[qabqabaca]

Is the issue here that all republican/right-wing biased platforms and influencers encourage hate-speech? Or simply that the platforms with the ability to block access to these services have a liberal bias and it suits their agenda better?

I am not right-wing nor am I even American, but at this stage I'm of the opinion that these bans are coordinated attacks. Watching Trump get banned from every social platform within two or three days for inciting an insurrection offline left a bad taste in my mouth. A similar thing has just happened to Andrew Tate. It also happens all the time with right-wing subreddits.

Why are right-wing communities not allowed to flourish online like left-leaning ones?

[tentacleuno]

What happened to Trump always made me feel a bit uneasy. Seeing companies from Stripe, a payments company, to all social media companies block him all at once was staggering to see. The collective power of all these companies is staggering, and I've never seen anything on this scale before.

[karmakurtisaani]

I feel like on January 6th something happened that could influence this.. I mean let's not pretend this kind of action happens just because the companies decide someone is not woke enough or some bs like that. Trump is dangerous and seriously doesn't deserve to be on these platforms.

[Yoric]

I don't know about this specific service, but I've read up about the general context.

What is happening here to US Conservatives is similar to what happened to Muslims around 2016. Until that time, most online services didn't want to touch anything religion-related with a ten foot pole because they felt that it would be religious censorship and/or feared the backlash. But then, with Daech stepping up its online recruitment effort and hiding much of it among benign Muslim/Muslim-adjacent conversations, services decided to do something.

So a loosely coordinated effort started around 2016 to marginalize Daech. This meant investing time and effort in moderating Muslim and arab-speaking communities. This meant banning extremist users and closing extremist groups – even as they migrated from service to service. This also meant banning communities that refused to moderate extremist speech.

And, to the best of my understanding, it worked. Daech lost most of its capability to recruit online for terrorism, civil war and funding, while, after an initial scare, regular users (including Muslims and arab speakers) continue using the services without any real disruption.

Until 2020, nobody dared to touch US Conservatives for the same kind of reason. US Conservatives are powerful, well funded, well organized, they own a large fraction of US media and they are very much in a position where they can boycott and destroy plenty of services (possibly not Big Tech, but many services are much smaller). This was a problem because the number of terrorist attacks planned by groups hiding in plain sight among regular Conservatives users had reached scary levels, not to mention the amount of dangerous propaganda hiding among regular Conservative discussion. I assume that there were plans to try and do something about that, but they were rejected by business fiat because of the fear of backlash. Then came the assault on the Capitol and the plans were not rejected anymore.

We have entered a stage in which services attempt to get rid of/marginalize extremists from within the ranks of US Conservatives, in the hope that this will help decrease far right terrorism. It is scary for US Conservatives, just as the 2016 operations were scary for Muslims and arab-speaking users. As far as I can see, right wing communities very much continue to exist – they just can't operate in a "we're not going to moderate extremist speech".

Is it specifically targeting US Conservatives? Yes, it is, because US Conservatives communities are being used by extremists to hide in plain sight.

Is this a good strategy? Is it successful? Too early to tell, I guess. But there is a historical precedent that suggests that it should be, in time.

[timeon]

I do not think that it is "all republican/right-wing" platforms. It is just that these are more amplified because of former POTUS.

[qabqabaca]

That's exactly my point. How can something like 4chan still exist online? There have been multiple mass-shooters bred there. It also used to be known for extremely questionable adult content. Why do Trumps preferred platforms get taken down but not this?

[luxeo223]

Yes to the former: in my impression, the far right discourse and memes, in the broad sense of the word, tend to be more threatening and violent on average when the posts are directory towards the opposing political group or marginalised communities (e.g. racial or sexual). This happens both towards the group broadly or when targeting particular individuals, such as jail Hillary, hang Pelosi, or shoot the gays, or that women are not worth anyone's time (Andrew Tate example).

You can have a less polarised left- or right-wing discussion, and that results in less moderation for both sides. For example in the UK, you may not have liked Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson, but you'd hardly have anyone calling for them to be jailed or murdered.

[qabqabaca]

This is a good observation. It's also probably not coincidence that any "free speech" (i.e. zero content moderation) platforms inevitably end up full of racists/homophobes/xenophobes etc

[rhdunn]

You still see polarization, though. People calling Lib Dem supporters "yellow tories", people who like Blair and/or his vision of a center left Labour party "red tories", calling people "gammon", etc.

These things help push people to the extremes and drown out the middle ground. That only helps push people further to extremes, which ultimately leads to conflicts as the two sides disagree with each other.

And while there may not have been calls for Corbyn to be jailed or murdered (I can't remember for sure), there has been a strong anti-semitism push against him (rightly or wrongly) with calls for him to step down as an MP.

The UK is growing more polarised, we just haven't had an inciting incident like George Floyd or Jan 6th yet. It has come close with things like Brexit.

[encryptluks2]

Just go to r/PublicFreakout on reddit which frequently reaches top page and you'll find plenty of posts validating and encouraging people to punch and knock out individuals for merely words or vaccination status. People fail to even recognize that violence such as punching someone in the face can often result in murder. So I don't believe the propaganda machine is exclusive to one side or the other, but I don't see much being done to question whether violence is merely a corporation at this point to meet quotas for the privatized prison labor system and finding ways to spread it on social media directly benefits those that profits from those incarcerates that become radicalized by such media.

[locutous]

> in my impression, the far right discourse and memes, in the broad sense of the word, tend to be more threatening and violent on average when the posts are directory towards the opposing political group or marginalised communities

I'm unfamiliar with right wing communities. I've been involved in a fair number of left wing ones and the level of wishing-death-upon-opponents is scary, and it has grown much worse and bare knuckled over the years.

Which makes me think we are in the early stages of an undeclared civil war.

[tibbydudeza]

Right and you got downvoted - what a surprise.

[Khaine]

It wasn’t right wing activists who burnt down whole blocks in Kenosha, or in Portland where they repeatedly attacked a federal court. These people were coordinating and asking for donations and weren’t shut down.

You see people on the left constantly denigrating white men, and calling for attacks against them, the latest I saw being https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11140197/Librarian-...

So yes, to people on the right it very much feels skewed. The worst excesses on the right are blown up, and minimised or ignored on the left

[tibbydudeza]

SOME right-wing communities are rather racist and frankly unhinged with the worst aspects of online behaviour - just look at QAnon and Proud Boys and the hatred of LGBTQ people.

It is not like the old days of conservatism - Big govt is bad - lower taxes- unions are bad - abortion is bad - work at will is the way to go.

Most left wing communities even the extreme ones in comparison get upset full of vitrol but that rarely veers into that sort of behaviour - health care for all - single payer - socialism works is hardly offensive to many.

[roenxi]

But the actual results of the left are much scarier than those of the right. "Socialism works" in particular was the initial seed of some of the worst suffering humanity has ever called forth.

And I haven't seen a tally of the results but the amount of political violence could be relatively balanced. Eg, attacks on congress people [0] is roughly balanced, with arguably the Republicans have suffered more (I personally call that 1-1 since 2000, although the attack on the republican baseball game was probably trying to achieve mass slaughter - it isn't obvious the attack on Rand Paul was the normal political assassination variety).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress...

[sol_invictus]

False comparison - you’ll find plenty of vitriol against white people, christians, traditional values and such in extreme left

[awelxtr]

I'm sure it's related to the paradox of tolerance

[PaywallBuster]

Project Veritas captures some interesting bits undercover from the left wing media https://www.projectveritas.com/

[andybak]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

[upsidesinclude]

Yeah, your comment is getting erased because you provide evidence of how they play the game.

Edit: Now my comment too! Of course no input or reply.

[upsidesinclude]

1. No.

2. Yes.

3. That is the nature of the social media business.

Take for example the fact the a vast majority of government workers self identify as democrats/liberal. People that don't believe in a large government (conservatives) choose not to work in government positions.

[batmanturkey]

3) so how do you explain either conservative or right wing politicians, judges, or secret service agents?

Aren’t you really just complaining that reality has a left wing bias?

Perhaps seeing how governments actually work dissuades you from erroneous conclusions you had drawn from right wing brainwashing?