8 ms·

And suddenly twitter is a leftist corporation. Frankly I don't know whats the better way for twitter, its one of those doomed if you do, doomed if not.

damagednoob 6y ago
"Suddenly". You have to work really hard to make sure your timeline includes centre leaning views, never mind right leaning.
- recursive 6y ago
  "centre leaning" Could you draw a diagram of this?
  - dylan604 6y ago
    ahhh, you are only thinking of a 2D diagram. Take your circle with a line splitting through the middle. Now, rotate it so that it is a sphere. Tilt it at 23 degress, and you'll have a center leaning image.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Sure, it's called the Overton Window, and it moves over time. Generally speaking in America it has moved leftward continually since the American Revolution, which was a left-wing act of protest against a monarchical government (which, on a flatness <--> hierarchy view of the left/right axis, is among the furthest right political systems possible). Each successive major shift in American politics has been a shift towards the left in some way (more egalitarian/equalizing policies, more erosion of authoritative positions on social policies, etc). Conquest's Second Law is in effect! At any one time, the "center" is just the point of acceptable shared discourse between the organizations that control the 'poles' at the left and right extents of common discussion; anything past those poles is considered "extreme". For example, during our lifetimes, discussion of a topic like Gay Marriage has gone from being an extreme leftist social policy you couldn't discuss with people in polite company, to being a hot topic of common debate that even Obama said he would not legalize, to becoming official policy, and then even being accepted by the Republican Party as simply the law of the land and not a subject for discussion any more, pushing the topic as far to the right now as it was to the left 30 years ago. (I hold no judgement on the topic here, merely using it as an example for how the window of what is socially acceptable can shift, and the "center" shifts with it.)
    - r00fus 6y ago
      Mostly correct - however, the period after the Civil War moved the country distinctly back towards the right. Chinese Exclusion Act, among others, would not have been considered mainstream in the early 1800s. This continued well into the 1900s - which is when all the confederate hero statues were built (mostly by private funding). Many are being removed now. In this case it's possible the Overton Window may finally be shifting back leftward on race and history regarding the Civil War.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        Good points. I'm not American so my history of that era is spread pretty thin. > it's possible the Overton Window may finally be shifting back leftward on race and history regarding the Civil War. I think that the 1965 Hart Cellar Immigration Act began a leftward push on that front that has not really experienced meaningful pushback at all beyond a few small groups publicly acknowledging the quietly-held discomfort of a very large segment of the population. Confederate statues and the defense thereof are just one of many small ways in which White Americans have tried to retain some sense of identity as their culture is perhaps irrevocably changed beneath them. Some try to make it all about slavery, but if you actually read what the more erudite examples of these folks think it's much more nuanced than that.
    - La1n 6y ago
      And compared to most other countries the US overton window is still very right on economics and foreign policy. Socialised health care, or economically left wing politics are still not mainstream and acceptable. Anything other than pure capitalism is called socialist, and socialist/communist is a term that can be career death for a politician.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        > the US overton window is still very right on economics and foreign policy. Yes! It's amazing. I don't think there will ever be some magical set of axes that allows a really clear quantification of where the US is at. The problem, of course, is that because of the false dichotomy of choices (R vs D) you can't actually vote for foreign policy decisions at all. It's not even a topic of debate, really! Essentially, the USA continues to have a relatively hawkish position, continues to fund under-reported foreign wars (e.g. in Yemen presently), continues to be a destabilizing entity in many ways, often to the benefit of countries more closely allied to the USA (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc) at the expense of smaller and less powerful nations. It's very confusing, full of misdirections, and impossible for any normal person to follow. Most Americans want fewer foreign wars, I think. Most Americans (surprisingly including a large and growing swathe of the working class right-wing, believe it or not) are open to the idea of social healthcare in one form or another. Large moneyed interests make these efforts impossible to take on politically, though, and whenever public opinion could be useful to influence actions on the issue, you'll see more false dichotomies form, meta-layers of fractally nested infighting designed to make it so people get hung up on stupid things and debate that instead of the real issue (huge lobby groups intent on acting as middlemen in every transaction to wring every last dollar out of people for no benefit to them whatsoever).
  - tyrust 6y ago
    Beats me; maybe something like Michael Jackson leaning directly forward in the Smooth Criminal video (https://youtu.be/h_D3VFfhvs4?t=424 https://youtu.be/h_D3VFfhvs4?t=424).
  - damagednoob 6y ago
    Heh. I should have known better that people would get stuck on this. Try find people to follow on Twitter with a nuanced view on abortion, somewhere between at right before birth and never.
    - recursive 6y ago
      I literally don't know how to find or follow any thread on Twitter full stop. I've never been able to make any sense of the UI.
- xxpor 6y ago
  You really, really do not. It's plenty easy to follow DJT, Cernovich, PJW, baseballcrank, Andy Ngo, etc.
  - damagednoob 6y ago
    I'm confused. Do you consider these centrists, you're listing here? Otherwise, it's kinda proving my point.
    - xxpor 6y ago
      They're right leaning. You made it sound like it's harder to make your timeline right leaning than center leaning.
      - damagednoob 6y ago
        I started out just following software developers. After Brexit and Trump getting elected, which was completely unexpected by me, I realised how much of an echo chamber I was in. I also realised how left-leaning software devs are as a whole. I would argue that it's same the same for the majority of twitter users.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Unless Twitter has changed something recently, there are follow buttons on the account pages for @cnn, @cnni, @reuters, @ap, @bbcworld, @cbcnews, @dwnews, etc. Provided you're using chronological mode (which you should for many, many reasons), tweets from these sources will appear in your timeline. If you do not consider those news outlets adequately centerist, that may be an indication that your personal Overton window is somewhat skewed.
  - someguydave 6y ago
    Those organizations all have a leftward slant. But thank you for informing me of your skew.
    - raunakdag 6y ago
      Interesting that @ap is considered a leftward slant. I’m not sure if you’d consider Reuters the same at that point?
      - lucaspm98 6y ago
        This site tends to have fairly reliable analysis of media biases, and AP falls questionably between center and leaning left. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/associated-press-media-bias https://www.allsides.com/news-source/associated-press-media-...
        La1n 6y ago
        >Because AP’s displays of Lean Left bias are quite infrequent, AP still warrants a Center rating. They just rate it center. There is no single media source that will never have any bias at all. So that would mean there would never be an center.
        lucaspm98 6y ago
        I completely agree with your conclusion, but you're cherry picking a quote. >AP is a source that AllSides has struggled to rate, due to its content seeming to toe the line between Center and Lean Left. People on the right may be more likely to see AP’s content as clearly Lean Left. While AP's news and world reporting is largely Center, AllSides has found AP often includes subjective, leftward analysis in hard news reports and omits sources in its political writing; in addition, its fact checks are biased to the left
core-questions 6y ago
> suddenly twitter is a leftist corporation. I mean, if you can't see that the social policy of the most leftmost activists and the social policy of the FAANG HR departments have a near-perfect alignment, I don't know what to tell you. There's a big difference between this and their views on financial policies, but they've learned they can assuage the angry crowd by kowtowing to social issues while continuing to play the job of the robber baron. To successfully ride on top of this unstable equilibrium, it is necessary to (1) establish false dichotomies, a la the Arthur Finklestein school of electoral politics, and (2) to crush dissent that tries to pick apart the false dichotomy by controlling speech and silencing anything that is actually dissident against any concrete part of the narrative that is really open to attack. Not that I think this Hunter Biden stuff is particularly noteworthy; if anything it's just more fuel for the false dichotomy, and a banning like this one for the NYP is perfect in terms of making it into a lightning-rod issue. Focus on this, people, and not any of the actual things happening in the world right now (like, say, the Middle East, or the flyover-state opioid crisis, or climate change, or inner city crime, or anything else that seemingly stops existing and has no interesting events when we don't pay attention to it, right?)
mc32 6y ago
We’ll see if on Nov 4 they re-instate it...
gran_colombia 6y ago
Banning right wing conspiracy theories would not have been a political issue 5 years ago. There is nothing intrinsically leftist about this. It turns out that one political party and its propaganda outlets favour disinformation designed (by foreign adversaries) to provoke political violence. This party only has itself to blame. Anything becomes political as soon as a politician talks about it. So things being 'political' do not transform them into sacred cows.
- La1n 6y ago
  >There is nothing intrinsically leftist about this. Exactly, the world is not that polarised that anyone not agreeing with right wing conspiracies is left wing.

damagednoob 6y ago

"Suddenly". You have to work really hard to make sure your timeline includes centre leaning views, never mind right leaning.

recursive 6y ago
"centre leaning" Could you draw a diagram of this?
- dylan604 6y ago
  ahhh, you are only thinking of a 2D diagram. Take your circle with a line splitting through the middle. Now, rotate it so that it is a sphere. Tilt it at 23 degress, and you'll have a center leaning image.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Sure, it's called the Overton Window, and it moves over time. Generally speaking in America it has moved leftward continually since the American Revolution, which was a left-wing act of protest against a monarchical government (which, on a flatness <--> hierarchy view of the left/right axis, is among the furthest right political systems possible). Each successive major shift in American politics has been a shift towards the left in some way (more egalitarian/equalizing policies, more erosion of authoritative positions on social policies, etc). Conquest's Second Law is in effect! At any one time, the "center" is just the point of acceptable shared discourse between the organizations that control the 'poles' at the left and right extents of common discussion; anything past those poles is considered "extreme". For example, during our lifetimes, discussion of a topic like Gay Marriage has gone from being an extreme leftist social policy you couldn't discuss with people in polite company, to being a hot topic of common debate that even Obama said he would not legalize, to becoming official policy, and then even being accepted by the Republican Party as simply the law of the land and not a subject for discussion any more, pushing the topic as far to the right now as it was to the left 30 years ago. (I hold no judgement on the topic here, merely using it as an example for how the window of what is socially acceptable can shift, and the "center" shifts with it.)
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Mostly correct - however, the period after the Civil War moved the country distinctly back towards the right. Chinese Exclusion Act, among others, would not have been considered mainstream in the early 1800s. This continued well into the 1900s - which is when all the confederate hero statues were built (mostly by private funding). Many are being removed now. In this case it's possible the Overton Window may finally be shifting back leftward on race and history regarding the Civil War.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Good points. I'm not American so my history of that era is spread pretty thin. > it's possible the Overton Window may finally be shifting back leftward on race and history regarding the Civil War. I think that the 1965 Hart Cellar Immigration Act began a leftward push on that front that has not really experienced meaningful pushback at all beyond a few small groups publicly acknowledging the quietly-held discomfort of a very large segment of the population. Confederate statues and the defense thereof are just one of many small ways in which White Americans have tried to retain some sense of identity as their culture is perhaps irrevocably changed beneath them. Some try to make it all about slavery, but if you actually read what the more erudite examples of these folks think it's much more nuanced than that.
  - La1n 6y ago
    And compared to most other countries the US overton window is still very right on economics and foreign policy. Socialised health care, or economically left wing politics are still not mainstream and acceptable. Anything other than pure capitalism is called socialist, and socialist/communist is a term that can be career death for a politician.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      > the US overton window is still very right on economics and foreign policy. Yes! It's amazing. I don't think there will ever be some magical set of axes that allows a really clear quantification of where the US is at. The problem, of course, is that because of the false dichotomy of choices (R vs D) you can't actually vote for foreign policy decisions at all. It's not even a topic of debate, really! Essentially, the USA continues to have a relatively hawkish position, continues to fund under-reported foreign wars (e.g. in Yemen presently), continues to be a destabilizing entity in many ways, often to the benefit of countries more closely allied to the USA (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc) at the expense of smaller and less powerful nations. It's very confusing, full of misdirections, and impossible for any normal person to follow. Most Americans want fewer foreign wars, I think. Most Americans (surprisingly including a large and growing swathe of the working class right-wing, believe it or not) are open to the idea of social healthcare in one form or another. Large moneyed interests make these efforts impossible to take on politically, though, and whenever public opinion could be useful to influence actions on the issue, you'll see more false dichotomies form, meta-layers of fractally nested infighting designed to make it so people get hung up on stupid things and debate that instead of the real issue (huge lobby groups intent on acting as middlemen in every transaction to wring every last dollar out of people for no benefit to them whatsoever).
- tyrust 6y ago
  Beats me; maybe something like Michael Jackson leaning directly forward in the Smooth Criminal video (https://youtu.be/h_D3VFfhvs4?t=424 https://youtu.be/h_D3VFfhvs4?t=424).
- damagednoob 6y ago
  Heh. I should have known better that people would get stuck on this. Try find people to follow on Twitter with a nuanced view on abortion, somewhere between at right before birth and never.
  - recursive 6y ago
    I literally don't know how to find or follow any thread on Twitter full stop. I've never been able to make any sense of the UI.
xxpor 6y ago
You really, really do not. It's plenty easy to follow DJT, Cernovich, PJW, baseballcrank, Andy Ngo, etc.
- damagednoob 6y ago
  I'm confused. Do you consider these centrists, you're listing here? Otherwise, it's kinda proving my point.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    They're right leaning. You made it sound like it's harder to make your timeline right leaning than center leaning.
    - damagednoob 6y ago
      I started out just following software developers. After Brexit and Trump getting elected, which was completely unexpected by me, I realised how much of an echo chamber I was in. I also realised how left-leaning software devs are as a whole. I would argue that it's same the same for the majority of twitter users.
bleepblorp 6y ago
Unless Twitter has changed something recently, there are follow buttons on the account pages for @cnn, @cnni, @reuters, @ap, @bbcworld, @cbcnews, @dwnews, etc. Provided you're using chronological mode (which you should for many, many reasons), tweets from these sources will appear in your timeline. If you do not consider those news outlets adequately centerist, that may be an indication that your personal Overton window is somewhat skewed.
- someguydave 6y ago
  Those organizations all have a leftward slant. But thank you for informing me of your skew.
  - raunakdag 6y ago
    Interesting that @ap is considered a leftward slant. I’m not sure if you’d consider Reuters the same at that point?
    - lucaspm98 6y ago
      This site tends to have fairly reliable analysis of media biases, and AP falls questionably between center and leaning left. https://www.allsides.com/news-source/associated-press-media-bias https://www.allsides.com/news-source/associated-press-media-...
      - La1n 6y ago
        >Because AP’s displays of Lean Left bias are quite infrequent, AP still warrants a Center rating. They just rate it center. There is no single media source that will never have any bias at all. So that would mean there would never be an center.
        lucaspm98 6y ago
        I completely agree with your conclusion, but you're cherry picking a quote. >AP is a source that AllSides has struggled to rate, due to its content seeming to toe the line between Center and Lean Left. People on the right may be more likely to see AP’s content as clearly Lean Left. While AP's news and world reporting is largely Center, AllSides has found AP often includes subjective, leftward analysis in hard news reports and omits sources in its political writing; in addition, its fact checks are biased to the left

core-questions 6y ago

> suddenly twitter is a leftist corporation. I mean, if you can't see that the social policy of the most leftmost activists and the social policy of the FAANG HR departments have a near-perfect alignment, I don't know what to tell you. There's a big difference between this and their views on financial policies, but they've learned they can assuage the angry crowd by kowtowing to social issues while continuing to play the job of the robber baron. To successfully ride on top of this unstable equilibrium, it is necessary to (1) establish false dichotomies, a la the Arthur Finklestein school of electoral politics, and (2) to crush dissent that tries to pick apart the false dichotomy by controlling speech and silencing anything that is actually dissident against any concrete part of the narrative that is really open to attack. Not that I think this Hunter Biden stuff is particularly noteworthy; if anything it's just more fuel for the false dichotomy, and a banning like this one for the NYP is perfect in terms of making it into a lightning-rod issue. Focus on this, people, and not any of the actual things happening in the world right now (like, say, the Middle East, or the flyover-state opioid crisis, or climate change, or inner city crime, or anything else that seemingly stops existing and has no interesting events when we don't pay attention to it, right?)

mc32 6y ago

We’ll see if on Nov 4 they re-instate it...

gran_colombia 6y ago

Banning right wing conspiracy theories would not have been a political issue 5 years ago. There is nothing intrinsically leftist about this. It turns out that one political party and its propaganda outlets favour disinformation designed (by foreign adversaries) to provoke political violence. This party only has itself to blame. Anything becomes political as soon as a politician talks about it. So things being 'political' do not transform them into sacred cows.

La1n 6y ago
>There is nothing intrinsically leftist about this. Exactly, the world is not that polarised that anyone not agreeing with right wing conspiracies is left wing.