My friend and GMU colleague Dan Klein, editor of Econ Journal Watch, takes issue with my recent post, “The Woke Who Did Not Cancel.” Here is his response. Enjoy! Here are some reasons I think Bryan’s post is badly off-base: Bryan uses “the dog barking” as a metaphor for Facebook/Twitter/Google-YouTube engaging in ideologically-motivated wrongdoing. What he operationalizes as wrongdoing/no wrongdoing is whether someone has been kicked off the platform. He says, “Yet they’ve cancelled less than 1% of what you’d think they want to cancel.” He says they engage in only “a token quantity,” “a tiny sliver,” of ideologically-motivated wrongdoing. But Facebook et al screw with content providers in a large number of ways: slapping on labels and warnings and barriers, shadow banning, demonetizing, suspending, defamation, disabling features, miscommunicating, stonewalling, stalling, and so on. There are probably a dozen ways that a platform can screw with a content provider. In the details, probably scores of ways.
Totalitarians know that if you publicly shoot a few troublemakers, the rest will get the point. Google, Facebook and Twitter operate on this assumption.
Klein makes some good points. As I read Bryan's post, I too thought he was underestimating the depth and power of propaganda that the new left elites have built, monitored, and sustained. Look at Bryan's campaign contributions by party for the major technology companies. There is no way that this is not a very clear signal in my mind: that kind of tilt is stunning. The new tech elites build and amass significant chunks of wealth through network externalities. Despite their power they are human beings filled with extraordinary hubris (networks have the numbers!) Social desirability and confirmation bias are deeply baked into social media itself. Add the catalyst of trolls, and we see what we get.
Smith is a great framework, too. I suspect it is not the money, but the influence, status, and power. The Poor Man's son has found a new avenue: social status and mass power leveraged by their own platforms.
What I'm surprised about Caplan's original post and Klein's counterarguments is that Bryan was basing his commentary on the number of *employees* at media companies that donated to Democrat or Republican candidates. IMHO that has virtually no bearing on the behavior of (the management of) those companies towards "cancelling". What percentage of employees are politically active, enough to bother giving a donation that has to be reported, versus (I presume) the majority that don't give a whit about elections? And there's much more that could be said about Bryan's extrapolations.
How many people did the Soviet Union jail after 1960? A lot less than 1% of the population, which would be, maybe, 2 million. 1% kicked off is a huge number. Particularly if 50% of accounts are fake bots.
One problem with both of these takes is that they ignore how much intra-lefty canceling goes on. For that matter, they ignore intra-righty canceling as well. This profoundly restricts the types of explanations each considers.
The recent project veritas videos point to Klein being more correct here, I think.
"Project Veritas published a new story on Tuesday night featuring footage of Twitter Lead Client Partner Alex Martinez discussing the company’s ideology, criticizing the acquisition of the company by Elon Musk and at times denigrating Musk for his expressed views on free speech.
Martinez: “Right now, we don't make profit. So, I’m going to say ideology, which is what led us into not being profitable.”
Martinez on free speech: “The rest of us who have been here believe in something that's good for the planet and not to give people free speech.”
All these points are trash. Two things matter here. There is no FCC but I still cannot see female nipples or hear the word fuck online in normal everyday communications. In the old days of 2005 I could actually see the footage of atrocities if I wanted to watch the video, now it's not even available.
And you know what pisses me off the most? I was actually able to load up the comments section of an econtalk podcast and be the first poster. Ironically I put in "first post!" and it was removed because it quote, "didn't contribute to the conversation". Fuck that and also hold in your imagination a picture of the forbidden female nipple. Also pour a 40 of Old E on the curb for Biggie.
An investment letter included the following in commenting on the inherent nihilism of ESG but I think also supports Klein's well thought out response: "Both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx actually agreed on one thing: Businessmen would put their pet projects above profits and kill capitalism".
> Look at what has become of Wikipedia. Do non-leftists bother to try to correct its leftist bias? Why would they?
What happened to Wikipedia? What's an egregious example of an article being changed? What's a typical one? This is a genuine question; I'd really like to see this illustrated and Wikipedia has every diff stored.
Totalitarians know that if you publicly shoot a few troublemakers, the rest will get the point. Google, Facebook and Twitter operate on this assumption.
Klein makes some good points. As I read Bryan's post, I too thought he was underestimating the depth and power of propaganda that the new left elites have built, monitored, and sustained. Look at Bryan's campaign contributions by party for the major technology companies. There is no way that this is not a very clear signal in my mind: that kind of tilt is stunning. The new tech elites build and amass significant chunks of wealth through network externalities. Despite their power they are human beings filled with extraordinary hubris (networks have the numbers!) Social desirability and confirmation bias are deeply baked into social media itself. Add the catalyst of trolls, and we see what we get.
Smith is a great framework, too. I suspect it is not the money, but the influence, status, and power. The Poor Man's son has found a new avenue: social status and mass power leveraged by their own platforms.
What I'm surprised about Caplan's original post and Klein's counterarguments is that Bryan was basing his commentary on the number of *employees* at media companies that donated to Democrat or Republican candidates. IMHO that has virtually no bearing on the behavior of (the management of) those companies towards "cancelling". What percentage of employees are politically active, enough to bother giving a donation that has to be reported, versus (I presume) the majority that don't give a whit about elections? And there's much more that could be said about Bryan's extrapolations.
How many people did the Soviet Union jail after 1960? A lot less than 1% of the population, which would be, maybe, 2 million. 1% kicked off is a huge number. Particularly if 50% of accounts are fake bots.
One problem with both of these takes is that they ignore how much intra-lefty canceling goes on. For that matter, they ignore intra-righty canceling as well. This profoundly restricts the types of explanations each considers.
The recent project veritas videos point to Klein being more correct here, I think.
"Project Veritas published a new story on Tuesday night featuring footage of Twitter Lead Client Partner Alex Martinez discussing the company’s ideology, criticizing the acquisition of the company by Elon Musk and at times denigrating Musk for his expressed views on free speech.
Martinez: “Right now, we don't make profit. So, I’m going to say ideology, which is what led us into not being profitable.”
Martinez on free speech: “The rest of us who have been here believe in something that's good for the planet and not to give people free speech.”
https://www.projectveritas.com/news/twitter-executive-mocks-elon-musk-for-believing-public-can-make-their-own/
Ivor Cummins is not a "leader" or "truth-teller". He's some rando who has been persistently wrong about COVID.
Thinking about what Amazon, Apple, and Google did to Parler...imagine the internal discussions if they consider the same re Musk-owned Twitter.
"Do we really want to force *Elon Musk* to setup a competitive [app store/cloud computing infrastructure]?"
Private companies taking private action, the horror.
All these points are trash. Two things matter here. There is no FCC but I still cannot see female nipples or hear the word fuck online in normal everyday communications. In the old days of 2005 I could actually see the footage of atrocities if I wanted to watch the video, now it's not even available.
And you know what pisses me off the most? I was actually able to load up the comments section of an econtalk podcast and be the first poster. Ironically I put in "first post!" and it was removed because it quote, "didn't contribute to the conversation". Fuck that and also hold in your imagination a picture of the forbidden female nipple. Also pour a 40 of Old E on the curb for Biggie.
An investment letter included the following in commenting on the inherent nihilism of ESG but I think also supports Klein's well thought out response: "Both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx actually agreed on one thing: Businessmen would put their pet projects above profits and kill capitalism".
> Look at what has become of Wikipedia. Do non-leftists bother to try to correct its leftist bias? Why would they?
What happened to Wikipedia? What's an egregious example of an article being changed? What's a typical one? This is a genuine question; I'd really like to see this illustrated and Wikipedia has every diff stored.