"Conservatives “feel like the big social platforms, Facebook and Twitter, are not sympathetic to their views,”. Uhm. yes. But this is not a "feeling". Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg have both admitted the echo chamber their companies are in. You don't have to be conservative, or even American, to see that Silicon Valley is definitely left leaning, which will be reflected in the content social media giants allow.
If this is good or bad is another question. Everyone builds their own echo chamber, consciously or unconsciously. Thats why I don't appreciate the one-sidedness of the article. They make it sound like only republicans like to live in their bubble.
>This is the insular world in which tens of thousands of Americans who use conservative political apps are experiencing the midterm election season.
Because being on Facebook on Twitter is not experiencing an insular world, right? I mean, conservatives would not have to create their own apps to communicate if they would be left to express their views on the mainstream ones.
I think there must be some powerful mental dissonance for conservatives in a world where by some important measures, you are winning, and still find that "Reality has a well known liberal bias"
American culture is shaped largely by costal cities, especially towards the outwards world. Don't you think its fair to say those regions have a liberal bias?
Societies are more complex then that I believe. At some point, people must wonder why are we working together? We must share somewhat similar desires in what we want as an outcome. That means, we share a similar vision for the environment we want to live in.
Is this vision drastically diferent between the American left and the right? I'm not sure. I still feel people are looking for as much personal freedom as possible while maintaining high personal safety.
In that regard, if its true this is still the shared outcome by all Americans, then the disagreement is in how to best achieve it. In that case, there will be someone who'se idea is actually better. If coastal cities are the major influences on this end goal, could it not be that their method works better?
I'm not wanting to downplay the right. There are most likely specific issues which could be better solved with right leaning policies, this is all really hard to predict. The point I want to make is that not everything can be bias. The center isn't necessarily the unbiased position. Its possible the right or the left is actually the better solution on one issue or another. If say the left was overall a set of better solutions, it would be unfair to say that people who believe in those solutions to be biased, they might be unbiased, yet, the unbiased truth is that the set on the left is simply a better way to achieve the desired outcome. This would similarly apply to the right.
I disagree with "I still feel people are looking for as much personal freedom as possible while maintaining high personal safety". If we're talking about leftists, not (classical) liberals, it is abundantly clear that they don't want personal freedom, but government control
The premise that America is locked in a cultural war between leftist "city dwellers" and "heartland" conservatives is also mostly populist propaganda. The truth is most Americans are not entirely one or the other ideologically.
But we have a two party first-past-the-post system which encourages ideological polarity and tribalism, so broad and simplistic (and mostly incorrect) narratives about the makeup of American culture and politics win out in the media and get reintegrated into popular culture through osmosis.
What do you expect from a newspaper that has people on their editorial board like Sara Jeong, who openly tells us all on twitter how she likes to see old white people suffer?
Very dark times are coming to the US. It's not going to end well. I hope we can avoid it in Europe, we still have time left. I think people here will see what's happening in the US as a warning sign not to let things go too far.
Chris Hedges, the reporter who was booed, drowned out and pushed off stage for opposing the Iraq invasion, his latest book America: The Farewell Tour is a must read. America is headed to bread and circuses, violent cognitive dissonance, troglodyte populist fascists and the rich aristocracy strip-mining the foundations of civilization one rust-belt city system and bridge at a time until cities collapse.
They were trying to make the point that these insular platforms are something conservative Republicans are cooking up on their own, but the behavior of the other major social networks attempting to insulate their platforms first and foremost is what is creating these conditions across the board for everyone.
Action, reaction.
Private platforms, newsgroups, bbses, and forums are nothing new for the internet, I wouldn't even know if I would call these apps social networks in the sense of a wide reach like Twitter and Facebook have, but it shouldn't be surprising that if you deplatform a group of people and/or make their political views against the terms of service, that they'll go somewhere else, and if the other place they go to happens to be an echo chamber of political thought built from the ashes of actions committed by other social networks with a perceived political bent, it shouldn't be surprising that the political activism gets ramped way up as a result.
In my opinion, and this goes for both groups, not exposing yourself daily to conflicting opinions and different solutions to problems is intellectually damaging, and I firmly believe how most major social media companies are handling discourse in our country is extremely short sighted and damaging for real problem solving and conversations going forward. The first amendment and free expression is supposed to be an ugly, gnashing, frothy thing full of intellectual guts and blood. Bad ideas and bullshit solutions should get their guts ripped out in spirited debate, and we aren't doing that anymore.
From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.
We can never reach the point of spirited debate, when any opinion that goes against popular opinion is immediately labelled as "hate speech", "bigoted" or "ignorance". Good point
> From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.
I get that you don’t like the Democrats, but if you can’t distinguish between the GOP and conspiracy peddlers like Alex Jones, then I think you hate your own party more than the Democrats do.
The problem is not what I can and cannot distinguish. The problem is that the Big Tech companies want to make that decision for me. I despise Alex Jones and don't want to read him, but I want to make that decision by myself and not trust Facebook to take it for me.
> I want to make that decision by myself and not trust Facebook to take it for me
And what’s stopping you from doing that?
See, really what you want isn’t Facebook from making the decision for you, since they can’t. Alex Jones has his own show, and FB has no interest or ability in changing that. What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
If Big Tech colludes to deplatform Jones, then it's no longer my decision.
> What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
I can't make decision for Facebook, I don't have that power. I can't force Facebook to do anything. Facebook, on the other hand, has the power to deplatform Jones and force me to not be able to see his content via Facebook, discuss his content with my Facebook contacts, force me off the platform for supporting Jones, etc. etc. Of course, they don't have influence beyond facebook platform, but in collusion with Google, Twitter, DNS providers, certificate providers, cloud service providers, etc. (virtually all those have been participating in deplatforming before) - they wield immense powers, so "but you can build your own Internet, nobody prevents you from doing that" is not really a good suggestion. Even then, that's exactly what the subjects of the article is doing - and they are being mocked for it, too.
Why do you assume he's a Republican? He didn't even mention Democrats. You don't have to be a Republican to see that many people on social media and in social media companies are close minded.
Jones was just the start. Why shouldn't conspiracy theorists have the right to use social media? What's next? Can they have a back account? Credit card? Just a month later, we had a huge purge on Facebook and Twitter, targeting mostly left wingers, libertarians and alternative news sites. Sure, some of these are wacky people, but some provided honest content from a different, anti-government viewpoint, like Dan Dicks from Press For Truth for example. Why shouldn't those voices be heard?
https://uk.pcmag.com/facebook/117908/news/facebook-purges-80...
What Republicans are being deplatformed? The only one I could find was a fringe challenger named Paul Nehlen who acts like a Democratic characticure of a “racist Republican”
Are you literally claiming you tried to find any Republican (I include here obvious conservative people who are not elected officials but would obviously vote Republican and are outspoken in support of causes associated with Republicans) who got deplatformed on social media, and could not locate more than one person? I would suggest to put more effort into it, because there is definitely more than one case.
I’m specifically interested in Republican politicians. It looks like he was banned from Twitter due to posting a racist meme (which wasn’t related to Politics or conservative thinking). It looks like he was also banned from Gab for doxxing someone.
Can you give an instance where someone was banned for simply having Republican views, rather than someone violating the TOS who merely happens to be Republican?
In most cases, TOS are super-vague and allow to ban for things like "hateful conduct", without defining what it is. Criticizing anybody could be defined as "hateful conduct", and so is participating in any political controversy - after all, if you say some politician is a bad person and should never be elected, doesn't it mean you hate him?
So if you search for "twitter bans conservative", get literally dozens of results, you can always claim they are banned for "violating the TOS", not for expressing their views. And since there's almost never a specification of what caused the ban and no process that allows to know it, and frequently not even any notification beyond "you've been suspended, goodbye" there's no way to resolve this question (e.g. twitter suspended one of my accounts which I used to post completely innocent non-political non-offensive jokes, I still have no idea why and there's no process to find out, I don't care because I stopped using Twitter shortly thereafter anyway).
So you can always claim this is because all these people were racist, hateful and doxxing. I have no means to prove otherwise to you, there's no force in the Universe, beyond God Almighty and maybe NSA, that could prove particular twitter account never posted anything bad, especially after it's been blocked. But I can see the pattern. Especially when obvious hateful conduct on twitter (like a notorious antisemite Farrakhan) keep using Twitter for spreading their hate without any problems.
So let's see your search primarily shows two white nationalists, one of whom incites riots were removed based on your search. That's pretty much all your search shows with a couple people from Infowars who..wait for it...incite violence against others. I am not shocked that these people were removed.
If inciting riots were really a problem, I wouldn't see antifa accounts on Twitter. I do see them, I found a dozen of antifa accounts, including Berkeley antifa, notorious for their violent actions. Nobody cares.
Antifa perpetrating violence is widely reflected in the press. They are not ashamed of it and not hiding it. They are a violent organization, by principle. Yet, they feel completely comfortable on social media. These are the facts, which are so widely available that if you can not find them without me leading you by hand, you probably won't believe me anyway and find some excuse to dismiss my evidence too - because I can not imagine how otherwise a person who is villing to engage in good faith about the topic can doubt that antifa perpetrates - not just incites in others, but actually doing by itself - violence.
> Partisan hand-waving doesn’t fool anyone.
That's ok, because there's no purpose to fool anyone. Only to highlight the obvious bias of certain social media platforms, which get triggered by slightest transgression by right wingers and at the same time tolerate virulent haters like Farrakhan and violent organizations like Antifa. These are the facts, you can interpret them as you like.
In this thread you’ve haven’t provided a single specific example. If your viewpoint can’t be supported with specifics, then I’m afraid it’s not very compelling.
Just replace 'Republicans' and 'Facebook' with X and Y. Then, everything goes away: X finds a Y-workaround. This is an issue of problem solving in any domain.
Why is it ironic? These people surely don't have a problem with getting the Trump's message in. And to read Trump's tweets, they don't even need Twitter account. What they have the problem with is getting their own messages out, getting their own communications. Trump has nothing to do with it - his message is not the problem, he has the biggest megaphone in the world, anything he wants to be heard will be heard regardless of platform.
There was a recent study that demonstrated that social media (Facebook) was actually pushing people to be more right leaning over time. I wonder if moving away from the platform would revert that trend.
But these platforms would be echo chambers, and their messaging wouldn't reach people outside of it. That's effectively what it used to be like with online forum communities and news outlets, you'd only go there if you were already won over.
You're correct, and that seems to be the point. They consider the entire rest of media (mainstream and social) to be a leftist echo chamber and these apps to be the only place where they can discuss what they consider to be truth without "bias" or "interference".
It's the same elevator pitch as Fox News but with a modern twist.
They lost me at the first line. "Imagine a society in which everyone more or less agrees with you." Don't have to imagine. Maybe this author's been under a rock and hasn't heard the phrase "echo chamber."
The other thing of course is that it's not just Republicans surrounded by only those they agree with. By the simple rules of logic if you start out with A and B together, and B leaves, then A is just as insular and surrounded-by-its-own-kind as B is.
People on both sides need to get better at understanding the opposing viewpoint. Plus having a coherent viewpoint of your own, and then the humility to know you don't have a direct line to The Truth.
Your logic seems overly simplistic. A's makeup and ideologies aren't necessarily as uniform as B's, unless you're implicitly asserting that they are - but it would be more constructive to make such a point explicitly.
A's belief that their ideology is broad and that B's is narrow and uniform, is in fact part of what defines A's rhetoric and its viewpoint of itself and of B. But the fact remains that A's tolerance for B is no higher than B's tolerance for A. A freaks out just as theatrically when it loses an election as B does when it does. Each one is starting to define itself as not the other one. A = !B and B = !A. Neither has a coherent ideology anymore. You are voting for nothing. The differences are now chiefly historical, between the ideologies each sold out and neither implements.
> The other thing of course is that it's not just Republicans surrounded by only those they agree with
"Not just"? Let's do a thought experiment. Take two people, and let them come to a random Silicon Valley Company - Twitter, Facebook, Google, whatever, or to a college campus - and publish on a company public forum, or campus forum, etc. - a slightly controversial article - one with some left-to-the-center bent and one with right-of-the-center one. Which person would have a higher chance to earn the vitriolic scorn of the surrounding public, face HR complaints and ultimately may get fired?
Did you ever read the political spectrum distribution on university faculties? In some places, there's no single person that is not ideologically left on the whole faculty staff. In others, you get ratios like 1:10 to 1:20. This is where the students spend their formative years.
I am assuming for now that the political spectrum is one-dimensional, which is obviously wrong. But if we keep this simplifying assumption for a minute, and consider how one can form a bubble, "not just Republicans" would be quite an understatement.
For the non-lefty person in most tech, academic, entertainment, press and many other areas, there would be literally no way to live in a Republican bubble - there would be no material to form the bubble from. Of course, there are such bubbles too, and places where you could comfortably form them - but I think I would not be too wrong if I say at least 90% of HN readers are not in those places. You can form your own bubble of course by carefully selecting what you read, who you listen to, etc. - but even then if you're in one of the places enumerated above in the US, you'd encounter people who hold views different from yours - and are very open, outspoken and sometimes forceful about them - literally every day.
The reason why the right wants their own apps is not because they don't want to ever hear from the left - though some do, of course, but not all - it's because they feel the left does not want to hear from them, and is actively pursuing silencing them. And they have a very good evidence to show for it.
You're heavily biased. Try bringing a leftist point of view on a right wing site, the Heritage foundation, or the American government. The current crop of conservatives brought loaded weapons to a presidential rally under Obama and President Trump is demanding personal loyalty pledges from civil servants. Breitbart, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh etc control the talk show airwaves, there's not a single strong liberal voice in any media that has the sway or clout of any of those that I mentioned.
Leftists have been getting fired from media for quite some time for not being conservative enough. I sincerely disbelieve that the right is being silenced. What is being silenced is death threats, hate speech, and extremist which doesn't belong in public discourse. The people leaving to form their own groups are generally people who support white nationalism. Reddit has groups that literally function as attack dogs silencing any group that speaks ill of the president through brigading and taking over the front page.
To suggest that there is "good evidence" that the left is censoring the right is plain silly. What's being censored is things that don't belong in a workplace, or don't belong on a site for civil discourse. Personally, I am glad that they still have a place to speak for themselves, but most people don't want to read conspiracy theories, hate speech, and abuse on a daily basis from either party and every single time some group is removed they claim censorship, usually because they follow the letter to break the spirit of any rules.
I think you'll both find that the majority of Americans are neither far left nor far right. The "echo chamber" of the internet will tell you otherwise, of course, but that's a case of the vocal minority.
> Try bringing a leftist point of view on a right wing site, the Heritage foundation, or the American government.
I do not doubt, as I pointed out explicitly, that right-wing bubbles exist. They just don't exist anywhere typical HN reader would find themselves. They do not exist, in particular, anywhere in Silicon Valley, and can not exist. Of course they would exist on a Trump rally or in Trump's White House maybe (I hope not, but who knows).
> Breitbart, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh etc control the talk show airwaves
Err, what? Those people control nothing but their own private channels. None of them can deplatform a leftist radio show. Facebook or Twitter, or a typical campus administration, can easily deplatform a right-wing person or group, and did so many times. Can you spot the difference? It's like I can ban you from my private home, and you can chase me out of the city - who has more power here?
> there's not a single strong liberal voice in any media that has the sway or clout of any of those that I mentioned
Of course, nobody expects to find a lot of liberals on Rush Limbaugh show or conservatives on Rachel Maddow show. The problem is not single shows, but whole platforms and whole branches (like political science or sociology) become ideologically homogenous. If one family lives in one house, it's not a diversity problem, there are other houses. If the whole large city is just one family, now you have a problem.
> The people leaving to form their own groups are generally people who support white nationalism.
If you are going to confuse right wing with white nationalism, I'd decide you failed the Turing test and discussion with you is pointless until you educate yourself at least about the basics of US politics. Free lesson: white nationalists are tiny minority of the right wing, just like leninists are minority of the left wing (probably the latter minority is larger than the former one).
> Reddit has groups that literally function as attack dogs silencing any group that speaks ill of the president
Judging from my last visit to Reddit, couple of days ago, these groups are piss poor at their job, as there is nobody in mortal fear of criticizing the president and lots of people continue to criticize him without any problem. Which, of course, as it should be.
> To suggest that there is "good evidence" that the left is censoring the right is plain silly
Only if you arrived at predetermined conclusion and intend to declare "silly" any evidence that contradicts it.
> What's being censored is things that don't belong in a workplace,
If you think that by shifting the goalposts and calling things that disagree with your ideological positions "hate speech", "unfit for workplace", "don't belong in civil discourse" and so on, you are somehow making your argument stronger - I am sorry, you are not. Ideological censorship remains the same, whatever fig leaf you put on it.
> most people don't want to read conspiracy theories, hate speech, and abuse on a daily basis
On most social networks - including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. - it is extremely easy to not read content that you don't want to read. Deplatforming does not prevent you from reading it - it prevents everybody from reading it, and the purpose of it not to avoid encountering content that you don't like but prevent that content from reaching people who do like it.
> usually because they follow the letter to break the spirit of any rules.
And, of course, since the letter of the rules does not mean anything, and those in power are always free to interpret "the spirit" of the rules as they want, the result is unlimited arbitrary power, not constrained by any rules. Which corrupts exactly as it always did.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 76.5 ms ] threadIf this is good or bad is another question. Everyone builds their own echo chamber, consciously or unconsciously. Thats why I don't appreciate the one-sidedness of the article. They make it sound like only republicans like to live in their bubble.
>This is the insular world in which tens of thousands of Americans who use conservative political apps are experiencing the midterm election season.
Because being on Facebook on Twitter is not experiencing an insular world, right? I mean, conservatives would not have to create their own apps to communicate if they would be left to express their views on the mainstream ones.
But I see conservative views on social media all the time, they're doing just fine on mainstream platforms.
The vast leftist purge of conservatives from social media is mostly propaganda and myth.
Is this vision drastically diferent between the American left and the right? I'm not sure. I still feel people are looking for as much personal freedom as possible while maintaining high personal safety.
In that regard, if its true this is still the shared outcome by all Americans, then the disagreement is in how to best achieve it. In that case, there will be someone who'se idea is actually better. If coastal cities are the major influences on this end goal, could it not be that their method works better?
I'm not wanting to downplay the right. There are most likely specific issues which could be better solved with right leaning policies, this is all really hard to predict. The point I want to make is that not everything can be bias. The center isn't necessarily the unbiased position. Its possible the right or the left is actually the better solution on one issue or another. If say the left was overall a set of better solutions, it would be unfair to say that people who believe in those solutions to be biased, they might be unbiased, yet, the unbiased truth is that the set on the left is simply a better way to achieve the desired outcome. This would similarly apply to the right.
But we have a two party first-past-the-post system which encourages ideological polarity and tribalism, so broad and simplistic (and mostly incorrect) narratives about the makeup of American culture and politics win out in the media and get reintegrated into popular culture through osmosis.
They were trying to make the point that these insular platforms are something conservative Republicans are cooking up on their own, but the behavior of the other major social networks attempting to insulate their platforms first and foremost is what is creating these conditions across the board for everyone.
Action, reaction.
Private platforms, newsgroups, bbses, and forums are nothing new for the internet, I wouldn't even know if I would call these apps social networks in the sense of a wide reach like Twitter and Facebook have, but it shouldn't be surprising that if you deplatform a group of people and/or make their political views against the terms of service, that they'll go somewhere else, and if the other place they go to happens to be an echo chamber of political thought built from the ashes of actions committed by other social networks with a perceived political bent, it shouldn't be surprising that the political activism gets ramped way up as a result.
In my opinion, and this goes for both groups, not exposing yourself daily to conflicting opinions and different solutions to problems is intellectually damaging, and I firmly believe how most major social media companies are handling discourse in our country is extremely short sighted and damaging for real problem solving and conversations going forward. The first amendment and free expression is supposed to be an ugly, gnashing, frothy thing full of intellectual guts and blood. Bad ideas and bullshit solutions should get their guts ripped out in spirited debate, and we aren't doing that anymore.
From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.
I get that you don’t like the Democrats, but if you can’t distinguish between the GOP and conspiracy peddlers like Alex Jones, then I think you hate your own party more than the Democrats do.
And what’s stopping you from doing that?
See, really what you want isn’t Facebook from making the decision for you, since they can’t. Alex Jones has his own show, and FB has no interest or ability in changing that. What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
If Big Tech colludes to deplatform Jones, then it's no longer my decision.
> What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
I can't make decision for Facebook, I don't have that power. I can't force Facebook to do anything. Facebook, on the other hand, has the power to deplatform Jones and force me to not be able to see his content via Facebook, discuss his content with my Facebook contacts, force me off the platform for supporting Jones, etc. etc. Of course, they don't have influence beyond facebook platform, but in collusion with Google, Twitter, DNS providers, certificate providers, cloud service providers, etc. (virtually all those have been participating in deplatforming before) - they wield immense powers, so "but you can build your own Internet, nobody prevents you from doing that" is not really a good suggestion. Even then, that's exactly what the subjects of the article is doing - and they are being mocked for it, too.
Jones was just the start. Why shouldn't conspiracy theorists have the right to use social media? What's next? Can they have a back account? Credit card? Just a month later, we had a huge purge on Facebook and Twitter, targeting mostly left wingers, libertarians and alternative news sites. Sure, some of these are wacky people, but some provided honest content from a different, anti-government viewpoint, like Dan Dicks from Press For Truth for example. Why shouldn't those voices be heard? https://uk.pcmag.com/facebook/117908/news/facebook-purges-80...
https://www.rt.com/usa/441140-facebook-purge-victims-speak/
We should be careful cheering social media giants just banning people. It will backfire
Can you give an instance where someone was banned for simply having Republican views, rather than someone violating the TOS who merely happens to be Republican?
So if you search for "twitter bans conservative", get literally dozens of results, you can always claim they are banned for "violating the TOS", not for expressing their views. And since there's almost never a specification of what caused the ban and no process that allows to know it, and frequently not even any notification beyond "you've been suspended, goodbye" there's no way to resolve this question (e.g. twitter suspended one of my accounts which I used to post completely innocent non-political non-offensive jokes, I still have no idea why and there's no process to find out, I don't care because I stopped using Twitter shortly thereafter anyway).
So you can always claim this is because all these people were racist, hateful and doxxing. I have no means to prove otherwise to you, there's no force in the Universe, beyond God Almighty and maybe NSA, that could prove particular twitter account never posted anything bad, especially after it's been blocked. But I can see the pattern. Especially when obvious hateful conduct on twitter (like a notorious antisemite Farrakhan) keep using Twitter for spreading their hate without any problems.
Providing examples is a counter-argument.
Of course, next stage would be claiming it's all for "TOS violations" and "hateful conduct".
Please cite antifa accounts on Twitter - not blocked - that are inciting violence.
Partisan hand-waving doesn’t fool anyone.
> Partisan hand-waving doesn’t fool anyone.
That's ok, because there's no purpose to fool anyone. Only to highlight the obvious bias of certain social media platforms, which get triggered by slightest transgression by right wingers and at the same time tolerate virulent haters like Farrakhan and violent organizations like Antifa. These are the facts, you can interpret them as you like.
It's the same elevator pitch as Fox News but with a modern twist.
The other thing of course is that it's not just Republicans surrounded by only those they agree with. By the simple rules of logic if you start out with A and B together, and B leaves, then A is just as insular and surrounded-by-its-own-kind as B is.
People on both sides need to get better at understanding the opposing viewpoint. Plus having a coherent viewpoint of your own, and then the humility to know you don't have a direct line to The Truth.
"Not just"? Let's do a thought experiment. Take two people, and let them come to a random Silicon Valley Company - Twitter, Facebook, Google, whatever, or to a college campus - and publish on a company public forum, or campus forum, etc. - a slightly controversial article - one with some left-to-the-center bent and one with right-of-the-center one. Which person would have a higher chance to earn the vitriolic scorn of the surrounding public, face HR complaints and ultimately may get fired?
Did you ever read the political spectrum distribution on university faculties? In some places, there's no single person that is not ideologically left on the whole faculty staff. In others, you get ratios like 1:10 to 1:20. This is where the students spend their formative years.
I am assuming for now that the political spectrum is one-dimensional, which is obviously wrong. But if we keep this simplifying assumption for a minute, and consider how one can form a bubble, "not just Republicans" would be quite an understatement.
For the non-lefty person in most tech, academic, entertainment, press and many other areas, there would be literally no way to live in a Republican bubble - there would be no material to form the bubble from. Of course, there are such bubbles too, and places where you could comfortably form them - but I think I would not be too wrong if I say at least 90% of HN readers are not in those places. You can form your own bubble of course by carefully selecting what you read, who you listen to, etc. - but even then if you're in one of the places enumerated above in the US, you'd encounter people who hold views different from yours - and are very open, outspoken and sometimes forceful about them - literally every day.
The reason why the right wants their own apps is not because they don't want to ever hear from the left - though some do, of course, but not all - it's because they feel the left does not want to hear from them, and is actively pursuing silencing them. And they have a very good evidence to show for it.
Leftists have been getting fired from media for quite some time for not being conservative enough. I sincerely disbelieve that the right is being silenced. What is being silenced is death threats, hate speech, and extremist which doesn't belong in public discourse. The people leaving to form their own groups are generally people who support white nationalism. Reddit has groups that literally function as attack dogs silencing any group that speaks ill of the president through brigading and taking over the front page.
To suggest that there is "good evidence" that the left is censoring the right is plain silly. What's being censored is things that don't belong in a workplace, or don't belong on a site for civil discourse. Personally, I am glad that they still have a place to speak for themselves, but most people don't want to read conspiracy theories, hate speech, and abuse on a daily basis from either party and every single time some group is removed they claim censorship, usually because they follow the letter to break the spirit of any rules.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...
I think you'll both find that the majority of Americans are neither far left nor far right. The "echo chamber" of the internet will tell you otherwise, of course, but that's a case of the vocal minority.
I do not doubt, as I pointed out explicitly, that right-wing bubbles exist. They just don't exist anywhere typical HN reader would find themselves. They do not exist, in particular, anywhere in Silicon Valley, and can not exist. Of course they would exist on a Trump rally or in Trump's White House maybe (I hope not, but who knows).
> Breitbart, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh etc control the talk show airwaves
Err, what? Those people control nothing but their own private channels. None of them can deplatform a leftist radio show. Facebook or Twitter, or a typical campus administration, can easily deplatform a right-wing person or group, and did so many times. Can you spot the difference? It's like I can ban you from my private home, and you can chase me out of the city - who has more power here?
> there's not a single strong liberal voice in any media that has the sway or clout of any of those that I mentioned
Of course, nobody expects to find a lot of liberals on Rush Limbaugh show or conservatives on Rachel Maddow show. The problem is not single shows, but whole platforms and whole branches (like political science or sociology) become ideologically homogenous. If one family lives in one house, it's not a diversity problem, there are other houses. If the whole large city is just one family, now you have a problem.
> The people leaving to form their own groups are generally people who support white nationalism.
If you are going to confuse right wing with white nationalism, I'd decide you failed the Turing test and discussion with you is pointless until you educate yourself at least about the basics of US politics. Free lesson: white nationalists are tiny minority of the right wing, just like leninists are minority of the left wing (probably the latter minority is larger than the former one).
> Reddit has groups that literally function as attack dogs silencing any group that speaks ill of the president
Judging from my last visit to Reddit, couple of days ago, these groups are piss poor at their job, as there is nobody in mortal fear of criticizing the president and lots of people continue to criticize him without any problem. Which, of course, as it should be.
> To suggest that there is "good evidence" that the left is censoring the right is plain silly
Only if you arrived at predetermined conclusion and intend to declare "silly" any evidence that contradicts it.
> What's being censored is things that don't belong in a workplace,
If you think that by shifting the goalposts and calling things that disagree with your ideological positions "hate speech", "unfit for workplace", "don't belong in civil discourse" and so on, you are somehow making your argument stronger - I am sorry, you are not. Ideological censorship remains the same, whatever fig leaf you put on it.
> most people don't want to read conspiracy theories, hate speech, and abuse on a daily basis
On most social networks - including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. - it is extremely easy to not read content that you don't want to read. Deplatforming does not prevent you from reading it - it prevents everybody from reading it, and the purpose of it not to avoid encountering content that you don't like but prevent that content from reaching people who do like it.
> usually because they follow the letter to break the spirit of any rules.
And, of course, since the letter of the rules does not mean anything, and those in power are always free to interpret "the spirit" of the rules as they want, the result is unlimited arbitrary power, not constrained by any rules. Which corrupts exactly as it always did.