POTUS has the most popular (and currently most controversial - note, that's _controversial_ not _extreme_ or some other morph) so it's easy to see why Twitter are on top of it. Other blue-checked accounts, whilst more "important" than unverified, just simply don't compare to the importance and prevalance of POTUS' account.
Update: data https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw...
Update: admission https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
It goes on to say this can’t be possible because it would mean that conservative content would have to violate rules at 4x the rate of others, and that statistically its highly improbable. Why? It’s a known problem that Twitter has a lot of accounts that are fake accounts from bad actors trying to sow discord in the US political system, and those tend to be right leaning. Didn’t Twitter relatively recently do a purge of a large number of accounts that were deemed fake? That could easily skew the numbers, especially because those accounts tend to engage in the kind of rhetoric that gets you banned.
And then the article points to cases where liberal leaning content doesn’t get banned even though it should. I can also find cases where conservative content violates the rules yet it didn’t face consequences, most prominently the president’s account. It’s not just liberals who get a free pass, so I’m not sure what that proves.
Is it possible there is a bias in how Twitter sensors content? Sure. But that article makes it sound like they have a data driven, mathematically rigorous proof that it’s true, and I don’t think they meet that mark.
I'm not being facetious. Isn't this something the right is actually proud of? I mean, they actually boast about not being "politically correct" (something the rest of the western world calls "common decency").
If you want to be editorializing people's content then you are a publisher and then you are responsible for the content they write.
The point of social media is that each person is their own publisher and own their own words.
Oterwhise lets just regulate Twitter and FB and Youtube like a publisher and lets see them handle the lawsuits.
"Perhaps conservatives are simply more likely to violate neutral rules regarding harassment and hate speech. In such case, the observed data would not serve to impugn Twitter, but rather conservatives themselves."
... and then say "no, they need to be ideologically neutral" when they act in ways you dislike.
For just about anything you want the alt-right has their "free speech" alternatives. The thing they are whining about is that the reach of these alternatives is way, WAY lower than the reach of the companies/projects of the alt-right. Almost as if the free market actually works and people deliberately choose to not engage in platforms dominated by alt-right hate mongers...
Just about every other editorial on right leaning outlets that complain and moan about political correctness?
Oh, and actual self-identified right leaning HN/Redit users. Just ask, many of them will be quick to tell you (some version of) "political correctness is BS".
(To be clear, I know not all right-leaning people think this way, but a very large proportion do).
Just so I'm clear, are you arguing that avoiding political correctness is not a core tenet of a large part of the conservative base? I thought it was a badge of honor for many?
I think it's completely possible for a popular pro free speech platform to exist provided it is able to be more user friendly or have some other killer feature.
> database of prominent, politically active users who are known to have been temporarily or permanently suspended from the platform. … Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.
The Vox piece isn't an "admission" that their moderation is biased. Twitter's CEO is "admitting" that the politics of the developers is heavily liberal:
> “We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company,” Dorsey said. “They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don’t think that’s fair or right.”
That's not an opinion or a judgement, that's just reality, as much as 1+1=2 or the sky being blue. It doesn't require interpreting anything or contextualizing anything. It's obvious and plain as day, and eyes and ears and integrity and maturity are all that are required to perceive it. I absolutely believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that any reasonable application of any reasonable rules of moderation concerning threats, abuse, and misinformation would have much more impact on a typical Trump supporter in 2020 than anyone else (still faithful in 2020 folks, that's the type of person we're talking about here), and that that would be almost certainly the fault of the individual, and not biased moderation. The only way moderation would affect both sides equally would be if both sides were the same, or composed of the same sort of people.
But both sides have never been the same, and that's more true now than at any time since the Civil War. Except that now Republicans identify with Confederates instead of Lincoln and his ideals, and somehow Democrats flipped from representing Evangelical rural Southerners to representing the industrialized, urban, and successful parts of America, that were represented by Republicans in Lincoln's day.
FWIW I agree with George Washington that political parties themselves are the poison pill that repeatedly divides and screws up America, and that our current system is fatally flawed because it naturally leads to a two-party system, and that two-party systems by definition lead to more corruption and shittier governance. Just because one party is clearly criminally corrupt doesn't make the other party the goodguys, but until (if ever) we get rid of FPTP voting, it's a "pick the lesser evil" situation, and hoo boy is one evil obviously lesser than the other one.
So look at it this way: are the things that conservatives say outside the bounds of common decency of the 1980s? 1950s? 1930s? Then ask if the kind of things that left-leaning users say are outside the bounds of common decency of the 1980s, 1950s, 1930s.
You say that political correctness is just common decency. Your grandparents probably had a different standard for common decency in their day.
I don't think that's a good, or even workable solution. Social media companies are not public utilities.
The overall trend is that justice and respect for human dignity has steadily, undeniably, increased over the last several hundred years. Therefore, generally speaking, I would say that yes, a modern 30-something has more "decency" than one of 50, 75 or 100 years ago.
To be totally clear, I don't fault my grandparents or other people that are products of these eras. They aren't necessarily bad people. And certainly, the measure of "common decency" would, of course, be different then.
I just can't wrap my head around longing for a time when society was more constrained/repressive/intolerant. Yes, there are things I think were better in the past, but they are the exception.
(side note: this is not to say I don't think political correctness can go too far, it certainly can. There are exceptions to everything).
I'm saying this as someone who thinks Twitter in general is stupid, Trump behaves like a clown on Twitter and the best outcome would be if everyone stopped using Twitter.
But you cannot have it both ways, and in that particular issue he is right.
It's absolutely true, and has absolutely nothing to do with moderation "being hard". As someone who absolutely opposes Trump, but also absolutely opposes our many wars and global bombings, I'm horrified on a daily basis (and have been since 2009 when I joined Twitter) by open calls for violence against a wide variety of countries from Syria to Venezuela to Iran. When has Twitter ever suspended anyone (let alone a public figure, or even Trump himself, who has called for violence against other countries many times) a single time for openly calling for violence against the people of any of the countries? The answer is never. Its beyond absurd, bordering on delusional, to pretend that Twitter's actions here weren't nakedly political and have absolutely nothing to do with a standard against, "fomenting violence".
An example: Traditional values would say that modern men have less respect for human dignity given the rise in single motherhood. Out of respect men were expected to stick around and help raise a child.
No everyone is going to agree that we are moving in the right direction. It's important to remember that when engaging in political discussions. That people are not often acting out an evil agenda. They are just going with what they think is right.
Discussions on what is the best way forward for society are far more fruitful than the way politics are generally discussed online. Where the other side is evil and it should be obvious to everyone that they just want to see the world burn.
Also isn't political correctness subjective too? Or is there a canonical definition of what is and is not politically correct that I'm unaware of.
This link doesn't say what you claim. It's Dorsey talking about the internal social environment at Twitter's offices, not Twitter's moderation policies.
Correct, but it's disingenuous to suggest they're not strongly correlated at the group level.
No. No it isn't. That's patently ridiculous. Almost every decade of the past couple hundred years has consistently seen better human rights (in the Western World at least).
We're talking about: the elimination of slavery, establishment of women's rights, childrens' rights, elimination of colonialism, elimination of authoritarian rule by non-elected persons, elimination of torture, the right to freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, single digit illiteracy, near zero deaths due to hunger, reduced systemic oppression against minority groups, reduced systemic oppression against non-traditional sexual orientations, universal access to free basic healthcare (caveat: every western country except the US), universal access to free basic education, and, in my lifetime alone we've added access to affordable and near-instant worldwide communication with the right to use it anyway we see fit (within reason). [0]
Now, how (besides the environment) have things gotten worse from a human dignity standpoint in the west?
The one example you gave was indeed a decent one. I know there are other good ones but there's absolutely no way they will add up enough to tip the scales so that you can argue human rights and dignity have gotten worse overall.
----- [0]: The list provided contains generalizations about "Western Countries". The list is incomplete/imperfect in that there will be some exceptions/caveats. In other words, yes I'm sure someone could find something there to nitpick but it's generally true in the big picture.
Sorry, I won't bite. See if you can bait someone else.
Remember nearly everyone used to farm, including the ancestors of liberals. Today's right wing "family farmers" are the people who were most stubborn or least able to learn new things as their way of life shrank and not the representatives of farming in general.
Both are owned by the same oligarchs, it's a pretend lesser of evils game that just pendulum swings back and forth every few election cycles and it amazes me people still fall for this kind of rhetoric. Then again, most people fell for Russiagate hook line and sinker too... and when we increasingly get the evidence about how false it was, crickets... The entire democratic party fell for disinformation just as easily as the republicans did. Stop kidding yourself.
You use 'dignity' to mean, I think, that an individual has been granted autonomy. So a woman is now free to sleep around, terminate her pregnancies at will, and live her life however she pleases; she has rights. To you, she is being treated with dignity because she has autonomy. But that is not, I think, the way the 19th century mind thought (obviously this is a generalization; but think in terms of the kind of person who would have defined what 'common decency' meant in 19th century America). Dignity back then had to do with comportment and behaving well. What you call 'dignity' they would call 'licentiousness', and it would be considered the antithesis of dignity. One of the words for such a woman was 'indecent'.
You can argue that political correctness is just the decent way to speak, but to assume that it is 'common decency' is to assume an awful lot, especially when using that phrase to put down approximately half of the US electorate. The disagreement on just what constitutes 'common decency' is the exact issue here. One cannot resolve the issue by appealing to it. Conservatives and liberals have a different idea of what is offensive/harmful and what is decent because they have different fundamental values.
Or at least some of them do. A whole bunch of people on all sides are just engaging in thoughtless tribalism and mood affiliation. You are not one of the thoughtless ones, obviously. :)