Pew: Liberals most intolerant online

March 13, 2012
by Ed Morrissey

It’s a well-known fact that liberals are more tolerant than conservatives or moderates. Superior liberal tolerance is such a fact that they will scream at you if you dare to disagree or debate them, demand that your advertisers bail on you, and pressure the FCC to get you banned from the airwaves. Does that sound like tolerance to you? A new survey from Pew confirms that liberals are the least tolerant of differing opinions, at least on line (emphasis mine):

Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS [social networking sites] users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps by doing at least one of the following:

• 10% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because that person posted too frequently about political subjects
• 9% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive
• 8% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they argued about political issues on the site with the user or someone the user knows
• 5% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics that the user worried would offend other friends
• 4% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they disagreed with something the user posted about politics

Of course, that means that 82% of SNS users have not taken any steps to ignore or disconnect from someone whose views are different – or have not encountered any views that would prompt such a move.

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