I’ve been using Lemmy for a while now, and I’ve noticed something that I was hoping to potentially discuss with the community.
As a leftist myself (communist), I generally enjoy the content and discussions on Lemmy.
However, I’ve been wondering if we might be facing an issue with ideological diversity.
From my observations:
- Most Lemmy Instances, news articles, posts, comments, etc. seem to come from a distinctly leftist perspective.
- There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).
- Discussions often feel like they’re happening within an ideological bubble.
My questions to the community are:
- Have others noticed this trend?
- Do you think Lemmy is at risk of becoming an echo chamber for leftist views, a sort of Truth Social, Parler, Gab, etc., esque platform, but for Leftists?
- Is this a problem we should be concerned about, or is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?
- How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?
- What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of having a more politically diverse user base on Lemmy?
As much as I align with many of the views expressed here, I wonder if we’re missing out on valuable dialogue and perspective by not having a more diverse range of political opinions represented.
I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on this.
like bluesky is rightist , lemmy may be leftist . it also depends on the server , left has blocked right and vice versa . try to find a right one
Since when is Bluesky rightist?
Bluesky is very liberal.
Economically rightwing or socially?
Liberalism as an economic ideology. It seems fairly progressive socially.
Ah shit, want to hear my economic hot takes? Haha
Sure, why not
I want to have private schooling preserved
This place def needs more centrists. Too many libs sucking themselves (and each other) off. Not more MAGA though. Those guys are just wrong
Election time was so irritating, Lemmy basically reigned in Harris as the next messiah; I had to end up blocking political keywords to make it usable. Kamala Harris is an absolute joke and the DNC is an even bigger joke. I remember seeing one post where someone basically claimed she has a spotless political career and I’m just thinking, 😮💨, really?
The problem with left leaning individuals on the internet is we have a lot of drive and conviction behind our ideas which is a good thing, but that should translate into real life activism or doing something that will combat the current political system and promote change. But we are beaten down since that’s basically a total pipe dream, we realize what the problem is and feel powerless to fix it. What’s
Now, whats a good way to regain some of the power over your “opponents”? Silence their opinion, whether that be outright censorship or in other ways that are antithetical to getting the point across.
The American political system has us fighting amongst one another to keep people distracted from who is really fucking everyone up the ass daily. And it continues to work. We need to stop this petty squabbling and use all this wasted energy on something useful that could actually bring us together, like maybe instead of just browsing social media all day, you could go out in to the real world.
I am left-leaning and live in a predominantly conservative area. Very red. When I go out, people usually don’t just randomly talk about Trump all day, that’s just not reality. Most people dont make their political views their entire personality. I hear way more about Trump from social media than I am ever do from people in real life. And I assure you, I don’t seek it out.
You have way more in common with the other side than you realize. Social media allows the worst aspects of peoples personality to come out since you don’t have to look at a human being in front of you that has feelings, goals, beliefs, dreams, et al. just like you do. Have some god damn compassion and maybe try to understand why people on the other side have come to the conclusions they have, instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
@ronflex said:
The problem with left leaning individuals on the internet is we have a lot of drive and conviction behind our ideas which is a good thing, but that should translate into real life activism or doing something that will combat the current political system and promote change. But we are beaten down since that’s basically a total pipe dream, we realize what the problem is and feel powerless to fix it.
In many ways, that’s what they want you to believe: that you have no hope to change things, so most people never try. That leaves the powers-that-be in charge.
But the reality is that people have the power to transform the country, and it does not have to be through the government. For example, if you are socialist or communist, you can establish your own communes, cooperatives, and employee-owned enterprises yourself, and it is totally legal! And, there are plenty of them already in existence.
People like to complain that someone else should fix their country, but the reality is, they can do it themselves, even when they have no political power whatsoever. But it takes hard work, and that is something most people aren’t willing to do.
I concur. I got downvoted just for pointing out the left has an issue courting young male voters. I’m so sick of my own party.
It’s not your party.
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Yeah… True enough.
Appreciate ya, and agreed there too. Like UltraGiGaGigantic said, it’s unfortunately not a party for the people. Neither are, really. Something American Democrats should consider is dropping the whole “vote Blue no matter who” kind of mentality. The huge base of people with that are part of the reason the DNC is able to maintain status quo and not have to actually do anything people want. If a large enough group of people were able to get together and agree on shit for once, a third-party or independent candidate might be possible. But the parties are basically treated like sports teams. Like, you’re either team A or team B and theres no other option. except it’s just a game at the end of the day. The system is set up to continue to enforce the two-party dichotomy, unfortunately.
Election time was so irritating, Lemmy basically reigned in Harris as the next messiah
You must have been using a different site than me. My experience was the opposite. Just a flood of bullshit to convince people not to vote for her (or not to vote).
I think the problem is in the opposite direction. Society is too ideologically homogeneous in being against socialism. The major narratives are controlled by nation-states and corporations, social media are infested with political advertisement and propaganda.
So, as others say, I believe it is sorta uninformed and middle-of-the-road fallacy to find a corner of the internet where you can speak your mind without being harassed by white supremacist trolls, and say we need more diverse views.
Right wingers have (had) Parlel, Gap, TruthSocial, now they have X, and Facebook, where they were also dominating and harassing in the past. No leftists and/or genderqueer person would survive a day at these platforms.
But Lemmy being primarily/explicitly leftist is the problem, and you suddenly are alarmed for echo chambers. This is not quite fair, now is it.
As for Lemmy per se, I don’t think it is too homogeneous. I debate centrists and liberals every other day. And recent discussions showed that the amount of latent transphobia in the site is shocking, with people knowing next to nothing apart from 4chan/MAGA talking points.
How can this happen after all these years of activism and outreach. It is because of the ecosystem of echo chambers in the broader communications and media landscape. This discourse never reached those people.
Considering it was the position of major medical and professional organizations, it shows that the pathology lies with the existing social media and broader media enterprizes, with a prominently selective messaging.
Do I need to say that this led to widespread science-denialism for which mainstream platforms are clearly to blame?
If your inquiry is honest, then the only explanation is that the propaganda apparatus works so well, that the (relative) absence of the dominating narratives makes you anxious that you entered an echo chamber, when in fact you probably have been in an echo chamber so far.
If your inquiry is honest
They claim to be communist but wants more centrists and rightwingers here. It’s a clear clue they are not honest.
Is it so strange to entertain the thought of talking with people outside your bubble? Not everyone enjoys day after day of single-opinion threads and enjoy having well-intentioned discussions with other people. Political movements would never go anywhere if they never left a basement.
I only know a single other Communist IRL and they’re my fiancé. Existence forces me to grapple with liberalism and fascism on a daily basis, maybe an Anarchist here or there. It is only here that I can talk to comrades.
Bruh, i live in fucking Poland, literally everyone around is shitlib or fascist and any kind of socialist thought is tightly censored in non stop anticommunist onslaught in every possible media, so you can take your plurality posturing and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
As a leftist myself (communist)
Very, how do you do fellow kids energy from this comment.
I don’t think I’ve ever interacted with a communist who would be upset about a lack of reactionaries in their spaces, they’d be relieved to have a place free of them and their ignorance and hate.
And the fact you think that “centrists” and “right-wing” are somehow not extremists (but this made up special category of MAGA which by the way is most conservatives in the US and in a lot of the world somehow is) tells me you are politely not really politically literate.
Liberals are reactionary enough in their excuse for genocide, you think for some reason we need space for not only them but the people who want to take away rights from trans people, who want to kill trans kids, who want to make women second class citizens, who are incredibly racist, war-mongering, anti-science, etc?
As much as I align with many of the views expressed here, I wonder if we’re missing out on valuable dialogue and perspective by not having a more diverse range of political opinions represented.
You can get that literally anywhere else offline or online, especially your home instance. You’re not from a leftist instance but from the most reddit-brained, centrist neo-lib instance.
This is false equivalence, the idea that the left is too extreme and needs balancing with the right. Please just accurately identify your politics or don’t bother mentioning them as we can easily guess them from a post like this.
As a leftist myself (communist)
The Alphabet Boys are tired of lurking in the shadows. They have Trump (and more) dead to rights on 10,000 times worse shit then what is public and they sit on their hands.
The intelligence community wants what is coming. Do not hesitate to judge them as they have already judged you.
Your Facebook profile is probably uploaded to some automated killing machine already for purging. Someone just needs to execute the program.
From your post it’s pretty safe to assume that you’re part of the lefties that are crying over meta dropping censorship against misinformation for community notes
want to take away rights from trans people, who want to kill trans kids, who want to make women second class citizens, who are incredibly racist, war-mongering, anti-science, etc?
Yet here you blatantly spread misinformation…
There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).
TBF, they don’t exist.
They’re might be some that on appearance hold reasonable views that are considered centrist /moderate conservative but if their privilege is questioned or their fragile egos get scuffed, they always and invariably go full on far right.
Their moderate views are just a veneer that are held to appear as such and never stand up to pressure.
What typically America-centric thinking
You can also tell by the misuse of “they’re” lol
I’m not in the US so that’s your first fuck up.
Secondly, the misused ‘they’re’ was me not proofreading autocorrect too closely while I was on the train this morning.
You are an insufferable elitist bore.
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I’m curious as to how their comment was “America-centric”? It seems as though it applies universally. Bad ideas are bad ideas, it doesn’t matter what continent it happens on.
That’s them being an elitist prick, full of English exceptionalism.
You could look through their previous comments and probably find that they invariably wear the badge of “political moderate” but their world view based around their superiority seeps through eventually.
Lack of fake accounts/trolls like on other platforms and you’ll have that.
We shouldn’t be encouraging or squelching any political diversity whatsoever, we should be honing in more and more on how things actually are in the world, and the effects things are likely to have, regardless of who it pisses off or pleases.
I’ve seen right wing liberals, left wing liberals, marxists, stalinists and anarchists just to name a few. If anything there is more diversity here than other platforms as it isn’t just various shades of liberal.
As a leftist myself (communist), I generally enjoy the content and discussions on Lemmy.
This post is a great example of what OP is talking about. OP gave no political opinion on anything and you are calling them out for not being a real leftist?
username checks out
I have yet to hear anyone irl that identifies as left that actually wants to hear what the right has to say.
Right now it’s all hate and bigotry. Which has no place in society as far as I’m concerned.
The only people I’ve seen concerned with people Hering out the right, are people on the right. “Centrists” are just right wing sympathizers.
So yes, I don’t think they’re actually left leaning.
I agree with the comment your replying to. It’s very fellow kids. It’s not how most people on the left talk.
Note: not the person you replied to.
If I saw serious attempts anywhere from right-wingers to advocate for their views as an actual political philosophy I’d be more concerned by this. But we need spaces where people actually discuss how to build a better society, and simply because of that concern these spaces lean left. It’s rare to find right-wingers who are even seriously interested in that question, except as a pretext to vent their unexamined prejudices and personality issues.
If, on internet forums, you push for everyone to have equal say even when their views are not well considered, everyone’s energy gets used up arguing with the most offensive right-wing posters. I think it’s a good thing to have spaces where that isn’t how it goes. As for centrists, I think there’s a place for engaging with them because there’s more of a chance that they just haven’t examined their views but can be brought to. But I’m not going to miss them if they’re so put off by a left-leaning space that they won’t participate, and I don’t think every left space needs to spend its time arguing with liberals.
Frankly, my view of the right wing these days is that there’s no particular need to treat a mishmash of selfishness, greed, lust for power, deceit, gullibility, ignorance, insecurity and hatred as if it’s a political philosophy at all. Left versus right isn’t a helpful picture. Serious vs unserious would be a better one. If someone has serious arguments for a right-wing position made in good faith, then they’re not just wasting people’s time. But that’s not usually what you see, and I suspect it’s because there’s a lack of serious arguments to be made for it.
I don’t miss the right-wing voices. For the most part they just dominate, disrupt and obstruct serious discussion. That said, it’s important we don’t forget how unrepresentative our online discussions are of society as a whole, and how little impact merely talking about them here has.
Yes, exactly this.
It’s rare to find right-wingers who are even seriously interested in that question, except as a pretext to vent their unexamined prejudices and personality issues.
Because those that actually are interested in that question end up moving to the left when they see the “answers” that the right has to offer.
There is the same kind of special snowflake attitude on here that ruined Reddit. You people only want to have your exclusive social bubble where you can sniff each other’s farts. I’m not interested in that.
I wish lemmy had more niche interest groups, like marvel champions card game. Then there’d be something to talk about that isn’t how we should force others to give a percetage of their earnings to the goxernment.
Personally, I don’t buy this echo chamber shit. Before social media, you choose your spaces and your company and did not have to put up with random jackasses butting into your conversations to tell you how much they hate gay people or whatever.
The abnormal thing is this expectation that we’re all supposed to meet in the middle with any asshole at all times. I’m happy with a townhall meeting once in a while but I don’t want to or need to put up with bigots and people who are otherwise socio-politically the opposite of me on a daily basis.
I want to be in the company of people that don’t make me feel like shit and who I can see eye to eye with. That’s not being closed minded or wanting an echo chamber, that’s normal.
My instance has conservative and anti-leftist communities. They’re more the personal playgrounds of a few people with humiliation and persecution fetishes though.