Last week, Dan Klein wrote a critique of my essay, “The Woke Who Did Not Cancel.” I have one big response, plus more specific reactions. Big response: Even if everything Dan says is correct, there’s still a massive puzzle! Given the extreme left-wing orientation of social media firms, why don’t they ban
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.)
Isn’t it possible that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter actually don’t like censoring and only resort to it in extreme cases? Seems like a better null hypothesis and fits the data pretty well as far as I can see.
I assume a Laffer curve effect to optimal censorship.
censor too much, and your effectiveness goes down, because people will move to other platforms, and will be more conscious that they are bent censored. like in the USSR.
assuming no profit motive, are they actually censoring that much less that optimal?
"people who run businesses are self-selected to care about profits over other values"
I'm surprised to hear that from you Bryan. Perhaps I'm oversensitive because I run a business.
But why do you claim that? Do you think there's some conflict between commerce and morality?
A charitable interprentation would be that the "other values" you refer to are leisure and financial security. But I don't think of those as *moral* values.
"We shouldn’t be asking, 'Why isn’t cancelling worse?' and giving my answer. We should be asking, 'How bad is cancelling?' - and giving the answer 'Terrible.' If so, we’re at an impasse. Why aren’t both questions worthwhile?
This is similar to questions in my head around gun control and school shootings. "How bad are shootings?" Terrible! But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"
They don't do 10x more censoring because of the network effect and economies of scale. A social network's value and stickyness comes from the size of its network.
If you kick out half your network you loose more than half the value. It gives a competitor an opportunity to grow their network. Finally, the cost of engineering and marketing doesn't change much with scale.
Also, if there are no "bad" ideas, what are people going to post outrage about? Kicking Trump and The Babylon Bee off Twitter probably was bad for business. But, kicking them off sent a message.
I suspect he just doesn't believe that's the question you are really asking since it has such an obvious answer.
Banning too much speech not only is likely to result in pushback it makes you look bad and hurts your view.
The logic of cancellation has always been that these are especially severe or eggregious cases (even if it may not literally be true).
You start cancelling left and right and it starts to look like you are just blocking ideas you fear are too convincing. Not only would that cause a backlash by even progressive users but it harms their political cause. Looking weak and afraid is never a winning strategy.
How about this: part of the product the social media platforms are selling is a place where it’s “loyal lefty users” can participate in the canceling. It’s no fun for them if all the righty users are gone. Keep everyone around and keep everyone slightly angry and self-righteous
Well thought out and written. Perhaps the Leftwing media doesn't go all out in its censorship over concern of creating a political firestorm? They do just enough by use of arbitrary methods to create doubt and a self-censorship by its users. They might think their expertise gives them a feel for how much they can stroke the teat?
I think there is clearly SOMETHING bad going on in a leftward direction on most of the social media sites. However, you do point out several things that indicate it's not strategically done, rather incompetently and arbitrarily.
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.)
Isn’t it possible that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter actually don’t like censoring and only resort to it in extreme cases? Seems like a better null hypothesis and fits the data pretty well as far as I can see.
I assume a Laffer curve effect to optimal censorship.
censor too much, and your effectiveness goes down, because people will move to other platforms, and will be more conscious that they are bent censored. like in the USSR.
assuming no profit motive, are they actually censoring that much less that optimal?
My intuition is yes. but I cannot be sure.
"people who run businesses are self-selected to care about profits over other values"
I'm surprised to hear that from you Bryan. Perhaps I'm oversensitive because I run a business.
But why do you claim that? Do you think there's some conflict between commerce and morality?
A charitable interprentation would be that the "other values" you refer to are leisure and financial security. But I don't think of those as *moral* values.
Bryan wrote:
"We shouldn’t be asking, 'Why isn’t cancelling worse?' and giving my answer. We should be asking, 'How bad is cancelling?' - and giving the answer 'Terrible.' If so, we’re at an impasse. Why aren’t both questions worthwhile?
This is similar to questions in my head around gun control and school shootings. "How bad are shootings?" Terrible! But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"
They don't do 10x more censoring because of the network effect and economies of scale. A social network's value and stickyness comes from the size of its network.
If you kick out half your network you loose more than half the value. It gives a competitor an opportunity to grow their network. Finally, the cost of engineering and marketing doesn't change much with scale.
Also, if there are no "bad" ideas, what are people going to post outrage about? Kicking Trump and The Babylon Bee off Twitter probably was bad for business. But, kicking them off sent a message.
I suspect he just doesn't believe that's the question you are really asking since it has such an obvious answer.
Banning too much speech not only is likely to result in pushback it makes you look bad and hurts your view.
The logic of cancellation has always been that these are especially severe or eggregious cases (even if it may not literally be true).
You start cancelling left and right and it starts to look like you are just blocking ideas you fear are too convincing. Not only would that cause a backlash by even progressive users but it harms their political cause. Looking weak and afraid is never a winning strategy.
How about this: part of the product the social media platforms are selling is a place where it’s “loyal lefty users” can participate in the canceling. It’s no fun for them if all the righty users are gone. Keep everyone around and keep everyone slightly angry and self-righteous
Well thought out and written. Perhaps the Leftwing media doesn't go all out in its censorship over concern of creating a political firestorm? They do just enough by use of arbitrary methods to create doubt and a self-censorship by its users. They might think their expertise gives them a feel for how much they can stroke the teat?
I think there is clearly SOMETHING bad going on in a leftward direction on most of the social media sites. However, you do point out several things that indicate it's not strategically done, rather incompetently and arbitrarily.