Late in Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) dodged a question about whether he and running mate Donald Trump would accept the 2024 election results by pivoting to a favorite topic: what he called the “censorship” of Americans by social media companies, terming it “a much bigger threat to democracy.”
His statement drew on a years-long Republican contention that Silicon Valley tech giants have suppressed conservative views on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. That narrative has underpinned congressional hearings, Republican fundraising campaigns, the dismantling of academic research centers, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, state laws seeking to restrict online content moderation, and multiple lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court this year.
But is it true? Well, yes and no, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Conservatives and Trump supporters are indeed more likely to have their posts on major social media platforms taken down or their accounts suspended than are liberals and Joe Biden supporters, researchers from Oxford University, MIT and other institutions found. But that doesn’t necessarily mean content moderation is biased.
This is a long one, and I want to start by saying that your comment is a super popular belief. Even so, I think misses the mark a little bit.
Everything in the political sphere is emotions based. ‘Murder is bad’ isn’t some ultimate truth. We care about other people and ourselves. That emotion then leads to the reasoning that murder is bad and should be illegal. Same goes for everything else.
What conservatives tend to do is say ‘murder is bad’ and ‘there is a group that I hate’. They then abandon the truth of what murder statistics tell them and blame it on the out group which justifies the second emotion. They’re not wrong because it is emotionally centered (again we all do that). They’re wrong because they aren’t willing to examine that emotional motivation vs reality.
All of that to say that if we think the problem is emotionality we are probably making similar mistakes even if the outcome is better. To paraphrase a very true statement in Futurama - There is no scientific consensus that life is valuable.
“Climate change is real and man-made” is not an emotion-based statement. “Outlawing abortion worsens medical outcomes for pregnant women” is not an emotion-based statement. “Children do better in class when the school system offers free lunches” is not an emotion-based statement. “Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around” is not an emotion-based statement.
Frankly, there are an absolute fuck-ton of things that are simple statements of fact that conservatives delusionally take issue with. Factual reality is not a matter of opinion and I’m not only sick and tired of conservatives trying to make it into one, but perhaps even more sick and tired of ‘enlightened centrists’ carrying water for them!
I hope you don’t feel that was an attack because the fact that it wasn’t one will never override the emotional response if you feel it is. If you do feel that way, there is probably no reason to read on. You’ll be wasting your own time.
For the record, I didn’t say I agree with anything the right puts forward, I don’t see room to compromise on things I care about, and if you’re talking US I think the “center” is left of the two presidential candidates.
You’re absolutely right those are facts (and those facts get totally ignore by people because the are in conflict with their emotions), but the reason you’re looking at those stats is also emotion based:
Climate change will hurt blank (too many to list) and I LIKE blank (or am AFRAID of blank) so climate change is bad. Access to abortion is good because I VALUE people lives. All children should have food because I WANT to live in a world where everyone, especially those without agency, can be happy, healthy, and get at least a fair shake. Those are my motivations. How we get there is policy. That’s when facts become relevant.
Understanding how we all make decisions based on emotions will help you understand yourself, your motivations, and help you convince people around you that they should also value the same things as you. Practically, you need to go a step further than facts. Ask yourself why that chunk of data is important to you. When you cite it, why would the other person care? Because people are dying? Why does that matter?
There is a consensus that emotions are bad and should be ignored but if you ask people what they want out of life it’s all emotions: love, happiness, excitement, fullfillment. We denigrate feelings all the time but we didn’t go to the moon for science, it was curiosity and wonder and joy.
Your comment just reminded me that I’m very tired of emotions being dismissed as useless or harmful.
Absolutely! The positive emotions are easily the best of humanity.