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Comment by Volker_W | Hacker News Reader

> All my left-wing woke friends are CONVINCED that the social media platforms uphold the white supremacist misogynistic patriarchy... > All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends are CONVINCED the social media platforms uphold the woke BLM/Marxist/LGBTQ agenda...

Not judging and willing to be proved wrong, but the difference seems to be that the left usually wants more censorship, and the right wants less censorship. The far right is usually mad that they got censored but only rarely mad that the left did not get censored. The far left is usually mad that the right did not get censored but only rarely mad that the far left did get censored.

> Because it is not TOPICS that are censored. It is BEHAVIOR.

Again, not judging and willing to be proved wrong, but the right is a lot ... rougher, aggressive ... that the left, even when talking amongst themselves. Pacifists and civil talking people etc. are usually found on the left.

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Back when I was on Twitter, my biggest observation was that the left-right continuum doesn't necessarily help explain things very much by itself. You have to talk about specific coalitions and fan clubs. Here's a very incomplete list:

- On the right: right-wing journalists, right-wing podcast fans, Trump-heads, Cernovich-heads, Peterson-heads, Pepe avatars, right-wing anime avatars, ultra-trads, open neo-Nazis

- On the left: left-wing journalists, Tumblr fans, left-wing podcast fans, K-pop fans (this is a SURPRISINGLY large and powerful group), activist defenders of rights for various marginalized groups, left-wing anime avatars, nonprofit group figures, Antifa, tankies

On each side you have certain groups and certain subsets within those groups who use censorship or censorship-adjacent techniques, like mobbing, character assassination, public shaming, doxxing, or fabricating false and misleading narratives optimized for virality.

The biggest thing you want to avoid is getting into the gun-sights of anyone with a large following, left or right. Or someone who will work tirelessly to doxx or spread lies about you.

The right's already got they wanted censored. Most people don't learn real American History until college. In my view, they're mad in part because the internet now exists, and people are reconsidering figures that maybe shouldn't have ever been put on a pedestal. And a lot of mistakes on the part of the police wouldn't have come to light without smartphones. The right needs to mount a counter-offensive to this. They've got "porn" censored in the media, but gratuitous depictions of gun violence is okay. What's okay to publish is very much biased for the right.

There are issues with the American left, but this isn't really it.

My issue with the right is that these grievances (amongst others) are legitimate, and instead of settling back, figuring it out politically, and doing better, a lot of folks decided that they rather just have power by any means, as if it's some pride thing. There ought to be folks from ethnic minorities (like myself) voting for some mix of both parties, but the politics of the right were unpalatable even before Jan 6. I could vote for folks like Schwarzeneggar, Romney, Murkowski, and Collins, but there's not many more. That's doubly a problem because you always need a counter-balance in Western democracies. I do not want to be voting down the column.

The left fights dirty and illegitimately in its own ways. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than the right, but if you want some neutrality, it's in my view that the dirty fighting is questionable simply because I see it backfiring on both sides. The left creates their own bubble-chamber, which works against them.

If it weren't for gerrymandering securing safety seats for each political party (which ends up benefitting the extremes on both ends), I'd think everyone (including the folks at the "extremes") would be better off. Which isn't to let the moderates off the hook. Part of the reason why there's so much petty drama is because turnout at the primaries is what it is. We all need to take our responsibility in this drama and make things better. There's way too much intellectual laziness and/or regressing to narcissism going on.

Well first, Twitter literally banned the President of the United States while allowing ISIS and other terrorist groups to have free reign. All this tells me is that one of your friend groups is perfectly happy lying to themselves about what is going on.

>Again, not judging and willing to be proved wrong, but the right is a lot ... rougher, aggressive

I am yet to see anyone on the right openly talking about murdering black people, whereas it is common for left wing twitter users to talk about murdering white people (remember the new editor for the New York Times had a number of tweets to that effect). Also, posting pictures of themselves with severed heads of their enemies while covered in blood seems like a thing among left wing users. I am in fact struggling to think of anything "rough" or "aggressive" from the right, even at the most extremes that comes close to the norm of the left on that platform.

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