Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe you missed this news story:

  Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets[1]

  The research found that in six out of seven countries, apart from Germany, tweets from rightwing politicians received more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left; right-leaning news organisations were more amplified than those on the left; and generally politicians’ tweets were more amplified by an algorithmic timeline than by the chronological timeline.

  According to a 27-page research document [2], Twitter found a “statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing” in all the countries except Germany.

Twitter admits it was boosting right wing accounts over left wing accounts. It treated right wing twitter users who violated its own terms of service better than regular users because of their position as conservative leaders. Trump himself was boosted and promoted while he violated Twitter TOS. It took him using Twitter to wage a coup against the US government for them to ban him. So yeah, there's more than a little reason to believe that there's evidence at Twitter of them boosting right wing accounts.

And PS: Notice that this research by Twitter is never mentioned by Musk or in the Twitter files. They're trying very hard to memory hole this report, and it seems like it's worked on you.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...

[2] https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter...

But that was published while the pro-Democrat establishment goons were in charge of Twitter, so of course they would say that because they wanted you to beleive they weren't favouring the left. It's hardly a reiable source. Same applies to Musk-era of course.

In the end, we accept the things we agree with, and discredit the ones we prefer not to believe. Human nature.

As I said, we don't need to know anything internal about Twitter to know for a fact that they bent over backwards to elevate extremist right wing voices. Because they elevated the most important extremist voice for 4 years as he violated the terms of use for their platform. In effect, we all had one TOS, and there was a different, more permissive TOS for the leader of the US MAGA-right wing movement, the most extreme version of right wing politics in America. That's blatant, confirmed, irrefutable, systematic bias and special treatment for conservatives on Twitter, pre Musk.

In case you want to discount the Twitter report as a false flag, here's a report from NYU that independently confirmed Twitter is biased toward conservatives. It also found the same for Facebook: https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page

American universites are notoriously politically biased. Calling that "independent" is a stretch.

Again - we accept evidence that supports what we already believe.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

You really can't just blanket claim that all research from a university is politically biased, even if you feel American universities in general are biased. Come on now, we're here for discourse that's a little more nuanced than that I hope.

Since all you're bringing to the discussion at this point is a comic, I think that's all there is to say.

Yes, discussion over, you learned nothing, you'll carry on defending your fixed beliefs, and you got in a cheap comment about a serious comic. Well done.

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