Comment by bryans
2 years ago
Even if you're legitimately attempting to analyze political preferences or skew on social media, it seems incredibly inappropriate to be basing that analysis on someone who makes purely biased claims in all of their social media posts. There are so many analytical flaws in the graphs he provides, that they really shouldn't be used for anything.
They've selectively[1] searched for multiple Palestine hashtags, which all show up under the same base hashtag[2], but then count all of the hashtags as separate data points -- and then compares them to a singular Israel hashtag that includes an emoji, which won't include most results regarding Israel. What's worse, is that including a Palestine hashtag doesn't remotely guarantee that the post is pro-Palestine or anti-Israel, and the same is true for posts including Israel hashtags not necessarily being pro-Israel, which can also be seen in [2]. In reality, the #palestine hashtag is used in pro-Israel posts all the time, so the sweeping generalizations made by Anthony Goldbloom aren't based on any legitimate statistical methodology.
Instead of echoing Goldbloom's manipulation of data as factual, it should be used as an example of pro-Israel disinformation and entirely backs the article's claim. In fact, even Goldbloom admits that he made mistakes[3], and the other graph was made by him and not the company who conducted the survey, who actually disputes his claim.
I think it could even be argued that your comment, without any supporting facts other than a very pro-Israel Twitter pundit who already debunked himself, is contributing to the misinformation discussed in the article, even if you're doing so unintentionally.
[1] https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602/...
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@kituuuub/video/7298048299905355041?q...
[3] https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2023/tiktok-antisemiti...
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