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.
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.
there’s no such thing as politically neutral
Considering the Overton window, there’s also the fact that what is left and right varies from country to country and culture to culture. For example, a centerist in America would be considered right wing when compared to a centrist from Vietnam or Cuba.
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.
A lack of opposing viewpoints is a fast-track to a closed-minded approach to interactions. I see far too many people, of all backgrounds, enter into engagements with a “you’re wrong and I’m right” mindset born from only entertaining their own ideals. Day after day of “other side bad” comments that entirely miss why that other side believes what they do in the first place. I don’t see how that helps anyone unless your goal is to pat each other on the back while the country drifts farther apart. Personally speaking, reading entire threads like this gets tiresome and while I am glad we don’t have the same level of bad faith right-wing spam that other platforms do, I wish we had a more open atmosphere.
I hope you’re not being serious but if you are try to get out your bubble while you still can
I absolutely am. Im happy to discuss and debunk any right wing viewpoint thats brought up, but beyond that, having it repeated ad nauseum is in no way useful. Some opinions are not valid and don’t deserve the space for argument beyond potentially educating people.
The idea that every left wing viewpoint is perfectly aligned with science and critical thought is over reaching
I didn’t say that, and im open to discussion on any viewpoint to an extent. Theres a lot of things i dont agree with even my most leftist friends about. But constantly giving voice to ideas that have been proven wrong, either scientifically or historically, is not helpful in any way. For some things there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answer. Gender science, economics, racial discrimination, the predominant roght wing ideas about these topics are just false, scientifically. And they shouldnt have to be disproven constantly in a public forum when that work has been done elsewhere.
Casualy defined leftist as brainwashed lol. You guys seem to love the “How to hate freespeech 101” course.
I like this comment most.
I would argue that wider community cohesion and thus tolerance of other viewpoints is important. Without hearing and understanding why these other points of view exist, understanding and accepting these people is hard.
Branding someone’s point of view as inherently or even ‘factually’ wrong is pretty blunt, alienating and invalidating IMO. I prefer a left-wing world view that tolerates people who don’t have the same understanding as me.
Patience and willingness to educate people is necessary in any community, as is a certain amount of tolerance for disagreement, in topics that aren’t harming anyone or restricting anyones roghts. In our current political environment, the predominent viewpoints of many people are outright dangerous and violent towards dissenters or outsiders, and those views do not deserve to be platformed. This is all based on context obviously, as everything is. If my neighbor is adamant that an unregulated free market society benefits everyone and is the best option despite all evidence to the contrary, and won’t be swayed by any argument or proof i offer, then fine. I just wont talk about the economy with them. But if my neighbor starts to say that trans people are mentally ill, and mexicans are subhuman, and palestinians deserve to be eradicated just for being born, thats a whole other matter. In the world we live in now we have to be very careful about what information is being propagated and consumed and absorbed by people who may lack the skills or understanding to resist it. As i said, some ideas are not worthy of repetition.
Yeah but this thread was supposed to be about whether ideological diversity is important, not whether hate speech is important.
It was about a lack of right wing viewpoints being problematic. Can you give me an example of a right wing viewpoint that is worth discussing, not scientifically unsound, not hateful, and is currently missing from lemmy? Cause if there is value in these ideas being discussed you must be able to give at least one example right?
The value is in being accepting that other people don’t see the world in the same way as you, and treating them with respect.
The value is having a society that is tolerant of diversity of opinion.
This is not an universal truth.
Nazism is explicitly deemed unworthy of respect in some legal systems, like Germany or the UK. MAGAs, white supremacists, and alt-righters are objectively too close to nazism, therefore their opinions are unworthy of respect to start with.
There is also the paradox of intolerance. If you let these people in, to respect their opinion, they will take over and deprive people of the right to live. They don’t play by tolerant society’s rules, so they they don’t get tolerated.
The value is having a society that is tolerant of diversity of opinion.
Here is the opinion of the scientific consensus on transgender people, which is have been so for years, if not decades.
We have been harassed, bullied, doxxed, and banned for bringing those up in all major social media platforms. TERFs, white supremacists, misogynists, racists, have always gotten away in these platforms with punching down on leftists, African and Caribbean reparations activists, feminists, and queer people. They were protected by equally bigoted moderators under the guise of entitlement to their opinion, at the same time that all these other opinions are bashed and framed as “overstepping”.
This is in line with what the EFF and Techdirt, which are both vocal First Amendment absolutists, have already said that what X and Facebook do now is in fact amplifying hate speech and effectively suppressing the free speech of gender and sexual minorities.
And this has been the situation for years, take for example the online harassment of feminists .
It is a deeply systemic bias, due to centrist indoctrination in broader society, that it is the leftist and inclusive spaces that are called out for lack of diversity for responding to harassment and bigotry, when the voices and lives of people are simply dominated and evacuated in major platforms without an iota of moderation and responsiveness to punch-down harassment.
Let alone that in the light of the most recent developments, which consolidates the above tendencies, makes the timing of the tolerance argument even more ironic and dishonest.
There is also the paradox of intolerance. If you let these people in, to respect their opinion, they will take over and deprive people of the right to live. They don’t play by tolerant society’s rules, so they they don’t get tolerated.
Do you not see the irony here of op being intolerant of sharing lemmy with people who do not share their viewpoint? You’ll note from my other comments here that I’m explicitly not arguing for hate speech. IMO this thread was actually about the lack of moderate alternative views on Lemmy, not about encouraging extremist narratives to take over the federation.
What I am arguing for here is to drop the unhelpful us-versus-them narrative and to argue that Lemmy could well learn to tolerate a wider range of opinions. This is not to say extreme and intolerant views such as the ones you have described should be permitted.
Yes and for some topics thats valid, and for some it absolutely is not. Like this discussion isnt even about being tolerant about other viewpoints, its about a lack of other views being problematic, and i dont consider a lack of hateful bile to be a problem in any way. I also dont consider those hateful ideals to be worthy of tolerating. I asked you for an example of a specifically right wing viewpoint thats not false, is worthy of discussion, and not hateful, and you gave none, so what is the point youre trying to make? And why should we make an effort to platform more right wing views when they are basically all hateful?
I think you’re missing my point.
If your goal is to solve society’s problems, you have to listen to everyone, even people you disagree with, in order to identity the underlying problems.
And sometimes you have to read between the lines because they are not politically and economically literate. And unfortunately, that means people often latch onto ideas that sound good to them, but may or may not be a good idea in real life.
For example, some people may blame immigration for their problems. But that is not the real problem. That is just a scapegoat that the politicians use. The real problem is that they are struggling financially, and don’t know how to fix it, most likely because someone is taking advantage of them and/or they don’t have what they need to be successful.
If you fix their economic problems, and educate them on what the real problems are, they will realize that the immigrants were never the problem. This will reduce the tension and hate, and expose the propaganda for what it is.
But you can’t change anyone’s minds if you label them as enemies and refuse to listen to them. And you can’t solve problems if you can’t identify the underlying issues people are concerned with.
The thing about the right wing is that it always boils down to the cruelty being the point. People play it up -just- being a difference of opinion like we’re talking about whether or not pineapple is good on pizza; when the opinions in question are that brown people are inferior, trans people people don’t deserve rights, a woman’s life is worth less than a fetus, etc: there’s no valuable dialogue to be had. Ban the fucker and don’t look back.
The closest thing to valuable dialogue you’re going to get with that garbage is the bullshit veneer they slap onto their vitriol to make it easier to sell - the whole white knight bit about protecting babies or bathrooms or some other nonsense that conveniently lands the same outgroups into a bind every single time. If you think any of that shit is in good faith, you’ve fallen for a trap before the conversation even starts.
Diversity of thought is great, up until we start turning to hatred/bigotry for a fresh perspective. Those are not welcome here, nor should they be anywhere else.
I’d say rightwing is inherently egoistic, far right is what you are talking about.
Both are tiresome when it comes to discussions, one is full of hate, the other lacks compassion.
So yes, what is there to discuss? What “viewpoint” is there to see?
Self-care.
Being egoistic or even egocentric isn’t self care.
It is caring about oneself. Exclusively.
Like a banana is a fruit, but fruit isn’t “a banana”.
go back to Reddit nerd
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.
Wait you’re saying that calling people nazis if they have a different viewpoint than you doesn’t foster diversity? Who would have thought.
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.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is a nazi”
too far gone
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.
There is the same kind of special snowflake attitude on here that ruined Reddit. You people only want to have your exclusive social bubble where you can sniff each other’s farts. I’m not interested in that.
lol posting this on the most notoriously censored instance, on a platform intentionally removed from the fediverse for this very reason.
Echo chambers are the flavour of lemmy. Think wrong is quickly censored.
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.
Yes, exactly this.
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.
Because those that actually are interested in that question end up moving to the left when they see the “answers” that the right has to offer.
I’ll offer this thought…
When I used to discuss politics with someone who viewed policy from the perspective of a different political party say 25-30 years ago, I would say 90-95% of what we wanted to see happen in the country was exactly the same. The differences were in how we wanted to get there.
Unfortunately, today I don’t think that the views align much any more. The views have diverged, and at least on the right, they have become extreme to the point of openly courting fascism, government capture by the oligarchy, and the masses supporting this don’t care about the consequences so long as they think they have a punitive moral victory over their opponents. The left isn’t really the left anymore, and I’m not sure what they want for the country. I don’t think they know either. They seem more interested in inclusivity than they do in actually making economic policy benefitting anyone under the upper middle class level.
All that said, I have yet to encounter one single instance of a conservative view on lemmy that wasn’t radical and antagonistic. I have also encountered far left views that were also radical and antagonistic. Far more hard left views than right, perhaps because there are so many hard left views the right stays away.
I don’t have the answer to what would increase the breadth of political content in Lemmy discussions, but the highly polarized and emotional views of politics along with internet anonymity isn’t really a recipe for balanced discussion. We haven’t even touched on organized propaganda deliberately pushing inflammatory posts and lies that incite reactionary and extreme views in return.
‘Openly courting fascism’ is a bit of an understatement, tbh. Elon Musk did a sieg heil and Trump wants to deport minorities. Can’t get clearer than that.
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.
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.
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.
