My wife just checked. Its now showing some pretty heinous things on the demo crat side...I dont think prior to the election that would have been tolerated. They definitely changed the "algorithm".
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Roughly a week ago Insta started hitting me hard with right-wing memes and creationist bullshit.
YouTube is now showing nothing but (tr)ump stuff....I have not looked at dump stuff on YouTube. It's all positive on him too.
Is this on Shorts or actual videos/suggestions?
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Yeah the unspecified "issue" is probably that the blocklist was not a shadow ban but blatantly obvious. They probably only unblocked direct searches for these keywords. Wanna bet posts containing any of the listed keywords are still either removed from all other feeds or at least deranked in the great algoritm?
Oligarchs control the network for their benefit. Free and open souce alternatives are the only option.
Free speech my ass.
Thankfully the fediverse is tolerant of people with descenting opinions.
tolerant
Really? Try making a post supporting conservatism or attacking socialism and see how that goes for you. Most likely it'll get down voted to oblivion, and in many communities mods will remove it. And it doesn't really matter if it's a high quality post either with tons of scholarly sources and whatnot.
The Fediverse is tolerant of leftists and progressives, and a bit less tolerant of libertarians. If there's any hint of conservatism or centrism, the veneer of tolerance disappears.
I don't know the solution here, but I think allowing users to choose their moderation is a piece of it.
It's the paradox of intolerance.
Conservatives are generally intolerant nowadays, towards marginalized people.
It's ok to be intolerant of intolerance.
I'm not talking about intolerant speech, like disparaging marginalized groups or something, I'm talking about even mundane policy. Try agreeing with Trump on something and you'll get the same tired "Nazi bar" reaction.
For example, try agreeing with the pardon of Ross Ulbricht, who was given a life sentence with no possibility of parole for hosting a website that facilitated relatively safe drug trade. He was a first time offender, there's no evidence that he actually sold anything illegal or did anything violent, and he acted on the philosophical idea that consenting, peaceful adults should be able to trade things freely (i.e. he wasn't in a cartel or anything). But because he was pardoned by Trump, people jump to the conclusion that it must somehow be bad. If Biden (or Harris) did the exact same, it would get positive responses and people would likely assume it was somehow good. This has absolutely nothing to do with either side here, and if anything, it leans liberal/progressive, but because a conservative did it, it's automatically bad (he only did it because he made a deal with libertarians to try to get their vote).
It's the same kind of tribalist nonsense we see on the right.
And to be clear, this isn't a "both sides, lol" argument, it's commentary about tribalism in general. If something sounds sufficiently different from what we're comfortable with, we reject it without further consideration. This is more extreme on the more popular instances (e.g. Lemmy world), which seem to be a lightning rod for this type of behavior, and my best argument is that people comfortable with group think flock to larger instances, whereas people interested in combating it flock to smaller instances.
You have to be pretty damn naive to think Trump pardoned the guy in a vacuum. That's not tribalism, but a simple observation that Trump doesn't do anything unless it benefits himself.
Right. He went to the Libertarian Party national convention and promised to pardon him, and this is him making good on that promise. It doesn't cost him anything and it potentially gets him a little more support from the libertarian-leaning people in Congress.
Oh, it's not just that. Trump wants to setup a bitcoin reserve. Ulbrich had 50,676 bitcoins (~$5.3B at the current exchange rate) that were all confiscated as part of his arrest. He doesn't get those back just because he was pardoned. Good chance it's now the seed money for the bitcoin reserve.
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They can start their own instance. Away from ours. No need to tolerate intolerance. We don't need that shit here. Just because its open does not mean we want right wingers to wipe their shit on the walls. They can start their own instance in the fediverse and wipe shit on the walls there in their own little community. 🤷
I'm not talking about right wingers, I'm talking about anything that seems different from the majority opinion on a given community. It could have absolutely nothing to do with marginalized groups, if it challenges the leftist/progressive agenda in any way, it gets downvoted or moderated away.
Examples:
- Trump pardon of Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road guy) - this was a libertarian agenda item, and completely goes against the conservative "War on Drugs," yet so many push back on it; if Biden did the same, people would likely approve of it ("that poor kid was treated unjustly")
- try discussing any form of government waste (there's plenty, not $2T like Musk claims, but probably a few billion)
- TikTok - people claimed it was anti-China fear mongering when Trump initially suggested we ban it, then supported the ban when Biden admin supported it, and now are against softening the ban now that Trump is in power (that's some serious political whiplash)
This isn't tolerance vs intolerance, it's tribalism, and the Fediverse just has different sets of tribes vs mainstream social media.
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I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don't fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
I banned from the news communities so I made my own [email protected] with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that's chill AF allowing real discussion.
Whether you care about down votes on your own posts is irrelevant. But down votes on topics/categories absolutely steers the conversation and is precisely the concern we're discussing here.
People love to rail against big tech companies for silencing certain groups through moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, but look the other way when we have tyranny of the majority doing the same thing through down votes and general pressure from the community to drive away dissent. It's the same idea, just different groups of people doing the silencing.
I don't care about down votes on my posts either, but I do care about systematic down votes on posts with ideas that are not dangerous, just unpopular. We won't progress without challenging the status quo, yet we humans love to group ourselves into tribes and cast out anyone who doesn't conform.
My point is that Lemmy isn't any better than other social media, it has the same problems, just a different status quo.
I'd far prefer tyranny of the majority to being dictated to by an oligarch.
I refuse to accept the false dichotomy. I hope I'm not alone.
What's the alternative? U need some way to sort the marketplace of ideas and I would argue that democracy is the beat system we have.
I think this applies: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill
The Fediverse isn't a democracy though. Admins self-select, and moderators are merely those who made the community first or were selected by those who made the community (or maybe replaced by the admins). Hosting a big instance costs quite a bit of money, so it'll naturally attract people with some kind of agenda. Those in charge will self-select their users whether intentionally or unintentionally.
The discourse on Lemmy (don't know about the rest of the Fediverse) largely happens on a handful of instances, and I think that's to be expected from the above. We'd probably be better off if we actually has democracy, but I think that's the wrong metaphor to use since we're not restricted to a geographical area like we are on real life.
I think the solution is distributed systems. Instead of a handful of people running things, everyone should take part in running things. Instead of a handful of people moderating things, everyone should be a moderator, and users should be able to select which moderators they trust and which they don't. Internet services can do things that physical services can't, and I think we should while explore that (and I'm doing just that on my own projects).
I guess the solution is for people with conservative values to stop associating so freely with subjugation addicts? Once conservative identity is dissociated from a wide spectrum of racist and classist bullshit, not to mention that we are entering an extinction level event of our own doing, then maybe the guilt by association will go away.
Free speech my ass.
That's not what free speech is. Freedom of speech prevents the government stopping you speaking, not private organizations.
Ahh yes free speech invented by the American constitution. I forgot that its not a philosophical ideal how stupid of me to assume that.
Stfu
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prevents the government
That's the american legal version. If you think about the philosophical concept, it's waaaayyyy more broad than this.
There is no interpretation of "freedom of speech" that forces a 3rd party to amplify your voice.
👀
the fediverse is tolerant
LOL no, it isn't.
descenting opinions.
I'm picturing descending opinions. Ones that start off alright, but just keep on getting worse the more you think about them...lol
"Instagram blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and a number of other terms Tuesday."
It's not just democrat
Interesting. The screenshots shared with me by a friend:
Given the corporate media sane-washing and general kissing of the ring, I choose to believe what has been shared with me directly over the "actchually, it was an awkward gesture of exuberance" milquetoast media.
Especially when the list looks like this:
Hastags that have also apparently been blocked from user experiences. Will keep updating. Range is worldwide.
"#berniesanders"
"#queer"
"#obama"
"#voteblue" (#votered remains unaffected)
"#dnc" (#rnc remains unaffected)
"#fucktrump" (#fuckbiden remains unaffected)
"#democrat" (#republican remains unaffected)
"#kamala"
"#prochoice"
"#constitution"
"#reproductiverights"
"#jan6th"
"#insurrection"
"#14thamendment "
"#republicans" (with an s)
"#fascism"
"#liberal"
"#rightwing"
“#georgeconway”
“#domesticterrorist”
“#jacksmith”
“#drumpf”
“#johnoliver”
That is not a "glitch."
Here, I took this just now: https://i.imgur.com/GoBOPwG.jpeg
Interesting posts being served up:
-
"This isn't a fight between republican and democrat. It's between communism and freedom."
-
A map showing Republicans as an overwhelming majority.
-
Photo about Democrats being more likely to call white people terrorists, while Republicans are more likely to call every other race terrorists.
They're not in the majority, but not subtle enough to avoid worming their way into peoples opinions.
Amazing. /s
The ban list seems a little bit incosistent, but is really obvious on where the bias goes. Not that Instagram were good ever.
It’s not just democrat
It was. Searching republican yielded results, searching democrat yielded a sensitive content warning and no results. They "fixed" it later.
Adding republicans to the title would get less clicks though.
Sadly, yes. It's important to know your audience.
What if it's a bug? Maybe they didn't block it intentionally.
Even if it was, the timing is odd isn’t it ? I don’t recall hearing about „bugs“ like this before.