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.
I find circles around .world to be more liberal and not leftist. (Not that there aren’t any on .world… Just leans that way)
There’s not much in terms of right wing spaces but tbh I’m uh, completely fine with that.
This place def needs more centrists. Too many libs sucking themselves (and each other) off. Not more MAGA though. Those guys are just wrong
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.
@Teknevra
I’m not a part of Lemmy, but I will say this: There are some people with whom reasonable dialog is just not possible. Speaking only for myself, I choose not to engage. That does not mean I’m not aware of what they are saying or thinking. It means that I am drawing a healthy boundary for myself.Your feelings about it are valid. You should absolutely seek out more mixed spaces, if that is what you want to do.
Cheers!
Yeah this mirrors my approach to it.
People can like Trump/Musk or dream of Marxism in practice. I am so far from both ideologies that I find it difficult to relate to either, and end up being called a traitor by the left and a triggered lib/loser by the right. Lemmy is in my experience quite left.
The political differences have become so extreme that I just avoid any debate at all and stick to the technical stuff and hobbies. My sanity is more important to me than trying to convince someone over the pond that they are wrong.
Honestly, I just try to live my life as the best person I can be. I’ve gotten to old to try to change anyone else. And I have had some great encounters here, so I am not going back to Reddit anytime soon.
Stay awesome, people!
I feel like we have come to a point in time where the Internet in general is becoming more separated like this in general. I enjoy Lemmy because I get a lot of the other perspectives in my day to day work life, and I like coming to this place to read and engage with people who share my views and ideas on topics. 🤷🏼♀️ Maybe that is pretty close to an echo chamber, but it is what I am seeking after spending every work day with conservatives.
@frankspurplewings Exactly.
It is the definition of an echo chamber. If every thread/comment w/e not following the trend gets censored or w/e else, it’s not a diverse website and more likely propaganda/echo chamber.
I find it interesting that some people are saying “the right is this” and “conservatives are that” and then saying horrible things most people would be opposed to. How would you know if you never talk to them and just assume what they think?
I think most people assume the extreme right is the entire right, just like most people assume the extreme left is the entire left. It’s actually a spectrum. Or more accurately, a Nolan chart.
Most people I know are in the center, and they oppose racial segregation, oppose racism, oppose oppression, oppose monopolies, and oppose corrupt officials. But since they are not communists or socialists, some people on the left lump them in with the far right, which the center doesn’t like either.
And if you attack the people in the center by falsely accusing them of being the right, all you are doing is alienating people who might agree with you on a lot of things.
I have spoken to them all, for years. In all shapes and sizes.
They are all driven by fear and tribe mentally. Reality does not matter to them only emotions.
I’m not a communist or socialist btw.
You probably have not talked to moderates much. They don’t like talking about politics because they get attacked by both the left and the right. But they are the swing voters, and they oppose the hate they hear everyday.
Moderate conservatives? You’re right they’re normally older techno phones so I don’t. But I know they didn’t put up much resistance to trumps antics. And many were happy to sacrifice reality to own the libs.
I’ve seen the radicalisation of anti authoritarian spaces by the right wing hate machine in real time though. Ancaps in 2006 terms would be leftists today. Classic liberals with economic backgrounds jumping on the MAGA train after being fed the right fake news memes.
All subconsciously which is the worst thing about it.
I said moderates. This includes left-leaning centrists.
My comment was about conservatives so wasn’t clear. Spoken to plenty of moderates.
As opposed to you because you are not tribal and never make emotional decisions.
Reducing people like this is itself an emotional defense mechanism. We are fallible to the things you describe. All political bubbles have people who make this same exact claim about all the other bubbles.
There intelligence in recognizing this. Neither you nor I are in the one true bubble.
I’m not tribal at all and non-conformist to a fault. Of course I make emotional decisions - but when presented with clear evidence I can adjust my views as neccessary. I love to be wrong, the entire concept of how right-wingers react to information is so foreign to me I’ve spent years trying to figure out if they’re lying or are they actually believe it. Unfortunately it’s the latter. Giving those eejits air-space only pushes the centrist NPCs who have the same inherent flaws in how they process information to the right.
NPCs? Yikes.
It’s okay they can’t hear us.
Listen to yourself speak and tweak a couple of words to make it a right winger saying it. Perhaps you might realise how similar you sound.
the entire concept of how liberals react to information is so foreign to me I’ve spent years trying to figure out if they’re lying or are they actually believe it.
Sounds exactly like what I’d read on r/conservative.
Well yeah they’re right into projection but doesn’t make it not true does it?
Is the concept not foreign to you? I’m all ears if so please. How do you deny that your guy tried to steal the election when his own VP came out and said it. Ignoring the fact he done it all out in the open blatant af.
I don’t consider myself leftist or rightist. I flip both ways on different issues and the middle on other things.
How ever Lemmy is becoming less tolerant of jokes and any view that doesn’t line up with a moderator’s view on the world.
It took a long time for me to get a ban but it’s happened a couple times now.
Admittedly they’re from .ml
Though some more left leaning communities have gone full on dog like as though it’s Reddit
Moderators shouldn’t be allowed to post to their own groups. How do you question a post by a mod without getting deleted/banned?
Multiple moderators i guess, why mod a group you can’t engage in
I have noticed this trend. On the one hand, “Truth has a liberal bias” has always been true. If a community is geared towards truth and evidence, like as not it will lean left. There is copious evidence for this, for any random topic.
On the other hand, it has resulted in a lot of “I downvote complexity” behavior, which is, in my view, problematic. It is very easy to take stances of ideological purity online, and behave as if any recognition of greater complexity is EVIL!!1! I see this again and again. This is a way to make your ideological movement irrelevant and unworkable.
As much as folks decry the rigor of the MAGA right, where fealty to Trump is the only virtue, the Progressive left exhibits the exact same rigor, the exact same intolerance for deviation from its allies. Both Progressives and MAGAts see this as a virtue, but it very much is not: it locks you into a worldview that eliminates important complexity and any ability to see things from alternate perspectives. If you have a belief that your perspective is the only correct one, then the vast majority of the time, you’re wrong.
One thing I’ve found in life is that extremists of any ilk have more in common than differences, they just wave different colored flags.
Horseshoe theory is discredited nonsense.
Discredited by extremists ;)
Discredited by academics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#Academic_studies_and_criticism
It is reality
The only Adults in the Room are we Enlightened Centrists.There is absolutely nothing I said that says I’m a centrist. You’re an example of the problem.
Yup. Proglib? right of center. Anything that doesn’t label itself as LEFTIST is hard right according to them.
As a non-American the issue as I see it is that too much of Lemmy is dominated by Americans and therefore American politics. I scroll through and read a ton of comments about how monstrous and vile the right wing is, and that’s just simply not true where I live. The popular American right is incredibly authoritarian and seeks to control all aspects of ones life. The right wing in my country is purely economic. You can debate capitalism vs communism I guess but no part of my countries right wants to remove the rights of women or the lgbt. Its all just a matter of where you live. And most people here live in the States.
Sadly I see that shifting as billionaires in other countries see the success of American billionaires. Hoarders of money and power exploit society to their gain any way they can get away with. The orthodoxy and social norms of your country may keep their power grabs in check to date, but be vigilant. The resources and power of billionaires allows them to play the long game on whittling away at anything that stands in the way of their egomaniacal lust for more. I hope for all of our sakes, this billionaire undermining movement that is spreading can be beaten back. What’s happened in America was not organic. It was a strategy engineered by idealogical confederations of billionaires pooling resources.
For now. Most countries are realising how well this is working and following suit. The Tories in the UK used to be mostly sensible and fiscally conservative. Then last election cycle they pivoted to talking about the tofu eating wokerati and attacking trans people. Support for things like abortion or LGB is generally more established but they’re chipping away at that too.
Feel free to redirect those posts to !AskUSA@discuss.online
Why? My point wasn’t that we should quarantine it. Just laying out the facts as I see them.
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.
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…
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.
Everywhere else in my life is centrist or rightwing. I enjoy having somewhere to escape it.
Conservatism is generally a worthless ideology that makes the world worse, so I don’t feel a desire to spend more time with it. We don’t need to debate “what if women don’t have rights”, “what if gay stuff is illegal?”, “what if you had to pay for health care so if you were poor you’d just die?” or whatever.
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.
Turn off the voting system first if you want any sort of questioning or challenges
Lemmy is the definition of a left-wing echo chamber. We all see it and if you downvote me for pointing this out - you are lying to yourself.
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 is very rigid in its ideologies, even more so than reddit.
