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Comment by rovolo

5 years ago

I think the Quillette piece is overstating its evidence to make a rhetorical point. 1) They're only measuring the last enforcement step. 2) n=22 is really small. 3) They're measuring (suspended|trump) and are asserting the relationship is causal. If you download their dataset, you find these 4 people listed under the "supports trump" column: Alex Jones, American Nazi Party, David Duke, Richard Spencer. I think most everyone can agree these 4 weren't suspended because they are conservative or voted for Trump. (The other instances probably aren't partisan either, but not everyone will know about those people)

> database of prominent, politically active users who are known to have been temporarily or permanently suspended from the platform. … Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.

The Vox piece isn't an "admission" that their moderation is biased. Twitter's CEO is "admitting" that the politics of the developers is heavily liberal:

> “We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company,” Dorsey said. “They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don’t think that’s fair or right.”