There's also the fact that there isn't an algorithm trying to keep you doomscrolling by promoting commercial content.
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...
I need eye bleach - I googled that song and wished I didn't. You don't even need to go to a small town - you go 5 feet outside of ANY city in US and everyone suddenly has a Southern accent and half of the people have Confederate flags. My 5 year old was with her mom in a peaceful protest and the fucking sheriff teargassed the group - she didn't get hit by the teargas but she did almost get crushed by the panicking crowd. Fuck these people. Sorry about the "negativity." But fuck.
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.
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.
Lemmy is so far left leaning because a large part of its existence is due to people being mad at capitalism
And its so tiring to hear about all the time
Edit: and I don’t disagree
I agree with it, but I also agree with you
"I disagree with the bad thing, but I wish the people affected by the bad thing wouldn't complain about it so much!"
I'm real tired of hearing about Lemmy and Reddit. I just want the other content that I used to consume here. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing how bad Reddit is doing.
It's like someone coming out of an abusive relationship. Every other sentence is about the awful things they did, how good it is to be away, and did you hear about xyz thing they did.
Thinking like this is why people get surprised when right leaning parties get voted for in elections
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.
Left wing politics are more popular in the real world than they are in real world governments. The thing is that extremely online youth have absolutely no idea of just how far left they are.
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.
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.
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.
I feel that comment is on the vibe of “liberals are leftists”.
Edit: “that comment” as in the one above the one I’m replying to…
Libertarians are not leftists.
Ayn Rand style, "Don't tread on me" objectivists, no. But they just co-opted the term. Libertarianism is pretty much anarchism, which is incomoatible with right wing beliefs, no matter what an-caps try and tell you. A right wing social order necessitates hierarchy, which anarchism is diametrically opposed to.
Libertarians promote "natural" hierarchy; the ones based on slavery, inheritance, and other mechanisms of white supremacy. And ultimately, the hierarchy of money which translates to power. To say they don't believe in hierarchy when they're the party of the robber baron who believe the bosses have the right to murder striking workers, even child workers, is frankly silly.
It's not on anarchist ideology really because of this and only appeals to disinfranchised people if they haven't bothered to do the math.
It's like you only read two words of my comment. The dickhead rightoidswho call themselves libertarian are NOT libertarian. It is a left wing ideology. You cannot have a society that is both right wing and libertarian. It is impossible.
That is exactly why those fuckheads bring in bullshit like "natural hierarchy", to jam their square beliefs into the round hole that is a classless ideology.
They took a word that already had a meaning, and tried to invert it.
Yes, it is beyond bonkers to suggest that crypto fascists want to flatten hierarchies. That is why it's maddeningly stupid for them to call themselves libertarians. Agreeing with them and calling them libertarians is just feeding their lie.
My point was that anarchism is not compatible with capitalism because capital is a form of hierarchy.
And I read your post. Yes, tea party libertarians ultimately lean more big government authoritarian than strict libertarians should.
But libertarians, even ones that aren't in bed with the GOP, aren't anarchist because they ultimately use the power of money and privilege to create hierarchy and control others. They just don't want democracy (i.e. governments) interfering in that power.
That's not anarchy but feudalism.
That's exactly what I've been saying... that is why they cannot call themselves libertarians. It's a corruption of what the term means.
While yes, libertarian is originally a leftist term, that’s not what I meant.
I meant the first comment saying most people on new tech are leftists is wrong. Most people who are technophilic are liberals. As in US style Democrat liberals. Which are NOT leftists. At all.
Why on earth would you say most tech heads are liberal?
Why would you say they aren’t ? They all buy in hard into capitalism.
Where are all these leftist techies?
You think every tech enthusiast "buys hard into capitalism"?
Hyperbole my friend. Exaggeration.
But to be much more precise and literal: a good amount of them. Likely even a majority, do.
Depends on which libertarian ideology is being expressed. Left libertarians - anarcho-syndicalists libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists are all libertarians. The right wing of anarchism aren't leftists, the left wing are.
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.
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...
Thanks to Big tech censorship, there are lots of people who are more anti-establishment right on the fediverse. Lots of fairly large instances. Some of them are real nasty pieces of work filled with folks dropping n bombs and swastikas, some of them are filled with some of the sweetest religious right folks you ever met in your life.
I think one of the biggest differences is that you don't have the Jerry Springer algorithm trying to match up a bunch of black people with a bunch of KKK members. Most far right instances don't defederate anyone, but many of the far left instances defederate the moment anyone looks at them funny so despite sharing a platform, typically there just isn't that much engagement between the two groups. In the middle of there are instances that are more than happy to federate with both as long as they aren't too big of jerks.
Did you come up with "Jerry Springer algorithm" expression? Very apt way to express it.
After realizing that it would put a bunch of black guys and a bunch of KKK members in the same space intentionally because it drives overall engagement, it became clear that's what it was. haha
Yet despite the clear creation of echo chambers, which I think is inevitable given how freedom of association works so smoothly and easily online, the Fediverse forces them all to "live next to each other".
It's not an entirely separate service I need to go on if I want to see what all the Nazi kids are up to these days.
This forced adjacency and inability to create any blocks stronger than defederation (which is pretty weak, really, compared to what other services can do) is going to have overall beneficial effects in the long-run, I think. Though it'll certainly cause its fair share of headaches too.
I'm actually happy to see the reduction in echo chambers for myself because it does 2 things:
It reminds me that the people I think I disagree with have good points I need to remember, and
It reminds me that the people I think I agree with have terrible points I need to remember.
For someone who thinks for themselves, seeing extremism in some cases actually makes you less extreme because you see it and realize you don't agree with it at all.
I mean, they're there to talk to... If you like jacking each other off... I don't.
Both of those sites have been ostracized (defederated) from the mastodon fediverse. The mastodon fediverse is in general quite left.
Yes, I said that. Well technically I said Gab was. Truth was so forked I don't believe there was even an option to defederate them. They intended on a walled garden on their own.
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon
I dont think that is the case.
Left leaning people are just much less accepting of authority, so there are more likely to move of of reddit. right leaning people also tend to be more conservative, so they are more likely to stay on there old platforms.
There have been many right-wing exodus from reddit over the years. All of them have centered around a perceived "free speech" issue, and they have always flocked to the most promising alternatives (e.g. Voat). Obviously Lemmy with its origins was never seen as particularly appealing for that crowd. This time the issue just happened to touch the left-leaning part more.
Probably also explains why Lemmy is doing well.
Knock on wood, but Lemmy's grown to the point now that it almost completely replaces Reddit for me. The only reason I still stop by Reddit is for more niche fandoms that haven't taken off here quite yet.
Yeah, there's that one shitty instance pretty much everyone defederated from a week or two ago.
It's actually one of the oldest instances, over a year old. Because the worst far right trolls that got ip banned from reddit came here when they couldn't make a new account on reddit.
I’m a right winger here for free speech reasons
Come on I don't think so. Lemmy was a left leaning platform since the beginning.
Well that's still the same point though. Lemmy and the fediverse are all about rejecting the authority of centralized services/social media.
I think it's a different political dimension entirely isn't it? You have left vs right economics, and then authoritarian vs libertarian governance. I don't buy into that stupid political compass, but the axes do seem accurate.
As a grandfather, boomer, white cis male, I suggest you might just be over-generalizing.
"as a black man"
Lemmy is a decentralized protocol not a centralized americanized political leaning social media.
Do you think that's relevant? I don't see anything about either reddit or lemmy that makes it harder for right-wingers to join. I can tell you that America does not have a monopoly on the alt-right (AfD, Brexit, etc)
I'm keen to learn more if you've seen evidence in this topic. I wouldn't know how to investigate, tbh.
If the platform owners are driving discussions by manipulating feeds (Facebook) or running bots to make the platform look popular (Reddit), the right-wing presence on those platforms might not be as real as we believe.
Well, looking at elections worldwide, the far-right isn't as small as any extremist party should be...
On Reddit is way harder now (like I care), it is not about monopoly but a state controlled company that's has censorship from a party.
state controlled company
Umm. Do you mean Tencent? They have a minority holding. The idea that China actively controls reddit is hard to reconcile with the amount of content that is critical of China. Or let me know what you mean, if not that.
has censorship from a party
What censorship, what party? Do you mean t_d being shut down? Because a better explanation of that would be that the majority of civilised people finally had enough of the nasty chumps in that hole, and good riddance to them. Or let me know what you mean, if not that.
State controlled and censored I mean three letter agency, as the NSA leaks.
The political discourse seems toned down here, I am already happy with that.
It doesn't to me. It's just communists vs liberals rather than left vs right.
It's more easily avoided.
But I am seeing 2010 style cringe new atheism though. It's never a good sign when those people are around, they were the precursors to the cancer we see on the big platforms today.
But that's just as easily avoided too. I only know what you're talking about because I saw like 4 cringe atheist memes while broswing All once. I don't subscribe to any of those pages and so I rarely see it, just like how one could easily avoid political discussion.
When I say easily avoided I mean that I literally don't see them very often. Whereas new atheism seems to be seeping into the feed wierdly often.
This reminds of when people go to toxic subs on the old place, to shit on fat people or something. The end result of these low iq hateful subs is that you grow a base of angry, preaching anti intellectuals who think they're right and who are ripe for a right wıng bot army and bad actors to brainwash them, and ultimately afflict cancer on the space.
That said, I am on all too often.
Yes, I prefer my online culture to be entirely Christian, or failing that, trauma-free ex-Christians that have no desire to talk about how fucked the US is because of evangelicalism. High five, buddy.
There are countries other then the US.
Yup. There are. And if they have governments that are dominated by religious activists, the same message applies.
New atheism cringe is different to being pro abortion, women's autonomy, and advancing marginalised people's rights. Completely different.
If you specifically identify with new atheism and the thinking of Dawkins and his brigade, I'd seriously reconsider.
Here's where I'm at - at the local level, the US is already a de facto theocracy in many places. If you have the privilege of being unexposed to this, great. The issue I have with Dawkins is that he's an asshole that got called out for being an asshole by his own admirers and he doubled down on being an asshole to his own popular detriment. I have no issue with loud pissed-off atheists in a rabidly conservative USA. If the issue is that old school atheists kept their mouths shut, while new atheists are out and proud, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.
If the issue is that old school atheists kept their mouths shut, while new atheists are out and proud, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.
If you think 'new' means modern, as in present day, then you've been arguing with me for hours for no reason. Because 'new atheism' refers to a specific movement, around the 2010s. It's not simply 'atheism' now.
I don't care about shouty atheists or quiet atheists, it literally doesn't matter to me. I am wary of people congregating around easy targets like broadly religious people, when religious people can mean anybody. It can be a white supremacist American, or it could be a Yemeni Muslim getting genocided by Saudis using American and UK bombs. And I don't see that very important distinction made when those low iq anti-theist posts are spammed on c/all.
I would say less "left leaning" and more anti-capitalist / anti fascist. More socialism less Nazis.
At least it's an ethos.
You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole. /s
Shut the fuck up Donny!
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.
Among people in general who actually read comments, the left does have a distinct advantage.
If Republicans could read, they'd be real mad
Lemmy also isn't profit driven, so you don't get libertarian tech bros.
For all we know the people that are on the right have gone to other platforms. That doesnt stop you jerks from saying im on the right even though im not. For some reason both sides have adopted a "with us or against us" mentality and everyone is a nazi.
That’s exactly what a Nazi would say!
/s
People throw around the word too much, there are actual Nazis around and we need to reserve the term just for their special brand of evil. Otherwise the phrase gets so watered down as to essentially become meaningless.
Otherwise they are just rightwing dipshits.
Watering down language is part of the right wing platform. I think they actually want to be seen as nazis so the term is less powerful. On the other side, they are calling everyone groomers to water down that language as well.
I’ve had people in this thread say that I advocate for genocide.
I don’t think the right are the ones watering down the language
Maybe you should do more research instead of advocating for then.
I know what the word ‘genocide’ means. The left just misuses words all the time.
I don’t need to ‘do more research’
You definitely could do more research since you disagree with scientific consensus on trans issues and think you know better how it aught to be.
I didn't see anyone accuse you of genocide but from your other comments I wouldn't be surprised if you did and just didn't know it or tried to pretend you didn't because of a technicality.
I would have disagreed with lobotomies too, had I been around for that. I don’t really see the point you’re trying to make here.
There really isn’t any such thing as scientific consensus, not as it relates to truth. Science is ever evolving and asking questions, and re-answering old questions when we discover new information.
There is no ‘this is settled’ in science.
Well, you don’t know what genocide means. It’s okay
Sorry, this is the case on both sides. I'm a leftist, and I see it happen from my side all the time. Deflecting and claiming only Republicans do it is ignorant or blatant gaslighting.
I'm called a nazi sometimes from people in my own party. It 100% happens.
Hell, "gaslighting" itself is a good example of this phenomenon, and it's mostly on the left.
You know your political views are truly independent when both the left and right accuse you of siding with the enemy.
Independent.. you mean a dirty centrist?!?
The hate for anyone who weighs ideas no matter which team they're from is very transparent.
I'm all for saying both sides are bad, because they are, but I'm guessing you either did something to warrant being called a nazi or found a cringey liberal to argue with.
You are absolutely correct. Not all fascist are Nazis.
There was already a right wing exodus from Reddit. /r/RedditAlternatives was created during that exodus, which is why their pinned list of alternatives includes things like gab(racists) and ovar.it(terfs).
Don’t forget the classic, “You sure with insert political extremist group on an issue. At least my side doesn’t team up with them.”
Most commonly seen when talking about Nazis obviously. I’ve been criticized for supporting free speech on social media sites because obviously only Nazis would benefit from being able to voice their opinions without worrying about being deplatformed.
Exactly. Blame/credit (blame in this case) doesn't travel that way.
Take the following example: Alice and Bob both support view X. Bob also supports view Y. Y is evil. Then, Bob can be deemed responsible for supporting view Y. But X does not become evil because Bob is. And so Alice is completely fine.
The right has moved onto other platforms.
A lot of people on the right who would post online have been banned from most of the left leaning platforms and have found their own places to talk.
And the end result is that every site is an echo chamber.
The state of the internet in 2023 is more or less, “Do you want the left-wing circlejerk or the right-wing circlejerk?” And if you want a place where people are allowed to express their views even if it disagrees with the majority opinion of the site, that no longer exists.
I’m sure it must be great if you identify as left or right, but it sure as hell sucks shit if you don’t align completely with either side.
I agree so much.
I love discussing things with people who think differently than I do, that’s how we learn. We should be able to disagree in a civil way and exchange ideas and understand each other and eventually agree to disagree.
But we can’t.
Online it’s either one extreme or the other.
When is someone going to have the balls to create a place where people can argue and talk shit out? Or is that just too mature for the kids online these days who cannot handle a disagreement?
Maybe there should be online discussions that are age restricted. No teenagers, 30+ adults only. I wonder if that would be better or worse
The end result is that some sites have a lot of white nationalists and some sites have very little white nationalists.
Conservatives have nothing humane to bring to the table at this point, even if not proudly saddled with your average ethonostate enjoyers, the platform is nothing but a fight against progress during a time where crisis requires it.
I always find it funny (albeit in a depressing way) when people on the left act like anything short of totally open borders is white supremacy.
Wanna talk about ethnostates? Check out the demographics and immigration policies for countries like Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Wanna talk about racism? Ask the average naturalized immigrant how they feel about illegal immigration.
Supporting more secured borders isn’t racist. The reality is that the American government should prioritize the interests of its own citizens before prioritizing the interests of people from other countries. It drives me up the walls to see how much support our government provides to refugees when meanwhile our own cities are struggling, most often in predominately black areas. Yes it’s a slight false dichotomy to act like we can’t support refugees while also improving our inner cities, but the reality is that we usually fail to do both as they’re often competing interests.
Is it really “supporting a white ethnostate” to say I’d rather have our country let in more immigrants with college degrees or at least a willingness to work over a bunch of people who have zero desire to integrate or even work.
“Progress” doesn’t mean trying to increase the population of our cities and diversity as much as possible even if it means bringing in millions of people who will rely on the government to survive, refuse to integrate into American society, and are the literal opposite of progressive. “Progress” means working to improve the lives of the people we have already living here, regardless of their ethnic background. And currently our immigration policy isn’t accomplishing that.
How many democrats with meaningful power are actually proponents of an "open border"?
The main times I see the term "open borders" is a bunch of republican sites making strawman arguments. Fact is the border isn't open and nobody serious really wants it open, but if it's implied enough then people believe it. The #2 hit on google is an official republican senate website attacking this "open border" policy.
Why this fixation on highlighting immigration in a facetious way to misrepresent the situation? Even the tone-deaf can hear that faint whistle.
Which site has the least strawmen?
I know I shouldn't go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
I know I shouldn't go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
It really is. So many vapid little monsters. You get to witness the ignorance and hatred spewed from people who think they're moral beacons for the rest of us. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing, like you said.
There is also the fact that this isn't a platform as much as it's a framework that uses and open protocol. Right leaning people can setup Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, and so forth as easily as left wingers.
The biggest problem in general has been people treating Fediverse setups like traditional ones. Facebook, Twitter, Discord are all run by central companies.
Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix, have the benifit of being usable as bases for people to setup individual communities for themselves and still have some networking.
For some reason both sides have adopted a “with us or against us”
I hate this. I hate that if you are not 100% aligned to a certain groups policies, you're pretty much the devil in disguise. A leftist Democrat that supports the 2A? You're a "hard core racist bigot conservative that needs to home someone you love die in a shooting to see how you like it!". Those people are insane. It's not how the majority thinks, but those that do are very outspoken and loud so they have way more visibility.
There are a lot of people (on both sides) that can see how extreme parts of their "side" are and are very self aware of those things. They'll call out their own side for going too far, being too weird, and saying unfactual things. Those are the people that you can have real conversations with. You won't agree, you won't change opinions, but the conversation is generally very informative and you're not getting pissed off at each other (or you do, but you still show each other a mutual respect).
I cannot stand those with the "with us or against us" mentality. They really need to GTFO. And they absolutely cannot say they are patriots and support America first and everything that goes along with that. Because our country was founded on different principals, people with different viewpoints, and we created ways to allow those various viewpoints to exist together. We WANT to have different viewpoints instead of just allowing one to flourish and grow to an extreme and heavy handed policy. If you support the "Us" part of that, we are ALL with us, even if our views are opposing and we refuse to even meet in the middle.
I cannot stand those with the "with us or against us" mentality. They really need to GTFO.
In other words, if they aren't with you they are against you?
As someone with similar views, I recently realised that I have the exact same tribalism and aggression, it's just targeted at people who have that mentality.
I like seeing things forbwhat they really are, so I consider myself a centrist. Both sides hate me they are so brainwashed.
Neither side has all the answers. Both sides have valid points, but these fools choosing a side stop using their brains to think for themselves, and just puppet whatever the rest of their cult is parroting.
Well you just got it all figured out!
I'm waiting for your centrist answers for everything! Please do tell.
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other!"
Centrism is just being able to acknowledge that both parties have flaws. If you can’t find any issues with the party you support, that means that you got your political views from someone else instead of developing them yourself.
People on a left-leaning site don’t wanna hear it, but US Democrats aren’t perfect. Their policy on immigration is not sustainable. A de facto open border policy for refugees and people who cross illegally while people with college degrees can’t even get a work visa is absurd. As a nation we are not obligated to help others when many of our own citizens are struggling. Biden’s student debt relief plan would have caused tuition prices to increase at an even faster rate than before and guaranteed further debt relief executive orders would be required in the future. Plus it set an insane precedent that the president could authorize billions in spending without any congressional oversight. Democrats were frightengly authoritarian during COVID with stuff like vaccine mandates and online censorship. Things were labelled as “misinformation” and later accepted to be the truth… repeatedly, and people simply didn’t care. One day you could get banned from every social media site for saying COVID may have come from a lab, and the next day it was perfectly plausible. That stuff would have been unthinkable prior to 2020 and it’s just apparently normal today.
And then there is the stuff where they’re just hypocritical or simply providing lip service. Biden could remove marijuana’s schedule 1 classification today with an executive order, but he won’t. Instead his administion argued in court that marijuana users cannot be trusted owning firearms and the ATF is right to prohibit them from buying guns. Speaking of guns, Biden also signed an executive order declaring pistol braces to be stocks after years of the ATF saying they weren’t stocks, making millions of gun owners into felons, many who didn’t even know about the reclassification. A piece of plastic that was legal one day is now 10 years in federal prison. Democrats are guilty of putting corporate interests before individual interests, much like republicans. Democrats love to talk about how much they care about the environment and climate change, but would sooner pass a law saying people can’t set their AC below 80 degrees than dare invest money into nuclear power or stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
You don’t have to agree with everything I said here. But if you can’t find anything to criticize about your preferred party, or at least acknowledge that these are valid criticisms even if you disagree with them, you are part of the problem.
“Centrists” gets tons of hate online that’s unwarranted IMO. “Centrism” is just a label people like to put on independent voters because mocking them by acting like their political position can be summed up as “Democrats have some good points, but the Nazis do too” is an easy way to dismiss them, when the reality is that most centrists are voters who get no representation since we have a broken-ass two-party system. Admitting that the two-party system is bad doesn’t benefit you if you support one of those two parties. So here we are.
I dont think anyone on the left would say the democrats in the US are perfect, in the UK we hate labour since the leader is defiantly not left leaning and the party has fallen in the past few years
Centrist doesnt always mean fence sitter... could just mean you agree with different points opposite of the eisle. Its almost like this whole political system wasnt intended to have a 2 party system or something...
It wasn't intended, just a long term effect of First Past the Post voting systems.
It's hard because everyone 100% has a different definition for every political party/leaning. I'm proud of you for sticking to being open to consider all points if view.
I'm a leftist, but I love having my views pushed against, and I am open to having my views changed on what I believe and think if I find the argument persuasive enough. It really is a sort of cancer that both sides tend to refuse to even consider they might be wrong on anything.
Keep on doing you, the downvotes don't mean your outlook politically is wrong or bad.
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.
Imagine if Lemmy just totally avoided playground level political debate?
Please.
i like you.
People will stay where they're right, and avoid places where they're wrong. See: Facebook groups.
I don't think I'm all THAT left leaning. I just like to be told I'm wrong... I may have problems.
I honestly don't think that's the case. There's tons of right leaning and left leaning people that are bots. You can just never know. I think it comes down to the age range using this place and the culture using it. Reactionary people prefer sites like 4chan or the other online communities designed to cater to them. The age comes in because based on research the largest age demographic using Lemmy is between 25 and 35. This site is too underground to attract the middle aged and older cohort that are right wing. It's also not hip enough to attract the under 20 crowd who make up the bulk of Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool viewers.
Surely you're pulling those age ranges out of your ass.
I've run into a handful on here ... but they're always downvoted to oblivion, and even their sealioning comments often get removed by mods.
I think that the left-right dichotomy is inherently flawed. A lot of what I believe might be considered "right-leaning" or "left-leaning," but I cannot say that I prescribe to either sort of ideology fully or with any fidelity.
I will always be opposed to any view with a pervasive "moral" authority, and both the so-called left and right are obsessed with their own versions of this. The problem we run into is the false supposition that beliefs can be categorized on a spectrum spanning right to left (or, even more liberally, a spectrum spread across two dimensions). It has been a ridiculous notion from its inception, whenever that might have been.
Building one's identity (another silly notion, in general—identity itself being a frivolous construct that functions only as a fulcrum for the extortion of social power) upon a supposed spectrum is likewise ridiculous. You can be conservative or liberal, or anything, really. But those beliefs do not exist in a linear or planar dimension. They are so far removed from each other that one cannot fathom sliding incrementally from one to the next.
And to each respective party, "left" and "right," the other can be demonized as evil, even without full comprehension of the other. It's all just so damned tribalistic and silly.
It's completely natural for humans to fall into a binary thinking.
It's evolutionarily advantageous to fully focus on "the enemy", whatever that may be, and "the friends", our own family/tribe, absolutely hating the enemy while absolutely loving your family. It's what made it most likely that our genes persevere, if you give the enemy the benefit of the doubt, and they backstab you, you're dead, but not if you just kill them first/don't trust them at all in any way.
This concept permeates our society and you see it everywhere. It's always "us" vs "them". If your ideology "wins" politically, throughout most of human history that means you get to kill your opponent, while if you lose, it means you may die. So it's naturally almost the worst thing in the world for us if someone disagrees with us politically.
It's really amazing how almost everything about the way we behave is completely shaped by what made us survive in some form or another thousands of years ago. The only way out so far is trying our hardest to resist our natural programming and apply rationality, which comes with its own set of problems.
Algorithms and AI. Rage gets views, so it's what gets pushed to the top, so it gets even more views, so it gets pushed to the top.
Yeah, Lemmy has address to this by just having an incredibly glitchy algorithm (look at this post with five up votes from four months ago, it deserves to be on the front page). No one can game it because no one understands it.
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.
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.
To build upon this, just getting into a petty online argument about nothing keeps users coming back. I enjoy reading the back and forth between two strangers
Yep!
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.
The users create the content, the background ai decides which content to prioritize and promote to the front page, etc..
Which part of that is wrong?
The fact that the user is the one imputing the data to determine the received content in some way. You're selecting the content you interact with, not a black box trying to take over the population. They just want you to stay on the site, look at the ads, and never leave. They don't care about your political allegiance or what movies you like, they will feed you whatever you want.
Agreed!!!
The user selects the content that they interact with, but because content that upsets you is so engaging, the AI will heartily promote it.
look at how engaged you are with these comments! Is it because they make you upset?
How interesting. ;-)
I only really ever comment when I have something to say. This usually is only when I disagree with something.
That’s why my upvote ratio is terrible. I rarely comment when I agree with something someone has said. I bet my ratio would be a lot better if I did.
But that’s just human nature, I think. Some people crave acceptance and validation so they comment agreement and some people crave conflict and challenge, so they comment in disagreement.
Everyone is the hero of their own story, so I think they feel the need to “correct” perceived injustices.
I think your experience is common.
And I think AI exploits this, because it’s useful.
I agree 100%
You're attributing combative interaction to an algorithm on a site that has no algorithm. Congratulations you just proved the algorithm isnt needed to cause interaction. People do this with no computer forcing them to, but tons of people here are convinced that every other site is filled with bots manipulating content for people when the people are asking for the content, sometimes very directly.
I’m attributing combative interactions to “keeping your attention”
The ai just exploits this.
So while it’s not NEEDED, it does happen and it works.
Maybe your point is better worded as “the AI doesn’t overrule your own ability to choose”
Which while true, doesn’t change my point. Combative interactions happen without ai, the ai just learns and promotes them.
So you understand the system very well, yet completely ignore the ethically dubious aspects of the system.
People are not born desiring harmful garbage. They are, at least in part, taught, conditioned to desire it.
When you say that a site "feeds you whatever you want", you're ignoring the chicken-or-the-egg pattern of desire and satisfaction on the market. The site teaches you want you want. Internet addiction and the ways in which contemporary media and tech affect your mind (most obviously by reducing people's attention spans) are fairly well known today.
Imagine a drug dealer who sells his garbage to the same person so much that they develop an addiction. With your logic, we can just blame the junkie who keeps returning to the dealer, while the dealer is pretty much innocent - surely it's not his responsibility if someone else develops an addiction and destroys their life!
Purely anecdotal, but I have two Facebook profiles. I'm extremely left leaning, especially in the fake one, yet both have their feeds blowing up with articles from conservative pages and groups about this "small town" song, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis. Oh, and Fox News articles too, up until I hid them.
I don't engage with any of those communities or anything even tangentially related to them. I have discussed all of those concepts in groups lately, though.
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].
Is manipulation a force?
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.
No, it's because of your scrolling speed, pauses, engagements, updoots, downdoots. Everything you do is taken into consideration to update your feed with more stuff that you are likely to engage with. That's all.
And you're the one doing it all, not a computer. the computer is not that smart, you need to tell it what you want to see.
You're arguing that there's no algorithm that promotes content users interact with on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and so on? This has been proven repeatedly.
On Facebook, most people seem to think they get the feed in time-ordered manner, and that hasn't been true for a decade or more. For example, posts with pictures get promoted to be closer to the top of the feed. Crucially, posts with more interaction (replies, reactions, probably even reports) are also shown closer to the top of the feed, so the user is much more likely to see those when they load Facebook.
So, things that upset people will get a lot of interaction, and they show those at the top of the feeds, which generates even more interaction. So then the algorithms start looking for similar content that will generate the same type of interactions, to put that near the top of the feed, and next thing you know millions of people are worshiping the ground some idiotic politician walks on.
Sure, it's free will to respond, but the fact is that the users' feed is being curated, focused on whatever extreme thing generates reactions.
Nah, it's probably because most of us left Reddit at some point, either due to banning left-wing subs or due to corporate dickery.
The right-wingers went their way, to places like Voat, Saidit, Gab and Truth Social.
Idk how it's taken people this long to figure it out lol
I agree.
I think most people just miss the point that young people tend to move faster the others established.
It doesn't help that people's views o left v right differ depending on their agendas etc...
I agree with you that Lemmy may be more left-leaning than other social media platforms due to the lack of bot activity. However, I think it's also important to consider the type of content that is shared and discussed on Lemmy. As a platform focused on creativity and expression, there may be an inherent bias towards progressive or left-leaning ideas and discussions. Additionally, Lemmy's community guidelines prioritize kindness and respect, which can create a space where voices from marginalized communities feel safe to share their opinions and experiences. Overall, while bot activity certainly plays a role in shaping the political climate of social media platforms, I believe that Lemmy's unique culture and values also contribute to its overall political orientation.
That being said, I appreciate your comment and am glad to see thoughtful discussion happening on Lemmy! Let's keep building a supportive and inclusive online community together.
Good job! You did it, a real comment!
I come here to not read about politics, left or right
Everything is political, my friend. Accept it, and be kind when discussing! (Not to fascists tho, they will exploit your kindness.)
You're in for a bad ride then. There will always be politics in some magazines/threads.
One look at the results of elections all across the world is enough to prove this hypothesis wrong.
Lemmy is not representative of the general demographic of countries. Thinking it is will lead to a very narrow world view.
That statement does not make sense. Op claimed that this applies to all social media, not just Lemmy.
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.
Not sure what you are talking about. How is that even relevant? Even pretending the US is the only country on the internet (as you people like to do), Trump still got more than 40% of the popular vote, didn't he? That means that a lot of people do hold these views. They don't need to be an absolute majority to voice their opinions on social media.
You mentioned "results of elections all across the world". I see Benjamin Netanyahu, a facist who lost election after election now trying to take absolute control over his country. I see fascists in America trying to steal elections with 40% of the vote when the majority of the population doesn't want them. I see Lukashenko imprisoning his political rivals that appear to be supported by a majority of people. Conservatives don't believe in democracy. They don't care what people want. They just want the appearance of legitimacy that democracy provides. Creating fake supporters online is just one tool in the aresenal to create the impression of support where none actually exists, to make their fascism easier to pull off. You can think of astroturfing as reverse censorship, and it's just as bad.
Haha, good one tankie. Look, I can hide the sun with one hand! xD
Right wing bots. That's a good one.
Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
As long as these rules are in place and enforced arbitrarily by power tripping mods you'll only see the woke bubble. Alternate ideas are not allowed. Try talking about any of the taboo subjects and see how quickly the ban hammer falls.
kbin.social is just as bad as reddit ever was. I said that I personally don't want a transgender transition surgery and they banned me. These are not places where real discussion can happen.
Then find another instance where you can be as homophobic and transphobic as you want
you can be as homophobic and transphobic as you want
Lol see how easily you are triggered? I mentioned nothing about others. I can support trans people to be who they want to be and not desire the same treatment for myself. But all you hear are dog whistles, and that stops all discussion dead. It's the basis for an echo chamber.
When my personal choices are see as "transphobic" the problem isn't with me.
No one wants to force you to get surgery. It’s possible you were just misunderstood since announcing you don’t want to transition is a completely random and pointless thing to do. I said that in my comment because you said you wanted the rules about homophobia and transphobia gone
announcing you don’t want to transition is a completely random and pointless thing to do
We celebrate people transitioning, isn't it a little bigoted to not also celebrate not? I mean accepting who you are on the inside is what this is all supposed to be about, no matter who you are, isn't it?
you said you wanted the rules about homophobia and transphobia gone
Nope, not what I said. Read it again.
I said they were enforced arbitrarily, by mods who only hear what they want to hear.
I want to pick a fight but let’s please stick to topics Ive already thought of a clever comeback for
Clarifying my position is picking a fight?
Sounds like you're the one out of clever comebacks.
This then later became lemmygrad. Lemmygrad is a echo chamber. That’s what I mean with that it was originally designed to be a echo chamber.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Then explain to the class what you do believe in. Give us 3 bullet points you'd want a candidate to also support.
I'll start as an example:
I believe in complete and unequivocal abortion rights for women
High speed rail should get more funding in the US, and car based transport (where rail could be a realistic replacement) should not be a cheap as it is
Gerrymandering should be ended, and federal level elections should be taken over by a nonpartisan 50-50 committee to create new maps when local governments continue to submit unacceptable voting maps to intentionally stall so they can keep using the old gerrymandered map for the next elections
I’m not a politician, but I’m voting for the Conservative Party in Canada, I would suggest you look into their platform if you’re interested because I’m a supporter
But there are people recently that have said they should get stuck into asylums.
Does existing not include participating in society?
I don’t think gay or trans people shouldn’t participate in society. That doesn’t make any sense.
There are people that say a lot of crazy shit I don’t agree with, on the left as well.
Is there an argument that trans people need help? I think that’s pretty obvious. Is the help needed for the brain or the body? I think thats where a lot of disagreement comes from.
When I think about it, I can see why someone would think that surgery on a healthy body because the mind thinks it was born in the wrong body could be the wrong thing to do.
I don’t think that’s at all unreasonable. Most mental illnesses are treated by treating the mind.
And if your mind disagrees with the healthy body you were born in, I can see how the mind might be the place to start treatment, and not the body.
However, I also believe in adults being able to make their own decisions. Just as if someone wants to have cosmetic surgery to install horns in their head, or someone wants breast augmentation surgery, go fill your boots.
So if someone wants a surgeon to create a cosmetic neovagina forcthemselves and that would make them happy, go for it.
I also think adults should be able to hook themselves on heroin if they want. No one is there to hold your hand through life, most of all the government
If you’re an adult, make your own decisions and live with the consequences. I’m not here to babysit you.
Just wanted to add to this that the amount of downvotes I’m receiving just by speaking in this discussion just further proves my point.
I’m not welcome here, that’s clear, that’s why you don’t see more people like me online in places like this. But don’t let that fool you, we exist. Just not in the same places that you like to hang out.
And I think everyone likes that just fine
So there's the rub. Are puberty blockers treatment for the mind or body? If it's a "body" treatment and therefore the "wrong place to start" should children not have access to this treatment until they are 18? It does reduce morbidity of the condition.
You get shit on for your opinions because they are both uninformed and callous. You are also missing the point of the healthcare by focusing on elective cosmetic surgeries.
The way you talk about this subject is just awful.
I don’t consider cosmetic surgery ‘health care’. Gender reassignment surgery is cosmetic surgery. It’s not like a knee replacement or a quadruple bypass surgery.
Everything I’ve said has been to the adult population and that adults can make their own decisions.
Children cannot make those decisions for themselves. And in those cases, I think they need to be taken on a case by case basis and taken very seriously.
I don’t have much of an opinion on puberty blockers, other than to say that if the body is healthy and normal, I wouldn’t choose to medicate or mess with my child’s natural process of growing up into an adult.
Those are my personal beliefs and they apply to any ‘health care’ my kids would receive. If there is nothing wrong with the body’s process, I don’t see any reason to interfere.
Now if other parents don’t think that way, they can parent their kids however they see fit.
Being a parent is a difficult thing. All parents want what’s best for their kids, and no matter how hard we try to be the best parents we can be, I don’t think any child makes it out of childhood without some for of trauma, unfortunately.
I carry trauma from childhood, I’m sure my children will as well. I’m sure you do, as well as all of your friends.
You can assert that I’m ‘callous, uninformed and awful’ as much as you want, I’m used to much much worse. But I know myself (you don’t), and I know how empathetic I am to everyone’s unique situations.
My personal beliefs don’t really apply to anyone else. I just hope everyone ends up happier tomorrow than they were yesterday, and one size isn’t going to fit all.
That’s why I need to trust you to make the best life decisions for yourself. I’m not equipped to make those decisions for you.
I’m also not going to go out of my way to fix your mistakes though, either. Not because I’m callous, but because I think we are all on our own journey, and there is no safety net out there.
Life is very dangerous, you have the ability to really fuck it up. So take care of yourself, make good decisions, be strong, be independent, and have faith in yourself
The surgery is not only cosmetic, it has several health benefits.
It seems like you are selectively uninformed. You put breast argumentation in the same basket as extreme body mods.
Your choice to deprive your children of medication that would reduce their rate of suicidality is concerning. Would you let your son wear a dress?
Breast augmentation is a body mod. It’s putting silicone under the skin to project a certain aesthetic, same as similar body modifications.
The mental health benefits of cosmetic surgeries aren’t what I would consider ‘health care’ either. Like I said, some people get tattoos all over their faces. I’m sure that improves their mental health. I wouldn’t say that makes it a recommended health care service for people with low self esteem or anything.
If someone is unhappy and it is causing them mental health distress and they feel like cosmetic surgery will make them happy, and they receive the cosmetic surgery that makes them happy, how is that ‘health care’?
If someone is happier with bigger breasts, that’s consider health care? This is so stupid
If a dude injects synthol into his arms so his muscles appear bigger and that makes him happy, that’s just him practicing health care on himself?
Like what are we even talking about here?
As far as I’m aware, there is no mental default for ‘healthy’. Not like there is with the body. The brain functions in a much different way than the body does. What makes one person feel happy isn’t going to make another person happy. This is called personality and emotion.
The medical field can sometimes return a defective body to a working state through medical intervention. I haven’t seen medicine be able to make someone ‘happy’ though.
It sounds like a lot of this argument revolves around making someone feel happy. I just don’t see how happiness is considered health care, in any serious sense. Happiness is up to the individual, has a lot to do with how someone feels, and is not directly tied to a medical process that can augment someone’s base happiness.
These kinds of studies are always done through surveys, because there is no medical test that defines a persons level of happiness. All it is is filling out survey questions.
“On a scale of 1-10 how happy do you feel?”
“On a scale of 1-10 how happy do you feel now?”
“Do you have more or less suicidal ideation today?”
It’s not very scientific, people aren’t very good at quantifying their own happiness and there is no objective testing to give you a reliable score.
You can try to medicate the chemistry in the brain to try to affect someone’s mood or happiness level, but even now studies are coming out saying things like depression aren’t tied as much to brain chemistry as they thought 20 years ago.
This is to say that what we might considered correct today, isn’t necessarily correct. The right thing never changes, as the absolute truth remains constant, but our perception of and uncovering of what that truth is, changes.
They did lobotomies on people, ffs.
Sounds like this should be something that is discussed and decided upon by a medical professional and their patient. Mr. conservative over here wants big government intervening in peoples lives. weird.
When did I say that?
No one. NO ONE, think LGBT people shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
What I've heard IRL and what I've read online in less moderated spaces speaks to the contrary.
Online isn’t a real place, you’ve got bots and trolls and people who just say things to get a reaction.
If you know people IRL that believe lgbt people shouldn’t exist, I guess I feel bad for you and who you associate with. I don’t know anyone at all like that, not even close to that.
Also, I don’t feel like I need to defend the ideas of the most crazy people/trolls you can find online. I’ll defend my own words and beliefs, but I don’t feel the need to defend the most extreme examples of dumb things you’ve read online that someone else posted.
You can relativise things all you want, it's a fact that online insanity does leak back into the reality. For example see Qanon, or Brenton Tarrant, who used to frequent 4chan and 8chan. Not to mention the more trivial things such as people openly agreeing with Andrew Tate, or becoming fans and voters of Donald Trump due to his online presence, etc.
If you know people IRL that believe lgbt people shouldn’t exist, I guess I feel bad for you and who you associate with.
Did you just spin this into a covert ad hominem? Nice job, but I don't "associate" with every person whose views I hear espoused IRL.
I don’t know anyone at all like that, not even close to that.
Ok? But why assume that every community and society is exactly like yours? From your other comments I notice you're from Canada, I hope you're aware your political culture isn't typical for the rest of the world, not even for the entire "west".
I don’t feel the need to defend the most extreme examples of dumb things you’ve read online that someone else posted.
Right, so you didn't have to claim such people and such extreme positions literally don't exist - with caps lock, no less. I probably wouldn't think of replying to you if you didn't formulate it so categorically.
Would you care to explain the policy changes right wing politicians are making then?
This is who I’m voting for in the next Canadian election. I have a hard time disagreeing with anything Pierre Poilievre is campaigning on.
You can find a lot of him speaking in parliament on YouTube if you’re interested
for saying something reasonable
"Something reasonable" tends to be sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, etc. in my observation.
Funny how they offered no examples of these "reasonable" arguments.
Tbf, they're a self-acclaimed smart person who doesn't want to get banned. At least they haven't gotten themselves banned yet, so can't find fault with that statement yet.
One of the last reddit posts I saw on unpopularopinion was someone self identified as being on the right, and how they were persecuted for their beliefs.
Literally her entire profile was them talking about the pros of meth, and saying some of the most bigoted shit I had heard in a bit, and attacking anyone slightly left of them in comments.
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'
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
So when Michael Knowles said "Transgenderism must be eradicated" That was not "Trans people shouldn't exist"? Or when Italy decided to remove lesbian mothers from birth certificates, that is in fact not "LGBT people don't deserve the same things"?
Or Florida updating history books to illustrate how slaves benefited from their position because they now know the skill of blacksmithing?
dude, the latest batch straight up denies slaver was a thing
Don't forget Florida changing the curriculum to show the "benefits of slavery"
The only point getting proven is you don't even know the party you're supporting. You said nothing I mentioned was the truth but that was just shit from the last few months. You're wildly off the mark here and it showing big time.
All of those things happened quite recently, you should keep up with the news if you're gonna comment about this stuff
I don’t think you understand. We’ve checked out.
You guys are kinda on your own. I think we all prefer it that way right now.
Also, not being American is another weird wrinkle in all of this. American politics is seeping into Canadian politics, but we don’t have as many of the same problems around race and inclusion as you do.
But there are still conservatives north of the border who aren’t really caught up in what’s happening in Florida or California.
There is a difference between conservative, or right wing and Republican. You seem to think they are the same thing. Well I’m not a Republican
Dude there is plenty of racism in Canada.
Have you heard people talk about drunk homeless natives? Call your black coworker "intimidating"? Complain about drivers of any ethnicity? Talk about immigrants and refugees?
Do you interact with humans at all?
There is a lot of native racism, absolutely.
We don’t have the same history as the US does with racism though. If you think the US and Canada’s history of race relations is at all similar, you’re just ignorant about the subject.
Racism exists everywhere, yes. Not that it’s right, but it’s also not the same country to country.
Is japan racist? Yup, same with Sweden and Africa and the Caribbean and the UK and Egypt.
I’ve been to all of these places and interacted with the humans who live there.
But it’s not all the same.
You're the one on your own buddy. You can plug your ears down to the third knuckle, doesn't change your delusions. You cant defend your position beyond a simple "Nu uhhh!" and now you're running with your tail between your legs, screaming "big meanies!"
They won't even say what their positions are nevermind defend them
That’s fine
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".
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”
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.
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.
Fuck your enlightened centrism
The concept of enlightened centrism is nothing but a tool to drive people into extremism. How can you not see that?
Are you sure you replied to the right person? I was condemning the "enlightened" centrism and the idiot I responded to. I think anyone who goes "but both sides" is almost always a blithering idiot.
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.
The only ones not welcome are extremists. If you felt unwelcome you probably are.
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.
There's also the fact that there isn't an algorithm trying to keep you doomscrolling by promoting commercial content.
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...
I need eye bleach - I googled that song and wished I didn't. You don't even need to go to a small town - you go 5 feet outside of ANY city in US and everyone suddenly has a Southern accent and half of the people have Confederate flags. My 5 year old was with her mom in a peaceful protest and the fucking sheriff teargassed the group - she didn't get hit by the teargas but she did almost get crushed by the panicking crowd. Fuck these people. Sorry about the "negativity." But fuck.
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.
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.
Lemmy is so far left leaning because a large part of its existence is due to people being mad at capitalism
And its so tiring to hear about all the time
Edit: and I don’t disagree
I agree with it, but I also agree with you
"I disagree with the bad thing, but I wish the people affected by the bad thing wouldn't complain about it so much!"
I'm real tired of hearing about Lemmy and Reddit. I just want the other content that I used to consume here. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing how bad Reddit is doing.
It's like someone coming out of an abusive relationship. Every other sentence is about the awful things they did, how good it is to be away, and did you hear about xyz thing they did.
It's exhausting.
Capitalism doesn't tire!
Thinking like this is why people get surprised when right leaning parties get voted for in elections
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.
Left wing politics are more popular in the real world than they are in real world governments. The thing is that extremely online youth have absolutely no idea of just how far left they are.
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.
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.
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.
I feel that comment is on the vibe of “liberals are leftists”.
Edit: “that comment” as in the one above the one I’m replying to…
Libertarians are not leftists.
Ayn Rand style, "Don't tread on me" objectivists, no. But they just co-opted the term. Libertarianism is pretty much anarchism, which is incomoatible with right wing beliefs, no matter what an-caps try and tell you. A right wing social order necessitates hierarchy, which anarchism is diametrically opposed to.
Libertarians promote "natural" hierarchy; the ones based on slavery, inheritance, and other mechanisms of white supremacy. And ultimately, the hierarchy of money which translates to power. To say they don't believe in hierarchy when they're the party of the robber baron who believe the bosses have the right to murder striking workers, even child workers, is frankly silly.
It's not on anarchist ideology really because of this and only appeals to disinfranchised people if they haven't bothered to do the math.
It's like you only read two words of my comment. The dickhead rightoidswho call themselves libertarian are NOT libertarian. It is a left wing ideology. You cannot have a society that is both right wing and libertarian. It is impossible.
That is exactly why those fuckheads bring in bullshit like "natural hierarchy", to jam their square beliefs into the round hole that is a classless ideology.
They took a word that already had a meaning, and tried to invert it.
Yes, it is beyond bonkers to suggest that crypto fascists want to flatten hierarchies. That is why it's maddeningly stupid for them to call themselves libertarians. Agreeing with them and calling them libertarians is just feeding their lie.
My point was that anarchism is not compatible with capitalism because capital is a form of hierarchy.
And I read your post. Yes, tea party libertarians ultimately lean more big government authoritarian than strict libertarians should.
But libertarians, even ones that aren't in bed with the GOP, aren't anarchist because they ultimately use the power of money and privilege to create hierarchy and control others. They just don't want democracy (i.e. governments) interfering in that power.
That's not anarchy but feudalism.
That's exactly what I've been saying... that is why they cannot call themselves libertarians. It's a corruption of what the term means.
While yes, libertarian is originally a leftist term, that’s not what I meant.
I meant the first comment saying most people on new tech are leftists is wrong. Most people who are technophilic are liberals. As in US style Democrat liberals. Which are NOT leftists. At all.
Why on earth would you say most tech heads are liberal?
Why would you say they aren’t ? They all buy in hard into capitalism.
Where are all these leftist techies?
You think every tech enthusiast "buys hard into capitalism"?
Hyperbole my friend. Exaggeration.
But to be much more precise and literal: a good amount of them. Likely even a majority, do.
Depends on which libertarian ideology is being expressed. Left libertarians - anarcho-syndicalists libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists are all libertarians. The right wing of anarchism aren't leftists, the left wing are.
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.
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...
Thanks to Big tech censorship, there are lots of people who are more anti-establishment right on the fediverse. Lots of fairly large instances. Some of them are real nasty pieces of work filled with folks dropping n bombs and swastikas, some of them are filled with some of the sweetest religious right folks you ever met in your life.
I think one of the biggest differences is that you don't have the Jerry Springer algorithm trying to match up a bunch of black people with a bunch of KKK members. Most far right instances don't defederate anyone, but many of the far left instances defederate the moment anyone looks at them funny so despite sharing a platform, typically there just isn't that much engagement between the two groups. In the middle of there are instances that are more than happy to federate with both as long as they aren't too big of jerks.
Did you come up with "Jerry Springer algorithm" expression? Very apt way to express it.
After realizing that it would put a bunch of black guys and a bunch of KKK members in the same space intentionally because it drives overall engagement, it became clear that's what it was. haha
Yet despite the clear creation of echo chambers, which I think is inevitable given how freedom of association works so smoothly and easily online, the Fediverse forces them all to "live next to each other".
It's not an entirely separate service I need to go on if I want to see what all the Nazi kids are up to these days.
This forced adjacency and inability to create any blocks stronger than defederation (which is pretty weak, really, compared to what other services can do) is going to have overall beneficial effects in the long-run, I think. Though it'll certainly cause its fair share of headaches too.
I'm actually happy to see the reduction in echo chambers for myself because it does 2 things:
For someone who thinks for themselves, seeing extremism in some cases actually makes you less extreme because you see it and realize you don't agree with it at all.
I mean, they're there to talk to... If you like jacking each other off... I don't.
Both of those sites have been ostracized (defederated) from the mastodon fediverse. The mastodon fediverse is in general quite left.
Yes, I said that. Well technically I said Gab was. Truth was so forked I don't believe there was even an option to defederate them. They intended on a walled garden on their own.
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon
I dont think that is the case. Left leaning people are just much less accepting of authority, so there are more likely to move of of reddit. right leaning people also tend to be more conservative, so they are more likely to stay on there old platforms.
There have been many right-wing exodus from reddit over the years. All of them have centered around a perceived "free speech" issue, and they have always flocked to the most promising alternatives (e.g. Voat). Obviously Lemmy with its origins was never seen as particularly appealing for that crowd. This time the issue just happened to touch the left-leaning part more.
Probably also explains why Lemmy is doing well.
Knock on wood, but Lemmy's grown to the point now that it almost completely replaces Reddit for me. The only reason I still stop by Reddit is for more niche fandoms that haven't taken off here quite yet.
Yeah, there's that one shitty instance pretty much everyone defederated from a week or two ago.
It's actually one of the oldest instances, over a year old. Because the worst far right trolls that got ip banned from reddit came here when they couldn't make a new account on reddit.
I’m a right winger here for free speech reasons
Come on I don't think so. Lemmy was a left leaning platform since the beginning.
Well that's still the same point though. Lemmy and the fediverse are all about rejecting the authority of centralized services/social media.
I think it's a different political dimension entirely isn't it? You have left vs right economics, and then authoritarian vs libertarian governance. I don't buy into that stupid political compass, but the axes do seem accurate.
Grandpa also doesn't understand federation
Grandpa actually votes tho
As a grandfather, boomer, white cis male, I suggest you might just be over-generalizing.
"as a black man"
Lemmy is a decentralized protocol not a centralized americanized political leaning social media.
Do you think that's relevant? I don't see anything about either reddit or lemmy that makes it harder for right-wingers to join. I can tell you that America does not have a monopoly on the alt-right (AfD, Brexit, etc)
I'm keen to learn more if you've seen evidence in this topic. I wouldn't know how to investigate, tbh.
If the platform owners are driving discussions by manipulating feeds (Facebook) or running bots to make the platform look popular (Reddit), the right-wing presence on those platforms might not be as real as we believe.
Well, looking at elections worldwide, the far-right isn't as small as any extremist party should be...
On Reddit is way harder now (like I care), it is not about monopoly but a state controlled company that's has censorship from a party.
Umm. Do you mean Tencent? They have a minority holding. The idea that China actively controls reddit is hard to reconcile with the amount of content that is critical of China. Or let me know what you mean, if not that.
What censorship, what party? Do you mean t_d being shut down? Because a better explanation of that would be that the majority of civilised people finally had enough of the nasty chumps in that hole, and good riddance to them. Or let me know what you mean, if not that.
State controlled and censored I mean three letter agency, as the NSA leaks.
The political discourse seems toned down here, I am already happy with that.
It doesn't to me. It's just communists vs liberals rather than left vs right.
It's more easily avoided.
But I am seeing 2010 style cringe new atheism though. It's never a good sign when those people are around, they were the precursors to the cancer we see on the big platforms today.
But that's just as easily avoided too. I only know what you're talking about because I saw like 4 cringe atheist memes while broswing All once. I don't subscribe to any of those pages and so I rarely see it, just like how one could easily avoid political discussion.
When I say easily avoided I mean that I literally don't see them very often. Whereas new atheism seems to be seeping into the feed wierdly often.
This reminds of when people go to toxic subs on the old place, to shit on fat people or something. The end result of these low iq hateful subs is that you grow a base of angry, preaching anti intellectuals who think they're right and who are ripe for a right wıng bot army and bad actors to brainwash them, and ultimately afflict cancer on the space.
That said, I am on all too often.
Yes, I prefer my online culture to be entirely Christian, or failing that, trauma-free ex-Christians that have no desire to talk about how fucked the US is because of evangelicalism. High five, buddy.
There are countries other then the US.
Yup. There are. And if they have governments that are dominated by religious activists, the same message applies.
New atheism cringe is different to being pro abortion, women's autonomy, and advancing marginalised people's rights. Completely different.
If you specifically identify with new atheism and the thinking of Dawkins and his brigade, I'd seriously reconsider.
Here's where I'm at - at the local level, the US is already a de facto theocracy in many places. If you have the privilege of being unexposed to this, great. The issue I have with Dawkins is that he's an asshole that got called out for being an asshole by his own admirers and he doubled down on being an asshole to his own popular detriment. I have no issue with loud pissed-off atheists in a rabidly conservative USA. If the issue is that old school atheists kept their mouths shut, while new atheists are out and proud, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.
If you think 'new' means modern, as in present day, then you've been arguing with me for hours for no reason. Because 'new atheism' refers to a specific movement, around the 2010s. It's not simply 'atheism' now.
I don't care about shouty atheists or quiet atheists, it literally doesn't matter to me. I am wary of people congregating around easy targets like broadly religious people, when religious people can mean anybody. It can be a white supremacist American, or it could be a Yemeni Muslim getting genocided by Saudis using American and UK bombs. And I don't see that very important distinction made when those low iq anti-theist posts are spammed on c/all.
I would say less "left leaning" and more anti-capitalist / anti fascist. More socialism less Nazis.
At least it's an ethos.
You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole. /s
Shut the fuck up Donny!
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.
Among people in general who actually read comments, the left does have a distinct advantage.
If Republicans could read, they'd be real mad
Lemmy also isn't profit driven, so you don't get libertarian tech bros.
For all we know the people that are on the right have gone to other platforms. That doesnt stop you jerks from saying im on the right even though im not. For some reason both sides have adopted a "with us or against us" mentality and everyone is a nazi.
That’s exactly what a Nazi would say!
/s
People throw around the word too much, there are actual Nazis around and we need to reserve the term just for their special brand of evil. Otherwise the phrase gets so watered down as to essentially become meaningless.
Otherwise they are just rightwing dipshits.
Watering down language is part of the right wing platform. I think they actually want to be seen as nazis so the term is less powerful. On the other side, they are calling everyone groomers to water down that language as well.
I’ve had people in this thread say that I advocate for genocide.
I don’t think the right are the ones watering down the language
Maybe you should do more research instead of advocating for then.
I know what the word ‘genocide’ means. The left just misuses words all the time.
I don’t need to ‘do more research’
You definitely could do more research since you disagree with scientific consensus on trans issues and think you know better how it aught to be.
I didn't see anyone accuse you of genocide but from your other comments I wouldn't be surprised if you did and just didn't know it or tried to pretend you didn't because of a technicality.
I would have disagreed with lobotomies too, had I been around for that. I don’t really see the point you’re trying to make here.
There really isn’t any such thing as scientific consensus, not as it relates to truth. Science is ever evolving and asking questions, and re-answering old questions when we discover new information.
There is no ‘this is settled’ in science.
Well, you don’t know what genocide means. It’s okay
Sorry, this is the case on both sides. I'm a leftist, and I see it happen from my side all the time. Deflecting and claiming only Republicans do it is ignorant or blatant gaslighting.
I'm called a nazi sometimes from people in my own party. It 100% happens.
Hell, "gaslighting" itself is a good example of this phenomenon, and it's mostly on the left.
You know your political views are truly independent when both the left and right accuse you of siding with the enemy.
Independent.. you mean a dirty centrist?!?
The hate for anyone who weighs ideas no matter which team they're from is very transparent.
I'm all for saying both sides are bad, because they are, but I'm guessing you either did something to warrant being called a nazi or found a cringey liberal to argue with.
You are absolutely correct. Not all fascist are Nazis.
Conservative =/= fascist
Change my mind
There was already a right wing exodus from Reddit. /r/RedditAlternatives was created during that exodus, which is why their pinned list of alternatives includes things like gab(racists) and ovar.it(terfs).
Don’t forget the classic, “You sure with insert political extremist group on an issue. At least my side doesn’t team up with them.”
Most commonly seen when talking about Nazis obviously. I’ve been criticized for supporting free speech on social media sites because obviously only Nazis would benefit from being able to voice their opinions without worrying about being deplatformed.
Exactly. Blame/credit (blame in this case) doesn't travel that way.
Take the following example: Alice and Bob both support view X. Bob also supports view Y. Y is evil. Then, Bob can be deemed responsible for supporting view Y. But X does not become evil because Bob is. And so Alice is completely fine.
The right has moved onto other platforms.
A lot of people on the right who would post online have been banned from most of the left leaning platforms and have found their own places to talk.
And the end result is that every site is an echo chamber.
The state of the internet in 2023 is more or less, “Do you want the left-wing circlejerk or the right-wing circlejerk?” And if you want a place where people are allowed to express their views even if it disagrees with the majority opinion of the site, that no longer exists.
I’m sure it must be great if you identify as left or right, but it sure as hell sucks shit if you don’t align completely with either side.
I agree so much.
I love discussing things with people who think differently than I do, that’s how we learn. We should be able to disagree in a civil way and exchange ideas and understand each other and eventually agree to disagree.
But we can’t.
Online it’s either one extreme or the other.
When is someone going to have the balls to create a place where people can argue and talk shit out? Or is that just too mature for the kids online these days who cannot handle a disagreement?
Maybe there should be online discussions that are age restricted. No teenagers, 30+ adults only. I wonder if that would be better or worse
The end result is that some sites have a lot of white nationalists and some sites have very little white nationalists.
Conservatives have nothing humane to bring to the table at this point, even if not proudly saddled with your average ethonostate enjoyers, the platform is nothing but a fight against progress during a time where crisis requires it.
I always find it funny (albeit in a depressing way) when people on the left act like anything short of totally open borders is white supremacy.
Wanna talk about ethnostates? Check out the demographics and immigration policies for countries like Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Wanna talk about racism? Ask the average naturalized immigrant how they feel about illegal immigration.
Supporting more secured borders isn’t racist. The reality is that the American government should prioritize the interests of its own citizens before prioritizing the interests of people from other countries. It drives me up the walls to see how much support our government provides to refugees when meanwhile our own cities are struggling, most often in predominately black areas. Yes it’s a slight false dichotomy to act like we can’t support refugees while also improving our inner cities, but the reality is that we usually fail to do both as they’re often competing interests.
Is it really “supporting a white ethnostate” to say I’d rather have our country let in more immigrants with college degrees or at least a willingness to work over a bunch of people who have zero desire to integrate or even work.
“Progress” doesn’t mean trying to increase the population of our cities and diversity as much as possible even if it means bringing in millions of people who will rely on the government to survive, refuse to integrate into American society, and are the literal opposite of progressive. “Progress” means working to improve the lives of the people we have already living here, regardless of their ethnic background. And currently our immigration policy isn’t accomplishing that.
How many democrats with meaningful power are actually proponents of an "open border"?
The main times I see the term "open borders" is a bunch of republican sites making strawman arguments. Fact is the border isn't open and nobody serious really wants it open, but if it's implied enough then people believe it. The #2 hit on google is an official republican senate website attacking this "open border" policy.
https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/democrats-declare-mission-accomplished-on-the-open-border
Why this fixation on highlighting immigration in a facetious way to misrepresent the situation? Even the tone-deaf can hear that faint whistle.
Which site has the least strawmen?
I know I shouldn't go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
It really is. So many vapid little monsters. You get to witness the ignorance and hatred spewed from people who think they're moral beacons for the rest of us. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing, like you said.
There is also the fact that this isn't a platform as much as it's a framework that uses and open protocol. Right leaning people can setup Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, and so forth as easily as left wingers.
The biggest problem in general has been people treating Fediverse setups like traditional ones. Facebook, Twitter, Discord are all run by central companies.
Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix, have the benifit of being usable as bases for people to setup individual communities for themselves and still have some networking.
I hate this. I hate that if you are not 100% aligned to a certain groups policies, you're pretty much the devil in disguise. A leftist Democrat that supports the 2A? You're a "hard core racist bigot conservative that needs to home someone you love die in a shooting to see how you like it!". Those people are insane. It's not how the majority thinks, but those that do are very outspoken and loud so they have way more visibility.
There are a lot of people (on both sides) that can see how extreme parts of their "side" are and are very self aware of those things. They'll call out their own side for going too far, being too weird, and saying unfactual things. Those are the people that you can have real conversations with. You won't agree, you won't change opinions, but the conversation is generally very informative and you're not getting pissed off at each other (or you do, but you still show each other a mutual respect).
I cannot stand those with the "with us or against us" mentality. They really need to GTFO. And they absolutely cannot say they are patriots and support America first and everything that goes along with that. Because our country was founded on different principals, people with different viewpoints, and we created ways to allow those various viewpoints to exist together. We WANT to have different viewpoints instead of just allowing one to flourish and grow to an extreme and heavy handed policy. If you support the "Us" part of that, we are ALL with us, even if our views are opposing and we refuse to even meet in the middle.
In other words, if they aren't with you they are against you?
As someone with similar views, I recently realised that I have the exact same tribalism and aggression, it's just targeted at people who have that mentality.
I like seeing things forbwhat they really are, so I consider myself a centrist. Both sides hate me they are so brainwashed.
Neither side has all the answers. Both sides have valid points, but these fools choosing a side stop using their brains to think for themselves, and just puppet whatever the rest of their cult is parroting.
Well you just got it all figured out!
I'm waiting for your centrist answers for everything! Please do tell.
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other!"
Centrism is just being able to acknowledge that both parties have flaws. If you can’t find any issues with the party you support, that means that you got your political views from someone else instead of developing them yourself.
People on a left-leaning site don’t wanna hear it, but US Democrats aren’t perfect. Their policy on immigration is not sustainable. A de facto open border policy for refugees and people who cross illegally while people with college degrees can’t even get a work visa is absurd. As a nation we are not obligated to help others when many of our own citizens are struggling. Biden’s student debt relief plan would have caused tuition prices to increase at an even faster rate than before and guaranteed further debt relief executive orders would be required in the future. Plus it set an insane precedent that the president could authorize billions in spending without any congressional oversight. Democrats were frightengly authoritarian during COVID with stuff like vaccine mandates and online censorship. Things were labelled as “misinformation” and later accepted to be the truth… repeatedly, and people simply didn’t care. One day you could get banned from every social media site for saying COVID may have come from a lab, and the next day it was perfectly plausible. That stuff would have been unthinkable prior to 2020 and it’s just apparently normal today.
And then there is the stuff where they’re just hypocritical or simply providing lip service. Biden could remove marijuana’s schedule 1 classification today with an executive order, but he won’t. Instead his administion argued in court that marijuana users cannot be trusted owning firearms and the ATF is right to prohibit them from buying guns. Speaking of guns, Biden also signed an executive order declaring pistol braces to be stocks after years of the ATF saying they weren’t stocks, making millions of gun owners into felons, many who didn’t even know about the reclassification. A piece of plastic that was legal one day is now 10 years in federal prison. Democrats are guilty of putting corporate interests before individual interests, much like republicans. Democrats love to talk about how much they care about the environment and climate change, but would sooner pass a law saying people can’t set their AC below 80 degrees than dare invest money into nuclear power or stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
You don’t have to agree with everything I said here. But if you can’t find anything to criticize about your preferred party, or at least acknowledge that these are valid criticisms even if you disagree with them, you are part of the problem.
“Centrists” gets tons of hate online that’s unwarranted IMO. “Centrism” is just a label people like to put on independent voters because mocking them by acting like their political position can be summed up as “Democrats have some good points, but the Nazis do too” is an easy way to dismiss them, when the reality is that most centrists are voters who get no representation since we have a broken-ass two-party system. Admitting that the two-party system is bad doesn’t benefit you if you support one of those two parties. So here we are.
I dont think anyone on the left would say the democrats in the US are perfect, in the UK we hate labour since the leader is defiantly not left leaning and the party has fallen in the past few years
Centrist doesnt always mean fence sitter... could just mean you agree with different points opposite of the eisle. Its almost like this whole political system wasnt intended to have a 2 party system or something...
It wasn't intended, just a long term effect of First Past the Post voting systems.
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It's hard because everyone 100% has a different definition for every political party/leaning. I'm proud of you for sticking to being open to consider all points if view.
I'm a leftist, but I love having my views pushed against, and I am open to having my views changed on what I believe and think if I find the argument persuasive enough. It really is a sort of cancer that both sides tend to refuse to even consider they might be wrong on anything.
Keep on doing you, the downvotes don't mean your outlook politically is wrong or bad.
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.
Imagine if Lemmy just totally avoided playground level political debate?
Please.
i like you.
People will stay where they're right, and avoid places where they're wrong. See: Facebook groups.
I don't think I'm all THAT left leaning. I just like to be told I'm wrong... I may have problems.
I honestly don't think that's the case. There's tons of right leaning and left leaning people that are bots. You can just never know. I think it comes down to the age range using this place and the culture using it. Reactionary people prefer sites like 4chan or the other online communities designed to cater to them. The age comes in because based on research the largest age demographic using Lemmy is between 25 and 35. This site is too underground to attract the middle aged and older cohort that are right wing. It's also not hip enough to attract the under 20 crowd who make up the bulk of Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool viewers.
Surely you're pulling those age ranges out of your ass.
I've run into a handful on here ... but they're always downvoted to oblivion, and even their sealioning comments often get removed by mods.
I think that the left-right dichotomy is inherently flawed. A lot of what I believe might be considered "right-leaning" or "left-leaning," but I cannot say that I prescribe to either sort of ideology fully or with any fidelity.
I will always be opposed to any view with a pervasive "moral" authority, and both the so-called left and right are obsessed with their own versions of this. The problem we run into is the false supposition that beliefs can be categorized on a spectrum spanning right to left (or, even more liberally, a spectrum spread across two dimensions). It has been a ridiculous notion from its inception, whenever that might have been.
Building one's identity (another silly notion, in general—identity itself being a frivolous construct that functions only as a fulcrum for the extortion of social power) upon a supposed spectrum is likewise ridiculous. You can be conservative or liberal, or anything, really. But those beliefs do not exist in a linear or planar dimension. They are so far removed from each other that one cannot fathom sliding incrementally from one to the next.
And to each respective party, "left" and "right," the other can be demonized as evil, even without full comprehension of the other. It's all just so damned tribalistic and silly.
It's completely natural for humans to fall into a binary thinking.
It's evolutionarily advantageous to fully focus on "the enemy", whatever that may be, and "the friends", our own family/tribe, absolutely hating the enemy while absolutely loving your family. It's what made it most likely that our genes persevere, if you give the enemy the benefit of the doubt, and they backstab you, you're dead, but not if you just kill them first/don't trust them at all in any way.
This concept permeates our society and you see it everywhere. It's always "us" vs "them". If your ideology "wins" politically, throughout most of human history that means you get to kill your opponent, while if you lose, it means you may die. So it's naturally almost the worst thing in the world for us if someone disagrees with us politically.
It's really amazing how almost everything about the way we behave is completely shaped by what made us survive in some form or another thousands of years ago. The only way out so far is trying our hardest to resist our natural programming and apply rationality, which comes with its own set of problems.
Algorithms and AI. Rage gets views, so it's what gets pushed to the top, so it gets even more views, so it gets pushed to the top.
Yeah, Lemmy has address to this by just having an incredibly glitchy algorithm (look at this post with five up votes from four months ago, it deserves to be on the front page). No one can game it because no one understands it.
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.
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.
To build upon this, just getting into a petty online argument about nothing keeps users coming back. I enjoy reading the back and forth between two strangers
Yep!
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.
The users create the content, the background ai decides which content to prioritize and promote to the front page, etc..
Which part of that is wrong?
The fact that the user is the one imputing the data to determine the received content in some way. You're selecting the content you interact with, not a black box trying to take over the population. They just want you to stay on the site, look at the ads, and never leave. They don't care about your political allegiance or what movies you like, they will feed you whatever you want.
Agreed!!!
The user selects the content that they interact with, but because content that upsets you is so engaging, the AI will heartily promote it.
look at how engaged you are with these comments! Is it because they make you upset?
How interesting. ;-)
I only really ever comment when I have something to say. This usually is only when I disagree with something.
That’s why my upvote ratio is terrible. I rarely comment when I agree with something someone has said. I bet my ratio would be a lot better if I did.
But that’s just human nature, I think. Some people crave acceptance and validation so they comment agreement and some people crave conflict and challenge, so they comment in disagreement.
Everyone is the hero of their own story, so I think they feel the need to “correct” perceived injustices.
I think your experience is common.
And I think AI exploits this, because it’s useful.
I agree 100%
You're attributing combative interaction to an algorithm on a site that has no algorithm. Congratulations you just proved the algorithm isnt needed to cause interaction. People do this with no computer forcing them to, but tons of people here are convinced that every other site is filled with bots manipulating content for people when the people are asking for the content, sometimes very directly.
I’m attributing combative interactions to “keeping your attention”
The ai just exploits this.
So while it’s not NEEDED, it does happen and it works.
Maybe your point is better worded as “the AI doesn’t overrule your own ability to choose”
Which while true, doesn’t change my point. Combative interactions happen without ai, the ai just learns and promotes them.
So you understand the system very well, yet completely ignore the ethically dubious aspects of the system.
People are not born desiring harmful garbage. They are, at least in part, taught, conditioned to desire it.
When you say that a site "feeds you whatever you want", you're ignoring the chicken-or-the-egg pattern of desire and satisfaction on the market. The site teaches you want you want. Internet addiction and the ways in which contemporary media and tech affect your mind (most obviously by reducing people's attention spans) are fairly well known today.
Imagine a drug dealer who sells his garbage to the same person so much that they develop an addiction. With your logic, we can just blame the junkie who keeps returning to the dealer, while the dealer is pretty much innocent - surely it's not his responsibility if someone else develops an addiction and destroys their life!
Purely anecdotal, but I have two Facebook profiles. I'm extremely left leaning, especially in the fake one, yet both have their feeds blowing up with articles from conservative pages and groups about this "small town" song, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis. Oh, and Fox News articles too, up until I hid them.
I don't engage with any of those communities or anything even tangentially related to them. I have discussed all of those concepts in groups lately, though.
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].
Is manipulation a force?
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.
No, it's because of your scrolling speed, pauses, engagements, updoots, downdoots. Everything you do is taken into consideration to update your feed with more stuff that you are likely to engage with. That's all.
And you're the one doing it all, not a computer. the computer is not that smart, you need to tell it what you want to see.
You're arguing that there's no algorithm that promotes content users interact with on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and so on? This has been proven repeatedly.
On Facebook, most people seem to think they get the feed in time-ordered manner, and that hasn't been true for a decade or more. For example, posts with pictures get promoted to be closer to the top of the feed. Crucially, posts with more interaction (replies, reactions, probably even reports) are also shown closer to the top of the feed, so the user is much more likely to see those when they load Facebook.
So, things that upset people will get a lot of interaction, and they show those at the top of the feeds, which generates even more interaction. So then the algorithms start looking for similar content that will generate the same type of interactions, to put that near the top of the feed, and next thing you know millions of people are worshiping the ground some idiotic politician walks on.
Sure, it's free will to respond, but the fact is that the users' feed is being curated, focused on whatever extreme thing generates reactions.
Tbf r/politics was extremely left leaning.
Extremely is a stretch.
“Extremely” doesn’t go far enough to accurately describe that cesspool
Nah, it's probably because most of us left Reddit at some point, either due to banning left-wing subs or due to corporate dickery.
The right-wingers went their way, to places like Voat, Saidit, Gab and Truth Social.
Idk how it's taken people this long to figure it out lol
I agree. I think most people just miss the point that young people tend to move faster the others established. It doesn't help that people's views o left v right differ depending on their agendas etc...
I agree with you that Lemmy may be more left-leaning than other social media platforms due to the lack of bot activity. However, I think it's also important to consider the type of content that is shared and discussed on Lemmy. As a platform focused on creativity and expression, there may be an inherent bias towards progressive or left-leaning ideas and discussions. Additionally, Lemmy's community guidelines prioritize kindness and respect, which can create a space where voices from marginalized communities feel safe to share their opinions and experiences. Overall, while bot activity certainly plays a role in shaping the political climate of social media platforms, I believe that Lemmy's unique culture and values also contribute to its overall political orientation.
That being said, I appreciate your comment and am glad to see thoughtful discussion happening on Lemmy! Let's keep building a supportive and inclusive online community together.
Good job! You did it, a real comment!
I come here to not read about politics, left or right
Everything is political, my friend. Accept it, and be kind when discussing! (Not to fascists tho, they will exploit your kindness.)
You're in for a bad ride then. There will always be politics in some magazines/threads.
One look at the results of elections all across the world is enough to prove this hypothesis wrong.
Lemmy is not representative of the general demographic of countries. Thinking it is will lead to a very narrow world view.
That statement does not make sense. Op claimed that this applies to all social media, not just Lemmy.
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.
Not sure what you are talking about. How is that even relevant? Even pretending the US is the only country on the internet (as you people like to do), Trump still got more than 40% of the popular vote, didn't he? That means that a lot of people do hold these views. They don't need to be an absolute majority to voice their opinions on social media.
You mentioned "results of elections all across the world". I see Benjamin Netanyahu, a facist who lost election after election now trying to take absolute control over his country. I see fascists in America trying to steal elections with 40% of the vote when the majority of the population doesn't want them. I see Lukashenko imprisoning his political rivals that appear to be supported by a majority of people. Conservatives don't believe in democracy. They don't care what people want. They just want the appearance of legitimacy that democracy provides. Creating fake supporters online is just one tool in the aresenal to create the impression of support where none actually exists, to make their fascism easier to pull off. You can think of astroturfing as reverse censorship, and it's just as bad.
Haha, good one tankie. Look, I can hide the sun with one hand! xD
Right wing bots. That's a good one.
As long as these rules are in place and enforced arbitrarily by power tripping mods you'll only see the woke bubble. Alternate ideas are not allowed. Try talking about any of the taboo subjects and see how quickly the ban hammer falls.
kbin.social is just as bad as reddit ever was. I said that I personally don't want a transgender transition surgery and they banned me. These are not places where real discussion can happen.
Then find another instance where you can be as homophobic and transphobic as you want
Lol see how easily you are triggered? I mentioned nothing about others. I can support trans people to be who they want to be and not desire the same treatment for myself. But all you hear are dog whistles, and that stops all discussion dead. It's the basis for an echo chamber.
When my personal choices are see as "transphobic" the problem isn't with me.
No one wants to force you to get surgery. It’s possible you were just misunderstood since announcing you don’t want to transition is a completely random and pointless thing to do. I said that in my comment because you said you wanted the rules about homophobia and transphobia gone
We celebrate people transitioning, isn't it a little bigoted to not also celebrate not? I mean accepting who you are on the inside is what this is all supposed to be about, no matter who you are, isn't it?
Nope, not what I said. Read it again.
I said they were enforced arbitrarily, by mods who only hear what they want to hear.
Clarifying my position is picking a fight?
Sounds like you're the one out of clever comebacks.
Say hello to my blocked list.
Discrimination is not a "real discussion".
Me personally choosing not to have gender transition surgery is Discrimination?
Nope. It’s because it was originally made to be a echo chamber for Communists. The devs are open communist
They developed the software, they don't run all of lemmy. They run one singular instance.
It's open source, if you actually think this software pushes left echo chamber, you're a smooth brain.
Pretty sure lemmygrad originally was a dev run instance. I don’t know if it still is
...that's still just one instance.
And that's why I said originally
How do you reckon the design influences this? What do you think supposedly enabled that?
What specifically makes it a platform designed to be an echo chamber?
It was originally made because they couldn’t say some stuff on r/communism
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
This then later became lemmygrad. Lemmygrad is a echo chamber. That’s what I mean with that it was originally designed to be a echo chamber.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Then explain to the class what you do believe in. Give us 3 bullet points you'd want a candidate to also support.
I'll start as an example:
I’m not a politician, but I’m voting for the Conservative Party in Canada, I would suggest you look into their platform if you’re interested because I’m a supporter
But there are people recently that have said they should get stuck into asylums.
Does existing not include participating in society?
I don’t think gay or trans people shouldn’t participate in society. That doesn’t make any sense.
There are people that say a lot of crazy shit I don’t agree with, on the left as well.
Is there an argument that trans people need help? I think that’s pretty obvious. Is the help needed for the brain or the body? I think thats where a lot of disagreement comes from.
When I think about it, I can see why someone would think that surgery on a healthy body because the mind thinks it was born in the wrong body could be the wrong thing to do.
I don’t think that’s at all unreasonable. Most mental illnesses are treated by treating the mind.
And if your mind disagrees with the healthy body you were born in, I can see how the mind might be the place to start treatment, and not the body.
However, I also believe in adults being able to make their own decisions. Just as if someone wants to have cosmetic surgery to install horns in their head, or someone wants breast augmentation surgery, go fill your boots.
So if someone wants a surgeon to create a cosmetic neovagina forcthemselves and that would make them happy, go for it.
I also think adults should be able to hook themselves on heroin if they want. No one is there to hold your hand through life, most of all the government
If you’re an adult, make your own decisions and live with the consequences. I’m not here to babysit you.
Just wanted to add to this that the amount of downvotes I’m receiving just by speaking in this discussion just further proves my point.
I’m not welcome here, that’s clear, that’s why you don’t see more people like me online in places like this. But don’t let that fool you, we exist. Just not in the same places that you like to hang out.
And I think everyone likes that just fine
So there's the rub. Are puberty blockers treatment for the mind or body? If it's a "body" treatment and therefore the "wrong place to start" should children not have access to this treatment until they are 18? It does reduce morbidity of the condition.
You get shit on for your opinions because they are both uninformed and callous. You are also missing the point of the healthcare by focusing on elective cosmetic surgeries.
The way you talk about this subject is just awful.
I don’t consider cosmetic surgery ‘health care’. Gender reassignment surgery is cosmetic surgery. It’s not like a knee replacement or a quadruple bypass surgery.
Everything I’ve said has been to the adult population and that adults can make their own decisions.
Children cannot make those decisions for themselves. And in those cases, I think they need to be taken on a case by case basis and taken very seriously.
I don’t have much of an opinion on puberty blockers, other than to say that if the body is healthy and normal, I wouldn’t choose to medicate or mess with my child’s natural process of growing up into an adult.
Those are my personal beliefs and they apply to any ‘health care’ my kids would receive. If there is nothing wrong with the body’s process, I don’t see any reason to interfere.
Now if other parents don’t think that way, they can parent their kids however they see fit.
Being a parent is a difficult thing. All parents want what’s best for their kids, and no matter how hard we try to be the best parents we can be, I don’t think any child makes it out of childhood without some for of trauma, unfortunately.
I carry trauma from childhood, I’m sure my children will as well. I’m sure you do, as well as all of your friends.
You can assert that I’m ‘callous, uninformed and awful’ as much as you want, I’m used to much much worse. But I know myself (you don’t), and I know how empathetic I am to everyone’s unique situations.
My personal beliefs don’t really apply to anyone else. I just hope everyone ends up happier tomorrow than they were yesterday, and one size isn’t going to fit all.
That’s why I need to trust you to make the best life decisions for yourself. I’m not equipped to make those decisions for you.
I’m also not going to go out of my way to fix your mistakes though, either. Not because I’m callous, but because I think we are all on our own journey, and there is no safety net out there.
Life is very dangerous, you have the ability to really fuck it up. So take care of yourself, make good decisions, be strong, be independent, and have faith in yourself
The surgery is not only cosmetic, it has several health benefits.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/mental-health-benefits-associated-with-gender-affirming-surgery/
It seems like you are selectively uninformed. You put breast argumentation in the same basket as extreme body mods.
Your choice to deprive your children of medication that would reduce their rate of suicidality is concerning. Would you let your son wear a dress?
Breast augmentation is a body mod. It’s putting silicone under the skin to project a certain aesthetic, same as similar body modifications.
The mental health benefits of cosmetic surgeries aren’t what I would consider ‘health care’ either. Like I said, some people get tattoos all over their faces. I’m sure that improves their mental health. I wouldn’t say that makes it a recommended health care service for people with low self esteem or anything.
If someone is unhappy and it is causing them mental health distress and they feel like cosmetic surgery will make them happy, and they receive the cosmetic surgery that makes them happy, how is that ‘health care’?
If someone is happier with bigger breasts, that’s consider health care? This is so stupid
If a dude injects synthol into his arms so his muscles appear bigger and that makes him happy, that’s just him practicing health care on himself?
Like what are we even talking about here?
As far as I’m aware, there is no mental default for ‘healthy’. Not like there is with the body. The brain functions in a much different way than the body does. What makes one person feel happy isn’t going to make another person happy. This is called personality and emotion.
The medical field can sometimes return a defective body to a working state through medical intervention. I haven’t seen medicine be able to make someone ‘happy’ though.
It sounds like a lot of this argument revolves around making someone feel happy. I just don’t see how happiness is considered health care, in any serious sense. Happiness is up to the individual, has a lot to do with how someone feels, and is not directly tied to a medical process that can augment someone’s base happiness.
These kinds of studies are always done through surveys, because there is no medical test that defines a persons level of happiness. All it is is filling out survey questions.
“On a scale of 1-10 how happy do you feel?” “On a scale of 1-10 how happy do you feel now?” “Do you have more or less suicidal ideation today?”
It’s not very scientific, people aren’t very good at quantifying their own happiness and there is no objective testing to give you a reliable score.
You can try to medicate the chemistry in the brain to try to affect someone’s mood or happiness level, but even now studies are coming out saying things like depression aren’t tied as much to brain chemistry as they thought 20 years ago.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression
This is to say that what we might considered correct today, isn’t necessarily correct. The right thing never changes, as the absolute truth remains constant, but our perception of and uncovering of what that truth is, changes.
They did lobotomies on people, ffs.
Sounds like this should be something that is discussed and decided upon by a medical professional and their patient. Mr. conservative over here wants big government intervening in peoples lives. weird.
When did I say that?
What I've heard IRL and what I've read online in less moderated spaces speaks to the contrary.
Online isn’t a real place, you’ve got bots and trolls and people who just say things to get a reaction.
If you know people IRL that believe lgbt people shouldn’t exist, I guess I feel bad for you and who you associate with. I don’t know anyone at all like that, not even close to that.
Also, I don’t feel like I need to defend the ideas of the most crazy people/trolls you can find online. I’ll defend my own words and beliefs, but I don’t feel the need to defend the most extreme examples of dumb things you’ve read online that someone else posted.
You can relativise things all you want, it's a fact that online insanity does leak back into the reality. For example see Qanon, or Brenton Tarrant, who used to frequent 4chan and 8chan. Not to mention the more trivial things such as people openly agreeing with Andrew Tate, or becoming fans and voters of Donald Trump due to his online presence, etc.
Did you just spin this into a covert ad hominem? Nice job, but I don't "associate" with every person whose views I hear espoused IRL.
Ok? But why assume that every community and society is exactly like yours? From your other comments I notice you're from Canada, I hope you're aware your political culture isn't typical for the rest of the world, not even for the entire "west".
Right, so you didn't have to claim such people and such extreme positions literally don't exist - with caps lock, no less. I probably wouldn't think of replying to you if you didn't formulate it so categorically.
Would you care to explain the policy changes right wing politicians are making then?
https://www.conservative.ca/pierre-poilievre/
This is who I’m voting for in the next Canadian election. I have a hard time disagreeing with anything Pierre Poilievre is campaigning on.
You can find a lot of him speaking in parliament on YouTube if you’re interested
"Something reasonable" tends to be sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, etc. in my observation.
Funny how they offered no examples of these "reasonable" arguments.
Tbf, they're a self-acclaimed smart person who doesn't want to get banned. At least they haven't gotten themselves banned yet, so can't find fault with that statement yet.
One of the last reddit posts I saw on unpopularopinion was someone self identified as being on the right, and how they were persecuted for their beliefs.
Literally her entire profile was them talking about the pros of meth, and saying some of the most bigoted shit I had heard in a bit, and attacking anyone slightly left of them in comments.
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'
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
So when Michael Knowles said "Transgenderism must be eradicated" That was not "Trans people shouldn't exist"? Or when Italy decided to remove lesbian mothers from birth certificates, that is in fact not "LGBT people don't deserve the same things"?
Or Florida updating history books to illustrate how slaves benefited from their position because they now know the skill of blacksmithing?
dude, the latest batch straight up denies slaver was a thing
Don't forget Florida changing the curriculum to show the "benefits of slavery"
The only point getting proven is you don't even know the party you're supporting. You said nothing I mentioned was the truth but that was just shit from the last few months. You're wildly off the mark here and it showing big time.
All of those things happened quite recently, you should keep up with the news if you're gonna comment about this stuff
I don’t think you understand. We’ve checked out.
You guys are kinda on your own. I think we all prefer it that way right now.
Also, not being American is another weird wrinkle in all of this. American politics is seeping into Canadian politics, but we don’t have as many of the same problems around race and inclusion as you do.
But there are still conservatives north of the border who aren’t really caught up in what’s happening in Florida or California.
There is a difference between conservative, or right wing and Republican. You seem to think they are the same thing. Well I’m not a Republican
Dude there is plenty of racism in Canada.
Have you heard people talk about drunk homeless natives? Call your black coworker "intimidating"? Complain about drivers of any ethnicity? Talk about immigrants and refugees?
Do you interact with humans at all?
There is a lot of native racism, absolutely.
We don’t have the same history as the US does with racism though. If you think the US and Canada’s history of race relations is at all similar, you’re just ignorant about the subject.
Racism exists everywhere, yes. Not that it’s right, but it’s also not the same country to country.
Is japan racist? Yup, same with Sweden and Africa and the Caribbean and the UK and Egypt.
I’ve been to all of these places and interacted with the humans who live there.
But it’s not all the same.
You're the one on your own buddy. You can plug your ears down to the third knuckle, doesn't change your delusions. You cant defend your position beyond a simple "Nu uhhh!" and now you're running with your tail between your legs, screaming "big meanies!"
They won't even say what their positions are nevermind defend them
That’s fine
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".
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”
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.
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.
Fuck your enlightened centrism
The concept of enlightened centrism is nothing but a tool to drive people into extremism. How can you not see that?
Are you sure you replied to the right person? I was condemning the "enlightened" centrism and the idiot I responded to. I think anyone who goes "but both sides" is almost always a blithering idiot.
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.
The only ones not welcome are extremists. If you felt unwelcome you probably are.
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.