Fediverse

My instance has conservative and anti-leftist communities. They're more the personal playgrounds of a few people with humiliation and persecution fetishes though.

There are plenty of people on the fediverse that are clearly free and independent thinkers - as in not operating from inside a bubble where they get fed opinions and views from others and them regurgitating those views ad nauseam. On Lemmy, I see a lot of curiosity and a lot of people who were probably censored or effectively buried by downvotes on other platforms, despite their good faith and interesting (and sometimes radical) perspectives.

Discussion flows well, there's less focus on upvotes/downvotes and there is no karma. There doesn't seem to be a tradition of dog-piling people who wrong-think according to the group consensus (or whatever neoliberal narrative is prevailing) as there is on Reddit. Moderation is much less heavy-handed and there are no shadowbans/comments that don't show up for others (but only for yourself). There are significantly less bots and almost zero astroturfed content, as well.

Worry less about the labels, I say. If you want mainstream or conservative opinions, it's very easy to seek them out - the internet is full of those perspectives. If you're curious, you could play devil's advocate and discuss current events or other hot topics from a mainstream perspective and ask others why they think differently to better understand the userbase on the fediverse and how things generally go down here. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to weigh the pros and cons of different viewpoints and perspectives and entertain a discussion about certain issues in good faith.

Not everybody is filtering everything out from a polarized lens and is focused on being an absolutist or purist with their preferred ideology.

1. Yes I noticed this too
2. It already is, which is a shame
3. Yes it's a problem because even if you try to get a balanced amount of all the views in your Lemmy subscriptions it's not possible, at the same time bubbles radicalize people.
4. Let discussions happen, don't delete and ban because you're against the view (as long as it's not continuously spamming)
5. Benefit: You see people as humans even if they are wrong, Drawback: you need to sometimes change your mind in face of new evidence showing up, which it wouldn't if you stay in your bubble.

The thing which I really dislike with a bubble is that people inside of it get more and more radical and ban even their allies because they're not radical enough.

Lack of fake accounts/trolls like on other platforms and you'll have that.

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.

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).

They hang out in /modlog.

I'm interested in this, i left reddit due to that, if it's just a reddit 2.0 i'm better getting off. So far it looks samey.

I’ll offer this thought…

When I used to discuss politics with someone who viewed policy from the perspective of a different political party say 25-30 years ago, I would say 90-95% of what we wanted to see happen in the country was exactly the same. The differences were in how we wanted to get there.

Unfortunately, today I don’t think that the views align much any more. The views have diverged, and at least on the right, they have become extreme to the point of openly courting fascism, government capture by the oligarchy, and the masses supporting this don’t care about the consequences so long as they think they have a punitive moral victory over their opponents. The left isn’t really the left anymore, and I’m not sure what they want for the country. I don’t think they know either. They seem more interested in inclusivity than they do in actually making economic policy benefitting anyone under the upper middle class level.

All that said, I have yet to encounter one single instance of a conservative view on lemmy that wasn’t radical and antagonistic. I have also encountered far left views that were also radical and antagonistic. Far more hard left views than right, perhaps because there are so many hard left views the right stays away.

I don’t have the answer to what would increase the breadth of political content in Lemmy discussions, but the highly polarized and emotional views of politics along with internet anonymity isn’t really a recipe for balanced discussion. We haven’t even touched on organized propaganda deliberately pushing inflammatory posts and lies that incite reactionary and extreme views in return.

I dunno. I'm fairly far left, and moderately radicalized, and I get plenty of pushback. And from both those further left, and those that are US left (which is more centric overall).

Yeah, you don't get as many right wingers, but they do exist, and they tend to be willing to speak up. On the less crazy instances, they don't even get shut down by admins/mods, though they'll get down voted all to hell.

But I can't say that lemmy as a whole is that echoey. It just leans more left than any other form of social media.

Using Lemmy requires some modicum of understanding in technology. Most conservatives I've encountered tend to be technology-ignorant at best, and technophobic at worst. You don't see as many differing political views on Lemmy cause some/most conservatives are too inept at technology or can't be bothered to figure it out.

Reddit was just easier to get into, and as much as I personally like Lemmy, it's a hard sell to some from the outset. If the signup could be simplified (which I understand federation and why it can't be that easy), we could see an influx of more outdated viewpoints on the platform.

I also agree with others who have stated that most "conservative" philosophy involves denying rights to those who have only recently (last 50 years or so) been afforded rights equal to their own. I'm also growing increasingly suspicious of how much lead was actually used in the products consumed by boomers and some Gen-x before its use was known and most of it banned or removed from products. It seems too many in their late 40+ are going from normal human being with empathy towards others to RAGING MAGA CONSPIRACIST, seemingly overnight.