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.
Conservatism is generally a worthless ideology that makes the world worse, so I don’t feel a desire to spend more time with it. We don’t need to debate “what if women don’t have rights”, “what if gay stuff is illegal?”, “what if you had to pay for health care so if you were poor you’d just die?” or whatever.
Hearing from “both sides” and coming to some compromise/middle ground only works if the following is true:
- Both parties are acting in good faith.
- The viewpoints expressed are close enough that they don’t require a total departure from one’s current viewpoint.
- The disputed topic doesn’t have a obvious or clear correct answer.
The problem is, at least in the US, none of these are true for right wingers and even many “centrists.”
You cannot talk to somebody and try to find common ground if they don’t believe in statistical studies by government agencies, they don’t believe in scientific studies by major universities and research institutions, and don’t care about the rights and protections for minority groups.
The older members of my family are almost all conservatives, MAGA supporters, and fundamentalist Christians.
They genuinely believe that Evolution is a myth and the Earth was created 6000 years ago. They believe that illegal immigrants are invading this country and that Democrats are secretly allowing them to. They don’t believe humans have any effect on climate change. They don’t think Covid was anything more than a common cold that the government used as an excuse to try to control people. They don’t believe in vaccines.
I find Lemmy to be very refreshing. I get news from a diverse collection of Leftists sources. Anarchists, statists, weak socialists like the AOC/Bernie types, government studies, independent guerrilla journalists, Communists, Mutualists, Marxists, etc.
But I have no interest in further “diversifying” by adding right wing “sources.”
Cookies can taste good with many different ingredients, but no cookie tastes good with horse poop.
Liberals are not leftists.
yeah, liberals are conservative scum lol.
liberals are literally on the left wing of the spectrum, but apparently that’s not good enough for ‘arbitrary decider of who’s a leftist’ here
Liberals are auth right on the political compass.
Leftism is anti-capitalist.
The Political Compass is generally a terrible way to view politics, I wouldn’t put any stock in it.
It’s an oversimplification and has its limitations but that’s often what’s needed to reach mass appeal and be useful in discourse.
On the contrary, it makes little sense at all. Ideologies can’t be put on a compass like that.
On the contrary, it’s is a useful heuristic, even if it’s not perfect. While ideologies are complex and multifaceted, it provides a framework to map tendencies. It simplifies ideologies, sure- but that’s precisely its value & the social/cultural dimension and is harder to map
obligatory reminder that us-american domestic politics are so skewed to the right that what appears “moderate” in the usa is right to far-right anywhere else
your “liberals” are right-wing
your “conservatives” are right-wing
both are liberals
@Teknevra
I’m not a part of Lemmy, but I will say this: There are some people with whom reasonable dialog is just not possible. Speaking only for myself, I choose not to engage. That does not mean I’m not aware of what they are saying or thinking. It means that I am drawing a healthy boundary for myself.Your feelings about it are valid. You should absolutely seek out more mixed spaces, if that is what you want to do.
Cheers!
I feel like we have come to a point in time where the Internet in general is becoming more separated like this in general. I enjoy Lemmy because I get a lot of the other perspectives in my day to day work life, and I like coming to this place to read and engage with people who share my views and ideas on topics. 🤷🏼♀️ Maybe that is pretty close to an echo chamber, but it is what I am seeking after spending every work day with conservatives.
@frankspurplewings Exactly.
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.
There appears to be a lack of “centrist”
“Progressive” liberals in fact the centrists—they’re center-left at best—and there are plenty of them here.
right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions)
These people are liberals as well, but because they usually break Lemmy’s code of conduct regarding various bigotries, they get usually quickly the boot.
non-political
Everything social is political, and the fediverse is social media.
I think the idea that all viewpoints are equally valuable and need to be given equal weight or volume in discussions is incredibly fallacious. Left wing ideals are backed by a multitude of research as well as ethical and moral philosophies. I don’t know how you could be a leftist and say “what this place really needs is more right-wing voices” with a straight face. The whole “im just asking questions, everyone deserves to be heard, i just want to hear both sides of the argument” is a common tactic the right uses to try to seem reasonable and propagandize more people. Some ideas aren’t worth hearing out and can only do damage to those who listen.
I hope you’re not being serious but if you are try to get out your bubble while you still can
I absolutely am. Im happy to discuss and debunk any right wing viewpoint thats brought up, but beyond that, having it repeated ad nauseum is in no way useful. Some opinions are not valid and don’t deserve the space for argument beyond potentially educating people.
The idea that every left wing viewpoint is perfectly aligned with science and critical thought is over reaching
I didn’t say that, and im open to discussion on any viewpoint to an extent. Theres a lot of things i dont agree with even my most leftist friends about. But constantly giving voice to ideas that have been proven wrong, either scientifically or historically, is not helpful in any way. For some things there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answer. Gender science, economics, racial discrimination, the predominant roght wing ideas about these topics are just false, scientifically. And they shouldnt have to be disproven constantly in a public forum when that work has been done elsewhere.
A lack of opposing viewpoints is a fast-track to a closed-minded approach to interactions. I see far too many people, of all backgrounds, enter into engagements with a “you’re wrong and I’m right” mindset born from only entertaining their own ideals. Day after day of “other side bad” comments that entirely miss why that other side believes what they do in the first place. I don’t see how that helps anyone unless your goal is to pat each other on the back while the country drifts farther apart. Personally speaking, reading entire threads like this gets tiresome and while I am glad we don’t have the same level of bad faith right-wing spam that other platforms do, I wish we had a more open atmosphere.
I would argue that wider community cohesion and thus tolerance of other viewpoints is important. Without hearing and understanding why these other points of view exist, understanding and accepting these people is hard.
Branding someone’s point of view as inherently or even ‘factually’ wrong is pretty blunt, alienating and invalidating IMO. I prefer a left-wing world view that tolerates people who don’t have the same understanding as me.
If your goal is to solve society’s problems, you have to listen to everyone, even people you disagree with, in order to identity the underlying problems.
And sometimes you have to read between the lines because they are not politically and economically literate. And unfortunately, that means people often latch onto ideas that sound good to them, but may or may not be a good idea in real life.
For example, some people may blame immigration for their problems. But that is not the real problem. That is just a scapegoat that the politicians use. The real problem is that they are struggling financially, and don’t know how to fix it, most likely because someone is taking advantage of them and/or they don’t have what they need to be successful.
If you fix their economic problems, and educate them on what the real problems are, they will realize that the immigrants were never the problem. This will reduce the tension and hate, and expose the propaganda for what it is.
But you can’t change anyone’s minds if you label them as enemies and refuse to listen to them. And you can’t solve problems if you can’t identify the underlying issues people are concerned with.
Patience and willingness to educate people is necessary in any community, as is a certain amount of tolerance for disagreement, in topics that aren’t harming anyone or restricting anyones roghts. In our current political environment, the predominent viewpoints of many people are outright dangerous and violent towards dissenters or outsiders, and those views do not deserve to be platformed. This is all based on context obviously, as everything is. If my neighbor is adamant that an unregulated free market society benefits everyone and is the best option despite all evidence to the contrary, and won’t be swayed by any argument or proof i offer, then fine. I just wont talk about the economy with them. But if my neighbor starts to say that trans people are mentally ill, and mexicans are subhuman, and palestinians deserve to be eradicated just for being born, thats a whole other matter. In the world we live in now we have to be very careful about what information is being propagated and consumed and absorbed by people who may lack the skills or understanding to resist it. As i said, some ideas are not worthy of repetition.
Yeah but this thread was supposed to be about whether ideological diversity is important, not whether hate speech is important.
It was about a lack of right wing viewpoints being problematic. Can you give me an example of a right wing viewpoint that is worth discussing, not scientifically unsound, not hateful, and is currently missing from lemmy? Cause if there is value in these ideas being discussed you must be able to give at least one example right?
@emeralddawn45 It depends on whether we are talking about the hateful far right or conservatives.
Some things frequently talked about by conservatives, classic liberals, and centrists include:
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Limitations on government power, including how to prevent a politician from becoming a dictator. This includes checks and balances on power, separation of power, and the dynamic between the states and the federal government.
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Protecting peoples civil rights, including the rights of minorities. Opposing police brutality, protecting free speech, protecting the right of association, protections against illegal search and seizures, etc.
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The right of people to own firearms, as allowed by the second amendment. This includes minorities and black people, who have the same rights under the Constitution as everyone else.
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Health care reform. They want health care reform as much as the left does, but they usually disagree on how to reform the health care system. For example, the left usually wants to create a government monopoly, while the right usually wants to break up monopolies and distrusts the government.
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How to give the power back to the people, since corporations and the elite seem to have taken over this country. Like #4, they agree that things need to change, but often have different ideas on how to change it.
I could go on.
Don’t confuse the hateful right with the moderate centrists and right-leaning voters. Most people have the same concerns the left does, but have a different perspective on it. And most people aren’t hateful. Maybe misinformed, but not hateful.
Anarchists discuss basically all of that and aren’t right wing
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The value is in being accepting that other people don’t see the world in the same way as you, and treating them with respect.
The value is having a society that is tolerant of diversity of opinion.
This is not an universal truth.
Nazism is explicitly deemed unworthy of respect in some legal systems, like Germany or the UK. MAGAs, white supremacists, and alt-righters are objectively too close to nazism, therefore their opinions are unworthy of respect to start with.
There is also the paradox of intolerance. If you let these people in, to respect their opinion, they will take over and deprive people of the right to live. They don’t play by tolerant society’s rules, so they they don’t get tolerated.
The value is having a society that is tolerant of diversity of opinion.
Here is the opinion of the scientific consensus on transgender people, which is have been so for years, if not decades.
We have been harassed, bullied, doxxed, and banned for bringing those up in all major social media platforms. TERFs, white supremacists, misogynists, racists, have always gotten away in these platforms with punching down on leftists, African and Caribbean reparations activists, feminists, and queer people. They were protected by equally bigoted moderators under the guise of entitlement to their opinion, at the same time that all these other opinions are bashed and framed as “overstepping”.
This is in line with what the EFF and Techdirt, which are both vocal First Amendment absolutists, have already said that what X and Facebook do now is in fact amplifying hate speech and effectively suppressing the free speech of gender and sexual minorities.
And this has been the situation for years, take for example the online harassment of feminists .
It is a deeply systemic bias, due to centrist indoctrination in broader society, that it is the leftist and inclusive spaces that are called out for lack of diversity for responding to harassment and bigotry, when the voices and lives of people are simply dominated and evacuated in major platforms without an iota of moderation and responsiveness to punch-down harassment.
Let alone that in the light of the most recent developments, which consolidates the above tendencies, makes the timing of the tolerance argument even more ironic and dishonest.
There is also the paradox of intolerance. If you let these people in, to respect their opinion, they will take over and deprive people of the right to live. They don’t play by tolerant society’s rules, so they they don’t get tolerated.
Do you not see the irony here of op being intolerant of sharing lemmy with people who do not share their viewpoint? You’ll note from my other comments here that I’m explicitly not arguing for hate speech. IMO this thread was actually about the lack of moderate alternative views on Lemmy, not about encouraging extremist narratives to take over the federation.
What I am arguing for here is to drop the unhelpful us-versus-them narrative and to argue that Lemmy could well learn to tolerate a wider range of opinions. This is not to say extreme and intolerant views such as the ones you have described should be permitted.
I find it interesting that some people are saying “the right is this” and “conservatives are that” and then saying horrible things most people would be opposed to. How would you know if you never talk to them and just assume what they think?
I think most people assume the extreme right is the entire right, just like most people assume the extreme left is the entire left. It’s actually a spectrum. Or more accurately, a Nolan chart.
Most people I know are in the center, and they oppose racial segregation, oppose racism, oppose oppression, oppose monopolies, and oppose corrupt officials. But since they are not communists or socialists, some people on the left lump them in with the far right, which the center doesn’t like either.
And if you attack the people in the center by falsely accusing them of being the right, all you are doing is alienating people who might agree with you on a lot of things.
I have spoken to them all, for years. In all shapes and sizes.
They are all driven by fear and tribe mentally. Reality does not matter to them only emotions.
I’m not a communist or socialist btw.
As opposed to you because you are not tribal and never make emotional decisions.
Reducing people like this is itself an emotional defense mechanism. We are fallible to the things you describe. All political bubbles have people who make this same exact claim about all the other bubbles.
There intelligence in recognizing this. Neither you nor I are in the one true bubble.
I’m not tribal at all and non-conformist to a fault. Of course I make emotional decisions - but when presented with clear evidence I can adjust my views as neccessary. I love to be wrong, the entire concept of how right-wingers react to information is so foreign to me I’ve spent years trying to figure out if they’re lying or are they actually believe it. Unfortunately it’s the latter. Giving those eejits air-space only pushes the centrist NPCs who have the same inherent flaws in how they process information to the right.
NPCs? Yikes.
It’s okay they can’t hear us.
We already have people praising Liz Cheney.
You could say “I am noticing a distinct lack of Neo Nazis on Lemmy”.
To which I say why change that.
It’s important though to not fall into the trap of creating false balance, i.e. giving the same weight to a false or harmful statement than to a truthful or good statement, in the name of “fairness” or “objectivity”. Also, conservatives tend to shift to the right currently.
I don’t think having Nazis and Zionists here would make anything better, make anyone sympathize with them, or find common ground. This is a place where we can be safe, why add people who are purposefully being dishonest and spreading disinformation? They aren’t misinformed people, they are real pieces of shit who hold a genuinely wrong position/s; they want to piss you off to ruin your day. I already have enough discourse with these people everywhere else, why here?
Given the recent right wing takeover of other social media sites and the glorification of hate speech I am fine not seeing that bullshit spread here.
This is bad for the health of lemmy though, I think. A discussion board/framework should be politically neutral, while still employing rules on hate speech based on the voice of the masses.
If you want to talk hate speech, I’ve seen numerous accounts on lemmy instances of people advocating for murder or other violence against “billionaires” or anyone with a significant wealth. Or same with right-wing ideals, I’ve seen users advocating similar broad calls for violence based on pretty poor assumptions against the entire right-wing USA block.
If someone wanted to make a well-formed right wing argument I doubt they’d get too much backlash. But it’s all bigotry and lies and conspiracy theories at this point so they get shitcanned.
Fighting back against the ultra wealthy who are killing our people and our planet is not the same as punching down on minorities who are just trying to exist.
there’s no such thing as politically neutral
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 it’s very important to accommodate genocide and climate denialism. 🙄
Have you spent any time at other places on the Internet?
