Yet.
Lemmy is so far left leaning because a large part of its existence is due to people being mad at capitalism
And its so tiring to hear about all the time
Edit: and I don’t disagree
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developed by socialists
I thought only capitalism drives innovation?
it does, in the fields of exploitation sciences, also known as orthodox micro economics
Freedom and personal liberty drives innovation more than anything else.
Capitalism drives dependance tho. Not a socialist but capitalism is terrible as well. Lemmy is created by free software and open source software enthusiasts. This means that code is public, its for everyone, and anyone can use it woth or without modification.
Some people think this is communism
One of the devs has a guide on how to get into communism and which books to read on their GitHub. People think lemmy is communistic because the devs are.
One of the devs
People have very different opinions. The free software dev communities consist of many weird people as well. Many autistic ones, having other mental issues, and some sane people. But in the end all that matters is the software that they create. They are open and visible. Thoose people can’t be corrupt like the proprietary corporations(facebook, google, reddit) as the anyone can see what the software exactly does. If the software does the job without tracking or doing malicious attempts on you like facebook or google, then its really good
I mean the lead dev. Dessaline
community property is a feature of socialism.
Community property is also a feature of capitalism (the form of it in the USA).
Police stations, public parks, classified documents, national/state parks and conservation areas are examples.
I think ‘community property’ is a byproduct of having a functional community.
more like a prerequisite
Nah those are socialist features within capitalism and are all under assault from the neolib privateers.
A robust and non-ideological non-profit sector is key to any form of healthy capitalist system. That should be an agreeable statement to anyone regardless of if they like or hate capitalism.
There are two main reasons that evangelicals oppose government social services. One: Communism bad (well, “socialism bad” now because they have to poison the well against European democracies now that USSR is gone). Two: If the government helps people, people will be less likely to seek help from evangelical organizations, which eliminates a huge way to market Supply Side Jesus to people. Eating in to evangelicals’ ability to proselytize compellingly is therefore a non-starter.
more like we wanted out of the colonial capitalist echo chamber so we could hear ourselves think.
nice try though
It can be both. You cannot argue that Lemmy is devoid of echo chambers.
Thinking like this is why people get surprised when right leaning parties get voted for in elections
Lol right? “Right wing politics only seem popular because of bots”. No, left wing politics only seem popular on social media because old people dont use it, despite making up the majority of many populations, and often times are the only people who actually vote in elections.
Left wing politics are more popular in the real world than they are in real world governments. The thing is that extremely online youth have absolutely no idea of just how far left they are.
Not really. I mean that “because…” part.
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new. It’s part of its lifestyle. EVERY new, massive social “site” (or online service) is expected to be left-leaning by default. It may later change its political viewpoint, but in its relative infancy it’s left.
Rightism is more about actions taking place in real-world. As such, the technology isn’t perceived as more than a tool, used for specific purpose only, rather than part of, or the foundation of a lifestyle.
…and of course there’s a plethora of alternative political views, options and convictions that are a mix of either extremes of the spectrum - if you meet a person online, it shouldn’t be surprisied to learn about “pro-life”, but also “anti-Trump” and similarly puzzling approaches to various aspects of life.
tl;dr: it’s not about bots. It’s because Lemmy/Mastodon isn’t popular enough to serve as a tool for right-wing politics.
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new.
I don’t know, there has always been a huge libertarian contingent of the tech industry as well. I’m not sure which is bigger. I hope the leftism.
I feel that comment is on the vibe of “liberals are leftists”.
Edit: “that comment” as in the one above the one I’m replying to…
Libertarians are not leftists.
Depends on which libertarian ideology is being expressed. Left libertarians - anarcho-syndicalists libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists are all libertarians. The right wing of anarchism aren’t leftists, the left wing are.
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Communism and libertarianism have nothing to do with each other. What are you even talking about?
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I’d say I’m generally conservative and have been dabbling in alternative social media for a number of years. Some of the biggest Mastodon instances are/were right leaning. Gab.ai started off as a proprietary site and then migrated to Mastodon. Truth.social was always based on Mastodon. I’ve never been active on them because I don’t like echo chambers though. I’ve never really had a desire to have my thoughts reaffirmed by strangers…
I would assume they’re presence isn’t felt in the fediverse because the concept of de-federating is working? Gab is likely cut off by others and truth social never federated with others to begin with. I don’t think Truth ever intended to though, and really just wanted something they didn’t have to build from scratch.
The only Mastodon instance I actually have an account with now is somewhat right leaning but it’s not their emphasis. Even then I’m not too active on it.
From what I gather, Mastodon attracts little attention in conservative circles.
One of main reasons I’ve heard is that “there’s hardly anyone to talk with”. Beats me if it’s default, general conservative opinion…
I mean, they’re there to talk to… If you like jacking each other off… I don’t.
Both of those sites have been ostracized (defederated) from the mastodon fediverse. The mastodon fediverse is in general quite left.
Yes, I said that. Well technically I said Gab was. Truth was so forked I don’t believe there was even an option to defederate them. They intended on a walled garden on their own.
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon
I dont think that is the case. Left leaning people are just much less accepting of authority, so there are more likely to move of of reddit. right leaning people also tend to be more conservative, so they are more likely to stay on there old platforms.
There have been many right-wing exodus from reddit over the years. All of them have centered around a perceived “free speech” issue, and they have always flocked to the most promising alternatives (e.g. Voat). Obviously Lemmy with its origins was never seen as particularly appealing for that crowd. This time the issue just happened to touch the left-leaning part more.
Probably also explains why Lemmy is doing well.
Knock on wood, but Lemmy’s grown to the point now that it almost completely replaces Reddit for me. The only reason I still stop by Reddit is for more niche fandoms that haven’t taken off here quite yet.
Yeah, there’s that one shitty instance pretty much everyone defederated from a week or two ago.
It’s actually one of the oldest instances, over a year old. Because the worst far right trolls that got ip banned from reddit came here when they couldn’t make a new account on reddit.
I’m a right winger here for free speech reasons
Come on I don’t think so. Lemmy was a left leaning platform since the beginning.
Well that’s still the same point though. Lemmy and the fediverse are all about rejecting the authority of centralized services/social media.
I think it’s a different political dimension entirely isn’t it? You have left vs right economics, and then authoritarian vs libertarian governance. I don’t buy into that stupid political compass, but the axes do seem accurate.
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No, it’s just a matter of who they accept as legitimate “authority”.
If the Dumbass-in-Chief, their ministers, and their news had all told them to wear masks, they absolutely would have, but every single one of their primary authority sources were pulling in different directions and they don’t accept any “liberal” sources as legitimate authority. You can see it at a much smaller scale by looking at Church congregation sizes where some ministries focused on trying to protect their elderly and infirm members and those who didn’t.
Conservatives who had pastors who told them to wear masks were a LOT more likely to do so than ones who were getting mixed messaging.
Remember when their Dumbass-in-chief told them to get vaccinated and they booed him?
My crazy fundie paternal aunt told me the only reason Trump said to get vaccinated was because he was “forced” to say it, and that she does not believe, to this day, he ever got vaccinated or that he even ever got Covid.
We don’t get along. 😂
I didn’t follow mask mandates because I was required to or told to by any authority. I did it because it was the right thing to do based on the science, and still is (which is why I still mask up in enclosed or busy spaces).
If you’re old enough to remember when seat belt laws started/became more prevalent, you’ll remember the right-leaning folks were all up in arms because “muh freedom to do what I want if it doesn’t hurt anyone else” not realizing (or not caring about) the effect their choices had on their children. While center/left leaning people were just like “I already wear it because it’s the smart thing to do”.
More recent example: smoking bans
I don’t use a mask currently, but if transmission levels of the flu or COVID were notably above average in my city I absolutely would wear one indoors. I think with really busy indoor places I’d just find something else entirely. I don’t know how I was ever okay with level of crowd density.
People on the “right” are vastly more accepting of authority than people on the left. For example, the people who didn’t wear masks were willing to die because Tucker (or whichever right-wing shitgoblin they listen to) told them to. It wasn’t some sort of anti-authoritarian expression, it was pure authoritarianism.
If we’re talking about acceptance of authority, right leaning folks are less likely to do so
Right-wingers love authority, especially if it’s the kind they approve of. It’s literally part of the ideology. A lot of them didn’t wear masks because the right-wing grifters (like Tucker) told them not too.
Wearing masks during the pandemic was just smart, common sense and had nothing to do with authority, in spite of the right-wingers trying to make it seem like it was.
Grandpa also doesn’t understand federation
Grandpa actually votes tho
As a grandfather, boomer, white cis male, I suggest you might just be over-generalizing.
“as a black man”
The political discourse seems toned down here, I am already happy with that.
It’s more easily avoided.
But I am seeing 2010 style cringe new atheism though. It’s never a good sign when those people are around, they were the precursors to the cancer we see on the big platforms today.
But that’s just as easily avoided too. I only know what you’re talking about because I saw like 4 cringe atheist memes while broswing All once. I don’t subscribe to any of those pages and so I rarely see it, just like how one could easily avoid political discussion.
When I say easily avoided I mean that I literally don’t see them very often. Whereas new atheism seems to be seeping into the feed wierdly often.
This reminds of when people go to toxic subs on the old place, to shit on fat people or something. The end result of these low iq hateful subs is that you grow a base of angry, preaching anti intellectuals who think they’re right and who are ripe for a right wıng bot army and bad actors to brainwash them, and ultimately afflict cancer on the space.
That said, I am on all too often.
Yes, I prefer my online culture to be entirely Christian, or failing that, trauma-free ex-Christians that have no desire to talk about how fucked the US is because of evangelicalism. High five, buddy.
New atheism cringe is different to being pro abortion, women’s autonomy, and advancing marginalised people’s rights. Completely different.
If you specifically identify with new atheism and the thinking of Dawkins and his brigade, I’d seriously reconsider.
Here’s where I’m at - at the local level, the US is already a de facto theocracy in many places. If you have the privilege of being unexposed to this, great. The issue I have with Dawkins is that he’s an asshole that got called out for being an asshole by his own admirers and he doubled down on being an asshole to his own popular detriment. I have no issue with loud pissed-off atheists in a rabidly conservative USA. If the issue is that old school atheists kept their mouths shut, while new atheists are out and proud, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.
If the issue is that old school atheists kept their mouths shut, while new atheists are out and proud, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.
If you think ‘new’ means modern, as in present day, then you’ve been arguing with me for hours for no reason. Because ‘new atheism’ refers to a specific movement, around the 2010s. It’s not simply ‘atheism’ now.
I don’t care about shouty atheists or quiet atheists, it literally doesn’t matter to me. I am wary of people congregating around easy targets like broadly religious people, when religious people can mean anybody. It can be a white supremacist American, or it could be a Yemeni Muslim getting genocided by Saudis using American and UK bombs. And I don’t see that very important distinction made when those low iq anti-theist posts are spammed on c/all.
It doesn’t to me. It’s just communists vs liberals rather than left vs right.
Not by bots but by rage farming algorithms. Rage farming the right is easy and profitable. Facebook has gotten that down to science. The fake absolutist free speech espoused by Twitter’s management as well as the apparent moderation inaction by Facebook are all about that. Letting right wing nuts rage freely generates engagement, generates ad revenue. The only thing the platforms actively manage is making sure that big name ads don’t show up on Nazi posts.
For all we know the people that are on the right have gone to other platforms. That doesnt stop you jerks from saying im on the right even though im not. For some reason both sides have adopted a “with us or against us” mentality and everyone is a nazi.
That’s exactly what a Nazi would say!
/s
People throw around the word too much, there are actual Nazis around and we need to reserve the term just for their special brand of evil. Otherwise the phrase gets so watered down as to essentially become meaningless.
Otherwise they are just rightwing dipshits.
The rightwing dipshits are now mostly nazis though, the moderate and neutral have been mostly boiled off.
I can only base this on my own government but I’d say about only a small fraction of the right wing party are full on Nazi’s, the rest are just awful people but they’re not evil. Although it is hard to tell because quite a lot in the greedy, which from a distance can’t look the same.
I want to upvote you for your rational take on nazis but downvote you for calling so many people awful.
Watering down language is part of the right wing platform. I think they actually want to be seen as nazis so the term is less powerful. On the other side, they are calling everyone groomers to water down that language as well.
I’ve had people in this thread say that I advocate for genocide.
I don’t think the right are the ones watering down the language
Maybe you should do more research instead of advocating for then.
I know what the word ‘genocide’ means. The left just misuses words all the time.
I don’t need to ‘do more research’
You definitely could do more research since you disagree with scientific consensus on trans issues and think you know better how it aught to be.
I didn’t see anyone accuse you of genocide but from your other comments I wouldn’t be surprised if you did and just didn’t know it or tried to pretend you didn’t because of a technicality.
Sorry, this is the case on both sides. I’m a leftist, and I see it happen from my side all the time. Deflecting and claiming only Republicans do it is ignorant or blatant gaslighting.
I’m called a nazi sometimes from people in my own party. It 100% happens.
Hell, “gaslighting” itself is a good example of this phenomenon, and it’s mostly on the left.
You know your political views are truly independent when both the left and right accuse you of siding with the enemy.
Independent… you mean a dirty centrist?!?
The hate for anyone who weighs ideas no matter which team they’re from is very transparent.
I’m all for saying both sides are bad, because they are, but I’m guessing you either did something to warrant being called a nazi or found a cringey liberal to argue with.
You are absolutely correct. Not all fascist are Nazis.
Conservative =/= fascist
Change my mind
There was already a right wing exodus from Reddit. /r/RedditAlternatives was created during that exodus, which is why their pinned list of alternatives includes things like gab(racists) and ovar.it(terfs).
The right has moved onto other platforms.
A lot of people on the right who would post online have been banned from most of the left leaning platforms and have found their own places to talk.
And the end result is that every site is an echo chamber.
The state of the internet in 2023 is more or less, “Do you want the left-wing circlejerk or the right-wing circlejerk?” And if you want a place where people are allowed to express their views even if it disagrees with the majority opinion of the site, that no longer exists.
I’m sure it must be great if you identify as left or right, but it sure as hell sucks shit if you don’t align completely with either side.
I agree so much.
I love discussing things with people who think differently than I do, that’s how we learn. We should be able to disagree in a civil way and exchange ideas and understand each other and eventually agree to disagree.
But we can’t.
Online it’s either one extreme or the other.
When is someone going to have the balls to create a place where people can argue and talk shit out? Or is that just too mature for the kids online these days who cannot handle a disagreement?
Maybe there should be online discussions that are age restricted. No teenagers, 30+ adults only. I wonder if that would be better or worse
Aren’t you doing that right now?
I mean I always try, because I believe in it.
I think I’ve probably lost 40% of my total upvotes having this conversation though. On reddit when you go too deep into negative karma you need to make a new account because you can’t post in a lot of communities at that point
I think you’re speaking with people willing to engage and you’re not seeing it. Downvotes don’t mean people aren’t discussing, it means they don’t agree or they think you’re coming from a trolling place.
No no, I don’t mean anyone specifically in this conversation
I was more speaking in general.
The end result is that some sites have a lot of white nationalists and some sites have very little white nationalists.
Conservatives have nothing humane to bring to the table at this point, even if not proudly saddled with your average ethonostate enjoyers, the platform is nothing but a fight against progress during a time where crisis requires it.
I always find it funny (albeit in a depressing way) when people on the left act like anything short of totally open borders is white supremacy.
Wanna talk about ethnostates? Check out the demographics and immigration policies for countries like Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Wanna talk about racism? Ask the average naturalized immigrant how they feel about illegal immigration.
Supporting more secured borders isn’t racist. The reality is that the American government should prioritize the interests of its own citizens before prioritizing the interests of people from other countries. It drives me up the walls to see how much support our government provides to refugees when meanwhile our own cities are struggling, most often in predominately black areas. Yes it’s a slight false dichotomy to act like we can’t support refugees while also improving our inner cities, but the reality is that we usually fail to do both as they’re often competing interests.
Is it really “supporting a white ethnostate” to say I’d rather have our country let in more immigrants with college degrees or at least a willingness to work over a bunch of people who have zero desire to integrate or even work.
“Progress” doesn’t mean trying to increase the population of our cities and diversity as much as possible even if it means bringing in millions of people who will rely on the government to survive, refuse to integrate into American society, and are the literal opposite of progressive. “Progress” means working to improve the lives of the people we have already living here, regardless of their ethnic background. And currently our immigration policy isn’t accomplishing that.
How many democrats with meaningful power are actually proponents of an “open border”?
The main times I see the term “open borders” is a bunch of republican sites making strawman arguments. Fact is the border isn’t open and nobody serious really wants it open, but if it’s implied enough then people believe it. The #2 hit on google is an official republican senate website attacking this “open border” policy.
https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/democrats-declare-mission-accomplished-on-the-open-border
Why this fixation on highlighting immigration in a facetious way to misrepresent the situation? Even the tone-deaf can hear that faint whistle.
Which site has the least strawmen?
I know I shouldn’t go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
I know I shouldn’t go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
It really is. So many vapid little monsters. You get to witness the ignorance and hatred spewed from people who think they’re moral beacons for the rest of us. It would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing, like you said.
Don’t forget the classic, “You sure with insert political extremist group on an issue. At least my side doesn’t team up with them.”
Most commonly seen when talking about Nazis obviously. I’ve been criticized for supporting free speech on social media sites because obviously only Nazis would benefit from being able to voice their opinions without worrying about being deplatformed.
Exactly. Blame/credit (blame in this case) doesn’t travel that way.
Take the following example: Alice and Bob both support view X. Bob also supports view Y. Y is evil. Then, Bob can be deemed responsible for supporting view Y. But X does not become evil because Bob is. And so Alice is completely fine.
There is also the fact that this isn’t a platform as much as it’s a framework that uses and open protocol. Right leaning people can setup Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, and so forth as easily as left wingers.
The biggest problem in general has been people treating Fediverse setups like traditional ones. Facebook, Twitter, Discord are all run by central companies.
Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix, have the benifit of being usable as bases for people to setup individual communities for themselves and still have some networking.
For some reason both sides have adopted a “with us or against us”
I hate this. I hate that if you are not 100% aligned to a certain groups policies, you’re pretty much the devil in disguise. A leftist Democrat that supports the 2A? You’re a “hard core racist bigot conservative that needs to home someone you love die in a shooting to see how you like it!”. Those people are insane. It’s not how the majority thinks, but those that do are very outspoken and loud so they have way more visibility.
There are a lot of people (on both sides) that can see how extreme parts of their “side” are and are very self aware of those things. They’ll call out their own side for going too far, being too weird, and saying unfactual things. Those are the people that you can have real conversations with. You won’t agree, you won’t change opinions, but the conversation is generally very informative and you’re not getting pissed off at each other (or you do, but you still show each other a mutual respect).
I cannot stand those with the “with us or against us” mentality. They really need to GTFO. And they absolutely cannot say they are patriots and support America first and everything that goes along with that. Because our country was founded on different principals, people with different viewpoints, and we created ways to allow those various viewpoints to exist together. We WANT to have different viewpoints instead of just allowing one to flourish and grow to an extreme and heavy handed policy. If you support the “Us” part of that, we are ALL with us, even if our views are opposing and we refuse to even meet in the middle.
I cannot stand those with the “with us or against us” mentality. They really need to GTFO.
In other words, if they aren’t with you they are against you?
As someone with similar views, I recently realised that I have the exact same tribalism and aggression, it’s just targeted at people who have that mentality.
I like seeing things forbwhat they really are, so I consider myself a centrist. Both sides hate me they are so brainwashed.
Neither side has all the answers. Both sides have valid points, but these fools choosing a side stop using their brains to think for themselves, and just puppet whatever the rest of their cult is parroting.
Well you just got it all figured out!
I’m waiting for your centrist answers for everything! Please do tell.
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Centrism is just being able to acknowledge that both parties have flaws. If you can’t find any issues with the party you support, that means that you got your political views from someone else instead of developing them yourself.
People on a left-leaning site don’t wanna hear it, but US Democrats aren’t perfect. Their policy on immigration is not sustainable. A de facto open border policy for refugees and people who cross illegally while people with college degrees can’t even get a work visa is absurd. As a nation we are not obligated to help others when many of our own citizens are struggling. Biden’s student debt relief plan would have caused tuition prices to increase at an even faster rate than before and guaranteed further debt relief executive orders would be required in the future. Plus it set an insane precedent that the president could authorize billions in spending without any congressional oversight. Democrats were frightengly authoritarian during COVID with stuff like vaccine mandates and online censorship. Things were labelled as “misinformation” and later accepted to be the truth… repeatedly, and people simply didn’t care. One day you could get banned from every social media site for saying COVID may have come from a lab, and the next day it was perfectly plausible. That stuff would have been unthinkable prior to 2020 and it’s just apparently normal today.
And then there is the stuff where they’re just hypocritical or simply providing lip service. Biden could remove marijuana’s schedule 1 classification today with an executive order, but he won’t. Instead his administion argued in court that marijuana users cannot be trusted owning firearms and the ATF is right to prohibit them from buying guns. Speaking of guns, Biden also signed an executive order declaring pistol braces to be stocks after years of the ATF saying they weren’t stocks, making millions of gun owners into felons, many who didn’t even know about the reclassification. A piece of plastic that was legal one day is now 10 years in federal prison. Democrats are guilty of putting corporate interests before individual interests, much like republicans. Democrats love to talk about how much they care about the environment and climate change, but would sooner pass a law saying people can’t set their AC below 80 degrees than dare invest money into nuclear power or stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
You don’t have to agree with everything I said here. But if you can’t find anything to criticize about your preferred party, or at least acknowledge that these are valid criticisms even if you disagree with them, you are part of the problem.
“Centrists” gets tons of hate online that’s unwarranted IMO. “Centrism” is just a label people like to put on independent voters because mocking them by acting like their political position can be summed up as “Democrats have some good points, but the Nazis do too” is an easy way to dismiss them, when the reality is that most centrists are voters who get no representation since we have a broken-ass two-party system. Admitting that the two-party system is bad doesn’t benefit you if you support one of those two parties. So here we are.
Now do the Republicans.
Is there really anything to say there that everyone in this comment thread would be surprised by?
Republicans care too much about culture war BS
Republicans are blatantly wrong on the issue of abortion, and it’s actually baffling that they continue to oppose abortion even though it’s going to cost them elections
Environment. Need I say more?
Republicans are guilty of supporting giant corporations and serving corporate interests just as much as democrats. The only reason I don’t say they’re more guilty than Democrats is because companies that I consider to be some of the most monopolistic and controlling are tech and media companies that get much more support from democrats. I consider it a tie until one party either blocks a corporate merger or breaks up a monopoly.
I touched on Democrats being creepily authoritarian regarding speech, but of course Republicans are just as eager to censor when they have the opportunity as well.
I could go on, but these are the glaring issues I can think of that immediately come to mind.
What about Desantis being authoritarian and creating his own militia for Florida, Trump going after Muslims and other non-white people, trump encouraging his base (all republicans) to perform a failed coup? You seem to be watering down some very serious things on the republican side. I’m glad you’re sending your best efforts, but it’s not going to be enough here, at least right now.
He reactivated the Florida State Guard. The samekingd of State Guard utilized by like 22 other states including California and New York. The FSG was created way before DeSantis came to office.
To be honest, it looks like you are biased to the republican side.
You make good points though.
Based on two comments I made do you truly think I’m “biased toward the Republican side” or are you just assuming that because you automatically assume anyone who disagrees with Democrats on certain issues is a Republican sympathizer?
Centrist doesnt always mean fence sitter… could just mean you agree with different points opposite of the eisle. Its almost like this whole political system wasnt intended to have a 2 party system or something…
It wasn’t intended, just a long term effect of First Past the Post voting systems.
It’s hard because everyone 100% has a different definition for every political party/leaning. I’m proud of you for sticking to being open to consider all points if view.
I’m a leftist, but I love having my views pushed against, and I am open to having my views changed on what I believe and think if I find the argument persuasive enough. It really is a sort of cancer that both sides tend to refuse to even consider they might be wrong on anything.
Keep on doing you, the downvotes don’t mean your outlook politically is wrong or bad.
i think its not just the bots but also that the right want their posts to be seen and want to “present” themself and their “opinions”. And i think for that, lemmy is just not visible enough, yet.
People will stay where they’re right, and avoid places where they’re wrong. See: Facebook groups.
I don’t think I’m all THAT left leaning. I just like to be told I’m wrong… I may have problems.
I honestly don’t think that’s the case. There’s tons of right leaning and left leaning people that are bots. You can just never know. I think it comes down to the age range using this place and the culture using it. Reactionary people prefer sites like 4chan or the other online communities designed to cater to them. The age comes in because based on research the largest age demographic using Lemmy is between 25 and 35. This site is too underground to attract the middle aged and older cohort that are right wing. It’s also not hip enough to attract the under 20 crowd who make up the bulk of Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool viewers.
Surely you’re pulling those age ranges out of your ass.
Lemmy also isn’t profit driven, so you don’t get libertarian tech bros.
I think that the left-right dichotomy is inherently flawed. A lot of what I believe might be considered “right-leaning” or “left-leaning,” but I cannot say that I prescribe to either sort of ideology fully or with any fidelity.
I will always be opposed to any view with a pervasive “moral” authority, and both the so-called left and right are obsessed with their own versions of this. The problem we run into is the false supposition that beliefs can be categorized on a spectrum spanning right to left (or, even more liberally, a spectrum spread across two dimensions). It has been a ridiculous notion from its inception, whenever that might have been.
Building one’s identity (another silly notion, in general—identity itself being a frivolous construct that functions only as a fulcrum for the extortion of social power) upon a supposed spectrum is likewise ridiculous. You can be conservative or liberal, or anything, really. But those beliefs do not exist in a linear or planar dimension. They are so far removed from each other that one cannot fathom sliding incrementally from one to the next.
And to each respective party, “left” and “right,” the other can be demonized as evil, even without full comprehension of the other. It’s all just so damned tribalistic and silly.
It’s completely natural for humans to fall into a binary thinking.
It’s evolutionarily advantageous to fully focus on “the enemy”, whatever that may be, and “the friends”, our own family/tribe, absolutely hating the enemy while absolutely loving your family. It’s what made it most likely that our genes persevere, if you give the enemy the benefit of the doubt, and they backstab you, you’re dead, but not if you just kill them first/don’t trust them at all in any way.
This concept permeates our society and you see it everywhere. It’s always “us” vs “them”. If your ideology “wins” politically, throughout most of human history that means you get to kill your opponent, while if you lose, it means you may die. So it’s naturally almost the worst thing in the world for us if someone disagrees with us politically.
It’s really amazing how almost everything about the way we behave is completely shaped by what made us survive in some form or another thousands of years ago. The only way out so far is trying our hardest to resist our natural programming and apply rationality, which comes with its own set of problems.
Imagine if Lemmy just totally avoided playground level political debate?
i like you.
Algorithms and AI. Rage gets views, so it’s what gets pushed to the top, so it gets even more views, so it gets pushed to the top.
Yeah, Lemmy has address to this by just having an incredibly glitchy algorithm (look at this post with five up votes from four months ago, it deserves to be on the front page). No one can game it because no one understands it.
