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Most Americans Think Facebook and Twitter Censor Their Political Views (bloomberg.com)
According to a new Pew Research Center study, 72 percent of those polled (from a sample of 4,594 adults) think it's likely companies such as Facebook and Twitter actively censor political views that they consider objectionable. The study finds that Americans don't trust those companies to be impartial when it comes to partisan politics. Bloomberg reports: Republicans, more than their Democratic counterparts, displayed concern over perceived political bias. Eighty-five percent of Republicans and those who labeled themselves conservative independents said it's likely that social media platforms censor political speech. And 64 percent of Republicans think technology companies support the views of liberals over conservatives. The majority of Democrats, meanwhile, think it's likely that social media platforms censor political viewpoints, coming in at 62 percent. But only about a quarter of Democrats worry that these companies support the views of conservatives over liberals.
As volatile as politics are now, I wouldn't trust anyone to be "objective" anymore. Shit, even my local donut shop is starting to get too heavy-handed with the politics on their Facebook page.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Water is wet, bears shit in woods, Sun rises in the east, and FB and Twitter censor anything that isn't "progressive".
"Determined by algorithm" doesn't mean the result is impartial. It just means it happened systematically.
I don't understand why it is that anyone trusts these companies at all when it comes to anything.
I hate the thought that we may look back fondly one day soon on an earlier era where most businesses welcomed all customers, regardless of their political beliefs. The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised to see most Silicon Valley-based social media platforms outright banning all posts supporting Trump by the 2020 elections, combined with a backlash from the right that only ratchets up the anger on both sides.
It's just not healthy for us to take politics this personally. A similar thing happened in the U.S. in the 1850's, with Congressmen literally beating each other on the Senate floor. And it ultimately lead to a civil war.
This story, which suggests more right-wingers think companies are biased toward left-wing politics reminds me of a fun quote: "Reality has a liberal bias." I suspect, based on politics in the USA at the moment, Republicans are running out of excuses as to why the world doesn't agree with their views. Suspecting censorship and blaming "fake news" seems to be all they have remaining to keep their bubble intact.
It's kind of like watching religious people claim evolution is fake or that you can't test for the existence of God because He needs to be taken on faith. The amount of mental twisting and denial is amazing and horrifying to watch.
In my opinion, the issue became palpable in the 1990s with the beginning of the consumer internet age, the massive expansion of telecommunications powers, and the beginnings of the anti-public education campaign. The truth is that the vast majority of people in American have no clue how these businesses work or how their tech works. And they're OK with it because they like what their tech gives them AND they actually like complaining about it. Everyone wants an easy life of luxurious rebellion.
"Yes, I want to be able to say three words to my handheld device and for that device to tell me exactly how to get home... but I HATE that this corporation knows where I live! They have too much power!"
Thus, I can't be surprised when told that people love their Facebook and Twitter with one tongue and speak conspiracy with another. We keep teaching people be exactly like this.
As an American it saddens me to truthfully say that most Americans today are dumbasses. Most especially, those who regularly ingest the mental poison that is Fox News are the dumbest of the dumb and - not surprisingly for a group locked into the Religious Right - believe their bullshit with religious fervor and are thus immutable to logic and reason. Jesus wept.
Well, in this case "objective" generally means letting people shoot their mouths off without censoring them for it, even if they're dumbasses who you strongly disagree with--in fact *especially* if they're dumbasses who you strongly disagree with. If every social media company only allows people to speak who agree with them, then all you're going to get is an echo chamber that, like an inbred trailer park, only gets more-and-more stupid, radical, and out-of-touch over time.
Letting the other side speak is how we remind ourselves that the world isn't just comprised of our own fragrant farts.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The important question isn't "How would you treat Hitler?" The important question is "How would you actually know he was Hitler and not just someone you had mistaken him for?" And it's a pretty important question in an era where everyone thinks they know exactly who Hitler is but, when asked to point him out, they all point to different people.
Will the real Hitler please stand up, please stand up, please stand up...
Plenty is getting done at the federal level. Problem is, the left is extremely angry about it. Instead of trying to win votes, they're aggressively attacking anyone who thinks differently from them. See the Bernie-Bro assassination attempt on Scalisle, the attack on Rand Paul, following Sarah Sanders to the next restaurant after asking her to leave, Maxine Waters advocating stalking people, the harassment of the Florida attorney general.... the list goes on. The left, now more than ever, thinks that they're so much better than their opponents that any depraved act is justified to get back on top.
Fact is they're nuts and going insane with rage. While I derive some guilty pleasure from watching youtube videos of far-away left wing cranks going apoplectic; it's not so fun seeing someone I know and like (who has been a generous host to me at several parties) falling apart on facebook. Her world is collapsing because folks she doesn't agree with got elected, and they're starting to play by some of the rules established by the left under Obama.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Inciting Violence. I'm going to be completely blunt. The reason the right wing (I refuse to call people in favor of radical change "Conservative") get more bans is there's a lot of them hinting at violence. There's a good example right here. Jones backpedaled as best he could but the meaning was clear. It's so common there's a name for it: Dog Whistling
You're entitled to your opinion right up until it becomes incitement to violence. The radical right has a lot of unhinged people than even the extreme left. There have been no cases of left wing terrorism since the 70s. Abortion doctors OTOH can point to multiple instances of terrorism and ask the black and LGBTQ communities about how they're treated down south some time. The right words said to the right person equals violence. The right have a well documented history of spreading those words and using them to oppress. Hate speech turns into actions all too often. You don't get to shout fire in a theater and you don't get to exclaim out loud how if only someone would rid you of this meddlesome priest.
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I have see tons more conservatives being hit by things like shadow bans or outright bans on Twitter than I have seen any liberals affected.
Huh... Maybe because conservatives deserve it ?
It's not liberals who spew their social-darwinist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic garbage all over the web.
It's not liberals who promote and defend values that would have modern civilization revert back to the dark ages, when superstition trumped science, when men and women were constrained in predefined roles, as defined by men only, when the exploitation of the weak by the strong was considered normal.
It's not liberals who are 911-truthers, climate-change deniers, 6000-year-earthers, creationists, moon-landings hoaxers, flat-earthers.
Your complaining about mainstream media and tech companies being biased against conservatives is like cancer cells complaining that the immune system is biased against them compared to the rest of the body cells. Of course mainstream media and tech companies are biased against conservatives. And for anyone who values reality over superstition, collaboration over competition, compassion over heartlessness, collectivism over individualism, civilization over barbarism, this is exactly how it should be.
How many times has Obama's Twitter account been deleted compared to Trump?
Huh? How many times has Obama called people names? How many times has King Orange?
I don't respond to AC's.
and really the truth - not one sided political noise - you've got to examine multiple news sources. If all you listen to is MSNBC or FOX then you're only going to get opposite ends of the spectrum. The exact same news story will be reported through a political lens, skewed this way or that to advance a given agenda.
Me? I listen to NPR and I watch FOX and I browse various news sites on the interweb. Somewhere in all that lies the truth. When I hear news I am skeptical. I ask myself what agenda are they trying to sell. And EVERYONE has an agenda. Everyone.
So the trick is to recognize where the news reporting ends and the editorial begins. In the old days, Walter Cronkite would announce "and now for tonight's editorial..." so you knew that what you were about to hear was opinion. Today it is all interspersed so it can be difficult to tell where the reporting ends and the opinion begins.
Trump only demanded that the existing laws on the treatment of illegal immigrants be enforced. And he inherited these laws from his predecessors. The illegal immigrants bring minor children with them because they work better than a passport. If you want to invade the US all you need to do is bring a child with you. Although over 1/3rd of the minor children being detained crossed the border by themselves. Obama was partial to making executive orders and that is not always a bad thing. Relying on executive orders for the country's immigration policy is not a good solution. The Legislative Branch is the guilty party in the immigration policy debate. The Democrats are crying about the detained children but have not offered a solution to the problem. They are content to use the detained children to attack the President. The Democrats and Republicans that make up the Legislative branch is ultimately responsible for almost every problem the country faces. Immigration, trade, military deployments, and the economy. And the braying public doesn't even understand that the Executive Branch does not have the power to effect the major issues of the day. The President is just the front man. A President cannot dictate laws or even influence the national budget. While every one is focused on the President related investigation the actual culprits are safely out of the spotlight. And the Democrats, Socialists, Communist, Republicans, and Independents are all guilty of forgetting that every action creates a reaction. The Democrat calling for people to harass anyone working for Trump better be ready for a Republican to push back. And for god's sake there is another Presidential election in 2 years and Trump will be gone. Relentlessly hounding everything he says or does just means the next Democrat to become President will face the same type of tactics.
And the post asking if you would you serve Hitler if he came into your business establishment is a trick question. Hitler would have just killed or imprisoned anyone trying to dictate any of his actions.
So what if the facts are wrong?
Then they're not facts, and you refute them with actual facts. Duh.
The pertinent question isn't really "what if they're wrong"; it's "what if they're right". If you have a policy of censoring anyone you believe to be wrong, you aren't even leaving yourself open to the possibility that YOU might be wrong. This is how dictatorships operate. They don't argue with you, they don't consider your position, they just shut you up and lock you away the moment you say anything they don't like.
I would far rather have a marketplace of ideas in which any crank can say whatever stupid thing pops into their mind than a marketplace of ideas where only popular things can be said. The former might be annoying and anarchic, but the latter is far, far more dangerous. All progress ceases when intelligent disagreements aren't even allowed to take place.
Straw man.
The examples were provided as a refutation of the 'it is legal' defence.
Horseshit. "The examples" were themselves a strawman since nobody ever argued that legal and moral are the same thing. The previous guy merely pointed out that the government is enforcing the law the way they're supposed to, rather than ignoring it the way a certain previous administration did.
You think the law is immoral? Great, start a campaign to change it. Meanwhile the government has a duty to enforce it as it's written.
It's neither dishonesty nor hyperbole when 45's "fine people" are literally marching in the streets with the swastika. Sorry, not sorry... if it talks like a nazi, goose-steps like a nazi, and sieg heil's like a nazi; it's a goddamned nazi.
Imagine all the people...
Wow, and you just scored the bingo in a single post.
The only people that anybody is calling Nazis, are the people chanting Nazi slogans, waving Nazi flags, and saluting Nazi propaganda. There is a pretty big line between those guys and the rest, it just doesn't help when the POTUS calls them "fine people" after ruthlessly murdering someone and celebrating it.
Maybe the question is "why do we keep calling people with different political views Hitler/Nazis?"
I mean, enforcing borders laws + procedures that have been around for years (even pre-Obama) suddenly means the fourth reich.
The answer of course, is that the people saying this are being manipulated by the Democrats, with other people being manipulated by the Republicans.
We shouldn't allow little-Stalinists to censor freedom of speech. EVER.
When you find yourself aligned with people shouting "Blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us", dont be surprised if people start calling you a Nazi. Especially if you go out of your way to not call them out.
That comment was about the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" participants. Here is the transcript:
REPORTER: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.
TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group â" excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
Trump is saying that some of the Unite the Right protesters were "very fine people" despite their decision to associate and march with people openly displaying swastikas and chanting "blood and soil" while holding their burning torches and wearing 1488 t-shirts.
In any case, the bigger issue was his failure to swiftly and completely condemn the nationalists. If you can't even say "Nazis are bad" or "I dislike people who want to create an ethnostate in the US" then there is a problem. To be fair to Trump, he probably doesn't like those people and doesn't agree with them, but because parts of his base are associated with them or share some of their views he won't directly condemn them.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So everyone that choses to march or support black lives matter are responsible for what the more extreme in their group said since they didn't branch off and make their own separate march?
If it's possible for illegals to obtain what passes for welfare benefits in the US, then perhaps the US benefits system needs to be fixed
The vast majority of US benefits require that you show citizenship or a green card (permanent, non-citizen resident).
There's a tiny bit of benefits available to everyone, but that's things like emergency room treatment at a hospital. You can't live on them.
However, the vast majority of Republicans believe "welfare" 1) still exists (it ended in the 1990s), 2) is far more generous than it actually is, and 3) that there are more programs than actually exist. They have believed this since the 1980s and are not going to return to reality any time soon.
" Trump and his associates and his supporters are actually doing things that are cause horrific and unnecessary suffering for people in certain vulnerable populations"
Prove your accusation. Remembering accusations aren't evidence, and the entertainment industry is not an acceptable form of evidence, as we have already learned they manufacture whatever they need to suit the situation.
If he really was doing the evil things you say that would be far more court action working right now. Not bickering.,
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.