Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
I don’t care so much about the range of political views, just the quantity of them.
Too many people on Lemmy make their political ideology their entire identity, and it’s just freaking exhausting.
Can we not just be people talking to other people about cool stuff? I just get sick of political ideologies masquerading as people.
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people. They’re the same people who downplay and mock trans people and other minorities because they have never known even a moment of misfortune or injustice in their entire lives.
If you lose your shit when you hear about politics, you simply don’t care about helping others. Period.
Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck about making Lemmy a safe space for the apolitical. Simply existing in the WORLD is political.
Until supposedly civilized countries stop grinding the poor into hamburger to feed their rich, the poor should be able to make their plight known and no space should be safe from that. In fact, I will actively avoid, boycott, and mock any social media platform that censors the poor from expressing their REAL opinions while pretending to care about free speech.
For attracting new users, the extreme views of the majority of users on this platform are detrimental. I personally very much dislike how one-sided all platforms are now. They lean heavily to one side or the other, which isn’t an accurate representation of the world. Most people are somewhere in the middle, yet online they’re expected to behave according to the platform’s presiding mindset or be shouted down.
For me, it’s neither strength nor weakness. I’m a boring old fart, I’m not here for politics.
Mostly mixed. The way i think it’s a weakness is because I’m an anti authoritarian leftist, and i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy. Despite hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy thriving, Solarpunk and dbzer0 feel a little lacking community wise. I’d also like a diverse political community, in general.
Another con is that if you even just disagree with a [bastard] moderator, they’ll immediately ban you. Happens on lemmy.world with being anti-zionist, happens on lemmy.ml under the guise of ‘rule 1’ for literally just criticizing a mod such as dessalines.
But i also think it’s a pro due to the lack of far-right content on lemmy. I remember on reddit casually seeing disgusting content, such as blatant racism (Such as arabs being called sand n-rs, Or racism against asians/immigrants in general on r/canada + r/europe) and most of that is obscure on lemmy.
I’m not denying that the Lemmy community doesn’t have problems, Lord no. But it’s much better than most other platforms.
The type of anarchism that says, “You must agree with my anarchism, and if you have some incorrect view, I’ll use my powers to remove you from the space” is not actually anarchism. It’s actually strikingly reminiscent of how the Russian implementation of communism had nothing to do with worker-led socialism that it was branded as. They implemented freedom by declaring themselves the arbiters of what were the allowed types of freedom and ruthlessly repressing anything else, which isn’t how it works.
In general, I think it’s a myth that if you disagree with liberal orthodoxy on lemmy.world, you’ll be banned. Plenty of people on lemmy.world constantly criticize the liberal orthodoxy and it’s fine. The people purporting the myth are either:
- Being flaming cocks and then claiming they were banned for their factual beliefs when they get banned, when that wasn’t the issue
- Or else trying to make themselves feel better about the censorship of liberals that happens on their own instances, by claiming lemmy.world is doing the same to their “side” when they aren’t.
The occasional whining about how unfair it is that you can’t post anti-Israel stories on lemmy.world, for example, is nothing to do with reality, but is instead a disguised yearning for a space where you can’t post pro-Israel stories, and the mods will enforce that political viewpoint using their powers so the speaker can feel comfortable because all they see is things that they already agree with.
I’ve skimmed the lemmy.world modlog, and it seems you seem to be right. That was a bad example.
But my point was moreso on the stubbornness of mods. For example, if i suggest that China is bad on lemmy.ml, that’ll get me a ban under the guise of “rule 1”. Why? it’s not against the rules, it’s not bigoted or racist.
If i write controversial, or even bigoted comments, then that’s another story. I was criticizing power tripping mods that ban users if they personally disagree with them, instead of actually break the rules
Yeah, those mods are bad, and they definitely exist including unapologetically on the tankie instances. I was just saying that the mirror-image bad mod, who will delete anything anti-Israel, is almost entirely a self-serving myth by a selected group that likes to pretend.
I’m sorry but libertarians and ancaps are just proto-feudalists that may like to smoke weed.
I agree. I should have specified, i meant left-libertarianism.
It’s a weakness. We need more anti-authoritarians here for sure. And even conservatives if nothing else so they can represent their own opinions rather than just laughing at straw-man versions of what neolibs want to say they think. I have moments I hate it here but there’s nowhere good to go and I guess I add a little diversity.
I disagree with the conservatives part. Their ideology does not deserve a place at the adults’ table. It is far too bent on undermining democracy, equity, and egalitarian society.
EDIT: To clarify, this is elementary “Paradox of Tolerance”. Those that wish to undermine democracy in an equitable society cannot be tolerated without making an end to democracy inevitable. Not all opinions are created equal. For example: “I think trans people should receive additional state-funded support.” and “I think that trans people should be murdered and/or the state should cultivate an environment amplifying their likelihood to commit suicide.” (the prevailing view expressed by the far-right through their actions and legislation) are opinions that should not be given equal treatment.
Yep, paradox of tolerance. We shouldn’t bend over for far-right, or even fascists for the sake of “pure tolerance”.
Saying, “I don’t like what they say so they shouldn’t have a voice” sounds a lot like undermining democracy to me. Them living in conservative echo chambers doesn’t increase dialog or challenge their beliefs either. Divided media and divided opinions are the tools to take down a nation. Supporting this kind of division strikes me as an example of the main kind of foreign interference this country is crumbling because of. If that was your goal, I guess congratulations?
Paradox of Tolerance. Those that intend to undermine a just and equitable society that tolerates the existence of all kinds of people cannot be tolerated.
But do we actually wait until we see how people think, or just silence them based on their opinion on one or twy divisive issues as a litmus test to justify our own intolerance? “They don’t support trans women in women sports so none of their opinions are valid.”
Honestly, especially recently I feel like this place has been just a big Opinion Bubble/Echo Chamber and as someone who values trying to avoid these types of Bubbles and wanting to see what other opinions may look like this has consistently been one of my Biggest Issues with Lemmy. Not to mention that making it really hard to honestly recommend Lemmy to outsiders
I think it’s primarily, but not exclusively, a strength. “We need more right-wing posters” is not something I’ve ever thought of Lemmy.
Weakness, definitely. The range of “permitted” ideas is way too narrow.
I tend to agree with most common political stances on Lemmy, but still I feel I’m self-censoring occasionally.Many instances intentionally want an echo chamber. Posts and comments are often deleted even if they’re not abusive, if they are ideologically opposed.
The problem doesn’t seem to be that instances want to cater to a unique political group (that’s why we have federation) It’s that most instances cater to the same or similar groups. I think in general it’s better that instances are differentiated by political beliefs. For example, i don’t like Hexbear. I just block it. But if hexbear and solarpunk were a single instance, i wouldn’t be able to separate the good and the bad.
But i agree that separating yourself too much from other ideas is bad, and echo chambers are bad in general.
On Lemmy.world it’s a weakness. Your instance may vary
Maybe lemmy will grow over time to include more types of people.
Social unrest may evolve this network faster than expected, in particular ways that are not foreseen. So, in my mind there are two paths for lemmy. A stable growth or chaotic .
Edit : unrest in any country that has a lot of lemmy users if alternative social networks clamp down or are unsafe to use
There is a bunch of angry brigading here for any of a multitude of reasons, and that shear wall of vitriol thrown at people doesn’t help lemmy grow.
For people saying it’s a weakness because it causes or is caused by censorship from the mods, are you directly experiencing it? If yes, on which instance?
I got involved in a few heated discussions with members, but I was never bothered by any moderator/admin. I’m not sure if this is due to my views (anarchism / libertarian communism) but I don’t think so since they are not the ones of the main instances I roam (.world which seems quite soc-dem to me and all the tankies one).
To me all of this seems like an overall positive thing : the lack of hardcore far right dudes is a big plus, and I don’t think the political views can really influence the quality and quantity of content you can propose otherwise (which is to my eyes why there is not that much people here). Like I don’t think rightwing people will flee from Lemmy because of the political thing, but like i think most people do: mostly because there is not that many people and therefore that many content to begin with. But there again, I never directly experienced or witnessed political censorship or exclusion, and it seems a common experience so i might not have the best point of view.
I was banned on slrpnk because I said that Trump coming to power would be a dangerous thing for the world, people in Gaza included, and asked some questions about the point of view that was being expressed.
https://slrpnk.net/post/14823401
https://ponder.cat/modlog/2765?page=1&actionType=All&userId=201449
To me, the issue isn’t that we need to make a safe space for MAGA. Those people tend to be so obnoxious that there doesn’t even need to be a special rule for them to keep them out. The issue is that a lot of moderators seem to be nominating themselves the bosses of which are the permitted ideologies for people to talk about. Slrpnk does this, lemmy.ml does this. A lot of the niche “leftist” communities do it to anyone who’s a mainstream liberal.
Some of the big lemmy.world communities also do their own brand of bad moderation, but it’s usually not ideological, it’s just stupid.
Okay thanks for sharing your experience, it seems indeed a very good example of how bad it can be Thanks also for the explanation about the instance in the answer
Oh. The mods on that “anarchist” comm are bad faith actors and I doubt that they are actually anarchists - more likely authoritarian wreckers. The only things that they liked before the election was spreading tankie, anti-Biden, and anti-electoralist/accelerationist propaganda. For example, they would post anti-Biden op-eds then ban anyone who disagreed or pointed out that accelerationism has literally never had a positive outcome in recorded human history for “electioneering”.
That’s an interesting theory… I think there are some selected mods who are exactly that, but I don’t think that’s exclusive to slrpnk. One of my little conspiracy theories is that those bad actors got really good on Reddit at how to “take over” a subreddit so they can start bending it to be the way they want it to be, and I think a couple of the slrpnk mods have wormed their way into the good graces of the admins there and then used the anarchism as cover for pushing authoritarian agendas. I guess it’s possible that the slrpnk mod community as a whole is bad-faith actors, but I don’t think so.
I got curious about that one slrpnk mod who I tangled with who was pushing Green Party propaganda and deleting my comments about it, and just checked to see what he’s been up to since the election. My guess was that he would have switched to pushing “hard anarchism,” violence, reasons to hate the right wing, guns, things like that to stoke division. Nope. It’s been total crickets.
Turns out his passion for anarchism was fueled by the election, and since it’s over, he hasn’t had as much of a reason to be passionate about it. He posted 5 articles a few days ago, and right after the election he got in some kind of argument about the election which wound up getting a bunch of his comments removed, but other than that, no anarchism or participation of any kind. Weird how that works.
I think a couple of the slrpnk mods have wormed their way into the good graces of the admins there and then used the anarchism as cover for pushing authoritarian agendas.
That’s exactly what I think. I don’t think that it’s slrpnk as a whole but that anarchism comm on the instance had very problematic mods (who have indeed gone silent, pretty much proving that they were bad faith actors). They constantly acted to spread propaganda and silence anyone who disagreed. IIRC, one even all but outted themselves as a state actor. They’re all quiet now because they got what they wanted; successfully sewing enough discord in anarchist and other anti-authoritarian communities to prevent critical mass or embrace of effective strategies for positive societal change.
Yeah. I think they’re pretty good at exploiting tribal thinking, such that “he’s an anarchist just like us” or “he’s a vegan just like us” leads people to rally around someone, and overlook weird things that they’re doing.
The political divesity is less of an issue than the political ferver. Most people don’t want to talk aboit politics. They want to avoid political discussions, and get upset when people do things as basic as pointing out that politics exists in their bubble.
The fediverse turns them off because it’s loaded with politically aware and stubbornly vocal people, not because there aren’t enough people playing apologetics for the ruling class
Yeah, normal people do not care about anything outside the very small bubble of their own life. They have a few interests, a few hobbies, watch a few shows, know a few other people, and that’s… kind of it.
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