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Your Perception - Twitter And Bias (1 Viewer)

Do you perceive Twitter to be:

  • Very biased in favor of Conservatives

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Somewhat biased in favor of Conservatives

    Votes: 1 1.1%

  • Neutral

    Votes: 52 57.8%

  • Somewhat biased against Conservatives

    Votes: 15 16.7%

  • Very biased against Conservatives

    Votes: 22 24.4%
  • Total voters
    90
Joe Bryant

Joe Bryant

Guide
Staff member
There was some discussion earlier about whether Twitter as a platform was biased in favor of or against Conservatives.

I know it's a subjective question but wondered what folks felt. 

 
I voted neutral, mainly because I have no problem finding conservative and libertarian people to follow.  

I do think that Twitter has some left-leaning bias in terms of what types of issues get suppressed on the site (e.g. The Laptop) but that's a much broader issue of bias in the media.  I don't think Twitter specifically deserves to be called out for that.  And that's an issue of moderation around topics as opposed to moderation involving people.

If "slightly biased against conservatives" was an option, maybe I would voted that way instead.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I voted neutral, mainly because I have no problem finding conservative and libertarian people to follow.  

I do think that Twitter has some left-leaning bias in terms of what types of issues get suppressed on the site (e.g. The Laptop) but that's a much broader issue of bias in the media.  I don't think Twitter specifically deserves to be called out for that.  And that's an issue of moderation around topics as opposed to moderation involving people.

If "slightly biased against conservatives" was an option, maybe I would voted that way instead.
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I haven’t noticed any tweets from leftists labeled with fact checks. 

 
I actually voted somewhat biased against conservatives, but I meant to say that it's biased against anything not consensus. Therefore, you would have gotten warning labels about things like saying that COVID was started in a Wuhan lab just a year ago. 

It's stupid, and it's nowhere to go for real news. Twitter sucks. I'm on it for fantasy football and some politics, and I can tell you I only follow people that aren't caustic by nature. But Twitter makes them seem caustic anyway. 

Fantasy football Twitter is a scene, and awful as Twitter politics are, IMO. Too many ####posts from guys in the FF world. They need to grow up af. 

 
And yes, I said grow up as ####. As nonsensical as it sounds, I meant it. 

 
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urbanhack said:
Neutral - because you see what you want to see on Twitter.
Click to expand...
This is how I voted too.  But admittedly I’ve shaped my Twitter feed to exclude any drama or politics.  It’s literally my drama free zone with only the things I’m interested in so I may not be seeing the whole picture.  

 
Voted Neutral.  If you view a twitter that is "extreme" in either direction it's directly tied to your interactions and choices you make while using the product.  That's what you are seeking out, so that's what they provide you.

 
The Commish said:
Voted Neutral.  If you view a twitter that is "extreme" in either direction it's directly tied to your interactions and choices you make while using the product.  That's what you are seeking out, so that's what they provide you.
Click to expand...
This. 

And really, how would a person know about Twitter bias over millions of accounts?

Because some biased people told them that's what was going down. They have no data. They have their perception, which is shaped by who they believe. 

"Shadow-ban" 😂😂😂😂

 
Neutral.

Conservatives may be more prone to violate Twitter's user agreement, or they may be more prone to vocally complaining about it, but that doesn't mean Twitter is ignoring the same types of posts from "liberals".  It wouldn't surprise me that this is happening, but I would need to see the data before assuming it is.

Every time I have seen someone complain about their Twitter account suspended it's over something awful that I wouldn't want on my SM platform if I were in charge, so it's hard for me to feel sympathy.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
Strictly speaking, you see what Twitter lets you see on Twitter.
Click to expand...
This is true and there generally lots of issues with the feed. I'm not a fan of showing posts they think I might be interested in because someone else I follow liked it or follows that user. I'm also not a fan of the new recommended tweets where you can click the X to remove it but it's still showing up. I'm also not a fan of the inconsistent flow of posts that can alternate between 1 minute ago to 1 day ago. There seems to be a lot of stuff out of whack with the way the tweets are sorted and organized. 

 
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urbanhack said:
This is true and there generally lots of issues with the feed. I'm not a fan of showing posts they think I might be interested in because someone else I follow liked it or follows that user. I'm also not a fan of the new recommended tweets where you can click the X to remove it but it's still showing up. I'm also not a fan of the inconsistent flow of posts that can alternate between 1 minute ago to 1 day ago. There seems to be a lot of stuff out of whack with the way the tweets are sorted and organized. 
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Pretty soon all tweets will be “Elon endorsed and approved” 

 
Haven't used it a ton, but voted neutral.    I have yet to see examples of these bannings where it's not way more about being dooshes and spreading false info and stepping over that line than what people's political views are.   Similar to here.  Similar to Facebook. 

 
urbanhack said:
I'm also not a fan of the new recommended tweets where you can click the X to remove it but it's still showing up
Click to expand...
Huge not fan of this. They keep thinking I'll dig Barstool Sports and Pat McAfee. Nothing could be further from the truth. I loathe Barstool and Pat McAfee is a passing ship in the night. 

I mean, what's the use of the preference algorithm and user interface if they ignore it? 

That pisses me off. 

 
If they really blocked or took down tweets about Hunter's laptop - that may have affected the outcome of a US Presidential election.  There is no other choice but to vote very biased against conservatives. 

 
Dickies said:
Neutral.

Conservatives may be more prone to violate Twitter's user agreement, or they may be more prone to vocally complaining about it, but that doesn't mean Twitter is ignoring the same types of posts from "liberals".  It wouldn't surprise me that this is happening, but I would need to see the data before assuming it is.

Every time I have seen someone complain about their Twitter account suspended it's over something awful that I wouldn't want on my SM platform if I were in charge, so it's hard for me to feel sympathy.
Click to expand...
This.  

 
Joe Bryant said:
There was some discussion earlier about whether Twitter as a platform was biased in favor of or against Conservatives.

I know it's a subjective question but wondered what folks felt. 
Click to expand...
I understand its a subjective question and you're looking for how folks feel and, while I definitely have solid feelings on the subject I don't believe it would be fair to answer because other than viewing tweets posted here I've never been a Twitter member or user. As such, I chose Show Results instead of voting. I'm only slightly interested in the results of the poll though.

 
PhillipPhoto said:
When they locked the Post's account Twitter said it was for "hacked materials". 
Click to expand...


Yes, here's an article about it: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked-materials-policy-in-wake-of-new-york-post-controversy/

So that kind of seems like pro-conservative bias? Twitter had a policy forbidding the sharing of hacked materials, like files obtained from a laptop without the owner's permission. (Here is the current policy.) Twitter was heavily criticized by conservatives for this policy when the NY Post story was suppressed, so Twitter changed its rule specifically to placate conservatives and allow the NY Post story to be shared. (I think the new part is the part about deferring to news agencies.)

Twitter's policy may have been dumb, but it's not something they came up with specifically to suppress the laptop story. The policy already existed. It was quickly modified specifically to allow sharing of the laptop story.

 
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The "non-hack" rule served a very good purpose, but was unfit for that story. 

The Pentagon Papers were the result of illegally obtaining documents without the owner's permission and those ran in the NYT. 

I get the counter-story whereby the policy was to blame rather than bias, but that really doesn't hold muster. Make an exception. It was of national importance. 

 
Twitter is technically biased in favor of conservatives.  That is, posts with conservative viewpoints get significantly more reach and more recommendations in the algorithm than posts with liberal viewpoints.  Posts from right leaning news outlets get significantly more amplification from the algorithm than those from left leaning news outlets.

None of that is because the algorithm is actually biased in favor of conservatives, though.  Conservative posts just tend to be more brash and push boundaries more, which creates more engagement, which is the largest driver of the algorithm.  Of course that same boundary pushing is what leads to more conservatives getting banned, creating the illusion of liberal bias on that side of the coin.

Pushing the boundaries of the ToS more and more to create more engagement creates more reach, but at the risk of more moderation.  That's natural.  Throw in normal human judgement on edge cases that is never going to be perfectly consistent in any moderation setting, and you get the basis to invent a crusade of bias where it doesn't really exist.

I actually think similar to this forum when it boils down to the human side of things they are more likely to favor conservatives simply because they're aware of the stigma of being biased against them and want to avoid that.  Like the lady who we had a thread about on this forum who got banned from twitter for "criticizing Joe Biden" but had actually gotten banned because it wasn't so much criticizing as it was going on some huge curse/threat laden rant that would get someone banned if they said something similar about bananas, but was then unbanned when news outlets started picking it up (of course with the misleading headlines that she'd been banned simply because she criticized the president).

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
Yes, here's an article about it: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked-materials-policy-in-wake-of-new-york-post-controversy/

So that kind of seems like pro-conservative bias? Twitter had a policy forbidding the sharing of hacked materials, like files obtained from a laptop without the owner's permission. (Here is the current policy.) Twitter was heavily criticized by conservatives for this policy when the NY Post story was suppressed, so Twitter changed its rule specifically to placate conservatives and allow the NY Post story to be shared. (I think the new part is the part about deferring to news agencies.)

Twitter's policy may have been dumb, but it's not something they came up with specifically to suppress the laptop story. The policy already existed. It was quickly modified specifically to allow sharing of the laptop story.
Click to expand...
They later said it was a mistake doing it. We all know why they were trigger happy. It’s not the rules, its even handedly applying the rules.  

 
PhillipPhoto said:
They later said it was a mistake doing it. We all know why they were trigger happy. It’s not the rules, its even handedly applying the rules.  
Click to expand...


Yes, I agree that it was a mistake, for precisely the reason @rockaction stated. I think it took them about a day to correct the mistake, which doesn't seem terrible, but they shouldn't have made it in the first place.

 
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And that’s just the most popular example, for when you asked why. Many regular users we labeled disinformation. That turned out to be true, obviously. 

 
FairWarning said:
Twitter did mute a  lot of  people who questioned COVID and China.
Click to expand...
Do you have specific examples of these?     

There is a difference between banning somebody b/c of a link to a questionable site vs. somebody posting a link to a questionable site followed by a profanity filled rant.   Most of what I have seen has fallen into that second category - it wasn't just the info, it was the rest and being a DB that could have done it. 

 
KarmaPolice said:
Do you have specific examples of these?     

There is a difference between banning somebody b/c of a link to a questionable site vs. somebody posting a link to a questionable site followed by a profanity filled rant.   Most of what I have seen has fallen into that second category - it wasn't just the info, it was the rest and being a DB that could have done it. 
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/cnnnews18/status/1306673023961964551?s=21&t=Lz0xQ_2F6JHgZVR2Rz9Eag

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
Yes, I agree that it was a mistake, for precisely the reason @rockaction stated. I think it took them about a day to correct the mistake, which doesn't seem terrible, but they shouldn't have made it in the first place.
Click to expand...
That’s their problem - they jump to conclusions right away, then you have to prove it was right.  Some of their workers are threatening to leave if Musk takes over.  That speaks volumes about who controls the narrative.  

 
Was having this discussion in a text chat with a friend and he sent me this. 

‘Censorship is free speech’ is the establishment’s Orwellian line on Elon Musk’s Twitter crusade

Obviously, the NY Post has a perspective given the Hunter Biden story. And I do think some of the talk on Facebook and Twitter blurs the line of free speech and private business. In that sense, I'm playing the role of Zuckerburg with a zillion less customers. But I'm still "censoring" discussion in how we're talking about people and what we allow. 

What do you think?

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a summary of the left’s aspirations to control debate and shut down any opposition.

A recent example of those aspirations appeared in a column by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big buy of Twitter stock. The original headline — changed after widespread mockery — was this: “Elon Musk’s vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense: Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.”

The mockery was understandable. “Libertarian visions” of “uncontrolled” speech haven’t actually been the stock-in-trade of dictators, strongmen and demagogues. Typically, those authoritarian figures want to silence their opponents and ensure that their own voices, and those of their satraps and sycophants, are the only ones heard.

Reich’s defenders, to the extent he has any, might claim the headline is a poor summary of his real argument, which is this: “In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain — projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone. In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good.”

The thing is, what Reich describes is what we have now: a world in which unaccountable oligarchs like Amazon’s Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — people who are in fact “the richest and most powerful people in the world” — use opaque algorithms to mute criticism and disagreement.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich claimed that Musk’s vision for Twitter is “dangerous.”

That’s not Elon Musk’s vision. That’s the world that Reich’s allies in Big Tech have created.

And you don’t have to look far to see it. Just last month, Issues & Insights reported a poll it conducted with TIPP, the most accurate predictor of the last five presidential elections, regarding people’s feelings about COVID. The survey found 65% of Americans think COVID policy in the United States is “driven by politics,” with only 21% believing it’s “driven by science.”

The poll was scientific, conducted by a respected source and accurately reported.

Google AdSense responded by labeling it “dangerous and derogatory content” and thus stripped its ads from the article. When Issues & Insights appealed, Google stood by its action.

This isn’t the first time Google has attacked Issues & Insights over polls it didn’t like. In March, I&I released a poll showing that 67% of Republicans wanted President Donald Trump on the 2024 ballot while only 37% of Democrats wanted President Joe Biden on the ticket. Google called this “unreliable and harmful.”

Reich claimed that Musk wants the internet to be “dominated by the richest and most powerful people” in the world.

We’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing — not least when Twitter and other tech giants banned The Post’s reporting, since admitted to be accurate, on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the damaging information it contained. Many social-media giants banned any links to the story, and Twitter even went so far as to stop its users from sharing the story one-on-one through direct messages. (CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted that was a “total mistake.”)

Their purpose was to affect the election’s outcome in favor of the Democrats, and they probably did.

Reich isn’t at all upset about this sort of thing. He’s upset at the idea that Elon Musk might bring it to an end. Despite his bluster, Reich is in fact defending the strongmen and oligarchs who are unaccountably censoring people’s speech.

If Musk’s views are dangerously libertarian, it’s because a libertarian approach would destroy the tech oligarchs’ ability to shape people’s perceptions and influence politics.

(Reich also asserts, without evidence, that Trump’s ban from Twitter was “necessary to protect American democracy.” Well, maybe, if you remember that whenever Democrats go on about “our democracy,” they really mean “untrammeled power for Democrats.”)

In George Orwell’s “1984,” war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. To these Orwellian inversions, Reich would add another: Censorship is free speech. But it’s not, and claiming otherwise won’t make it so.

Sadly, though, Reich isn’t just one lone wacko writing in The Guardian. He is instead, as usual, parroting the establishment’s line.

The establishment doesn’t want free speech because if Americans can talk honestly about what elites are doing, people will understand just how rotten the establishment has become and will want to do something about it.

That can’t be allowed, obviously. If democracy dies in darkness, it won’t be an accident. It will be murder.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
Click to expand...

 
Joe Bryant said:
Was having this discussion in a text chat with a friend and he sent me this. 

‘Censorship is free speech’ is the establishment’s Orwellian line on Elon Musk’s Twitter crusade

Obviously, the NY Post has a perspective given the Hunter Biden story. And I do think some of the talk on Facebook and Twitter blurs the line of free speech and private business. In that sense, I'm playing the role of Zuckerburg with a zillion less customers. But I'm still "censoring" discussion in how we're talking about people and what we allow. 

What do you think?
Click to expand...
No surprise that I strongly disagree with the take by the NY Post. I have no love for Twitter (which is why I haven’t responded to your poll; I’m honestly indifferent to the question) but I only care about censorship when it’s a government issue. Private companies that choose to censor, for whatever reason, are engaging in freedom of speech. If, per the Post, the Left is taking this position, then they are correct to do so IMO. 

 
Juxtatarot said:
I think I agree with Musk on the open-source algorithms. Anyone disagree?
Click to expand...
I dont know his position. If hes saying that the way the algorithm is designed should be known to all, Id agree. If hes saying the code should be available to all, it would likely be the end of the platform as we know it. Id go as far as to say it would end up being the My Space of the 2020s. 

 
The Commish said:
I dont know his position. If hes saying that the way the algorithm is designed should be known to all, Id agree. If hes saying the code should be available to all, it would likely be the end of the platform as we know it. Id go as far as to say it would end up being the My Space of the 2020s. 
Click to expand...
I believe both.

 
If Elon were to share the algorithms, Reich’s main point mostly falls apart. However, Reich has a good point about Elon’s habit of blocking people.

 
Not a lot of deep thought put into this take, but I think almost all the hullaballo over Twitter could be eliminated by requiring a nominal fee to post on the platform, say $10/yr, and requiring a unique payment method per person to eliminate bad faith actors from funding anonymous accounts in bulk. Heck, make it $25/yr and throw in an ad-free experience and I'd pay - and I rarely post comments on Twitter.  If we want to insist upon the town square analogy, you can only be one be one person in the town square, and you in fact must be a human ... until our robot overlords take over.

 
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