Is Twitter biased against conservatives? A Study(psyarxiv.com)
psyarxiv.com
Is Twitter biased against conservatives? A Study
https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5
78 comments
> whoever gets to labels what's harmful misinformation and what is a legitimate dissenting voice is the source of bias
"misinformation" is the cleverest weapon against free speech in a while, despite being an old trick. It lets people support censorship while feeling like they're just opposing something evil. Catholic Europe said "heresy" or "blasphemy", McCarthyist USA said "communist", Islamic societies said "haram", secular dictatorships said "degenerate", etc etc.
"misinformation" is the cleverest weapon against free speech in a while, despite being an old trick. It lets people support censorship while feeling like they're just opposing something evil. Catholic Europe said "heresy" or "blasphemy", McCarthyist USA said "communist", Islamic societies said "haram", secular dictatorships said "degenerate", etc etc.
This is why the Saudi leadership invests so heavily in companies like Twitter and other media companies.
"Instead, the observed asymmetry could be explained entirely by the tendency of Republicans to share more misinformation."
...misinformation defined by whom?
Factually speaking, the vast bulk of the "Russiagate" scandal was a hoax designed to achieve a political agenda, pure and simple. Trump may be as corrupt as the next guy, but there is no evidence that implicates him as a Russian asset. But who was removed from social media for boosting this blatant misinformation? Literally no one.
...misinformation defined by whom?
Factually speaking, the vast bulk of the "Russiagate" scandal was a hoax designed to achieve a political agenda, pure and simple. Trump may be as corrupt as the next guy, but there is no evidence that implicates him as a Russian asset. But who was removed from social media for boosting this blatant misinformation? Literally no one.
Didn’t the Trump Camp lie about meeting with Russian operatives?
Didn’t people end up in jail for lying and refusing to cooperate?
It was absolutely political, but isn’t anything concerning an investigation of a sitting President?
Didn’t people end up in jail for lying and refusing to cooperate?
It was absolutely political, but isn’t anything concerning an investigation of a sitting President?
The bottom line is that the Steele Dossier was a QAnon-tier piece of disinformation, yet was endlessly paraded as "mostly true" by establishment media. That is an unexcusable double standard.
Almost no one believes most of what is in the Steele dossier. And news sources like CNN and Washington Post refused to print allegations in it. It was the Mueller report and it’s lead up that generated most of the discussion.
If you read the study you would know the answer, because they literally define the very thing you’re asking about.
As helpfully posted elsewhere in this thread:
> Helping to address concerns about potential liberal bias among fact-checkers, we also examined untrustworthiness ratings from politically-balanced crowds of demographically representative (quota-sampled) American laypeople recruited via Lucid (15), rather than professional fact-checkers.
As helpfully posted elsewhere in this thread:
> Helping to address concerns about potential liberal bias among fact-checkers, we also examined untrustworthiness ratings from politically-balanced crowds of demographically representative (quota-sampled) American laypeople recruited via Lucid (15), rather than professional fact-checkers.
The study pivots around popular perceptions of QAnon/Pizzagate as the archetype of "misinformation" and has zero mention of its political mirror-image, Russiagate. Both are false and ridiculous conspiracy theories aimed at defaming the opposing leadership. By omitting one of the two elephants (donkeys?) in the room, it has hard to take this study seriously. Very poor experimental design.
From reading the abstract, it seems like an exercise in circular logic.
Please expand upon this argument.
"Republican leaning users were banned ~5x more often than Democratic leaning users, but they also shared misinformation more as decided by we-promise-they're-neutral fact checkers and the average American, so there's no discrimination against Republican leaning users"
Which to me means "there's no discrimination unless the fact checkers and average American discriminate", also known as "there's no discrimination unless there's discrimination", which is circular logic.
Which to me means "there's no discrimination unless the fact checkers and average American discriminate", also known as "there's no discrimination unless there's discrimination", which is circular logic.
Claiming misinformation and opinion should be treated as equals is probably the problem.
Most open democracies have agreed misinformation can't be treated equally.
Hunter Bidens laptop was fact checked by various outlets but we found out later that was a lie. Who owns the fact checkers?
That's the exception that proves the rule. Fact checkers rarely can be wrong. The overwhelming amount of times they are very correct.
If anyone thinks I am wrong, they can list a dozen times fact checkers were wrong.
If anyone thinks I am wrong, they can list a dozen times fact checkers were wrong.
What would this list look like? A list of posted removed for being misinformation but that were actually not? Not particularly surprising such a thing does not exist
You mean the claims being made by the Trump camp were unsubstantiated? Because that happened and they were at the time.
For whose definition of misinformation?
I'm not saying they should be treated the same. I'm saying that "there's no discrimination because the majority agrees there's no discrimination" would not be accepted in almost any other scenario.
Might as well ask the Catholic church to conduct a study into whether God exists. (They are the experts, right?)
"... the observation that Republicans were more likely to be suspended than Democrats provides no support for the claim that Twitter showed political bias in its suspension practices. Instead, the observed asymmetry could be explained entirely by the tendency of Republicans to share more misinformation. While support for action against misinformation is bipartisan, the sharing of misinformation –at least at this historical moment –is heavily asymmetric across parties. As a result, our study shows that it is inappropriate to make inferences about political bias from asymmetries in suspension rates."
The key here is who is defining misinformation. As the COVID lab leak and Hunter Biden laptop story show there has been a tendency to loudly dismiss or condemn any dissenting opinions of those that don't align with the mainstream narrative as "misinformation". Only to subsequently find out later that these were not as far fetched or misinformed as previously believed.
And the Russian DNC hack. Crowdstrike's President told the public one thing and then testified to the House Intelligence Committee that there's no evidence of Russian involvement.
This didn't seem to stop multiple MSNBC hosts from shouting about Russian election meddling, long after the Justice Department dropped such claims and related charges.
This didn't seem to stop multiple MSNBC hosts from shouting about Russian election meddling, long after the Justice Department dropped such claims and related charges.
I’m not sure why you have been downvoted. It may be true that the Republicans share information from sketchier sources, but the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression was so bad that I don’t think Democrats have a leg to stand on here. The message that it was “Russian disinformation” was completely evidence-free and baseless, and the fact that Twitter blocked the URL was a clear signal that the standards for different political views is different.
I think the conclusions of the paper probably stand, but a more rigorous analysis will need to address this.
Fact-checkers have occasionally made serious errors, and in other cases made arbitrary, premature, or flimsy judgments of ambiguous situations, essentially passing off opinion as fact. From what I've seen, these errors and arbitrary judgments tend to favor the liberal side. Scholars will need to remove these errors and arbitrary judgment calls from the "misinformation score" and see whether there continues to be a big partisan gap.
Again, my gut feeling is that the conclusions wouldn't be changed much. There's plenty of genuine right-wing misinformation out there that isn't tied to erroneous or opinion-based fact-checking. But a paper like this really needs to get down to brass tacks about what exactly is being called misinformation, or it will only be yet more ammunition for political and culture wars, and won't provide any scientific enlightenment.
I suspect that certain segments of the left would also be somewhat vindicated by a more serious and detailed review of what is deemed misinformation. Dissenters on all sides are at least sometimes unfairly treated by the mainstream fact-checking institutions.
Fact-checkers have occasionally made serious errors, and in other cases made arbitrary, premature, or flimsy judgments of ambiguous situations, essentially passing off opinion as fact. From what I've seen, these errors and arbitrary judgments tend to favor the liberal side. Scholars will need to remove these errors and arbitrary judgment calls from the "misinformation score" and see whether there continues to be a big partisan gap.
Again, my gut feeling is that the conclusions wouldn't be changed much. There's plenty of genuine right-wing misinformation out there that isn't tied to erroneous or opinion-based fact-checking. But a paper like this really needs to get down to brass tacks about what exactly is being called misinformation, or it will only be yet more ammunition for political and culture wars, and won't provide any scientific enlightenment.
I suspect that certain segments of the left would also be somewhat vindicated by a more serious and detailed review of what is deemed misinformation. Dissenters on all sides are at least sometimes unfairly treated by the mainstream fact-checking institutions.
You can’t “remove” those errors — they are likely the primary cause of the perceived gap. I think that fact checkers and related orgs are mostly correct, but where there is room for interpretation and when mistakes are made they happen with a strong bias in one direction. Removing those is basically just pruning “outliers” in dataset that don’t support the conclusion you’d like to make.
> You can’t “remove” those errors — they are likely the primary cause of the perceived gap.
I think you can fix the errors and exclude more opinion-based "fact checks" if you review the underlying data carefully and transparently. Whether those fixes and exclusions close the gap is currently a matter of opinion, and I think we should try to do better than just everyone just having their own opinions on it. That's my whole point.
I think you can fix the errors and exclude more opinion-based "fact checks" if you review the underlying data carefully and transparently. Whether those fixes and exclusions close the gap is currently a matter of opinion, and I think we should try to do better than just everyone just having their own opinions on it. That's my whole point.
If your tweet was censored or your account was banned on the basis of an opinion-based fact check, what difference does it make? The enforcement action was still taken.
It’s like saying that all police action in the United States is righteous and legitimate (you simply need to exclude all actions which are not). What is the value of such a tautological study/statement?
It’s like saying that all police action in the United States is righteous and legitimate (you simply need to exclude all actions which are not). What is the value of such a tautological study/statement?
>I suspect that certain segments of the left would also be somewhat vindicated by a more serious and detailed review of what is deemed misinformation.
"Certain segments of the left" still believe that the Russians have a video of hookers peeing on Trump that they're using to puppeteer him to their own needs. The left has no business lecturing anyone about misinformation.
"Certain segments of the left" still believe that the Russians have a video of hookers peeing on Trump that they're using to puppeteer him to their own needs. The left has no business lecturing anyone about misinformation.
> Russians have a video of hookers peeing on Trump
That wasn't the actual claim, it was that the hookers were peeing on the bed in the hotel room with Trump.
(The actual interesting bit was that a video appearing to be that did turn up, and after examination, turned out to be a fake that someone put a considerable amount of effort into. I do wonder who, and what they were hoping to accomplish with it).
That wasn't the actual claim, it was that the hookers were peeing on the bed in the hotel room with Trump.
(The actual interesting bit was that a video appearing to be that did turn up, and after examination, turned out to be a fake that someone put a considerable amount of effort into. I do wonder who, and what they were hoping to accomplish with it).
We should now have clear enough evidence to impeach Hunter Biden. Or at least we could fire him from his government position.
For what it is worth, the laptop is far from the smoking gun people seem to think it is. The data is a mess and the story of how the data was acquired still makes no sense. The only thing that has been verified so far is that some of the emails did pass through GMail.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...
For what it is worth, the laptop is far from the smoking gun people seem to think it is. The data is a mess and the story of how the data was acquired still makes no sense. The only thing that has been verified so far is that some of the emails did pass through GMail.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...
I’m aware it’s a mess and the story is crazy, but unless we have hard evidence that something is legitimately misinformation, especially when it comes from a mostly reputable news source (NYP), then it should not be suppressed. And importantly: this standard should be held consistently, regardless of who benefits politically.
The “left a laptop at a repair shop” part is of course bizarre, but makes about as much sense to me as anything else that Hunter seems to have done in his life.
The “left a laptop at a repair shop” part is of course bizarre, but makes about as much sense to me as anything else that Hunter seems to have done in his life.
Hunter Biden does not work for the Us government.
Nor can he be impeached. That’s why it’s a joke.
It's not entirely a joke. Lets say the Hunter Biden story is true and he profited off of a Ukranian oil company. Why would it be a scandal? He is not in a position of trust with the government. Joe Biden didn't appoint him to his staff. The huge "gotcha" moment where they take down the entire Hunter Biden empire of deceit and corruption doesn't affect the public interest.
I’m not sure what you mean by “suppose”. Hunter Biden publicly served on the board of Burisma with compensation upwards of ~50k per month from 2014-2019 (while his father was Vice President). Joe Biden was sufficiently involved in Ukraine that Obama officials actually expressed concerns about a conflict of interest.
He was also on the board of BHR during the same period and acquired a significant stake at a discount. AKAIK, these facts are not in dispute.
The part that is potential scandalous (and disputed) is that he was in these positions to peddle influence with his father and even kicking back compensation with his fathers explicit knowledge and approval.
Joe Biden is in a position of trust in government, and the defense against this has basically been “I have no idea what Hunter was doing and those were legitimate business arrangements”. However, if that’s untrue then it is obviously influence peddling and scandalous. I’m not really taking a position here, but it makes no sense to claim that simply because Hunter Biden is not in government, this is irrelevant.
He was also on the board of BHR during the same period and acquired a significant stake at a discount. AKAIK, these facts are not in dispute.
The part that is potential scandalous (and disputed) is that he was in these positions to peddle influence with his father and even kicking back compensation with his fathers explicit knowledge and approval.
Joe Biden is in a position of trust in government, and the defense against this has basically been “I have no idea what Hunter was doing and those were legitimate business arrangements”. However, if that’s untrue then it is obviously influence peddling and scandalous. I’m not really taking a position here, but it makes no sense to claim that simply because Hunter Biden is not in government, this is irrelevant.
I am not sure why are you downvoted. But yes, who labels what's harmful misinformation and what is a legitimate dissenting voice is a big factor and the source of bias.
Zoom away from the polarizing US "current thing" BS politics and it becomes even clearer. Things like ESG, Nuclear energy, Middle Eastern conflicts, religious freedoms, criticizing China, etc.
The world is mostly gray, and whoever sets the boundaries of good/bad is king (that's why Media is valuable to billionaires and dictators).
Zoom away from the polarizing US "current thing" BS politics and it becomes even clearer. Things like ESG, Nuclear energy, Middle Eastern conflicts, religious freedoms, criticizing China, etc.
The world is mostly gray, and whoever sets the boundaries of good/bad is king (that's why Media is valuable to billionaires and dictators).
As the paper says in respect of politically motivated definitions of mis-information
> Helping to address concerns about potential liberal bias among fact-checkers, we also examined untrustworthiness ratings from politically-balanced crowds of demographically representative (quota-sampled) American laypeople recruited via Lucid (15), rather than professional fact-checkers.
> Helping to address concerns about potential liberal bias among fact-checkers, we also examined untrustworthiness ratings from politically-balanced crowds of demographically representative (quota-sampled) American laypeople recruited via Lucid (15), rather than professional fact-checkers.
The study defined misinformation as links to articles that were deemed to be false by fact checkers.
Has the Covid lab leak been proven true?
As for the Hunter Biden laptop story, what's the issue? I just want to know specifically.
As for the Hunter Biden laptop story, what's the issue? I just want to know specifically.
Lab leak hasn't been proven true, but hasn't been proven false. People were told they were spreading misinformation and xenophobia / racism if they talked about it.
Some portions of Hunter Biden laptop have been proven true (the emails on the laptop are legit) but people were banned for spreading hacked content (deapite it not being hacked) and spreading Russian disinformation.
Some portions of Hunter Biden laptop have been proven true (the emails on the laptop are legit) but people were banned for spreading hacked content (deapite it not being hacked) and spreading Russian disinformation.
> Lab leak hasn't been proven true, but hasn't been proven false.
That’s a lazy argument from ignorance, and can be dismissed out of hand by Hitchens’s Razor.
(See “philosophical burden of proof”)
That’s a lazy argument from ignorance, and can be dismissed out of hand by Hitchens’s Razor.
(See “philosophical burden of proof”)
The problem is the theory was just discounted right off the bat without any real reason other than conservatives said it. That is not an intellectually good argument. We should not be banning plausible theories unless we have actual evidence.
Was the theory discounted for no reason? I thought it was discounted because the evidence was weak at the time. Especially in comparison to how vigorously it was being pushed by politicos in power.
For example, if someone killed a bunch of people and the head of the FBI said, "A black guy is doing it!" with no real evidence then I think banning it might be more justified. Now it may turn out that a black guy is the one doing the killing, but that doesn't make the pronouncements of the FBI head justified (although I'm sure the FBI head would feel justified).
For example, if someone killed a bunch of people and the head of the FBI said, "A black guy is doing it!" with no real evidence then I think banning it might be more justified. Now it may turn out that a black guy is the one doing the killing, but that doesn't make the pronouncements of the FBI head justified (although I'm sure the FBI head would feel justified).
Who cares if the evidence is / was weak? They were censored for misinformation not because the evidence is weak. By that logic your post should be censored since your evidence that it was censored for being weak is in fact weak evidence.
We are not talking about the head of the FBI. If the head of the CDC said something like this you may be have a better comparison. Even if the CDC said something like this it wouldn't impact health so it probably shouldn't even count as harmful content.
We are not talking about the head of the FBI. If the head of the CDC said something like this you may be have a better comparison. Even if the CDC said something like this it wouldn't impact health so it probably shouldn't even count as harmful content.
Who was censored regarding the lab leak theory?
Dr. Li-Meng Yan
How?
She was banned on Twitter. I think it was temporary and she has her account back now though.
Facebook explicitly banned the theory and later unbanned the theory.
YouTube demonetized some videos about the theory, but I am not sure what the current status is.
Pretty clear censorship on Twitter and other social media sites.
Facebook explicitly banned the theory and later unbanned the theory.
YouTube demonetized some videos about the theory, but I am not sure what the current status is.
Pretty clear censorship on Twitter and other social media sites.
The burden on proof is on the people doing the censoring. If they wanna censor one theory they need do disprove it or prove another one. And this goes for all subjects, not just 'rona.
jandrese(1)
What exactly do you mean by emails? I ask, because AFAIK there's exactly one email that's been validated:
https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim/blob/main/M...
Have all of the emails on the laptop been verified, or is it still just that one?
https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim/blob/main/M...
Have all of the emails on the laptop been verified, or is it still just that one?
The NYT article seemed to indicate emails along with a cache of files were authenticated. I am not sure if only one was actually authenticated and people are assuming all of them were or not.
[deleted]
Chronology matters here. Any conspiracy theory, no matter how seemingly unhinged could become factual in time. And when you spew misinformation and lies everyday you are bound to have some lies eventually emerge as truth. None of that should lend credibility to the people who found themselves eventually and accidentally speaking the truth.
> The key here is who is defining misinformation.
We should respect the processes that are used to establish truthful information, even if it is occasionally wrong, rather than the noise makers who are occasionally right.
In other words “who” should not be a factor in determining misinformation, but “how”.
> The key here is who is defining misinformation.
We should respect the processes that are used to establish truthful information, even if it is occasionally wrong, rather than the noise makers who are occasionally right.
In other words “who” should not be a factor in determining misinformation, but “how”.
nynx(6)
I see disproportionate amount of violence/threats from right-leaning personas online. Perhaps that is a factor?
Yes, I know it's anecdotal, but the LGBTQ+ community has been the victim of an increasing number of hate crimes(confirmed by law enforcement reporting), and the rhetoric online seems to mirror this.
Free speech does not cover overt or implied violence based on sexual or gender identity.
Yes, I know it's anecdotal, but the LGBTQ+ community has been the victim of an increasing number of hate crimes(confirmed by law enforcement reporting), and the rhetoric online seems to mirror this.
Free speech does not cover overt or implied violence based on sexual or gender identity.
Do you have any evidence that it is disproportionately coming from the right? I see a lot more coming from the left so it seems a bit anecdotal.
Are you saying it's more likely hate crimes are being perpetrated by people that identify as progressive?
Well, let's see here.
We have one "side" publicly and loudly proclaiming the same things as racist lynch mobs from the 1800s and literal Nazis.
We have another "side" publicly and loudly calling for dignity and respect for every human being.
It would seem logical to me that the burden of proof here would be on the person claiming that the latter is sending more hate and death threats than the former. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
We have one "side" publicly and loudly proclaiming the same things as racist lynch mobs from the 1800s and literal Nazis.
We have another "side" publicly and loudly calling for dignity and respect for every human being.
It would seem logical to me that the burden of proof here would be on the person claiming that the latter is sending more hate and death threats than the former. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You are clearly bias. You are taking the worst arguments from one side and the best from the other.
The NY subway shooting was perpetrated by a black supremacist. So much for dignity and respect of every human being. Of course you would say that is just a small minority and people denounce what he did. So what? He did it and you are clearly ignoring that.
Burden of proof is not on the original person making an anecdotal statement, but the person stating their anecdotal experience is different? Nice consistency.
Every side has bad people and you can't whitewash one side and claim the other side is only their bad parts if you want a fair understanding of the situation. Nobody is making extraordinary claims except you. I can do the same thing as you: one side believes in killing every cop and the other side just believes in living peacefully with everybody. This is as fair of an assessment as you made.
The NY subway shooting was perpetrated by a black supremacist. So much for dignity and respect of every human being. Of course you would say that is just a small minority and people denounce what he did. So what? He did it and you are clearly ignoring that.
Burden of proof is not on the original person making an anecdotal statement, but the person stating their anecdotal experience is different? Nice consistency.
Every side has bad people and you can't whitewash one side and claim the other side is only their bad parts if you want a fair understanding of the situation. Nobody is making extraordinary claims except you. I can do the same thing as you: one side believes in killing every cop and the other side just believes in living peacefully with everybody. This is as fair of an assessment as you made.
Can you post any link to left leaning people calling for violence against LGBTQ aligned individuals?
I'm not sure I could easily find an example but there have been some lesbians who had calls of violence against them because they are a so called TERF.
I was, however, talking about general calls to violence not specifically against LGBT people. The first paragraph from the post I was replying to made no mention of LGBT. I should have quoted that part to make it more clear what exactly I was talking about. Sorry about the confusion.
I was, however, talking about general calls to violence not specifically against LGBT people. The first paragraph from the post I was replying to made no mention of LGBT. I should have quoted that part to make it more clear what exactly I was talking about. Sorry about the confusion.
I'd like to see a study that correlates use of Twitter's "report" button with political persuasion.
My hypothesis is that lefties are more likely to appeal to authority and hit the "report" button when they see something they don't like, and right wingers are more likely to go vigilante and hit "reply" and attempt to persuade/shout the person into agreeing with them.
My hypothesis is that lefties are more likely to appeal to authority and hit the "report" button when they see something they don't like, and right wingers are more likely to go vigilante and hit "reply" and attempt to persuade/shout the person into agreeing with them.
I break it down on authoritarian lines. Left, right, indie are a separate thing.
Authoritarians do these things most often:
Brigade, mass report, preemptive blocks, use of lists.
Malicious Compliance and or using, gaming rules to get other people into problem positions.
Tribe vs tribe, guilty by association, and or forcing others into false choice scenarios.
Mixing authoritarianism with political alignment complicates things unnecessarily in my view. There can be poor quality people favoring any ideology, and or multiple ones, same as there can be better quality people.
I urge you to give it some thought. You may find it helps to understand others better.
Authoritarians do these things most often:
Brigade, mass report, preemptive blocks, use of lists.
Malicious Compliance and or using, gaming rules to get other people into problem positions.
Tribe vs tribe, guilty by association, and or forcing others into false choice scenarios.
Mixing authoritarianism with political alignment complicates things unnecessarily in my view. There can be poor quality people favoring any ideology, and or multiple ones, same as there can be better quality people.
I urge you to give it some thought. You may find it helps to understand others better.
I don't think you know a lot of lefties, or that your lefties are at worst socdems (barely leftwing)
Zoom away from the polarizing US "current thing" BS politics and it becomes even clearer. Things like ESG, Nuclear energy, Middle Eastern conflicts, religious freedoms, criticizing China, etc.
The world is mostly gray, and whoever sets the boundaries of good/bad is king (that's why Media is valuable to billionaires and dictators).