
Republicans Find a Facebook Workaround: Their Own Apps - tareqak
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/technology/politics-apps-conservative-republican.html
======
rdiddly
They lost me at the first line. "Imagine a society in which everyone more or
less agrees with you." Don't have to imagine. Maybe this author's been under a
rock and hasn't heard the phrase "echo chamber."

The other thing of course is that it's not just Republicans surrounded by only
those they agree with. By the simple rules of logic if you start out with A
and B together, and B leaves, then A is just as insular and surrounded-by-its-
own-kind as B is.

People on both sides need to get better at understanding the opposing
viewpoint. Plus having a coherent viewpoint of your own, and then the humility
to know you don't have a direct line to The Truth.

~~~
smsm42
> The other thing of course is that it's not just Republicans surrounded by
> only those they agree with

"Not just"? Let's do a thought experiment. Take two people, and let them come
to a random Silicon Valley Company - Twitter, Facebook, Google, whatever, or
to a college campus - and publish on a company public forum, or campus forum,
etc. - a slightly controversial article - one with some left-to-the-center
bent and one with right-of-the-center one. Which person would have a higher
chance to earn the vitriolic scorn of the surrounding public, face HR
complaints and ultimately may get fired?

Did you ever read the political spectrum distribution on university faculties?
In some places, there's no single person that is not ideologically left on the
whole faculty staff. In others, you get ratios like 1:10 to 1:20. This is
where the students spend their formative years.

I am assuming for now that the political spectrum is one-dimensional, which is
obviously wrong. But if we keep this simplifying assumption for a minute, and
consider how one can form a bubble, "not just Republicans" would be quite an
understatement.

For the non-lefty person in most tech, academic, entertainment, press and many
other areas, there would be literally no way to live in a Republican bubble -
there would be no material to form the bubble from. Of course, there are such
bubbles too, and places where you could comfortably form them - but I think I
would not be too wrong if I say at least 90% of HN readers are not in those
places. You can form your own bubble of course by carefully selecting what you
read, who you listen to, etc. - but even then if you're in one of the places
enumerated above in the US, you'd encounter people who hold views different
from yours - and are very open, outspoken and sometimes forceful about them -
literally every day.

The reason why the right wants their own apps is not because they don't want
to ever hear from the left - though some do, of course, but not all - it's
because they feel the left does not want to hear from them, and is actively
pursuing silencing them. And they have a very good evidence to show for it.

~~~
cannonedhamster
You're heavily biased. Try bringing a leftist point of view on a right wing
site, the Heritage foundation, or the American government. The current crop of
conservatives brought loaded weapons to a presidential rally under Obama and
President Trump is demanding personal loyalty pledges from civil servants.
Breitbart, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh etc control the talk show airwaves,
there's not a single strong liberal voice in any media that has the sway or
clout of any of those that I mentioned.

Leftists have been getting fired from media for quite some time for not being
conservative enough. I sincerely disbelieve that the right is being silenced.
What is being silenced is death threats, hate speech, and extremist which
doesn't belong in public discourse. The people leaving to form their own
groups are generally people who support white nationalism. Reddit has groups
that literally function as attack dogs silencing any group that speaks ill of
the president through brigading and taking over the front page.

To suggest that there is "good evidence" that the left is censoring the right
is plain silly. What's being censored is things that don't belong in a
workplace, or don't belong on a site for civil discourse. Personally, I am
glad that they still have a place to speak for themselves, but most people
don't want to read conspiracy theories, hate speech, and abuse on a daily
basis from either party and every single time some group is removed they claim
censorship, usually because they follow the letter to break the spirit of any
rules.

~~~
taborj
I think you both could use a read of this article about an interesting study
recently done.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
majo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-
dislike-political-correctness/572581/)

I think you'll both find that the majority of Americans are neither far left
nor far right. The "echo chamber" of the internet will tell you otherwise, of
course, but that's a case of the vocal minority.

------
kleton
De-platform Republicans. Republicans find other platforms. What is the
surprise here?

~~~
spamizbad
What Republicans are being deplatformed? The only one I could find was a
fringe challenger named Paul Nehlen who acts like a Democratic characticure of
a “racist Republican”

~~~
smsm42
Are you literally claiming you tried to find any Republican (I include here
obvious conservative people who are not elected officials but would obviously
vote Republican and are outspoken in support of causes associated with
Republicans) who got deplatformed on social media, and could not locate more
than one person? I would suggest to put more effort into it, because there is
definitely more than one case.

~~~
spamizbad
I’m specifically interested in Republican politicians. It looks like he was
banned from Twitter due to posting a racist meme (which wasn’t related to
Politics or conservative thinking). It looks like he was also banned from Gab
for doxxing someone.

Can you give an instance where someone was banned for simply having Republican
views, rather than someone violating the TOS who merely happens to be
Republican?

~~~
smsm42
In most cases, TOS are super-vague and allow to ban for things like "hateful
conduct", without defining what it is. Criticizing anybody could be defined as
"hateful conduct", and so is participating in any political controversy -
after all, if you say some politician is a bad person and should never be
elected, doesn't it mean you hate him?

So if you search for "twitter bans conservative", get literally dozens of
results, you can always claim they are banned for "violating the TOS", not for
expressing their views. And since there's almost never a specification of what
caused the ban and no process that allows to know it, and frequently not even
any notification beyond "you've been suspended, goodbye" there's no way to
resolve this question (e.g. twitter suspended one of my accounts which I used
to post completely innocent non-political non-offensive jokes, I still have no
idea why and there's no process to find out, I don't care because I stopped
using Twitter shortly thereafter anyway).

So you can always claim this is because all these people were racist, hateful
and doxxing. I have no means to prove otherwise to you, there's no force in
the Universe, beyond God Almighty and maybe NSA, that could prove particular
twitter account never posted anything bad, especially after it's been blocked.
But I can see the pattern. Especially when obvious hateful conduct on twitter
(like a notorious antisemite Farrakhan) keep using Twitter for spreading their
hate without any problems.

------
SN76477
Social media needs to be more fragmented so this is good. Too bad it is
politicized though.

------
funkythings
"Conservatives “feel like the big social platforms, Facebook and Twitter, are
not sympathetic to their views,”. Uhm. yes. But this is not a "feeling". Jack
Dorsey and Zuckerberg have both admitted the echo chamber their companies are
in. You don't have to be conservative, or even American, to see that Silicon
Valley is definitely left leaning, which will be reflected in the content
social media giants allow.

If this is good or bad is another question. Everyone builds their own echo
chamber, consciously or unconsciously. Thats why I don't appreciate the one-
sidedness of the article. They make it sound like only republicans like to
live in their bubble.

~~~
spaginal
That was the impression I was getting.

They were trying to make the point that these insular platforms are something
conservative Republicans are cooking up on their own, but the behavior of the
other major social networks attempting to insulate their platforms first and
foremost is what is creating these conditions across the board for everyone.

Action, reaction.

Private platforms, newsgroups, bbses, and forums are nothing new for the
internet, I wouldn't even know if I would call these apps social networks in
the sense of a wide reach like Twitter and Facebook have, but it shouldn't be
surprising that if you deplatform a group of people and/or make their
political views against the terms of service, that they'll go somewhere else,
and if the other place they go to happens to be an echo chamber of political
thought built from the ashes of actions committed by other social networks
with a perceived political bent, it shouldn't be surprising that the political
activism gets ramped way up as a result.

In my opinion, and this goes for both groups, not exposing yourself daily to
conflicting opinions and different solutions to problems is intellectually
damaging, and I firmly believe how most major social media companies are
handling discourse in our country is extremely short sighted and damaging for
real problem solving and conversations going forward. The first amendment and
free expression is supposed to be an ugly, gnashing, frothy thing full of
intellectual guts and blood. Bad ideas and bullshit solutions should get their
guts ripped out in spirited debate, and we aren't doing that anymore.

From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded
companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic
world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.

~~~
mcphage
> From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded
> companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic
> world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.

I get that you don’t like the Democrats, but if you can’t distinguish between
the GOP and conspiracy peddlers like Alex Jones, then I think you hate your
own party more than the Democrats do.

~~~
smsm42
The problem is not what I can and cannot distinguish. The problem is that the
Big Tech companies want to make that decision for me. I despise Alex Jones and
don't want to read him, but I want to make that decision by myself and not
trust Facebook to take it for me.

~~~
mcphage
> I want to make that decision by myself and not trust Facebook to take it for
> me

And what’s stopping you from doing that?

See, really what you want isn’t Facebook from making the decision for you,
since they can’t. Alex Jones has his own show, and FB has no interest or
ability in changing that. What you want is to make that decision for
_Facebook_ , and not let Facebook make it for themselves.

~~~
smsm42
> And what’s stopping you from doing that?

If Big Tech colludes to deplatform Jones, then it's no longer my decision.

> What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook
> make it for themselves.

I can't make decision for Facebook, I don't have that power. I can't force
Facebook to do anything. Facebook, on the other hand, has the power to
deplatform Jones and force me to not be able to see his content via Facebook,
discuss his content with my Facebook contacts, force me off the platform for
supporting Jones, etc. etc. Of course, they don't have influence beyond
facebook platform, but in collusion with Google, Twitter, DNS providers,
certificate providers, cloud service providers, etc. (virtually all those have
been participating in deplatforming before) - they wield immense powers, so
"but you can build your own Internet, nobody prevents you from doing that" is
not really a good suggestion. Even then, that's exactly what the subjects of
the article is doing - and they are being mocked for it, too.

------
didibus
There was a recent study that demonstrated that social media (Facebook) was
actually pushing people to be more right leaning over time. I wonder if moving
away from the platform would revert that trend.

~~~
krapp
not if they're moving to platforms whose explicit purpose is to curate right-
wing views.

~~~
didibus
But these platforms would be echo chambers, and their messaging wouldn't reach
people outside of it. That's effectively what it used to be like with online
forum communities and news outlets, you'd only go there if you were already
won over.

~~~
krapp
You're correct, and that seems to be the point. They consider the entire rest
of media (mainstream and social) to be a leftist echo chamber and these apps
to be the only place where they can discuss what they consider to be truth
without "bias" or "interference".

It's the same elevator pitch as Fox News but with a modern twist.

------
raincom
Just replace 'Republicans' and 'Facebook' with X and Y. Then, everything goes
away: X finds a Y-workaround. This is an issue of problem solving in any
domain.

------
spamizbad
This is ironic given how adroit the current Republican president has been at
harnessing twitter. Are they sure they want to leave?

~~~
smsm42
Why is it ironic? These people surely don't have a problem with getting the
Trump's message in. And to read Trump's tweets, they don't even need Twitter
account. What they have the problem with is getting their own messages out,
getting their own communications. Trump has nothing to do with it - his
message is not the problem, he has the biggest megaphone in the world,
anything he wants to be heard will be heard regardless of platform.

------
rmbeard
soon everyone will have a personal app and there will be no room on my phone,
I will have to start getting rid of my friends.

