[lone_haxx0r]

I much prefer Facebook's relatively laissez faire approach instead of Twitter's politically biased approach where hateful things are allowed as long as they are from the left side of the political spectrum.

Drawing the line on what is hate speech is a hard enough problem already, and companies like Google, Twitter don't even try to be impartial, their execs have clearly taken a side. Add to that the weird times we're living in and how people's fundamental moral ideas have diverted so much in the last 10 years, and you have a perfect disaster.

Facebook's approach is less harmful than the alternative right now.

[sailingparrot]

> where hateful things are allowed as long as they are from the left side of the political spectrum

Citation needed.

It's not because you hear more often in the media about the right being censored that it means that hateful stuff from the left is allowed.

[ApolloFortyNine]

There were an incredible number of tweets calling to "Burn it down" or similar (about the fires in Minneapolis after the George Floyd protests).

I can link a few tweets, but with millions of twitter messages a day, I can hardly link enough to be statistically relevant if you choose to believe the other way, and I don't have the energy to randomly sample twitter.

[augustt]

Which is hateful against... buildings?

[milkytron]

It's not that it's hateful. It's inciting and encouraging violence, which I'm pretty sure is against the ToS.

[augustt]

> Violence: You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people

Try again

[liquidise]

Burning a building to the ground is presumably an (in)direct act of violence against the inhabitants of said building. 911, the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Kyoto Animation fire all come to mind.

[cryptoz]

It's generally understood that violence is something that happens to a person or living entity; buildings being burnt down is very different from a person being attacked. The word violence might be used for both, but really, it is meant in the modern day to refer to people.

Violence isn't about property that can be rebuilt with mere money. It is about hurting people.

[Fellshard]

How does burning down someone's business cause them no harm? You are implicitly making the claim that anyone who owns or leases a building for their business is rolling in excess money, which is incredibly ignorant, naïve, uncharitable, and untrue; especially when many of the businesses called for burning were locally owned, and many minority owned. That kind of thinking is pretty hideously warped, and you'd do well to rethink your worldview to avoid such malice.

[milkytron]

So I looked up their policy, and you seem to be correct there. Twitter defines violence as towards other individuals or groups. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules

However, if users are encouraging or telling others to break the law, that is also against Twitters policies.

> You may not use our service for any unlawful purpose or in furtherance of illegal activities.

Encouraging or inciting others to break the law is illegal.

Although it's on the illegal goods page, I think this could still be against their policy.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/regulated-goo...

[aifer4]

The definition of violence: "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something." Unless we're using words in the humpty dumpty sense of "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

[Minor49er]

One of the buildings was the police precinct

[Darmody]

Need a citation? Get on twitter and see how right wingers get banned on heated discussions with left wingers where BOTH are aggressive to each other.

The left also mass report stuff they don't like as "hate speech" which automatically results in a ban.

Sorry, but the hate speech stuff is just a new way to censor stuff some people don't like and in the end it'll affect us all, no matter if left or right wing.

[alpha_squared]

A citation is still preferred because the nature of social media is that everyone experiences their own bubble of interactions. As a counter-anecdote, my experience has been that frivolous reporting is far more common coming from far-right political ideologists. Without citation, no one knows who's right/wrong or even how pervasive of a problem it is. It just results in zero discussion and turns into a flame war.

[sailingparrot]

That's doesn't provide any evidence. Twitter doesn't block tweets for being "agressive", they block tweets for some very specific things like call to violence etc.

* Can you show that one side gets censored more often than the other? Not just based on your biased personal timeline.

* If yes, can you show that both sides breaks the ToS as often? Both sides are politically very different, and appeal to very different people, it's not hard to imagine that one side may indeed be more violent than the other.

So yes, I would like a citation.

[shripadk]

Alright since you asked for citation here is one: https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/popular-twitter-account-true...

This is a really popular right wing Twitter account in India which only dealt with exposing false narratives spread by leftist historians with facts. Facts from published books, memoirs of Kings who ruled India, sculptures and ancient artifacts. "True Indology" did not break any rules. Was not violent nor did he threaten anyone. Just exposing false narratives through facts. He was banned with no reason provided. This was not the first time his account was suspended. It was done multiple times. You can read complete details of what he experienced on Twitter here: https://www.mynation.com/views/true-indology-exposes-the-vic...

The number of right wing accounts shadow banned and suspended in India by Twitter is staggering. You never hear left wing accounts being suspended. No matter how much hate speech you come across. Heck those left wing accounts that get exposed for hate speech automatically turn their accounts private. That doesn't mean that Twitter doesn't know what is contained within the account right? It can still close down the account for violation of its policies. But it doesn't do that. There is a strong undercurrent against left-leaning biased social media sites like Twitter in India. It will just erupt one day just like Indians have erupted against TikTok. It is only a matter of time. Twitter is doing a big mistake by treating right wingers in India unfairly.

[commoner]

OpIndia is a propaganda website.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpIndia

[shripadk]

More Golden quotes from the Co-Founder of Wikipedia:

"It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.4 It might be better to embrace a “credibility” policy and admit that their notion of what is credible does, in fact, bias them against conservatism, traditional religiosity, and minority perspectives on science and medicine—to say nothing of many other topics on which Wikipedia has biases.

Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to make any such change; they live in a fantasy world of their own making.5"

So much for neutrality!

Source: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

[shripadk]

And whether OpIndia is a propaganda website or not doesn't change the fact that the popular account was suspended. You can check it here: https://twitter.com/TrueIndology

Is the suspension propaganda too? How far will the left be willing to take this until it all implodes? The right wing feels so devoid of freedom of speech on these platforms that there will be a major revolt! Alternative platforms that are either right wing or neutral would prop up challenging the hegemony of these left-wing dominated platforms. And that will be the end of social media as we know it in its current form. There is a strong undercurrent and to deny that would be folly!

[shripadk]

OpIndia is not a propaganda website. Period. This is the typical slander that happens when you refer to left-wing articles. If you are referring to left-wing portal Wikipedia as your citation then something is really wrong with you. The point I was making was precisely this. That social media is dominated by the left-wing and the left-wing narrative. Anything that is published on left-wing outlets is taken as truth without even bothering to question the sources.

So when the entire question is about left-wing bias you go ahead and show me a Wikipedia entry whose management and editors are known to have left-wing bias! In fact the Co-Founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger himself says that Wikipedia's Neutrality is dead because of left-wing bias [1]!

A quote from his blog post:

"Wikipedia’s “NPOV” is dead.1 The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”2 The notion that we should avoid “false balance” is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science. Here are some examples from each of these subjects, which were easy to find, no hunting around. Many, many more could be given."

It is a fact that social media management is dominated by left-wing bias. No wonder so many right-leaning articles and accounts are banned on a regular basis. If you do not give the right-wing a voice they will make sure they are heard louder than ever!

The entire IFCN saga has been rebutted point by point by OpIndia [2]

OpIndia exposed many fake news articles published by BBC which was forced to backtrack. Then BBC claimed that it was a "mistake" and that corrections were made subsequently after being exposed. This was never a "mistake". It is purely left-wing bias.

[1]: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

[2]: https://www.opindia.com/2019/03/opindia-response-to-ifcn-int...

[Minor49er]

I am citing this comment as an example

[TheRealSteel]

I'm about as left wing as you can get, but Twitter is incredibly biased.

August Ames chose not to have sex with men who have sex with men. Because of this decision to do what she wants with her own body, she was harassed by people telling her to commit suicide for it.

She DID kill herself, and the people that told her to were not even banned.

https://www.spartareport.com/2017/12/leftists-bullied-august...

[mtgp1000]

If these claims of censorship were true, where would you expect to find a citation?

If I linked you threads of people like Tariq Nashad calling for racial violence against whites, my post would likely be flagged and I'd be banned for posting flamebait.

I don't think there's an explicit conspiracy but the forces are aligned such that they suppress content and naturally suppress criticism of suppression, and that creates an internet-wide false consensus.

[kukx]

What about the call to dox the Covington kids by a verified account. Is there anything comparable to it on the right side? I do not think so. The rules for thee, but not for me. https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1086927762634399744?...

[sailingparrot]

You mean like the numerous calls from many top GOP lawmakers to dox the Ukraine scandal whistleblower?

Probably dozens of tweets just from the president and not one was censored.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Giving examples of the type of content that's permitted from the left, but not the right, could be helpful to your argument. As someone who leans left, it's hard to see the bias. One other piece of contextual relevance is tweets from POTUS stay up due to their newsworthiness. If a Democratic president tweeted identical statements to Trump, I would expect identical treatment: no removal, but tagged with phrases like "Get the facts" (e.g., on coronavirus) or tweets hidden for glorying violence.

[t-writescode]

The president is a huge exception to the rule. 3 and a half years ago, I think (citation needed) it was found that Twitter was obligated to keep Trump tweets up because he is president and those are now official record. There was that whole big to do wat back then about him deleting one of his tweets and whether that was allowed or not.

[caymanjim]

Allowed by whom? Twitter can delete anything of Trump's, and can delete his account if they want to.

[t-writescode]

Things get complicated with the president. This whole thing happened: https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/sep/27/what-does-law...

[caymanjim]

That's entirely about the government's responsibility to retain records. Twitter has zero obligation.

[onetimeusename]

Here is a demonstrably false thing that Twitter doesn't censor: https://twitter.com/search?q=black%20egyptians&src=typed_que...

I have not seen them censor the Black Egyptian or Black Moor hypotheses in spite of being associated with Black Supremacy and being "demonstrably false" which is a category of things the #StopHateForProfit campaigns are targeting.

In fairness I don't know what content ends up being blocked, maybe there is a way to see it. But I have seen particular efforts, such as the doctored video Donald Trump recently posted, to tag content as misleading but I have not seen this for the above. As you pointed out, they did the same for coronavirus. Perhaps some of this debate is just about the 'reach' of content but afaict the Black Egyptian disinformation is prevalent. I might be wrong, I don't know all the ins and outs of Twitter blocking.

[r00fus]

I feel exactly the opposite of you. Facebook is a right-wing echo chamber, and I've left along with all of my family (moving outwards to more extended family).