Yet.
Lemmy is so far left leaning because a large part of its existence is due to people being mad at capitalism
Lemmy is more left leaning because the rights popularity seen on other social media are driven by bots that are not here.
Submitted 1 year ago by chk232@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Silviecat44@aussie.zone 1 year ago
And its so tiring to hear about all the time
EddoWagt@feddit.nl 1 year ago
I agree with it, but I also agree with you
dmmeyournudes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
More like, it was developed by socialists who didn’t want to use cooperate owned social media sites that promoted beliefs they didn’t agree with. It’s just that what they really wanted was an echo chamber for what they think and they are going to defederate their way to it.
pozbo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
developed by socialists
I thought only capitalism drives innovation?
treefrog@lemm.ee 1 year ago
more like they wanted out of the colonial capitalist echo chamber so we could hear ourselves think.
nice try though
oce@jlai.lu 1 year ago
You know people can have strong ideals and still have the humanity to help people who may disagree with them? Not everything is run by political ideology.
jesterraiin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not really. I mean that “because…” part.
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new. It’s part of its lifestyle. EVERY new, massive social “site” (or online service) is expected to be left-leaning by default. It may later change its political viewpoint, but in its relative infancy it’s left.
Rightism is more about actions taking place in real-world. As such, the technology isn’t perceived as more than a tool, used for specific purpose only, rather than part of, or the foundation of a lifestyle.
…and of course there’s a plethora of alternative political views, options and convictions that are a mix of either extremes of the spectrum - if you meet a person online, it shouldn’t be surprisied to learn about “pro-life”, but also “anti-Trump” and similarly puzzling approaches to various aspects of life.
tl;dr: it’s not about bots. It’s because Lemmy/Mastodon isn’t popular enough to serve as a tool for right-wing politics.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new.
I don’t know, there has always been a huge libertarian contingent of the tech industry as well. I’m not sure which is bigger. I hope the leftism.
MBM@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Yeah crypto bros aren’t exactly leftist, neither is the hypercapitalist Silicon Valley crowd, and I’ve encountered plenty of other tech enthusiasts with worrying opinions.
Elgordofordo86@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’d say I’m generally conservative and have been dabbling in alternative social media for a number of years. Some of the biggest Mastodon instances are/were right leaning. Gab.ai started off as a proprietary site and then migrated to Mastodon. Truth.social was always based on Mastodon. I’ve never been active on them because I don’t like echo chambers though. I’ve never really had a desire to have my thoughts reaffirmed by strangers…
I would assume they’re presence isn’t felt in the fediverse because the concept of de-federating is working? Gab is likely cut off by others and truth social never federated with others to begin with. I don’t think Truth ever intended to though, and really just wanted something they didn’t have to build from scratch.
The only Mastodon instance I actually have an account with now is somewhat right leaning but it’s not their emphasis. Even then I’m not too active on it.
jesterraiin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
From what I gather, Mastodon attracts little attention in conservative circles.
One of main reasons I’ve heard is that “there’s hardly anyone to talk with”. Beats me if it’s default, general conservative opinion…
jungekatz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon
pfannkuchen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thinking like this is why people get surprised when right leaning parties get voted for in elections
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Lol right? “Right wing politics only seem popular because of bots”. No, left wing politics only seem popular on social media because old people dont use it, despite making up the majority of many populations and often times are the only people who actually vote in elections.
Zomg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Grandpa also doesn’t understand federation
bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Grandpa actually votes tho
style99@kbin.social 1 year ago
Among people in general who actually read comments, the left does have a distinct advantage.
healer_56@lemmy.world 1 year ago
i think its not just the bots but also that the right want their posts to be seen and want to “present” themself and their “opinions”. And i think for that, lemmy is just not visible enough, yet.
willeypete23@reddthat.com 1 year ago
I would say less “left leaning” and more anti-capitalist / anti fascist. More socialism less Nazis.
veroxii@lemmy.world 1 year ago
At least it’s an ethos.
Reverendender@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole. /s
Zezzoz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The political discourse seems toned down here, I am already happy with that.
Strangle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Most smart right wing people (not me obviously), long ago gave up trying to discuss anything important with the left.
It’s not productive, and everyone that I know has just gone to more private chats and channels and don’t even have social media accounts.
You get banned enough times for saying something reasonable, or constantly get called a nazi or something ridiculous and you just stop using those places to talk.
The separation and division has already happened. For anyone hoping to have a discussion with anyone who has different opinions than you do, that train has left the station.
There are bots, lots of them (I’m sure from the left and the right) and that’s it’s own problem. But I doubt we will ever see a place where people can just disagree anymore.
No one seems to have the balls to let these conversations happen on either side.
disposabletentacle@kbin.social 1 year ago
It's just very hard to find a compromise or "agree to disagree" when the topic of debate is something like should LGBT people be allowed to exist. The days are long past where the right/left divide was all about economic policy -- the divide lies along basic human values at this point. You're going to be hard pressed to find people who can engage with you calmly when you're defending a party whose primary concerns right now are stripping away civil rights from their least favorite human beings before all else.
Balssh@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yup, pretty much. And most of the times I've seen right wing people just come comment the most batshit crazy thing imaginable. This doesn't mean left wing lunatics don't exist too.
Strangle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is something people on the right just find absolutely ridiculous. No one. NO ONE, think LGBT people shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
This is a big part of the problem, another response to my comment said people who think like I do support genocide.
Like this just sounds so hyperbolic and absolutely laughably ridiculous that no one has the patience to put up with it. It’s not a discussion.
You think I want an entire group of people to not exist. You have been taught this from somewhere and it’s not true. But you’ll never realize that.
So what’s the point?
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
for saying something reasonable
“Something reasonable” tends to be sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, etc. in my observation.
OctopusKurwa@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Funny how they offered no examples of these “reasonable” arguments.
Duder167@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ah yes, the right wings reasonable arguments. Things such as “kids don’t deserve food” “Trans people shouldn’t exist” “LGBT doesn’t deserve the same things” “Slavery was good for the slaves”
If only we had the balls to really discuss this stuff instead of just calling it evil.
Your user note is now ‘right wing shit head’
Strangle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Except …. None of those things are true
But thanks for proving my point. This is why I (and no one else) should even bother with online public discussions
Sentrovasi@kbin.social 1 year ago
As someone who skews quite far left ideologically but believes that people on both sides have been painted into polarised caricatures in each others' minds by social media, I wholeheartedly agree.
linuxisfun@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Honestly, I have started to block political keywords on Mastodon (can’t do this on Lemmy unfortunately), because I am tired of the lack of nuance in online discussions and I am really not that interested in reading the same things over and over again.
People just group each other into two drawers marked “left-wing” and “right-wing” and that’s it. Some go even further and block instances with people they don’t completely agree with. In my opinion this stigmatisation just further and further divides people and will eventually result in less and less respect for each other (or should I say “hate towards each other”). If people would discuss more (without instantly putting words into the other side’s mouth), they might see that they share common ground on some topics, even though they disagree on others.
I am pretty confident that the political believes of most of the general public can’t be categorised into just two drawers. Most people probably have political views that are a mixture of different ideologies and they might not even know if those views are considered “left-wing” or “right-wing”.
Strangle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Exactly, this is what all of my conservative friends think too.
They are just tired of it all.
I have some left wing view points on things, I voted for Trudeau the first time he ran (I consider this a mistake now), I also have right wing view points on some things.
I’m not at all an activist, but it feels like online everyone is expected to be.
I use common sense, that’s all. I don’t see any of these kind of conversations happening out in the real world, we don’t sit around and argue about this stuff face to face. It only really exists online.
Sorry, but I agree with Chapelle “Twitter is not a real place”
WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 1 year ago
Given rw bots are given free-reign over many political topics on mainstream sites, seems like there no issue with having conversations as long as the conversation is pro-corporate talking points on topics like climate change and the bots are overwhelmingly on the rw side of the issue.
The only area where people are likely to get banned is things like being overtly pro-genocide against groups other than all humans.
Dasnap@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lemmy also isn’t profit driven, so you don’t get libertarian tech bros.
jumbodumbo@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
That’s reaching a quite a bit. Reddit itself is very left leaning. Pair that with the fact that the (probably few) ring wing people leaving Twitter recently might not be interested in a forum style platform such as Lemmy.
My guess is that the number of right leaning people joined Lemmy in this last wave of new accounts was small in comparison to the left leaning ones.
tamas@kbin.social 1 year ago
Reddit used to be very left-leaning, but I don't think that's true anymore. Even if you look at a community with a conventionally "leftist" moderation like /r/europe you will see a huge amount of authoritarian and outright fascist comments.
NuPNuA@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I mean, the political situation in Europe has changed a lot in the last fifteen years. Lot’s of those may be the same users/mods who’s opinions have shifted along with that.
orrk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
/r/europe will ban you for insinuating that rich people are making the world worse for everyone because “it’s communism”
SmurfDotSee@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t think i ever viewed Europe as leftist. Now, WPT… That’s a great example of authoritarian leftism.
Fatebound@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I come here to not read about politics
jamieWxyzt@kulupu.duckdns.org 1 year ago
Everything is political, my friend. Accept it, and be kind when discussing! (Not to fascists tho, they will exploit your kindness.)
Balssh@kbin.social 1 year ago
You're in for a bad ride then. There will always be politics in some magazines/threads.
dmmeyournudes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Can someone explain to me why everyone on this site thinks that everything bad about other social media sites is somehow being forced upon the users to enslave them to “the algorithm”? It’s like socialist Qanon.
ArbiterXero@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sooooo, there’s a lot of truth to it.
Once a site is big enough that they want to cash in on it, they develop tools and ai and make choices that are designed to keep you on the site longer.
These tools and ai quickly discover that the way to keep you engaged is to keep you enraged. Content that angers you will keep your engagement longer and keep you coming back.
This is well researched and I’ll cite sources if you need it.
So what happens is that the ai, while it isn’t designed explicitly to show right wing content, will end up learning that showing that content accomplished it’s actual goal. It’s original goal being “Keep people on the site longer”
Right wing content fits a nice niche where it engages a lot of people. Donald trump claiming that he lost the election will enraged the right because they believe in his horse shit and that the election was stolen, and the left gets enraged by it because it causes unnecessary violence like Jan 6th. The AI loves that because it’s fairly universally enraging, and engaging most people.
dmmeyournudes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There is no truth to it. The vast majority of negative interactions and aberations on a social media site is brought about by the users, not by the operators of the site. These tools they have are not as powerful as you think they are. The only reason they have any power at all is because the users give them that power because that is what they want. You don’t have a successful site by manipulating the user base to do what you want them to do, they will just leave. You simply give them what they want and they never leave. “The algorithm” is there to give the user what they want, and they’re actually really bad at doing that.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know exactly what angle you’re looking to clarify in that regard, but to ELI5 it:
There are two factors: targeted ads and algorithm manipulation.
Mainstream social media sites earn money from ads they deliver. The more people stay on the site and view posts, the more ads they see. The algorithm is designed to promote content that users are likelier to view, not necessarily content that they would like more. In practice, this tends to be content that provides some sort of shock value. That combination of targeted ads with clickbait creates “doomscrolling”.
Longer explanation below:
The value that social media sites give to advertisers is that they know everything about their users. They collect data based on posts and viewing habits to learn things like income, hobbies, location, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc. When advertisers buy ads to show on social media sites, they get to target these ads at specific people that they are likely to leave the biggest impact on.
But what happens if you want to increase the visibility of your (not ad) content on social media? A lot of companies use social media to bring people to their own sites/channels where they make money. In some cases, they can pay to be promoted, giving them an advantage in the algorithm. In other cases, they can manipulate the algorithm using clickbait (to engage users using the doomscrolling trend) or even using bots to give a false sense of engagement.
In recent major elections/referendums, there were a lot of ads and promoted content intended to sway opinions. People would intentionally be shown content to upset them, increasing doomscrolling and increasing their chances of getting out to vote against these things. However, in many cases, the content that people would see would be half-truths or outright lies. Because they were earning money, social media sites did not care about verifying the content of the ads they were showing.
It’s been proven that Brexit, for example, was decided by voters who were manipulated via targeted ads and clickbait delivered by social media to believe falsehoods that swayed their vote. And in many cases, these lies weren’t just spread by specific political campaigns, but actually by external governmental entities who had a vested interest in the outcome. Namely Russia, who had a lot to gain from a weaker EU.
Lemmy is not immune to doomscrolling and bot manipulation, but it doesn’t have ads and, that we know of, does not sell user data. It’s harder to be targeted here because the only thing people can do is try to game the vote system to make their content more visible (which is sadly easier than it should be). But all you have access to are people subscribed to specific communities or registered on specific instances. It’s harder to target people en masse and you only have a single data point to target, namely people who like [community topic].
bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Is manipulation a force?
dmmeyournudes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No one forces you to engage in arguments on Reddit or Twitter. You have autonomy over who you interact with on both sites. You’re not being forced or manipulated to do anything. If you engage in this these things people perceive as negative, it’s because you choce to do it of your own free will.
Kribensis@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Lemmy is left-leaning because the vast majority of its users are Reddit refugees, and Reddit is left-leaning. There is no other reason.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As someone around before the Reddit diaspora, I disagree. It was very left leaning before with a significant population of communists and socialists. The Fediverse dovetails perfectly with the communist dream: not doing things for profit, but instead for the common good.
Since the Reddit influx, I’d say it’s actually less left leaning. Questions to the effect of “why so many goddamn commies” were not common.
NumbersCanBeFun@kbin.social 1 year ago
I mentioned this on another thread awhile back but most of Reddit is just bots or shills pushing a paid agenda. It’s been nice not to see that activity here but I know eventually it will rear it’s ugly head.
WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
One look at the results of elections all across the world is enough to prove this hypothesis wrong.
rDrDr@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not sure what you’re talking about. Right wing minorities have also tried to steal elections. Trump is going to be indicted within a couple days for trying to use fake electors. It actually lines up perfectly.
lmaydev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lemmy is not representative of the general demographic of countries. Thinking it is will lead to a very narrow world view.
ProfessionalLurker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think that Lemmy leans left because people on the right tend to be occupied with more productive activities in their life, such as work, family, or hobbies. The left-leaning Lemmy tends to be people who haven’t gotten out and touched grass in a while, mainly because it is composed of former redditors.
Zuberi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Idk how it’s taken people this long to figure it out lol
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Not by bots but by rage farming algorithms. Rage farming the right is easy and profitable. Facebook has gotten that down to science. The fake absolutist free speech espoused by Twitter’s management as well as the apparent moderation inaction by Facebook are all about that. Letting right wing nuts rage freely generates engagement, generates ad revenue. The only thing the platforms actively manage is making sure that big name ads don’t show up on Nazi posts.
newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Nope. It’s because it was originally made to be a echo chamber for Communists.
SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 1 year ago
That’s just wrong. Totally ahistorical.
There’s a good chunk of the rest of the fediverse that’s more right leaning, for the most part they’ve actively avoided Lemmy because Lemmy was actively hostile to any kind of wrongthink. It was one of the things that really limited it’s growth because you could only be on Lemmy if you believed exactly what you were told to believe.
I stayed on the threadiverse through lotide despite it all, and despite having some pretty limited takes, I quickly found myself banned or defederated from many instances. To this day I don’t participate on those instances because I’m not welcome. Wolfballs and exploding-heads came to exist, but were similarly rejected and even now the very first thing to be done by many instances is defederating from those instances.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that some of the people who run fediverse instances are considering starting Lemmy instances now that the platform is growing.
rob64@startrek.website 1 year ago
There’s also the fact that there isn’t an algorithm trying to keep you doomscrolling by promoting commercial content.
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year ago
I think this is a huge part of it. Occasionally I'll surf Facebook after checking out the marketplace. Last night I saw tons of posts about that "Try that in a small town" song with tons of people claiming to support it. Just post after post of people saying they don't see anything racist about it at all, and not a single one pointing out how showing videos of the BLM protests while singing "we take care of our own, try that in a small town" miiiiiiiight just be a little bit racist. Fortunately I usually only click on cat videos and the rare left leaning recommended posts, so I got to see one post with a picture of John Cougar Mellencamp saying something like "I sang about my small town without mentioning violence." The post had hundreds of comments....all deleted by admins.
Even when you try to avoid the controversy and hateful comments, the system is still designed to keep you doomscrolling. Positivity doesn't help that...
Candelestine@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
This is underrated. I actually close Lemmy a lot easier and more quickly than I did reddit, it’s not hooking me with dopamine hits nearly as strongly.
As a result, since I know I’ll probably just scroll for a few minutes at a time, I’m more willing to check in more often and toss a few upvotes and maybe a comment or two around.
figment@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Yep this is huge. I still scroll on RiF sometimes without being logged in, and I had only ever looked at the subs I was subscribed to until now. I’m shocked by how much infuriating nonsense is being pushed by the site.