Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them. https://t.co/sgV5WCD4wh
Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.
This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.
More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.
For the past 50 years, the best way to win a Republican primary was to say that you were further to the right than the incumbent.

This dynamic has primed GOP voters to support extremists since the former extremists get to become the mainstream. First Ted Cruz, then Alex Jones.
Because of this dynamic, it means that somewhat more established outlets such as Fox News or National Review must engage with material and ideas from the far right in order to retain relevance, market share, and dollars.
This is why Fox occasionally reinforces white nationalist fears that increasing numbers of Hispanics and Asians will doom the GOP. https://t.co/oNV9xRVezN Or why every conservative magazine periodically runs screeds criticizing evolution.
As another examle of this, I have reported how in 2008 future white nationalist Richard Spencer was actually pressured into running racist material on a website he edited that was, at the time, more libertarian oriented: https://t.co/ETunOYrZR0
There are many other examples of this co-mingling of conservative and far-right within the same media outlets. I talked about several instances in a recent Twitter thread: https://t.co/v7Hx3dZAJr
For a more academic look at the right/far-right information ecosystem, I highly recommend this research paper from @JonasKaiser
and @nikkiboura. It focuses on Breitbart as a bridge for extremist content but the overall principle is shown as well: https://t.co/gkTbyplxse
The bottom line is that because there are so many rhetorical and topical intersections between extremist and conservative media, this makes it essentially impossible to devise an algorithm that would not disproportionately impact conservatives.
A similar dynamic exists between Republican politicians and fact-checking organizations. Conservatives simply cannot compute the idea that maybe GOP officials get fact-checked more because their beliefs and rhetoric are less factual.
Facebook can't publicly admit this reality because that would expose them to charges of being "biased" or "unfair." But in truth, conservative media have enormous, fundamental problems which no conservative journalist ever wants to confront. It's easier to whine about evil libs.

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We’ve been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this.

The community’s response? Outrage.


Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

When we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep:
- Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?
- What’s the quality of jobs + how many are promised? Are these jobs low-wage or high wage? Are there benefits? Can people collectively bargain?

Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.

Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life.

We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism.

It’s possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.
1/ Imagine that as soon as the referendum result the EU announced that it was looking forward to the end of free movement of UK citizens in the EU


2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home

3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK

4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal

5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights
I told you they’d bring this up


I was wondering why that tweet had so many stupid replies. And now I see


Seriously, this was “the night before.” If you’re at the march where they’re changing “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” you’re not a “very fine person.” Full stop.


There are 3 important moments in that transcript.

1.) When someone asked Trump about a statement *he had already made* about there being blame on “both sides,” he said the “fine people” line.


2. Trump does clarify! “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally “

Okay!

Then adds that there were “many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”

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... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


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Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


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I wonder why...

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