Trump Twitter censored 65 times; Biden never. This proves that Biden is more responsible and less hateful, right?

[Maximian]

However, who gets to decide what constitutes responsibility or hatred? By what standard? Or in the famous words of Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Twitter does when it comes to removing content from their platform.

I accept that there are probably political motivations involved - Trump has characterised himself in opposition to “Big Tech” a lot more than Biden.

 

[PaulinVA]

One of the candidates lives on Twitter and posts constantly in grandiose terms and the other, while on Twitter, just posts mostly innocent stuff. Trump has many more opportunities, since he posts way more content, to be censored.

True, tech skews left, but what has Joe posted that is objectively that bad?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

This proves that Biden is more responsible and less hateful, right?

I don’t think we have agreement that the number of Twitter moderators is a metric of hatefulness for content.

However, who gets to decide what constitutes responsibility or hatred?

Each individual person can make that assessment themselves. You may find communities of people that agree or disagree.

But I think you mean to ask who gets to decide to take action on a tweet. If you owned a property and people posted signs in your yard, who gets to decides which signs (if any) are removed?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Except for when the exchange of money is involved (which makes the privileges or services purchasee subject to commerce laws) one has a great deal of latitude in deciding who can use their private property. Do you feel it is necessary to have an enforcement mechanism to impose something different?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Trump has characterised himself in opposition to “Big Tech” a lot more than Biden.

I know this is subjective, but Twitter has never come across as “big” to me. It has about 4,000 employees. Compare this to Facebook (50,000 employees) Apple (137,000), Google (100,000) , Microsoft (156,439) or Amazon (1,000,000).

 

[Rockoh22]

One of the candidates lives on Twitter and posts constantly in grandiose terms and the other, while on Twitter, just posts mostly innocent stuff. Trump has many more opportunities, since he posts way more content, to be censored.

True, tech skews left, but what has Joe posted that is objectively that bad?

It is not just about President Trump being censored. I mean, they are censoring the leader of the “free world”. If they censor the leader, they censor who ever they want. And at that is authoritarian. They have censored more Republicans than Democrats. They do not apply the rules equal at any rate. The evidence is clear that they allow a political view over the other.

But it is not just twitter. It is Facebook, google, YouTube, Bing and just about all of silicone valley.

This are rich people interfering with what the people of the Nation want to discuss. They decide what is worthy of discussion or not.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Give it a few years and we will have only one political side allowed.

It does lean favorable to the Democrats at the moment, but only the Democrats that are aligned with the platforms. As soon as Democrats do not align with the platform, they will also be censored.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

They have censored more Republicans than Democrats.

Have there been any metrics on this? I know that is the perception that some have, but is their factual I formation to support this perception?

If someone receives moderation and decides to accept it, others may never k ow. If a tweet is moderated and then the person that made the tweet deletes it there is no evidence of the moderation left behind.

I’ve wonder if part of the perception is in part from differences in inclinations to tell the world about the moderation.

 

[Rockoh22]

Have there been any metrics on this?

It has been happening for quite some time now. We even have video evidence from undercover videos. We have people of high positions talk about this from multiple institutions, like the NYT and Associated Press.

You want evidence? Well you can start with Project Veritas, actual undercover videos, and whistleblowers.

 

[F_Marturana]

Joe Biden doesn’t tweet that much.

He’s tweeted about 7,000 times total.

https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/detail/939091-joebiden

Trump on the other hand has tweeted over 54,000 times.

Trump Twitter Archive

 

[PaulinVA]

It is not just about President Trump being censored. I mean, they are censoring the leader of the “free world”. If they censor the leader, they censor who ever they want. And at that is authoritarian. They have censored more Republicans than Democrats. They do not apply the rules equal at any rate. The evidence is clear that they allow a political view over the other.

I’m not so sure. Evidence would be nice.

Can you give an example of a “liberal leaning” posts or group of post that should have been censored and was not?

 

[PaulinVA]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[ReaderT]

Yeah, they do have a left leaning bias. Trump tweeted the NY Post “Hunter Biden” story and they blocked it because it had “hacked information.” But they were fine with the stories about Trump’s tax returns 1 week ago, which were not obtained licitly.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

You want evidence?

Specifically metrics and methods which can be subjected to analysis by others. From what I’ve seen we don’t actually have this, and instead discussion tends to based on perceptions than something that can be measured and examined.

This is likely to be information that won’t be available to us though. If it were, it would be an awesome data set for analysis. The information of interest might include the number of tweets moderated, whether the moderation were from a human or automation, reason for the moderation, the text of the moderated tweet. There would need to be a method for determining a political status for the moderated tweet too. Note that a use could have political leanings and still engaged in undisputed violations.

Are you familiar with Milo Yiannopoulos? He is an ex-Breitbart employee. He identifies as right-leaning. But he also identified as a professional troll. Twitter permanently suspended his account after he lead an online harassment campaign against Leslie Jones. Milo claims he was suspended because of political bias.

I can think of a number of reasons why it might be in Twitter’s best interest to not release such detailed information. I don’t think we will ever see ot. However, I think it would be useful if the claims of political bias were supported by something that can be independently examined.

 

[Rockoh22]

I’m not so sure. Evidence would be nice.

I am surprised an active political person like your self has not seen this. I little searching shows the evidence. But just in case, here are at least two.

The blocking of news that hurt the Biden campaign are the most obvious. That in it self should be evidence enough. They never blocked conspiracies or hurtful content against the president even when it was lies.

Remember when Twitter placed a “Deceptively Edited” to a video Trump twitted about Joe Biden words. Then immediately after Biden twitted a clip of Trump that was severely edited and twitted did nothing?

 

[ReaderT]

Can you give an example of a “liberal leaning” posts or group of post that should have been censored and was not?

Well, the Steele Dossier for one, which was absolutely not true but FB and Twitter still allowed it to roar around un-fact-checked. Also Trump’s tax returns - totally unchecked, illicitly obtained and may be partly or mostly fictitious.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The anticompetitive cases they have been working on against Google et al are centered on commerce and advertising. From what I’ve seen of the cases so far, they haven’t had anything on user moderation , censoring, or alleged political bias. Ex: against Facebook, the case is on Facebook’s advertisement network and acquisitions.

 

[Rockoh22]

Specifically metrics and methods which can be subjected to analysis by others.

look, I am not attacking you, but you asked for evidence. I pointed you to some undercover evidence. You never even talked about it. So why ask?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Well, the Steele Dossier for one, which was absolutely not true but FB and Twitter still allowed it to roar around un-fact-checked.

I dont think the Steele Dossier is alleged to be hacked material. The same reason provided for the moderation of the NY Post link doesn’t appear to be applicable.

 

[PaulinVA]

The blocking of news that hurt the Biden campaign are the most obvious. That in it self should be evidence enough. They never blocked conspiracies or hurtful content against the president even when it was lies.

Since I don’t want to defend Twitter or Facebook (why would I?), I’ll not dispute that.

 

[Rockoh22]

Since I don’t want to defend Twitter or Facebook (why would I?), I’ll not dispute that.

I can sympathize. But always defend the truth.

A great example? Jesus was innocent. Pilate knew that, but he did not wanted to get involved for many reasons, so Pilate is guilty of it. Crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Just defend truth, that is what we are called to do. Hard to do at times, since it will “embolden” our opponent.