Fediverse

Since my (leftist) instance is blocked, OP probably can't even read this comment.

That irony aside, although I disagree that federated Lemmy as a whole is homogenous, it's only natural that an alternative social network would skew away from the mainstream, and that instances would be relatively homogenous internally.

I believe this is by design, but to expect something else is unrealistic. The only options for Lemmy would be for it to be either further left or further right than Reddit. And there are a couple fascist instances, though they are blocked.

There are many posts preaching for the choir, but I wouldn't call it an echo chamber. It's more like a dead sound chamber where the ideas dies in agreement. It doesn't bounce off the walls or resonate. It's already there so no answer is required.

Lemmy would benefit from more users playing the devil's lawyer, but I think it's too small for anyone to use their main profile for that, and alt-accounts would quickly get blocked or banned.

Actual users with opposing views wouldn't be of much help. Politics isn't very nuanced these days. It's not red or blue, left or right or whatever. It's polarized into a new duality: Those that give a shit and those who are proud idiots. Lemmy is on the good side of this and will not benefit from being more accepting of idiots.

Personally, I don't buy this echo chamber shit. Before social media, you choose your spaces and your company and did not have to put up with random jackasses butting into your conversations to tell you how much they hate gay people or whatever.

The abnormal thing is this expectation that we're all supposed to meet in the middle with any asshole at all times. I'm happy with a townhall meeting once in a while but I don't want to or need to put up with bigots and people who are otherwise socio-politically the opposite of me on a daily basis.

I want to be in the company of people that don't make me feel like shit and who I can see eye to eye with. That's not being closed minded or wanting an echo chamber, that's normal.

As a leftist myself (communist), I generally enjoy the content and discussions on Lemmy.

You sure you’re a leftist? I see more leftism allowed to exist on Lemmy than other platforms, but the majority of it certainly leans neoliberal.

Try criticizing NATO or the Democrats in Lemmy communities. See how fast the powermods and groupthink kick in to put a stop to it.

But of course the rightwing stuff gets targeted, too. The mods here seem keen to mirror the narrow pro-neoliberal Reddit viewpoint of what is acceptable speech. Anything beyond that will result in a strike against the user or instance.

ETA: just got banned from another Lemmy.world community for pointing out the original NATO commanders were Nazis. There you have it.

There's a lot of stuff written on this topic, but I haven't seen this mentioned yet: there are conservative instances on Lemmy, as a platform. Most of them are widely defederated, not necessarily for the views of the majority (though in some cases, yes), but because of asshats deliberately causing trouble.

Unfortunately, this is also a product of a wider shift in discourse by the right (understood in a North American context), which appeals mostly to edgelords rather than the (rapidly shrinking, already shrunk to the point of irrelevance/non-existence one could argue) thinking, at least ostensibly humanistic conservative.

There's self-selection in action here. Which makes sense, even if I also find it troubling (there are people who can be reasoned with drowned out by Nazi assholes, who are willing to hear people out on the not-Nazi stuff, give positive reinforcement and with it a home to get radicalized).

I don't have a good answer, and if I did I'd probably be up for a Nobel Prize given how wide and damaging the problem is. It ain't just here - it's pretty much anywhere anyone expresses any idea. I just happen to like this side of the Threadiverse much more, so it's where I hang out.

Only real hope is meatspace, imo. And even then, not everyone has the privilege to engage this way in meatspace without a direct risk to their personal safety (see POC, our trans brothers and sisters, LGTBQ+ folks, etc.).

Election time was so irritating, Lemmy basically reigned in Harris as the next messiah; I had to end up blocking political keywords to make it usable. Kamala Harris is an absolute joke and the DNC is an even bigger joke. I remember seeing one post where someone basically claimed she has a spotless political career and I'm just thinking, 😮‍💨, really?

The problem with left leaning individuals on the internet is we have a lot of drive and conviction behind our ideas which is a good thing, but that should translate into real life activism or doing something that will combat the current political system and promote change. But we are beaten down since that's basically a total pipe dream, we realize what the problem is and feel powerless to fix it. What's

Now, whats a good way to regain some of the power over your "opponents"? Silence their opinion, whether that be outright censorship or in other ways that are antithetical to getting the point across.

The American political system has us fighting amongst one another to keep people distracted from who is really fucking everyone up the ass daily. And it continues to work. We need to stop this petty squabbling and use all this wasted energy on something useful that could actually bring us together, like maybe instead of just browsing social media all day, you could go out in to the real world.

I am left-leaning and live in a predominantly conservative area. Very red. When I go out, people usually don't just randomly talk about Trump all day, that's just not reality. Most people dont make their political views their entire personality. I hear way more about Trump from social media than I am ever do from people in real life. And I assure you, I don't seek it out.

You have way more in common with the other side than you realize. Social media allows the worst aspects of peoples personality to come out since you don't have to look at a human being in front of you that has feelings, goals, beliefs, dreams, et al. just like you do. Have some god damn compassion and maybe try to understand why people on the other side have come to the conclusions they have, instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

If I saw serious attempts anywhere from right-wingers to advocate for their views as an actual political philosophy I'd be more concerned by this. But we need spaces where people actually discuss how to build a better society, and simply because of that concern these spaces lean left. It's rare to find right-wingers who are even seriously interested in that question, except as a pretext to vent their unexamined prejudices and personality issues.

If, on internet forums, you push for everyone to have equal say even when their views are not well considered, everyone's energy gets used up arguing with the most offensive right-wing posters. I think it's a good thing to have spaces where that isn't how it goes. As for centrists, I think there's a place for engaging with them because there's more of a chance that they just haven't examined their views but can be brought to. But I'm not going to miss them if they're so put off by a left-leaning space that they won't participate, and I don't think every left space needs to spend its time arguing with liberals.

Frankly, my view of the right wing these days is that there's no particular need to treat a mishmash of selfishness, greed, lust for power, deceit, gullibility, ignorance, insecurity and hatred as if it's a political philosophy at all. Left versus right isn't a helpful picture. Serious vs unserious would be a better one. If someone has serious arguments for a right-wing position made in good faith, then they're not just wasting people's time. But that's not usually what you see, and I suspect it's because there's a lack of serious arguments to be made for it.

I don't miss the right-wing voices. For the most part they just dominate, disrupt and obstruct serious discussion. That said, it's important we don't forget how unrepresentative our online discussions are of society as a whole, and how little impact merely talking about them here has.

I don't understand this thought process. If the far left is preaching facts and kindness, and the other side is literally Nazies we need more left homogeneous thinking. We need to get educated and organized about the issues facing humanity. When the far left starts to be anti science and facts then you can begin to worry.

I wish lemmy had more niche interest groups, like marvel champions card game. Then there'd be something to talk about that isn't how we should force others to give a percetage of their earnings to the goxernment.

We are doing fine. Don't overthink lemmy.

People go where they want, Block what they will. Share what they share.

What else do you need? We aren't driven by shareholders to infinitely grow. Instances/communities/users will come and go, but lemmy is forever. It's just going to get better from here till we get a "TikTok ban" from big brother. Enjoy the ride.

As a leftist myself (communist)

Very, how do you do fellow kids energy from this comment.

I don't think I've ever interacted with a communist who would be upset about a lack of reactionaries in their spaces, they'd be relieved to have a place free of them and their ignorance and hate.

And the fact you think that "centrists" and "right-wing" are somehow not extremists (but this made up special category of MAGA which by the way is most conservatives in the US and in a lot of the world somehow is) tells me you are politely not really politically literate.

Liberals are reactionary enough in their excuse for genocide, you think for some reason we need space for not only them but the people who want to take away rights from trans people, who want to kill trans kids, who want to make women second class citizens, who are incredibly racist, war-mongering, anti-science, etc?

As much as I align with many of the views expressed here, I wonder if we’re missing out on valuable dialogue and perspective by not having a more diverse range of political opinions represented.

You can get that literally anywhere else offline or online, especially your home instance. You're not from a leftist instance but from the most reddit-brained, centrist neo-lib instance.

This is false equivalence, the idea that the left is too extreme and needs balancing with the right. Please just accurately identify your politics or don't bother mentioning them as we can easily guess them from a post like this.

Participating in this thread had left me feeling like lemmy is much more of an echo chamber than what I thought before.

I like being disagreed with on occasion, but don't feel like anyone really listened here. That is very internet but also pretty concerning.

2. There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).

I see plenty of them. They're just mostly on other instances to me (like your home instance).

Furthermore, while it's tempting to see the so-called 'left' and 'right' as equivalent mirrors needing to be balanced for diversity, the reality is far from it. After seeing Wolfballs in action (that instance died before the reddit API fiasco), I can tell you we don't need to be balanced out by 'white genocide' discussions and more open anti-semitism. I know that's not what you proposed, but it's to illustrate that sometimes there isn't value in arbitrary balancing the 'left' and 'right' on these websites.

is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?

It's also a result of Lemmy's history and appeal. When reddit went on sprees of deleting subreddits, the right-wing hate groups made their own reddit clones, anarchists typically went to Raddle, and when GenZedong and ChapoTrapHouse went down, they went to Lemmygrad.ml (as a result, it became the largest instance) and created Hexbear respectively. So there is a long history of larger communist communities from day one which was the status quo until the reddit API fiasco.

The Fediverse also tends to attract anarchists and other socialists by the appeal of its decentralized nature, along with a few right-libertarians who see it as an anti-censorship tool. So one could say there's a bias there.

How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?

That's tough, because you inherently limit which political perspectives you can encourage.

Hearing from "both sides" and coming to some compromise/middle ground only works if the following is true:

1. Both parties are acting in good faith.
2. The viewpoints expressed are close enough that they don't require a total departure from one's current viewpoint.
3. The disputed topic doesn't have a obvious or clear correct answer.

The problem is, at least in the US, none of these are true for right wingers and even many "centrists."

You cannot talk to somebody and try to find common ground if they don't believe in statistical studies by government agencies, they don't believe in scientific studies by major universities and research institutions, and don't care about the rights and protections for minority groups.

The older members of my family are almost all conservatives, MAGA supporters, and fundamentalist Christians.

They genuinely believe that Evolution is a myth and the Earth was created 6000 years ago. They believe that illegal immigrants are invading this country and that Democrats are secretly allowing them to. They don't believe humans have any effect on climate change. They don't think Covid was anything more than a common cold that the government used as an excuse to try to control people. They don't believe in vaccines.

I find Lemmy to be very refreshing. I get news from a diverse collection of Leftists sources. Anarchists, statists, weak socialists like the AOC/Bernie types, government studies, independent guerrilla journalists, Communists, Mutualists, Marxists, etc.

But I have no interest in further "diversifying" by adding right wing "sources."

Cookies can taste good with many different ingredients, but no cookie tastes good with horse poop.

obligatory reminder that us-american domestic politics are so skewed to the right that what appears "moderate" in the usa is right to far-right anywhere else

your "liberals" are right-wing your "conservatives" are right-wing both are liberals

I think the idea that all viewpoints are equally valuable and need to be given equal weight or volume in discussions is incredibly fallacious. Left wing ideals are backed by a multitude of research as well as ethical and moral philosophies. I don't know how you could be a leftist and say "what this place really needs is more right-wing voices" with a straight face. The whole "im just asking questions, everyone deserves to be heard, i just want to hear both sides of the argument" is a common tactic the right uses to try to seem reasonable and propagandize more people. Some ideas aren't worth hearing out and can only do damage to those who listen.

Given the recent right wing takeover of other social media sites and the glorification of hate speech I am fine not seeing that bullshit spread here.

It's important though to not fall into the trap of creating false balance, i.e. giving the same weight to a false or harmful statement than to a truthful or good statement, in the name of "fairness" or "objectivity". Also, conservatives tend to shift to the right currently.

I'm interested in this, i left reddit due to that, if it's just a reddit 2.0 i'm better getting off. So far it looks samey.

I don’t think having Nazis and Zionists here would make anything better, make anyone sympathize with them, or find common ground. This is a place where we can be safe, why add people who are purposefully being dishonest and spreading disinformation? They aren’t misinformed people, they are real pieces of shit who hold a genuinely wrong position/s; they want to piss you off to ruin your day. I already have enough discourse with these people everywhere else, why here?