Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Personally, I think Twitter is useless and wouldn't care at all about it, except left-liberal media, including those with important social influence, often take it as representative of the community.

That said, it isstill biased, and you don't respond to those links.

Same as left and right as political terms are useless, also conservative and liberal as political terms are useless. I do not respond to those links because I do not know those people. Milo has come up enough so I know about him, Farrakhan sounds as if I heard before, the rest I cannot place, so it would be too much work to go through to determine whether they are really conservative or liberal, particularly given that, as said, conservative and liberal are useless terms.

As such, I am honestly unable to detect any anti-conservative bias. From US (and perhaps also UK) point of view, the world is divided into two parties. This is not the case in the rest of the world. There are many more parties than that.

So the first hurdle would be to define "conservative" in a way that "anti-conservative" could be a thing. Moreover, "anti-conservative" should somehow be the more powerful party.

Yes, there are statements and expressions attacked in public and deleted on Twitter, but I do not see how those statements or expressions are somehow conservative instead of inflammatory or offensive, and I do not see how the attacks are due to any sort of bias instead of due to general lack of tough skin.

Okay, I am making an attempt with one of your links http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/adriana_cohen/2018/09/social_media_must_end_anti_conservative_bias

"It’s no secret Twitter and Facebook — run by left-wing activists who despise President Trump and conservative values — are abusing their power and stifling conservative voices. Not only is that un-American, it’s also a gross violation of Americans’ constitutional right to free speech."

Wait, since when does Trump represent conservative values? Which values specifically? And, if Twitter and Facebook literally abuse power, stifle conservative voices, and are un-American in gross violation of Americans' constitutional right to free speech, then why is Trump, the defender of conservative values, sitting there doing nothing? And why is Trump, apparently a conservative voice, not himself getting stifled? Can you prove all those abuses are taking place or is it just hyperbole?

If hyperbole, then I question your conservatism. If not hyperbole, then of course you have evidence and, in a free country defined by rule of law, you can tackle the issue by legal means. Go ahead and do it.

The article is alarmist drivel. It also supports the problematic premise that I already pointed out: Somehow Twitter and Facebook are things that give you free speech and when you get banned, this means your free speech has been taken away. Both sides seem to share this premise. So much about that.

Last edited by seigneur (10/27/2018 8:34 am)

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. However, paid advertisements tend to do their thing (as has always been maintained by all sociologists, not only Marxist ones). Once they already accepted pro-abortion ads, they would be disinclined to litter their pages with the exact opposite message at the same time. Pro-lifers may look at it like an ideological bias, but there is a business profile element to it, just like in case of "independent" newspapers a century ago.

All in all, let's say that I agree with sociologists that business profile translates into ideological profile. However, I do not agree with alarmists that there is a conspiracy against them due to ideological bias. It is more like a market tide which is against them and there is an ideological element to the market tide.

Of course it would be clearer if Twitter, FB, etc. profiled themselves openly in terms of ideology, but first, such clarity does not serve business interests and, second, the business element is more powerful and it may override the ideology element any time. Third, such clarity is not required in any other business sector either, e.g. banks are not required to openly declare their pro-rich bias. So let's try to deal with the world the way it actually is, instead of according to our wishes and prejudices.

Edit: This current conservative uproar reminds me of the whining about anti-conservative bias of Wikipedia over ten years ago. As a result, Conservapedia was created. Feel free to take a look at how that went.

Anybody here ready to insist that Wikipedia still has anti-conservative bias or had back then? The debate around Wikipedia can be focused on ideology in a much purer way, because Wikipedia refuses any and all paid ads.

Last edited by seigneur (10/28/2018 8:13 am)

Siegneur,

Bots do not make the decisions. They may flag content, but it is employees who decide to ban or take other action. And, as you yourself note, it is often users flagging content that starts things off. There is a pattern of such action being more readily taken against conservatives, and conservative opinions being more likely to be considered inflammatory or otherwise censored. So, I don't see the relevance of your point.

The point about the pro-life groups is that they were stopped from doing what Twitter let Planned Parenthood and other pro-choices do unproblematically.

Social media aren't normal businesses. They are more like phone companies, especially Facebook and Google. It would be bad for phone companies to discriminate against some customers on an ideological basis.

The bias isn't market driven. A few progressives might have a hissy fit if Twitter or Facebook were less biased, but it wouldn't do much harm. The issue is a corporate-culture and just the basic worldview of staff in Silicon Valley.

In the end, you are just ignoring evidence and just stick to your opinion come what may, which isn't surprising. Twitter, Facebook, et al. have a proven track record of anti-conservative bias, and you haven't done anything to show otherwise, no matter how many times you use the word alarmist. And, yes, Wikipedia is almost useless on any political or controversial topic. These topics tend to devolve into bickering, and one side - usually the left-liberal ones where the issue is at all political or cultural - usually wins and skews the content. I would never let my students quote from Wikipedia. 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.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Bots do not make the decisions. They may flag content, but it is employees who decide to ban or take other action.

In companies big enough, like FB and Twitter, yes they do. I have ran against bot action personally a few times on FB.

Also, on a much older form of social networking called IRC, bots have been there since day one, decades by now.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Social media aren't normal businesses. They are more like phone companies, especially Facebook and Google. It would be bad for phone companies to discriminate against some customers on an ideological basis.

They would be comparable to phone companies assuming that the content is not public. When you talk to anybody on the phone, the assumption is that it's just between you two. When you click Send on Twitter and FB, you *publish.* So journalism is a better analogy, particularly for Twitter. The closest analogy to FB is IRC, except IRC does not support itself with ads.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

The bias isn't market driven.

So you go against what sociologists theorise and against prior similar experience with "independent" newspapers a century ago. Okay.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Twitter, Facebook, et al. have a proven track record of anti-conservative bias, and you haven't done anything to show otherwise, no matter how many times you use the word alarmist. And, yes, Wikipedia is almost useless on any political or controversial topic.

Public opinion sets the tone in the market. It is in the interest of business to stay away from controversial topics, but as more and more topics become controversial, business succeeds in staying away from them less and less. And Wikipedia is not a business.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I would never let my students quote from Wikipedia.

I would never let my students quote from any encyclopedia. The way to use encyclopedias is to look at their sources, look up those and quote from the sources directly. It is strongly recommended to do the same even with scientific research articles. Not because I suspect others of bias before the fact, but because I have a habit to verify facts so that I can later tell, based on facts, whether there is any bias.

Last edited by seigneur (10/29/2018 4:12 am)

Your fundamental point is fallacious. It assumes right-wing or conservative views are controversial but left-liberal ones aren't. A platform that censors or marignalises pro-life expression, but takes no such action against the pro-choice, for example, is not simply trying to avoid controversy. The evidence is clear that these companies have a history of discriminating against conservatives, and much of it isn't from bots. It may not be systematic discrimination, though sometimes the algorithms themselves have acted in this way, but it has been widespread enough to be a clear pattern. And, yes, although I do think corporations are mostly motivated by the bottom line, it isn't quite so simplistic that this is all they ever care about or act on. There is a corporate-culture, and this does tend to be left-liberal, especially in Silicon Valley. Sometimes it is deliberate bias, but sometimes it is just the way the people in these corporations see the world - they genuinely see, for example, pro-life positions as controversial but pro-choice as rational and sensible. Sometimes, indeed, they may see business choices through a left-liberal lens, and vice versa. But that doesn't mean that this ideological framework is public opinion or that it actually serves their business interests to be biased in this way. There are some noisy progressives who might make issues, but I think it probably wouldn't hurt these platforms to do more to be unbiased. And, yes, certainly we can't expect any human to be completely unbiased, but these platforms could easily do more. Just about every incident or pattern I have mentioned could easily be stopped without any obvious business or PR issue for these companies, and there are many more such that could be stopped in this way. In fact, I'm not aware of any genuine issue or pattern that these companies likely couldn't easily put an end to, with little fuss. As I said, the only problem might be noisy progressives, but to give in to them when they are calling for political discrimination is not only not right, but it just proves the biased concerns of these platforms.

Social media networks aren't journalistic outlets, so I think they do have an easier job of removing bias. But, still, the mainstream media may be better than many conservative (or more openly leftist) outlets, but it is was far from the best it could realistically be, even before many outlets let the mask drop almost completely in the age of Trump (e.g., CNN now resembles MSNBC). They could have done, and certainly can do, much better. It isn't unavoidable human failing that, for example, means ABC Australia's main current affairs panel show is consistently full of left-liberals or the BBC didn't have Eurosceptics on for a decade because they (the majority of the public) seen as fringe, as the ex-chairman admitted. These are all part of a pattern. Yes, no outlet could be perfect, and, yes, it is a failing of conservative media outlets they tend to be as biased, or more, than the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean the mainstream media are doing all they can, or anywhere near it.

The outlet you take a rather silly shot at appears to be one dedicated to free speech (I'm taking the media description at face value), but even free speech absolutists don't believe in incitement to violence, and this isn't covered by the US first amendment. Other than that, I'm not talking about such absolutism necessarily. What I'm talking about is equitable treatment. If these outlets want to police certain kinds of legal speech, that is one thing, but they shouldn't target conservatives more than left-liberals. And nor should they make their criteria of what can and can't be said too ideological, so, against for example, pro-choice views are fine, no matter how strident, but even relatively moderate pro-life ones are inflammatory and to be restricted or censored.