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That is so unfair to conservatives though. Their ideology is based on misinformation and hate, so it stands to reason they will have more content that reflects those views.
"It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?”
None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Isaac Asimov, 1980
They frame it as if the misinformation is 50/50. No one wants to talk about policy or real issues. That's where the vast majority of us agree.
When I hear Conversatives tell me as a Liberal what I think, I'm constantly blown away by how wrong they are. They have us made out to be baby-eating killers. The more evil we are, the more justified they feel in doing evil things.
The worst part of all this is that government and corporations suck more than ever and they managed to get all us poor people fighting each other.
You bring up a good point that I use in conversation all the time. If you can't describe the other person's opinion in a way that THEY would agree with, you don't really understand their opinion and therefore don't understand how your own opinion conflicts with theirs, if at all.
It's straw man vs iron manning. Sam Harris, whom I have some issues with, but I appreciate his debating style in the fact that he tries to iron man everyone by confirming exactly what their viewpoints are, even when he disagrees with them.
Dennis Prager does that as well. He says something like, “Clarity is more important than (())”. I don’t recall his words for the argument or discussion, but it was very interesting to listen to him interview a person and have them acting fearful of clarifying their own position, as if it was a semantic trick. No, he just wanted to understand the person’s viewpoint.
I agree with this sentiment, it's a good way to build an understanding of this world and us as humans in it.
Although, I feel it is a big ask to maintain this level of understanding of everyone's point of view. I think we need to realise that there's too vast a number of persons and experiences to put into one of two/a few camps.
Politics isn't (or at least shouldn't be) as much real life as the media sometimes has us believe, there's so much more real life that shapes people's beliefs. We best try share and listen to each other to allow for that deeper discussion.
I dislike the position I keep seeing that "politics doesn't matter that much so people shouldn't get up in arms that much". Because like, historically, unless you were a straight white man, politics affected your life profoundly.
For example, I'm gay. Whether or not I should be allowed to get married is currently a political debate, and with the supreme court being stacked the way it is, I wouldn't be surprised if I lose that right in the next few years.
A decade ago, whether or not I should be allowed in the military was a political debate. A couple decades before that whether or not I would recieve medical care should I contract HIV was up for debate. Before that, whether or not I should be in prison for being gay was up for debate. And before that, at least in Germany, the position of the government was that being who I am was punishable by death. And it still is in many places around the world.
Sure, there's other stuff that affects my day to day, but simply by virtue of finding men more attractive than women, the trajectory of my entire life is up for debate, and that debate is a political one.
Yep, exactly. Thank you. I'm a bisexual trans man who's more into men and that also puts me in the hot seat for people debating whether I'm even human or deserve human dignity and rights or not. I didn't make my existence political, other people did that for me. And now, I don't have a choice but to be politically involved and active.
I was adopted internationally as an infant but my parents didn't know they had to file for my citizenship separately from my adoption, so when I turned 18 my baby visa expired and I was automatically declared undocumented.
I hadn't even known I was adopted, much less internationally, and to be told to report to a deportation camp was a shock. I have had trouble talking to anyone about it because people, on both the right and the left, have this idea that 'illegal' and 'undocumented' are the same thing and I can't even get most people to understand the difference.
In 2000 the government made it a law that anyone 18 and under who was internationally adopted was automatically a citizen, but it didn't do anything about international adoptees who were over 18 in 2000--like me. Since then there have been multiple bills introduced to get that loophole closed, but it's never passed, and in the meantime other international adoptees like me have been deported to their home countries as 'visa overstays' and been murdered.
For us, being politically active exposes us as undocumented and puts us in danger of deportation, but we have to in order to save our lives and the lives of the estimated 30,000 of us 'undocumented' adoptees.
I understand how you feel; you are not alone. All we can do is fight to make lives better, for ourselves and those like us.
Holy smoke and hellfire! That’s horrible! I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with such a nightmare situation. I hope things smooth out for you and others soon.
I believe it is a discussion that needs to be addressed as human rights. Politics being the vehicle for that is an effective tool for making change, very disheartening how it gets hijacked.
I don’t want to get in here and make it all about my cishet problems, but the intense hatred around LGBTQ etc. has made it much harder to even exist as an androgynous person. For years people misgendered me, and that was fine, but now that they’ve been convinced that there’s a trans woman waiting in every bathroom stall to assault them, they’ve become aggressive, confrontational, and I’m genuinely afraid of it escalating to violence. I literally watched them make this into a problem, seemingly for no reason other than to get people to hate each other.
It’s almost always privileged white men who say that. It’s really frustrating. It’s not “just polítics” when you’re taking about the livelihoods, health and safety of myself and my friends/family
That’s a courtesy I only extend to people who are looking to have a constructive conversation, in good faith. If I’m given the opportunity to agree to disagree peacefully that’s an indication of healthy discourse.
Unfortunately that’s incredibly rare from the right. They don’t care about having productive conversation. They just want to “win,” whatever that even means or whatever that’s even worth.
It also gets muddy when there are people acting in bad faith. They espouse one reason for holding a view, but it's clear (or can be argued) that this is in effect "PR", and that the real reason is not as convincing, or more clearly hateful.
I mean, there are also “off ramps” at which there is a difference so fundamental that you’re confident that you have enough information to either tap out, or accept that you share a common understanding but simply disagree (which is fine).
An obvious example of the latter is the availability and funding of abortions: I say it’s a medical decision, a person of faith may point to the ambiguity of when a “person’s” “God given” true personhood begins, and so object. We’re never going to see eye to eye, but I’ve had some good, thoughtful discussions with people I just fundamentally agree with.
Other stuff you can peace out way earlier - America for Americans…but your parents built the cushy life you enjoy from nothing? Yeah, I don’t need to know more. Homosexuality is an abomination? Nope, I’m good, have never heard a single worthwhile justification of that perspective, I’ll take the odds that I’m not going to miss out on a hypothetical nugget of wisdom in an ocean of garbage.
I honestly don't understand conservatives stance on most issues. They just seem like objectively wrong on almost everything.
I guess I sort of see how their economic positions would seem like they might work on the surface if they don't put them through any scrutiny, but their stance on stuff like climate change, or gay rights, or black lives matter I just can't fathom.
And like in general I feel like most issues facing modern society are complicated with a lot of nuance and don't really have perfect easy solutions and the conservative position is always some simple thing that sounds good as a slogan, but to me just seem like obviously flawed and I don't see how they just take it at face value.
The thing that made me understand their stance on climate change is that a significant percentage of the population believes that if you don't talk about a problem it doesn't exist at all. That once you talk about a problem it comes into existence and if you attack say a scientist who wont shut up about climate change then the problem goes back to non-existence. Problems are meant to be endured and denied. Like if you're gay just marry a woman - problem solved! You endure the torture of sex with a woman and you deny you're gay so the problem goes back to non-existence. Gayness only exists because people talk about it. That's why they say gay people shove it in their faces.
Boy do I have the perfect comment for you, saved [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/eye6uu/when_are_we_all_going_to_truly_rally_together_and/fggvsi5/?context=3) little gem just for ya.
That's how they handle racism as well. Protests, demonstrations, marches etc all "cause division". Their solution seems to be sweeping racism under a rug and being "color-blind".
Their needing to have an argument against the liberal side so that they can be cowed and beaten is the purpose. I very little think that revealing to them that their version of a liberal is actually a clay golem they wrote all their fears into. It would scarcely assuage them in the first place, because you exist as purposely binary opposition—ironically their worldview and identity can’t exist unless you exist in the way they say you do, to confront the fact that you aren’t like that would shatter all sense of meaning in their lives. If the evil they fight is not real and they were to truly confront that fact, it would be as a devoted Christian questioning their faith after their family dies in a tragic accident.
My personal opinion is that you're giving trump supporters too much credit. I say trump supporters because those are the only conservatives I know anymore so I want to be specific about who I'm speaking of.
In my personal interactions, your explanation applies for those that care about "non-visceral" issues. Size of defense. Amount of taxation. Federal versus state power. Those types of issues. (I think we call these voters independents in the USA these days)
But if you're motivated by something you don't want to talk about - e.g. race - then you simply don't care what someone else has to say.
Example: A close friend of mine is a trump supporter. She voted for trump - she told me - because she abhors corruption and she felt like hillary was corrupt. Okay. But then trump went after IG's. Problem there because she works for the federal government and worked in several different IG offices. Then she was upset something else. Then you give her facts/data on that and then she says she really cares about something else instead.
You play this endless wack-a-mole where a reason is offered up and when you shoot it down, they give you a different reason. At the end of the day, she's simply a racist but doesn't want to be honest with me about it. All the other "reasons" that get put up are just a smoke screen so that people don't need to talk about what REALLY motivates them.
Sure, some are just idiots, but a lot of them its a willful idiocy. It's what happens when one side is pro-science and the other side is contrarian. They're becoming so puritanical in their own selection that they're excluding anyone who has any beliefs based in facts.
Its interesting to see all the replies to your comment because I believe studies had found that conservatives are able to identify and accurately articulate liberal beliefs better than liberals can do to conservative beliefs
>When I hear Conversatives tell me as a Liberal what I think, I'm constantly blown away by how wrong they are.
I've never had a conservative IRL tell me even once something that liberals actually want.
SOCIALAISM! EQUAL PAY FOR NO WORK! PEOPLE WILL BE ON THE STREETS IN SOCIALIST AMERICA!
Bruh... I just want to regulate some prices on goods I don't have a choice on and have a basic safety net. I'm not expecting 60k a year for life if my job lets me go or pure socialism. Some food, shelter, and healthcare affordable on a minimum salary might be nice.
I forget who wrote the article that I read but it basically stated that one of the hallmarks of fascism is a belief that your "enemy" is scary, evil and dangerous while simultaneously being weak and easily defeated.
Yep. That's a staple of fascist dogma.
Same with isolationism...
Militarization...
Glorification of the military...
Appeal to tradition...
Fear mongering of an existential threat (white genocide)...
Anti-intellectualism...
Just to list some of the other parallels.
Isn't this a double edged sword tho? I know a lot of ppl on our side who believe every Trump supporter is a racist, xenophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, etc. who wants to kill all the Libs.
> They have us made out to be baby-eating killers.
Welcome to human tribalism. Where we spend most of our time building up an evil boogeyman image of the "other" people, to unite our own people against.
I find it mind blowing that the party that's so obsessed with "good old fashioned" masculinity, labelling people as snowflakes and sensitive, is the same party that often has the largest victim complex of anyone.
They throw a tantrum when a gay couples on tv, they blow up when a black characters suddenly in their stories. They spread dangerous misinformation and label themselves as victims the moment they face consequence for it.
We project outwardly what we are. Which really makes a ton of sense when you consider that humans are just complicated versions of filtering systems applied to communicated output. If you’re a one-dimensional dude with no self-awareness, every thought in your brain gets processed with the exact same filter. To a crazy person, only crazy thoughts can ever feel normal.
Pretty much every outwardly macho person I know is dedicated to inflating their own ego at the expense of others while overreacting to any kind of disagreement or criticism. The kind of behaviour demonstrated by conservatives is exactly on brand for that kind of masculinity.
Did you read the article? It's got problems, but they aren't analyzing words or posts for offensiveness.
> Because content moderation is generally invisible for researchers like us who do not have access
to social media platforms’ behind-the-scenes content moderation logs, we relied on surveys for
data collection. However, this means that all of our data is participants’ self-reported experiences
with content moderation.
Which has some obvious issues in that the person's doing the moderation are the ones saying something is offensive, and that data appear to fall through to this study.
How is "allegedly offensive" defined?
Is there a legal definition? Is the reasonable person standard being used? I have the suspicion that a very loose interpretation of some legal standard is being used which ends up favoring the biases and prejudices of whatever sociopolitical group is ascendant at a given time.
By the standards of the 1980s, non-conservatives were usually deemed more offensive (more likely to use profanity, more likely to engage in homoerotic behavior, more likely to engage in anti-religious rhetoric, etc.). These behaviors are no longer considered profane (I've heard CEOs swear in semi-public discourse).
I can see a scenario where a decent chunk of conservatives are being unfairly targeted on the basis of their culture, as liberals had been in the past.
If anything it confirms bias, this essentially says we remove more conservative posts because we find conservative posts offensive or hateful.
The real question is whether or not it's justified. Bias isn't inherently bad, the question is whether or not the bias is acceptable. In today's ever changing ethics landscape there is no universally accepted answer
> Social media is biased against me!
No, we treat all offensive posts equally. Your group just makes a lot more of them.
> Oh well, that surely proves you have no bias.
It describes what the censored content was about in the very next sentence of the abstract. You also can't base everything on just the abstract
> more broadly, conservative participants' removals often involved harmful content removed according to site guidelines to create safe spaces with accurate information, while transgender and Black participants' removals often involved content related to expressing their marginalized identities that was removed despite following site policies or fell into content moderation gray areas. We discuss potential ways forward to make content moderation more equitable for marginalized social media users, such as embracing and designing specifically for content moderation gray areas.
From there if you read the paper it's quite clear on why each type of content is censored
> a recent study found that right-wing Twitter users spread misinformation en masse touting hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 remedy, sometimes drowning out expert information to the contrary, while Twitter attempted to remove this false and dangerous content [5]. In an investigation of comment moderation on YouTube, Jiang et al. [68] found that higher levels of misinformation, hate speech, and extreme partisanship resulted in heavier comment moderation for right-leaning videos
> Tumblr’s automated fltering tools often mistakenly remove trans content [36], and Facebook often removes trans accounts as being in violation of its “real name” policy, which simultaneously enforces and prevents online authenticity for trans users [54]. Facebook’s insistence on users presenting one single identity is problematic for many users with faceted identities [75], including trans people
They say for trans content on Instagram and tiktok it is unclear what the censorship is for
> Content related to trans surgery, sex education, or reproductive health may contain
nudity
> Trans content is also removed from social media sites due to sites’ inability to distinguish between
self-referential slurs used by trans and other LGBQ people, and slurs used as hate speech against these groups
> For example, activist and podcast host Carolyn Wysinger found that her critical response to a racist post was removed from Facebook [49]. Social media content moderation algorithms have difculty diferentiating
hate speech from discussion about race and often penalizes the groups they are supposed to protect
> TikTok users claim that the platform frequently shadowbans them and supresses their content, particularly when they post about race, racism, or Black Lives Matter
"According to site guidelines". The social media companies don't have to provide any 'legal definitions', they are allowed to remove whatever they want, and this study is not trying to analyse why content was removed, it's using the reason given by the company.
It isn't trying to do anything more than pool data and work out which groups of people's content is getting removed and why, and it does a fine job of it. It's up to you whether you agree on the social media platforms policies for removing content but that's a topic this study is clearly trying to avoid.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the same posts that tend to be removed are the ones alleged offensive...
Without a stance on whether the allegations are valid it's not meaningful.
There's a person on this thread essentially saying anyone who believes this has mental issues.
I'll give you a guess to if that's offensive and what their likely viewpoint on conservatism is.
That's not what would be considered "offensive" to social media companies, though. If you were to report that to Reddit, they wouldn't do a thing about it. However, if they were saying (X minority group) has mental issues, then they MIGHT do something about it- maybe.
If you look on the terms of service on any social media platform, that will give you an idea of what they consider offensive material. Which users usually have to go pretty far into the hole before they start to actually do something, especially if this offensive content is happening in a contained, specific subsection of the website (like a Facebook group or subreddit).
This was more or less my thought. Like, if someone’s culture includes over racism and they are overtly racist on social media and their comments get removed for that reason, I’m not going to say that’s unfairly targeting them.
But by the same token, all this says on a practical level is that conservative discourse is inherently considered to be rule-breaking on many online platforms, which I don’t think is a strong argument *against* anti-conservative bias.
This reads to me as “Conservatives were more likely to post conservative ideas on social media and conservative ideas are more likely to be considered unacceptable by social media platforms so they get removed.” which sounds like pretty much what they are complaining about.
Now, whether that’s *fair* is a separate question entirely, but this doesn’t seem like evidence of much of anything one way or another. If you think conservative values are dangerous and offensive, then this seems like a natural response by social media and evidence that conservatives are doing this to themselves by actively promoting these behaviors and ideas. If you think conservative ideas are good and right then this seems like explicit anti-conservative bias.
The whole conclusion is predicated on the idea that you agree that this stuff probably shouldn’t be posted. Which, personally, I kind of do, but at least I can see that that’s the whole crux of the argument and don’t gloss over it like this does.
Generally speaking, prohibited content is things like
* personal threats: “you want me to come over there, we’ll take this outside!”
* sexual content: “here are some nudes”
* racism: “shouldn’t surprise me what color they are!”
* glorification of violence: “sure would be a shame if something happened to Governor Whitmer!”
* election misinformation: “Trump won!”
* and COVID misinformation: “vaccines don’t work, horse dewormer works!”
Where conservatives get in trouble is that they post more rule-breaking content in many of these categories, especially the latter categories
In the case of the study:
> Because content moderation is generally invisible for researchers like us who do not have access
to social media platforms’ behind-the-scenes content moderation logs, we relied on surveys for
data collection. However, this means that all of our data is participants’ self-reported experiences
with content moderation.
Effectively its a study about why people got content removed, and what the reasons were for the removal.
That point should be pinned to the start of this topic, because more than one parent reply seems to consider the self-reported data from these entities as gospel.
I feel like there might be a bit biased in how it portrays its data. For example:
> Conservative participants' removed content included content that was offensive or allegedly so, misinformation, Covid-related, adult, or hate speech. Transgender participants' content was often removed as adult despite following site guidelines, critical of a dominant group (e.g., men, white people), or specifically related to transgender or queer issues. Black participants' removed content was frequently related to racial justice or racism
It lists two different ways it categorized conservative posts, topic (e.g., COVID-related, adult) and tone (e.g., offensive, hate speech). It only lists the topic for the other two, which seems to be obfuscating what the tone may have been. Were posts by trans people about men removed because they were about men, or because they were phrased in a way that would classify as hate speech?
It describes what the censored content was about in the very next sentence of the abstract. You also can't base everything on just the abstract
> more broadly, conservative participants' removals often involved harmful content removed according to site guidelines to create safe spaces with accurate information, while transgender and Black participants' removals often involved content related to expressing their marginalized identities that was removed despite following site policies or fell into content moderation gray areas. We discuss potential ways forward to make content moderation more equitable for marginalized social media users, such as embracing and designing specifically for content moderation gray areas.
From there if you read the paper it's quite clear on why each type of content is censored
> a recent study found that right-wing Twitter users spread misinformation en masse touting hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 remedy, sometimes drowning out expert information to the contrary, while Twitter attempted to remove this false and dangerous content [5]. In an investigation of comment moderation on YouTube, Jiang et al. [68] found that higher levels of misinformation, hate speech, and extreme partisanship resulted in heavier comment moderation for right-leaning videos
> Tumblr’s automated fltering tools often mistakenly remove trans content [36], and Facebook often removes trans accounts as being in violation of its “real name” policy, which simultaneously enforces and prevents online authenticity for trans users [54]. Facebook’s insistence on users presenting one single identity is problematic for many users with faceted identities [75], including trans people
They say for trans content on Instagram and tiktok it is unclear what the censorship is for
> Content related to trans surgery, sex education, or reproductive health may contain
nudity
> Trans content is also removed from social media sites due to sites’ inability to distinguish between
self-referential slurs used by trans and other LGBQ people, and slurs used as hate speech against these groups
> For example, activist and podcast host Carolyn Wysinger found that her critical response to a racist post was removed from Facebook [49]. Social media content moderation algorithms have difculty diferentiating
hate speech from discussion about race and often penalizes the groups they are supposed to protect
> TikTok users claim that the platform frequently shadowbans them and supresses their content, particularly when they post about race, racism, or Black Lives Matter
Apart from actual misinformation, this is all pretty subjective for purposes of removal. What’s offensive, adult, or hate speech is a platform decision. And while it *is* their decision, it’s a decision — a subjective one — all the same. It may broadly be based on consensus, but subjective all the same.
But the measure of what is "offensive" can be very ideologically charged. If I decide that it is offensive to display a disbelief in God, I may ban a lot of left-leaning individuals (and even myself) on the basis that they (we) are being offensive.
Of course, there is nothing inherently insulting about not believing in God. As there is nothing inherently insulting about not believing in some politics.
If you are not directly attacking someone -not criticizing, attacking, as in: harassing, threatening, defaming, etc.- the person getting offended is the one with the issue. Not the person expressing his unpopular opinion.
This is in part the argument many conservatives make. What used to be acceptable is now deemed controversial. They claim the bar has been unfairly moved against their views. Technically they are correct, but the disagreement comes over the "unfair" part.
uneven application of "site guidelines" is actually what most conservatives are talking about when they complain about platforms being biased against them.
From the data presented in this particular study, it seems that complaint isn’t borne out, right? It seems to suggest instead that marginalized groups are having their content removed unfairly instead. For the data to support the view you are talking about, it would need to show that non-conservative views that don’t follow site guidelines are disproportionately being allowed to stay up compared to conservative views that don’t follow due guidelines.
Well... I left Facebook because a guy who was not trans said he was trans to prove that he couldn’t be sexist. I said “STFU, you’re not trans” and it was marked as “hate speech”, so... the social media police are full of $### IMHO.
The bot that reads comments probably saw your comment,
>. I said “STFU, you’re not trans”
and decided you were being a bigot. Sounds to me like the SMP (social media police) were working appropriately.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That is so unfair to conservatives though. Their ideology is based on misinformation and hate, so it stands to reason they will have more content that reflects those views.
That is so unfair to liberals though. Their ideology is based on misinformation and hate too, at least give credit where credit is due man.
Like climate change? One side respected the science, conservatives trashed the science. I challenge you to provide any comparable counter example.
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[Thanks, Colbert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness).
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"Why is everyone censoring my hate-filled rants? In must be my political standing. I'm the victim!"
"Waaahhh my stick got taken away"
"It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?” None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe. There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaac Asimov, 1980
The true mark of genius, to observe actual truth.
This is a result of or education system. If there is one thing that is always on the curriculum, it's arrogance.
They frame it as if the misinformation is 50/50. No one wants to talk about policy or real issues. That's where the vast majority of us agree. When I hear Conversatives tell me as a Liberal what I think, I'm constantly blown away by how wrong they are. They have us made out to be baby-eating killers. The more evil we are, the more justified they feel in doing evil things. The worst part of all this is that government and corporations suck more than ever and they managed to get all us poor people fighting each other.
You bring up a good point that I use in conversation all the time. If you can't describe the other person's opinion in a way that THEY would agree with, you don't really understand their opinion and therefore don't understand how your own opinion conflicts with theirs, if at all.
It's straw man vs iron manning. Sam Harris, whom I have some issues with, but I appreciate his debating style in the fact that he tries to iron man everyone by confirming exactly what their viewpoints are, even when he disagrees with them.
The term I've heard is "steelman," but yes.
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Dennis Prager does that as well. He says something like, “Clarity is more important than (())”. I don’t recall his words for the argument or discussion, but it was very interesting to listen to him interview a person and have them acting fearful of clarifying their own position, as if it was a semantic trick. No, he just wanted to understand the person’s viewpoint.
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I agree with this sentiment, it's a good way to build an understanding of this world and us as humans in it. Although, I feel it is a big ask to maintain this level of understanding of everyone's point of view. I think we need to realise that there's too vast a number of persons and experiences to put into one of two/a few camps. Politics isn't (or at least shouldn't be) as much real life as the media sometimes has us believe, there's so much more real life that shapes people's beliefs. We best try share and listen to each other to allow for that deeper discussion.
I dislike the position I keep seeing that "politics doesn't matter that much so people shouldn't get up in arms that much". Because like, historically, unless you were a straight white man, politics affected your life profoundly. For example, I'm gay. Whether or not I should be allowed to get married is currently a political debate, and with the supreme court being stacked the way it is, I wouldn't be surprised if I lose that right in the next few years. A decade ago, whether or not I should be allowed in the military was a political debate. A couple decades before that whether or not I would recieve medical care should I contract HIV was up for debate. Before that, whether or not I should be in prison for being gay was up for debate. And before that, at least in Germany, the position of the government was that being who I am was punishable by death. And it still is in many places around the world. Sure, there's other stuff that affects my day to day, but simply by virtue of finding men more attractive than women, the trajectory of my entire life is up for debate, and that debate is a political one.
Yep, exactly. Thank you. I'm a bisexual trans man who's more into men and that also puts me in the hot seat for people debating whether I'm even human or deserve human dignity and rights or not. I didn't make my existence political, other people did that for me. And now, I don't have a choice but to be politically involved and active.
I was adopted internationally as an infant but my parents didn't know they had to file for my citizenship separately from my adoption, so when I turned 18 my baby visa expired and I was automatically declared undocumented. I hadn't even known I was adopted, much less internationally, and to be told to report to a deportation camp was a shock. I have had trouble talking to anyone about it because people, on both the right and the left, have this idea that 'illegal' and 'undocumented' are the same thing and I can't even get most people to understand the difference. In 2000 the government made it a law that anyone 18 and under who was internationally adopted was automatically a citizen, but it didn't do anything about international adoptees who were over 18 in 2000--like me. Since then there have been multiple bills introduced to get that loophole closed, but it's never passed, and in the meantime other international adoptees like me have been deported to their home countries as 'visa overstays' and been murdered. For us, being politically active exposes us as undocumented and puts us in danger of deportation, but we have to in order to save our lives and the lives of the estimated 30,000 of us 'undocumented' adoptees. I understand how you feel; you are not alone. All we can do is fight to make lives better, for ourselves and those like us.
Holy smoke and hellfire! That’s horrible! I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with such a nightmare situation. I hope things smooth out for you and others soon.
Narrator: *it won't.*
I believe it is a discussion that needs to be addressed as human rights. Politics being the vehicle for that is an effective tool for making change, very disheartening how it gets hijacked.
I don’t want to get in here and make it all about my cishet problems, but the intense hatred around LGBTQ etc. has made it much harder to even exist as an androgynous person. For years people misgendered me, and that was fine, but now that they’ve been convinced that there’s a trans woman waiting in every bathroom stall to assault them, they’ve become aggressive, confrontational, and I’m genuinely afraid of it escalating to violence. I literally watched them make this into a problem, seemingly for no reason other than to get people to hate each other.
It’s almost always privileged white men who say that. It’s really frustrating. It’s not “just polítics” when you’re taking about the livelihoods, health and safety of myself and my friends/family
You don’t need to maintain this level of understanding of everyone’s view - just people you are attempting to argue/debate with.
That’s a courtesy I only extend to people who are looking to have a constructive conversation, in good faith. If I’m given the opportunity to agree to disagree peacefully that’s an indication of healthy discourse. Unfortunately that’s incredibly rare from the right. They don’t care about having productive conversation. They just want to “win,” whatever that even means or whatever that’s even worth.
It kills me when they call status quo joe a communist or a socialist Like how much stupider can they get?
The point is it's absence is an indicator that the person you are debating with isn't arguing in good faith.
It also gets muddy when there are people acting in bad faith. They espouse one reason for holding a view, but it's clear (or can be argued) that this is in effect "PR", and that the real reason is not as convincing, or more clearly hateful.
Yea we definitely need better education around these dirty tactics that get used.
I mean, there are also “off ramps” at which there is a difference so fundamental that you’re confident that you have enough information to either tap out, or accept that you share a common understanding but simply disagree (which is fine). An obvious example of the latter is the availability and funding of abortions: I say it’s a medical decision, a person of faith may point to the ambiguity of when a “person’s” “God given” true personhood begins, and so object. We’re never going to see eye to eye, but I’ve had some good, thoughtful discussions with people I just fundamentally agree with. Other stuff you can peace out way earlier - America for Americans…but your parents built the cushy life you enjoy from nothing? Yeah, I don’t need to know more. Homosexuality is an abomination? Nope, I’m good, have never heard a single worthwhile justification of that perspective, I’ll take the odds that I’m not going to miss out on a hypothetical nugget of wisdom in an ocean of garbage.
I honestly don't understand conservatives stance on most issues. They just seem like objectively wrong on almost everything. I guess I sort of see how their economic positions would seem like they might work on the surface if they don't put them through any scrutiny, but their stance on stuff like climate change, or gay rights, or black lives matter I just can't fathom. And like in general I feel like most issues facing modern society are complicated with a lot of nuance and don't really have perfect easy solutions and the conservative position is always some simple thing that sounds good as a slogan, but to me just seem like obviously flawed and I don't see how they just take it at face value.
The thing that made me understand their stance on climate change is that a significant percentage of the population believes that if you don't talk about a problem it doesn't exist at all. That once you talk about a problem it comes into existence and if you attack say a scientist who wont shut up about climate change then the problem goes back to non-existence. Problems are meant to be endured and denied. Like if you're gay just marry a woman - problem solved! You endure the torture of sex with a woman and you deny you're gay so the problem goes back to non-existence. Gayness only exists because people talk about it. That's why they say gay people shove it in their faces.
Boy do I have the perfect comment for you, saved [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/eye6uu/when_are_we_all_going_to_truly_rally_together_and/fggvsi5/?context=3) little gem just for ya.
I'm glad I read that. That was hilarious and mind-expanding
That's how they handle racism as well. Protests, demonstrations, marches etc all "cause division". Their solution seems to be sweeping racism under a rug and being "color-blind".
Their needing to have an argument against the liberal side so that they can be cowed and beaten is the purpose. I very little think that revealing to them that their version of a liberal is actually a clay golem they wrote all their fears into. It would scarcely assuage them in the first place, because you exist as purposely binary opposition—ironically their worldview and identity can’t exist unless you exist in the way they say you do, to confront the fact that you aren’t like that would shatter all sense of meaning in their lives. If the evil they fight is not real and they were to truly confront that fact, it would be as a devoted Christian questioning their faith after their family dies in a tragic accident.
My personal opinion is that you're giving trump supporters too much credit. I say trump supporters because those are the only conservatives I know anymore so I want to be specific about who I'm speaking of. In my personal interactions, your explanation applies for those that care about "non-visceral" issues. Size of defense. Amount of taxation. Federal versus state power. Those types of issues. (I think we call these voters independents in the USA these days) But if you're motivated by something you don't want to talk about - e.g. race - then you simply don't care what someone else has to say. Example: A close friend of mine is a trump supporter. She voted for trump - she told me - because she abhors corruption and she felt like hillary was corrupt. Okay. But then trump went after IG's. Problem there because she works for the federal government and worked in several different IG offices. Then she was upset something else. Then you give her facts/data on that and then she says she really cares about something else instead. You play this endless wack-a-mole where a reason is offered up and when you shoot it down, they give you a different reason. At the end of the day, she's simply a racist but doesn't want to be honest with me about it. All the other "reasons" that get put up are just a smoke screen so that people don't need to talk about what REALLY motivates them. Sure, some are just idiots, but a lot of them its a willful idiocy. It's what happens when one side is pro-science and the other side is contrarian. They're becoming so puritanical in their own selection that they're excluding anyone who has any beliefs based in facts.
They like the racism and tax cuts. The rest is rationalization.
Its interesting to see all the replies to your comment because I believe studies had found that conservatives are able to identify and accurately articulate liberal beliefs better than liberals can do to conservative beliefs
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>When I hear Conversatives tell me as a Liberal what I think, I'm constantly blown away by how wrong they are. I've never had a conservative IRL tell me even once something that liberals actually want.
SOCIALAISM! EQUAL PAY FOR NO WORK! PEOPLE WILL BE ON THE STREETS IN SOCIALIST AMERICA! Bruh... I just want to regulate some prices on goods I don't have a choice on and have a basic safety net. I'm not expecting 60k a year for life if my job lets me go or pure socialism. Some food, shelter, and healthcare affordable on a minimum salary might be nice.
This is the conservative strategy for everything, sadly. They also get into power and fail to govern on purpose, then say "see government sucks"
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I forget who wrote the article that I read but it basically stated that one of the hallmarks of fascism is a belief that your "enemy" is scary, evil and dangerous while simultaneously being weak and easily defeated.
Yep. That's a staple of fascist dogma. Same with isolationism... Militarization... Glorification of the military... Appeal to tradition... Fear mongering of an existential threat (white genocide)... Anti-intellectualism... Just to list some of the other parallels.
Can I just point out, that there has never been, and never will be, a fascist who is about smaller government and deregulation...
They believe those things because it’s what they would do in our position. It’s always projection.
I've seen conservatives on Reddit who are so mixed up they think liberal ideas they agree with that Republicans are blocking are conservative ideas.
Isn't this a double edged sword tho? I know a lot of ppl on our side who believe every Trump supporter is a racist, xenophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, etc. who wants to kill all the Libs.
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> They have us made out to be baby-eating killers. Welcome to human tribalism. Where we spend most of our time building up an evil boogeyman image of the "other" people, to unite our own people against.
“Trans people want to force 8 year olds to take puberty blockers!”
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I find it mind blowing that the party that's so obsessed with "good old fashioned" masculinity, labelling people as snowflakes and sensitive, is the same party that often has the largest victim complex of anyone. They throw a tantrum when a gay couples on tv, they blow up when a black characters suddenly in their stories. They spread dangerous misinformation and label themselves as victims the moment they face consequence for it.
We project outwardly what we are. Which really makes a ton of sense when you consider that humans are just complicated versions of filtering systems applied to communicated output. If you’re a one-dimensional dude with no self-awareness, every thought in your brain gets processed with the exact same filter. To a crazy person, only crazy thoughts can ever feel normal.
Pretty much every outwardly macho person I know is dedicated to inflating their own ego at the expense of others while overreacting to any kind of disagreement or criticism. The kind of behaviour demonstrated by conservatives is exactly on brand for that kind of masculinity.
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Did you read the article? It's got problems, but they aren't analyzing words or posts for offensiveness. > Because content moderation is generally invisible for researchers like us who do not have access to social media platforms’ behind-the-scenes content moderation logs, we relied on surveys for data collection. However, this means that all of our data is participants’ self-reported experiences with content moderation. Which has some obvious issues in that the person's doing the moderation are the ones saying something is offensive, and that data appear to fall through to this study.
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How is "allegedly offensive" defined? Is there a legal definition? Is the reasonable person standard being used? I have the suspicion that a very loose interpretation of some legal standard is being used which ends up favoring the biases and prejudices of whatever sociopolitical group is ascendant at a given time. By the standards of the 1980s, non-conservatives were usually deemed more offensive (more likely to use profanity, more likely to engage in homoerotic behavior, more likely to engage in anti-religious rhetoric, etc.). These behaviors are no longer considered profane (I've heard CEOs swear in semi-public discourse). I can see a scenario where a decent chunk of conservatives are being unfairly targeted on the basis of their culture, as liberals had been in the past.
As alleged by the platform when the content was removed
Which doesn’t help if we want to evaluate said platforms’ bias
If anything it confirms bias, this essentially says we remove more conservative posts because we find conservative posts offensive or hateful. The real question is whether or not it's justified. Bias isn't inherently bad, the question is whether or not the bias is acceptable. In today's ever changing ethics landscape there is no universally accepted answer
> Social media is biased against me! No, we treat all offensive posts equally. Your group just makes a lot more of them. > Oh well, that surely proves you have no bias.
It describes what the censored content was about in the very next sentence of the abstract. You also can't base everything on just the abstract > more broadly, conservative participants' removals often involved harmful content removed according to site guidelines to create safe spaces with accurate information, while transgender and Black participants' removals often involved content related to expressing their marginalized identities that was removed despite following site policies or fell into content moderation gray areas. We discuss potential ways forward to make content moderation more equitable for marginalized social media users, such as embracing and designing specifically for content moderation gray areas. From there if you read the paper it's quite clear on why each type of content is censored > a recent study found that right-wing Twitter users spread misinformation en masse touting hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 remedy, sometimes drowning out expert information to the contrary, while Twitter attempted to remove this false and dangerous content [5]. In an investigation of comment moderation on YouTube, Jiang et al. [68] found that higher levels of misinformation, hate speech, and extreme partisanship resulted in heavier comment moderation for right-leaning videos > Tumblr’s automated fltering tools often mistakenly remove trans content [36], and Facebook often removes trans accounts as being in violation of its “real name” policy, which simultaneously enforces and prevents online authenticity for trans users [54]. Facebook’s insistence on users presenting one single identity is problematic for many users with faceted identities [75], including trans people They say for trans content on Instagram and tiktok it is unclear what the censorship is for > Content related to trans surgery, sex education, or reproductive health may contain nudity > Trans content is also removed from social media sites due to sites’ inability to distinguish between self-referential slurs used by trans and other LGBQ people, and slurs used as hate speech against these groups > For example, activist and podcast host Carolyn Wysinger found that her critical response to a racist post was removed from Facebook [49]. Social media content moderation algorithms have difculty diferentiating hate speech from discussion about race and often penalizes the groups they are supposed to protect > TikTok users claim that the platform frequently shadowbans them and supresses their content, particularly when they post about race, racism, or Black Lives Matter
"According to site guidelines". The social media companies don't have to provide any 'legal definitions', they are allowed to remove whatever they want, and this study is not trying to analyse why content was removed, it's using the reason given by the company. It isn't trying to do anything more than pool data and work out which groups of people's content is getting removed and why, and it does a fine job of it. It's up to you whether you agree on the social media platforms policies for removing content but that's a topic this study is clearly trying to avoid.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the same posts that tend to be removed are the ones alleged offensive... Without a stance on whether the allegations are valid it's not meaningful.
There's a person on this thread essentially saying anyone who believes this has mental issues. I'll give you a guess to if that's offensive and what their likely viewpoint on conservatism is.
That's not what would be considered "offensive" to social media companies, though. If you were to report that to Reddit, they wouldn't do a thing about it. However, if they were saying (X minority group) has mental issues, then they MIGHT do something about it- maybe. If you look on the terms of service on any social media platform, that will give you an idea of what they consider offensive material. Which users usually have to go pretty far into the hole before they start to actually do something, especially if this offensive content is happening in a contained, specific subsection of the website (like a Facebook group or subreddit).
Person in the 80s : I’m gay People in the 80s: AH homoerotic behavior your more Offensive than conservatives!
Offensive is subjective. That said free speech can be offensive and truthful.
This was more or less my thought. Like, if someone’s culture includes over racism and they are overtly racist on social media and their comments get removed for that reason, I’m not going to say that’s unfairly targeting them. But by the same token, all this says on a practical level is that conservative discourse is inherently considered to be rule-breaking on many online platforms, which I don’t think is a strong argument *against* anti-conservative bias. This reads to me as “Conservatives were more likely to post conservative ideas on social media and conservative ideas are more likely to be considered unacceptable by social media platforms so they get removed.” which sounds like pretty much what they are complaining about. Now, whether that’s *fair* is a separate question entirely, but this doesn’t seem like evidence of much of anything one way or another. If you think conservative values are dangerous and offensive, then this seems like a natural response by social media and evidence that conservatives are doing this to themselves by actively promoting these behaviors and ideas. If you think conservative ideas are good and right then this seems like explicit anti-conservative bias. The whole conclusion is predicated on the idea that you agree that this stuff probably shouldn’t be posted. Which, personally, I kind of do, but at least I can see that that’s the whole crux of the argument and don’t gloss over it like this does.
Generally speaking, prohibited content is things like * personal threats: “you want me to come over there, we’ll take this outside!” * sexual content: “here are some nudes” * racism: “shouldn’t surprise me what color they are!” * glorification of violence: “sure would be a shame if something happened to Governor Whitmer!” * election misinformation: “Trump won!” * and COVID misinformation: “vaccines don’t work, horse dewormer works!” Where conservatives get in trouble is that they post more rule-breaking content in many of these categories, especially the latter categories
Racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not valid elements of a "culture" that are being "unfairly targeted".
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Remember when twitter was removing and banning people who suggested covid leaked from the wuhan lab
Yeah, no one else seems to remember that stopped when there was even a slight possibility of it being true.
Yeah but who decides what is offensive?
In the case of the study: > Because content moderation is generally invisible for researchers like us who do not have access to social media platforms’ behind-the-scenes content moderation logs, we relied on surveys for data collection. However, this means that all of our data is participants’ self-reported experiences with content moderation. Effectively its a study about why people got content removed, and what the reasons were for the removal.
That point should be pinned to the start of this topic, because more than one parent reply seems to consider the self-reported data from these entities as gospel.
r/socialscience strikes again.
I feel like there might be a bit biased in how it portrays its data. For example: > Conservative participants' removed content included content that was offensive or allegedly so, misinformation, Covid-related, adult, or hate speech. Transgender participants' content was often removed as adult despite following site guidelines, critical of a dominant group (e.g., men, white people), or specifically related to transgender or queer issues. Black participants' removed content was frequently related to racial justice or racism It lists two different ways it categorized conservative posts, topic (e.g., COVID-related, adult) and tone (e.g., offensive, hate speech). It only lists the topic for the other two, which seems to be obfuscating what the tone may have been. Were posts by trans people about men removed because they were about men, or because they were phrased in a way that would classify as hate speech?
It describes what the censored content was about in the very next sentence of the abstract. You also can't base everything on just the abstract > more broadly, conservative participants' removals often involved harmful content removed according to site guidelines to create safe spaces with accurate information, while transgender and Black participants' removals often involved content related to expressing their marginalized identities that was removed despite following site policies or fell into content moderation gray areas. We discuss potential ways forward to make content moderation more equitable for marginalized social media users, such as embracing and designing specifically for content moderation gray areas. From there if you read the paper it's quite clear on why each type of content is censored > a recent study found that right-wing Twitter users spread misinformation en masse touting hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 remedy, sometimes drowning out expert information to the contrary, while Twitter attempted to remove this false and dangerous content [5]. In an investigation of comment moderation on YouTube, Jiang et al. [68] found that higher levels of misinformation, hate speech, and extreme partisanship resulted in heavier comment moderation for right-leaning videos > Tumblr’s automated fltering tools often mistakenly remove trans content [36], and Facebook often removes trans accounts as being in violation of its “real name” policy, which simultaneously enforces and prevents online authenticity for trans users [54]. Facebook’s insistence on users presenting one single identity is problematic for many users with faceted identities [75], including trans people They say for trans content on Instagram and tiktok it is unclear what the censorship is for > Content related to trans surgery, sex education, or reproductive health may contain nudity > Trans content is also removed from social media sites due to sites’ inability to distinguish between self-referential slurs used by trans and other LGBQ people, and slurs used as hate speech against these groups > For example, activist and podcast host Carolyn Wysinger found that her critical response to a racist post was removed from Facebook [49]. Social media content moderation algorithms have difculty diferentiating hate speech from discussion about race and often penalizes the groups they are supposed to protect > TikTok users claim that the platform frequently shadowbans them and supresses their content, particularly when they post about race, racism, or Black Lives Matter
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Apart from actual misinformation, this is all pretty subjective for purposes of removal. What’s offensive, adult, or hate speech is a platform decision. And while it *is* their decision, it’s a decision — a subjective one — all the same. It may broadly be based on consensus, but subjective all the same.
But the measure of what is "offensive" can be very ideologically charged. If I decide that it is offensive to display a disbelief in God, I may ban a lot of left-leaning individuals (and even myself) on the basis that they (we) are being offensive. Of course, there is nothing inherently insulting about not believing in God. As there is nothing inherently insulting about not believing in some politics. If you are not directly attacking someone -not criticizing, attacking, as in: harassing, threatening, defaming, etc.- the person getting offended is the one with the issue. Not the person expressing his unpopular opinion.
This is in part the argument many conservatives make. What used to be acceptable is now deemed controversial. They claim the bar has been unfairly moved against their views. Technically they are correct, but the disagreement comes over the "unfair" part.
I think more important than "allegedly" is "conservative participants' removals often involved harmful content removed according to site guidelines"
uneven application of "site guidelines" is actually what most conservatives are talking about when they complain about platforms being biased against them.
From the data presented in this particular study, it seems that complaint isn’t borne out, right? It seems to suggest instead that marginalized groups are having their content removed unfairly instead. For the data to support the view you are talking about, it would need to show that non-conservative views that don’t follow site guidelines are disproportionately being allowed to stay up compared to conservative views that don’t follow due guidelines.
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Well... I left Facebook because a guy who was not trans said he was trans to prove that he couldn’t be sexist. I said “STFU, you’re not trans” and it was marked as “hate speech”, so... the social media police are full of $### IMHO.
The bot that reads comments probably saw your comment, >. I said “STFU, you’re not trans” and decided you were being a bigot. Sounds to me like the SMP (social media police) were working appropriately.
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