
Not Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals - andrenth
https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals/
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zimpenfish
Anecdata: Given the number of left/liberal people I've seen on my
timeline/lists suspended for innocuous replies to harassment, the number of
posts about Twitter support not suspending conservative harassers (POTUS being
a prime example!), and the fairly strong conservative bias of Quillette, I'll
be needing a bag of salt and a lot more proof than this article provides.

~~~
afiori
Kathy Griffin literally called for her followers to dox the MAGA kids. When
asked about this on Joe Rogan podcast twitter CEO just changed the topic.

Journalist are the lifeline of twitter, so they will always be on the side of
the mainstream media. If you are leftist/liberal but out of the media bubble
(like some trans-esclusionary radical femminists) then you are worse off than
conservatives,

~~~
zimpenfish
> Kathy Griffin literally called for her followers to dox the MAGA kids.

Well, she asked for names, not a full dox, but I would agree that she should
have been temporarily suspended for that, yep.

> like some trans-esclusionary radical femminists

They tend not to be leftist/liberal in my experience.

~~~
afiori
"liberal" is a confusing word; for a few centuries leftist/liberal meant very
similar things in the west. Today we have strong movements of
illiberal/authoritarian on the left while the right (in the US) has strong
libertarian movements.

Consider the famous example of the baker and the homosexual wedding. Without
judging the standard leftist position is significantly less libertarian than
the usual position on the right.

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dev_north_east
Not a big Twitter user (never tweeted and only follow a small amount of
people/services) and I've seen this again and again. I didn't really think it
was in dispute?

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ethagknight
Call it paranoia, but I have long felt that twitter suppresses my own tweets
on “hot” political topics (I.e. 0 interaction, 0 in-person comments or
discussion), whereas literally every tweet a make gets some reactions. It’s
just too uncanny to miss, yet I have no ability to prove.

I’ve even paid considerably to promote tweets on a mildly controversial topic
that got next to no interactions.. never again will I pay twitter like that.

EDIT- re: the article and I don’t see this discussed elsewhere, I wonder if
left leaning people are just 4x more likely to use the “flag as offensive”
feature, leading Twitter to process and prosecute more conservative
viewpoints?

~~~
shard972
It's already quite known to a few people that there are many words that will
trigger twitter to push your tweets under the "show more".

For example: Tranny.

If you say that word in any context, your tweet will not show up in many of
your followers timelines and if it was a reply it will only show up if you hit
show more at least once.

Maybe thats a good thing overall, but I can't help think about the long term
effects when the words you can and cannot say can't easily be understood and
we end up in some kind of world where only the most sanitized advertiser
friendly tweets are the only ones your able to see without having to dig
around all the time.

~~~
mc32
Are you certain? In mechanics’ circles that has a completely neutral meaning.
Doubt Twitter is so simplistic it can’t figure out people are talking about
drivetrain transmissions.

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timonoko
It is worse in other countries without "free speech"-clauses in constitution.
Twitter has very active role in general elections in many countries in Europe.
Only in Deutschland this issue can be corrected by suing Twitter. Other
countries do not even have suitable legislation, because only government (and
elected spokespersons) have "free speech".

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woah
Very shaky methods. He doesn’t even tell us who is on his list of 21 unfairly
banned trump supporters

~~~
ethagknight
>> Very shaky methods. He doesn’t even tell us who is on his list of 21
unfairly banned trump supporters

he provided his whole database of users tracked

Edited to remove snark

~~~
woah
The link doesn’t work on my phone and he doesn’t spend any time discussing the
cases. The article is not actually written about the “data”, it is simply
there to add some kind of impression of rigor.

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nrev
I don’t use Twitter much, but I have noticed the reverse is true on Facebook.

~~~
yesenadam
Doesn't that entirely depend on who your friends are, and what they post?

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benj111
This is poor reasoning.

The _average_ Trump supporter may be no more likely to break Twitters TOS, we
aren't looking at the average here, we are looking at the outliers.

22 bans is absolutely insignificant compared to the millions of users, you
can't extrapolate that out to _all_ Trump voters or even the _average_ Trump
voter, therefore his argument makes no sense.

~~~
mc32
True, but let’s say a ridiculous ToS had any mention of Marxist ideology as a
violation.

That would have an inherent bias against people on the Democratic side.

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benj111
Are you equating Marxism with Nazism???

I'd accept a Stalism/Nazism (or maoism) equivocation.

Marxism is not like Nazism.

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mc32
No. I’m saying _if_ they instituted an unfounded TOS against Marxism, that
would have an inherent bias. I purposely left Maoism and Stalinism out due to
their fascist nature.

Let’s say they were owned by Exxon, their TOS had that talking the negative
aspects of fossil fuels was a violation, that would have an inherent anti
Democrat bias, even if they didn’t have a stated anti Democrat bias.

~~~
benj111
Ok, sorry.

Was anyone accusing them of having an anti right wing TOS?

In general I agree with you, but I think you'd have a hell of a time teasing
apart the politics of it. Eg if a rule said all statements had to be
scientifically proven, is that anti right wing? Is that even wrong in and of
itself? How would you balance that out?

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mcphage
> Are prominent Trump supporters more likely to break neutrally applied social
> media terms of service agreements than other voters? Perhaps. But are they
> four or more times as likely? That doesn’t seem credible.

That seems perfectly credible.

~~~
shard972
If so, wouldn't that mean that twitter is credibly bias towards progressives?

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krapp
The null hypothesis here is that Twitter is biased against users who violate
their terms of service, and that if conservatives violate Twitter's terms of
service more often than progressives, they appear to be subjected to "harsher"
treatment, which is interpreted by conservatives as an organized campaign of
anti-conservative bias and suppression, rather than Twitter simply enforcing
its policies.

What needs to be demonstrated, to me, is that the majority of banned provably
conservative accounts were not banned for violating Twitter's terms of
service, but for their political views, and that an equal or greater ratio of
provably liberal accounts with equal or greater following which violated
Twitter's terms of service were _not_ banned, in order for political bias to
be the more likely reason for the treatment of conservatives.

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shard972
What if I told you that twitters TOS itself is bias against conservatives?
Your whole argument seems premised on the idea that twitters TOS is completely
neutral.

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krapp
>What if I told you that twitters TOS itself is bias against conservatives?

Here is Twitter's TOS[0], I'd ask you to prove it.

[0][https://twitter.com/en/tos](https://twitter.com/en/tos)

~~~
shard972
> We reserve the right to remove Content that violates the User Agreement,
> including for example, copyright or trademark violations, impersonation,
> unlawful conduct, or harassment.

So Kathy griffin doxxing and sending a hate mob after children is not
harassment but alex jones having a minor encounter with a CNN journalist is an
instantly bannable example of harassment.

I'm pretty sure your just arguing out of bad faith at this point.

~~~
mcphage
Interesting. So which part of that do you feel is intrinsic to being a
conservative, that would make the part of the TOS you quoted biased against
conservatives? Is it the harassment, maybe? The unlawful conduct?

> I'm pretty sure your just arguing out of bad faith at this point.

You have no idea what that means, do you?

