Late in Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) dodged a question about whether he and running mate Donald Trump would accept the 2024 election results by pivoting to a favorite topic: what he called the “censorship” of Americans by social media companies, terming it “a much bigger threat to democracy.”
His statement drew on a years-long Republican contention that Silicon Valley tech giants have suppressed conservative views on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. That narrative has underpinned congressional hearings, Republican fundraising campaigns, the dismantling of academic research centers, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, state laws seeking to restrict online content moderation, and multiple lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court this year.
But is it true? Well, yes and no, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Conservatives and Trump supporters are indeed more likely to have their posts on major social media platforms taken down or their accounts suspended than are liberals and Joe Biden supporters, researchers from Oxford University, MIT and other institutions found. But that doesn’t necessarily mean content moderation is biased.
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
Needs more (((triple parentheses))).
Oh, you know the ones
I am naive. Please fill me in.
Sexism, racism, and hatred based on religion or sexual orientation, mostly.
Not to mention doxxing, swatting, brigading, trolling, ban evasion.
Funny how even this is just projection.
Rather than the algorithm being bias, it’s them being bias.
It’s the death threats, hate posts, violent rhetoric, and posing misinformation & disinformation. Simply put, conservatives violate social media ToS’ far more often than liberals.
They violate basic standards of human decency. The social contract is dead in this country thanks to them and their jaundiced god-king.
jaundiced god-king
This is brilliant. I’ll start using it - thank you!
their arguments are always emotion based. because of that, it devolves quickly into nonsense.
This is a long one, and I want to start by saying that your comment is a super popular belief. Even so, I think misses the mark a little bit.
Everything in the political sphere is emotions based. ‘Murder is bad’ isn’t some ultimate truth. We care about other people and ourselves. That emotion then leads to the reasoning that murder is bad and should be illegal. Same goes for everything else.
What conservatives tend to do is say ‘murder is bad’ and ‘there is a group that I hate’. They then abandon the truth of what murder statistics tell them and blame it on the out group which justifies the second emotion. They’re not wrong because it is emotionally centered (again we all do that). They’re wrong because they aren’t willing to examine that emotional motivation vs reality.
All of that to say that if we think the problem is emotionality we are probably making similar mistakes even if the outcome is better. To paraphrase a very true statement in Futurama - There is no scientific consensus that life is valuable.
“Climate change is real and man-made” is not an emotion-based statement. “Outlawing abortion worsens medical outcomes for pregnant women” is not an emotion-based statement. “Children do better in class when the school system offers free lunches” is not an emotion-based statement. “Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around” is not an emotion-based statement.
Frankly, there are an absolute fuck-ton of things that are simple statements of fact that conservatives delusionally take issue with. Factual reality is not a matter of opinion and I’m not only sick and tired of conservatives trying to make it into one, but perhaps even more sick and tired of ‘enlightened centrists’ carrying water for them!
There is a consensus that emotions are bad and should be ignored but if you ask people what they want out of life it’s all emotions: love, happiness, excitement, fullfillment. We denigrate feelings all the time but we didn’t go to the moon for science, it was curiosity and wonder and joy.
Your comment just reminded me that I’m very tired of emotions being dismissed as useless or harmful.
As long as slander laws exist, this will continue to be true. You can’t be conservative and honest. It’s just not physically possible.
There isn’t a republican in my family that isn’t a liar and I have a massive family spanning 26 states. They’re literally all shit and backwards. They just love eating shit and I can’t figure out why. Must love all of the trauma and superstition. Weirdos.
Nature - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Nature:
MBFC: Pro-Science - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceWashington Post - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Washington Post:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source
