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Comment by treeman79 | Hacker News Reader

No. People don’t want Conservatives to have a voice.

I've always been curious about that. Does Twitter forbid discussing lowering taxes? Maybe demanding harsher immigration policies? Higher prison sentences? Bans on abortion? Shutting down the department of education? Reinstating a monarchy? Who is more conservative than The Federalist? Quillette posts "race science" articles, and even the Claremont Institute, which is so reactionary that it balks at the term "conservative," posts articles on Twitter calling for ending democracy. Margarita Simonyan, a chief spokesperson for an ultraconservative authoritarian regime that is currently engaged in one of the deadliest wars in modern history against a budding democracy, has an account with over half a million followers. You want pre-Hellenic conceptions of the world? You got it! So seriously, what specific conservative content does Twitter disallow?

I'm not a big Twitter user but am often bombarded with right wing content on other sites like Reddit and Youtube no matter how often I try to tell the site/train the algorithm that it's not content I'm interested in seeing whatsoever, the idea that conservatives are being silenced when I (a left wing Brit) am constantly seeing their content is frankly ridiculous

That depends the subs you are subscribed, I usually get bombarded with left content and big subs are astroturfed by leftist.

I think it is an algorithm thing:

As a member of NAFO I get bombarded by Pro-Russian views every single time I refresh my timeline it seems, and I never like any of it or follow any of those genocidal maniacs or their cheerleaders :-/

> the idea that conservatives are being silenced when I (a left wing Brit) am constantly seeing their content is frankly ridiculous

It doesn't matter if you're "left wing" or not - The algorithm decided that certain people should be steered toward that content and others away from it. So the content is not reaching people organically or through merit. Rather, you're selected based on a hidden formula that nobody gets to see, and certainly doesn't serve the interests of the viewers or the uploaders. If you don't understand how that is censorship, you're missing the point of the whole show.

> that is currently engaged in one of the most deadly wars in history

? you dont have to use hyperbole to make a point.

I wasn't (although I'll qualify with "modern history"): https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/23/ukraine-wa...

If? Since when do we qualify a war as deadly based on linear projections in the future?

No projections needed. By intensity it's in the top 25% deadliest already.

This statistic is completely irrelevant because we have massive outliers like WW1 and WW2 and then a host of small, proxy conflicts afterwards. You don't make statistics based on mixing apples and oranges together and then making classifications out of it.

Plus, that Post article is ridiculous, you would obviously not put conflicts 200 years old like the US-Mexican war next to a conflict with modern weapons which are by nature much more deadly. If we go by this definition then most conflicts these days are in the upper 1% of fatalities compared to the whole of Human history, and that virtually says nothing interesting.

First the problem was that it's hyperbole and now that it's too obvious to be interesting? In any event, that statement was true and the fact remains that it is not only probably the most intense of the ongoing fifty or so armed conflicts -- which very much makes it stand out -- it is also among the most deadly in a long time, so I think pointing that out is pertinent, despite your stylistic reservations. Also, you can reach out to Paul Poast if you want further explanation about the conflict: https://www.paulpoast.com/bio-cv

It's very hard to estimate casulties in Russia's war on Ukraine but I think it's possible for it already to be over 200k soldiers and civilians, definitely over 100k since over 30k civilians died in Mariupol (likely many more some say 100k in Marioupol alone). We probably won't get good numbers till after the war

Twitter suppressed the NY Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop right before the 2020 presidential election. Calling a surgeon who performed sex reassignment surgery a criminal is what got Jordan Peterson suspended until he'll remove that tweet. Trump was banned despite never telling anybody to go inside the Capitol building and even posting a video telling his supporters to go home. Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for making fun of an actress. Alex Jones was banned for posting a video where he insulted a CNN journalist. Nick Fuentes was banned for repeated violations but Twitter has never made clear what the relevant tweets were. These were just off the top of my head. I also remember tweets calling for mass reeducation of white people or the eradication of whiteness being allowed.

All of these ideas/notions/opinions/stories were very widely disseminated on Twitter to an audience of millions (BTW, the legality of Trump's behaviour, including what exactly he urged his followers to do, is under ongoing investigation). The suppression of the Post's story on Hunter Biden might have been an overreaction, that story itself was all over Twitter (that's how I heard about it). It's possible some tweets "calling for mass reeducation of white people or the eradication of whiteness" were not removed, but neither were tweets with vile racism/misogyny/antisemitism that constantly flood the platform.

I assume a claim could be made (although it would be hard to support) that, on average, more conservatives are suspended than progressives for similar behaviour but that still amounts to zero conservative ideas suppressed. On the other hand, there's also a bias in violent acts between conservatives and progressives. If there's any conservative content banned or suppressed, I've yet to see a single example.

> If there's any conservative content banned or suppressed, no one has yet to find even a single example.

A pretty common conservative opinion is that there are only two genders, but Twitter doesn't allow misgendering

That doesn't limit in any way the expression of the belief that there are only two genders. Feel free to run a Twitter search and confirm that for yourself (I just did). I have to say I am genuinely curious to find a conservative belief that I wouldn't find thousands of (unironic/uncritical) hits for in a matter of seconds.

It does, you can't tell a non-binary person that they're a man or a woman, if your tweet is reported it will be deleted. If you can find any examples of this they simply haven't been reported or reviewed yet.

Intentional misgendering of an individual could be sexual harassment; it is certainly not a form of "conservative speech" regardless of beliefs. However, the belief that there only two genders is not only not banned by Twitter but is, in fact, widely disseminated.

"I assume a claim could be made (although it would be hard to support) that, on average, more conservatives are suspended than progressives for similar behaviour"

Thanks, that pretty much wraps it up.

Exactly. We don't know whether or not that's true; what we do know is that no conservative ideas are suppressed.

Trump encouraged a violent coup attempt. Twitter didn't want to be culpable in any further attempts to violently overthrow a democratic government

Nick Fuentes is a white nationalist. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...

How did he encourage a coup?

That is the subject of an ongoing US DOJ and Congress investigations. In case you missed the public hearings (where, for example, DOJ officials testified they were told by the former President to declare the 2020 election fraudulent even though they informed him it wasn't; this is known as a "self-coup"), the House Select Committee is expected to publish its findings in a final report by the end of this year; criminal indictments, if any (although we don't know yet if Mr Trump will be charged with insurrection), would likely be served within a year.

Multiple people have been locked out for saying that a man cannot get pregnant. Saying that cutting the healthy breasts of a young girl is child abuse, or saying that giving a child puberty blockers is also child abuse. Stop being so obtuse

I don't know the particular circumstances of those sanctions, but all of these opinions have been widely disseminated on Twitter. Exactly none of them have been suppressed, as a quick Twitter search would immediately reveal.

I understand that the feeling that conservative/reactionary ideas are suppressed has been an important myth in conservative circles for at least a century (to varying degrees), and that opinion itself is one of those conservative notions so prevalent on Twitter, but as a statement of fact, it is very easily disproved.

So they're claiming things, that are part of being a supportive parent and are not abuse, are abusive. And possibly encouraging harrasment of supporting parents and doctors?

Also I'm pretty sure vast majority of those getting top surgery are 18 or older.

Those topics aren't on the minds of conservatives lately, and if you think they are, you're either out of touch or making your point in bad faith. Since those ideas don't carry weight at the moment, they aren't a liability and therefore there's no reason to censor at this time.

You mentioned in another comment that the "censorship myth" is "easily disproved". You might want to re-think your logic, or stop spreading such BS, even if it sounded clever to you.

I think you're wrong (e.g. The Federalist, Claremont, and Quillette are pretty much the zeitgeist of the more-extreme-than-mainstream right these days; Claremont pretty much is the pro-Trump/pro-fascist/anti-democratic section of conservative writers), but regardless, could you name a conservative opinion/idea/belief that Twitter does not widely disseminate?

> could you name a conservative opinion/idea/belief that Twitter does not widely disseminate?

I do not necessarily endorse or agree with the viewpoints of those who were banned. But some confirmed examples include: QAnon, vaccines, Hunter Biden laptop, use of gender pronouns. Anything Pro-Putin (there's growing support of Putin among conservatives, but I'm not one of them). Claiming that the 2020 election was stolen (where was Twitter in 2016?). Being a member of Proud Boys.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions#2022

Also, accounts like @JamesOKeefeIII banned arbitrarily in retaliation. https://www.thedailybeast.com/project-veritas-founder-james-...

Meanwhile: https://rdi.org/twitters-dictator-problem/ - Same thing happened in India FYI. You should learn to understand that iron and velvet are two sides of the same coin.

That some accounts were suspended under specific circumstances does not mean that conservative content is suppressed. Potential bias in moderation policies of specific behaviours/events and the matter of suppressing ideas are two separate issues (although the moderation of the Hunter Biden story, as I mentioned earlier, was probably a mistake).

Twitter is flooded with pro-Putin, anti-vaxx, stolen election, and "only two genders" content. The claim that these ideas are suppressed is so easily debunked (with a quick search) as thoroughly false, that I doubt that those making that claim actually believe it.

I don't know if Twitter punishes conservative Twitterers more harshly under similar circumstances, but it is simply and verifiably untrue that conservative content, of any flavour and level of extremism, is not widely disseminated by Twitter. I know that suppression has been a fundamental narrative for the right for some generations now, but like its other incarnations -- "the war on Christmas" and "cancel culture" -- it is just not real.

> That some accounts were suspended under specific circumstances does not mean that conservative content is suppressed.

I never said anything about "Conservative content is being suppressed", which is in and of itself an incredibly vague and arbitrarily defined assertion. The commenter you replied to was the one who said it. Hopefully my points are clearer than that, but there is some overlap.

> Potential bias in moderation policies of specific behaviours/events and the matter of suppressing ideas are two separate issues

A suspended account suppresses content in at least four ways:

1) The specific tweet, and all retweets, are memory-holed.

2) The user is directly prevented from posting additional tweets, different (or equal) in content but always compatible in motive.

3) The suspension serves as a warning to discourage others from doing the same.

4) The suspension is a clear message to discourage others with similar views from investing time and resources to build a following on Twitter.

---

> The claim that these ideas are suppressed is so easily debunked (with a quick search) as thoroughly false

The fact that you've admitted spending little enough time on research to be able to call it a "quick" search, and triumphantly so, doesn't help your argument. Nobody cares about suppressing last year's news, but what about when it was this year's news?

> Vaccines

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/01/twitter-c...

> QAnon and Elections

https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/202...

And even your own examples:

> The Federalist

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/23/twitter-is-censoring-fe...

> Quillette

https://archive.ph/CpzM2

> Clairemont

That's a think tank - Old guys in suits. Deep pockets. They're not grassroots-oriented, and don't need Twitter to reach their intended audience. They have the resources to fight back anyway, so it's not a high-value target. Not to mention they can afford to vet and craft their messages carefully to avoid getting blocked. Self-censorship.

---

> I don't know if Twitter punishes conservative Twitterers more harshly under similar circumstances, but it is simply and verifiably untrue that conservative content, of any flavour and level of extremism, is not widely disseminated by Twitter.

You can suppress content and still be overwhelmed by its sheer appeal at the end of the day. It happens all the time. Sometimes the other team wins. That's why we're not living under the flavor of totalitarianism that existed in medieval times.

That has nothing to do with conservatism, though. If a conservative is arrested while spraying "Stop the Steal" on your car, that doesn't mean that the police is suppressing conservatism. Twitter chooses to prevent certain behaviours and certain actions, and also doesn't wish to disseminate misinformation about a pandemic (progressives fell victim to those beliefs, too). Like every enforcement action, it's certainly possible that specific instances are misguided, and it's also possible that there is some bias, although whether there is or isn't is far from certain (it's also possible that conservatives are biased toward rule-infringing behaviour on Twitter just as they are biased toward political violence; more conservatives are also arrested for politically-motivated violence than progressives, while property vandalism might be biased the other way).

The fact remains that every conservative idea, including extreme ones, is widely disseminated on Twitter. Even fringe right wing ideas have far more reach today -- thanks, in part, to Twitter -- than ever before in history. The idea that they're being suppressed is downright ridiculous.

So we're calling it as vandalism, violence, and misinformation now? Think you just lost the argument there.

I wasn't having an argument, merely saying that no one has ever been able to present a conservative idea that Twitter has not widely publicised, let alone banned outright.

The dangerous misinformation about Covid that Twitter didn't want to publish is not a conservative idea at all; both conservatives and progressives fell victim to it and spread it. I think that there were more conservative victims because these days people who more easily believe conspiracy theories are more likely to be conservative, but that correlation is purely accidental and wasn't always the case. Certainly there is no conservative content to stories about chips in vaccines or miracle cures.

As to vandalism and violence, I was pointing out that not every action that's performed concurrently to expressing an opinion is just an expression of a belief (if I mutilate you, that I'm doing so to carve "Biden 2024" on your chest doesn't make my action protected political speech). So the fact that some people were sanctioned while expressing some ideas doesn't mean that the ideas themselves are the sole cause for their punishment, which is why I keep looking for any conservative idea that isn't expressed on Twitter. For example, the opinion that there are only two genders is widely expressed on Twitter without censorship, yet misgendering individuals could be sexual harassment performed in the course of expressing that opinion.

Chowderhead, Tim Pool, Shapiro, Owens, FoxNews, & and to some extent Rogan. Last I checked all of them have a heavy amount of followers and their accounts have not been banned from Twitter or FB?

Can you give examples where this takes place?

Donald Trump

Project Veritas

James Lindsay

Babylon Bee (locked out for not deleting a tweet.)

Jordan Peterson (locked out for not deleting a tweet.)

Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account

Steve Bannon

among others

They have a voice. What they don’t have any more is the privilege to use it without any consequences.

I wish the Left experienced the same, then. Large, influential accounts calling for white genocide and education camps publicly with no consequences or media backlash is a travesty.

Got any examples of accounts?

Unfortunately I don't really bookmark tweets so I can share them 1-2 years later with folks who won't bother to search for them, themselves.

Sorry, you'll have to take my word for it, and you'll need to have enough interest and curiosity to care. I don't mean to assume you don't, and I want to think you're genuinely interested in knowing, but at the risk of sounding rude, people who usually ask for evidence or examples didn't spend any time looking on their own, and seek only to condemn, deny, or denounce the OP's claims at any cost — or worse, when evidence is shared, twist it into something it's not and make excuses for it.

A quick search got me reprehensible posts generalizing White people, or highlights patently racist behavior towards Whites by people (and news media) that are still allowed to exist quite freely on Twitter, like so:

1. https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1325702297402306561 (AOC calling for White re-education en masse, is patently racist)

2. https://twitter.com/SkyCricket/status/1280809870766284800

3. https://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/1584926736583913472

4. https://twitter.com/swordsjew/status/1255273666302095368

5. https://web.archive.org/web/20190111211254/https://twitter.c... (this thread was not deleted, the account that posted it has made their profile private — however this thread was allowed to exist for years).

6. https://twitter.com/WilliamCheeks10/status/10693653458220892... (small account, still stands as a reply off a Guardian news post)

7. https://web.archive.org/web/20210108061020/https://twitter.c... (smaller account, but still allowed to stand)

8. https://twitter.com/Brother_Jacob1/status/128084335718345113... (smaller account, but still allowed to stand)

Generally the most likely response at this point is "You're cherrypicking" (and thus invalidates my entire claim), right?

Disclaimer: my snark isn't directed at you by the way. I just find it fun to presume the outcomes of a — 1) share 2) evidence pls 3) shares evidence 4) ??? — interaction.

The fact that you are not witnessing the consequences a lot of people on the left are subjected to is part of the problem. Social media works better when it is able to isolate people into their own bubble, and to see the other as the source of all that is bad in the world. I wish you good luck, getting out of there is difficult.

Here's a video about how it was to feel cancellation of a leftist (from people also on the left!). It's long but you might find it entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8

Lots of people on the left face moderation. Often even unfair moderation. They just don't whine about it as much.

normal conservatives? yes please. weirdo fruit-loop frothing conservatives? no thanks.

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