> its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being skeptical about information on the Net.
The entire raison-d-etre of the "alternative right" websites is that conservative views are being suppressed in the entire leftist-leaning media establishment. If anything, liberals missed the entire ideological wave by pitting their heads in the sand, until it hit came back to bite them.
> It's not like these members of the inaccurately titled "Intellectual Dark Web" are actually interested in changing anyone's mind.
This is incredibly disingenous. That is exactly what they're trying to do, and quite successfully. Peterson's book sales are skyrocketing, and not among convinced rightists. Browse any conservative forum and you'll find that the vast majority of the new wave of conservatives are former liberals who were convinced by these people.
> I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell.
I think you can attribute that seeming explosion (at least in part) to people suppressing moderate conservatives, who then have a choice between becoming enlightened classical liberals and bearing the cost of that path in social isolation, or joining the more extreme people where they've been banished to (which, for its moral hazards, is a hell of a lot more fun, and a lot less depressing).
These people are not beyond help, but if you keep suppressing them, they will become more entrenched in the underground and the fringes, and they will become as fragile and bigoted as the academic marxists and intersectionalists who inhabit the same sorts of places on the far left.
The high road takes a lot of fortitude when you are a social progressive who is seen as willing to hear and integrate good conservative arguments. Libel, vandalism, and assault are rampant against people visibly associated with conservatives, at least, they have been where I've lived (in southern Ontario).
> from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content.
Yeah, content platforms aren't getting hammered from the right because of patterns of overly aggressive moderation of content anymore than conservatives complain about underrepresentation in "the media" because it's actually true.
More likely it happens because:
* Lots of people really have no principled philosophy of free speech beyond wanting their own privileged. And rather than understanding it existing in tension with other principles inside a classically liberal social system, it's understood primarily as a personal privilege to be indulged absent attendant responsibilities or potential checks.
* By temperament people on the right are especially invested in status over other values and have a stronger tendency to take things that don't privilege their ingroup and worldview over competing outgroup/worldviews as persecution. Also tend towards below average in openness to new ideas. And of course, to the extent that your worldview is essentially a tribalized version of the fundamental attribution error writ large, introspection isn't usually among most practiced skills.
* There are political operators on the right who know full well that their particular ingroup doesn't particularly suffer from a lack of platforms for discourse about their ideas. But they push the idea of persecution anyway because they know it works as political currency for the reasons above and they can cultivate a following that sees themselves as embattled rather than just engaged in discourse, and that in turn makes the process of any actual moderation or other consequences for speech loaded and lets them work the refs, which is exactly what most of the complaints about Google and FB are.
* Operators targeting the right have become especially invested in disinformation and propaganda. This isn't even questionable in the age of Plandemic/America's Frontline Doctors whatever, and there were strong clues once Bannon "flood the zone with shit" tactics had become public knowledge.
The left has its own issues with purity tests and cancel culture running amok among other things but that's as often the classic circular firing squad as it is a line in left-right discourse. And I do not envy any content platform that has to sort this out.
But at the same time, let's be circumspect about whether/why the right really faces any kind of systemic uphill battle on the most popular content platforms.
>And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post
Yes, this is you expressing your liberal bias. Huffington Post is Breitbart of the left. They just use a slightly different strategy for pushing their propaganda. The end result is the same: readers with skewed, dysfunctional views of reality.
You disagree? Okay. Which major left-wing website do you consider equally biased to Breitbart?
> The common theme among all of them is that they spread lies, use coordinated disinformation campaigns, and aim to confuse and distract from reality.
Judging from the examples you gave, I disagree with this conclusion. It looks more like they're trying to make liberals and conservatives look bad to each other, by playing up stereotypes. The primary aim seems to be to divide.
> Alternative media is seeing a surge of right-wing because mainstream media is exclusively left-wing, often downright conspiratorially so.
Ironically, the narrative that all mainstream media is left-wing propaganda is, itself, a right-wing conspiracy theory.
A successful one, since it's the raison d'etre for Fox News, but it's still just a step removed from fears of "globalist elites" running a shadow government, cultural marxism or Hillary Clinton having a kill count.
Even if there were a credible point to be made about left-wing bias in the media (which could easily be countered by pointing out the amount of pro-business, pro-war content in the very same media) none of that is going to make Reddit, Breitbart or Gab more credible as alternatives.
>I am infinitely more likely to see a positive portrayal of a mixed-race lesbian than a nationalist family man.
No, you aren't. Although I don't know (but I do suspect) what "nationalist family man" is supposed to mean as a qualifier, or why this is presented as the obverse to "transgenderism, homosexuality and racial diversity," the majority of relationships portrayed in media are heteronormative, and plenty are between Caucasians, and few portray those traits as inherently negative.
Indeed, it's still common in mainstream media to fall back on old tropes like "killing your gays" (having homosexual or nonbinary characters die in a narrative, which goes back to the old Hays Code and its requirements that "sexual perversion" be punished or else never portrayed in a positive light) camp gay characters, depraved bisexuals and "traps." While not as common now as in the past, you're still more likely to find negative, or at least sterotypical, portrayals of non-white races and non-hetersexual identities than the opposite.
>You need to realise that half of everyone else sees it the other way.
Now you're trying to move the Overton window towards normalizing what is an extremist point of view.
I am aware that plenty of people do hold such views, but it's simple falshood that they comprise at least half the population.
> ... the sites are filled to overflowing with HEAVY liberal bias ...
This very subjective and probably different person to person especially given AI driven filters and the ability to choose who to follow or friend on these sites.
When I check one of the sites you mentioned, I see almost exclusively voices from the American right-wing. On the other one, it's significantly more moderate but with some opposing viewpoints from either extreme thrown in. It all depends on who someone friends or follows and what the filter chooses to show.
Of course, this ignores what "liberal bias" is, which is a subjective determination that varies according to the bias of whomever makes such a determination.
Although, this is a distraction from the question raised early in this thread. of whether some coordination happened behind the scenes or if these bans are a result of distinct actions in response to the same circumstances.
More like "Dude and the whole leftist intellectual elite are wrong on the Internet, will never acknowledge being wrong and will be wrong again the next time the same thing happens. News at 11."
> The comments about fake news how colleges stifle free speech are typical Conservative dog whistles in the United States.
Dog whistles? What "secret meaning" is meant to be conveyed?
> This article could be construed as being right leaning
I don't see how the article can be construed as "right leaning" as there is nothing conservative or liberal about supporting free speech and the value to listening to dissenting opinions.
Indeed, I think the desire to categorize arguments, article, positions or especially people as "conservative" or "liberal" rather than engaging with ideas on their merits is a distinctly negative trend that accelerates our descent into ineffectual partisan bickering. It means that anyone who takes the time to consider issues carefully and form their own opinion gets shut out as a "liberal" by the conservative and a "conservative" by the liberals. Thus the people who we should be paying the most attention to are the ones who get ignored.
> Conservatives in general have extremely simple black and white thinking with no consideration of statistics or larger concepts. That's why they're so fear driven.
These kinds of claims on Hacker News happen to be nearly indistinguishable from trolling, and it's not OK to then attack other users when they bite. We're after civil, thoughtful discussion on HN, so please don't take us in the opposite direction.
The entire raison-d-etre of the "alternative right" websites is that conservative views are being suppressed in the entire leftist-leaning media establishment. If anything, liberals missed the entire ideological wave by pitting their heads in the sand, until it hit came back to bite them.
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