Hacker News Reader

Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

First the censors came for the right-wingers, and I did not speak out— Because I was not right-wing....

That's the problem with putting in place censorship. Sometimes it affects people you like.

I don’t think freedom of speech is a left-right wing issue. There are people who strongly support free speech on both sides, and likewise there are censors on both sides.

It’s more of an authoritarian-libertarian axis issue.

I think in general terms as a political philosophy I would agree with you.

I think in terms of how restrictions on speech are implemented by Facebook/Twitter/YouTube it absolutely seems to be more used against right wing sources.

Craig Murray doesn't seem particularly right-wing to me. Meanwhile, here someone describes not seeing several dozen left-wing sources on Twitter for weeks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24578659

Oh agreed. He's very left wing.

You could argue, though, that Assange/WikiLeaks isn't very popular with the left due to how they helped torpedo Clinton's campaign.

Assange is your typical cold war era anti war guy, it was sick how suddenly the American left wing spat on her for shitting on status quo. He was a messiah for the left when he did the same for Bush administration. Anyone remember Palins emails? At least for Clinton there was something to reveal.

Yeah, I think he is one of these activists that will call people out whatever side of the political spectrum and so spends his time oscillating between which side dislikes him most.

"The left" doesn't like Clinton either. There's a big difference American liberals and leftists, and it doesn't make much sense to group them together. I'd say the vast majority of those on the left have a favorable view of Assange.

The most popular posts in FB are from fox news taking heads.

Try finding a post mentioning Gavin McInnes.

You can't even mention McInnes' new website censored.tv on Instagram, even in private messages.

"right-winger" content is the top content in the US every single day on Facebook.

Source: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

Those voices are hardly being silenced.

But you have to ask, did they censor right-wingers, or did they censor beliefs and behaviour that is often associated with "the right wing", e.g. racism?

I mean if the right-wing feels attacked because their posts get banned so much, maybe they should take a closer look at themselves.

>> I mean if the jews feel attacked because their families get gassed so much, maybe they should take a closer look at themselves.

Yeah I'm being facetiously inflammatory there, but c'mon you can make a better argument than that?

Right, but for Americans everything that is not certified by democratic party is racist so there's not much to look into. No one really buys that argument unless you're extremely naive.

Thanks, I was wondering how this was the fault of the left.

*/s

I don't think it's helpful to blame things on broad groupings of the political spectrum like "the left". But a discussion on how scary it is the social media platforms are shaping debate needs to acknowledge the existence of large, powerful movements demanding that they build the tools and precedent to do so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com