I know the real answer is reddit but I really don’t want to go back now that I’ve already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn’t. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I’m pretty much ready to move on. I just don’t know where else to go.
I’m sure this will come if the wrong way but if you’re genuinely concerned about discovering diversity of thought, you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example.
I’m all for finding diversity, but so often what people who post these are looking for is an echo chamber. Like if you’re really wanting to be challenged, and you’re a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.
But if what you’re concerned about is the nerds in Lemmy seem to be left leaning, that’s just the nature of smart creative people. We value skills and creativity over hierarchy and structure.
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I like hearing both sides of every argument even when I don’t agree with it. On reddit I could read the top comments first and then sort by controversial to hear the opposing arguements. Here I can’t do that. There usually are no opposing arguments or if there is they’re made in bad faith. It’s almost like I need to choose a team and then subscribe to the ideologies of that team when in reality I’m more of a pick and choose type of person.
you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example
There are very few “positions” I hold. When it comes to most subjects I’m not informed enough to form strong opinions so I generally float somewhere in between. For most hot topics I see on Lemmy every day I can usually make good arguments for both ways. I may lean to one side or another but I’m often just a few well written comments away from tipping to the other direction.
you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example
There are very few “positions” I hold.
The “positions” term is usually a shorthand for the eventual distillation of your values. If you haven’t arrived yet at your positions, have you examined on your values? Values are usually far more primitive in the sense they don’t conform exactly to specific public policy, but there is usually public policy that encompasses specific values.
While its certainly possible for a person’s values to change over time. We usually arrive at what most our values are in our 20s. These are things such as:
- Your belief in the value of life; Your own vs everyone else’s in society, in the world.
- Your adoption or rejection on any specific religion or faith
- Where you decide the right balance is between individualism vs collectivism
- Your belief in personal responsibility and autonomy vs societal responsibility and obligation
I believe it is very important for each of us to examine who we are, what our values are, and then use our intellect to decide/craft which positions can be arrived at with guidance from our values.
When it comes to most subjects I’m not informed enough to form strong opinions so I generally float somewhere in between. For most hot topics I see on Lemmy every day I can usually make good arguments for both ways. I may lean to one side or another but I’m often just a few well written comments away from tipping to the other direction.
This is where your responsibility comes in. If you’re not informed enough, become so. Listen critically to arguments, don’t simply accept on face value what other proclaim is true. If you’re hearing a logical argument that seems to contradict your understanding, yet aligns with your values, challenge yourself to explore it. The phrase “steel sharpens steel” applies here. If you have healthy and strongly defined personal values, the arguments of your positions should be equally strong and stand up to scrutiny. If your positions are found faulty by your own examination, adopt all or elements of the argument that knocked your position down because its is the right one for your values and ability to critically apply logic with all the information you have available.
You made other statements about choosing a side, but realistically it isn’t just two sides. Its dozens or hundreds of nuanced views, and every single one could be flawed in some way, or incomplete. Accept that in many situations there isn’t a “right” answer. All sides represented could be wrong and the best you can do is admit this choose the least worse. This constant reexamination and frustration is both the beauty and the horror of being human.
Accept that in many situations there isn’t a “right” answer.
This is pretty much the essence of what I was trying to say there. The more you study a subject the more you realize how much nuance there is to everything so it’s near impossible to land on any clear conclusion on what to think about it. People often act as if it’s all black and white but it almost never is. Even in cases such as the war in Ukraine where it’s a pretty clear which side is the good and which is the bad one you should still be allowed to examine the alternative perspective too to better understand the “enemy” as well as realize that the good side isn’t wihout a fault either and critizicing them doesn’t automatically make you a Russian troll.
You know you’re allowed to make comments in threads challenging people if you think their comments are too one sided?
If you suspect there is an unexplored side to something, you can ask about that, and you’ll very likely get an answer, at least as far as I’ve seen. But usually if no one does that then yeah, like you say, you’ll only see “one side”.
You don’t have to be a passive observer, you can get the discussion you want by guiding it.
It gets quite tiring after a while that instead of having to defend the point you’re trying to make you instead have to defend yourself as a person. Ad-hominem is what a huge portion of active commentors here reach for when ever someone says something that they disagree with.
But then your problem does not seem to be diversity. Why do you act like it is?
Views to the right of centre are almost entirely missing from Lemmy so the problem is lack of diversity. Or perhaps I should say one of the problems. Incivility on social media on the other hand is not an issue unique to Lemmy.
You know you’re allowed to make comments in threads challenging people if you think their comments are too one sided?
Saying “I’d like to hear a different perspective” is generally interpreted by others as “Your perspective is wrong” and then the assumptions begin, which lead to accusations and bickering.
I was speaking of something substantial and specific, not just some abstract stuff. For example, idk, "why not halt all arms deliveries to Ukraine? We need the weapons/money ourselves. I.e. some actual question about the topic. Because if you can’t form a question like that, then it doesn’t even make sense really to “hear a different perspective” as this different perspective will have no meaning for you.
But it seems anyway, after reading OPs responses to this thread, that they don’t really care about diverse viewpoints, just about their own viewpoints not being disregarded/dismissed/argued against.
The more you study a subject the more you realize how much nuance there is to everything so it’s near impossible to land on any clear conclusion on what to think about it.
Take this just one step further: Understand that indecision, is a decision. That inaction, is an action.
On every topic, you can’t just look at all the arguments and say “none of these are good enough, I select none” forever. By choosing to opt out forever, you allow the voices and actions of those you disagree with to stand in your place. In these situations where there are no good choices, is where you must eventually make a choice (at least for now), and that choice isn’t going to be the best because there isn’t a best choice. Its going to be the least-worse. This is why its so critical to have explored yourself to decide what values you hold. They are your guideposts to how you evaluate and arrive at what path you choose forward.
Keep looking for better, but don’t let that paralyze you to the point of indecision and inaction.
Very few subjects are the kind of where one absolutely has to pick a side. That’s kind of like saying you can’t just enjoy football but you have to choose a team to support to. No I don’t.
Just because one thing is slighly better than the alternative that doesn’t mean I’m all for that one thing then. Israel - Hamas conflict is a good example. I don’t support either side and the more I study the subject the more confusing it gets.
First, I said you can’t be inactive/indecisive forever, that is, if you want your values reflected in the world. If you’re content to having the world be whatever someone else decides for you, then I suppose you can, but that in itself is a choice.
Very few subjects are the kind of where one absolutely has to pick a side. That’s kind of like saying you can’t just enjoy football but you have to choose a team to support to. No I don’t.
I’m talking about subjects where you have an opinion for a preference. When you’re a passive watcher of football, there is no outcome that will be against your values. You have no effort to impart with watching football that will affect its outcome.
Just because one thing is slighly better than the alternative that doesn’t mean I’m all for that one thing then.
Of course not, but to affect change you may need to accept a chunk of negative with your path to get a larger chunk of positive. Again, there’s no “best” solution, only least worst.
Israel - Hamas conflict is a good example. I don’t support either side and the more I study the subject the more confusing it gets.
Its a great example! There are zero good choices here. I’m in a similar position, however what I have concluded is our inaction (yours and mine) is causing the continued deaths of the civilians of Gaza. I value the lives. The most number of lives of the civilians that are the most risk right now are those of Gaza. So I have to ask myself, what can I do to preserve as much of civilians of Gaza? It gets even more complicated in the USA where I can advocate to my representatives for support for civilians of Gaza and try to stop the continued flow of US weapons causing the harm. However, our current politics are tying military support to Taiwan (which I support), Israel (which I do not support anymore), and Ukraine (which I do support) all as one package. To stop Russia from seizing Ukraine (where Russia will eventually use the Ukrainian people for further war against others) do I have to let Israel commit genocide against Gaza’s civilians? Again, there are NO good choices here. Only least worst, and the subjective nature of which one is the least worst is guided by your values.
You will have to come to your own conclusion, but make not mistake, without you using your voice others are taking a path one way or the other and your values are not being represented.
I think OP would be good to watch the first season of the Good Place. There is a character on there that is obsessed with making the correct decision and argues so much with himself and others over every tiny nuance that could shift the balance that he never acts on anything at all unless forced.
As you said, fence sitting is in an of itself an action, almost always to the detriment of the topic at hand.
It’s almost like I need to choose a team and then subscribe to the ideologies of that team when in reality I’m more of a pick and choose type of person.
This sums up my feelings lately very nicely. I’d say I am generally well aligned with the culture on here, and share most leftist views. However there are certain topics, and even just sub aspects of certain topics, that will net you a lot of downvotes very quick and condescending proselytizing comments if you even slightly differ from the general consensus in your views.
I’m not sure what could be done about this though, I certainly dont want Lemmy to be more welcoming towards alt right bullshit and such. But talking with a bunch of queer leftists about queer leftist things all the time is like that old south park episode where the parents become pretentious wine snobs and start getting high on their own farts. Boring, pointless self aggrandizement.
The amount of tankies and idiots with idiotic opinions is way to high on here. And in general I realy get what they are saying. Other platforms with a bigger user base don’t have that big of a problem with diversity. It bothered me too, it seems like the whole of lemmy has a very idiotic position on a lot of things and saying anything that is even in the slightest against that gets you down voted. That is something that sadly developed over time. In the early days everyone was way more friendly and less radical people were on here.
that’s just the nature of smart creative people
Well. No. Say that to yourself, but ideology and belive is a lot more complex than: I am smart, so I am left. Your believes mostly stem from influences in your childhood, like parents, friends, people you trust. It’s dangerous to lift yourself above others with different believes.
Like if you’re really wanting to be challenged, and you’re a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.
The problem is that a socialist worker doesn’t realy have a place to go to challenge their own opinion. Lemmy sadly has gone the way of an eco chamber. And for political discourse you need other people that have an opinion like yours that support you in your arguments. Currently it’s more like “this guy has a bad opinion, downvote him to hell”
It’s not enough for me to leave, because in general I realy like it here and with enough comunitys blocked it has become bearable.
I’ve seen a LOT of strawman attacks. It usually seems to be honest miscommunication, but underneath that… It looks like predisposition to combative and somewhat-dismissive hot takes.
And it works. Certain members have swung entire conversations and down votes by implying a person said something they didn’t.
It’s not unique to online fora, but the concentration seems off here.
Some of this just looks like people feeling like big fish in this small pond and finding a degree of confidence or even righteousness from the voting patterns.
The amount of tankies and idiots with idiotic opinions is way to high on here.
On an internet site?! I’m shocked! Shocked!
I mostly sign jokes and shitposting communities, but the people there are surprisingly calm and diverse. I mean, surprisingly for an internet community; most could pass just as a very weird group in another context.
But if you go signing for politics communities on the internet, you’ll get the expected result.
You don’t need to know their views to know what a diverse community is. Lemmy is a heavily-
biaseebiased echochamber, they want something that’s not a heavily-biased echochamber.
If you’re after moderate right flavored discussion I sympathize but you’ll have trouble finding it as the broader right has been consumed by alt right and far right. If your point is that those viewpoints specifically are missing from Lemmy then I’d say it’s a good riddance. I just wish Lemmy was as hard on some immature leftie takes.
I’m a pretty “left-winged” European, but I see the lack of a “moderate right” or “conservative” alternative as a real problem! Here on Lemmy and in the real world as well. When there is no place for them, people will feel the need to align with the far-right to at least have some points in common with others. And the only one who profits from this is the far-right. It’s important to have a mixed political Landscape, so Ideas can be exchanged, topics can be discussed in a meaningful way, and we don’t end up in an echo chamber.
I’ve skimmed some of your comments, and honestly it looks like you’re already getting a diverse experience considering your political and ideological way of thinking. That’s not a condemnation, but a quick observation.
The thing is that people actually don’t know my politics or ideologies. They think they do and then reply accordingly.
We can only know what you show us. The rest we have to fill in based on what you’ve said in the past. That’s how this stuff works. It’s a back and forth. For it to work, you actually have to contribute.
My every single post would be a wall of text if I was to exhaust every possible misunderstanding and make my position absolutely clear and people would still attack me for a stance I don’t hold. My post entire history is there available for anyone to read - that’s the best I can do.
👌👌👌👌👌👌💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯
There’s some irony to how good thread this turned out to be
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Lemmy is a federation of servers. “Lemmy” is not one political group with one viewpoint. If you’re looking for different viewpoints, try different groups, or different servers.
In another comment you said this about the comments you read:
they’re made in bad faith
I don’t think this is true. I think that what you think is “bad faith” is actually “people who disagree with me”. So far, most users of Lemmy appear to trend politically left by American standards, but that’s only because American standards are so absurdly skewed to the right that it appears to stand out. By American standards, “truth” is left-wing.
Ask yourself what you’re actually looking for.
The problem is that all of the big instances sorta line up the same way and anything that doesn’t please them gets defederated at the speed of light and comments and posts get removed. They have the control.
Tildes might work for you. Politics is a banned subject, but you’ll get polite discourse on most subjects.
I found it stifling, personally. But if you like overly verbose, overly polite discussions where all opinions are respected as long as it’s long winded and politely communicated, well, that’s your place.
Reddit: everybody sucking Trump or Biden’s dick
Lemmy: everybody sucking Putin or Xi Jinping’s dick
I too enjoy that Lemmy has a more global audience and isn’t as USA centric.
Oh it’s still incredibly USA centric, at least as far as the content shared and discussed in English is concerned. The userbase just gets their biased talking points from Russian bot farms instead of US media outlets lol. I guess that counts as more global.
I’ve been pleased with the amount of content from non-English languages even if my ability to parse it is pretty poor.
Honestly? It’s tricky to find communities that give you a spread.
I can recommend picking an instance that has a secondary alignment with you (for example, country/state), as they’ll tend to pick up posts in All that may be of interest other than politics.
(Though tbf, our instance still leans left on whole. Just not so crazily)
I don’t think there is one, unfortunately. I agree that lack of ideological diversity is a problem with the Fediverse in general, but it’s a problem that likely won’t go away unless the Fediverse becomes mainstream.
What kind of ideology would you like to see more? I mean I’ve stumbled onto the whole left-right spectrum here? Few/no fascists, ultra conservatives I guess?
Not really interested in discussing things with fascists, but I’ve rarely seen anyone here who’s to the right of, like, a milquetoast social democrat.
There’s a few of us further right than that, but when I was forced to cut back on reddit I realized that political discussion online was deleterious to my mental health. I resolved to not seek out or sub any political discussion communities on the new platform. A spontaneous discussion, sure, sometimes, but I can’t do it every day.
💯
Nah, anything else (even free speech instances) will always get defederated from the “popular” ones.
We’re stuck like this forever.
How the actual fuck is the answer Reddit?
Because there is enough people to drown out all the people being paid by political parties to post here and offset the upvotes they buy.
The DNC has dozens of paid people on this platform and Because a post may only get 100 comments the people being paid can make it look like their opinion is the popular opinion.
I’m not sure if Lemmy has a large enough userbase to warrant paying shills to sway opinion.
What would the purpose of that be? Get 20-30 politically inactive Arch Linux users to vote for Biden?
Hey man, the Linux vote could be the swing factor .
/s
BREAKING NEWS:
BIDEN USES LINUX!
“Pls Help, VIM keeps me hostage”
The Secret Service is currently trying to free him.
Bro if you think the DNC even knows what Lemmy is, letalone is teying to influence it, then you need to check yourself into inpatient psychiatric care ASAP. Give me a fucking break LoL.
Shhh, don’t tell them about the secret paid Lemmy posting jobs. I’m up to 45 Soros bucks an hour posting about fully automated luxury gay space communism a few times a week. Don’t ruin this for me!
Lol you mad.
I feel your pain. The fediverse has been disappointing because of the extreme bias and propaganda.
While I see a lot of posts that would have this problem, at least the discussion are a bit more balanced compared to when the same stuff would happen on Reddit. So for example fuck cars is about the same in terms of posts, but here I tend to see a bit more back and forth and a balanced perspective on how the comments are up voted. On Reddit, any comment vaguely questioning the circle jerk will be down voted into oblivion and receive nothing but angry replies.
The amount of apolitical posts is a bit disappointing though.
Check us out hilariouschaos.com and let me know. Our premise is to shoot the shit,talk shit, shit post, post content you create, talk and have fun.
We’re not interested in being like what you’re experiencing. We’re here to have fun. Shit doesn’t always have to be about politics. I hope you check is out. Thanks
I can’t tell if you’re the problem or if it is Lemmy.
I don’t think there is an alternative as of now.
However: I think Lemmy will grow. As of now it doesn’t due to the limitations of the software developers… Which is my personal little pet peeve. But it’s currently in the process of diversifying itself. New projects like Piefed and others are being developed to tackle the current issues and limitations that don’t get addressed by the Lemmy developers. I think there is a good chance that Lemmy is going to change in the near to mid future.
(And I don’t get all the drama and political arguments anyways. It doesn’t contribute anything to my life discussing world news/politics and it’s bound to be negative… I’d like some more nice personal projects, soldering electronics, Linux communities and maybe posts about woodworking or lewd stories. Arguing about politics is a valid thing to do, but also boring in my perspective and this place is full of it.)
