Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
I find the limited political knowledge a far bigger concern. The US has taken perfectly acceptable words and butchered them: liberal, libertarian, conservative, left, fascist, socialist etc mean different things inside the US to what they mean everywhere else. I reckon US political language hasn’t butchered itself - there’s a plan in there somewhere.
Agreed but I want to push you to go further: it’s not just politics that has been so influenced.
Even Google searches - once world-renowned for their recall and precision and overall helpfulness, now are shit. Reddit as well. Twitter… well, apparently was always a hellhole? :-P YouTube was not though - until it was bought by Google.
Enshittification destroys all that it touches. Even/especially governments. Though the same happened to Rome, so many thousands of years ago. And to Russia too, more recently, despite it ostensibly calling itself “communist”/leftist.
I do think that there was a plan to help move it along, but I also think that it might have been an inevitable consequence of (more or less) entirely unfettered capitalism, and that those two worked together to destroy a nation that once was struggling far less than it seems to be doing lately?
Weakness, If you’re here for anything other than the narrow view.
Even if you’re here for the the narrow view take a moment and consider if an echo chamber is good for you.
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
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
“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).
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Not everywhere though - e.g. lemm.ee tries to keep things open, at least on the instance level, and the anarchist servers (chiefly lemmy.dbzer0.com but iirc slrpnk.net as well) very much do not remove things that many people would expect them to if they had been more driven by a more authoritarian mindset.
In our new community !AskUSA@discuss.online for instance, I very much hope that we can remove comments that attempt such a shouting-down as would make people feel unwelcomed to be there - regardless of their political affiliation (so long as the people being shouted down do not DESERVE it for trolling, e.g. “my reason for helping the less fortunate than myself is my belief in the Christian God who guides all my ways” is absolutely fine but “your gawd is shit and u r too, l0s3r” is not).
For me, it’s neither strength nor weakness. I’m a boring old fart, I’m not here for politics.
I mostly here not for politics too… yet everywhere I look in Lemmy, it’s all politics, kinda annoying
I think it’s primarily, but not exclusively, a strength. “We need more right-wing posters” is not something I’ve ever thought of Lemmy.
Preemptively let me say that I agree, although there is an entire spectrum along which people can hold their beliefs, and then on top of that there is the strength with which they hold them that can vary a lot - including some who are apolitical entirely as far as they themselves may be aware.
Also, recalling the phrase “first they came for…” - remember that WE are the “right-wingers”, from the perspective of instances such as lemmygrad.ml, lemmy.ml, and hexbear.net. I am not saying that Truth is subjective, but the definitions of those particular terms most definitely are.
So if they exclude us, and then we exclude “centrists”, who themselves exclude people to either side of them… ultimately what does that make us - conservatives ourselves, chasing some kind of ideological “purity”?
Let’s get back to me agreeing with you now, but clarifying why: we MUST be intolerant to those who are intolerant of others. However, to those who ARE tolerant… shouldn’t we be as tolerant to them as we can stand to be? As in, interact with them civilly even if we do not fully agree with everything they say?
So leftist vs. right(-ist?), I don’t care what someone is, so much as I care whether they are tolerant of others. BUT NOT TO THE INTOLERANT (i.e. not the Alt-Right, and also not the Alt-Left that I see hanging out on various Lemmy instances).
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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.
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
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.
Mixed opinion these days often reads more like outright polarization vs balanced discussions.
I just wish the top posts on the meme pages were more than just an anti-capitalist caption and a vaguely related image.
I block most of thé memes community, the only ones remaining being !lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !bikinibottomtwitter@lemmy.world
Omg !tenforward@lemmy.world is also amazing, check it out! Also there’s Risa and the Star Wars memes etc. - there are so many fantastic memes communities available:-).
Separately, you may be interested to know that the entire “vibe” of Lemmy has changed in the last two weeks. Very seriously, check out an instance where you are not logged in and just take a peek at what the most popular content is lately. I’m not suggesting that you wallow in it but you should know what’s going on lately bc it affects the future of us all.
I’m not familiar with Star Trek, so I usually don’t get those memes
the entire “vibe” of Lemmy has changed in the last two weeks.
The entire USA vibe has changed in the last two weeks, from what we can see on every social media. What happened is an important historical events, it has repercussions on all aspects of USA society
True, and btw I don’t mean that there is not good/great reasons for such even - people are DYING.
I was just pushing that thought since we were initially responding to:
I just wish the top posts on the meme pages were more than just an anti-capitalist caption and a vaguely related image.
It’s creating an environment where people who can’t handle the cultural shifts (e.g. not everyone is neurotypical) are having to heavily curate their experiences.
It’s creating an environment where people who can’t handle the cultural shifts (e.g. not everyone is neurotypical) are having to heavily curate their experiences.
Non Americans already had to curate their experience for weeks before and during the US presidential election
I think it’s a strength because I don’t want to chat with fascists, thanks
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.
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.
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.
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.
