Before I deliberately locked myself out of it (well before Musk), I asked for my data.

They classify me as:

  * speaks Indonesian
  
  Interested in:
  * Beer
  * Cricket
  * DJs
  * Dance
  * Enterprise software
  * Horror
  * NFL football
  * South America

  And aged either between 13-54 or (and?) over 65

Other than the age (I'm neither under 13 nor between 55-64), everything I've listed is incorrect.

On that basis, they'd probably call me a Republican.

Carries a different meaning when you're British, that name does.

I'm a guy in my 30s but they had me classified as a 65+ year old woman. They also thought I was a radiologist.

What a strange age classification — no idea about what your age actually is, just that it definitely isn't 55-64. I assume it would never conclude you are under 13 for legal reasons.

Aren't "enterprise software" and "horror" the same thing?

Fair.

I try to avoid both, when I can. :)

This is what it means to let another country own your social media. Their ideas and memes unconsciously get preferential treatment. This is maybe not a good thing, but it is what it is.

> Their ideas and memes unconsciously get preferential treatment.

I think as this repo shows it's conciously, rather than unconsciously, getting preferential treatment.

It’s omission. They built for Americans because they were Americans. No one building this said “let’s ignore Canadian politics” or any other country, they just didn’t think about them at all, because like most Americans they don’t really care about the insidious Québécois plots to annex Prince Edward Island or whatever actual issues are happening in Canada.

The freedom convoy and it's repression with suspension of constitutional rights (because that's a thing over there?) and bank accounts arbitrarily frozen did get a little bit of attention in the American medias.

> the insidious Québécois plots to annex Prince Edward Island

I know it's a joke, but the people of Prince Edward Island would most likely welcome it. Economically that would be a huge boost. Not sure Québec would enjoy it however.

Perhaps they should look at annexing Labrador?

Bank accounts were not "arbitrarily frozen". This is total nonsense.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/banks-were-only-asked-t...

Not arbitrarily: the freezing was targeted against political protestors.

They were going pretty damn far beyond "protesting" they were trespassing/loitering/squatting.

Loitering, dear god!

When done in giant trucks blocking traffic and making tons of noise and exhaust fumes for weeks it is a crime.

That sounds straight out of Russia or China.

Your article seems to support the idea that bank accounts were arbitrarily frozen.

> The freedom convoy and it's repression with suspension of constitutional rights

This was needed because the convoy of morons was seriously damaging people's quality of life and the local police did not do their job. The police in other towns DID do their job and blocked the trucks. You should be mad at the cops who just sat by and watched the convoy of morons roll in with their thumbs up their butt.

What exactly is allowed in a protest is quite a thorny issue.

Here in the UK there are environmental protestors gluing themselves to the streets and I have quite mixed feelings about them.

A protest that does not inconvenience anyone is very easy to ignore.

You can see here how wild and inconvenient these protests were. The bouncy castle and hot tub were a big public nuisance!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74pbbhCZng

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hzfwaSVIvoA

The constantly idling giant trucks very much were a public nuisance. YOU wouldn't want to live near them.

Indeed their acts of terrorism were not reported by international media.

For example, during the occupation of residential areas of the capital they created deafening noise around the clock that was measured indoors (windows closed) at levels causing permanent hearing damage after minutes of exposure, with police doing nothing to stop them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30434168

People can always use their countries' social media (and I assume many do!).

But it's indeed an interesting fact that people seem to specifically seek American tech and social media. And honestly, there's no shortages of foreign nationals commenting on American politics (and it's a good thing, it's their right thanks to the first amendment!).

This is a joke, right?

The vast vast vast vast majority of people use “American” social network because they are the social networks that exist. The US is undeniably the main exporter of SaaS products. See: the incumbents freaking out that China is getting a turn in the front seat. I’ve never once heard of anyone seeking ‘American tech’, except for some punchline in an anti-Soviet joke or movie.

Foreign nationals can comment about American politics because the US doesn’t have jurisdiction over their speech, notwithstanding the back and forth over whether social media companies are liable for disseminating such content in the first place.

A material part of why the USA is seen as The Country in Western culture, and a noted big player in other cultures, is because of the power it projects via the media. That includes both Hollywood exports, and social media.

American social media companies have the benefit of a large homogenous deeply interconnected culture with a vast ad buying community. Simply put, a U.S. social media platform can get more revenue with less effort than a European counterpart (because they have to go country by country, language community by language community), and will generally outcompete those EU counterparts, with social network reinforcement effects doing the rest. This holds up for most ad-supported online services, which together with a much stronger private investment sector is the reason American platforms absolutely dominate Europe. The EU has a stronger government subsidy system for software but that system does not reward or expect market success, which is why it delivers very little value.

The importance of US cultural power cannot be overstated.

> I’ve never once heard of anyone seeking ‘American tech’

One reason people have a distorted idea of what physical products the US produces, so I've read, is that most of them are products for industrial use, in factories and so on.

You look at consumer products that are made in..., because that's where the finishing touches are put on. That's not representative of the global economy though.

> I’ve never once heard of anyone seeking ‘American tech’, except for some punchline in an anti-Soviet joke or movie.

Really? Why is everyone using MacBooks and iPhones? Actually most Soviet computers were copies of western designs. [0]

> is because of the power it projects via the media. That includes both Hollywood exports, and social media.

The thing is, is takes to to project, someone has to export a product and someone else has to import it. Since people seek it and want to consume it it's easy to export.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_computer_system...

Only anecdotally.

But ever since Musk took over the amount of US political content has significantly increased in particular from the right despite me not living in the US.

It's hard to tell whether previously political content was weighted less and Musk has removed those controls or whether they are now weighted higher.

Some of the power users Musk reportedly had boosted are specifically right wing political posters, like catturd2. But then he's also boosted some high profile left leaning politicians, so it's not exclusive. It does mean you're more likely to see right wing American political content either way, which has to be annoying for people outside of the US.

https://gizmodo.com/twitter-algorithm-aoc-ben-shapiro-cattur...

Would it not be just as annoying to see a slant the other direction, or in any extreme direction?

The parent poster doesn't realize the inherent bias in what they wrote and that you have pointed out.

Boosting both right and left wing content increases your chance to see either type of content, because you boosted them over everything else.

I'm not sure why you wrote that to me. It was already in your prior comment.

I believe their point is that, because the US is generally regarded as 'to the right of' many countries in Europe, for example, a slight rightwing bias looks to us (I'm in the UK) like an extreme rightwing bias. Heck, even a completely neutral stance, as far as the US is concerned, will look like it veers to the right for us. Note that I'm not saying anything about how I believe the twitter algorithm should work, this is just my interpretation of what that commenter meant.

Europe is only a tiny fraction of the world, though.

Compared to India, Japan, Singapore and (depending on the metric) China, the US looks clearly left of center. Compared to most of the Middle East, the US looks extremely left-wing.

Why do you believe it would be annoying to us?

Because all those Right-Wingers are stupid crazy sub-humans without valid opinions right?

The tribalism in the US is insane, I think mostly because they've had one inflammatory President followed by another one. Some could argue that was deliberate to cause arguments as distraction... Worked a treat.

some of those opinions are that others of certain sexual orientations are indeed subhuman and/or should be treated as much, and due to Popper's paradox of tolerance, we don't need to, and shouldn't, tolerate such intolerance

That's one interpretation, which I see used as justification to attack and be generally horrible to anyone who disagrees.

Unfortunately the plight of LGB (and Womens' rights to an extent) has been utterly brushed aside by the continual addition of each letter to the cause and the arguments too hot and aggressive to separate out the underlying causes for fair debate on their own.

you say "attack and be generally horrible to anyone who disagrees", but recall that the thing said "attackers" are disagreeing with is equal or greater animosity towards people on the basis of their sexuality versus their opinions

in other words, it's a reaction to intolerance, specifically a decision not to tolerate intolerance - as we covered before, we don't need to, since doing so will end tolerance entirely (see Popper's paradox of tolerance for this)

I think Popper's paradox does nothing really but talk around an issue by changing the argument. Intolerance is not black and white, it is contextual. You can be intolerant of those who break the law, because they break the laws that hold society together (at a basic level). Paradoxes often aren't so problematic if you take them out of their own frame of reference (e.g. Zeno's paradox & Achilles).

I think the context we are referring to here is really free speech. Should we tolerate speech (opinions) that we despise or disagree with? Absolutely. And here we have the attackers responding to feeling insulted (framed as 'intolerance') by not being accepted/agreed with. Then they respond in kind and no progress is made.

You show me those people responding to equal/higher hostility and I guarantee I can show just as many examples of the opposite. And what I mean there is not "you're side is worse," I mean there are aggressive and horrible actors on both sides, who should not be the frame of reference for debate. But too often they are, and too often examples of hostility as used as an excuse for escalation or to avoid real debate.

It's nice that you personally think those things, but none of those things you personally think override or disprove Popper's paradox of tolerance, and thus none of those things you personally think will convince people to tolerate the intolerance that is, just as a single example, right-wing anti-trans intolerance

indeed, responding to, say, right-wing intolerance of trans people, by not tolerating it, is totally okay, despite your FUD, for reasons described by Popper

don't like your own intolerance of e.g. trans people, and actual attacks on them, to be responded to? maybe keep your intolerance and actual attacks to yourself, problem solved

> Republicans are some kind of lower intelligence being too

You HAVE to be pretty stupid to fall for the really blatant propaganda the GOP uses. Remember that scary migrant convoy they invented just before an election to use to scare people into voting GOP and then it just vanished right after? Have you heard the incredibly stupid things Tucker Carlson, MGT, Matt Gaetz, and Boebert say? People like Carlson are way too smart to actually believe the crap they spew, they knowingly spend their lives telling lies to gullible and/or stupid people to manipulate them.

Of course there is no left wing propoganda to fall for though, right?

Do you wonder how you came to form such blatant negative opinions of your political opposites as a charicature of hate and ignorance?

whataboutism doesn't really address any of the points in the post you're responding to, and certainly didn't answer the questions in that post which were posed to you

Because I don't disagree with those points. But the idea that there is nothing 'noticeable' from the left shows they're a) maybe better at it and/or b) saying things that are believed at face value because they align to beliefs.

For the other commenter to be so entirely blind to their side's propoganda should at least cause pause for reflection.

your supposition regarding a) and b) are pretty unconvincing, they're on the level of conspiracy theorists who say that a lack of evidence is just stronger evidence of the conspiracy

frankly your claims of equivalency are pretty unconvincing, too, but that's neither here nor there, since the topic is one specific side, not "both sides" or how you personally think they're equivalent

anyways, let's get back on topic to where we were before the whataboutism reared its ugly head (and we can both just pretend like you haven't been attacking the commenter themselves): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35397668

> Of course there is no left wing propoganda to fall for though, right?

I'm honestly not aware of similar propaganda on the left. By similar I meant an entire industry designed to lie and gaslight people into voting for people who will cause them direct economic harm. The GOP has made lying an entire industry and an art form. Now they are demonizing trans people in a way extremely similar to the way Nazis demonized Jews.

> Do you wonder how you came to form such blatant negative opinions of your political opposites

I know exactly why I have formed such a negative opinion of the GOP, because I've watched them lie blatantly and egregiously for the last 20 years and I'm really sick of it.

That extreme polarisation didn't start with the last few presidents; it's been the explicit strategy of the Republican Party to demonize the Democrats in every possible way ever since Newt Gingrich became a prominent figure in the 1980s.

Of course it has. And the Democratic party just wanted to get along.

Either way, unfortunately the political bickering fuelled by bots and social media manipulation is in a very sad state.

> And the Democratic party just wanted to get along.

In comparison to the GOP yes.

It was frustrating to see Obama keep reaching across the aisle and basically getting spit on. Democrats have their faults, but Republicans have made it clear that it's impossible to reach any kind of compromise with them.

And Fox News was created specifically for this purpose.

If these ‘distraction-causing arguments’ are affecting real people (read: foreigners, queer people, black people), then they’re worth paying attention to regardless.

Is your assertion that this is all some big conspiracy how you justify not caring?

No, it's that people have bought so heavily into just attacking 'the other' instead of trying to get along and being critical of policy and authority instead. The distraction is the direction to argue with each other rather than against policy/corruption/authority

I live in the US in "Trump country" and don't see any political content. Maybe its just related to the people you follow and the content you look at?

This is an interesting point... they're making sure their A/B experiments don't adversely affect Republicans or Democrats. But lots of European countries are skewed more to the left and would broadly look more similar to the "Democrats" group.