Do you have data showing this? The last thing this debate needs is rumor and speculation.
Consider:
- Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between somebody's finger on a button and technical difficulties. (Did this hashtag disappear from autocomplete because someone removed it, or because the backend index is messed up?)
- Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint.
Political identity doesn't work either. Someone who's an unabashed Republican tweeting about, say, abortion, there's a very high likelihood that whatever they say about it is negative regardless of the content of the message, but how do you get a computer to understand that without a lot of false positives?
- Nobody from the companies is ever going to admit to hiding/removing content for political reasons. (Barring whistleblowers of questionable veracity, c.f. Facebook)
That only leaves generalities and user reports to work from, which have their own reliability problems. We're talking sociology/political science at the end of the day, and it's opinions all the way down, with very little hard data.
> Twitter is structured in such a way that direct censorship can't be differentiated between
Twitter provides data to researchers, at least in some situations, and may provide data about these events.
> Differentiating between "left" and "right" political posts is not possible from an objective, programmatic standpoint.
AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right.
> AFAIK, there are well-known methods in political science for defining left and right.
Small problem: political science isn't computer science.
Small problem: if the data they provide to the public can't be trusted, then why would the data provided to scientists be any better?
The parent comment is valid. hackuser isn't asking for a double-blind study with p=0.05 and n=[all Tweets ever produced] ; she or he is asking for any evidence whatsoever to substantiate the claim.
I predict that more people will want to visit if they see it as the only outlet where they can freely express their opinions on a topic. The vast majority of people don't seem to be able to sustain silence when they have a differing opinion, they need an outlet.
If they cannot express that on Twitter/FB, they Will find another way.
Funnily enough this will have a much larger negative effect on the "hate speech" movements goals than the existing presence of so called "hate speech".
I think there are cases that should be easy on both sides and I would hazard a guess that they simply aren't dealt with the same. Sure, hate being removed is objectively good, but if only one side of the hate is removed, it will cause friction.
This actions are made BECAUSE OF right-wing hate on facebook/twitter where people post that they should kill other people, politician, refugees. That's why they focus on this problem right now. Does this mean left-wing hate speech at the same level will not be deleted? I don't think so.
Said groups could however be characterized by a mob mentality that leads to attacking peoples livelihood, harassing peoples families, sending death threats, etc, usually driven by social media, and hopefully something we could both agree is over the top, unacceptable, and indeed openly hateful.
My comment was ridiculously measured. I didn't even pick sides in the actual topic. I definitely didn't pick sides politically. You seem to have chosen one for me, although I regret to inform you you have assumed incorrectly.
Your comment was not measured. You made it impossible to have or continue a productive conversation. If I would have been the person you apparently think I am, you would not have won me over. You would have alienated me further. But I suspect that's part of it all. Some people don't care about productive conversation. They care about being "right" in front of other people who also want to be "right".
More substantive comment: why do we care about a person's race or gender when they use particular words?
Sure it's complex, convoluted, and controversial.. but as long as we put the right people in charge to make the decisions for us, it will all work out fairly.
I'll not go into that concept further for fear of igniting another tired flame war.
Similarly, if a white person publicly says something discriminatory against black people, it's a much different context than if a black person says the same thing. As an simple example, imagine a two black people in a room of 40 white nationalists: If one black person says to another, "hey n-!", that's much different for the person hearing it than if one of the white nationalists says the same thing.
There's a lot more to that word, including black people taking power for themselves and away from racists by using it (really a brilliant, innovative way to push back), but that's too much to write here and now.
I've yet to meet the democratic nominee who refers to an entire ethnic group as "rapists and murderers".
Maybe twitter removes a lot more posts from the right because those posts are actually racist.
Here's an ArsTechnica article on climate change[1] where the very first comment advocates the murder of those who disagree with the liberal position. It has a positive score and many others in the thread defend it.
Liberals can dish it out too, and moderators let them get away with it.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/climate-hustle-wants-...
He was claiming the Mexican government was purposefully or tacitly sending their problems across the border.
You can disagree with this claim, but don't misconstrue what his message was.
He's also cited this article[0] in reference to the point he's trying to make.
http://fusion.net/story/17321/is-rape-the-price-to-pay-for-m...
One side of the spectrum goes out of their way to spew hate and abuse and incite violence. The other preaches tolerance and respect. You can't really play the "there are two sides therefore the two sides are equivalent just opposed" game here, I think even if you still could manage to do it pre-Trump, Trump killed it by choosing to be objectively worse by all measurements and accounts.
And with stuff like the trust and safety council on Twitter and the news topic biases on Facebook (as well as documented examples where they worked with governments to remove speech the government didn't like, such as that about immigration in Germany), I suspect it'll just cause yet more political divisions and drama on these sites.