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.
so you’re suggesting, what, exactly?
say I’d observed this trend as well, and agreed there was a risk (I don’t but let’s follow your chain of thinking) - what then?
Because I’m sure there’s a desire for conservatives to have alternatives to reddit, but I as they can federate their own instances and have damn near free reign over whatever communities they want to create, I don’t really understand what’s to be gained from any actions that might be taken. We won’t convince them it’s a conservative haven, and that’s genuinely what they want, a safe space where no one questions their conservatism.
so what is it you’re thinking?
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.
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.
Reading this thread, i think lemmy has a real problem. There sre a few comments that appear centrist or left-leaning, but the majority of comments are extremely left.
I’m not asking for neo-nazis or far right, just more centrist opinions like in this thread
Why do we need more centrist opinions? Why is it a problem to have leftists?
Echo chamber and group think… To get the best ideas, all ideas must be considered within reason
All ideas within the centrist sphere have already been considered and mostly discarded by Leftists. You may have had a point if this was a centrist dominated space.
All ideas within the centrist sphere have already been considered and mostly discarded by Leftists.
Very dogmatic approach for what is essentially uncharted territory.
I disagree. Leftist ideas are only “uncharted” in some areas, in most of the world leftist ideas are more common or dominant.
I’m far left wing, but it’s my philosophy, it don’t exclude the respect and tolerance to others (to certain limits). This is what is really important, a unique truth don’t exist.
There are plenty of people on the fediverse that are clearly free and independent thinkers - as in not operating from inside a bubble where they get fed opinions and views from others and them regurgitating those views ad nauseam. On Lemmy, I see a lot of curiosity and a lot of people who were probably censored or effectively buried by downvotes on other platforms, despite their good faith and interesting (and sometimes radical) perspectives.
Discussion flows well, there’s less people focusing only on upvotes/downvotes. There doesn’t seem to be a tradition of dog-piling people who wrong-think according to the group consensus (or whatever neoliberal narrative is prevailing) as there is on Reddit. Moderation is much less heavy-handed and there are no shadowbans/comments that don’t show up for others (but only for yourself). There are significantly less bots and almost zero astroturfed content, as well.
Worry less about the labels, I say. If you want mainstream or conservative opinions, it’s very easy to seek them out - the internet is full of those perspectives. If you’re curious, you could play devil’s advocate and discuss current events or other hot topics from a mainstream perspective and ask others why they think differently to better understand the user-base on the fediverse and how things generally go down here. I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to weigh the pros and cons of different viewpoints and perspectives and entertain a discussion about certain issues in good faith.
Not everybody is filtering everything out from a polarized lens and is focused on being an absolutist or purist with their preferred ideology.
Go through my comment history and you’ll see that the dog-piling on people with wrong think very much exists
👍
I see that you frequently employ laughing in discussion, that you are pretty confused about different ideologies (such as seeing communism as being inherently authoritarian), and that you are frequently sarcastic and dismissive to others. You consider anybody suggesting change outside of capitalist philosophy as radical and you mock others for blaming capitalism for their problems. I apologize if I’m mischaracterizing you, I quickly skimmed a few pages.
Be respectful, debate in good faith, perhaps stop typing your laughs and other perceivably rude remarks if you don’t want backlash. Or just do you - you are allowed to have gripes with various systems and ideologies and express them and discuss them with others.
Pay less attention to the downvotes. The downvotes don’t hide your comment as on Reddit. There is also no collapsing of comments done by mods. Myself, I’m personally not a fan of the upvote/downvote systems and if I continue using this service I’m likely going to zap the upvotes/downvotes and all vote counters with uBlock Origin (as I don’t participate in voting anyway).
I feel like you picked out those examples while ignoring the ones where i have acted in good faith
I did see those examples and of course I commend you for those and empathize with you. I feel it’s best to just not engage with very polarizing topics, and from my experience, changing people’s minds is very difficult if they are firm in their position and feel very strongly about a topic - even if your arguments are sound. If you think or feel differently than the consensus and feel strongly enough to talk about such subjects, just calmly eat the downvotes in such topics as you did.
Listen, I was just trying to explain why some of the downvotes might be happening generally and I’m certainly not attacking you or against you. You’re free to see things however you’d like and hold whatever views you like. Again, if it were my choice votes wouldn’t appear at all.
I just know people are very sensitive to tone, and I understand that it’s difficult to always be on your best behavior when people don’t give you the respect you deserve, but I assure you there’s a balancing act where you can not be a doormat and also assert yourself.
I respect your nuanced takes. I wish there were more on the fediverse with your mindset and calm approach to conversation.
There doesn’t seem to be a tradition of dog-piling people who wrong-think according to the group consensus
I think I’ve been in different threads then, because most posts that aren’t the majority opinion around here gets heavily discouraged by downvotes and/or replies.
That is not what .ml stands for… not even close. There you get blocked for critical comments on china (in the memes sub… not even an CCCP echo chamber).
What you said is mostly true… not on your .ml instance. That instance is cooked by chinese nationalists…
Everywhere else in my life is centrist or rightwing. I enjoy having somewhere to escape it.
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.
-
Yes
-
Yes
-
Yes
-
Yes
-
Yes
-
Maybe; yes
-
It’s a mindset thing. The more you interact with others positively while disagreeing, the better things will get. This only applies to reasonable disagreements.
-
People will learn more, but people will be wrong more. Unchecked political diversity drives away normal takes. No political diversity makes people afraid to voice disagreement.
-
It is very rigid in its ideologies, even more so than reddit.
like bluesky is rightist , lemmy may be leftist . it also depends on the server , left has blocked right and vice versa . try to find a right one
Since when is Bluesky rightist?
Bluesky is very liberal.
Economically rightwing or socially?
Liberalism as an economic ideology. It seems fairly progressive socially.
Ah shit, want to hear my economic hot takes? Haha
Sure, why not
I want to have private schooling preserved
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.
Not counting lemmygrad and hexbear most of lemmy instances is completely liberal, at best radical liberal. I seriously doubt your statement about being communist if you call for more centrism and think we need more rightwing info.
You want more rightwing? Go anywhere else in the internet, there’s full of it everywhere. What is lacking everywhere else, is communist point of view.
I have been saying a number of times over the course of my time here, that I think the “echo chamber”-ness of Lemmy is by design.
Each instance is moderated by a different team of people who run their server under a different philosophy. You can see clearly in this thread many from the lemmy.ml instance express mild disdain for “liberals”, whereas other instances like lemmy.world and lemm.ee don’t hold such animosity to that collective extent, but admins hold other expectations for what should be the norm. The way I view the Fediverse is that it’s a collection of echo chambers, which within them help foster discussion between like-minded individuals. However these are networked with each other so you can wander outside that bubble to other instances when you feel like it. You also have control to block groups and instances you don’t vibe with.
I know some instance moderation policies remove posts and comments that go far against the grain, but in other instances, unpopular takes just get super downvoted but left for people to see.
Yes it’s very important to accommodate genocide and climate denialism. 🙄
Have you spent any time at other places on the Internet?
Theres tons of calls to violence from the auth left. Kill all ceos, kill all landlords etc.
That’s just the left, lol
Lack of fake accounts/trolls like on other platforms and you’ll have that.
