bought by the RNC.
I similarly suspect the Hillary Campaign would've seen an application to add an emoji to #DumpTrump rejected. Hell, Pepsi probably can't sponsor a #CokeSucks one.
> However, both DNC and RNC conventions had custom emojis this cycle and they did not use disclaimers.
> But, the only other campaign large enough to have this type of deal would have been the Clinton campaign and my contacts inside TW informed me that they did not have one in place. So basically, “cancelling for all political campaigns” really meant cancelling ONLY for Donald J. Trump’s campaign.
The DNC and RNC both got custom mascot emojis for their hashtags, and the Trump campaign did not get a #CrookedHillary emoji, nor did the Clinton campaign get (or ask for) a similar anti-Trump emoji. So the other side was quite clearly not allowed to do the exact same, nor did they even ask to do the exact same.
EDIT: I ask because this is an example of an attack ad targeted to an individual candidate rather than a general promotion or political concept, which I can see why Twitter wouldn't necessarily want to promote.
Any ad that directly mentions the opposing candidate, no matter how polite, is an attack ad. And there is no guidance from ANY regulatory authority that I can see, that bans, discourages, or even regulates them.
Which, frankly, has been an issue that plagues them on both sides of the political divide.
A blog post (not journalism!) by a paid member of a political campaign infamous for its loose relationship with fact and truth, quoting other paid members of the Campaign, to push a particular message that the campaign has been aggressively pushing...
I mean, dude, what the fuck. How can you call what is literally campaign propaganda produced by two members of a partisan campaign PR department a "smoking gun"?
I'm at a loss for words. What is happening to Hacker News?
Your response is overblown and strident.
Why? Because algorithms.
Maybe "censorship" is a strong word in this instance — do we prefer "selective disclosure"?
Regardless, not what I signed up for. Deleted FB.
It's also possible that Facebook determined that this person has substantially different politics than you, and has put you in different 'boxes'. You can actually check what groups Facebook thinks you belong in. For instance, Facebook thinks my peer group is 'Starting Adult Life', and my US Political Stance is 'very liberal'.
(Facebook also thinks I work in a production occupation, like mining, or lumber, which couldn't be further from the truth, which explains all the ads for industrial equipment)
I went to high school in a really conservative place, and I'm friends with a lot of people who have wildly different views on religion and politics. A few years ago I stopped seeing their posts, even if I added them to the group of people I see first on Facebook. Meanwhile, I started seeing a ton of posts from people who I barely knew in college, presumably because their 'beliefs' were much closer to mine.
I'm extremely cynical, and I find dogmatic people of similar beliefs as annoying as people whose beliefs I disagree with, and my Facebook feed became a personal hell of dogmatism, especially leading up to the 2016 election. As a result I check Facebook at most once a week. It's entirely possible that leaving the platform improved the experience for some of my more conservative peers from high school, who no longer have to see my posts on the walls of mutual friends.
Apparently I'm 'very conservative'... probably because of my friend group, since I've never posted anything political on Facebook.
The four groups I’m in are all related to using a mobile device or wi-fi.
I’m pleasantly surprised but it appears deleting all of my content, unfollowing every person on my feed, not logging in except on incognito windows and very infrequently at best, and using ad blockers has effectively stymied facebook’s ability to establish a good notion of who I am beyond the most extreme basics.
I still use messenger although I try to use encrypted messages when I can, but they don’t mine that for advertising information according to their user policy. Not sure if they mine it for anything else.
Either way, good.
Honestly though, as William Wrigley Jr once wrote, "When two men always agree, one of them is unnecessary." I have one friend that I disagree with about literally everything, and I respect him a lot because every discussion we have is thoughtful, and my ideas and beliefs are better for having discussed them with him.
Anyways, your political bent is probably based on what types of posts you've read or liked, or even who has liked your comments, even if they were apolitical.
https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences
And then open Your Information > Your Categories. I assume this is what they are talking about.
Then see how many minutes it takes before your entire thread is flagged and effectively censored.
Doesn’t have to be a giant to exhibit the behaviors people find objectionable, like applying selective censorship.
Just two days ago this NYT editorial [1] was on the front page of HN with 20+ upvotes IIRC, and before there were more than 1 or 2 comments the post was deleted and unviewable. (And didn't show up as flagged either -- just totally deleted.)
I'm not sure how many people on HN are aware of what appears to be admin censorship of this topic. And it's not like it's some incendiary blog post -- it's an Op-Ed from the nation's traditional "newspaper of record", part of the national conversation, and relevant to our industry.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-ame...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403488
Other recent threads on the subject:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759138
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16250371
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327774
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17334733
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778
This happens for articles that discuss China, diversity, etc.
Because it's not.
Spacing them out means they're getting some later, leaving them vulnerable longer. It also lends false credence to the idea that they're dangerous. In many cases, it may also mean kids miss out on the later doses, because repeated doctor visits to administer them may be unaffordable (copays) or difficult (scheduling, transportation, etc.). Multiple visits for shots also exposes them to germy pediatrician waiting rooms more frequently.
You state that such a discussion should not occur, and that those new parents should not have access to those (including our pediatrician, by the way) who state that the current schedule is much too aggressive and can safely be spaced out.
Denying new parents the opportunity for such a discussion is pure and simple arrogance and it does nobody any good except the egos of those who engage in that censorship.
---------------------
Whackadoodles. Nice. The arrogance is strong in this one.
Your own linked article (about not a study, but merely a survey whose demographics and actual questions are hidden from us) states that parents concerns should not be dismissed. This is a discussion about censorship, and you've shown yourself only too willing to engage in it.
You don't agree that giving a vaccine later means you're not getting its benefits as quickly?
You don't agree that three pediatrician visits is 3x the exposure to the germs in a pediatrician's waiting room?
As for your pediatrician's particular practice, they may simply be avoiding conflict: http://time.com/3726887/doctors-space-out-vaccines/
> And while nearly 90% thought that such spacing out of the immunizations would put the children, and the community at risk of spreading infectious diseases like measles, 37% said they agreed to do so often or always.
(There are also a smattering of whackadoodles in any profession...)
The word I like to describe all of this stuff is scientism -- it looks like science, feels like knowledge, but it's just well-formed nonsense.
I do think there’s some kind of “you can’t discuss that” attitudes on here about certain topics. Diversity stuff is an area I can imagine reasonable and even good comments getting downvoted. Sadly I don’t have any sources, but this is my intuition after reading HN regularly.
Supposing we take your argument seriously though, comments past the page fold which also have their contrast lowered to the point of illegibility are certainly censored even moreso.
Incidentally, I do think the way the comment fading works is pointedly user-hating and dumb (it's traditionally dumb, though!), but it's not really censorship. More generally, since we're talking about taking things seriously, framing forum irritants as some sort of oppression is a solid way to ensure few people take you seriously.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
That topic in particular (gender in STEM, feminist topics, etc.) I find is usually a no-go zone anywhere else on the net unless you have a specific opinion abut it, but on HN it wasn't censored and I felt comfortable expressing an opinion.
It's sometimes hit and miss. I think sometimes posts on certain hot-topic political issues are downvoted because many people come here for tech related stuff and don't want to see anything else-- especially that which leads to an unwinable argument.
The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques.
Whether every instance of "hi, I'm new here, why is affirmative action a good thing?" is actually bad faith, etc. is irrelevant.
Diversity as a topic gets downvoted, flagged, and removed because the heat keeps happening on those threads. Regardless of which side you occupy or support or even if you claim to support no side at all, it consistently produces uncharitable and unproductive discussion.
I disagree completely. My view is that the facts and data do not support the leftists' position, so when free discussion of the women or diversity in STEM issue(s) takes place, their arguments do not fare well. And leftists generally seek to suppress any expression of ideas that run counter to their own, so they kill the discussion altogether through flagging or downvoting. And then they engage in all sorts of sophistry to justify their suppression of free discussion.
[Downvoters: QED! ;-)]
Comments like this rightly get downvoted and flagged for being unsubstantive, flamebait, ideological battle, and going on about downvotes. Then of course people complain that it's their politics which are being censored.
Anyone who claims to have been exposed to "microagressions" simply because they have been talking to people of a different view-point, are exactly the people who need more "microagressions".
This kinda thing here is exactly what is killing the current political left. I honestly think they mean well, but with stuff like this it's hard to take them seriously.
Had they only harmed themselves, it might not have been that bad, but they are simultaneously and ruining a generation of youngsters by teaching them that this is kinda behaviour is normal.
I think if someone is making you feel uncomfortable you have every right to tell them. Now if they decide not to change that’s up to them, and you two may choose not to have a relationship moving forward, but it’s okay to share how you feel and ask for change.
However some people decide they are the victim of aggression and they then yell at the other person, and that’s obviously absurd. If you don’t want people to be aggressive at you, don’t be aggressive at them.
But what you’re proposing is that, when someone is feeling uncomfortable, we should make them more uncomfortable. I think that’s shitty behavior and I don’t believe it is helpful. Do you?
Feeling disgust at an political view is a well established medical phenomenon. It trigger the same brain region as smelling rotten food, garbage and contaminated water. How would we go about to prevent triggering this reaction?
>The problem is these "genuine questions," for other people, are received as: bad faith questions, "sea lioning", poorly researched questions (e.g., simple query would find the answer), microagressions, dog whistles, sock puppet arguments, or other incendiary social media argument techniques.
Those things - I don't understand or currently agree with your view, so it's a "bad faith question" - are Bay Area culture.
In the rest of the adult world, it's OK to not share your opinion before asking questions.
It's a common misconception, but HN users are overwhelmingly not in the Bay Area. When I looked at this a few months ago, the number was about 10%. (Actually between 5% and 14% depending on how you count.)
I noticed a similar trend on Facebook. My posts about the tragedy occurring right now in Yemen got almost no traffic on Facebook, despite being worded and cited similarly to my other popular posts.
However, I find it hard to justify calling this "censorship" because it is the site working as intended. Controversial topics are avoided because the goal of the site is ultimately recreational. There are many things you can't discuss on HN because the userbase just isn't interested, but nobody would argue that HN censors discussions of, say, the hardcore music scene in the Bay Area.
Partly due the to recent news on Harvard admissions, most of my Asian friends think affirmative action is racist against them.
In the old Internet (forums and Usenet), sure, there was crowd psychology too. There always is.
However, these social media designs were far less prone to hiding unpopular opinions. As a general rule, unless you had an overtly strict moderator or something, you could read posts with unpopular opinions, even if the "crowd" disagreed.
Big social media sites (Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc.) in contrast use algorithmic reordering, shuffling, and tweaking of your feeds / timelines / etc. Likes / retweets / etc. are one component to what gets displayed on your feed. The net result here is that unpopular opinions are often effectively "silenced". IMHO this leads to a negative and polarizing effect.
I can't call it 100% censorship though. It's different. On most social networks, you are free to, say, start your own little space (a subreddit or your own Twitter space and whatnot) where, say, the less fortunate sides of diversity initiatives are discussed. Unless the subject strays into TOS violation territory, you can probably say what you want. However, there's a good chance in said subreddit (in this polarized environment and considering crowd psychology) that it is the positive side of diversity initiatives that are downvoted to oblivion. And the reverse is true as well. Basically, crowd psychology and the binary like/retweet system ensures that no one hears what the "other side" has to say. Maybe it's a "dark pattern" of sort? Tweak the emotions of the user in the right way, not the wrong way, and they might spend a bit longer looking at that advertisement...
Hacker News doesn't feel as "bad" to me as the bigger social networks for some reason -- I'm not a big fan of upvote/downvote systems, obviously, but at least HN includes tools like the showdead option that's pretty easy to enable. There was a large discussion about diversity initiatives during relevant stories (the James Damore memo for instance), but for others, I know that some of the "crowd" here is wary of overtly political articles period, favoring only pure tech articles. So you are going to get some front page selection bias against articles of a "political" nature.
We could have enriched our online culture with a flourishing set of shared emoticons by now!
Emojis should have only been embedded user-defined pngs. I know I'm being cranky and old, but I feel our character sets shouldn't have been used to encode novel cute pictures.
It's called an "alphabet".
"Shared emoticons" sounds like what you really want is a way to channel community defined imagery into a palette of images. There are in fact ways to do that now, usually called "stickers".
I'd never want just anyone to be able to define new Unicode targets. We'd soon be overrun with Ricks because idiots.
used to be called a headlock... until sundar turned on Pakis
Note that there is no "true neutral" in this world; neutrality itself is a political position that helps certain people and hinders others.
Conservative comedian Owen Benjamin being banned from Twitter for life is but one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wehNVE7_G24
Where did the assumption of an un-biased platform come from? These companies are in the business of making money, as much as they preach about 'making a difference in the world', they will always default to whatever gains the most public favor and generates the most revenue.
I am actually surprised by the statistics, I had assumed that less people thought they were being censored. Although this presents an opposite problem, if everyone thinks they are being censored then they can claim the real truth is being 'censored'.
Biases will always exist when money is involved.
As to your specific points:
> Would you assume I'm right-wing if I do not use politically correct terminology?
Frankly, yes. Politically correct speech appears to be today's shibboleth[0].
> Will slowing down change my world-view or simply the language I use to express it?
Slowing down a poster will reduce their ability to express their viewpoint, diluting it among other posters.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
I would, because it implies that your desire to not change how you speak is more important to you than making others feel comfortable.
And to those downvoting this discussion, thank you for proving my point.
Most people are unable to decouple their sense of self-worth from the public perception of themselves. It takes a great deal of introspection and self-discipline to detach in the manner described, and even then, it stings at first before the brain kicks in to post-hoc rationalize the response. It's how human beings are wired and a few years of deep thought are not going to change millenia of evolutionary responses.
"If it feels bad it's censorship" is not a particularly useful definition of 'censorship'. It should give you pause that most messageboard complaints about 'censorship' revolve around it - you never see someone passionately argue how their top comment (with page-consuming thread hanging off it) is 'censoring' other viewpoints.
Why would someone complain about their comment being the top comment? They are the most popular person at that point.
But doesn't that imply that you're entitled to a response? And why would you say there's no rationale? It might not be a rationale that you like, but there certainly is one; your post was either violating the guidelines or wasn't contributing to the conversation.
"Why would someone complain about their comment being the top comment? They are the most popular person at that point."
That viewpoint is part of the problem; votes aren't supposed to be about popularity.
These people can only exist in a bubble though. Most people outside that bubble are laughing at them.
There is great confusion on the scope and purpose of the First Amendment in play here.
Secondly, media is drilling down on two toxic ideas:
always two sides to every story
, and
objectivity, claim of no bias.
These things combine to present ordinary Americans with the expectation of objective media and free speech everywhere.
A side effect is a surrender of critical thought in return for unwarranted trust.
The remedy should be to evaluate all of this with a critical eye and help people understand there is always bias, and how they can and shoild be using diverse sources to stay informed.
I think the biggest contributor is just that left-leaning people are more likely to be offended by right-leaning views. As a result, even an entirely neutral algorithm focused on retention / user satisfaction will be more careful about showing right-leaning views to users who aren't obviously right-leaning. To me, it's tough to call that censorship.
As a result, I see the issue more as a symptom of the real problem, but that's a lot tougher to solve.
More likely to have empathy is another way to phrase that.
At the bottom? Fear of the other; in the United States, fear of the other rooted particularly in racism. Because it's not "nationalism" here--a disease by itself, but a controllable one. It's white supremacism, given nicer clothes by calling it "white nationalism" for some godforsaken reason, peddled by leaders who want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along.
At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex.
(And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)
I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with White nationalism either. Or Jewish nationalism. Or German nationalism. Or Japanese, Indian, or African nationalism. Each nation has spilled much blood for its territory, and each race has a right to defend its existence and secure a future for its children.
Alas, the experiment of multiculturalism in the U.S. and Europe has been a complete disaster. It has led to increasingly divided, low trust, and hateful societies. There were some good intentions behind multiculturalism, but there were also destructive intentions.
The multiculturalists, the globalists, the corporate elite, the international communists -- whatever you want to call them -- have very good reasons for wanting to destroy racial, national, cultural, familial identities. They want atomized individuals, rootless, without a history and without a real identity, because atomized individuals do not have strong enough bonds with a people to resist being subjugated and controlled.
Multiculturalism is a religion which preaches "diversity is our strength", but practices the destruction of diversity, of nationality, of race, of family.
Those at the top have an agenda to consolidate power over a homogenized people who are easy to rule. At the bottom are the "educated" postmodern zealots who believe everyone is equal, everything is relative, and nothing is real.
It's bullshit and now people know it, too.
Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.
Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...
That article was a good personal account which could definitely change minds.
All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?
For the primaries, using similar measures at least, the Republicans all more or less clumped together to the right of Clinton.
He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation.
So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.
In every case, there is some "more important cause" that someone prioritizes that makes it look like they don't have empathy.
I think you will find a lot of leftists caring deeply about the lives of people who are currently working in coal mines or in a police force, and concluding that the best answer for them is found in different employment.
It is no lack of empathy to the life of a coal miner to say that coal should stop being mined any more than it is a lack of empathy to the life of a soldier to say that a war should end.
It's the same with people on the right with this immigration issue. They care about immigrants, but they care about rigid immigration policies to prevent "free-riders" even more. That's why you will find very few right-leaning people against legal immigrants as opposed to the many against illegal immigrants.
That's a terrible way to put it.
Or to be more honest, they think white rural Americans dying of drug overdoses is funny. I mean these stupid rednecks deserve it right? Fewer white births than deaths in many states? (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-populat...) It's about fucking time!
Now I'm being a bit unfair to the left here partly because I'm more pissed at them, as I'm a liberal who would have thought this was "my team" just a few years ago. Of course there are people that would say all that and probably worse regardless of their politics. But something seems very wrong. IMO it's been a long time since this large of a number of people on either side truly think their political opposition ought to be killed. I've seen people on the left say Trump voters should be shot, he should be assassinated, etc., and I've seen similar shit coming out of the right as well. Not even on the internet; I have heard this things IRL. Maybe modern society/technology has done something really fucked to our empathy? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been like this as long as I've been alive.
That fact almost proves the point OP was making though, when your argument is emotion based offense at hostile views comes naturally.
Some of these rules, IMHO, are absurd, but many you'd come to the same conclusion without faith as with it.
They mostly agree with their understanding of the Bible, so extend the benefit of the doubt to issues they don't yet understand.
Similar to supporting a policy because your favorite politician supports it.
Every time I've dug into some divisive issue I see core rational arguments on both sides along with these faith based cop outs or short sighted emotional appeals.
From Russia eh?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm sure you meant to phrase it differently but in its current form, your comment comes across as more snarky than substantive or civil.
I wonder what causes that.
There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.
I'd have to avoid all the late night shows, most newspapers and TV news stations, and most social media. It doesn't take long to get inoculated. As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas being reinforced.
> There seems to be an idea that the things that offend them are, like, “naturally” abhorrent, so it’s not offense so much as, like... digust in satanic things, virtue in “common sense”, etc. There’s a whole language to talk about things that carefully avoids the concept of “being offended”.
I'm sure that's a debate to be had--but to apply most applicably to this discussion, I mean "sufficiently offended to leave a website, stop watching a video, block something, report something, or otherwise feel like you've had a negative experience." The kind of things social media algorithms will pick up on.
You used the word “exclusively”... “As a left-leaning person, it's much easier to see almost exclusively your own ideas.”
I think you’re making a strange assumption here: some of my conservative ideas are almost universally rejected by the media around me, therefore many liberals must feel all of their ideas are universally accepted by the media.
That’s not true though. For example some liberals feel that capitalism is immoral. That idea is almost universally rejected in the media, and by most Americans.
I think your point—that some ideas which are important to you are being suppressed—is important to raise. I care about those ideas and seek them out. (Although I’m conservative in many ways)
But I think you really weaken your position in the debate by tacking on strong claims about how enfranchised leftists must feel in the media.
The people who feel comfortable with the media are really neither left or right. They are people who feel comfortable with the status quo, who feel most happy when everyone agrees and actively move away from discord. Non-ideologues. These people are neither left nor right.
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+arugula
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+tan+suit
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+dijon+mustard
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+feet+desk
Yeah, spare me.
Considering "right leaning views" includes things like women should not have reproductive control over their bodies, trans people should not be able to use the bathroom they feel comfortable with, and gay people shouldn't be married, and people should have their children yanked away from them at the border, yes, I can very much see why they would be offended by that.
You're not getting a lot of people being offended by the nuances of tax policy, for instance.
This theory only makes sense if there's an asymmetry between left offended at right and right offended at left. I don't think that's true. At least I don't think its true in the direction of left-more-offended-at-right. A large fraction of right-wing media seems built around selling a feeling of indignation and contempt (Ann Coulter, Bill o', any Murdoch publication etc). I've seen "liberal" used as a sneer by conservatives, but never in the opposite direction.
As a conservative, it's tough to avoid seeing opposing points of view. You'd have to avoid all late night shows, nearly all TV stations and newspapers, and most social media. We're quite accustomed to seeing opposing views and if it actually bothered us seeing them, we'd be frustrated virtually all the time.
Left-leaning people can quite easily participate in society without seeing opposing views. You can openly discuss even political activism at work without issue. Avoid Fox News and Breitbart and you're unlikely to see anything much different than what you already believe.
Maybe "offended" isn't the right word, but I do think it's a contributing factor.
Very little of this is regional because most media consumed is not regional, and most reporters and editors lean left.
* washingtonpost is behind a GDPR paywall (for me at least), it took a few attempts even for the link preview to load when I tried posting that
* 99.9999% uptime of web APIs is not 100%, fb servers really could have been having trouble reaching washingtonpost
* I was able to share that post fine (once the link preview finally loaded properly), so WFM..?
People will anthropomorphize any technical issue.
But hidden camera footage of a Twitter engineer openly admitting that they shadowbanned conservatives came out last year.
It's no surprise that algorithms create an information bubble for us. I like to use music as an example: the best music recommendations I've ever received have been from friends. I'll describe music I'm listening to and like, and they'll recommend something for me. I'd say 50% of the time I find it unobjectionable, 30% of the time I hate it, and 20% of the time I love it.
Sites have been trying to replicate this functionality using algorithms for a well over a decade. Last.fm used to be a great way for me find music. As far as I could tell, it would just pick music from people who listened to the same artists as you. I'd say I found 30% of the music unobjectionable, 50% of the music terrible, and 20% of the music great. Functionally, this was remarkably similar to my friends recommending me music, because I only care about the music I loved.
Over time their algorithm got 'better' and nearly stopped recommending music I disliked, however I found that it mostly just recommended me music that was in the unobjectionable middle ground of 'meh'. I stopped looking for music on Last.fm because it stopped giving me music I loved.
We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content. Machine learning lacks the ability to deal with the nuances surrounding controversial or challenging content. It never takes the leap of faith that a person would when recommending you something.
I am really interested to see how this all plays out over the next few years, because I think people are beginning to realize they are addicted to the perpetual stream of 'good enough' content. The network effect will probably protect Facebook for the time being, I assume the first sites affected will be content-driven, like YouTube.
Of course, XKCD addressed the issues I have with algorithms far better than I could ever hope to:
https://xkcd.com/1831/
I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set. I believe what you are seeing is an accommodation for the average person. Most people aren't adventurous, and it makes business sense to get algos working for the middle majority than to cater to tail ends.
It also, IMO, makes content at places like youtube less technical and more clickbaity. But again I believe this is somewhat intentional.
> I don't think the problem is with ML. You could easily train a net to make boulder selections with an appropriate data set. I believe what you are seeing is an accommodation for the average person. Most people aren't adventurous, and it makes business sense to get algos working for the middle majority than to cater to tail ends.
You literally just said the same thing the GP did while ostensibly disagreeing with him: ML curated content caters to the lowest common denominator - i.e. the content that most people would be okay with.
Would that mean more rock and less bluegrass? (I'm kidding, of course)
In all seriousness though, the problem probably is the data set to a certain extent. I am pretty adventurous, true, but at the same time I think the problem is that regardless of what data we collect, we only have the ability to determine if something is inoffensive.
All you need to do is look at a site that aggregates reviews like Yelp or Amazon, and read some reviews. 95% of reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars, and it's obvious from reading the text that the rating is meaningless. "I ordered the wrong item by mistake, 1 star" "Food is overpriced, but the bathrooms are clean and wait staff is attractive, 5 stars."
I find star ratings most useful because people who rate things 2-4 stars generally have the most nuanced and productive things to say about the product, and actually rate things what they think they should be rated, rather than using the rating system as a vote for "rate this higher/lower."
I don't think it's possible to actually come up with good recommendations based on user-reported like/dislike rating. It's not wrong for a user to dislike a song because it reminds them of an ex, but using that as a basis for a recommendation to someone else is entirely useless.
Systems like Rotten Tomatoes works really well in this regard, but almost has the opposite problem, which is that it tends to underrate movies with broad appeal, but that's generally not a problem since users will be exposed to those movies anyways.
I would say most people aren't adventurous in everything except their interests, which they are very adventurous in. The problem is that there will always be more people with a meh feeling toward a random subject than people with a genuine intrest in it, and a brute force ML algorithem trained by just throwing unholy amounts of generic personal data at it before being being relased on the giant mashup of random subjects that make up something like youtube won't catch that nuance
Ehhh... mathematically, most ML methods basically assume that the underlying data and label manifolds should be smooth (in the real analysis sense). Sharply peaked output distributions, small mountains of "loved it!" surrounded by valleys of "ugh", are hard to work with for many models, compared to a wavy surface between "ok" and "ok, I guess".
Is there any evidence to support this assertion and that Facebook isn't merely showing you information that is palatable to you? (Note that this greatly expands the use of this fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance)
I think we all have to answer these questions first:
1) Are you comfortable with receiving information that is true, or even mostly true, but that which is distasteful to you personally?
2) If so, do you wish to impose this expectation on everyone else?
The story was broadly covered by sources across the political spectrum.
And in answer to your two questions: Yes, I expect news sources to have journalisic integrity, even if the truth is not popular.
Which is basically just content monitoring that AI can't do... child exploitation, hate speech, gore, pornography, etc.
I think it's a pretty damn right-wing slippery-slope you're traversing if you assume that's equivalent to "censorship of rogue ideas"
Californians have a different idea about hate speech than people from Alabama who have a different view of hate speech than someone from Bangalore.
So if you hire your censors from California you are going to see right wing rogue ideas considered hate speech.
I'm not sure why intent matters. The point is I can't turn it off and see all the information if I wanted to. My access to information is being artificially restricted.
> 2) If so, do you wish to impose this expectation on everyone else?
This is completely unnecessary. Just need an option in preferences: Use algorithmic feed [Yes] [No].
Edit: Like privacy, this is another case where the ad-driven business model is in conflict with the best interests of the user. Ad-supported algorithmic feeds optimize not for truth, educational value, or even user happiness, but for engagement. This often means eliciting a strong emotional reaction - positive or negative. In effect algorithmic feeds create the informational equivalent of how grocery stores put high-margin junk and processed foods in the high traffic areas. They want you to buy this stuff - your health be damned.
Or you know, what actual real life and political experience points to, and labelling it "conspiracy" is the "jumping to conclusions fallacy".
Twitter openly admits to censorship. They censored legitimate journalism for political reasons.
Source: https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4766f54d-...
Try Reddit for your garbage opinions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think the logic goes like this: "We wouldn't tweet that. Nobody we know would tweet anything like that. Therefore, this is not from real people." Maybe the Twitter employees need to get out a bit more, perhaps taking a lengthy visit to rural Oklahoma or West Virginia.
There may be some feelings of guilt here. To deal with that, just claim that the tweets aren't from real people.
2) Yes.
Was that supposed to be hard?
If this was not true, Vero would have taken off instead of falling flat.
Social media is pretty much broken at this point. The idea was to increase reach and communication. Instead we've got people grouped into thought bubbles and echo chambers. I'd argue that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are causing more harm to society at this point than any potential benefit they provide.
- the Gun Emoji censorship was only the beginning but clearly intends to define the ideologically playing field by limiting the ideas people can express
- Those who believe that "hate speech" should be censored will likely view the censorship in place as legitimate. However, "hate speech" is typically allowed against Whites (they are considered "oppressors" and because of power imbalances, it's different for them ... ). The phrase "Hate Speech" is used to ban speech that did not violate previous norms against violence / obscenity but is nonetheless considered subversive.
- Facebook contracted with the "mainstream media" and recently eliminated its "trending" feature after left-wing criticism that they did not censor conservative so-called "fake news" that helped Trump win election. Apple is similarly contracting with predominantly left-wing "mainstream media" outlets to stock its human-curated i.e. censored News App.
- Youtube and likely others work with ADL / SPLC to use ML to algorithmically flag and ban "hate speech" content.
Here is a ranking of the subreddits ADL flagged in "Hate comments count by subreddit":
- White rights
- Mens rights
- the Donald
- Ask Trump Supporters
- Republican
- Conspiracy
- Guns are Cool
- New Right
- 2016 Elections
- Censorship
- First Amendment
- Nazi Hunting
- 911 Truth
- Good Cop Free Donut
They appear to be very focused on right-wing "hate" and not much on the left.
Source: page 10 of https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/Online%20H...
- ADL is working with social media giants (notably Reddit) on automated "hate speech" censorship. https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/the-online-hate-index
- ADL [of B'nai B'rith] was founded in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a "force for Jewish unity, Jewish security, and Jewish continuity." (http://www.bnaibrith.org/giving.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Defamation_League)- Youtube demonetized, suspended, and terminated numerous gun channels in recent months
- Pervasive political censorship of controversial but nonviolent "alt-right" ideas, e.g. Twitter and Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer and crowdfunding. Certainly neither constitutes "incitement" under the first amendment standard of Brandenburg v. Ohio "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
- While private organizations are not bound by the first amendment, one could reasonably consider their removal of political speech that in public is protected by f...