DARN IT, THIS TIME WE WERE SURE THE SNOWFLAKES WEREN'T JUST WHINGEING...:

Many Republicans routinely complain that the big social networks systematically suppress right-wing viewpoints, but they've produced little real evidence of it. A new study from New York University finds that there is no evidence of it, and in fact finds the opposite--that social media has spread right-wing viewpoints to wider audiences than ever before.

"[T]he claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it," the report states. "No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests." [...]

Quite the contrary, actually. Barrett found evidence that the content-serving algorithms used by the leading social media platforms have amplified right-wing voices to reach audiences of unprecedented size. That may be a nice way of saying that the social networks have taken advantage of fringy, factually questionable right-wing content to entice users to share more content and spend more time on their sites.

"The social media companies have a mercenary outlook," Barrett says. "They want to increase user engagement, and they'll use whatever kind of content users are engaging with. If that's with a sensitive piece of political content, or if it's something cultural like kittens and puppies, it's all good."

If you've spent any time tracking the most viral news-link posts on Facebook, as New York Times columnist Kevin Roose has, you'll see that it's usually not kittens and puppies. It's highly partisan political posts from Fox News, Breitbart, and Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire.

Right-wing politicians routinely use their social media persecution tale to lead up to calls for the removal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides legal protections for the tech companies that operate social networks. Section 230 shields tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter from being sued either for harmful user content posted at their sites, or for decisions they've made to remove harmful content. Actually, even Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, who cowrote Section 230 back in the 1990s, says that Facebook and others may have used the law's legal shield as a substitute for rigorous content moderation. But a full repeal of Section 230 would likely be more punitive than corrective.

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