> drag you deeper into the rabbit hole of extremism
This is what banning /r/the_donald and now /r/donaldtrump did. It doesn't stop the users from believing what they believe, it just further isolates them in an echo changer while simultaneously reinforcing the belief that the liberal media is "out to get them".
But crucially, it also makes it much more difficult for unwitting people to start discovering it. The point is to slow the spread, not to reach the people who are already there.
The idea that the only way to protect unwitting people from falling into some undesirable line of thinking is to limit what they see to the desirable line of thinking seems doomed to fail. Either discourse works and you expect people can be made to come to their own sensible conclusions or discourse doesn't work and every change from the norm must be subversive. I.e. tucking it away doesn't guarantee it ends up less visible to people it just guarantees it will be less visible to the system tucking it away. People are still going to share ideas that don't agree with the majority opinion but now those hearing have zero tools or experience for dealing with such claims.
Memes as viruses seems apt. There's a fine balance between exposure leading to herd immunity, and pure isolation making the entire population susceptible to being swept up in a collective insanity once a novel one emerges or re-emerges from generational turnover (eg Marxism or Nazism.) Anyone pretending like one or the other is a global maximum is wrong, and pulling us closer to something non-balanced creates risk around the worst case befalling us in that regime.
The obvious question in this analogy is if there's anything akin to a vaccine. Well, when it comes to bigotry, I think having people you care about in your life that are in tribes or groups being demonized by bigots is just that. And a society of liberal norms of the free exchange of ideas and democracies acts similar to a culture of hand washing and cleanliness in a society where people are free to interact with the sick.
> simultaneously reinforcing the belief that the liberal media is "out to get them".
These people are brainwashed. No concrete action normies take can convince them. They have to decide to get better and ask for help. And we must help them, without judgment or scolding, when that happens. But at some point, you have to stop a policy of appeasement because it doesn't work. They'll just keep pushing and taking more and more.
Leave it alone. Reddit did the right thing early on by minimizing /r/td spam on the front page. Aside from that I'm convinced there were no problems posed by /r/td or /r/donaldtrump aside from those invented by the small, vocal minority of pearl-clutchers complaining that someone somewhere on Reddit was posting things they disagreed with.
An interesting thought exercise is if the whole thing which happened would have been avoided if they were allowed to stay on reddit. They were driven to another site, and I can say for sure the level of extremism was unchecked in comparison by their own community at that point. On reddit, they at least were exposed to more formalized community moderation as well as regular influx of more level headed people who often tried to talk sense into some of the more extreme members. I think some good faith efforts and ground rules were in place on the new site, but a lot of this insurrection shit seems like it would have gone very differently on a more public facing reddit subforum.
Would you take down posts around organising an attempted coup? Where is the line? I'm asking because I see both sides but err on your side but I also know it's a very suboptimal solution.
Note that Fox News remains the most-watched cable news network - though online, it ranks after CNN and NYT (and possibly others, depending on the metric).
Because Fox is the primary "mainstream" news source for conservative viewers. There are many more left-leaning news networks so their viewers are more divided. The majority of remaining news channels/networks/etc. have liberal bias.
Viewers have various options to choose from (eg CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Newsmax, ...). The divion CNN+MSNBC vs Fox (in terms of, say, viewership or ad revenue) seems to be roughly comparable to what you'd expect from voter demographics.
If, say, Newsmax rose to prominence and we'd see more fragmentation on the 'right', or CNN and MSNBC were to merge, and we'd see less fragmentation on the 'left', what would that change?
Just looking at the "AllSides Media Bias Chart" there are more "major" sources that are left-leaning than right [0]. The chart includes top sources by traffic. I mean this doesn't calculate all traffic and determine if in general left sources are more viewed but it's a start.
That’s a very subjective chart and by their own admission doesn’t even try to compare for honesty or credibility. Most of the two R columns routinely run fake or highly selective coverage to a degree which only Democracy Now and certain HuffPost writers approach.
There is an enormous difference between an outlet like the New Yorker, which is definitely liberal but also fiercely committed to fact checking, and outlets like Newsmax or The American Conservative which are proudly movement conservatives first and journalists second, if at all.
This desire to present a false equivalence is understandable - it makes it easier to avoid acknowledging a major schism in the country - but the misrepresentations requires are a disservice to their readers. Just the fact that The Economist is listed as leftist to the same degree that The Post Millenial or NY Post are listed as right wing tells you how interested they are in accuracy!
> The AllSides Media Bias Chart is more comprehensive in its methodology than any other media bias chart on the Web. While other media bias charts show you the subjective opinion of the one person who made it, our ratings are based based on multipartisan, scientific analysis.
> and by their own admission doesn’t even try to compare for honesty or credibility
I don't think this matters in the context of the point I was making.
> Most of the two R columns routinely run fake or highly selective coverage
Hmm, so this further reduces the number of quality right-leaning sources. Seems to further prove my point. Remember, the chart shows sites with the most traffic.
> There is an enormous difference between an outlet like the New Yorker, which is definitely liberal but also fiercely committed to fact checking, and outlets like Newsmax or The American Conservative which are proudly movement conservatives first and journalists second, if at all.
Maybe, but it doesn't matter in the context of my point. Also, if they are clear about their biases it shouldn't matter, unless presenting outright lies. Many left-leaning sources try to come off like they are objective. Also:
> A leading New Yorker writer omits crucial facts to run interference for Joe Biden against serious allegations of corruption in Ukraine, writes Joe Lauria. [0]
Many left-leaning sources were also guilty of this (twitter going so far as take down the tweet from the NY Post as "hacked information" even though there was zero evidence this was the case, and Facebook de-prioritizing shared link of the same).
This is my opinion and based around some examples I've seen, but I believe that conservative sources have a tougher time making money, because people will attack their ad-partners for supporting those companies. I'd like to see where this happens to left-leaning sources.
There's a reason you're reacting to my comparison of these people to ISIS, rather than suggesting that ISIS recruitment videos be permitted. ISIS represents something "beyond the pale", so obviously bad that it's okay if we censor it because it's dangerous and seditious.
You object to the comparison because it's an attack. We all know ISIS is bad, so the only reason to comparing these people to them is to make it seem like they're bad too, even though they're trying to say a lot of reasonable things if someone would just listen with an open mind!
Obviously, not everyone on r/DonaldTrump is down to invade the capitol. I'm sure there are plenty of people who support ISIS that don't support their violence either. No group is homogenously made up of cartoon villains. But that doesn't mean we need to be fine with the recruiting grounds for their most violent sects.
To be clear, your rhetorical position is the exact same as mine. You're perfectly fine with the exact same censorship you're ostensibly criticizing. You just want the line to be drawn somewhere else.
It is certainly looking that way to me. At least ~80% of them. They're all going along with this bullshit apart from a few more principled ones who are in it for the money/ self enrichment only.
I think it's unfortunate that you feel this way, especially if it's without any evidence. I wouldn't say that 80% of liberals are communists and socialists. I think this mentality will only further the division between sides.
I don't believe most conservatives agree with his rhetoric, they just like his policies for the most part. They probably don't even like him much, they just dislike the direction the democratic side is going enough to vote for him.
> I don't believe most conservatives agree with his rhetoric, they just like his policies for the most part. They probably don't even like him much, they just dislike the direction the democratic side is going enough to vote for him.
"I don't care for Hitler's rhetoric, I just voted for the Nazis because I think he has some good ideas about infrastructure and I like his jobs plan" doesn't exactly come across as sympathetic. Especially not after it becomes obvious where the trains are going.
If you're a conservative or a Republican who supports Trump for his politics alone, or because he was the R and you hate the D, the moral thing to do as of January 6 is to disavow Trump entirely, and look for another candidate who supports his views, or perhaps consider supporting a third party. Not to dig in and continue making excuses for him and his supporters.
Can you be upset and disavow what someone says but still support them? The instant someone says something "bad" they should be just thrown out?
I don't agree with a lot of what Trump says, but I don't hold him accountable for others' actions unless he specifically called for violence which I don't think he did in this case. He does say some questionable things, but has always disavowed violence on both sides.
Obama has promulgated lots of anti-police rhetoric, and there are some who would blame him for certain attacks on police. I disagree with things he said, but would not blame him for any of that.
If you truly can't see any relationship between Trump's rhetoric and the behavior of his extremist base - particularly with the conspiracy theory of the 2020 election being stolen from him - a conspiracy theory he continued to spread at every available moment and which provided the impetus behind numerous incidents of violence leading up to the events at the Capitol just days earlier - then we may be at an impasse.
As far as I can tell, Obama is considered "anti-police" simply because he supports BLM, but BLM have legitimate concerns about police violence and systemic racism in law enforcement, and voicing those concerns doesn't make one anti-police. I have yet to find an "anti-police" statement made by Obama which condemns all police and calls them all evil, that is at all equivalent to the vitriol or paranoia in Trump's rhetoric.
It seems like a false equivalence drawn between the two.
There are people out there that are crazy, and will use anything to justify their actions. Unless he called for a specific action, I don't see how he is to blame. It would be setting a bad precedent to blame or punish anyone that said something provacative that is not explicitly a call for inciting harm/violence. People need to be held responsible for their own actions.
I believe Obama used carefully picked statistics to say there is widespread racism in the police. There are likely racist people/cops, but I don't believe there is evidence to suggest widespread racism.
The media is more left leaning than 1) the median of the population and 2) the media was 20 years ago.
I think 1) is what's driving the "media is left" feeling. It is left compared to the median of society. To many people (not just on the far right), that feels like the media pushing leftist views/narratives/agendas.
This is what banning /r/the_donald and now /r/donaldtrump did. It doesn't stop the users from believing what they believe, it just further isolates them in an echo changer while simultaneously reinforcing the belief that the liberal media is "out to get them".