> There is no manipulation going on by “Big Tech”. Your fear mongering is unfounded. Pushing this sort of rhetoric is what created the insurrectionist events a few days ago.

There's definitely manipulation going on by "big tech". Social media has radically distorted political discourse and amplified some trends far beyond what Fox News style media alone could have accomplished.

What's debatable (and perhaps straying into crackpot conspiracy theory territory) is the idea that "Big Tech" has done this deliberately, collectively, and with goals of steering society at large in any particular direction. This hypothesis is a lot more far-fetched than the default assumption that big tech has smaller, more localized concerns about maximizing profit, and cares little for the broader consequences of the interaction between their algorithms and society. (Analogously, it is absurd to suggest that US food companies have a goal of making everyone obese and giving them diabetes and heart disease. They simply want to make more money, and have found ways to optimize their product until it becomes addictive, and they don't care about the long-term or large-scale impact on the public because it's not their job to care.)

> There's definitely manipulation going on by "big tech".

We do it to ourselves. I made this site [1] to review moderation on reddit. It works for accounts, subreddits, threads, and there is also a "top posts/comments" section [2]. When a userbase can review the moderation it becomes harder for manipulation to occur.

[1] https://www.reveddit.com

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/reveddit/comments/kfdaj7/top_remove...

I agree that the manipulation is automated and intended to increase their profit. The effect seems to be that it creates really bubbles where you only see views that align with your existing world view. My own experience - I have my own YouTube profile filled with videos which reflect my political opinion and the feed of my friend who leans towards the other side of the political spectrum had videos reasserting his world views. I don't think the big tech is trying to steer socius towards one unified political view.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive....

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names....

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nonsense. A former Democratic staffer employed by Facebook censored the breaking news story about Hunter Biden's laptop on the eve of the election which we now know to be factually accurate. This is a literal and recent example of what the person you accused of being malicious talked about. We all know that if it was a smear against the Trump campaign instead, that this would've never happened. You must be able to see the double standard at work.

No idea why this is downvoted, there's no better example of censorship than this.

We would be in a better situation right now if voters had the facts about these four FBI investigations back in 2018, so perhaps the Democrats could have nominated a candidate that isn't a criminal.

I still voted for Biden, already aware of his family's influence peddling, because Trump is a repulsive moron in addition to being corrupt... just to be clear.

The NYPost was removed from the platforms for releasing this info. After the election, it was revealed that yes, all the pictures of Hunter smoking crack, fucking prostitutes, and the communications about being inappropriate with his 14yo niece were not fabricated and he is under investigation for tax fraud... not a peep from the orgs that silenced them for this. Memory holed.