I've noticed that lemmy as a whole is much more leftist than reddit (outside of political servers of course)
I can't really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by "both" sides of the spectrum. It's just something I find interesting.
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Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it's going to, but... Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.
Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It's a different group here.
Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others' needs.
It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.
I know this was a joke Colbert made, but the truth is the reverse: the left is reality-leaning. It's truly terrifying to see how divorced from reality the right-wing is, and how gleefully they just keep storming in that direction.
To an extent. But whenever there is a political discussion on Hacker News, the lib right response is very, very loud, and I try to remind myself I appreciate Hacker News for its tech news.
I think the culture is just different. Lemmy was started and run by Tankies. Hacker News was started by Y Combinator, which incubates silicon valley startups. They're going to attract different audiences, or at least different groups of people who will put up with different politics. I can't claim to be particularly upset about the .ml domains being pulled and the center mass of Lemmy moving away from those instances.
What's a tankie? I keep seeing it.
I had to look it up too. Apparently it's an authoritarian leftist. Thinks state-socialism was a good thing. As while most leftists are more of the democratic, market, and anarchist varieties.
State socialism is a good thing, what tankies promote is something else, they're fascist that can't accept that fact because it would mean having something in common with the fascists in the USA, a country that they hate so much that they're ready to deny reality to have an anti USA opinion.
I'm confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don't personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I've heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one's ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.
Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?
The problem is not state socialism, it's the authoritarian side of it. Tankies promote authoritarian views similar to fascists but with a different economics view (not even that different some times), hence they prefer the dictatorships like USSR (in these days even Putin, which is idiotic), North Korea, China; over what they perceive as imperialist, the USA (I agree on calling it imperialistic and disliking it, but not on considering it worse than dictatorships).
I'm a communist which likes state socialism, but what is and was present in those dictatorship (ignoring the authoritarian side which I despise) is state capitalism.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! I appreciate you!
Thanks for explaining for me, that's exactly what I meant, I just didn't have the time to reply!
The communist utopia needs authoritarianism to work
The confusion comes from so much mass media that equates socialism with communism. They're orthogonal concepts! Saying socialism is the same as communism is like saying beer-making is exactly the same as cheese-making. Anyone who understands what beer and cheese are would be like, "I'm sorry, what‽"
The best way to think of socialism is that's it's a governance strategy that can be used wherever you want. Want everyone to pay taxes in order to fund and deliver government-run firefighting services? That's socialism. Want to do the same with the military? Socialism. Whenever the government is delivering some good or service by way of taxpayer dollars that's socialism.
Capitalism and communism are economic systems. You can have socialist government constructs under either capitalism or communism. It's just that communism doesn't really have the flexibility to provide goods or services in any other way than via the government.
Then there's countries like China that claim to be communist (and the Right loves to call them that) but really, they're more capitalist than communist. What they do have that most communists and fascist governments have is authoritarianism.
That authoritarianism is what fascists and "tankies" have in common: Fascists support an authoritarian, pseudo-capitalist government while "tankies" support an authoritarian, pseudo-communist government.
I appreciate your break down on this, I feel like I get so confused with auth/fasc terms
Congratulations: That, and only that, is a tankie. It is a good practical defintion for the term.
As I see it, tankies are just the same as the Trumpers. You can't really say where they stand socially and politically, because they do not have a coherent opinion or ideology. Everyone who opposes their favorite regime is WRONG, and everything their favorite regime does is RIGHT. Bonus points for every action and opinion that hurts "woke lefties", because the favorite regimes of tankies are all inevitably incompatible with progressive ideas and ideologies.
Imagine the answer a Trumper would give when you ask them if they don't know about Trump's corruption and character. The tankies answer just the same in response to allegations in regard to corruption and character of their favorite regimes:
First of all, none of that is true, because the woke lefties, the media, and everyone are all corrupt, and lying. And what is true, is all a well played move of brilliant 5D chess which will save us all, because the supposed "corruption" is actually all part of a very smart and deliberate system of ploys and strategems which the woke lefties just don't understand.
Now, do the tankies and Trumpers truly believe that? Who knows. Doesn't really matter anyway. What is clear is that both of those "ideologies" are dumb idiots.
They're authoritarian. Not fascist. There is a difference. Even if both groups are more dedicated to authoritarianism than anything else. I would not be caught dead voluntarily anywhere with a fascist. While I disagree heavily with ML communist I might associate with them a little bit. But just never give them power.
Thanks for not leaving out the anarchists
I don't think you understand how small of a global majority white European men are.
I'd say most people are Chinese, but that's not correct - a quarter of the world's population is East Asian. This is the largest group in the world.
So, I'd say that's an odd quantifier that doesn't really seem to have any support or credibility or relevance. Seems based on entirely nothing, actually. Further more, were that true or even possible, what's your point?
Thinks Stalin was cool and Lenin was correct to break the short lived democracy of the USSR. The rest is details.
Basically authoritarian leftists that are caricaturized as worshipping the Soviet Union
Thanks! I thought it was Lemmy specific slang.
Nah it's been going on for probably more than a decade
Makes sense. I may have heard the term once or twice before, but here, I come across it almost daily.
The Experience
I gotcha
The super rich are usually highly educated but they live in such a homogenous bubble that they’re opinions on the majority of society should be entirely discounted. They usually have a total lack of empathy for people and vote for politicians with the same attitude. I have met some super rich people who try very hard to go against the grain and not fall into that mindset, but something about the need for protecting your money and lifestyle usually promotes an untrustworthy and skeptical view of everyone in their lives including their own family.
The political vibe on Lemmy isn't really a new thing. Reddit had it 15 years ago. Good forums and IRC channels had it before that. It's been part of the "golden age" of every online social medium
Eventually, teenage edgelords find start taking up too much space. Shortly after that, the far-right turn up to prey on them.
The people who made the platform good in the first place leave and the cycle begins anew.
Perfectly summed up.
Your username/instance combo is amazing. 10/10
That instance is epic lol .uk
lol, thanks
I think I might want to jump over to lemmyf.uk myself.
Is there a citizenship requirement? Do I have to prove that I find Daleks irrationally terrifying?
I do actually, because they all have Englishmen inside them. I kid, I'm Canadian. Scottish Canadian. Fuckin' wanker. Haha. I love you guys.
No requirements. Just don’t be an ass. 🙂
Theres a difference. While nerds are often book smart, we often have social difficulties.
Just cause I’m a nerd dusnt mean I can spell correctly
“tens”
“You can tell by the grammar, the spelling”
Lol! I am totally a nerd
Do you realise how dehumanising and ignorant you're being? You're just using stereotypes of your specific country to generalise everyone you disagree with.
Underestimating your "rivals" never goes well, as reality is often more complex than "we empathetic genuises they dumb psychos"
If anyone is basing their morals specifically just to go against their "rivals", I would seriously question that person's ethics, empathy, and reasoning skills. I'm absolutely serious about that. I would not trust that person in real life.
I would also have little sympathy for anyone who makes their own life worse just to get one in on their "rivals". You should always think how a new law might expand in 5-10 years, and not just focus on the current emotions.
If someone who you considered to be a truly terrible person got into power next, would you feel comfortable with those groundwork protections being seen as changeable? Would you be ok with that terrible person having that level of say over your life, knowing that they would get away with it?
If you hypothetically start messing with things like your country's ground-level human rights, it's likely to only be a matter of time until everyone is effected by it in unpleasant ways. Everyone thinks these changes will magically stop before it hits them, but I would strongly recommend for these people to brush up on history again. How has that gone in the past?
Politics shouldn't be some lame "gotcha" game because politics effect the real lives of many people. If anyone wants to do "gotcha" games, there are many places for those that won't possibly end with someone dead. That "someone" may be a stranger today, but it could be your child, spouse, or best friend next time.
Ah, I forgot you're probably American.
Then forget about what I said, you're ruled by a party with two colors, two letters and stupid followers
Not even close. Do you project this anger on complete strangers all the time?
I was referring to things like labor law changes. It's fine when it's someone else to a lot of people, but those people are silly to think that their jobs would be the one exclusion.
Not even close? Bro Biden is at most a little more center-leaning than Trump
I'm not in the US haha.
I don't vote based on parties or teams. I vote for the changes that I want to see.
lol when was it apolitical? As far back as 2010 it was getting mentioned on TV by liberal media for starting the Restoring Truthiness movement.
Your memory is awful, or you haven't been on it that long and are just making up its history to suit yourself. The earlier days of reddit's politics were mostly liberal. Although liberals were significantly more awful on social issues back then than they are today.
So you're saying stupid people like to lean left as to appear intelligent?
It's not the tech nerds funding the right wing; it's the venture capitalists
Those are CEOs.
There's a huge contingent of socialist/leftist techies. How do you think the open source movement happened? The most popular operating system for both servers and smartphones is given away to the world by a .org
I'm not saying there are no right-wing tech nerds, I'm saying that your argument that tech nerds are right wing is overly reductive.
You concede my point about FOSS but then try to muddy the waters from there by citing "their platforms started getting cracked down on and [their having] adopted cryptocurrency" to try to make your prior pidgeon-holing still work. Mind citing me a source for either of those claims? Neither of those seem to me to be issues plaguing the wider FOSS community, and as a participant I'm interested to hear about this news I've apparently missed.
Silicon Valley is not representative of tech nerds in general. It is, like Hollywood, a small area filled with desperate people trying to turn their talents into fame and fortune. Insinuating that tech nerds in general have the same culture as Silicon Valley is like insinuating that actors in general dress, act, and think like Hollywood actors do. It's ridiculous on its face.
All this to say it really sounds like you've built up a stereotype based on what you read in the news rather than by engaging with the actual community in question.
That used to be different, too
Ablism, real nice.
I am really not liking what you are throwing down and I am not seeing evidence of your multiple assertions. I am fairly leftwing, been an engineer for 15 years, I don't enjoy dealing with companies that are run by rightwingers but I am not going to do a purity test.
Stop with the discrimination against the high functioning autistic at least. I am sorry your glowing rectangle provider who let you unlock it but that is hardly our fault.
I wouldn't call them nerds because they're venture capitalists not nerds. Nerds implies some sort of technological or engineering skill or ability. Steve Jobs would qualify; not these two.
I think you dont know what luck is.
....I am not funding the right wing. I am building a better world one line of code and one circuit at a time.
Well first off software isn't just flowing rectangles connected to internet tubes. Many of us work in Industrial/Chemical/Civil control systems. Like me. There is a lot of thought that goes into making sure what you flush doesn't just pour on the ground. I made a decision early in my career that it was more important to me that we don't drown in our own waste vs making sure slack integrated well with outlook.
As for how I would go about changing stuff the answer is I do it everyday. Can do it a lot faster if the rest of you people stayed the hell out of my way.
Praise after attacking me means nothing.
Get off the wrong internet spaces and you'll start meeting the right kinds of nerds.
If it smells like shit everywhere you go, change your shoes.
Are those groups right wing, or just centrists that don't react well to people trying to push far left ideals in their spaces?
Just very, very rightist.
There's been tons of right-leaning Reddit alternatives before, but they always quickly devolved into Nazi spaces.
Lemmy was the first one that I'm aware of, which told Nazis to fuck off right from the beginning.
They just have their own instance and are defederated by some but not all, which is the best solution as it means they stick to their part of the fediverse instead of hijacking subs that weren't right leaning in the first place.
Yeah, right-wingers flock to "safe-spaces" as much as the far-left does. Lemmy doesn't have the tools to make a single community isolated like they could on Reddit, so they have to go to their own instances and end up defederated.
The main differences between left-wing and right-wing communities is that the right-wing ones quickly deteriorate towards a lot of hate related things. This leads them to being isolated from the rest. The left wingers are mostly tolerable and are just over zealous in preaching things like forcing everyone to use pronouns, lmao.
And everybody wins!
Gotta act like we're in kindergarten for them 🤷
That's the important bit. The creators of Lemmy needed to be hard leftist to keep it from being taken over by right wingers before it could become popular. Now it's big enough that the community isn't as leftist as the creators, but will still reject turning into another voat.
Unfettered echo chamber of right wing ideals will always devolve into fascist authoritarian and nazism
Surprise surprise, echo chambers devolve into more extreme versions of the original views
That's literally just how echo works
https://youtu.be/-MkRuV0aCcI
The new Lemmy anthem?
I'm sorry but what is considered to be "Nazi" in this platform? I've seen even socialists being called Nazis
I do not speak for this platform, but what I mean with Nazis here, are people who support the exclusion, inhumane treatment or exploitation of arbitrary groups of people, generally for the Nazi's (perceived) benefit and in spite of basic morals.
And what would exclusion, inhumane treatment and exploitation mean? It's key to clearly define the concepts before applying the label to someone, as if they stay undefined everyone can have the label applied
Right, so another policy from the early days of Lemmy that I thought was quite vital: No endless discussions on what precisely constitutes Nazi behaviour.
It's truly not hard to not be a Nazi. And if someone is even roughly in the ballpark of being a Nazi, the community as a whole just doesn't care to have that person's input here.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I do not think, it's relevant to clearly define these terms.
Then it's easy to fall to "Nazi is when I don't like"
If you’re worried people will think you’re a Nazi, maybe it’s not the other people you should be worried about.
What if you just have no idea of what my views are and I hate Nazis probably as much if not more as you do?
I’ve never had a productive conversation that started with “please define what counts as a Nazi for me”.
No argument there. But given that they mostly popup in the context of "I think all nazis..."-circlejerks, that's kinda to be expected.
progression tends not to be conservative
I'm afraid future will be conservative nevertheless due to the simple fact that they're the only ones making kids. I'm liberal myself but I don't have kids and will never have so my traits don't pass to the next generations. The conservative neighbours with 7 kids on the other hand..
Politics being genetic, of course.
What?
Politics aren't genetic.
But they ARE communal. Where you grow decides 90% of what you believe in.
It's actually why I disagree with the top comment chain that smarter means more left leaning. I think it's more that left leaning communities have better education standards and lead to smarter generations. Cause and effect reversed.
The ability to propagate the politics depends mightily on the success of the community though. It's sort of the other side of the 'brain drain' principle-- if people have to leave the community for educational or economic opportunity, they're probably not going to be able to reconstruct the same echo chambers.
Even when you see a preserved group within a larger population (think of Chinatowns and Little Italies), they're inherently getting a lot more cultural exchange than back in the home country.
A lot of the most self-destructive policies (neglecting education, running the environment into the ground, skate-where-the-puck-was-in-1972 economic policy) are just begging for decades of brain drain. The kids are going to leave because there's simply nothing there but the Gizzard Extraction Plant, and that got automated in 2032.
politics aren’t genetic, but they are obviously still inheritable
If you take in account that they're raised in their parents' household it's not ridiculous
Is that controversial? Look around..
I don't know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they're exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they're queer or go by a different name. But I also don't live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.
I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won't matter so much who their parents are.
Tell me you live in California without telling me you live in California
;)
Speaking of Reddit, here's an overused response that needs to be left behind with all the other unoriginal crap responses.
Only if we can kill the online radical left pipeline too. Too many tankies
The thing about that is, if they're ignorant, their kids will be ignorant too. And what that adds up to is just the same thing we've got: a large group of people who are subject to whatever momentary persuasion happens to reach them on any given day, and a political/ruling class that can work with that just fine, so they are taking steps to hamper education sufficiently that this can endure for an indeterminate amount of time before we all burn.
What those large populations do react to, is missing a meal or three. And so far, these aristocrats seem to understand that whatever else they try to pull, they must always service the fundamentals: bread and circuses.
See you at the coliseum.
But if that logic held wouldn't religion tend to increase instead of decrease?
Well by definition right?
Progressive outlook means your open to new ideas, exploring new territory, open to concept that challenge what you think and know, and gives you the ability to push boundaries, make new discoveries and try new things.
Conservative outlook on the other hand means you are content and safe with the familiar, doing things the way they have always been done because its tried and true, however this means if they feel unconfortable or threatened by ideas which are going to change the way the live and how things work which makes them dig their heels in and get defensive.
The progressive/conservative axis has nothing to do with the economical left/right, it was only forcefully merged in the USA because they have only two parties.
Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.
I wonder if there are demographics by IP already? TBH most of the threads I've been in have felt very US Centric. I also came with the great reddit migration too though.
On my feed, at least, I have my frontpage set to whatever the kbin equivalent to "all" is. I see lots of other languages beyond English populating - particularly German. The Lemmy instance I chose when I initially made my way to the fediverse operates out of China. They're chill over there.
I dunno. I think if you're only finding people discussing the US here, then you've probably accidentally pigeonholed yourself based on your own interests. The fediverse is diverse.
I mean yeah. Being only English speaking with gringo Spanish doesn't let me understand memes in German or any of the other various non-english speaking magazines lol.
English is the defacto lingua franca though. Particularly on the web. The diversity I've seen still heavily leans English, and western, which makes plenty of sense.
How do you get more languages?
Lemmy was initially created by communists.
It's still in the process of being created, and the communism is a bit less in your face now alongside there being other contributors to the code, but that's how it started.
Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric, and not because of Musk's leveraged buyout?
I would argue that US social media platforms are (now) right wing because of aggressive financial attacks meant to break up open social engagement, as this is bad for business and sociopaths looking to exploit people for profit. Reddit was left wing, until it was bought and sold. Same with Twitter.
However my comment was merely rejecting the idea that Lemmy is left wing because it is not US-centric. Lemmy was started by tankies, who say they're left wing and have some left wing ideologies, but really they're more authoritarian fascists, and fascism is in fact right wing. However as Lemmy grew it became apparent that this stance would impede its growth - particularly in western markets - so the main devs have tried to minimise their political views and keep the program neutral; now those views are primarily concentrated at lemmygrad.
Lemmy is not US-centric, but that's not why it's left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing. Lemmy is full of communism because it was started by communists/tankies.
If you think Marxist-leninists are fascists, or like fascists, then you don’t really understand what either of those words mean man.
The US is not inherently nor totally right wing, and Twitter was predominantly left wing until fairly recently. It might not have been full left wing socialist, but it was certainly left of centre.
Both parties in the US government are indeed right wing, but not everyone and everything in the US is right wing.
Communism is unfortunately a dirty word in the US, and socialism isn't far behind it. It doesn't help that there have been numerous foreign governments that call themselves communist that the US has labeled as enemies and fought against. As a result, an American labeling themselves communist is often ostracised. However, many people do in fact hold those ideals, albeit quietly and/or without naming it such.
An American politics forum is of course going to mirror American politics.
However Twitter and reddit as a whole were left wing. Not as in reading Marx, but in being for the good of everyone, with the core principle of serving the needs of the many rather than the desires of the few. They were also incredibly liberal. They've since been taken over by pseudo right wing authoritarian interests, gradually since around 2016.
Most of comments on popular communities boil down to “capitalism bad communism only solution”. Very in your face and everywhere
Yes, and I would say that's because of lemmy's communist/tankie roots. Which is a philosophy based in left wing ideology, however in practice it is more authoritarian fascism, which is right wing.
Is it? Just look at the comments here - the thought is about political left and right and yet almost everybody is talking about conservatives, that's a sure sign of Americans.
Plus I bet a good portion of the extreme left here are Americans disillusioned with their government, swinging hard into the other extreme.
Thank fuck for that.
Prove it, because I only see US-centric posts while browsing /all.
And no, America is not the US.
Your ALL is amplifying the highest engagement posts from the largest instances, particularly lemmy.world, which is definitely US-centric due to it being the largest open registration instance during the exodus... Go ahead and switch to your instances LOCAL and see what original content is being posted on sopuli.xyz. Quite a difference. https://sopuli.xyz/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&page=1&sort=Active
The thing is that I don't have those issues on Lemmy, because I usually browse by /local, both on this server and on beehaw. But I had to block lemmy.world with my user on Kbin due to that problem you were pointing out. And miraculously, I can see content from Kbin, lemmy.ml, blahaj, beehaw sopuli, and so on, because there is no way to browse only local content on Kbin as it can be done on Lemmy.
Nice!
Really? I've only seen US related stuff here
How many of your subscribed communities lie outside of lemmy.world? Very possible you've pigeonholed yourself. World almost certainly has a heavy US bias as it was the largest instance with open registration during the exodus.
Lemmy is made up of a ton of instances, many of which have quite limited US-related content. Posts from smaller instances may not rise to the top of World but they do elsewhere. Whereas World posts are going to rise across most instances, due to sheer volume. Where the posts come from is not as indicative of diversity as where the comments and votes come from.
Wait there are others apart from world?
Hundreds. Here's just a few places you can use for discovery.
Reality has a well known left leaning bias.
Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, "both sides" is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.
This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people are using Lemmy either because they prefer federated web platforms to centralized, which makes it antithetical to corporate interests, or because they're opposed to Reddit's API policy, which was a blatant move to squeeze more money out of their users. Either way, Lemmy's appeal is very anti-capitalist, and since opposition to capitalism is a generally left-wing philosophy, I can totally see why most Lemmy users would be left-wing.
This is my thought as well. Lemmy isn't what everyone is looking for. It's a free open source software project for creating a decentralized federated network of content aggregators. For most people that sentence doesn't make any sense nor do they really care. They just want a site they can doom scroll for hours.
The people who choose to use Lemmy are people who care about open source projects, care about decentralization of online platforms, or both. These types of people by their very nature support groups of people coming together collectively to do something big.
A collection of people working together towards a common goal without a strict hierarchy. You could say these people are community focused. Maybe we could call that communityism or something. Where people make rules as a group, or a union you could say. So yeah, no idea where the left lean is coming from.
"communityism" was somewhat the goal of reddit by having subreddits but still site owners has all the control over you. Lemmy is a free software and many free software projects interact with the userbase with such a community. Before this reddit thing, Free software enthusiasts used lemmy. Same goes with mastodon users before twitter was bought by elon. Now i can see when whatsapp does something shit(maybe) and people porting over to federated and decentralised E2EE matrix for instant messaging.(or maybe they just switch to telegram)
Honestly I came here just a few days ago, right after Reddit admins removed that r/place guillotine. I wouldn't say that I am very far to the left, but I do enjoy living in something close to a social democracy. I wouldn't be happy in a place like the United States for example.
Perfectly understandable
Maybe Lemmy was like this at the very start and is what helped Lemmy kick off, but I think a lot of people are looking for an alternative to Reddit. I think you're going to see a lot more people coming here for the content, not the politics of it all.
Hey, I'm on TV!
This has been my running theory as well. Wonderful to read all of the input on this thread.
Well, I don't oppose capitalism and here I am, trying to evade echo chambers and reading everyone's points
To be sure, you don't have to be anti-capitalist to want to use Lemmy. I'm just saying that it's very appealing to anti-capitalists.
It's in the name really.
And no, I witnessed this with the internet itself post 2000. Get off my lawn 😜
That's not really true. The right created Gab, and Ruqqus, and Voat. And they managed to hijack the U.S. legal system which the left can barely understand, let alone influence in any appreciable way.
A good chunk of the left (not the Dems, the actual left) understands the US legal system. It’s just that it’s hard to win in a pay-to-play system when everyone who can pay is against you.
I think you'll find a lot more leftists interested in platforms that are not powered solely by money and profit. Lemmy, much like Mastodon and other federated platforms, only need instances to run to be usable. It doesn't require millions of dollars to keep it afloat.
Generally speaking centrist and right wingers, especially in Western countries, tend to be very capitalist. They only understand the value in terms of money.
Anti-corporate platforms don't generally appeal to people that built and uphold the existing corporate status quo.
The first wave here were anticapitalists, anarchists or communists. The second wave are the most anti-corporate "liberals".
Maybe because on reddit you have an absolute fuck ton of right wing propaganda bots.
Probably because this migration may be related to the anti-corpo sentiment, which is more common in leftist circles
reddit had given into the "work the refs" strategy of the American right wing. That artificially elevated the voices of the right and suppressed the voices of the left. It's actually the case when you look at surveys and voting behaviors that right wing ideas are abysmally unpopular.
So when we're on an actually free platform that doesn't have an "engagement" based algorithm driving anger and division, with no one putting their thumb on the scale (or people who try getting defederated), "leftist" ideas come up.
The confusion reflected in the OP is the obvious outcome of the post Fairness Doctrine "both sides" media landscape. There really aren't as many right wing people as left wing. We are legion.
Lemmy is exactly as left leaning as Reddit was before the wave of propaganda and bots emboldened the right wing crazies to think they were the majority or welcome. I remember the falsely inflated upvotes that made those morons think they were the "silent majority".
Left and right are two stupid categories built up by propaganda, get them out of your head and start to think on your own terms
Left wingers: "The right is full of neo-fascists who want to exploit natural resources, subjugate minorities, project their own pedophilia habits onto us, roll back the clock on women's rights, and are willing to lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal to get it all done!"
Right wingers: "The left is ANNOYING!"
Federated sites overlap with leftist-adjacent interests. Software freedom, opposition to Facebook, weird illustrated porn, that sort of thing. Even if we're not leftists - we're the people who heard about Lemmy and went "oh, like Mastodon."
Many leftists were also familiar with Mastodon, because they saw Twitter as a harassment engine. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed results. Even before Elmo took over, Twitter was a continuous source of misery by design, if not on purpose. Now it's definitely on purpose. And it's been tilted against leftists, specifically, for a long damn while.
Some people are here because the mainstream options were a threat to their physical safety.
Meanwhile, right-wing assholes aren't leaving Twitter until they run out of victims. They just want an outgroup to yell at. They don't even like alternatives made for them specifically, because they can't stand each other, either. When they get tired of suffering their own company they'll migrate over to Threads. And then endlessly whine that Threads is "bias" against them, no matter how blatantly Zuck ignores their abuse and silences their victims.
Reddit was in a damningly similar situation, long before Spez decided to burn down every scrap of trust and goodwill. Some of us have been waiting on a better alternative for ten fucking years. There wasn't one. There still isn't. The bastards in control just made reddit itself worse, in ways that make even passive use feel like a failure and a betrayal. Spez could personally hunt me down and kick me in the groin, and it wouldn't leave me any less likely to waltz back in with a smile on my face. Dumb bastard made insane demands, killed the best interfaces, told us stupid lies, threw away our money, declared protest powerless, and threatened the people who do all of the fucking work on his empty box of a website... then says 'they'll come crawling back.' Nooo shit the first people out were principled self-organizing curmudgeons.
That aside:
People here reasoning from what they pretend "conservative" must mean are actively doing harm. Political conservatism obeys none of the other dictionary definitions. It's just a label. It's the label chosen by generations of influential public figures whose general philosophy is "Well someone has to be the king." That is their only constant, and it is a thought process baked into the human brain. It is our default. That's why dealing with it is such frustrating bullshit.
Isn't it obvious? Most of the recent wave of users to federated sites was caused by the enshittification, which means:
This is a problem caused by capitalism. Therefore many of us will be anti-capitalists. Many of us will value creating things that put people over profits.
When discussing the whole space of possible political views, there is no "both sides". There are seven zillion different axes on seven zillion different issues, some of them concrete ("should we forbid chemical companies from manufacturing neonicotinoid pesticides?") and some abstract ("what is the best relationship between individual creativity, the marketplace, and the state?").
"Both sides" (polarized duality) is partly an artifact of specific electoral systems. It can lead to people shooting at each other over tiny differences in doctrine — or, even more often, over which leader to follow this year.
Also: for example both US parties would be considered as a (far) right party here in Germany
Nah, one center-right (formerly centrist) and one far-right (formerly center-right). See discussion here and here.
In gist:
The Democrats have become the party of international free-trade capitalism with appropriate regulation, and with international policies that represent loyalty to the nation's traditional alliances.
The Republicans have become the local representative of the international far-right: the Putin-Trump-Erdogan-Orban-Netanyahu-etc. axis, focused on granting strongman leaders the ability to loot their states, purge opposition even among the elite (see DeSantis-Disney), betray the nation's traditional alliances (e.g. NATO) in favor of the far-right axis itself, and excite their "base" through hate & oppression of various minorities (e.g. immigrants, LGBTQ+).
The Democrats are the party of "keep the system working, but when you get a chance, try to make it work better for everyone."
The Republicans are the party of "tear the system down, and replace it with loyalty to our authority figures; keep the masses stupid and busy trampling on queers & foreigners."
Folks on the left may think that "the system" is shit, or that it can't be made to work better for everyone. But "keep the system running, it can be made okay" is pretty different from "tear the system down, all you need is loyalty to a strongman" which is what the far-right has to offer.
Yeah, I literally just said today's Democrats are a center-right party, and today's Republicans a far-right party. Back when the Republicans were neoliberal, they were center-right. But they're not anymore; they're aligned with Putin and the international neofascist tendency.
Oh! I was using "center-X" vs "far-X" as a distinction. The same distinction could be expressed maybe as "X" vs "radical-X" — the Democrats are "rightist" and the Republicans are "radical rightist" — much in the same way that we might say that social-democrats are "leftist" and revolutionary communists are "radical leftist".
A good non-radical leader can be one who is a good manager of the current system, who gently reforms it toward social goals. However, radicals would never accept such a milquetoast weakling; they want someone who will come in, smash everything, "drain the swamp", and implement the dictatorship of ... um ... someone.
It was because at the time of the exodus from Reddit somehow the conservatives (echoed on the sub by that name) felt that protests were ridiculous and they were on Reddit's side. So less likely to be jumping to an alternative.
Somehow the right has turned into not meeting any authoritarian boot they don't suddenly feel an urge to lick?
Hot take: you shouldn't subscribe to an ism.
You know what my political affiliation is? I'm an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.
Abortion? Sure.
What's the problem? Women are pregnant and they don't wanna be.
Well how'd they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.
That takes care of the input side of the equation. What's next? Oh yeah, they don't wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let's fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she's not in immediate danger. You can't force somebody to risk their life.
Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I'm sure of very little when it comes to God, but I'm sure it doesn't want preventable suffering.
What else? Families can't afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that's a different topic).
What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let's fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.
How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.
These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it's going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.
Does that make me a leftist?
Just to clarify...is /showerthoughts just a place to post an opinion?
I'll quote Drew Curtis of fark.com fame:
"Reality has a liberal bias."
Didn't Stephen Colbert coin that phrase? I thought he said it at the White House Correspondence Dinner or something.
Could be. Drew has also said it, that's where I first heard it so that's where I've attributed it.
I say this as a fan of Colbert.
Isn’t Drew a conservative?
That's disappointing if true. I loved Fark back in the day!
Looks like I'm behind the times. I checked his wikipedia page because I remembered he ran for Governor of Kentucky, but the page didn't list his political affiliation in that race. But in 2019, he ran for State Auditor as a Democrat. So perhaps he isn't!
Forget lemmy. Let's all go hang out at Fark again.
Eh....
¯\_ (ツ) _/¯In the grand scheme of things, both major US partys still primary subscribe to some version of liberalism at their core, although that's changing on both fronts.
People need to realize that in a world wide perspective, liberals are considered right wing for being capitalist. They're only left wing in the fucked up US political landscape that is so far skewed right.
So was reddit a long long time ago. I watched and felt it shift to the centre the heavily to the right. Conservatives destroy everything in the world. I don't doubt your favourite communitues will start heavily skewing right soon enough.
good
I see just as much if not more complaining about “tankies” as on subs like subredditdrama, it’s not that leftist
I once got dogpiled in r/lsd of all places for saying employers shouldn't be allowed to drug test for thc. I got swarmed for "being a druggie" in a sub about lsd.
I quit reddit for good not too long after that. What a fucking shithole.
Conservative trolls are by and large generally stupider than Liberals, and can't figure out how to onboard the Fediverse yet, which is great
It's funny how people think both this and states 4chan has always been rightwing since 2000s. The truth is your political bias says nothing about your intelligence. Stating otherwise just looks like boosting one's ego to me.
Also the reason you don't see right wing opinions on Lemmy is probably by and large because the right wing instances are being defederated by larger left-leaning Lemmy instances. Not saying if thats wrong, but that's just how it is.
What a very Reddited thing to say.
I'm liberal but yeah it's hilarious to see all these fucking idiots lumping together entire groups based on a political view.
Well said. Never underestimate someone’s ability to be stupid based upon their politics. It’s how we end up with absolute idiots in office.
I'm liberal. Non techy. The week of the blackout i googled 'Reddit alternatives', clicked a few buttons, made a name and password, and that was it. I don't get why so many fedders think it's too difficult for others. It's a hell of a lot easier than Pinterest. I still don't get that shit.
Same. It was effortless honestly.
In echo chambers, sure.
Makes sense that leftists would be more likely to reject the platform that is centralizing power
By definition, people with a conservative mindset are less open to change and new experience.
Federated social media is still in the new and formative stage. So it is not shocking it is still dominated by those more open to new experiences. But don't be surprised if that shifts if/when Lemmy/kbin reach critical mass.
The internet itself has followed a similar path.
Came here to say this. The most literal definition of the word conservative in the context of the party is "to conserve old ways". They are resistant to change by definition.
Leftists use change as a tool to try to make things better. They're naturally more likely to embrace something new.
Although I find it odd that conservatives today tend to have the most radicalized agenda out of all - yeah I mean there are some outright communists, but their numbers are like at most single-digit population percentages, whereas in the USA and UK and Russia and such they pretty much are the majority of people (hehe, in Russia the votes somehow outnumber the population even...:-P).
i.e. at one point they were conservative, and they still claim to be, even while wanting to change e.g. from a voting democracy to a totalitarian regime. But it changes every couple of years so it's really hard to keep up - e.g. in the USA GW Bush was an actual progressive (like, feed poor people), but then came the Tea Partiers, ousted by the Alt Right, which is no longer considered extreme enough and on and on it goes... (as the song continues: where it will stop, nobody knows:-).
All the right wingers went to Gab, Parler, Voat, Poal, Truth Social and other places.
It's not corporate based social with a mostly US based audience.
It was literally started because of political censorship of leftists on reddit.
I think it's because it's still smaller than Reddit.
This is just my opinion, but since modern right wing is reactionary they (by definition) require people to react to and rally against. In turn they need people to react to them for validation. Just look at any of the many right wing social media clones, without a "leftist" audience to perform for they inevitably get bored and leave, causing the site to slowly wither and die.
I think its more anarchist which skews moderately left for obvious reasons.
Edit: No mods, no masters ;)
What if I told you reddits antiwork was basically a glimpse of everything we're seeing on far left Lemmy. Lemmy just doesn't have a honeymoon stage for it.
Since I didn’t subscribe to any communities that are clearly all about politics, I haven’t really noticed many political views in my feed. Just like with Reddit, I’m here mostly for the science and technology.
I'm not surprised that people who reject a platform with centralized authority for shifting to "deliver value to shareholders" mode would be more leftist.
I'm still new here and still trying to figure out what the community is like.
I consider myself left of center on most (but not all) topics. I have a deep hatred for the GOP and everything they stand for, but I also am willing to nitpick the endless things that the Democrats do wrong. Ultimately I consider myself a pragmatist - in other words, you will never get your left-of-center policies enacted if the country as a whole is still leaning to the far right. Try to shift the country to your side first and THEN go for more progressive stuff. It absolutely doesn't work any other way. Trying to push for change too fast and too much will only get you a ton of blowback which will ultimately hurt your cause.
So having very briefly explained my overall stance even I was surprised by some of the comments I've seen - like far left stuff. But it's weird here because there are just simply not that many people, so even one or two comments in a lightly trafficked thread might make you think a site is heavily biased one way or another.
Also, please note that we have already entered US campaign season. Like the FBI has been warning us for literally years now (but few take seriously), there are indeed "bad actors" out there on various social media platforms (Reddit was notorious for this) trying to sway the US election toward Trump. They will do and say anything for it to happen, and that has been proven time and again. Like they fooled some gay groups a few years back and convinced them that Trump would support them, or back on Reddit reading Bernie-focused subs trying to convince progressives that, once again, Trump was the candidate who Sanders would prefer to win. Wild, and crazy stuff, but all it takes is a few percentage of people to buy into this mess to swing an election. Lemmy is not immune to these propaganda campaigns either.
The developers of Lemmy are the type who have jumped the shark when it comes to leftism.
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
Funny, just a few hours ago I was telling a friend that I noticed the opposite. This conversation started because while r/antiwork and r/work_reform had mostly incompatible ideologies, with antiwork being more radical, Lemmy suggested to me a community titled "Antiwork/Work reform" which is noticeably more status quo compacent. Additionally, the rate of posts going "capitalism isn't that bad, actually" and "fuck tankies" in my TL is higher than in Reddit.
I think this has to do with the amount of active users. If, say, 2% of active users are very vocal about abolishing wage slavery, if there are like 1000 users, that 2% is just 20 people, which wouldn't make a very active community, whereas if it's 100 000 users, then that makes 2000 people who can already make a sort of "echo chamber" where they can openly and actively discuss their ideas.
Also, not to forget that Reddit, like all mass social media, has algorithms meant to maximize your session lengths and that usually involves exposing you to more extremist ideas, both left and right.
IDK, seems like European right wing is considered left wing in USA.
So for most Americans, most Europeans are left wing.
Maybe lemmy has more Europeans?
Unfortunately the chuds have started pouring in, because we all know those people cant just let people enjoy themselves if it means they're not getting attention.
Post 2016, the worldnews/geopolitics subs that I follow on reddit have become nonstop sinophobic and anti-China hate subs. Prior to 2016, there were a lot of complaining about Chinese tourists and kids that shit on the streets, but after Trump got elected the cold war rhetoric went into full effect.
This got worse during and after Covid19, especially in America, Canada, and parts of Europe.
The cold war propagandizing is just so incredibly prevalent on reddit. It's like people forgot what the cultural/business relationship between the US and China looked like prior to 2016.
See, my worry was Mastadon's Fascist rep. Lemmy's left twist is no sweat of my back.
It’s made by Communists
I don't mind. Fewer conservatives means higher quality and higher general IQ.
Mastodon managed to fight off bigots and nazis very successfully, maybe they do have enough brain cells to remember something I guess.
Well it small anr mostly made up of young techies. So yeah a left leaning bunch.
I am not American so I don't care about your left winged ideas.
ITT: left = progressive and right = conservative
The ultraconservatives already left for gab and truth social. There are some conservative instances and a few nazi ones as well, but the aforementioned two scooped up most of right wingers willing to jump ship.
I've got a bad news for you, they have their own Lemmy instance.
I am not that leftist.
I think there's a wide range of people on Lemmy too but the extreme right and extreme left have ended up on instances that have been defederated from the main group. So what you're seeing are the sensible, rational people, and in America such people are considered left wing I guess 😉
I feel like there's a lot more queer focused instances available. Tbh that would most likely make it easier for queer people, and those more accepting of them, to easily and comfortably move to an instance.
ALSO, makes it that much easier to get banned if you're even slightly conservative imo. Imo we won't see many conservatives until we get a Steven Crowder or Daily Wire Instance.
Just speculating here. And building off some half-remembered On The Media pieces. But as (for any number of reasons) the faith in a social platform collapses (and often the safeguards against toxic stuff go down too, a la Twitter), people with a low tolerance for that shit are likeliest to bail and the 'call people the N word on Xbox' folks are likeliest to stay behind. People who could watch what Reddit did and stay behind aren't bad, I'm not saying that, but their tolerance for unethical stuff is way higher than the tolerance of those who decided to find a new home. Self-selection, ya know.
It is driven entirely by the moderators. r/Canada got taken over by alt-right moderators which attracted alt-right redditors.
It's a more techy community since that tends to be early adopters. They tend to lean pretty heavy left and are more informed. You still have the techys with anime profile pics and are 4chan/incel that are right wing though. They get defederated really quick though.
Curiosity, so just because I have an anime profile picture. You suddenly consider me an “incel” and a 4chan?
Sounds mean man. I just really like anime, never been an incel and never used 4chan.
I'm 4chan and I'm a scary website hiding in ur bushes waitin
Well I strongly disagree with most of the communists so I just avoid lemmy.ml
Fortunately, this happened mostly on political-related topics
You're absolutely clowning if you think you have the breadth of data available to confidently make such an assessment. This is, ironically, an incredibly Reddit moment.
I wonder how much of that on Reddit is just bots and shills, ie corporations paying to create and upvote posts and comments that support their agenda
I think everything West is leftish at the moment.
The Soviet Union went alt right, what could be more natural for the west to go left?
I'm Gen X, it's all a bit too weird for me.
Yup it is. There are a lot of communist techie people I guess. I still generally state my political opinions here though. Let them be downvoted.
I'm more right leaning and I use this website. I just hate Reddit and it's blatant censorship. Down with the tryants.
wweeew replies to absolutely nothing?
The few conservative communities are nearly empty. But I find Lemmy to be less political overall than Reddit.
I posted some memes about communism, you should see the comments in there
Yeah, it hasn't been overrun by Russian troll farms and AI yet like reddit and facebook
Well, there's a self-proclaimed Left which, though probably having started out with good intentions, is all about "lets classify people on visible things they were born with and then presume things about them purelly on their "classification" and treat them differently".
If this sounds strangelly like the far-right thinking that's because it is kinda derivative: the same architecture of deeming individuals as worthy/unworthy likely-good/likely-bad because they were born with certain characteristics as the far-right is used, and then the categories are swapped and the whole thing is called "being progressive" as if it was only unfair to judge and treat people because of their genetic makeup if done in one direction but not in a different one.
Then there is the tankie Left, which also started with good intentions but seem to have confuse the recipe-book of slogans and the Party über alles discipline invented in the late 19th century and early 20th century by middle class intellectuals to inspired the near-illiterate masses of the time to create an utopian leftwing world (which didn't work) with the actual thinking Principles and Intentions from which the rules were made. Because these people follow the recipes without examining the against the principles and ideals and in contexts which are very different of the ones for which those rules were created, you went up with ridiculous ideas directly opposed to "the greatest good for the greatest number" principle like supporting Putin's invasion.
The followers of such "Lefts" hate it when their faith-like beliefs are examined against the actual Principles of Equality and "the greatest good for the greatest numbers" and found often to be directly opposing them, just like when you grab some religious book or other and point out the inconsistencies in it: there is no greater hate than that of the faithfull who sees the basis of their Identity be examined under the cruel light of logic and found to be mainly bollocks.
Or in other words, I think the Left here is a lot more the product of thinking things through and concluding that it would be a lot better to live in a World with less poverty, more equality and were a few did not amass more power than whole countries thanks to their wealth, and continuing to actually continue to think things through when face with slogans from the tribalist flag waving slogan parroting and social-circle-jerk groups which call themselves "Left" and which are the leftovers from Marxism in the XXI Century and the Neoliberal-inspired "in the greed is good context, lets pursue personal-upside maximization as an 'Identity' group instead of individually so that we can claim we're lefties".
PS: If it sounds I'm raging against the Left here, that just because I find the pettyness and self-serving sociopathy of the modern Right to be self-evident. I actually don't think you can be a true leftwinger genuinelly fighting for the greater good if you just blindly follow slogans and tribes. Funilly enough it also means I can actually respect a genuine old-style conservative, even whilst wholly disagreeing with him or her.
I disagree. As a conservative I’ve only been banned from one sublemmy for my political alignment.
On reddit I got banned from space after space when my politics became known. Here I’m allowed to exist, which means this place is way less leftist than reddit.
Let’s all log on to truth social and have the same discussion. Imagine how that would turn out.
Yeah, Reddit leans boringly mildly progressive, Lemmy leans communist.
Sadly we've got the smug 'new' atheists of the old sort on here too.
They're not committed to progress, only condemning others as backwards while (generally) supporting punitive policies domestically and abroad.
Agreed. It's sad. I'd prefer to have a good balance but you get what you get.
Lemmy is more centrist than Reddit
(other than the usual issues) Reddit was hated by the general populace because it was too right wing and it was hated by right-wingers for not being right wing enough
Lemmy is still new and hasn’t gained a large population as of yet, but it’s already still far more representative than Reddit ever was
This is it. The US has gone so far right that centrism seems left wing. I have been generally comfortable with the tone of the conversation in the fediverse. Occasionally, I'd like to pull the conversations further left. I've been peeved or mildly disappointed, but never actually enraged or flabbergasted. Conversations have been pleasant and reasonable, even when I disagree with what's being said. It's been pleasant.
Yeah I gotta disagree with you on that. Reddit is more representative simply due to the fact that it's larger. Once Lemmy grows it'll become more diverse and therefore more representative of the general population.
Centrism is the only fallacy I call out. Its completely meaningless even with context
More centrist???
Lemmy is like a boiling pot of full-on tankie authoritarians. Reddit is only slightly less left than that but you still get autobanned from major subs for simply commenting somewhere deemed right-wing.
This reads like you never even visited Reddit.
This reads like you never visited any instance other than lemmygrad.ml.
They literally can’t shitjustworks blocks lemmygrad
I mean, good point actually. It’s very possible the issue is the instance I’m logged into. I switched around the time lemmy.world was hacked. But .world honestly felt the same as sh.itjust.works. Never fails that I login and the very first thing I see is some communist circlejerk with tons of upvotes.
I'm on .world and I very rarely see anything communism-related. But I mostly browse Subscribed rather than Local or All.
I browse all on lemmy.world and in a few days when I scroll to the third page or so there's suddenly a bunch of lemmygrad stuff. But it used to be every day and at the bottom of the first page.
Certainly something to do with the amount of content available in general.
I have seen way, way more people crying about tankies than I have seen people advocating for Stalinism.
Whenever I see a political thread here, it seems like the comment section is dominated by the most extreme of the left, with takes like "All right wingers are part of the MAGA crowd and advocating genocide" and "The right wing is weak, stupid, evil, and dangerous so we need to shut it down."
As a centrist (not a rightist,) I don't like this. We need rational discourse, not extremism and hate. Actually talk with reasonable people from outside your political circle please. (Reasonable people, not the right wing extremists that seem to be the only right-wingers y'all hear about.) Remember when we actually had a class struggle that made the people in power nervous instead of identity politics that get the working class fighting each other?
But then, most of the places I talk in are pretty politically left-leaning, so I guess being a centrist does make me look right-wing to a lot of people. I'm rarely seen pushing back against right-wing ideas, but that's because I rarely see right-wing ideas being presented (outside of leftists pointing at rightist ridiculousness) to push back against. That probably has to do with the internet as a whole leaning more left than right.
Considering I just got “permanently suspended” for making a bad joke on WTF, no appeal possible (nobody replies), Lemmy seems more fair. As getting banned for the entire site, so to speak, is really unlikely if not impractical versus Reddit where if one mod doesn’t like you, if left leaning (and they are all left wing fascists basically) you are F’ed.
Reddit is super left wing, Lemmy is too small (now) to compare or make any comparison to which is “worse”, so it can only be better right now.
I kind of disagree. From a European perspective, both American left and American right are just far right totalitarian genocidal lunatics.
But there are more people here who don't push their crazy political agendas, that's true.
I know, I got a 3 day ban for a silly reason from reddit. I figured it was a good time to make the move to Lemmy, it's even more leftist activist over here. Like tenfold. It's insane. I cang believe I'm saying this, but I'm looking forward to getting back to the standard low level leftist nutters.
Why can't we have nice things darnit.
I am a Nonist and hate reddit because of the cry baby and power tripping mods. Politics and political leaning doesn't exist in my internet life. For my old ass the internet is another world.
I've observed the opposite, but left it's a broad paintbrush, best to use six or nine point political axes.
Lemmy seems to get a lot more diverse comments, I see less uniform anti capitalism sentiment for example, lots of folks seem to be more Libertarian than Auth Left for example.
I've also seen a lot more pro free speech people, and dissenting opinions too, so since the current left trends towards limiting free speech, this also feels different than Reddit.
This is my observations, it may not be true, but it's my impression.
I'm not sure if you're talking about the left on a world wide scale, but in America I really don't think it's fair to say that the left is the side limiting free speech. Sure, they may paint the use of certain words as distasteful, but that's basically the extent. Leftists don't even tend to get the law involved outside of defining what may or may not be hate speech.
On the other side of the aisle, the right wing party is promoting book bans and firing teachers they disagree with. Several states have a version of the "don't say gay" bill that literally prohibits teachers from explaining why one student has two dads, and a similar bill that prohibits institutions from simply acknowledging a kid's preferred name. Texas and Florida are defunding colleges with curriculums they as a party don't like. Louisiana (along with a few other states) passed a bill requiring you to prove who you are with state ID before you can view something they deem inappropriate.
All of those things are actual examples of infringing the concept of free speech. Does the left do anything remotely like those things?
It's the conservatives that ban books, not the left of the right. It's the same in the USA, but for example we have a very conservative communist party (obviously - they want to return to what they think were good old days, but like the GOP across the pond) and a progressive right-wing pirate party that's largely made up of rich young techies, so leaning right economically but currently pushing marihuana legalisation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Lemmy started off as much more left-wing, to the extent that it had a hard-coded slur filter that only recently was made something configurable. The choice of .ml has been proposed as being chosen because it represents "Marxist Leninist" (and I don't know if that's true or not), but many of the original instances were highly censored.
That being said, I've been both left and right and presently I'm more right wing, and a lot of the time I write up some big screed in response to something dumb or evil and then just hit "close tab" because when I'm on someone else's instance I want to be a good houseguest and not cause trouble.
Such people have been surrounded by an echo chamber for years and years, they never hear any viewpoints other than what the establishment feeds them, and I don't really want to waste my time fighting against the propaganda power of multiple nation-state coalitions.
(I did make the mistake of accidentally saying what I thought a while back, and now I've got a bunch of smug idiots on my case)
I figure it's only a matter of time until the rest of the fediverse starts to arrive (I've heard through the grapevine some other instances considering starting up their own lemmy instances), and then things will be a lot more balanced.
Yeah that good ol' leftist establishment, telling them libruls what they want to hear.
No part of the establishment likes actual liberals.
Ah yes, the establishment that wants to (checks notes) abolish all governments and class hierarchy. How very establishment of them.
ok to but to be fair, the creator of Lemmy is a tankie. not "anyone I don't like is a tankie" tankie, but "genuinely supports the Soviet Union and CCP" tankie.
Oh yeah, I'm aware. I was more responding with the particular left-wing viewpoints that were fed to me by the establishment.
The establishment wants to:
This can be done by lying to both the left and the right, because that's why they have rooms full of the smartest people on earth crafting narrative framing to let them do the above while pretending they're doing something else, and using overwhelming power to implement their schemes.
You might not like it, but COVID showed exactly what everyone's actual attitudes were. Apparently the left loves bureaucrats, the biggest most authoritarian governments in the history of the world paid for by selling out future generations, and multinational drug companies. Swing and a miss.
Now don't get me wrong, the right is fucked too. Their narrative was the establishment narrative very recently, and even now as views start to change I can already see it that some of the old right-wing establishment types think their "side" is getting a toehold and they stand up and start trying to do the exact same thing just using their narratives. After 9/11 we got to see the exact same bullshit but instead of going after a virus it was going after "terrorism".
Isn't it funny that no matter which "side" you choose, they want to control your life more and spend more money on Government that magically seems to find it into the pockets of the ultra-rich buddies of whoever that part of the establishment happens to be?
Of course, there's an anti-establishment left and an anti-establishment right, and while they might not agree on what the final destination might be, there's a lot of common ground to be found as well (and common attacks from the mass establishment and their pawns on both sides of the aisle)
I don't know where to put this, so I'll just reply to you. Maybe we should trust the German when it comes to these matters. Like when my German professor warned my classmate not to go to school in Florida because it's fascist. Trust the German.
If there's one thing modern history tells us, it's that we should be wary of Germans and Austrians, not that we should trust them.
You have a lot more faith in The Powers That Be than I do. They're not nearly that smart, unified, or forward-thinking.
I'm afraid that having seen what I've seen, the worst thing you can do is underestimate the powers that be. It doesn't matter if they're smart or unified or forward thinking, it's an evolutionary process where the ones who do the right things get more power, and the ones who do anything but don't.
Sure, don't underestimate them, but don't overestimate them either. They're still human, with all of the flaws that that entails. They're also subject to their own information bubbles, which get pretty bad when one is running a large organization.
That's the scariest part about it.
I've been writing a lot lately about the Brahmins in India and the Song dynasty in China, both around the 9th century. The Brahmins were getting their shit pushed in by the Muslims from the northeast, and they thought all they needed to do was keep on building nicer temples and the gods would grant them victory. The Song lost half their empire to the Jin in the north while composing poetry about how much they'd like to win at war, and a common saying of the time was "just as good iron isn't used for nails, good men don't go into the military". In the final days of the western Roman empire, the established powers were fighting in the capital as if nothing was happening just as armies were descending on the city. The Greek Playwright Aristophanes wrote satires speaking of the wars that would ultimately mark the end of Athenian Greece as it was during its peak, and the powers that be watched the plays, laughed, and changed nothing. The kings of Babylon controlled the entirety of the known world of the era. The whims of those kings were so important that they're immortalized in 3 of the largest religions on earth, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Despite that, the dynasties of Babylon were often defeated and replaced, and ultimately Babylon was extinguished from history, its land taken up by new regimes.
So the people entrenched into positions of power are in fact humans, and they are fallible, and so not only does their power grow over time (at least it has consistently for decades), but increasing power does not mean increasing competence (at least not at anything other than acquiring more power).
Figures of legend such as the Roman statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus or the first US President George Washington are the center of stories that speak of civic virtue such that they come in and help deal with a crisis, and importantly relinquish power afterwards. It's not easy to have that kind of power and give it up because it's the right thing to do. They're legendary figures because it's uncommon to give up absolute power.
The one thing I'm hopeful for is related to the upcoming population collapse. The baby boomers are the largest generation in history, and they had the millennials, the second largest generation in history. Gen X and the Millennials and the zoomers have historically infinitesimal birth rates, far less than replacement in most of the world. World population projections are showing the world population peaking around 10 billion and then shrinking. In most western countries, that could mean a drop as much of 50% of population. Historically speaking, a growing population increases the size of the pie economically speaking, but having lots of people means the value of each person is less, and so periods of growing population tend to ultimately result in lower quality of life for individuals, which I think we've seen in the past couple generations after the boomers. In the next couple generations as the population falls, the value of individuals will rise, and I think that'll result in power being relinquished by the elites and the establishment and given back to the people, as has happened in previous cycles of the sort. The absolute economy is likely to shrink, but the quality of life for the average person is likely to grow. The incredible power of the individual baby boomers after the population decline of the world wars is one example, but the reduced power or feudalism and the rise of liberalism after the black death is another example.
The past is not the future, and so what will happen hasn't yet been set in stone. While population decline has in the past led to improvements in the common man's lot, we're living in an era where technology allows for unprecedented control over the individual as well. As well, an established elite may take a crisis like population decline as an excuse to take greater control as well. All this means in my view that we need to be working hard to raise up future generations to be people worthy of having individual power and wise enough to reach out for it. "History is written by those who show up"
Anyway, way too much on the topic, but I've been thinking ahead a lot lately.
lmfao
Doesn't that make it an eChO cHaMbEr or something(?) Like, I don't mind people I disagree with being within the same community I frequent, I just disagree within good boy guidelines. :)