Such heavy claims require evidence. Also, it is painting one group as a whole, which reminds me of ...

I don't think it's painting one group as a whole at all. No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist. Only that many alt-right figure heads are.

It's not a heavy claim. With Steve Bannon being appointed to the upcoming White House staff, there's been a parade of examples illustrating the blatant racism of alt-right figureheads.

While I appreciate the sentiment that Democrats lost the election by painting much of the population (uncritically) in very broad unflattering strokes, I don't really think the trend of people saying "Well you just can't talk about a group of people as a whole" is going to last. If you're unwilling to discuss groups of people as a single entity, the entire field of social science makes little sense.

I think maybe that we've lost sight of the fact that any time we talk about a group of people, we're really implicitly having a statistical discussion.

> No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist.

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

- Hillary Clinton, Sep 2016

Many Democrats, myself included thought that particular statement was unnecessarily incendiary. Though, in the bit of text that you quoted, I was mostly referring to the context of this thread. I don't think that there's any doubt that much of the liberal media has broadly painted all Trump supporters as being racists, bigots and xenophobes.

I saw a lot of people on my Twitter feed at the time arguing that actually, half was an understatement and that Clinton should never have backed down on this.

Half is an exaggeration, but they do seem a lot more common among Trump supporters than among Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Bush, and Kasich supporters.

Spend a while in /r/the_donald.

People who frequent that subreddit do not even amount to 0.00001% of the Trump electorate.

So? The same can be said for people who frequent Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Bush, and Kasich forums, but none of those get anywhere near the percentage of racist and similar posts and comments as does /r/the_donald.

So you are projecting opinions of 0.0001% of Trump supporters (or trolls, who knows) to 60M+ people who voted for him? I see a bright career at WaPo or NYT for you :-)

> So you are projecting opinions of 0.0001% of Trump supporters (or trolls, who knows) to 60M+ people who voted for him?

1. No, I'm looking at differences in properties of samples drawn from different populations to estimate differences in those populations. Trump-related online forums have a higher fraction of racists than Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, and Kasich forums do.

If Trump supporters in general had the same level of racism as supporters of those other candidates, then we would expect Trump forums to show about the same level of racism as the forums of those other candidates.

2. You seem to think the size of a sample as a percentage of the population is important. It is not. For large populations it is the absolute number of people in the sample that is important, not the percentage of the population.

I am making the assumption that supporters of various candidates are all about equally likely to decide to post on their candidate's forums. It is possible that there is something about Trump supporters that makes racist Trump supporters more prone to make racist forum posts.

That is what you should be focusing on to criticize my inferences about Trump supporters, rather than basing it on your inadequate understanding of elementary probability and how it applies to determining the sample size needed to make reasonably inferences about a population from a sample.

> I see a bright career at WaPo or NYT for you :-)

Have an upvote. I like it when people who are wrong are at least feisty about it.

Not all of them. They’re people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

> With Steve Bannon being appointed to the upcoming White House staff, there's been a parade of examples illustrating the blatant racism of alt-right figureheads.

I've looked at all the articles claiming that Bannon is "bad" (they use different words, of course), and I'm completely unconvinced. Seems like more of the "all Trump supporters are racist" meme.

The last year of news has pushed me more than ever to read/listen to primary sources. Things have become so distorted left or right, that it seems like the responsible thing to do.

Regarding the attacks towards Steve Bannon, I agree. They are only using examples of what other people who don't like him have said. Here is a great speech and Q+A he gave regarding Judeo-Christian values at the highly respected Dignitatis Humanae Institute [0]. Having listened to this speech amongst others, alongside his writings I can only conclude that what is being pushed are simply smears. Breitbart has taken so much power and money away from the mainstream publications, it is in their interests to take him down.

[0] https://soundcloud.com/buzzfeednews/steve-bannon-at-dhi#c=16...

edit: If anyone would like to dispute my opinion, please for good discussion provide primary sources that originate directly from Steven Bannon.

edit edit: please take a look at the Ask HN I have posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967873

Replying just to post the text of that speech you linked (since the audio is kind of bad), which I also stumbled on the other day in trying to figure this guy out.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-banno...

"No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist."

I have seen that claim hundreds of times in the past few days.

There's a difference between being intentionally and accidentally racist. That is often dropped in conversation, which is why you see different sides disagreeing on that.

In this specific thread? I think context is relevant here.

"reminds me of" != "is".

The article says

"The social network has not given an explanation for its actions."

Banning is fine, but it would be nice if they can actually say in writing, citing reasons and evidence, why they banned them (even if lots of evidence exists elsewhere).

Banning without any explanation isn't of any use to anyone

In the US, the Net Neutrality position describes internet access as a utility, not a luxury. Further the UN declares it a Human Right. If either/both of those positions hold, then the gatekeepers - Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc - suppressing any view or blocking access to any group could be a violation of human rights.

I think that will have to be settled in court, but it will get messy for those companies.

Nobody is being banned from the internet. They are merely being banned by a privately owned American website. Businesses in America have the right to refuse service to any individual provided it is not due to protected status. In America your opinions do not grant you protected status.

ISPs are privately owned American corporations as well. Did you read what you're replying to?

ISPs are considered common carriers, which Net Neutrality addresses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...

I haven't seen this same argument made for websites in particular. If you have good references for that, please do share!

btw, did you create an account just to make this comment? If so, why? It doesn't seem too controversial.

No real reason for the account creation, boredom mostly (I lurk).

And I think that's the point. ISPs are precedent to show that a company being private isn't of itself a good enough reason to let it censor people. Google and Facebook are big enough that I think they should be considered public fora for speech. Hence the term "Gatekeeper" in the OP.

I understand what you're saying, but I know that I'm not qualified to give an informed opinion. So I'd prefer to see a more legitimate source than speculation on HN :)

Just riffing here, but would it be fair to require Amazon to sell any product I want to make available?

If the UN declared your product a Human Right, seems possible.

A litany? Seems an opportunity missed not to produce it rather than resort to mere assertion. If you want to persuade others of your view, that is.