Mark Zuckerberg Announces Investigation Into Anti-Conservative Bias

[prwraith]

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

I don't see what is so hard to understand about that.

Is the basic brigade out in force today? Can you not see how completely asinine your argument is? I'm no conservative but I really hope you don't count yourself as a Democrat / liberal because I really don't want my party tainted any further than it already is.

[Deleted]

Denying visibility on Facebook isn't denying the service?

No.

An interesting point of view.

[twiddler]

An interesting point of view.

He isn't wrong. As I wrote in the previous daily MMO-C pool of ignorant tears and even this one, recommenders start by default at neutrality most common of the norm. If you sit there crying about censorship, it is because you let it happen and it is practically impossible to let this happen because Facebook, one of your leading innovators in graph learning, employs social graph recommenders, traditional like and click based recommenders, user defined subscriptions, which allow you to control everything, and (big surprise because people here like to cry about snooping) cookies!

I actually find it odd that we brilliant CS men like PrimaryColor who have yet to correct yet another MMO-C trigger thread.

[Deleted]

He isn't wrong. As I wrote in the previous daily MMO-C pool of ignorant tears and even this one, recommenders start by default at neutrality most common of the norm. If you sit there crying about censorship, it is because you let it happen and it is practically impossible to let this happen because Facebook, one of your leading innovators in graph learning, employs social graph recommenders, traditional like and click based recommenders, user defined subscriptions, which allow you to control everything, and (big surprise because people here like to cry about snooping) cookies!

I actually find it odd that we brilliant CS men like PrimaryColor who have yet to correct yet another MMO-C trigger thread.

What Facebook has been accused of is that they have rigged the system you brilliantly explained.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The fence/wall is only one part of the overall plan.

But I am glad to see that you are acknowledging his inevitable presidency.

The fence will never make it out of the houses.

Oh look it's you, the one who constantly makes excuses for Trump's failings, making his products in China, etc. and then tries to roast Hillary on small things.

[Zolaris192]

Not only is their southern border a fraction of the size of the U.S.-Mexico border, but there isn't even a wall there. You'll see two pictures floating around on the internet of the supposed wall, but one of them is a fence on the U.S. border and the other is in the Middle East.

They have a wall, and since when did the length required for a wall ever stop it from being built?

[Flutterguy]

Are we still pretending breitbart is real news?

Who are you talking to?

[Cricket22]

Given he starts from a 110 electoral deficit, and has to not only protect every state that even LEANS right, then take the toss-up states, then take most of the Leans Democrat and Likely Democrat states, that's an interesting prediction you're making.

Given that Clinton is averaging close to a +6% lead over Trump in the polls...

Given that Clinton's "favorable vs unfavorable" deficit is -10%, while Trump's deficit is -30%...

Trump's been catching up fast dearie. And you are completely ignoring the fact that republicans hav been winning more and more elections. Again, republicans not only now hold the majority in both the house and senate, but the majority of state governors are now republican as well.

That's aside from the fact that more Republicans have been showing up to vote in the primaries, despite the rabid democratic Bernie sporters--and in a recent exit poll, over 40% of Bernie supporters stated they would vote for Trump over Hillary.

And I myself have been called by at least 5 polling companies in the past week alone, and I don't even pick up the phone. I know that if I answer, my number will end up on every spammer's calling list in the country, experience tells me that. I won't answer internet polls either, because I don't want my email spammed either.

So who is participating in these polls? My bet is an awful lot are those who have not had this same experience, because they haven't been down this road long enough. Not old enough to know better, and probably aren't even old enough to vote.

[Rhaide]

What's wrong with suppressing racist and xenophobic news stories?

Awww, you're an adorable little closed minded thing aren't you? Try being balanced, I think you'll find the flavor more appealing if you can still taste anything with that kool ade stained tongue.

[Manabomb]

What's wrong with suppressing racist and xenophobic news stories?

Because it takes an entire supreme court of 9 advanced judges to be able to decide what is racist and xenophobic in the court of law.

But since Facebook is a private company, and people use their service, they can literally do what they want as long as it keeps the basis of the service active and falls within government guidelines.

So in the end, who really cares? Those racist and xenophobic news stories are just going to end up on daily mail and Fox sooner or later. What conservative even uses facebook as a reliable news source anyway? You'd think most would be staring at Fox and drooling.

[Spectral]

I think you're stretching much, much too far to try for what you're claiming - you're scuffing up some dirt, sticking it under magnification to make it look like a molehill, and then pretending its a mountain.

I don't think so, but I think I need to address a couple of these points out of the order that they're made in to provide a bit of clarity on what I am saying.

Which brings us to what you originally wrote - a blanket claim that, "conservatives feel put upon and beaten because they actually are put upon and beaten" - I responded by pointing out that in government, law, civil society, and the economy, they aren't. Can you provide statistical evidence corroborating your claim that conservatives are literally beaten for their beliefs?

When challenged, you immediately went from claiming that conservatives in general are literally "put upon and beaten", to trying to claim that conservatives don't get many positions in certain sectors of academia, solely because they are conservatives - which has no direct bearing on what you posted or to my response, even if it were true (which it is not).

I do not and did not mean physically beaten. Apologies for using a word that obviously can be used other way, but my intention here was to convey the impression of people that feel defeated, not people that are being physically attacked. Physical attacks on people for conservative, Christian beliefs are pretty uncommon.

The original core complaint was that conservatives have a "persecution complex". My response is that no, conservatives rightly perceive that they're reviled by societal elites. One example of this is the utter contempt that they're shown by academics, who are so comfortable expressing their dislike of conservatives that they think, "well, yeah, I discriminate against Christians because it's a proxy for conservatism" is a perfectly fine thing to put in writing.

You say to compare conservatives "with any other protected group", except that "conservatives" are not a protected group (among other reasons, because they're not actually discriminated against) - "conservatives" is also a term with no good, precise definition to begin with. And speaking of definitions... you, and particularly the source you're citing in support interchangeably intermingles the terms "Christian", "Evangelical", "Republican" and "conservative" - these are not identical or interchangeable descriptions!

That professors use these terms interchangeably when declaring that they'll discriminate against them in hiring is emphatically not a point in the favor of these professors. This shows that leftist professors are all too happy to just lump all of the Other into one group. When they declare that they'll discriminate against Evangelicals because they use it as a proxy for other views, this is blatant anti-religion discrimination. That they say it's because these people are right-leaning is pretty damning of just how left-wing the typical campus is at this point.

Along the same lines, again, your source takes (actually, exaggerates) surveys indicating low percentages of one group in the humanities, and then take a different survey of a different group that indicates a dislike of "conservatives" and presume they are causal - but no link has actually been demonstrated at any point. Indeed, you're completely avoiding the fact that there are explicitly measures in place to prevent the kind of discrimination you are claiming takes place.

This seems like a silly qualm to me. If we find a low percentage of a certain group and find the hiring people saying, "yeah, I discriminate against people like that", it's not much of a leap to arrive at the conclusion that there's a real cultural problem. I guess there could be other explanations and I'd wager there are other contributing factors, but a low percentage of conservatives in academia and people with hiring power saying they discriminate is pretty consistent with the hypothesis that conservatives are strongly disliked by academics.

You are also ignoring the high degree of correspondence between "conservatism" and/or "Evangelical Christianity" and promoting deliberate ignorance and/or conspiracy theories. Do many educated people, particularly in the 'humanities' dislike various different flavors of right-wingers (and right-wing nuttery)? Of course they do! What you haven't actually demonstrated is that Republicans or Christians in academia are actively being oppressed because they are Republicans or Christians; instead, as the other source you provided points out and you refuse to acknowledge, extremist conservatives regularly disqualify themselves, not because they're conservative, but because they insist on promoting nonsense in the classroom.

This logic should be applied to Marxists and extreme leftists, but plainly isn't. In any case, using "Evangelical" as a proxy for "is a crank, so it's OK for me to discriminate against them" is obviously illegal. The excuse that "X protected class is a good proxy for bad behavior" doesn't fly, for obvious reasons. While crank magnetism is pretty common, leftist cranks do just fine in academia.

(And while we're at it, let's not forget that you're taking a single sentence out of context from a blog post and treating it as some sort of definitive evidence!)

No, I'm looking at a body of evidence and highlighting one example of someone that's obviously bigoted against Evangelical Christians. That he's actually got hiring power is pretty relevant. I also provided empirical evidence of discrimination.

Are you going to claim that creationism, misogyny, global warming denialism, 9/11 truthing, rejection of evolution, and anti-vaxxing, are essential parts of any and all sorts of conservatism? If so, maybe you could make a case that conservatives are being discriminated against for their beliefs - but what actually seems to be happening is that, in academia, nuts are treated as nuts, and a lot of nuts appear to also be conservative.

If you think that the explanation that conservatives are just a bunch of nuts (or just have a super high nuts frequency relative to leftists), so that's why you don't find them in academia refutes the core point that conservatives really are despised by elites, I really don't know what to tell you.

[Cricket22]

The fence will never make it out of the houses.

Oh look it's you, the one who constantly makes excuses for Trump's failings, making his products in China, etc. and then tries to roast Hillary on small things.

Legislation for a 700 mile fence was passed in 2006. Obama's administration elected to ignore it, but that bill hadn't even been amended. Doubt seriously there will be any problem getting it built.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-...ouse-bill/6061

It's Hillary's campaign that minimizes her illegal action. You know, like calling the FBI investigation a " security inquiry", instead of a federal criminal investigation.

You are aware that the Director of the FBI rejected the notion that they are conducting a "security inquiry", and clearly stated not only doesn't the FBI conduct "security inquiries", he's never even heard of such a thing. Total and complete lie that Hillary's repeated over and over, time and time again.

Just like you repeat the same exact false rhetoric, over and over. easy to see where you're getting it from.

Come on! Post those tie pics again! 75 more times! You know you want to.

[PragmaticGamer]

Trump's been catching up fast dearie.

After 25 years of abuse from Republicans, Clinton is about as disliked as she's going to get.

Trump keeps opening his mouth, and giving new subsets of the population a reason to dislike him.

About the only thing Trump is catching up on is the title of "most disliked Presidential candidate in modern history." That title currently belongs to David Duke, who has enthusiastically backed Trump, but the difference is less than 2%.

[Cricket22]

After 25 years of abuse from Republicans, Clinton is about as disliked as she's going to get.

Trump keeps opening his mouth, and giving new subsets of the population a reason to dislike him.

About the only thing Trump is catching up on is the title of "most disliked Presidential candidate in modern history." That title currently belongs to David Duke, who has enthusiastically backed Trump, but the difference is less than 2%.

Ummm, no. Most people don't care anywhere near as much about politics as you seem to think, and most have absolutely no clue. The incredibly few SJWs on this board who continuously jump up and down, are hardly representative of the vast, overwhelming majority of the American public, and neither are the handful of protesters who have been getting paid to disrupt Trump's rallys.

Hillary, with her supposed vast political "experience" could not even win the democratic nomination against Obama, who also chose Biden for VP over her. She's had a bad rep going back to Monica, along with all the other women who Hillary attacked for speaking out against her abuser husband, who was impeached for lying, and still refused to step down. All the baby boomers are still pissed about all that and massively outnumber your SJWs -- most of who are Bernouts, who will probably end up voting for Trump instead.

Good luck!

[ringpriest]

I don't think so, but I think I need to address a couple of these points out of the order that they're made in to provide a bit of clarity on what I am saying.


I do not and did not mean physically beaten. Apologies for using a word that obviously can be used other way, but my intention here was to convey the impression of people that feel defeated, not people that are being physically attacked. Physical attacks on people for conservative, Christian beliefs are pretty uncommon.

The original core complaint was that conservatives have a "persecution complex". My response is that no, conservatives rightly perceive that they're reviled by societal elites. One example of this is the utter contempt that they're shown by academics, who are so comfortable expressing their dislike of conservatives that they think, "well, yeah, I discriminate against Christians because it's a proxy for conservatism" is a perfectly fine thing to put in writing.


That professors use these terms interchangeably when declaring that they'll discriminate against them in hiring is emphatically not a point in the favor of these professors. This shows that leftist professors are all too happy to just lump all of the Other into one group. When they declare that they'll discriminate against Evangelicals because they use it as a proxy for other views, this is blatant anti-religion discrimination. That they say it's because these people are right-leaning is pretty damning of just how left-wing the typical campus is at this point.


This seems like a silly qualm to me. If we find a low percentage of a certain group and find the hiring people saying, "yeah, I discriminate against people like that", it's not much of a leap to arrive at the conclusion that there's a real cultural problem. I guess there could be other explanations and I'd wager there are other contributing factors, but a low percentage of conservatives in academia and people with hiring power saying they discriminate is pretty consistent with the hypothesis that conservatives are strongly disliked by academics.


This logic should be applied to Marxists and extreme leftists, but plainly isn't. In any case, using "Evangelical" as a proxy for "is a crank, so it's OK for me to discriminate against them" is obviously illegal. The excuse that "X protected class is a good proxy for bad behavior" doesn't fly, for obvious reasons. While crank magnetism is pretty common, leftist cranks do just fine in academia.

No, I'm looking at a body of evidence and highlighting one example of someone that's obviously bigoted against Evangelical Christians. That he's actually got hiring power is pretty relevant. I also provided empirical evidence of discrimination.

If you think that the explanation that conservatives are just a bunch of nuts (or just have a super high nuts frequency relative to leftists), so that's why you don't find them in academia refutes the core point that conservatives really are despised by elites, I really don't know what to tell you.

You are making the same mistake as the conservatives who claim they're being discriminated against for their beliefs - you're conflating dislike for nuttery with discrimination against conservatives; they aren't identical, because, among other things, not all conservatives are anti-science conspiracy theorists who want to control others actions.

Trying to get hired as a climatology prof while insisting that global warming is a conspiracy, or trying to get hired as a sociology instructor while declaiming that homosexuality is an unnatural sin that should be a crime, and then claiming that you weren't hired because you were "a conservative" is pretty much a perfect example of a persecution complex.

Professors aren't doing the conflation here, your source is! If you think that pointing out that correlation does not imply causation is a "silly qualm" then I think I'm done after this. Likewise, if you think that adjunct faculty are "elites" (as opposed to, say, the right-wingnut billionaires spending hundreds of millions on anti-science propaganda) I don't know what to say to you either.

And now you're also making blanket assertions about leftist cranks from nowhere. You didn't provide the evidence you pretend you did, while willfully ignoring how you're cherry-picking and distorting the blog you're quoting, and would be engaging in the fallacy of composition even if you didn't.

All while you're still focusing on academia, and pretending it represents some sort of nation-wide oppression. (Or are you just going to agree that conservatives in general aren't discriminated against anyone but in academia?)

[Spectral]

All while you're still focusing on academia, and pretending it represents some sort of nation-wide oppression. (Or are you just going to agree that conservatives in general aren't discriminated against anyone but in academia?)

Snipping this out because it makes it clear to me that you're not getting the core point here. I was pretty clear about this:

I would say that an important thing to keep in mind with all feelings of persecution and oppression is that these are local, not global phenomena. As such, a gay person in a rural, poor, Deep South community really is oppressed, while a gay person at a university or software development company is not. Likewise, a conservative Christian in backwoods Alabama is being pretty silly if they claim that they're being persecuted. A moderately conservative religious person in academia, on the other hand, has good reason to feel this way.

Academia is one example of a sub-culture in which conservatives aren't showing a "persecution complex" is they say, "people treat me poorly and look down on me for my politics". I point to academia because it's an area that I'm personally familiar with; I can't speak to all sub-cultures as well.

At this point, if you don't think academia is rife with people that really, really dislike conservatives I guess we're done. We must see meet different people in academic circles.

[Espe]

not all conservatives are anti-science conspiracy theorists who want to control others actions

Citation needed.

- - - Updated - - -

Academia is one example of a sub-culture in which conservatives aren't showing a "persecution complex"

Could have fooled me

[Spectral]

Citation needed.

- - - Updated - - -

Could have fooled me

It's kinda weird that you simultaneously label all conservatives as "anti-science conspiracy theorists" while saying that they just have a persecution complex and are imagining that they're reviled.

[alexw]

Ummm, no. Most people don't care anywhere near as much about politics as you seem to think, and most have absolutely no clue. The incredibly few SJWs on this board who continuously jump up and down, are hardly representative of the vast, overwhelming majority of the American public, and neither are the handful of protesters who have been getting paid to disrupt Trump's rallys.

Hillary, with her supposed vast political "experience" could not even win the democratic nomination against Obama, who also chose Biden for VP over her. She's had a bad rep going back to Monica, along with all the other women who Hillary attacked for speaking out against her abuser husband, who was impeached for lying, and still refused to step down. All the baby boomers are still pissed about all that and massively outnumber your SJWs -- most of who are Bernouts, who will probably end up voting for Trump instead.

Good luck!

Lol no. The baby boomers are not the largest demographic anymore. They are declining in number while millennials outnumber them by an ever growing margin. The boomers absolutely hate it that they don't get to decide things anymore which is why they have gone so nutjob-angry. They scream and rage that they have lost their country and its true they have, which is a decidedly good thing given the absolute disaster they have made of it over the last 30 years.

If millennials turn out, which they do in presidential years, then republicans lose - period.

[Vyxn]

The entire "controversy" is that extremist propaganda sites often get pruned out because of their extremism and how they misprepresent the facts, and people want to blame that on a partisan bias, rather than a preference for accuracy.

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This isn't about anyone being "silenced", just whether they're promoted as "trending" or not by Facebook.

that is what a bias does especially a blinded bias it makes anyone that doesn't agree with you extreme, propaganda, misinformation so you feel justified in your censorship