Jeremy Taylor wrote:

It's true that, as with the mainstream media and the creation of Fox News, conservatives have a history of reacting to very real bias by creating just as biased alternatives themselves, but that doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia, the MSM, or Facebook,Twitter, Google, and YouTube each has shown a pattern of left-liberal bias against conservatives.

Should you not agree then that journalism is a good analogy here? Over a century ago, "independent" newspapers were not fair and balanced enough for socialists and they were compelled to create their own newspapers. And then police played whackamole with those newspapers because they were associated with leftist terrorism.

Nowadays, so-called conservatives increasingly complain about liberal bias on platforms ostensibly neutral. They go on creating their own conservative counterparts, which get bad business rep due to links to rightist terrorism, such as Gab messaging service right now.

If the analogy with journalism holds true, then social platforms cannot remain neutral for long. Professional news are deemed very often tilted, unprofessional "news" would necessarily be even more so. Consequently, it is silly to accuse social networks of bias: They simply cannot be any more balanced than they are, particularly with business interests involved.

The only way to have true neutrality is to have zero business interests, like on IRC. Political fights occur there among admins, but it's about the power over the resource, not control over the ideology of the regular members. Within given channels, yes, the mods control the content based on their own ideological bias (and presumably based on the topic of the channel), but any dissenting party, sect, or interest group can always instantly diverge into a new channel.

Again, you intently ignore how banning works. This is how it works: A bot detects or a user flags the content. Any topic that inflames some users is inflammatory in the relevant sense. The relevant sense is not the blanket-sense of inflammatory, but inflammatory for those who tend to flag other people's content. And insofar as this is so, there is no conspiracy on the part of Twitter managers themselves, except in the reactive sense: They respond to complaints of those who scream the loudest.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

For example, Twitter has banned major pro-life organisations from expressing a pro-life message on the site:

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/1255803002

Okay, I have read the article, and I maintain that both you and the article are mixing up distinct issues. And I am not splitting hairs here.

The pro-life organisation was not banned. Their offer to promote their message with paid advertisements was rejected. Does it need further clarification that this is a whole different issue than banning of accounts and deleting of messages? Twitter refused a business-relationship with the pro-life organisation.

Let's suppose that Twitter indeed has liberal bias and their advertisement policy is affected with that bias. This brings me back to the analogy with journalism. Does a liberal newspaper have to accept conservative ads or a conservative newspaper liberal ads?

A hundred+ years ago in continental Europe, when a newspaper called itself "(party-politically) independent", it was clear to everyone that it was a business-interest-driven entity, i.e. of bourgeois ideology, and it would not accept ads from workers' unions, it would not accept socialist-leaning writings or writers. What did those unions and writers do in response? They created their own newspapers. There was no other way.

Paid advertisements, i.e. the company's revenue source, adds a whole new dimension to the discussion. I would still say that Twitter as a company is politically neutral. How

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Also, the point about Farrakhan is nothing like what you link to about Trump. Farrakhan has called Jews termites on Twitter, and has spewed other such nonsense. Those on the right, take Milo Yiannopoulos (whom I'm no fan of), have been banned for less. And, it isn't a matter of bots. Human beings look into these issues.

I am no fan of Milo Yiannopoulos either. He has had some conservative following, but he is patently not a conservative himself. For what I can tell, he could be an impostor, a liberal posing as conservative. So that could be actually an instance of a liberal getting banned.

Otherwise, have you been counting bans against liberals on Twitter, so that all would be fair and balanced?

In my own experience, there have been a few photos and videos, views of random trees and houses taken by myself, that I have not been able to upload because of "copyrighted content". The block did not occur after uploading, but upon uploading, i.e. false positive by an automated bot. When this occurs multiple times to a non-entity like me, I can perhaps be permitted to deduce that bots are overeager.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

In the end there are two issues here. One is what should and shouldn't be banned. The other is whether these rules are carried out without bias. I think, on both counts, there's reason not to trust Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Oh, there are more issues. I think there is an overeagerness to enforce hate speech laws, but the overeagerness is on the part of European lawmakers (and perhaps US public opinion), not on the part of companies like Twitter. The overeagerness is thoroughly misguided. First, the companies are not law enforcement. Therefore, when pressured into taking law-enforcement-like action, they are absolutely bound to do it wrong, because they would do as little as possible with as little cost as possible, or for as much monetary profit as possible.

In my view, the danger is not in what Twitter, FB, etc. are d

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Twitter has demonstrated clear bias against conservatives, and it would be very hard to say this is just enforcing the law. For one, Twitter did nothing to Farrakhan called Jews termites, despite undertaking an official review, but has targeted conservatives for far less (even for what shouldn't be actionable). Secondly, Twitter is an American company and has targeted American conservatives, when there is, and, as long as constitutional jurisprudence doesn't change, can't be, hate speech laws in the US. So what law are they enforcing? German law over US citizens, in the US?

The issue is that Twitter should not be enforcing any laws at all. As any other company, they should be merely observing and following laws.

You are an admin here, so you should know how banning works. You personally notice something objectionable and you, likely, take action. Or somebody flags a post/poster. In a huge platform like Twitter, they have bots looking for specific content.

I would like to see the evidence that there is a clear bias against conservatives. Possibly the whistleblowing segment of twitterers may have bias, but the bots have no bias. They get false positives randomly.

My idea is this: If the content is really illegal, it should not stop at Twitter, but go over to the police for investigation. If not illegal, police or judge should have the power to reinstate the content and the account. This works in journalism and in academia. Unless you think journalism and academia have anti-conservative bias too and don't really work. If those don't work, then okay, nothing works and the world is lost.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I'm not sure of the point in your last two paragraphs. Rightwing, like left-wing, is a term so broad as to be basically meaningless.

That was exactly the point. I would add that it's also meaningless to talk about anti-conservative bias without clear cases at hand.

DanielCC wrote:

seigneur wrote:

Let's look at some objective criteria:

Soviet ideology promoted nationalism. Check.
Soviet ideology promoted family values. Check.
Stalin's personality cult with singing hymns and praises to his name, and referring back to him with reverence and devotion on every little local party meeting. Check.

These are conservative and religious values, are they not?

I disagree, they are values associated with some religious movements. They might be correct values but they do not directly follow from the truth of theistic claims.

The issue in this case is not whether the values are correct or whether theism is true. The issue is whether people could see religious quality or features in Soviet ideology. They easily could, if they are superficial enough.

In this case, sociologists indeed associate religion and ideology as flimsily as I laid out; most of them would categorize religions as ideologies with particularly tall claims, while the practical purpose of both religion and ideology is just power-grab and mind-control.

As a theologizing philosopher I would of course agree with you that there are essential features to religion that no political ideology can copy or emulate, but unfortunately sociologists call the shots here.