Republicans Find a Facebook Workaround: Their Own Apps
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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.
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.
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
It's the same elevator pitch as Fox News but with a modern twist.