[sellyme]

I'm assuming it's a satire in response to the following line, which claims that banned Facebook pages are "the anti-bullshit universe":

> One option, more popular each day, is to retreat to the anti-bullshit universe of alternative media sources. These are the podcasts, videos, Twitter threads, newsletters, and Facebook pages that regularly vanish from circulation for violating “community standards” and other ineffable codes of conduct, oft-times after failing “fact-checks” by the friendly people at Good Thoughtkeeping.

I also like that the author explicitly refuses to provide any examples of these "anti-bullshit alternative media sources". Very common tactic amongst this ilk - complain about aggressive censorship and how George Orwell was specifically warning us about Twitter, all the while doing everything you can to avoid people seeing what was actually incurring bans.

I see it all the time in communities I run, people start trying to spin off alternative sites and talk about how <insert community here> impinges on free speech, and then when you check what they were banned for there's a tirade of racial slurs directed at other members of the community.

It's insanely hard to get your content consistently removed from Twitter or Facebook, they do everything they can to avoid having to hire more moderators. It can happen, but then providing the examples will get everyone on your side immediately. Anyone who claims that they're being unfairly censored and yet refuses to show the content that actually got removed is trying to hide something.

[mistermann]

> I see it all the time in communities I run, people start trying to spin off alternative sites and talk about how <insert community here> impinges on free speech, and then when you check what they were banned for there's a tirade of racial slurs directed at other members of the community.

Are you suggesting that this person shares these behaviors?

[sellyme]

It depends on what you mean by "these behaviours". I'm suggesting that the author is claiming some great injustice but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves, and in my experience the people doing that usually aren't the world's most upstanding citizens.

I'm certainly not suggesting that the author is prone to outbursts of racial slurs - that was just an example of something I encounter regularly, and typically that type of person is far less literate - but I am extremely doubtful that the content they're complaining about removal of is as "anti-bullshit" as they'd like to claim.

[mistermann]

> but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves

Do you believe that your mind may be doing some interpretation (with or without "your" knowledge) in the formation of this conclusion?

[sellyme]

Yes, generally speaking when I'm reading something I'd hope that my mind is doing some interpretation. It would be a rather difficult activity otherwise.

[mistermann]

Agreed...the tricky part is realizing that it is doing interpretation, and realizing that what it ends up sending you is not reality, but an interpretation of reality, which is what you are discussing here (or all of us are discussing, in most any thread, or in life in general), as if it is reality itself. And then we're surprised when there are disagreements!!

The beauty of the mind though: even though it is doing this (manufacturing an interpreted version of reality in realtime), this tends to be an unpleasant idea to most people....but luckily, it also has the ability to interpret that away, allowing us to have our cake and eat it too (although this feature has some downsides of its own)!

[cpu_qwerty]

> and then when you check what they were banned for there's a tirade of racial slurs directed at other members of the community.

This isn't always true. I don't want to derail the topic of this thread, but I certainly find I cannot talk seriously about the causes of disproportionate violence and rape from certain segments of the population without getting banned. Even though, looking deeply into the science, it doesn't support the mainstream viewpoint. If I can't trust the media and even websites like HN to be honest on something so basic, why should I trust them for anything else?