The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives

Excerpt from
False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies
Censor Conservatives (link), by PAUL M. BARRETT AND J. GRANT SIMS
(NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights)

This accusation—that social media platforms suppress conservatives— riles a Republican base that has long distrusted the mainstream media and is prone to seeing public events as being shaped by murky liberal plots....

The claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it. No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that search-es are being manipulated to favor liberal interests.

Even anecdotal evidence of supposed bias tends to crumble under close examination. Take Trump’s exclusion from Twitter and Facebook. These actions, while unprecedented, were reasonable responses to Trump’s repeated violation of platform rules against undermining election results and inciting violence. If anything, the platforms previously had given Trump a notably wide berth because of his position, seeking to appease him, despite his demagogic and routinely false claims.

Initiatives to comb out false content disproportionately hurt conservatives. That’s because the right spreads more content that violates platform rules than the left. In light of this discrepancy, it stands to reason that right-leaning content would face labeling, demotion, or removal more frequently than left-leaning content.

Using U.S. samples collected during a 90-day period in late 2017 and early 2018, the Oxford Internet Institute divided Twitter users into 10 groups, ranging from Trump supporters to progressives. Trump supporters, the researchers found, circulated more “junk news” than all of the other groups combined. Using different groupings for their Facebook analysis, the Oxford team found that “extreme hard-right pages” circulated more junk news than all the other audiences put together. The researchers defined “junk news” as deliberately deceptive information purporting to be real news.27

Researchers affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University observed a similar imbalance in the production of false content: “No fact emerges more clearly from our analysis of how four million political stories were linked, tweeted, and shared over a three-year period [2015 - 2017] than that there is no symmetry in the architecture and dynamics of communication within the right-wing media ecosystem and outside of it,” the Harvard team wrote in a 2018 book called Network Propaganda. They underscored “the central role of the radicalized right in creating the current crisis of disinformation and misinformation.

Scholars from Harvard, Northeastern University, and the University of Buffalo published congruent findings in 2019. In a study of more than 16,000 Twitter accounts active during the 2016 election season, they determined that fewer than 5% of people on the left or in the center ever shared “fake news.” But 11% of people on the right and 21% of people on the extreme right shared fake news. These scholars defined “fake news” as the output of entities that lack editorial norms and processes for ensuring accuracy

 

It is the latest shtick by cons to pretend that they are victims rather than the predators that they are.
The Conservative Cult of Victimhood
Trump was a perpetrator who thought himself a victim, and American society has indulged that same illusion among Trump supporters.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/conservatism-reaches-dead-end/617629/

 

Problem with the bolded is that they created the rules specifically to target the right and Trump to begin with. The logic they use is the same logic people used in rationalizing things like literacy requirements to vote--law's the law, not our fault we enforced it!!

That said, on balance, social media platforms have at various points targeted groups from both sides of the aisles. The LGBT community in particular have been targeted in the past by some for fear their content would be pornographic or offensive.

Back and forth the pendulum swings

 

Censorship is rampant in the US, the Land of the Frightened and Home of the Brainwashed.

 

yep, cancer culture at full swing, just ask Kaepernick

The President of the United States was calling for them to be fired for using their free speech rights and calling them SOB's

 

It is not a "false claim". I just got off of a weeks censor by Facebook because I posted a joke that made democrats look bad.

 

Censors are also liars.

TAKING SIDES: Facebook censors Catholic professor’s book on ‘toxic femininity.’

Told seller that it violated a rule against selling ‘adult products’

Facebook has censored posts promoting a book from a Catholic professor that criticized feminism.

Facebook refuses to even discuss it.

Gress has also experienced problems with Amazon.

Gress said that Amazon was cancelling orders and only making the book available through third-party sellers on Amazon. The book was reinstated on January 27 and out of stock the same day. On January 28 it was in stock again and then out of stock about an hour later.

Amazon refuses to discuss it.

 

Anecdotal evidence is a poor basis for judging whether or not there's a concerted effort to censor some specific ideology, because it entails confirmation bias - and often also entails drawing unwarranted conclusions. The study I linked to does a more systematic analysis. Find a systematic analysis that supports your view, instead of just dismissing it - because you could very well be wrong.

Regarding the anecdote you described, I can't make any sense of the complaint about Amazon. I found the book on their site, and it's available for immediate Kindle download, but the hardback book is out of stock. That implies no more than what it says: they've sold what they have, and will get some more. If they didn't want the book out there, they wouldn't sell it on Kindle.

I have no idea what was going on with Facebook, but it sounds like an error. If they're trying to censor it, they're doing a piss-poor job, since it's referenced here:
https://www.facebook.com/CatholicWo...re-from-toxic-femininitychec/785748358450446/

...and you can do a search on Facebook for the book title, and find a number of references.

 

You have my sympathy. I'm still on a permanent ban. I'm the one who enacted it

 

Errors can be made. Without a broad examination of what they do, there is no basis for claiming there's a trend - it's too prone to confirmation bias. The article I linked to described a broad study. It isn't necessarily the last word, but you should at least infer that you might be wrong.

By contrast to your experience, I reported a video posted on Facebook that alleged Mike Pence killed a young boy after having raped him. They did NOT remove the video, and I think this sort of nonsense SHOULD be removed.

 

Really? Who is censoring you now?

I find it really funny how so many of the minions keep screaming censorship all over the damn place. How the hell can you be censored when we all see is how uncensored you really are? It's like having one of those talking dolls that you can't shut the hell up!

 

I have purged myself from all social media so I wouldn't know. Why argue with trolls all day anyway?

At least at PF there is a good solid base to work with, and the mods are readily contactable and do their best to help.

I've committed to spend every second I used to spend scrolling Facebook videos reading books. That's got to leave me better off.

 

If I go onto Twitter or Facebook can I call a M>F transgender a male?

 

Censorship is not a place. Censorship is an action.

 

Thanks for confirming you're not being censored.

 

Thanks for showing that censorship is acceptable to you.

By your logic if I apply for a protest permit to be held at the local park and nothing is scheduled for that park that day by anyone and the city denies me the permit for that location for no reason other than they don't like what the topic will be about but says I can have a permit for a location 5 miles outside of the city then I'm not censored. That is your logic. That is what you accept.

 

WTF does that have to do with censorship?

Your example is with a government agency. That is precisely where they cannot discriminate against you. It has zilch to do with a private company allowing you to violate its T & C.

 

I gave you a way in which even you could understand that censorship is not about a place. Its about an action. Which was the post that you originally responded to. Do try and keep up.

 

This thread is about the censorship of Social Media.

Your example is not even remotely related.

Look, I understand how frustrating it is to keep peddling bs day after day. Take a break. Step away. Go for a walk.

 

All my example did was show that censorship is not a place. That you call that BS is evidence that you are the one wallowing in it.

 

It's BS because it's a private company. I thought conservatives were all for allowing businesses to run without government interference, but now because a bunch of minions are having a temper-tantrum, the gov't has to force them to accept their crazy and dangerous posts? Sorry, but that is really really hypocritical.

Seriously, what is stopping the minions from creating their own platform to post whatever crap they can pull from their asses?

 

1: I'm not conservative.
2: Conservatives do not mind regulations when they are needed. They are against over regulation. Libertarians are the ones against any and all regulation.
3: I am, and have always been, against banning people just because what they say is not agreed with. That is what real free speech is about.
4: Parler...try and get on it.

 

Parler is just an app. Anyone is free to create their own version of FB.

 

An app that was considered as a place that conservatives went to. Now they're banned from every main stream way of getting their app out. Guess its not as easy as "minions from creating their own platform" now is it?

Notice you failed to respond to all my points. Not surprised. You refuse to even acknowledge that censorship is not a place. But an act. So why not refuse to acknowledge other things? Just keep pounding away at the keyboard and moving the goal posts. Eventually I'll shut up. Simply because arguing with brick walls is not my forte.

 

You're the one using the lame analogies.

And what a pathetic excuse. I said create your OWN FB, not an app. You can create a website that would allow you to download Parler or whatever, but rather than trying to solve your dilemma, you continue to cry like a little baby.