4/8/19

Deplatforming conservatives

4/8/19
Among the many pernicious aspects of the social media/fake news-related hysteria since Trump started campaigning has been the one-sided censorship/deplatforming of opinions.

It seemingly is always some conservative or libertarian voice getting banned, suspended, or silenced in some way when this rarely if ever happens to a lefty with comparable levels of extremism. Sometimes they are downright mainstream and/or milquetoast comments that get right wing voices banned.

In the context of universities consistently banning conservatives from speaking, MAGA hat wearing people getting assaulted, conservative personalities getting harassed at restaurants and their homes, it's pretty easy to think this is just more of that. Leftists high on the smell of their own shit, shutting down dissent, because they're right and you're wrong.

But it's not all just that. I mean, it still might be, but there's at least a little more to it, at least sometimes.

I haven't checked the veracity of the science behind this study, but if true, there's at least a reason (and a convenient fig leaf) for the banning of far more conservatives than liberals/progressives from social media platforms.

Here it is. In it, they found political ideology was the top indicator that the platform account was a bot or a "spreader." Spreader meaning a bot or person that spreads fake news, or something a "Russian Troll" tweeted. I'm not sure what they considered fake news, but there you go. And the ideology most indicative of being a "spreader?" Conservative ideology.

We've all heard of Russian bots and their goals to sow discord in the U.S. The conventional wisdom on this is that most of those are all "conservative." I think there's a reason for that. It's far easier to outrage Natasha the feminist life-coach in Seattle than it is to stir up Bob the factory worker in Missouri. Russian trolls go for the low-hanging fruit.

If I wanted to piss a lot of people off the fastest, well, I would target the most sensitive loud-mouths I knew of. It's just easier.

So there you go. "Conservative" bots say a lot of things that eventually end up creating what is probably many social media platforms' red flag list of words and phrases. Naturally, authentic conservative guy will probably say some similar things from time to time. And so Natasha's friends complain about authentic conservative guy, combined with him being already flagged, the banhammer drops.

Sure, there are still probably instances of pure bias and poor judgment resulting in deplatforming, but this helps explain a lot of it.

Thanks to SmarterEveryDay.

Blog Archive



Categories



Shameless Promotion


ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ


 

DailyMud. Copyright 2010-2017 Some Rights Reserved.
Creative Commons License