Social Media Sanctions Hit Conservatives More, But Due to Content Sharing, Study Says (nature.com) 127
A study published in Nature has found that conservative social media users were more likely to face sanctions, but attributes this to their higher propensity to share low-quality news rather than political bias. Researchers analyzed 9,000 Twitter users during the 2020 U.S. election, finding pro-Trump users were 4.4 times more likely to be suspended than pro-Biden users.
However, they also shared significantly more links from sites rated as untrustworthy by both politically balanced groups and Republican-only panels. Similar patterns were observed across multiple datasets spanning 16 countries from 2016 to 2023. The study concludes that asymmetric enforcement can result from neutral policies when behavior differs between groups.
However, they also shared significantly more links from sites rated as untrustworthy by both politically balanced groups and Republican-only panels. Similar patterns were observed across multiple datasets spanning 16 countries from 2016 to 2023. The study concludes that asymmetric enforcement can result from neutral policies when behavior differs between groups.
Misinformation/Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is the argument I have been using with a friend. We have yet to find a solution. The best I could come up with is a setup which identifies "positions" in a tree. So for exemple, you take this story, extract all the points, arguments and correlary and you display it in a tree to showcase the relationships. It would at least help people better understand the issues and solves partially the information warfare asymmetry problem.
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While I agree with you, the other side of the coin is "But, but, but they're a private corporation and can do whatever they want, including curating content."
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Re:Misinformation/Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
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Accusations of hypocrisy are fine and all- but an argument that someone's point is wrong because of hypocrisy is a logical fallacy.
When you try to use that accusation of hypocrisy as a way to discredit someone else, you are in fact engaging in a logical fallacy, and that is called Whataboutism.
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When the left gained power.
-Words of an ancient philosopher (Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one Louis Veuillot)
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It's funny how all of a sudden the left is sticking up for "private corporations". When did this paradigm shift begin?
They've had an undying love for them since ... 2020 or so.
Re:Misinformation/Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how all of a sudden the left is sticking up for "private corporations". When did this paradigm shift begin?
That's easy. It was when conservatives started going after the free speech rights of corporations (so basically the beginning of the Trump era). It was conservatives who pushed for corporate personhood in this country, we're not going to sit by and let them pick and choose when that's true or not true based on nothing but their personal whims.
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I think both left and right are at fault here in regard to freedom of speech. But freedom of speech comes in two forms when applied to these cases. There's the corporation's freedom of speech, which because of Citizens United ruling by the SCOTUS, most people have swallowed whole and now thinks corporations are people. Then there's individuals' freedom of speech, which the same people think should only apply when the government is involved and that when it comes to people vs private companies (X, FB, etc
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This is one of the core fucking principles of freedom of agency- private ownership.
Changing that would be the paradigm shift. CU is a red herring.
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What you call "their property" has changed over time, and whose freedom of speech (employees vs. clients) are also completely separate things. I have argued this many times previously, but some of the social media companies have become large enough to be called public squares, and I'm not the only one who believes that. Their users should enjoy the same freedoms they have against persecution from the government. Private ownership is not the end of all, especially when you're a publicly traded company of
Re:Misinformation/Censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
some of the social media companies have become large enough to be called public squares, and I'm not the only one who believes that. Their users should enjoy the same freedoms they have against persecution from the government.
The need for anonymity makes this completely unworkable.
Do you know what happens to unmoderated platforms? They're immediately taken over by criminal organizations, white supremicists, and child pornographers. Just look at Tor. The only way to avoid that shit is to use search engines and directories that heavily moderate content. Legitimate sites don't want to be associated with a network primarily known for illegal and disturbing content.
Moderation is what allows forums to function. Moderation is what keeps public spaces from being flooded with spam. Moderation is what keeps anti-social asshats from flooding discussions with irrelevant nonsense. Moderation is essential to free speech.
Of course, right wing cranks don't actually believe in free speech. They think that another person using their right to free speech to challenge or contradict their nonsense is "censorship". What they want is to force others to platform their speech and for their speech to go unchallenged. Just look at how draconian the moderation became on all of the silly right-wing twitter clone "free speech" platforms. Hell, look at how quick the world's richest "free speech absolutist" is to ban anyone who says something he doesn't like.
Also, why is it that the people most opposed to fact-checking are the one's actively spreading misinformation? Why do they seem to all be on the right? Such a mystery...
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What you call "their property" has changed over time, and whose freedom of speech (employees vs. clients) are also completely separate things.
Red herring.
Client, or employee. You have no freedom of speech on my property.
If I go into the homes of my client of employee, then that becomes an entirely different question.
I'll even grant you that sanctioning them for what they do in public is an entirely different question. But on my property? No.
I have argued this many times previously, but some of the social media companies have become large enough to be called public squares, and I'm not the only one who believes that.
Authoritarians will always wish to nationalize things they want control of. That's what you're arguing for. You want to declare my private property your public square to get around the fact that you have no
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Is public-squareness about size?
I thought it was about who sets the rules. Walmart and Facebook, for example, can't be pubic squares, because someone owns those things and their interests will rarely align with the public's interests.
If we're going to say big==public, then I wonder if we ought to be framing this as an anti-trust issue.
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Let's not forget freedom of association.
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Everybody [newsweek.com] wants [heritage.org] to [mtsu.edu] be [quora.com] a [house.gov] comedian [hillsdale.edu].
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the left doesn't care about Freedom of speech any more or any less than the right.
I can actually prove it. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill that was promptly smacked down for violating the 1st Amendment. Literally a Meme set him off, and he promised to end free expression because it hurt his feelings.
IF you think the left is better on this, you're not only wrong, you're dangerously wrong. Don't get me wrong, the right aren't angels here either, but at least they are countered by all the institutions of power
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the left doesn't care about Freedom of speech any more or any less than the right.
I can actually prove it. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill that was promptly smacked down for violating the 1st Amendment. Literally a Meme set him off, and he promised to end free expression because it hurt his feelings.
IF you think the left is better on this, you're not only wrong, you're dangerously wrong. Don't get me wrong, the right aren't angels here either, but at least they are countered by all the institutions of power that are controlled by the left, specifically the MSM. There is almost nothing stopping Newsome or John Kerry or Tim Walz or any of the other leftists complaining about people being able to speak freely
What did you just prove? Certainly not what you claim to be able to prove.
Also, it seems that your first sentence is contradicted by all of your others. I don't mind people having freedom of speech, but at least make it worth reading, por favor.
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including curating content.
And now you're a publisher. And have lost your section 230 protection.
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including curating content.
And now you're a publisher. And have lost your section 230 protection.
Showing that you're not familiar with section 230, because section 230 says interactive services explicitly can moderate content.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p... [pbs.org]
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First, I'm not going to consider pbs.org to be anything other than another "untrustworthy" source of the kind that they scorn.
Second, there is a distinction between the immunity from civil liability provided to an âoeinformation content providerâ (that's you and me typing comments into Slashdot) and an "interactive computer service" (Slashdot) who may provide the means for "information content providers" to restrict access to objectionable materials. The "provider" mentioned in 47 U.S. Code Sec 2
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First, I'm not going to consider pbs.org to be anything other than another "untrustworthy" source of the kind that they scorn.
I could have quoted any of a hundred other sources, but I've noticed that when a slashdot commenter dismisses factual information with "I don't believe that source", they will dismiss twenty sources just as quickly as one.
Second, there is a distinction between the immunity from civil liability provided to an âoeinformation content providerâ (that's you and me typing comments into Slashdot)
The relevant terminology in this case was "A provider of interactive computer service." No, that does not refer to you nor to me typing into slashdot.
and an "interactive computer service" (Slashdot) who may provide the means for "information content providers" to restrict access to objectionable materials. The "provider" mentioned in 47 U.S. Code Sec 230 (c)(2)(A) is the "information content providerâ. Not the service provider. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 [cornell.edu] It's a subtle distinction.
OK, the link you gave is fine, too, if you don't like the pbs link I gave:
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They're trying to conflate moderation with curation, and they are not the same. Curation does not have Section 230 protection because it's speech by the platform. Moderation is protected and it sometimes has the same result as a limited amount of curation but it is still not the same.
Re: Misinformation/Censorship (Score:2)
Point to where section 230 says that.
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There is no way for an interactive compute service to lose S.230 protection.
S.203.c covers both the platform itself curating, moderating, and the speech of anyone using it, including said platform.
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I hope you aren't considering starting your own service. But if you are, hire a good attorney. And then be sure to ask why nobody does it that way. Why do services have user moderation, or volunteer moderators/janitors. Even when that scheme has led down some paths that site owners really didn't like (4Chan and RapeApe come to mind).
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I hope you aren't considering starting your own service. But if you are, hire a good attorney.
I've operated a large regional ISP for nearly 20 years.
And then be sure to ask why nobody does it that way.
They do. They all do.
S.230 is very clear about its lack of exceptions to the immunity.
Why do services have user moderation, or volunteer moderators/janitors
Nearly all services have both. Why have volunteers? That's a simple matter of trying to reduce the amount of people you pay for a job to be done.
Even when that scheme has led down some paths that site owners really didn't like (4Chan and RapeApe come to mind).
lol- the premise of your argument is that 4chan's owners don't like 4chan being what 4chan is? You're ridiculous.
Re:Misinformation/Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds similar to the argument that "markets are always efficient" and would always solve any inefficiencies on their own. The truth isn't all that cut and dry. Markets can be easily manipulated. And people can be easily manipulated as well. We do need some fact checking. But, extremes, in either direction are bad.
In other words, a world with ministry of truth is bad. But idiocracy is just as bad. And like many things in life, a balanced approach is better.
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Re:Misinformation/Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
And what about if then I purchased a bunch of spam bots to like and repost my statement over, and over, and over, and over again, making it impossible for your friends to keep up their rebuttals and responses across my thousands of bots?
And then - again, hypothetically - what if a political candidate picked up on this social media trend of SmaryJerry being a nazi and eating dogs, and began including it in speeches, and I provided yet MORE links to stories - this time about a political candidate who stated the FACT that SmaryJerry is a nazi and eats dogs, and the forum where the political candidate made this statement - hypothetically - had promised not to "fact check" him, so the statement just hung out there, getting more likes and hits and shares and reposts?
You'd still say it's up to your friends to address this by posting their rebuttals and responses, or would you want some help from the platform that elevated, multiplied, and profited from untrue (I hope) speech about you?
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As long as all those thousands or millions of views also get blasted with advertising, thus increasing the platform's revenues, it's all gravy. Want Ketchup on that dog? Try Heinz, the Nazi dog eater's favorite! Or perhaps you're a mustard only Nazi? Heinz Yellow Mustard uber alles!
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Isn't this exactly what's been going on for the last 7+ years?
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This has happened multiple times on twitter. There is a famous case in Canada from a guy named Steven Galloway, who was accused of being a rapist, and he went after 'anonymous' twitter accounts who repeated this statement and successfully won huge judgements.
Re: Misinformation/Censorship (Score:3)
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aren't all these things done already
There's no algorithm that shoves your random website in front of my face or subscribes me to a newsletter when I'm trying to see pictures of my friends' kids or figure out the hours of some local business that's too lazy to do anything but have a Facebook page.
Direct censorship is not the solution but I am also not convinced that the social media companies - who are making huge $$ off this nonsense - have "no role" in addressing this problem; and I am not convinced that removing content from algorithms an
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Can I stand on your lawn and display any signs I want and say anything I want? And I mean to be there 24/7.
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Can I stand on your lawn
No. It's my lawn, and I politely invite you to get off it. Stand on the curb all you want.
and say anything I want? And I mean to be there 24/7.
Depends. Harassment has been ruled to be not a 1A protected activity.
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> No. It's my lawn, and I politely invite you to get off it.
Right, the thing OP is calling Censorship is the platform flexing its private property rights. Just like I can't stand on your lawn and do whatever I want, one cannot stand on a Social Media company lawn and do things the platform does not like. Social Media platforms are someone's private property and the property owner has rights.
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You probably meant *should* be policed. That is what Twitter had until Leon took over and was then outraged when his lies were called out. Or the lies of the right-wing were called out. It's the same reason Vance had fake umbrage his lies were called out during the debate. He was fact-checked about something he's already admitted is a lie but will keep saying it. They don't like it when their lies are called out which is
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There is more than one social media platform out there and users are welcome to select the ones that they prefer. Truth Social, if I did the math correctly, has 0.05% of the number of daily users as Facebook.
Nobody is going to
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They just classify things they disagree with politically as 'misinformation' and then use that as a basis for the discrimination.
"We're doing it because they're wrong, not because we disagree!"
It's obscene, frankly. Extremely Orwellian. If it's factually incorrect, then call it what it is. But they won't do that, because they can't substantiate contradicting facts.
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They just classify things they disagree with politically as 'misinformation' and then use that as a basis for the discrimination.
No, they don't. If you say the attack on the Capitol was really a bunch of peaceful tourists, that's misinformation (and a lie). If you say an anti-parasitic medication for horses will cure a viral infection, that's misinformation (and a lie). If you say millions of illegals voted in the election and provide absolutely no evidence, that's misinformation (and a lie). No one is "
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Hey look. Here's someone who posted a fact [slashdot.org] and was modded to -1 as a Troll. Clearly they're being censored for stating a fact, and guess who's doing the censoring.
"...politically balanced groups" (Score:2)
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It's astoundingly stupid thing to believe that it's not possible to assemble a group that balances a range of political viewpoints. I mean, I get why people believe it, but it's still dumb (and at their own peril/intellectual disservice in my opinion.)
ways to fight a pandemic (Score:2)
Targeting the disease vector is appropriate, but it does put the greatest burden on the infected.
its just twitter stats (Score:5, Funny)
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The far more interesting change is that Facebook has stopped prioritizing right-wing content. Before everyone gets their panties in a bunch no they're not shadow banning anyone they're just not going out of their way
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Twitter was overrun with bots before Elon took over. Some estimates at the time of the acquisition estimated 90-95% of accounts were bots. If it's down to 80% then that's a improvement.
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why do they think they are measuring actual people?
Because people think they are measuring actual people. It's a distinction without a difference. Users do not go an investigate every like to see what percentage are bots, and neither do algorithms. So if something is re-tweeted X number of times for the purposes of any engagement, be that actual people, or what the algorithm will push to users it is considered to be real actual people.
rating only by site domain is pretty suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
They're only classifying trustworthiness by news domain, which is pretty suspect. For example dailymail has some crazy trashy stuff, but also some reasonably good stuff. And while i "trust" the nytimes in terms of actually having fact checkers and quoting like 2 sources per story and not making things up out of whole cloth and that basic meat and potatoes stuff, they are also quite Left leaning in many of their takes , story selection, pov they take, what they DON'T say, etc. So i trust them to get a quote right (though it might be somewhat selective or out of context), but that doesn't mean that i trust them to not be brainwashing unsuspecting people in a certain world view that i only partly agree with.
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Sure, but, then shouldn't you support upping the signal of sites which don't have verifiable falsehoods with stuff made up whole cloth?
Presumably that'd eventually result in the sites whose biases you agree with also having facts?
Re:rating only by site domain is pretty suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, my argument is that intrasite variability in quality is high so you have to judge the actual shared stories independently, not just by the site.
e.g.:
One of the most egregious provable censorship events was of the NYPost breaking story on Hunter Biden's laptop back 3 weeks before the 2020 election. It literally led to the NYPost's twitter (pre-Musk) account being locked for 16 days starting 3 weeks before an election. (https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/twitter-unblocks-new-york-post-hunter-biden-hacked-materials-1234820449/ ) in addition to various other bans actual and "de-indexing" of sharing any links to it not just on twitter but also on Facebook (see e.g https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com] ).
This was huge and obvious scandal material, literally selfies of the guy smoking crack and years of emails and texts including about business ties to China and Ukraine. Like this isn't subtle allegations of he sad she said... or obscure accounting irregularities in government contracting etc. And STILL the prestige media managed to bury it not just before the election but for a couple of years after.
So basically you could not find that info in the prestige press at all.
Unfortunately the nypost also posts vapid bigfoot stories (this one just today)
https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/... [nypost.com]
and has daily horoscopes https://nypost.com/horoscopes/ [nypost.com] and other things that are "other than high quality journalism".
---
So just because nypost has bigfoot stories, it doesn't mean that it doesn't also have true stories that the prestige media won't cover and actively suppress.
(but my main point was that the Nature study's methodology seems kinda weak and i don't think it provides very strong evidence for what they're claiming and especially for the "oh, the big social media aren't _unfairly_ persecuting right wing views" )
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The only real issue I see with a per-item moderation, as opposed to a per channel moderation is that per-item moderation still creates incentives for orgs to lie and make up stuff because it makes you money and gets eyeballs, which eventually gets you more influence too. I tend to agree with that approach. .. however ..
The problem with your proposed approach for the study is that those sites don't moderate per news item, and they don't demote stuff that is whole-cloth made-up on their own. The folks consumi
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Reputation-based judgment is a normal part of society and,
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Considering the many signs of tamper, from an editorial perspective, I would also have killed the story. https://cyberscoop.com/hunter-... [cyberscoop.com]
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Yeah, then why didn't Hunter's criminal defense claim that it was tampered with, in his omnibus hearing on the admissibility of evidence, and instead take a plea deal admitting to guilt?
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Heh. I lasted until ~2018... basically the metoo and early 2020 campaign was when i stopped reading it regularly. That they started to enforce their paywall more made it easier to just go elsewhere too.
On the other hand now that some of the free places i moved to are clearly starting to use LLMs and the quality has dropped even more... i may have to drop some $$ on WSJ , FT or _maybe_ https://ground.news/ [ground.news] ?
Dipshits violate my standing shit-dipping policy. (Score:1, Troll)
TL;DR (Score:1)
Conservatives are more gullible than progressives and more likely to share misinformation.
Well, that's a shocker.
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LOL, thanks for proving my point.
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How is your reverse mortgage doing?
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that Harris didn't cock suck her way into power,
Good lord you're a miserable motherfucker. You wouldn't know what "truth" was if it hit you upside the fucking head.
Phrasing (Score:2)
> higher propensity to share low-quality news
For anyone reading along, this is just a euphemism of people with low intelligence. It's not as if propensity to share low quality news is some kind of innate human trait that some people have and some people don't. The issue, depending on your perspective is either: 1) people who cannot tell that it is low quality in the first place or 2) a failure of the media's implicit social contract to report truthfully and without bias.
Oh, I see (Score:2)
The study concludes that asymmetric enforcement can result from neutral policies when behavior differs between groups.
You don't say?
Maybe that also applies to ... law enforcement in general?
What's that ... no? It's all racism?
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However, certain policies, such as treating one form of cocaine differently than others clearly were not neutral policies.
There are clearly racial disparities in dealing with the justice system in the US. Some of those are a result of the types of offenses committed. And some are the result of different racial groups having different experiences with law enforcement. Why wou
Nature.... whatever (Score:2)
Funny that this was in Nature, a journal which in years past never would have published a study like this based on its applicability to nature and the political content. But the new Nature publishes bullshit stories about Pangolins spreading COVID after being pressured from powerful individuals. So not like we can trust them anymore.
So, ministries of truth are a thing then (Score:2)
That's a very roundabout way of saying... (Score:2)
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Or that Democrats are more biased and lie more?
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How do you explain this guy? https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
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Because the study was submitted to one of the most trusted academic journal, where the papers must be factual and not judgemental.
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According to the page, there ar e5 publicly known reviews, and other anonymous.
* Adela Lavis, Lecturer, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University https://elliott.gwu.edu/adela-... [gwu.edu]
* Sander van der Linden, Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/... [cam.ac.uk] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* Yunkang Yang, Assistant Professor (Communication, Politics, and Policy) Texas A&M University https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/c... [tamu.edu]
* David Yokum, professo
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Why not just say republicans are more gullible?
"The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check!"
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I mean....
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com]
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Probably because being misinformed is actually worse than being uninformed.
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Exactly, The only question is, who gets to decide what "misinformation" is bad, and what isn't bad.
The 51 Intelligence Agents were propagating "misinformation" and I do not recall ANY main stream leftwing anything complaining at the time. Not one. But it served its purpose at that time, Joe Biden pointed to that "letter" to claim the story he knew to be true was "false" during a debate.
Misinformation is just a term to censor.
Oh, I know! Lets have a ministry of truth! .... We've always been at war with Eas
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Exactly, The only question is, who gets to decide what "misinformation" is bad, and what isn't bad.
You're supposed to. You aren't.
The real problem is media illiterate mouth breathers disengage from all journalism "because bias", then feed on YouTube shorts, TikTok, and Facebook.
They all say the same things, "you used to be able to trust the news", but they never had any media literacy to begin with, and other than which of three broadcast news channels to flip to they didn't have any choice.
Now they get an algorithmic feed of if you liked tractors you'll like this short form video with a crazy guy blamin
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Wow, both this post and my post above went from +4 to 0 in 5 minutes. Someone must have multiple accounts with mod points ...
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What if different cohorts view/moderate at different times?
What if.. during this most recent period, the site averaged, say, 2 viewers with a moderation point per minute, and 50% of them found your comment stupid?
You're like those fucking morons who lost their shit over the _current_ poll leader changing as ballots were still being counted during elections.
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There's another explanation. Hear me out.
What if different cohorts view/moderate at different times?
What if.. during this most recent period, the site averaged, say, 2 viewers with a moderation point per minute, and 50% of them found your comment stupid?
You're like those fucking morons who lost their shit over the _current_ poll leader changing as ballots were still being counted during elections.
While I would love to see a mod point trend line built into /., if you use alterslash, its snapshot of the current +5 posts that gets refreshed every so often makes these bot mods obvious. The topics that get boosted to +5 too rapidly to be organic fit a certain pattern, and they'll usually get whittled down to 0 over the course of the day from real people.
So unless the alt-right all live in one particular time zone, you're not fooling anybody, the rapid swings are brigading or alts.
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Things boost to +5 as quickly as they drop to -1.
There are a lot of users of this site, and in particular, its traffic flow is largely based upon external linkage.
Trying to discount organized responses to your posts as bots is beyond lame.
Your argument is based upon a single assertion:
The topics that get boosted to +5 too rapidly to be organic fit a certain pattern
The problem, is that you pulled it out of your ass. You can't back it up, or describe that pattern in a way that I can't refute or demonstrate the opposite of.
You should recalibrate your perception of real
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I'd say the sock puppet ratio here is pretty high and I haven't had mod points since Obama was in office. How does that work?
Re: Who the hell are they to decide 'untrustworthy (Score:5, Insightful)
We still don't know where COVID came from and never will, we knew lockdowns were economically harmful but we also know lots of people getting sick and maybe dying is harmful, and nobody ever told you the shots were x prevent helpful or whatever. So no, no, and no.
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I see you both have been moderated properly.
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Re: Who the hell are they to decide 'untrustworth (Score:2)
If you actually were familiar with our history you would know that he and I have disagreed emphatically on many occasions about many subjects. You are once again pretending to knowledge that you lack. It seems to be a compulsion for you.
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Ironically believing that the US or Chinese sources as trustworthy is amusing, china ran a massive censorship regime to keep social panic down and deny all culpability and "save face", and the US incentivized its medical industry with free money to overcount the cases, to the extent that in my state (Oregon) a man who fell from a ladder was classified a COVID death.
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Does this sound any different? Please think twice before posting fact free drivel. If replacing one word can flip your entire narrative then maybe you didn't say anything of value in the first place. Virtue signaling isn't smart. It is just virtue signaling.
"Liberals tend to have two issues with reality: first, they don't believe in it where it conflicts with their views and second, they are opposed to it if denial might get them what they want.
It appears to be their belief that if they shout and stomp
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It's not an exclusively conservative trait, but by percentages they are trying their best to corner then market.
Re:BS whitewash (Score:4, Interesting)
It appears to be their belief that if they shout and stomp their feet enough, reality will bend to their beliefs and they get really upset when someone refuses to give them a stage upon which to do so.
I'm sorry, what?
Sounds more like you are describing the people who think that you can put on a dress and magically turn into a girl. And demand that everyone then use your preferred pronouns, and let you on their daughter's sports team.
Re: (Score:2)
Conservatives have a real problem with trans people. It used to be socially acceptable to insult and discriminate against gay people, but there are a fair number of them and it has become less acceptable to do that.
So the Conservatives (for now) retreat to shitting on trans people, because there are way fewer of them and a trans gender identity is harder for many people to understand than a gay sexual orientation.
But don't worry. Once the trans are disposed of, they'll be back for the gays. And then