Caplan and Klein on Facebook and Twitter Discrimination
A delicate discrimination disagreement discussion.
Prof. Bryan Caplan from GMU over at betonit.substack.com posted an interesting article “The Woke Who Did Not Cancel” asking why, when Facebook, Twitter, etc. are so left wing, do they not censor or ban more aggressively? Why are there any right wingers at all allowed on these social media platforms? Prof. Daniel Klein, also at GMU, replied to Caplan who posted his response as “Klein on Caplan on Cancelling,” to which Caplan relied with “Contra Klein on Cancelling.” All these are worth reading. I am lucky enough to have had both as my teachers and friends, and while their thought processes are very different at times, both are approaching truth. Truly valuable diversity!
I commented on the last post of the chain at length, and decided to repost it here.
I think part of this goes all way back to your original post, to the graphic you put up of political donations by party. You say "Wow, almost everyone at Facebook and Twitter donate to Democrats! Isn't odd that they don't cancel more right wingers, then?"
I think, though, that if we consider a few points about that the puzzle diminishes a good bit.
Firstly, not everyone donates to political parties. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of FB and Twitter employees vote Democrat, only a very tiny percentage of those who vote care enough to donate money. Notably, caring a great deal about politics seems to be the key driver of donations, although I don't know how much one has to care to donate 20$. More than I do, at least, but who knows.
Secondly, not everyone who votes or donates to the Democrats is a censorious bastard. There seems to be a good many actual freedom of speech and otherwise fairly sensible Dems out there still, who maybe don't denounce the crazy Woke fringe, but don't really support them either. These folks might get behind a little bit of censorship, or perhaps flagging COVID "disinformation", but they probably are not pushing to ban Joe Rogan.
I think those two points solve a lot of the puzzle here.
Why is there not more cancelling? Because only 10-20% of the workforce at FB and Twitter are super motivated canceller types; the rest push back just a little here and there and won't get behind sweeping bans.
Why is so much of the cancelling rather haphazard? It has to be the type that a large percent of the decision makers (at whatever relevant level) can get behind, and that includes a lot of fairly reasonable Democratic voting folks. They are scared about COVID misinformation, but less trigger happy on abortion debate, perhaps, at least compared to their more ideological firebrand colleagues.
Why don't they ban everyone? Well, see above, but also many of those middle manager types do recognize that alienating 50% of the US user base is probably a bit much.
Why do they trade profits for discrimination? This answer comes straight from the discrimination literature. It isn't the business owners who are super gung ho to ban everyone, as they rightly are trading off loss revenue against ideological or moral points. That calculation does include "If we are seen as more ideologically pure that can net us money... we don't want to look like 4chan." so banning some people through pure discrimination does make sense.
The middle managers, however, are the ones really making specific decisions around low level, not so famous people, and they could not care less about whether company revenue goes up or down the teeny tiny marginal amount banning one more pleb would cause. They are going to get pushback from the higher ups if they ban Trump or Caplan because those names are big enough for higher ups to hear about it, but they are not going to hear a thing if they ban me. All it takes is my name coming across their radar.
Which brings us to the last discriminating actor, the customers themselves. How does my name become a known target to those wielding the ban hammer at FB or Twitter? The censorious and prejudiced customer base that starts flagging my posts as evil misinformation, or hate speech, or whatever. The business is going to respond to the demands of its prejudiced customer base.
So, really, FB and Twitter's behaviors are pretty much what the economics of discrimination literature would predict. Discrimination is most costly to those who own the business, less costly to the workers, and even less to the customers. The very high ups mitigate some of what the middle managers do, but have very little oversight of day to day running of things, and middle managers respond to the demands of the customer when the customers demand things they want to do anyway. Having 10,000 user complaints is a good excuse to ban someone you don't like either.
Note, this also clarifies why certain things do get the heavy ban hammer instead of just the lesser hits: Hunter Biden's laptop, COVID craziness, China/Russia/Ukraine things are all political and government administration issues. Why does Google alter its algorithm for China? Why do Facebook and Twitter censor differently there? Because the higher ups at the company do actually care enough to make those things happen, either because of monetary reasons (want to be in Chinese market, don't want to be attacked by the regulatory state for not censoring what Psaki suggests) or because of ideological (don't want Trump to win so better hide Biden's kid.)
If I were to build on that a little more, having thought about it another ten minutes or so, there is a bit of hiding ones hand at play as well. I note that most on the left are cagey when talking about censorship. Lip service is still paid to open discussion of ideas and free speech, with only “reasonable” restrictions like hate speech, misinformation and things that anyone who matters might not like. Only a few fringe crazies cry for banning all political speech in opposition. This suggests that those in power on the left are not secure enough in power and influence to say “Silence them all, by banning or killing.” Nor are they so weak that they are overreacting to every threat. Some threats, yes, but the powerful are still trying to look like they don’t want to use their power and show everyone their red shoes1. One wants to appear weak and assert they do not want power until that power is consolidated enough to openly wield it.
So that is another partial answer to the question of why they don’t censor more: the businesses have to worry about alienating too many customers, and politicians need to worry about alienating too many voters.
At least until voters no longer matter.
UPDATE: Jon who writes Notebooks of an Inflamed Cynic made a good point as well I just saw:
Why does Putin just poison and pressure certain people as opposed to going full Ghengis Khan and beheading all his domestic opposition in Red Square?
A. It's the 21st century. It's not in style to go full Ghengis Khan.
B. It's much better to be able to present yourself as the neutral, ground state, than as openly, partisanly vicious. You're trying to manufacture/control opinion after all. If you behave too openly partisanly, vicious, more people will put their guard up. You give cowards/indifferents plausible deniability to avoid opposing your actions.
That’s pretty close to my point, so I thought I would include it here, as I am adding his blog to my weekend reading list.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
It just took me an hour to confirm I didn’t make that up… so 60 internet points to whomever gets the reference first!
There are signs of something of a thaw happening. Netflix pink-slipping the shrews whose boring garbage just cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. Coinbase adopting an explicitly apolitical company policy. What appears to be a post-liberal counterculture emerging in NYC of all places (as described by that recent Vanity Fair article). I've seen this in private life, too, with fairly liberal friends voicing their frustration with woke.
Assuming the same thing is happening quietly at the big tech platforms, and might have been for a while, that would also explain the lack of total censorship. The woke generate increasing friction for themselves as they get increasingly shrill.
I think you're completely right.
For one thing, when people say "they're losing profit" - well, are they? Or is their target audience not you? A company might care more about Chinese regulatory and public opinion more than American, if their product is very-well established and China is the new growth market and the location of their manufacturing. A company who knows that it won't really lose conservative customers of their very good or very necessary product can totally afford to go all woke, if it helps them with their own staff retention, regulatory compliance, marketing, etc. etc. Going back to the tech companies, yeah if they bring the hammer down too strongly, they WILL lose profit and push people into ACTUALLY forming something new, instead of just talking about it and half-assing it.
And if they're not committed to total war, for all the reasons you outlined: for a normal person to get banned, they have to be noticed. The mechanisms are probably user reporting, and automatic stupid blanket rules around the topics of interest, like COVID, elections "disinformation", trans issues. (For example, in one of my FB groups, every time the word "Vaccine" is mentioned, including in an image, a link to a FB Info Page on vaccines pops up.) This explains why innocuous tweets, including ones CRITIQUING a "bad" tweet, get automatically flagged.
I'm sure they also do covert things like shadow-banning and otherwise limiting the visibility of undesirable account: making it harder to subscribe, removing from recommending algorithms, removing from feeds, being more aggressive in auditing followers, I don't know. I'm guessing they have different lists or categories of users which the system treats differently, maybe?
There seem to be more passive tools to prevent anonymous engagement. I've heard of two cases where they require you to verify your phone number before you can keep posting, or your ban remains in place -- i.e., making you commit and not be anonymous to THEM (even if you are to the public). Or, as another example, Twitter wasn't letting me read or use functionality on my phone unless I installed an app (the way Reddit is doing now), or limiting how much I could scroll without making an account. Poof, one less suspicious reader whose info can't be mined. MIND YOU: these tools are probably more for generating revenue - they need to be able to count you and use your data to advertise to you - but still, it works for reducing anonymity and the spread of untraceable, subversive info. (Of course, if they gatekeep TOO much, they lose users and revenue..... Pinterest, Zulily - brands that at one time or another have required registration to access their content/products - probably have/had these issues. Probably why reddit doesn't require you to verify an email - it differentiates them from their competition!)
Finally, on the Putin question. Not everyone has the stomach for mass carnage, even if they have stomach for a little bit? Also, does China want Russia to execute their entire opposition? I wonder. :D