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Comment by lemonberry | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a phenomenon specific to the left. The number of people on the right that refuse to wear masks in private establishments that request is revealing.

To the right liberal judges are "activist judges". To the left conservative judges are "activist judges".

As a "liberal" (I'm not sure what that even means anymore) in his mid 40s I've been appalled at the portion of the left turning their back on the idea of free speech.

The hypocrisy, lack of critical thinking and myopia runs in both directions. And, unfortunately, it runs deep.

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It does run in both directions, but notice which side has the predominant position and representation at the top tech companies that are doing the information policing. It's certainly happening in conservative communities, but the established information channels are almost all controlled or dominated by the left. And they never call out their own. When was the last time you saw reddit for example shut down propaganda, say, on r/sino? Or prevent it from affecting other subreddits? It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media.

I don't disagree with your assessment, but I don't know enough about it to take a strong position on it. That said, I'm concerned about the idea of policing information. On the other hand the amount of manipulation I see via media, on both the right and the left, has me concerned too.

If it were so "blatantly obvious" then it should be easy for someone to provide statistical evidence of such behavior. Why don't you provide any references to support your claims?

This really would require these sources to be more transparent about where accounts are coming from and who is spending money on their platforms, and why would they be if they agree with what is happening? But at least we know how many accounts they delete.

https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-removed-130-accounts-linke...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/01/20/154481/cybersecu...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/twitter-d...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-shuts-down-200000-chin...

You can find many more sources like these. They do also delete accounts from far right troll farms, but the amount of astroturfing and gaslighting with the intention of pushing civil unrest, especially during this election, is palpable. Right now I'm looking at Reddit where garbage posts are somehow getting massively upvoted and gilded (with real money), pushing encouragement for civil unrest and paranoia about our democratic processes and whether or not they work.

It's state-sponsored. I don't have the keys to Reddit's back-end so I can't prove it, but there are plenty of sources on nation states trying to spread this type of garbage. Proceed to Google to find further sources beyond the ones I already gave.

That does nothing to support your narrative of "It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media."

I mean didn’t Reddit literally ban ChapoTrapHouse during the same wave they purged /r/TheDonald?

Meanwhile r/politics and r/worldnews are completely one-sided, with far-left brigading being the norm and questionable accounts/gilding spreading garbage all the time. I'm pretty left by American standards but it's still garbage.

There's a big difference between r/politics and people downvoting and r/conservative which insta bans you and has turned into the new Donald.

The purpose of /r/conservative is for conservatives to talk about conservatism. If somebody is not conservative then /r/conservative is not the best place for them.

The 10 top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages are almost always right to far-right. Whoever is behind this liberal conspiracy must be really bad at their job.

https://twitter.com/facebookstop10

Or they're spending their money on the "front page of the internet" like Reddit. See the links I shared in my other post for examples of clear nation-state activity linked to Reddit and Twitter. Facebook certainly does skew more to the right, but note that it's popular verified personalities like Franklin Graham or Trump himself who are getting those likes/hits. Whereas with these other sources you never know who is behind the accounts (is it Russia? China?). This being said I will not excuse this behavior from the right or from Facebook.

I think its absurd to me how this is somehow seen as a novel thing. You say something awful in kindergarden, you will be suspended. You try and write something awful in an op ed to the local paper, and it won’t ever get published. You call in to a radio station and say something awful, and you are taken off the air.

I don’t see why a private company with a website is any different than the above situations that no one bats an eye about. No one is entitled to grab any available microphone and say something awful. The only privilege you have is that the government shouldn’t go after you for this. Not that you shouldn’t get the privately owned microphone removed from your hands. And the government is not throwing alex jones into a jail cell despite the hysteria.

It's simple - just think about how quickly you'd change your mind about this if it was your worldview that was getting shut down by these platforms.

Maybe I’d question why my worldview was so widely considered in the wrong

Make sure to keep in mind that # of people holding a worldview has no bearing on whether or not it is true. Billions of people believe in an ancient supreme fairy ruling over the cosmos - there being billions who would consider non-belief wrong does not in itself contribute anything meaningful to the conversation.

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