I know the real answer is reddit but I really don’t want to go back now that I’ve already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn’t. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I’m pretty much ready to move on. I just don’t know where else to go.
If you’re after moderate right flavored discussion I sympathize but you’ll have trouble finding it as the broader right has been consumed by alt right and far right. If your point is that those viewpoints specifically are missing from Lemmy then I’d say it’s a good riddance. I just wish Lemmy was as hard on some immature leftie takes.
I’m a pretty “left-winged” European, but I see the lack of a “moderate right” or “conservative” alternative as a real problem! Here on Lemmy and in the real world as well. When there is no place for them, people will feel the need to align with the far-right to at least have some points in common with others. And the only one who profits from this is the far-right. It’s important to have a mixed political Landscape, so Ideas can be exchanged, topics can be discussed in a meaningful way, and we don’t end up in an echo chamber.
I agree but I also think it’s up to them to build that space.
If your a classical conservative and believe in personal and fiscal responsibility, then it’s your job to create or contribute to a space for this.
I think this is the problem, those people let the crazies in and then turn around and blame the victim.
Man, I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a nail get hit so hard right on the head but I’m coming up empty.
I’ve skimmed some of your comments, and honestly it looks like you’re already getting a diverse experience considering your political and ideological way of thinking. That’s not a condemnation, but a quick observation.
The thing is that people actually don’t know my politics or ideologies. They think they do and then reply accordingly.
Then express yourself to let them know what you stand for, and what do you expect from them.
But why? What is being said is what matters, not whose saying it.
“Israel is killing innocent Palestinian civilians by the tens of thousands” is a factual statement and will get upvoted because it signals that I’m on the correct side of the issue.
“Hamas is indiscriminately targeting Israeli civilians while using their own population as human shields” is also an factual statement but will get you downvoted because it sounds like the kind of noises the “others” would make.
In most topics like this it’s less about wether what you’re saying is true or not but rather about who we think you are based on what you’re saying. Prefacing every message with “I’m really against what these people are doing and I think person X really is a huge asshole but…” is not something I’m interested in doing.
Then what in the hell do you want?
I thought you want diverse opinions and nuanced debate, but when you want to just engage in opposing comments and not prefacing statements with ‘I understand X, but wanna discuss Y here’, the result is just trolling, detrimental to your proposed goals.
I have yet to understand what exactly do you want, or what is missing here.
I think I see the problem. You left Reddit, but Reddit didn’t leave you.
What I mean by this is that you care more about the responses of internet strangers than you do having a genuine a discussion. As long as you’re being truthful, honest, and giving good faith arguments, then who cares if people downvote you or call you names. You’ve done your job. You’ve led that proverbial horse to water. You can’t make them drink. Let it go, and love on.
Of course we’re going to form an opinion of you based on what you say. It’s all we have. If you don’t like the opinion being formed, then give us more insight to who you genuinely are so we can change our minds. And before you say it doesn’t matter, it obviously does or you wouldn’t be here making the argument you’re making. Be honest with yourself.
you care more about the responses of internet strangers than you do having a genuine a discussion
No, it’s the exact opposite. I long for the week long debates I used to have with complete strangers about some insignificant philosophical theory somewhere deep inside a thread that’s gone inactive a long time ago and it’s just the two of us there.
About post scores I don’t care because I have them hidden anyway. I do admit though that it does get frustrating when I try to make sense of something but the damn horse just refuses to drink.
Regarding the prefacing; it probably won’t even work because people will read it as a “I’m not racist, but” kind of statement.
Regarding the problem you’re stating; I’ve quickly after joining installed a tampermonkey script which allows me to hover over the name of an instance, magazine or user and display a small context menu where I can block them. Blocking certain magazines made all the difference for me.
is also an factual statement but will get you downvoted because it sounds like the kind of noises the “others” would make.
That’s because people don’t say things just randomly, they usually have a point or a conclusion they are trying to get to. When someone sees something like that, they don’t downvote because it’s not factual, but because of the implied point.
Your implied point here is that both sides are equally at fault. You didn’t say that and I would bet you don’t think that, but that’s not how your comment reads.
It’s similar to the BLM and the all lives matter response. Yes that is factually correct, but saying it in this context and time implies less or no attention should be given to the topic at hand.
“sir this is a picture of a cat, why are you bringing the middle east into it”
We can only know what you show us. The rest we have to fill in based on what you’ve said in the past. That’s how this stuff works. It’s a back and forth. For it to work, you actually have to contribute.
My every single post would be a wall of text if I was to exhaust every possible misunderstanding and make my position absolutely clear and people would still attack me for a stance I don’t hold. My post entire history is there available for anyone to read - that’s the best I can do.
👌👌👌👌👌👌💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯
Personally, I’ve found a fairly wide breadth of viewpoints on Lemmy. Perhaps what you’re experiencing is the stress that diversity brings? It’s a well-known effect of engaging with different viewpoints.
As my counselor keeps trying to get me to do: sit with your discomfort for a few minutes before reacting or taking any action. Think about your feelings and where they’re coming from.
Social science research suggests that people tend to react with anger and irritation when confronted about their biases—particularly when those biases are accurately labeled as such. Although such interactions may be unpleasant, they also tend to lead to behavioral change, and so should be welcomed as opportunities for growth. Bias is a measurable condition, but it is not a permanent one, on either the individual or the organizational level. By acknowledging it we can counter it, expanding our pool of potential collaborators and improving financial performance.
There’s some irony to how good thread this turned out to be
Lemmy is already diverse, you just gotta find the right instance, or multiple instances! The whole point of joining your platform to the federation is for visibility and control
I don’t quite see how the choise of instance affects much of anything except for which other instances you’re able to interact with.
Yeah it’s hard to say. Fark? HackerNews? Bluesky? Tildes? You’ll just have to try a bunch and see what catches on with you. You’re welcome to try Lemmy again anytime, so who’s to stop you from a break from it?
I’ve been saying for a year, Lemmy and the Fediverse is specifically designed to be like a series of echochambers, since the community, the moderation and local userbase are designed all around that. Ultimately, you have the freedom to choose who and what to allow and block yourself.
Personally I think you are subjecting yourself to grief by interacting with hexbear and lemmygrad but I’m not here to scold or police what you choose to do.
I think one major difference that can make your experience negative is that posts on Reddit can’t show below zero, and people here use the downvote button more often because they have strong feelings on a topic. In my experience on controversial topics you would have various threads where both sides of an argument receive downvotes which is a sign there are diverse perspectives. You just have to live with and not be bothered by a negative score, it means nothing. Some examples:
- Israel vs. Palestine narratives (Lemmy overall leans a little more toward Palestine but I’ve seen either get downvoted depending on community over the months)
- pro-Biden vs anti-Biden (this is a very controversial one and sure some of it is anti-American propaganda and “both sides are the same”-type of sealioning, still both perspectives get downvoted).
- Ukraine (this one is easy, you’re either on a community under .ml moderation or not, which determines the overall narrative)
This is all to say that the best way to get ‘diverse’ opinions on Lemmy is to hop around various communities, brace yourself for downvotes and just try to be genuine about it. For non-controversial content we all gotta do our part, speaking of which I haven’t posted much OC lately so I’ll get onto that soon in a couple days.
I keep post scores hidden so getting downvoted isn’t much of an issue for me because I won’t know unless I go out of my way to check.
The main issue for me is that I can reliably guess what kind of replies certain topics get and what is popular and what is unpopular. It’s kind of like having a friend who never says or does anything that surprises you. Why even bother asking for their opinion when you already know what they’re going to say.
I can understand what you mean. The prevailing narratives tend to be America bad, cars bad, capitalism bad, Linux good, on and on. But in the vein of how you assert that you don’t want people to assume what you believe, going into a community painting users with a broad brush is going to fill the gap with your pre-conceived biases, and that isn’t conducive to good discussion. I say give it a chance, even someone that writes along the lines of what you expect may still have a tiny sliver of something that surprises you. I look at some of the more notorious users like FlyingSquid, PugJesus, PP_BOY etc. and I’ve agreed with them and disagreed with them on various topics, even if they were in line with ‘the narrative’. Other users I attempt to converse and sometimes it works out while other times I have to stop at the 3rd reply.
I’m making an effort to be better, trying to curb the ratio of responses I do that have only memes and add more original thoughts or detailed opinions to my newer comments.
I keep post scores hidden so getting downvoted isn’t much of an issue for me because I won’t know unless I go out of my way to check.
On some conversations you might be better off seeing the score. Some people will agree in terms of a vote but aren’t going to back you up in the comments. I’ve had a few conversations where the comments are demoralizing and the score shows me I’m reaching at least some people (or vise versa).
Also, something I learned from Twitter and Reddit after engaging with people too much … sometimes the right answer is just to use the block button liberally and call it a day. Some people are not interested in discussion or good faith debate they just want to yell at people on the Internet and feel smart.
I had a person I bumped into saying (all of this paraphrasing) “the press has gone to shit” because of a headline and I was like “can we not be so dramatic this is a small website, surely a bad headline from a small operation is not a new thing” then they responded with “how many headlines do you see with X Y or Z even in those mainstream outlets? It’s all gone to shit.” I ran a few searches and found a rate of about 1 article per paper per year that met their alleged example… And then they said that was malicious compliance, I’d ignored their argument, and I wasn’t acting in good faith… Like mate, I just literally took 15 minutes to check your claim out and came back to tell you; how much more good faith do you want? That was a block, that person is clearly a total waste of time, and I don’t want to interact with their “doomerism.”
In a sense it’s a blessing lemmy is kind of small because blocking one loud person that has a lot of opinions that irritate you can go a long way.
The main issue for me is that I can reliably guess what kind of replies certain topics get and what is popular and what is unpopular. It’s kind of like having a friend who never says or does anything that surprises you. Why even bother asking for their opinion when you already know what they’re going to say.
I was definitely feeling this way a couple weeks ago … ironically the worst was the weekend my birthday fell on. It just felt like everything I came across was a hot take lacking nuance.
It comes and goes… Some weeks people can/will surprise you. Some topics… I think it’s better to just leave the mob alone and let them have their echo chamber.
Yeah I’m very familiar with the block button. Some might say even petty. My blocklist is around 600 users long.
I basically block everyone who demonstrate the incapability to have a civil discussion aswell as people that only shitpost. If someone posts something like “Fuck Elon” or “ACAB” etc. it’s instant block from me. Not because I disagree but because I’m not interested in seeing those kind of comments in my feed and I think it’s safe to assume that users who write comments like that likely aren’t interested in any kind of deep discussions or intellectual honesty.
It’s a blunt weapon and I’m knowingly filtering out a lot of valuable comments on other topics aswell but I don’t care. So far it doesn’t seem to affect the flow of new content in any way. Every now and then I notice a blocked person commenting something and I log out to see what it is and more often than not I’m satisfied with my decision to block.
Relatable
Honestly? It’s tricky to find communities that give you a spread.
I can recommend picking an instance that has a secondary alignment with you (for example, country/state), as they’ll tend to pick up posts in All that may be of interest other than politics.
(Though tbf, our instance still leans left on whole. Just not so crazily)
Lemmy is a federation of servers. “Lemmy” is not one political group with one viewpoint. If you’re looking for different viewpoints, try different groups, or different servers.
In another comment you said this about the comments you read:
they’re made in bad faith
I don’t think this is true. I think that what you think is “bad faith” is actually “people who disagree with me”. So far, most users of Lemmy appear to trend politically left by American standards, but that’s only because American standards are so absurdly skewed to the right that it appears to stand out. By American standards, “truth” is left-wing.
Ask yourself what you’re actually looking for.
Also, I’ve spent time on Reddit, it was only bad faith arguments in controversial. Like bots pushing propaganda bad.
While I see a lot of posts that would have this problem, at least the discussion are a bit more balanced compared to when the same stuff would happen on Reddit. So for example fuck cars is about the same in terms of posts, but here I tend to see a bit more back and forth and a balanced perspective on how the comments are up voted. On Reddit, any comment vaguely questioning the circle jerk will be down voted into oblivion and receive nothing but angry replies.
The amount of apolitical posts is a bit disappointing though.
How the actual fuck is the answer Reddit?
Because there is enough people to drown out all the people being paid by political parties to post here and offset the upvotes they buy.
The DNC has dozens of paid people on this platform and Because a post may only get 100 comments the people being paid can make it look like their opinion is the popular opinion.
I’m not sure if Lemmy has a large enough userbase to warrant paying shills to sway opinion.
What would the purpose of that be? Get 20-30 politically inactive Arch Linux users to vote for Biden?
Hey man, the Linux vote could be the swing factor .
/s
BREAKING NEWS:
BIDEN USES LINUX!
“Pls Help, VIM keeps me hostage”
The Secret Service is currently trying to free him.
Bro if you think the DNC even knows what Lemmy is, letalone is teying to influence it, then you need to check yourself into inpatient psychiatric care ASAP. Give me a fucking break LoL.
Lol you mad.
I don’t think there is one, unfortunately. I agree that lack of ideological diversity is a problem with the Fediverse in general, but it’s a problem that likely won’t go away unless the Fediverse becomes mainstream.
What kind of ideology would you like to see more? I mean I’ve stumbled onto the whole left-right spectrum here? Few/no fascists, ultra conservatives I guess?
Not really interested in discussing things with fascists, but I’ve rarely seen anyone here who’s to the right of, like, a milquetoast social democrat.
There’s a few of us further right than that, but when I was forced to cut back on reddit I realized that political discussion online was deleterious to my mental health. I resolved to not seek out or sub any political discussion communities on the new platform. A spontaneous discussion, sure, sometimes, but I can’t do it every day.
💯
And if that eventually happens, other problems will follow.
I kinda like it the way it is. I also use Reddit, so that kinda balances things out I guess.
It’s a problem with humanity.
We naturally silo ourselves into separate groups.
That is true, but I did find a lot of people on Twitter and Reddit who I could have productive and interesting disagreements with, even though I naturally mostly followed and subscribed to people and things I did agree with.
Kbin interacts with Lemmy and seems to me to contain reasonable people willing to have respectful discussions
speak for yourself nerd
Yeah that too, though this issue is the most prevalent on certain .ml instances and can be avoided by not commenting there to begin with.
Absolutely. There’s a small handful of sites full of insufferable stalinists. Thank god I didn’t discover Lemmy when I was 14, I might have been swallowed right up.
Just block those instances, your experience will be better immediately. And don’t hesitate to block individual users, even if they’re not breaking any rules or anything. Finding something to be annoying is plenty of reason not to want it as part of your internet experience.
I don’t mind extremists as long as they’re intellectually honest and willing to have a good-faith discussion and don’t just immediately attack you personally when you challenge their beliefs. One of the biggest issues here is that when you bring up a point people immediately draw conclusions about you and then they reply as if you really are this caricature of the “other” that they’re imagining.
And yeah I’m very familiar with the block feature. My blocklist is around 600 users long. I’ve blocked like 3 people already today and it’s only 9am.
What have you tried? There are communities of all types on here. If you say something, there are definitely people who will agree and others who will disagree. Most will express it quite badly and few will give a thoughtful response. Reddit, I find, was much worse at nuance.
/r/askmen for example was open to anybody asking questions while /r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn’t allow diverging views. /r/science turned into a place for science memes. /r/politics was just a battleground for left and right wingers calling each other names, and places about men’s health were consistently attacked by other subs. Reddit seemed like twitter’s second coming - with communities.
/r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn’t allow diverging views.
Oh my god yeah, that one was a bit ridiculous. I have a vague recollection of trying to help someone in a thread with like a domestic abuse situation or something and the mods quashed my comments because my comments had an opinion and I’m not a woman (mind you nothing I said was remotely sexist and it was a comment thread on an existing comment).
/r/signal was also a bit ridiculous. Rather than having a discussion on the merits of Telegram’s design vs Signal’s design for the average person, I got temp banned for “intentionally trying to compromise people’s security” or something like that.
Reddit seemed like twitter’s second coming - with communities
I will say Reddit never topped some Twitter Trumpies calling me a caribou diaper baby … that was particularly deranged and such a strange insult lol
caribou diaper baby … that was particularly deranged and such a strange insult lol
That made me laugh. It’s more hilarious than an insult. Maybe they are comedians in their free time?
No idea, I think they were just that strange… Their entire reply was majorly conspiratorial to the point of complete derangement then it went into this deranged ad hominem “caribou diaper baby” and I think some more stuff I don’t remember.
I think they were probably a Twitter troll … honestly I left that conversation a few IQ points lower, I try not to think about it 😂
What made your experience negative ?
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I’m on an large instance which doesn’t federate with Grad, so I don’t see the Right-winger playing to be leftist by supporting right wing dictators
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Tons of communities don’t get that much political beside the respect basic human rights and sometimes comment the news
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Even with the European election ongoing, I don’t see much political discussion on European communities
So may-be try more “casual/fun” communties than the political one.
If you use the “local feed” it may be worth checking another instance. I heard good stuff of Blahaj Lemmy which as no downvote and act mostly as a safe/relax space for queer but is open to non queer people
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Diversity will come with a larger userbase. You could wait and come back after the next reddit purge.
