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Comment by ebikelaw | Hacker News Reader

A bit of both-sides-ism here. The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint, despite the fact that these companies have bent over backwards to accommodate those views and to give them platforms. Meanwhile only a small fraction of Democrats believe this is very likely, and they aren’t strongly sure about which side is benefiting from the supposed bias.

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> The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint, despite the fact that these companies have bent over backwards to accommodate those views and to give them platforms.

However, that belief isn't totally without basis. Facebook fired its entire trending topics curation team [1], after allegations that its members suppressed conservative stories [2]. Even though Facebook denied that any ideological suppression took place, their actions in firing the team could be interpreted as confirming them, especially considering how badly their algorithm performed without human oversight afterwards.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-...

[2] https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-sup...

In fairness they ban gun related content like gun ads and the leaders of the giants have personally come out in favor of liberal ideals.

I think there's a pretty clear distinction between advertising and organic speech, and also a pretty clear distinction between wanting to restrict how other people use your platform and simply having views of your own.

Advertising is a form of speech.

Restricting the platform is their right. But the issue is people believing they are being censored and by banning certain ads they reenforce that viewpoint.

Choosing who to associate with is also a form of speech.

Somewhat unrelated. Advertisers dont want their to be a clear distinction anymore. Hell pretty soon the most effective marketing strategy wont be shameless plugs but offhanded ones. Ones that sneak in like oh hey yeah I was using x the other day and it helped me with y. Once gun manufactuers catch up it might look something like: popular social media user offhandedly mentions purchase of lgun, posts some pictures firing gun, learning gun safety, talks about how much fun they had. Itll be hard to censor and I wouldnt be shocked.

This is already similar to how a lot of gun culture videos on YouTube operate. Go watch Hickhock45. Guy just shoots and chats about guns in a casual, mostly non-political manner. He’s really popular and the whole shebang is one big (indirect) advertisment for various firearms.

They ban gay content too.

The leaders of Home Depot have come out in favor of conservative ideas. Does that mean Home Depot censors liberal things?

Does Home Depot operate a media platform?

> The poll shows that Republicans almost universally believe that these companies censor their viewpoint

To me it looks like the polls say that they believe these companies censor content, and that these companies also lean left. Nothing about their viewpoints.

There's also lots of evidence to the contrary: Twitter refuses to ban self-identified Nazis who incite violence but there are dozens of instances of people getting banned for saying mean insults to those same Nazis.

Yes that’s what I mean by bending over backwards. Twitter is actually a “safe space” for Nazis.

Making Nazis out to be just a more extreme form of the Republican viewpoint is hardly a good way to engage in discussion about a politically sensitive topic.

I didn't do that, it was just a similar example.

He did say 'self-identified Nazis'. He's talking about people who call themselves Nazis.

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