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.)
Lemmy is always going to lean more radical than other platforms. Not only is the lead dev a Communist, but to pick Lemmy over Reddit is an ideological choice to begin with. There is an ideological barrier to entry, and this won’t change until Reddit goes under.
For me picking lemmy over reddit is a matter of liking the software a lot better. As a dev myself I think lemmy is much more elegant and usable, and IDGAF about the lead dev’s ideologies, as a dev they kick ass.
Echo chambers are never good, no matter the politics. Just reading this comment thread is proof. Some of these comments are fucking ridiculous.
Half of Lemmy working to ensure that we never get any diversity of opinions or anymore normal people lol
Oh no, the poor right whingers aren’t being represented here.
Oh wait, good. Fuck ‘em.
They still have to suffer from shiti health insurance…
But sure let’s make sure nobody but a good neo libs “allies” are permitted here champ
Totally. Maybe we should invent some kind of… oh I dunno, ideological purity test? Surely that would not eat our faces off, hrm? Surely we can exclude only “them”, while keeping “us”.
Smh, it’s always the same. People don’t even see it.
In your country sure.
And who the fuck wants neo libs here? Neo libs (and libs) are right wing ideologies.
Weird seeing you again, and seeing you say this, after you quickly resorted to name-calling over a disagreement in another thread just 20 minutes ago. Do you really not think that you’re a member of the half you refer to? I’m not so sure you actually want “diversity of opinions” or “normal people” if that’s been your response so far.
You took a bad position, I clarified why it was unfounded.
That’s called a discussion. You are entitled to post your opinion, I am entitled to provide a rebuttal.
That’s how discourse works.
I don’t see it as either. I don’t come to social media to engage in political discussions, so for me, the bigger issue is the lack of thriving communities around topics outside of national/world politics and technology. I’d love to see more places like startrek.online.
I think it helps to place labels onto things… and then respect those labels.
Like porn: it can get someone literally fired if they chanced upon such at work - some corpos are just looking for any excuse to cut costs, especially a repeating salary one. But so long as it is labeled, and does not appear outside of bounds… then what is the harm? (more even, studies show that places that ban porn tend to have higher rates of sexualized crime i.e. rape, so the presence of porn literally seems to help society?)
And politics: so many of us here LOVE to discuss it! But what if someone had anxiety, and could not? Could they use something like hashtags, keywords, trigger warnings I dunno, and block out most of it, for the sake of their sanity? If not, then their only recourse would be to opt-out of the Fediverse entirely, thereby taking all of the content that they would have contributed with them…
Full disclosure of my own biases: this is why I am against places such as ChapoTrapHouse from being federated with most Lemmy instances (even as I support e.g. lemm.ee’s desire to keep it) - it’s not that I want it to “not exist” (I’ve enjoyed many of my own interactions there… though it is also simultaneously true that many users from hexbear [or their alts] act as toxic bullies, ignoring people’s consent outside of those spaces, despite being told explicitly not to by their admins), so much as that I want it to be properly labeled & constrained, so that someone does not walk into it unawares, not realize what it is, and then leave the Fediverse entirely having been turned away from us due to their interactions with them.
Likewise much of the content on lemmy.ml is very much not only anti-capitalist, but anti-Western - the former I sympathize with, though the vehemence with which it is delivered and especially the latter will turn people away, as it definitely has me (especially when it abuses blatantly false tropes).
And that is the identical reason why we cannot federate with conservative spaces either, if we want to survive: it is not that we want them to not exist so much as we cannot host their content here, without making THAT action a part of our own identity. And to be clear, I don’t mean content such as “God loves us, each & every one of us” (that’s kinda an awesome thought, is it not, regardless of what we each personally believe?), but rather “I know I speak for [my specific version of a god] when I say that he (she? it? them? other?) hates some people, especially YOUR type in particular!”
But even if we took it as a given, purely for the sake of a hypothetical argument mind you, that we actually did want some type of space to not exist, what are we going to do about it - sabotage their servers? And after they spin up new ones, with better protections - then what? No, the real recourse (imho) is to simply leave them be, yet not choose to federate their content here. We all were young & naive once too - they may grow given time, or not, but that’s their business, and all we can and should (and actually MUST) control is ours.
In all of the above cases - including the pornography example - it is not what the content is (or sometimes not just that), so much as the unfriendliness of it appearing outside of bounds, causing legitimate pain and harm when it is exposed to people.
I think the way to maximize utility is to increase diversity by increasing welcomingness. Sorta like how Linux does not push people into any one distro, or window manager, or anything at all - we each are free to pursue our own paths. That’s fucking awesome!:-P
Lest anything think that I’ve refused to answer the question: it is both. Our (future) political diversity can both be a wedge driven between us - if we allow that to happen naturally - or else a source of strength, e.g. to allow a centrist person to post content unrelated to their political beliefs (woodworking? a game community?), so long as they are respectful of other people’s beliefs in the process. We don’t all have to like one another, just get along. In diversity we find strength… or we could, if we did it right, i.e. if only the ones offered in good faith were allowed to stay while all others given the boot, and even then they need to remain within their allotted lanes.
Preemptively to the people who will scroll to the bottom of this, see me saying that diversity is a strength, and comment or just downvote and move on without bothering to read the rest: fuck you. But to anyone willing to offer a good-faith critique: I am listening.
I said this on reddit a long time ago and I’ll say it here:
We need a political tag like the NSFW tagThat would be so great
No echo-chamber is stronger for it. It’s a weakness.
I view the focus on Lemmy’s political opinions as a weakness for attracting new users.
I think its one of the reasons reddit will never reach the mainstream like reddit. For one people find it confusing to find a community which I disagree with, you just need to take a slight effort to understand that you have a choice of community and in return you get great freedom. Since its mostly for more techies I and its overwhelmingly like left, people with moderate right views will feel like they’re completely out of place.
Im also sad that many of the bigger communities like ml have unhinged mods that ban for anyone disagreeing with them. For example some calls for violence being overwhelmingly onesided on here made me feel sick at times. But I don’t feel like sparking that debate over here.
Pro-Tip: do NOT tell people irl that you use Lemmy. 100% of the times I’ve done this, I get the most horrible looks from them. It took me a long time to figure out why, but the short explanation is that the Alt-Left is here, so it’s equivalent to saying that you use Truth Social, just on the other side.
I’ve told people I use Lemmy several times, I only got neutral or positive reactions.
Lemmy is quite obscure, so most of the people have no idea what it is.
The top Google hit to an instance isn’t “here” but rather Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo chooses Lemmy.World, but as long as we are talking normies here…). Lemmy.ml’s default method of showing posts is Local, rather than All. Combined, this means that a mainstream normal person will see first primarily the Alt-Left propaganda machine pushing for the violent overthrow of capitalism and Western society, and then will NOT see so much of all the cute cartoons and Star Trek memes and such. Especially prior to the USA election, there was very much an obvious bias promoting the idea that BoTh SiDeS sAmE.
Your approach used on Reddit of pointing to a highly specific instance recommendation, especially one that has defederated from Lemmy.ml, is carefully crafted to avoid the scenario I outlined above from happening. And irl it’s helpful to do the same: don’t say that you use “Lemmy”, bc that has a very pronounced reputation.
don’t say that you use “Lemmy”, bc that has a very pronounced reputation.
People really don’t know about it. Maybe it’s my environment, but at this point I would almost be happy if people could talk to me negatively about Lemmy rather than just no know what it is
Not me, I’m salty about it:-) 😔 😭
Im also sad that many of the bigger communities like ml have unhinged mods that ban for anyone disagreeing with them. For example some calls for violence being overwhelmingly onesided on here made me feel sick at times. But I don’t feel like sparking that debate over here.
For people interested on that topic, !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a dedicated community
It’s certainly a weakness, especially since the Lemmy echo chamber is ever more extremist than the echo chambers you’d find on a place like Reddit or Truth Social. But I don’t think it makes it uniquely bad. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
It would compromise what we are to allow nazis and their ilk in here
Nazis and their ilk can be here, they just have to contend with a lot of disagreement when they broadcast their opinions.
I’m not a fan of this becoming a nazi bar
It’s not too far off already, considering .ml, grad, and hexbear’s propensity to advocate for violence against others for being “liberals.”
Basically it’s already a nazi bar with some red paint and a star on the door. The people who I told about lemmy all left pretty quick because of it and I’ve stopped recommending it to people entirely.
The people who I told about lemmy all left pretty quick because of it and I’ve stopped recommending it to people entirely.
This post could interest you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/32469271
Long story short, discuss.online defederated hexbear recently, making it a potential recommendation for new joiners (they also block lemmygrad)
https://lemmy.cafe/ blocks ml too, but they have the 0.19.7 pictures bug. Once they fix that, they could become another go-to recommendation for new joiners.
That’s good to know, I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks! But tbh the reality is that .ml is still too integral to defed yet, until your decentralization efforts take hold (and btw I try to sub to the other communities whenever I see you post one I’m interested in and will sometimes unfollow the .ml one if I can, thanks for all the recommendations!)
PieFed allows you to block all users from an instance of your choice without needing admin approval. The Lemmy apps Sync and Connect do also. So I’ve already managed to defederate from Lemmy.ml personally, aside from lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au that have all done that at the admin level.
Although it sounds like you meant more that so many communities are still on that instance - which is fine - and don’t have alternatives yet elsewhere, which is not fine. If you can, perhaps consider making just one and modding it to help it grow. It won’t fix everything but it will help, and if 9 other people did likewise then that’s 10 communities that people would not have had access to without those group efforts:-).
Little by little, I think that we don’t have to consider places such as hexbear.net as part of “us” anymore. Perhaps it will take the further development of Mbin, PieFed, and Sublinks to accomplish that for Lemmy.ml. Otherwise we simply will progressively give up while the place dies slowly around us, as people leave and new ones refuse to join.
I think at this moment people can live without .ml if they’re not into tech. Sure, !privacy@lemmy.ml and !firefox@lemmy.ml are the most active in their fields, but the non-tech user probably doesn’t care. And alternatives like !linux@programming.dev are getting more and more active
Glad that you like that effort!
That may be true tbh, I’m more techy so I can’t yet but maybe for someone who isn’t they could.
Keep at it for sure! If this place really ends up thriving and getting bigger for niche interests and stuff it’s in no small part because of your efforts to do so! I genuinely appreciate it, even for stuff I’m not personally interested in.
I’m not either, but that’s like saying “I don’t want my TV full of gays!” because a sitcom has a gay character.
Gay people and nazis are two very different groups, so it’s not like saying that at all actually.
I agree, and the point of my comment wasn’t to suggest gay people and nazis are the same (or even similar), it was that the mere presence of something disagreeable doesn’t mean the place is full of it.
Are you familiar with the nazi bar quote? I was referencing that phenomenon:
When Tager asked about why he booted the guy, the bartender, a seasoned pro, said that if you let one Nazi in, slowly they replace the clientele.
“You have to nip it in the bud immediately,” he said, as Trager paraphrased. “These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after a while, they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.”
“And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh *****, this is a Nazi bar now,” he continued. ”And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”
No, I wasn’t familiar with that quote. Sokath, his eyes open. But nazis would not receive a friendly welcome here like in the bartender’s hypothetical story, so the same outcome is so extraordinarily unlikely, the reference seems like the same level of overreaction I said it was.
It is a weakness.
Huge strength.
The alternative is Reddit or 4Chan if you want centrist or right wing takes. I know which of the 3 platforms I want.
Seeing this place run by individuals with a commitment to creating a better social environment is also a huge plus. You wouldn’t get that under a non-leftist platform.
“Left” or “Right” grouping is Western centric tho.
From my perspective as Indonesian, it’s weird that Westerner lump politics into separate group instead working together for a solution that caters to everyone.
So you would say PDIP and Gerindra both represent the same thing?
And I know for a fact you’se spent most of the mid 20th century killing “communists” in your borders. So there certainly was a left in Indonesia.
Both are just corrupt parties that doesn’t want to help people.
Maybe this will help: the left are the only ones that want to help everyone. The right wants to help themselves.
I still don’t get actual “left” and “right” definition by Westerner.
For example, people that support native people to be protected from encrouchment of their forest, as well as unmitigated immigration that will drive out them will considered both “left” and “right” side from Westerner.
Some Westerner also often assume their solution of problem is “the best” while all I can see is further division of society.
Please elaborate.
Indonesian here too. Same I am as confused too. It makes political discourse here looks good
I still don’t get actual “left” and “right” definition by Westerner.
The vast majority of Westerners don’t even really know what “left” or “right” mean. It’s going to be really confusing to rely on Westerners to self-identify their political beliefs, because every liberal seems to think they’re a leftist.
For example, people that support native people to be protected from encrouchment of their forest, as well as unmitigated immigration that will drive out them will considered both “left” and “right” side from Westerner.
It helps if we frame this in a context of imperialism and colonialism.
A refugee from Syria moving into Greece isn’t encroaching on anyone’s forests. That stands in stark contrast with a multinational corporation coming to DRC, clear cutting the forest, strip mining the mountains, poisoning the water, and paying pennies for labor.
Some Westerner also often assume their solution of problem is “the best” while all I can see is further division of society.
Absolutely. Any leftist in the West needs to spend their whole life unlearning their chauvinism.
The thing is, sometimes the immigrant are not corporate. They’re just groups of average people that cut all the protected forest to make a new home and uncontrolled killing of animals.
They don’t respect local rules at all.
This don’t really happen in the West, but it can happen in several parts of Asia or Africa.
That’s why ethnocentrism ended prevalent in these area.
The global South has a right to protect its sovereignty from rich Western assholes coming in to scoop up cheap land to build their summer villas. Tourism is a factor of imperialist exploitation too.
It’s a strength because we finally get to interact amongst the left without having to explain how society works to every ignorant conservatwat who thinks they can conservasplain some bullshit. It’s what makes it great.
Okay so yeah for actual conservatives totally. The Alt-Right is never going to be convinced no matter how many “facts” you explain to them anyway.
But you are considered a right-winger too, as well as I, by the likes of the folks in hexbear and Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. We don’t view ourselves that way, but it’s the truth: compared to the likes of the Alt-Left, we legit are more “right-wing” than they are. And for good reason: e.g. we may not appreciate them but we’ve never actually murdered our landlords.
“For example, in terms of attracting new users” - meaning that’s the whole point of the question, so I’ll address that.
Lemmy isn’t a corporation and doesn’t have to think like one. Market share means nothing. The goal is a high-quality app that does what its users want. If a majority of those users have a similar range of political views, that’s just how it works out. There’s nothing stopping ultra-conservatives from spinning up Lemmy instances if they want, blocking communities whose overall personality they don’t like, and banning users they don’t like. If this balkanizes the lemmy userverse, I don’t see that as an issue.
Conversely though: you are considered a right-winger by some (Lemmy.World = neoliberal bastion of not extreme enough Leftists). (And to be extra clear: me as well:-)
I agree that we must exclude trolling behaviors and those who refuse to not do them, but not bc of their beliefs and rather bc of their intolerance to anyone who disagrees. But by the same token, we must not become them in the process.
This would exclude both the Alt-Right, as well as the Alt-Left, leaving us centrists in the middle. And a week ago I would have added: “who don’t want to violently overthrow all of society”, although now I’m not so sure that a goodly fraction of Lemmy agrees with that anymore.
I’ve always voted liberal up and down the ticket, and in my daily interactions you would be hard-pressed to find me acting like anybody’s idea of a right-winger. But I don’t look at every detail of liberal doctrine as the sacred word of the gods. In many liberal forums you have to parrot all the correct doctrine and wear a pristine pure white hat, or people (apparently including yourself) will put a black hat on you. But really anyone who puts themself on a high pedestal of moral perfection is delusional.
Exactly what I’m saying. One mark of an extremist is often a kind of moral purity test of their ideology. I too was shocked to find out that I am considered “right-wing”, by the extremist left on places such as Lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. The latter is federated with by almost everyone, and they will call you and me as “right-wing”.
Now whether that’s “true” or not… well actually, it is though - if you do not approve of actually irl really murdering your landlord, then you are “right-wing”, in comparison to them. Then again, they also say that they love North Korea - but how many of them have actually picked up and moved there, hrm? 🤣
So I think we are “centrists”, on the global scale. To the left of the Alt-Right, and to the right of the Alt-Left. My language may be odd though.
To people whose purview pertains to the set of “alternative facts”, whether left or right wing, I simply cannot converse - no matter how hard I’ve tried. However to centrists I seem to have little to no trouble making myself understood, with only the slightest efforts? i.e., anyone at all acting in good faith I can outright enjoy discourse with, while anyone acting in bad faith I cannot.
So that is my criteria: it has nothing whatsoever to do with “beliefs”, political or religious or cultural or otherwise, and everything to do with attitude, particularly the willingness to converse with compassion or at the very minimum tolerance to others’ POV.
Does that make sense?
Makes sense immensely, and tbh good to read such a thoughtful post. Superficial or “meme-level” thinking has become deeply ingrained out our culture. I attribute it largely to the firehose of content available, like an always-full inbox. It conflicts with our natural desire to finish something - you can’t finish the Internet. One way to deal with it is to process each item in the feed as quickly as possible - take in minimal information, make a quick value judgement, and scroll onward. It makes people more susceptible to misleading headlines and images that are well-crafted to squeak through their narrow attention spans. I think this superficiality plays a large part in leading people to plunk a black or white hat on everybody. Considering shades of gray takes too bandwidth. Drawing zero-tolerance lines in the sand is far simpler. But I’ve got to accept it as part of the environment, because complaining about it just gets me called a nazi lol.
This essay describes the transition as we can readily observe it happening not just in social media on the internet but also in movies & TV & every other aspect of modern life as well. We see sitting members of Congress use the same principles: if you can do something in 5 seconds, and then move on to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and so on, then spending 5 hours let alone 5 days, weeks, months, or years on a project becomes downright “bad”. The latter obviously not meaning in an objective sense but rather a return-on-investment (ROI) calculation, if maximizing profits (or upvote karma or whatever) is one’s goal - and for a Congressperson, that very much is their job, to maximize votes or at least pass the threshold to ensure safe re-elections, then switch to expending that political capital to enrich one’s own pockets (oh uh… and
help peopleno, enrich one’s own pockets exclusively, apparently, more’s the pity).Aside from that, the paradox of intolerance really is a fundamental principle of the universe: imagine that you had a pen full of a thousand sheep, and you let in one wolf - let’s even say to be kind, b/c he’ll die if you do not? The next day you somehow only have 999 sheep… and you let in 2 more wolves. The next day you have 996 sheep, and you let in 3 more wolves, and so on. It won’t be long before you have no sheep and only wolves left. B-b-but, they PROMISED me that they’d behave!? They PROMISED me that they wouldn’t eat MY
face offsheep!?!? We ignore this at our peril. You can do the experiment for yourself: go to Lemmy.ml without being logged into an account and just going through the first couple of pages, count the number of posts that make fun of the Western world - especially the EU and even more especially in particular the USA - or perhaps it’s easier to count those that don’t? (granted, there’s a bunch of purely-Linux ones that do not, and sometimes you’d need to visit the post to read the comments rather than see it instantly from the title) Like here’s an example that I saw just prior to the recent USA elections:
B-b-bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO?! Except… they are not though? So many Muslim leaders in America told their followers to vote for Harris - b/c while what Biden did was not great, it will be as nothing compared to what Trump will do - although many waited until sth like 3 days before the election, hoping to wrangle every last ounce of possible concession out of the deal, though it may have been too late, b/c people simply don’t follow the news all that quickly (it would seem). In fairness, there were many issues irt that election, and this was only one of them. It does not change how the Alt-Left tries to put a “spin” that is hyperbolic, false, and most relevant: misleading to the point of being actually disinformation rather than merely misinformation. It is so easy to prop up such a strawman: “none such exist” as want to stop the chaos? Bitch, we ALL want to stop it though?! Well, liberals do, the conservatives want to fucking JOIN in making it happen FASTER! Also, it’s not like Russia actively doing genocide in Ukraine, or China to the Uyghurs, etc. (oh wait…), so I guess somehow it’s “better” to just put Trump in where he will do as he already said: write a blank check for Israel to do whatever they want from now on, including even more genocide. You know, b/c BoTh SiDeS eQuAl, and b/c if someone says it on the internet, then it MUST be true I guess?!
So yeah, according to these people, we are “right-wingers”. B/c people in the USA voting for Kamala Harris rather than voting for Donald Trump and then violently overthrowing all of society is… “right-wing”… somehow?
I will take every last ounce of diversity, from someone arguing in good faith. But I will take none from someone arguing in bad faith. Even if they call me a Nazi, or a coward, or whatever they want to call me - those manipulation tactics don’t matter, what matters is what I choose to do in response.
You’re right, everything is black-and-white absolutes. I don’t know how I could have thought “westerners” are actually millions of individuals with distinct morals, ideals and behaviors. My bad!
NOW you understand! 😜
Those kinds of messages seem to have worked - if not here bc we’re so tiny then at least overall. After all, we collectively decided together that BoTh SiDeS sAmE tHo and therefore elected Trump who ofc “is the same as Harris would have been irt the Gaza situation” (except not, if facts mattered, but since they don’t… then sure).
I’m here because I DON’T want to have to read fucked up opinions. People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
I’m all for difference of opinion, but not when one of those opinions is “we should oppress LGBT people” for example. 10-15 years ago, I’d have been more receptive to discussing opposing opinions, but shit has changed. A lot of those opposing opinions are now simply unacceptable to even entertain, because they’ve become a real, actual threat to my well-being. People aren’t discussing tax policy anymore, they are discussing imposing states of emergency to do some kind of purge on undesirables.
Some people call it an echo chamber, I just call it chilling and having fun with like-minded people. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what forums have always been.
Honestly the tankie takes justifying atrocities is nearly as bad as the conservative takes justifying the same.
Why nearly? They are just as bad, if not worse.
Nah. Tankies are wrong, but they’re also powerless. Conservatives actually have power though, and are extremely dangerous.
An idea being “bad” is power agnostic. If I want to blow up orphanages, wanting to do so is bad whether I’m the president or a homeless dude, the ability to follow through may change with power, but the ability to follow through isn’t what makes “wanting to blow up orphanages” bad, the idea itself is bad.
People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
Try disagreeing with the hive mind. Anyone can be nice to someone who echo’s their own opinion. The real niceness of a person is revealed when they can show civility to people they disagree with (I’m not talking about LGBTQ oppressors or Nazis…there’s a huge spectrum of opinions that aren’t extreme).
I’m on BlueSky on top of IceShrimp because anything better than Twitter is good to use at this point.
Let’s see how downvoted I get.
I’m also on BlueSky as well as Mastodon, because BlueSky has the momentum right now, and critical mass is important.
In that same vein, I wish you’d treat LW as you do any other instance. We’re not hostile to other instances, and I think there’s a healthy balance right now. It doesn’t hurt Lemmy to have a bigger, more mainstream instance. I think defederation solely for the sake of defederation does hurt Lemmy.
I wish you’d treat LW as you do any other instance. We’re not hostile to other instances, and I think there’s a healthy balance right now. It doesn’t hurt Lemmy to have a bigger, more mainstream instance. I think defederation solely for the sake of defederation does hurt Lemmy.
I never advocated for defederation of LW, just for more decentralization rather than have 90% of the active communities on LW.
You never answered my latest comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/13624614
Just to make it sure, are you saying that it’s not true that at this moment
- !showsandmovies@lemm.ee has 1.85k monthly active users
- !television@lemmy.world has 754 monthly active users?
What prevents you from locking !television@lemmy.world, redirect to !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, and get that community more active?
I can even make you or any other LW mod mod of that community too, I’m not attached to being a mod, I just want communities to flourish on other instances as well.
Because besides monthly active users, LW has 4,600 subscribers where lemm.ee has 537. It’s not a clear cut case.
What good is 4600 subscribers when 754 are active?
I just checked the updated numbers, now it’s 2.57k monthly active users for lemm.ee vs 958 on LW.
On !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, we actively build the community, we have a best of 2024 post, we opened the moderation posts to any person willing to help, while you keep that community unmoderated with 2 bots as mods.
Really, I just don’t understand. What are you afraid of? I’m pretty sure that !mapporn@lemmy.world had more subs than !map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz when it was locked down, but it was still okay, because the activity was happening on the sopuli instance.
I just checked, !electricvehicles@lemmy.world has more subscribers than !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net , but the slrpnk community was still chosen when the consolidation happened: https://lemm.ee/post/46935805
If you’re afraid about losing the people, you just pin a post, point to the new community, similar to !casualconversation@lemmy.world, and that’s it.
I did everything fair. “Not happy with the community? Create your own, and become the better one!”. I did, everything, and while we’ve had success, the LW staying open hinders the growth of that topic as a whole.
You ask me to treat LW as any other instance, but no other instance is reacting in that way, preferring to keep some of their communities open when other people actively try to build an active community on a topic that apparently only a few people are interested in anyway.
I don’t know. I am still as opinionated and difficult as I ever was on Reddit, but I also turn it around, display civility, and cede points far more often here. Maybe I’m becoming better, but I think it’s just a better situation overall.
I’ve received way more bitter and raged out responses here than I’ve ever received on Reddit for very lukewarm vanilla takes. I’m not saying Lemmy is full of extremists but there is a user base here that is all or nothing. My guess is it’s age related though.
Overall the people here are nicer.
The extremes are higher though - some people were booted from Reddit for a reason, and they came here.
Yea. I agree. There is a nice median and really strong extremes. But those extremes sometimes hog up the convo.
The presence of the high end of the extreme is what blew me away though. On Reddit I had given up all hope bc it never happened (even from myself, as I kept becoming more defensive, more snarky but less kind) while here the fact that it sometimes, heck even often happens, is just… outstanding!:-) 😍
Also the low end of the extreme is concentrated into specific instances, such that blocking Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net will improve someone’s experience on the Fediverse by ~90%, and then blocking users from lemmy.ml (with the PieFed Lemmy alternative, or either the Sync or Connect Lemmy apps, or lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au at the instance admin level) improves by a further 90% I found.
So the structure of the curve matters greatly here, to someone’s quality of experiences in the Fediverse.:-)
The version of someone you invite in the door determines the initial trajectory of how that person will act in the community. You can invite in the leading edge of someone’s developing kindness or invite in the ossifying mass of their nature that is threatening to turn hateful and uncaring. No one instance of invitation to a new person (however that may happen, formally or informally) pushes the needle far either way within any one particular person (though sometimes it can radically do so) but the overall integrated effect is a moderate shift of the an entire community towards the better or worse version of the community members. When this effect is used for good people often describe the resulting community space as a community that accepts them for who they are or more succintly is a genuinely safe space.
Of course, every interaction is in an invitation in some small way, it doesn’t just happen once.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone would ask you “Are you okay with sitting at the bar with nazis?” yet plenty will happily judge you for saying “I’d rather not have to deal with MAGAts and their opinions”
Sorry but if your opinion is “trans people aren’t people” or “blacks need to know their place” then your opinion is shit and no the fuck I don’t have to listen to it
I agree, which is why I recently kicked a MAGA guy out of my D&D group that meets at my house. I had tolerated him up to then because he generally acted decent and was a good player. But after the election I decided I just don’t feel like extending my hospitality to that anymore.
But on the flip side when I hear a phrase like, “uncomfortable with trans people” my first reaction is, “What makes you uncomfortable?” instead of, “Fuck you you fucking bigoted fuck!” For that moral imperfection in my character I’ve received name-calling and at least one ban. Whatever. People have irrational fears and I’m not going to exile them to the desert because their “eww” reflex isn’t pristine.
But another question, “are you ok with sitting at the bar with nazis, but they’re wearing red shirts with a hammer and sickle on them and espousing the same propensity for murder?”
Lemmy is fine with murder and genocide so long as you wear the right shirt while doing it.
Source: .ml, grad, hexbear.
🤡
No u
Normally I’d say it was a weakness but the right has significantly departed from reality in most countries for way too long now. It’s incredibly rare to find a right-winger who can be present in a discussion without spewing a whole lot of vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit.
So I find their absence refreshing, desirable and a strength of Lemmy.
I find the same on the left wing. Everytime I put out a slightly right wing position I get attacked and a ton of down votes.
Every time anyone mentions on Lemmy right wing positions it is with only to attack a strawman version that is very removed from what most right wing people think/do.
Every time anyone mentions on Lemmy right wing positions it is with only to attack a strawman version
It would help if you would be more precise. You are using a “feels like” statement here, which I have to disagree with b/c it is objectively false: all it would take would be to find a singular example wherein it was not true, at which point “every time” is shown to be invalid.
But often that does occur, yes. Sometimes our choice of wording can impede rather than aid in understanding?
And I say this as someone who seems to be more often misunderstood than not, go figure :-|.
I’m sure a counter example exists, but I’ve been around for year and not seen it yet. Though I’ll accept that the exception probably exists.
Downvotes can’t actually hurt you.
Personally, I’m fine with saying unpopular things and getting downvoted for it. Mods removing a disallowed viewpoint is something different.
They don’t hurt, but they still do not feel nice.
Just remember that the first person to say the world went around the sun got downvoted into oblivion… but it is factually accurate and a giant leap towards out current understanding of the physical realm. I’m happy for people to disagree with my views. Fuck, I probably disagreed with half of them, thirty years ago.
Mods removing a disallowed viewpoint is something different.
They will only do that if the opinion actually resonates lol
Haha yes, that’s usually the issue. I talked down below about getting banned on slrpnk because of some things I was saying. The comment thread with all the highly-upvoted replies getting removed by the mod, and the downvoted stuff intact, is hilarious to me:
https://slrpnk.net/post/14823401/11895951
The same mod also had a habit of arguing with people, while removing their comments but leaving his own side of the argument intact. He’s still a moderator there. In my opinion slrpnk needs to spend less time talking about anarchism and more time embodying anarchism.
Removed Comment I am gratified by the rate of downvotes on this. Greta Thunberg would, I think, be disappointed and angry that anyone would take what she said as a justification for ways to help get Trump elected. Let me highlight the very clearly written part that you seem to have missed: > It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity. > > There is no doubt that one of the candidates — Trump — is way more dangerous than the other. If you want real positive change, listen to Greta and fight for change outside the system. If you want third parties, support RCV and proportional representation, to make them viable. If you want the end of the fucking world, then don’t vote, or vote for spoiler candidates within the current system that makes them unelectable. Edit: Formatting by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
reason: Electoralism, liberalism
well you did kinda invade their safe space with common sense ideas, shit lord hehe
This moderator behavior here is exactly what you’d see on reddit lol
“We’re anarchists.”
“Cool. Here’s an urgent problem I see for the world that I think we should work on.”
“SHIT COCK GET OUT DISALLOWED We don’t say that here. You’re receiving a gentle ban, to think about what you’ve done. Be better.”
That’s the current modding situation across any community focused on working class politics… as if people running them are not interested in helping the peasants.
Why would anyone act like that on social media… for free at that
Oh my god… This is spot on. I feel like everyone here is mostly larping.
I use solarpunk and disappointed that it happened to you. I felt like solarpunk was the best instance Lemmy has, it feels like it has the least amount of echo chamber. Maybe I’m wrong.
I moderate my own community in solarpunk and I will try my best to not be like the moderator you talk about
I think you will see that these accusations have little substance, are taken out of context and argued in bad faith 🤷♂️
All I’ve done is link to the comments section illustrating what I was saying had happened, had happened.
Here he is, arguing with people while removing their comments and leaving his comments in place: https://slrpnk.net/post/14823401/11894346
I have no idea why you’re defending this guy. Like I said, the communities that try to “protect” their points of view, saying that one viewpoint is permitted in their space but other ones are will get you banned, generally become laughingstocks over time. It’s very different from protecting against abuse or racism, when you “protect” your space against people who don’t agree with some particular detail the way some particular person has interpreted it, and appoint an arbiter of what are the allowed interpretations, to ban anyone they disagree with. I think you should abandon that practice, and the censorship of ideas you disagree with, if you want to say that you’re supporting an instance that respects individual human freedom.
I don’t really have a problem with you in general, I was a little bit surprised that you came out swinging to defend this moderator. Maybe this all sounds like sour grapes on my part, but that is usually the result of banning people for disagreeing with you. It sparks a surprising amount of resentment.
I know you’re not the same moderator they were talking about, but I just want to make you aware of this: https://ponder.cat/comment/1193264
What are you talking about… This is the experience of most of us that dare slightly disagree on anything. It shouldn’t be this way
You’re comparing downvotes with “vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit”. The behavior I’m talking about isn’t hurtful in the social-rejection way that downvotes are, it goes way way beyond that. Can you see the difference?
I empathize, as a human being you have to realize that it is YOU that has to use politics as a tool & NOT BECOME a tool of Politics (Do you get what I mean) Use both Right & Left policies, I think it was called Moderatism or Communitarianism
Please… this is a serious display of availability bias.
Let’s face it: the demographic here is just a hyper concentrated version of Reddit, which itself is mostly middle-upper class tweenagers from affluent countries. They get online and get convinced that everyone is just like them.
The average person that hangs out on Reddit-like forums absolutely does not represent the population at large, and any “right-winger who can be present in a discussion without spewing a whole lot of vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit” has learned that there is no way one can have a reasonable exchange of ideas in any forum like this.
Your points about social bubbles and echo chambers are true, but experiencing the displeasure of having to routinely interact with rightwingers in person verifies that they have fully-fledged conviction in their “vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit”. They can’t have a reasonable exchange of ideas because they bring nothing reasonable or empathetic to the table.
There are many right wingers here, not conservatives. Liberals are right wing, and lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works are mainly liberal instances.
What rimu was mainly talking about are conservatives, or even far right users. So he wasn’t criticizing the whole right wing, he just used the term right wing to refer to those.
I know it’s comfortable to sit and call anything slightly right of ultra socialism as ‘right wing’ but a spectrum exists.
To conflate republican evangelical dominionist Christians with liberals is peak hubris.
There is a saying: ‘when you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail’. When you reduce everything to class warfare you’re not engaging in an effective discourse to reduce harm in the world. You’re just pontificating on the merits of socialism, which yea, we all agree are neat. But so what? You think folding everyone else into a basket gives you credence or helps the discourse in any way?
I wasn’t conflating. Conservatives are not liberals. But they are both right wing. (at least, classical liberals are)
And there is more than just class warfare, i agree.
But so what? why does it matter that they are right wing? not everyone has to be a communist.
The term left and right are very ambiguous to define in the first place. Some people argue that leftism is anti-capitalism. Some argue that leftism is just belief in equality. They are all right. Same thing with the right wing.
I think my issue is with the usage of the phrase “right wing” because we need something scathing to label liberals. It doesn’t really contribute anything to the discourse except create layers of exclusion.
Liberalism, broadly, is not interested in supporting or enabling hierarchies. The only thing they share in common with right wing conservatism is the ownership of private property -but that’s it. So lumping them all in the same bucket isn’t doing much for anyone except creating more exclusion at the risk of pushing forward socialist policies. The reality is liberals are probably more likely to favor equality, even if it’s just ideological. Shouldn’t we strive to bring more people on board and build bridges rather than continue this bizarre war of artrition?
My intent was not to cause division, I originally meant to clear things up for the user I was originally replying to, but things quickly descended into arguing about semantics. I agree that we should all work together to eliminate the rising threat of far right, fascist parties worldwide. That is what we should be focusing on.
I’m tired over me bikeshedding, So i’m just going to forfeit out of this argument.
Have a great weekend
We don’t have to have an argument over it. It’s ok to have a conversation. I’m familiar with the ‘liberals are right wing’ talking point.
I’m just trying to understand what exactly it is that defines ‘right wing’ and how we define ‘liberalism’ . You’re right, it IS a semantic discussion, but clearly the implication is that liberalism is on par with being right wing. So, nonetheless, a semantic relabeling which is not devoid of consequences.
So I’m wondering, at what point do those two overlap (liberalism and right wing politics)? Is it the right to private property? Beyond that, what exactly makes liberalism ‘right wing’?
Liberals are right wing
Case closed.
They are? i’m not sure where you live, but most of the world considers them to be right wing.
but most of the world considers them to be right wing.
Yep. I’m fiscally conservative, mildly sympathetic to people who fear and resist change, and fond of the pragmatic pursuit of libertarian ideals, where that’s possible.
I also feel that how others do sex is none of my damn business, taxes supporting social services are necessary, and equitably applied rule of law is critical for any real economic prosperity.
On the scale of history, I suspect that makes me centrist or even a moderate conservative.
In my country, and today, somehow, astonishingly, this combination makes me what most would call very left leaning.
I feel that the right has gone insane and continues to alienate people who might otherwise have been allies.
In my country, and today, somehow, astonishingly, this combination makes me what most would call very left leaning.
Let me guess, the US? The only people i’ve ever heard call liberals something as BS as far-left communists are conservative americans. The overton window in america is so ridiculous it’s hilarious.
No. Liberalism is against most things that the right wing of the political spectrum explicitly stands for. Liberalism exists as a counter argument to conservatism. As I mentioned earlier US political language has twisted and distorted what these words really mean.
Liberalism is against most things that the right wing of the political spectrum explicitly stands for
I’m assuming you’re talking in a US perspective.
Leftism describes a spectrum of political ideologies that seeks to minimize hierarchies and desires to achieve equality and egalitarianism. Liberalism is a pro-capitalist ideology, and capitalism is hierarchial and is unequal. Thus, liberalism is right wing. Progressivism isn’t related to right or left wing. You can be a communist but socially conservative. You can be fiscally conservative and be progressive. In the US, being left wing or right wing is mainly measured on how progressive, or if you support social programs (a little leftist, but still can be right wing, just center-right). Liberalism is right wing. Conservatism is far right.
No. I’m not talking from a US perspective. I’m talking from a political perspective. Liberalism is a moral and political philosophy - that is available in more than one flavour. Many things liberalism stands for are incompatible with right wing governments. Conservatism is far right? No, fascism is far right and there is an enormous difference between being conservative and being a fascist. Right and left are both part of a spectrum and run the whole gamut from dipping your toe in the water to being fully submerged. It’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
