If you want somewhere that definitely isn’t a liberal echo chamber there is always Lemmygrad. It’s so much not a liberal echo chamber that a lot of liberal instances have them blocked. It’s also awesome.
I think you don’t understand the term liberal properly though.
Here’s my one and only reply, who the fuck cares if you get downvotes. This isn’t reddit and you shouldn’t base your whole life on Internet points. If you don’t like the progressive viewpoints that most places like this attract to open minded and free thinkers, then either block those communities or find someplace that’s a better fit for you. I find people with similar viewpoints, but newsflash, the world outside MAGA world isn’t a right wing mob. The majority of the world are more “leftist”.
Without criticizing the use of “echo chamber” - Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is not liberal, but leftist. The entire concept of decentralization/federation/FOSS is leftist.
If this is the first time you are hearing that liberals and leftists are different things (not unusual for those who have gone their whole lives trapped in right wing “echo chambers”): The key difference between liberalism (which is centrist) and leftism is that liberalism enables and encourages the consolidation of wealth & power (rightward drift) while leftism actively advocates against the excessive accumulation of wealth & power, as doing so eventually creates inequity and oppression.
There are plenty of products out there that have authoritarian/right wing owners and moderators, and those are the places right wingers tend to congregate. But software like Lemmy that is built entirely on leftist principles - like democracy and free access to the means of production (i.e. source code) - is going to inherently attract more leftists.
I meant liberalism as progressivism and leftism, not economic liberalism nor libertarianism. What I mind is that herd behaviour of many fellows who downvote stuff even if it’s a plausible idea, and vice versa.
Downvotes mean even less on a Lemmy instance than they did on Reddit. They don’t affect your ability to post to a Community, or comment on a Post or start a Community and they don’t affect your comments position in a thread.
It therefore doesn’t matter in any way if people upvote or downvote your stuff, let it go as a concern.
Or, if simply sharing an instance with left leaning people is what really bothers you, exploding heads exists.
Liberalism, progressivism, and leftism are not synonyms. In a Venn diagram there may be some overlap, but they are still very distinct.
Liberalism and leftism are “absolutes” while progressivism is a relative. In all cases, these concepts are about the rejection of control and subjugation. If you wander into a left-leaning space and find yourself downvoted, it’s not because of “herd behavior” but because you said something wildly unpopular (e.g. authoritarian apologetics).
Whether you think something is “plausible” is beside the point. If it is unfair, inequitable, or otherwise supports, advocates, excuses, or leads to “some being more equal than others” then leftists will rake you over the coals.
One more thing to remember: leftists are so used to being misrepresented, lied about, vilified, and trolled by the right (including liberals) that there is very little patience for anyone that stumbles in and spouts any manner of right-wing rhetoric, because it’s almost NEVER someone trying to engage in good faith.
So ask yourself this: WHY is what you’re saying unpopular?
If you are willing to swallow your pride and challenge yourself, most leftists will be happy to discuss just about any topic… if you are able to build the trust that you’re exploring a topic in good faith. Asking challenging questions is a good approach; in lieu of making statements, always ask questions. Everybody loves answering questions. Challenging others leads to conflict (and downvotes), but challenging yourself leads to enlightenment.
It’s one thing to lean left, but to drown out other views, well that’s the big problem. Being able to hear other views, and even sometimes arguing topics only ends up making your arguments better. But too many subs don’t want that. Honing your argument as to why your view is better is a good thing. Shoving your fingers in your ears and screaming no, no, no just because someone is a little less or a little more liberal or conservative than yourself is the problem.
Given that anyone could set up their own instance with whatever rules they like, I don’t think it would make sense to say that “Lemmy” is “liberal”. It’s kind of like asking if email is liberal.
However, it is certainly the case that different instances have different political leanings as established by the instance administrators.
Likewise, communities are governed by their moderators, but as this is Lemmy, if you don’t like the way the moderators run their community, you can create a community of your own. Then you can have an echo chamber filled with everyone who agrees with you!
So, it is what we make of it. We can have liberal, center, or conservative echo chambers if that’s what we want, or we can have knock down drag out fights with people who will never agree with us.
It’s important to remember that in Lemmy downvotes are like the points in Whose Line Is it Anyway: they don’t matter.
I totally agree. We can have whatever political direction that we choose, nevertheless in practice it seems the majority of Lemmy is liberal & progressive & leftist. There is obviously nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is downvoting & upvoting along these political lines and disregarding how well is each idea formulated. It does happen too often in my opinion.
Like you, all can vote using whatever metrics they see fit. I don’t care if you downvote cripples and Klingons. Ideally if a given community is worth a shit, the net tally will show as such.
Lemmy is Free Open Source Software allowing anyone to host a content aggregator website. Lemmy instances can federate with each other to make it look like one big website to users. It was created from the ground up to avoid corporate influence.
A group of people working together towards a common goal while doing their best to avoid corporate influence is probably going to be mostly liberal minded.
I don’t see much of an echochamber though, although that’s probably because I block a lot of it. I prefer a post have a well thought out argument rather than “lol conservatives dumb”. If someone had a well thought out reason for being against a liberal policy I’d give it an upvote. It’s just that these rarely exist. It’s mostly just reactionary comments.
Echo chamber probably isn’t the best framing for it. I would say that the ethos of FOSS and the values of privacy which might incline a person towards these platforms is generally more in line with liberal views than conservative ones. What I’ve seen personally however, is that it’s not about whether you’re right or left, but in how you articulate your ideas. Low-effort posts that go against the grain, may very well be downvoted, whereas a well thought post that runs against that same grain might be met with discussion, but not necessarily downvotes.
Well, I know that part about the FOSS spirit and dissatisfaction with big corporations controlling the internet. Anyhow, I’ve seen here many occasions of what I would call a tactical voting where well formulated and polite comments get downvoted.
No, I’ve seen a diverse range of views, including several explicitly postliberal ones.
Unless you’re using “liberal” as lazy shorthand for the US left-wing, in which case still no, because it’s not an echo chamber, but yes, views that are left-of-(American)-center are predominant.
Some ideologies are illiberal because they predate liberalism. Some illiberal ideologies came after, but explicitly reject liberalism. Almost all postliberal ideologies (almost all illiberal ideologies in general, as a rule) are considered pretty extreme.
I mean, going off the community description, it’s neither “open ended” nor particularly “thought provoking”, so I think downvotes are perfectly warranted.
ETA: the “you know, where dissenters get downvoted” also seems pretty bait-y because it presumes that downvotes indicate dissent rather than indicating a lack of value to the community/discussion.
I suspect it predates Reddit culture by at least a few hundred thousand years. People don’t like bitching. I mean… we love bitching, we just don’t want to hear others do it.
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