Is there a more politically and ideologically diverse alternative for Lemmy?
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.
Tildes might work for you. Politics is a banned subject, but you’ll get polite discourse on most subjects.
I found it stifling, personally. But if you like overly verbose, overly polite discussions where all opinions are respected as long as it’s long winded and politely communicated, well, that’s your place.
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
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 😂
I’m not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.
What’s more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it’s often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.
I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be “special interest instances” that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.
I think there's a significant difference between "neutral" and "diverse".
For example, Reddit is big enough that if you find yourself holding an unpopular opinion in some particular subreddit and you're getting battered with downvotes, you can probably find some other similar subreddit that's more friendly to whatever view you've got that's drawing ire. People speak derisively of "bubbles" and "echo chambers", but really, why should I stick around and try to engage with people who just don't want you around? Communities naturally tend to segregate themselves along ideological lines like this.
Here on the Fediverse the population's too small to support quite so many diverse communities yet, unfortunately. So if you've got an unpopular minority view you can end up stuck with either routinely finding yourself serving as a punching bag or just not posting. That's no fun.
Yes, that’s probably true. For me, however, neutrality presupposes diversity - at least to a certain degree. As in the maxim of quality journalism: the assumption here is that a journalist can never be truly objective. This is why an attempt is made to allow opposing perspectives on a topic to have their say, so that the reader or viewer can form their own opinion.
Of course, this principle does not work in an environment in which differing opinions or perspectives are generally unwelcome. This is probably the case with Lemmy and other Fediverse applications for some topics. But I think that this doesn’t just apply to the Fediverse, but to social media in general. It seems to me just as you say: if you only encounter rejection on a platform, in a community or on an instance if you disagree with the majority, you will move elsewhere - which in turn will probably lead to you eventually finding yourself in an environment where the majority of others are of the same opinion.
Of course, it would be highly desirable if people were more open-minded, but I’m afraid that’s a utopia. In any case, I don’t have the impression that the advent of social media has fundamentally brought open exchange forward.
On the contrary, I have the impression that political discourse in many countries, for example, is now characterized by the very strategies that make social media posts successful: the abbreviated presentation of complex contexts, the invocation of enemy stereotypes, sometimes even straight-up trolling. But perhaps this is just a perception error on my part.
Though it’s only tangentially related to your inquiry, you should check out improvethenews.org
It’s basically what you are looking for but with news stories, though it’s primarily focused American news. It allows you to read the different narratives without actually visiting cancer news sites like Sky news.
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
Tons of communities don’t get that much political beside the respect basic human rights and sometimes comment the news
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
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?
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.
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.
I thought we have quite a diversity here with extreme right wing on hexbear, extreme left wing on lemmygrad, center with lemmy.world, (clasic) liberalism on dbzer0, and everything between like blahaj, beehaw, redhat, slrpnk, etc.
Hexbear are also far left. They’re just so far left that they hate the west more than China or sometimes even Russia for some reason. Afaik all far right instances are luckily defederated. Most of Lemmy leans heavily left. I considered myself left wing, and I’m also very much left wing nationally speaking, yet here on Lemmy I constantly encounter people who are so left wing that I pretty much completely disagree with them.
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.
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.
The problem is that all of the big instances sorta line up the same way and anything that doesn’t please them gets defederated at the speed of light and comments and posts get removed. They have the control.
I’m not sure of better alternatives, only different. Mastodon or even Threads might be your solution. I also took a look at the comment history to get a sense of what you mean and I think I get it since I also get a fair share of negative interactions.
I think it’s actually because of Lemmy’s size that you get some pretty fringe views on here. Heck, if anything, the diversity you seek might mostly be all the views in-between that get drown out by the loudest fringe views. I’m sure there plenty of us lurking, since it’s so exhausting engaging with lemmings at times. I’m by no means a moderate, but simply trying to defend a news source as legitimate can feel like a disheartening chore.
Anyway, I don’t really know where to go for that and if you find out, I’d love to know. I don’t necessarily agree with you on your views, whatever they may be, but I certainly can agree that we need a little wider range of views (and perhaps a bit more civility when someone expresses a different perspective).
I don’t even mind the fringe views. I even switched instances to one that federates with lemmygrad because of that. I know there are a diverse group of people here but many of them don’t comment because you get bullied for it. You can reliably guess which types of comment are the most popular ones and which ones are completely missing.
Another thing I have an issue with here is the fact that for the most part it seems that what is keeping this group together is not common ideas or goals but the common hatred towards an outgroup.
If it makes you feel better, I don’t particularly hate an outgroup (like reddit) and I’m not really here for that reason (although I like the app options here too). Maybe that’s a minority view, but hate is just too emotionally draining for me. Maybe I stick around because those Trek and Linux nerds won me over, haha.
But yeah, maybe if you like hearing folks over at Lemmygrad (or even… Hexbear?!) federation is still your best bet because you’ll never get that on the more mainstream sources. If it’s a bad experience, maybe you need to tweak your approach. Just brainstorming though, I really don’t know the ideal platform for open discourse.
Check us out hilariouschaos.com and let me know. Our premise is to shoot the shit,talk shit, shit post, post content you create, talk and have fun.
We’re not interested in being like what you’re experiencing. We’re here to have fun. Shit doesn’t always have to be about politics. I hope you check is out. Thanks
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
If you’re not offering enough of your own position in a post, then yes, those you’re posting to will make assumptions. To combat that, put your complete positions in your post and remove any doubt so people don’t have to assume. The reason both of your quoted statements would get strong responses in isolation is because posting only the one sentence in a post would suggest you don’t agree with the apposing statement that you also posted.
You will still get strong responses from smaller groups that believe one statement factual and not the other, but thats life. You’re not going to convince everyone all the time.
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.
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.
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