Not Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals
quillette.com
quillette.com
Thats a pretty poor example. The simple reality is that @potus won't be banned as it will immediately sow the seeds of twitters own destruction.
If you think twitter is bigger than the president of the USA, then im not sure what else to say.
If you want to point to examples as evidence, then what about Kathy Griffith? She can post herself holding a decapitated head of the president and sick mobs on school children because they smirked wearing a maga hat and yet shes not banned.
Why would it not be? It's a worldwide thing, not just for some provincial colony.
> She can post herself holding a decapitated head of the president
Which was clearly a joke.
> and sick mobs on school children
Yep, I'd agree she should be suspended for that.
The second link appears to be about anti-spam suspensions related to people who controlled many different Twitter accounts simultaneously using bots, not content related enforcement.
The third link is about the following tweet:
"Can’t wait for November 4th when millions of antifa supersoldiers will behead all white parents and small business owners in the town square"
That isn't an "innocuous reply to harrassment" as you implied in your first comment.
So far I don't think you've demonstrated the point you were trying to make. None of the examples of these suspensions were replies to harassment.
After being banned for using those words inocuously.
> That isn't an "innocuous reply to harrassment" as you implied in your first comment.
No, that wasn't one of those. It was clearly a joke, however.
> None of the examples of these suspensions were replies to harassment
A fair point. Next time I log into Twitter, I'll make a collection and come back with those, ok? I just didn't happen to have one ready for this discussion at current time.
Journalist are the lifeline of twitter, so they will always be on the side of the mainstream media. If you are leftist/liberal but out of the media bubble (like some trans-esclusionary radical femminists) then you are worse off than conservatives,
Well, she asked for names, not a full dox, but I would agree that she should have been temporarily suspended for that, yep.
> like some trans-esclusionary radical femminists
They tend not to be leftist/liberal in my experience.
Consider the famous example of the baker and the homosexual wedding. Without judging the standard leftist position is significantly less libertarian than the usual position on the right.
I’ve even paid considerably to promote tweets on a mildly controversial topic that got next to no interactions.. never again will I pay twitter like that.
EDIT- re: the article and I don’t see this discussed elsewhere, I wonder if left leaning people are just 4x more likely to use the “flag as offensive” feature, leading Twitter to process and prosecute more conservative viewpoints?
For example: Tranny.
If you say that word in any context, your tweet will not show up in many of your followers timelines and if it was a reply it will only show up if you hit show more at least once.
Maybe thats a good thing overall, but I can't help think about the long term effects when the words you can and cannot say can't easily be understood and we end up in some kind of world where only the most sanitized advertiser friendly tweets are the only ones your able to see without having to dig around all the time.
he provided his whole database of users tracked
Edited to remove snark
The average Trump supporter may be no more likely to break Twitters TOS, we aren't looking at the average here, we are looking at the outliers.
22 bans is absolutely insignificant compared to the millions of users, you can't extrapolate that out to all Trump voters or even the average Trump voter, therefore his argument makes no sense.
That would have an inherent bias against people on the Democratic side.
I'd accept a Stalism/Nazism (or maoism) equivocation.
Marxism is not like Nazism.
Let’s say they were owned by Exxon, their TOS had that talking the negative aspects of fossil fuels was a violation, that would have an inherent anti Democrat bias, even if they didn’t have a stated anti Democrat bias.
Was anyone accusing them of having an anti right wing TOS?
In general I agree with you, but I think you'd have a hell of a time teasing apart the politics of it. Eg if a rule said all statements had to be scientifically proven, is that anti right wing? Is that even wrong in and of itself? How would you balance that out?
That seems perfectly credible.
What needs to be demonstrated, to me, is that the majority of banned provably conservative accounts were not banned for violating Twitter's terms of service, but for their political views, and that an equal or greater ratio of provably liberal accounts with equal or greater following which violated Twitter's terms of service were not banned, in order for political bias to be the more likely reason for the treatment of conservatives.
Here is Twitter's TOS[0], I'd ask you to prove it.
So Kathy griffin doxxing and sending a hate mob after children is not harassment but alex jones having a minor encounter with a CNN journalist is an instantly bannable example of harassment.
I'm pretty sure your just arguing out of bad faith at this point.
> I'm pretty sure your just arguing out of bad faith at this point.
You have no idea what that means, do you?
One key here is the limitations of a "neutrally applied" standard. As others have pointed out, an alternative hypothesis is that the liberal majority is more likely to report violations. This can happen through sheer weight of numbers, it can mean completely neutral application of the standard but non-neutral invocation of it, and the author does nothing to address it.
Another confounding factor has to do with the very nature of conservatism and liberalism. One could argue, and conservatives do argue in other contexts, that the very definition of "hate speech" and the degree to which it is suppressed have a very liberal bias. Those who believe in those standards are more likely to invoke them, even if the two groups are equal in number. Those who do not believe in those standards are more likely to transgress. This is a difference in both invocation of the standard (by users) and its construction, but still not its application (by Twitter's mod team). Again, the author does nothing to address it.
AFAICT, what the author is demanding is equal outcomes despite unequal factors leading to those outcomes. It's an odd position for a conservative to take. Does Richard Hanania believe such affirmative action is justified in other contexts where a particular neutrally applied decision process yields unequal outcomes because of discrimination skewing its inputs? As always on deliberately "contrarian" Quillette, it seems like there's a bit of inconsistency here.
That’s okay, I don’t mind losing some internet points.