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Comment by jon_akimbo | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to take this argument seriously when the only companies mentioned are left-leaning tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

I suspect that the author's concern isn't censorship per se, but censorship of viewpoints he happens to uphold. If Twitter's suppression of conservative content is bad, then so is The Federalist's suppression of liberal content.

You're about to argue that one of these is a social media platform, while the other is a news outlet. In that case, what do you think is the essential difference that makes it okay for one to censor certain ideas but not the other?

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Isn't it more likely that the author chose Facebook, Google, and Twitter not because they're left-leaning, but because their traffic is vastly more significant than The Federalist? The three are all top-50 sites globally. The Federalist doesn't even make it into the top 10k.

It's pretty rational to focus more on the sites that have the most traffic when discussing bias, isn't it?

> It's pretty rational to focus more on the sites that have the most traffic when discussing bias, isn't it?

I feel that if a person is making an argument from principle, then that principle should apply everywhere and not just where politically convenient to them.

The author does:

> ... although it can be leveraged against big tech companies that are biased in favor of liberals, this line of argument also has implications that conservatives may less readily welcome. For instance, it means that how rich people use their money to promote their ideas may also be a problem, insofar as it distorts the marketplace of ideas.

The principle he's arguing is that when an organization that has a de facto monopoly on a type of information stream (search, microblogging, and social circle media) uses that monopoly to favor one political viewpoint, that is harmful to society because it "distorts the marketplace of ideas" by preventing equal access to said marketplace.

The Federalist is not in this position. For every conservative magazine like The Federalist, there's a liberal one like Mother Jones. This is the "marketplace of ideas" that the author refers to in action, not a distortion of it. So the author is, in fact, arguing from principle, just not the principle you're using.

I think a lot of people do take issue with things that call themselves "news" promoting one side of the ideological spectrum.

That being said, social media is just that: something users can post to. Twitter users were not hired to promote a particular point of view, they were invited to share their own point of view. To then go through and cull the people you invited to share based on ideology while still calling yourself a social media platform is where a lot of the complaints (rightfully) come from.

It sounds like you're saying that what a company calls itself determines which ethical obligations apply to it. I can agree to an extent, but I suspect there's a different point here.

Twitter, per its own website, is "what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now." Is there any way to revise this sentence—or any other aspect of the Twitter brand—such that Twitter would no longer be subject to these complaints of censorship?

> Twitter, per its own website, is "what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now." Is there any way to revise this sentence—or any other aspect of the Twitter brand—such that Twitter would no longer be subject to these complaints of censorship?

I would say no. It's a service designed from the ground up to allow people to speak their mind. When they start editorializing who is allowed to speak their mind, people will rightfully complain of censorship.

I suppose they could change the tagline to:

"what’s happening in the world (that we approve of) and what people (we like) are talking about right now."

I don't think many people would be excited to use that service though.

What makes a company left-leaning?

It turns out that people who suffer under an injustice are the ones most motivated to draw attention to the injustice. Whether the author has a personal motivation for his concern is utterly irrelevant.

I can argue that censorship isn't OK on either? Isn't that the appropriate position?

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