I’ve been using Lemmy for a while now, and I’ve noticed something that I was hoping to potentially discuss with the community.
As a leftist myself (communist), I generally enjoy the content and discussions on Lemmy.
However, I’ve been wondering if we might be facing an issue with ideological diversity.
From my observations:
- Most Lemmy Instances, news articles, posts, comments, etc. seem to come from a distinctly leftist perspective.
- 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).
- Discussions often feel like they’re happening within an ideological bubble.
My questions to the community are:
- Have others noticed this trend?
- Do you think Lemmy is at risk of becoming an echo chamber for leftist views, a sort of Truth Social, Parler, Gab, etc., esque platform, but for Leftists?
- Is this a problem we should be concerned about, or is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?
- How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?
- What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of having a more politically diverse user base on Lemmy?
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.
I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on this.
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.
This is bad for the health of lemmy though, I think. A discussion board/framework should be politically neutral, while still employing rules on hate speech based on the voice of the masses.
If you want to talk hate speech, I’ve seen numerous accounts on lemmy instances of people advocating for murder or other violence against “billionaires” or anyone with a significant wealth. Or same with right-wing ideals, I’ve seen users advocating similar broad calls for violence based on pretty poor assumptions against the entire right-wing USA block.
there’s no such thing as politically neutral
If someone wanted to make a well-formed right wing argument I doubt they’d get too much backlash. But it’s all bigotry and lies and conspiracy theories at this point so they get shitcanned.
Fighting back against the ultra wealthy who are killing our people and our planet is not the same as punching down on minorities who are just trying to exist.
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.
We shouldn’t be encouraging or squelching any political diversity whatsoever, we should be honing in more and more on how things actually are in the world, and the effects things are likely to have, regardless of who it pisses off or pleases.
go back to Reddit nerd
There is no such thing as a “moderate conservative” any more. IMO the difference has always been mainly, how mask off they were prepared to go. Trump has shown them that you can go fully mask off without any negative consequences.
This is such a strange take to me.
I was on the broader fediverse for a year or so before lemmy took off, and I got used to the very strong left leaning environment I found there, where compassion for your impact on the people around you was built in to the norms of many of the communities. I wasn’t used to it, but I was so glad to have found it.
And then lemmy happened. And unlike the rest of the fediverse, which was largely populated by people escaping twitter because it had been taken over by a fascist, the lemmy population was largely people escaping reddit because they could no longer use 3rd party apps. And the difference in ideology between those two groups is night and day.
To me, the broader fediverse feels left wing and comfortable. Lemmy feels centrist, where half of my time as an admin is banning trolls and bigots spreading hate.
tl;dr - Your definition of leftist is not my definition of leftist.
Big agree. Lemmy is regressive in a few ways some of the time!
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 idea, in the name of “fairness” or “objectivity”. Also, conservatives tend to shift to the right currently.
This meme basically:
To OP’s point tho, I think the fediverse is a lot more ideologically diverse than reddit or other corporate platforms. The fact that you can say something positive about the Palestinian resistance without getting banned, or say something positive about a country on the US-enemy list, is a testament to that diversity.
Sure, there are many servers on the fediverse that are anti-communist, and orientalist / western supremacist, and block leftist ones. But on corporate platforms, you aren’t given any option: that’s a non-negotiable default that you must accept. Here you can always join a server that’s willing to federate with leftist ones, and is okay with ideological diversity, even if you don’t consider yourself one.
Its not just about not getting banned, its also that were not dogpiled by Zionists calling us anti Semites (for the most part).
Those people seemed to give up once they realized no one was paying attention to their flameposting outside of the fediverse. The media doesn’t pick up on it (which is what they really want) unless you’re on one of the corporate social media sites where they can leverage their legal/monetary powers to amplify/silence the discussion per their will.
its also that were not dogpiled by Zionists calling us anti Semites (for the most part).
Seeing zionists ops flame out on here was beautiful. They don’t really try that here any more.
The new narrative is not all jews are Zionist which is true but genocide in Gaza ain’t about the Jews in the US lol
The issue is the genocide and not majority of israle being Jewish. Not all Jews are Zionist is propaganda tactic IMHO
This is one of the reasons why the US federal government wants to ban TikTok, a highly unpopular among the US general public. TikTok isn’t moderated in ways that suit US ideologies and propaganda, which means more leftist content leaks through to the masses.
Two big problems are
, when you talk with the Right, you don’t have to dig very deep before you encounter dishonesty.
When you talk with Liberals, they are not politically aware at all
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).
TBF, they don’t exist.
They’re might be some that on appearance hold reasonable views that are considered centrist /moderate conservative but if their privilege is questioned or their fragile egos get scuffed, they always and invariably go full on far right.
Their moderate views are just a veneer that are held to appear as such and never stand up to pressure.
What typically America-centric thinking
You can also tell by the misuse of “they’re” lol
I’m curious as to how their comment was “America-centric”? It seems as though it applies universally. Bad ideas are bad ideas, it doesn’t matter what continent it happens on.
That’s them being an elitist prick, full of English exceptionalism.
You could look through their previous comments and find that they invariably wear the badge of “political moderate” but their world view based around their superiority seeps through eventually.
I’m not in the US so that’s your first fuck up.
Secondly, the misused ‘they’re’ was me not proofreading autocorrect too closely while I was on the train this morning.
You sound like one of those butthurt centrists.
We already have people praising Liz Cheney.
You could say “I am noticing a distinct lack of Neo Nazis on Lemmy”.
To which I say why change that.
Lemmy has always had the Communists and Anarchists, from what I understand. Liberals largely came during the Reddit fiascos. Overall, I’d say instances are becoming more homogenous, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. I’d rather have more leftists and fewer liberals seeing liberals convert to leftists, IMO.
Liberals largely came during the Reddit fiascos
Even before there were several instances like beehaw or sopuli regularily coming out with shitlib takes.
Ah, gotcha. Still, the bulk came with Reddit I think, right?
Yeah. Before there were mostly few people in threads. Abovementioned shitlibs were not very numerous too, just few recurring nicknames and few others getting banned and coming back under new nicks every few days.
The ones that keep making new nicks are still here, lol. At least, some of them.
I dunno. I’m fairly far left, and moderately radicalized, and I get plenty of pushback. And from both those further left, and those that are US left (which is more centric overall).
Yeah, you don’t get as many right wingers, but they do exist, and they tend to be willing to speak up. On the less crazy instances, they don’t even get shut down by admins/mods, though they’ll get down voted all to hell.
But I can’t say that lemmy as a whole is that echoey. It just leans more left than any other form of social media.
Discussions often feel like they’re happening within an ideological bubble.
While this can be true for some communities, I find that users here do still engage with other viewpoints when the discussions are in good faith.
I think the reason why a lot of users lean in a certain political direction is because of
- the origins of Lemmy
- users that choose to leave the older platforms may have done so for social / political reasons
- threadiverse is still relatively small
Do you think Lemmy is at risk of becoming an echo chamber for leftist views, a sort of Truth Social, Parler, Gab, etc., esque platform, but for Leftists?
I feel like we’re getting more politically diverse over time. It’s only a risk if we force a certain political leaning through moderation.
Is this a problem we should be concerned about, or is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?
Worth keeping an eye on to see how it changes over time
How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?
Mainly moderation. If a community or space is intended for a particular group, it’s perfectly fine to moderate how you see fit. If it is meant to be a general space, try to limit political biases when moderating and focus on bad faith comments.
If a post/comment was in good faith, it’s more effective to let someone explain why it is wrong rather than removing it. Chances are that others can learn from the explanation (or that they were correct to begin with, and you’ll learn something)
What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of having a more politically diverse user base on Lemmy?
The benefits are easy, I can’t think of many drawbacks. Maybe:
- More people = higher moderation costs (which can be dealt with by having bigger teams)
- More drama (we have drama already)
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?
amen.
Booooooooo
