as a person that came from the 3rd world country and new in fediverse environment, i genuinely would like to know about this.
edit: thanks for the replies! sorry, i literally don’t know the reason since i’m not a western lol. twitter/x is too biased especially when musk openly supports trump so i came here and seeing fediverse is mostly are harris or biden (when he’s still up for the candidate) supporters. don’t know about reddit tho, i only use reddit as a forum for linux and programming stuff.
I think a lot of the people on Lemmy came from Reddit when the whole API thing happened. It was pretty much a boycott. I assume most of the people who cared enough about that to leave were mostly left-leaning.
That’s why I’m here, at least.
Edit: not sure about Mastodon, though
Reddit chased away the Trump supporters before the API thing happened. When it did, some people like me who are classic-liberals and libertarians also came over. After all, Lemmy is an inherently libertarian platform even when its users aren’t. When I express a political opinion objectionable to leftists, I get several times more down-votes than up-votes but I do get up-votes.
Lemmy is an inherently libertarian platform
This is an interesting perception, because if you mean American libertarianism then this doesn’t really make sense. Lemmy’s creators are communist and intended it to be anti-corporate. It is designed in a decentralized manner specifically to avoid situations where companies can own and profit from it.
The kinds of platforms I would see as being libertarian (in the American sense) are the diaspora of privately owned social media companies.
American libertarian just means embarrassed Republican nowadays.
Not all libertarian-leaning people are on board with corporatism; IMO freedom is for people, not businesses.
I respect it but if you’re American and trying to take the word back, I’m afraid you’re a little too late. It’s a political party now and they’re all-in on corporatism.
I’m sure even non-Ameticans can tell the difference between an uppercase and lowercase letter L.
Almost no one pays attention to the big-L Libertarian party. Ron and Rand Paul got some attention on the national level but they weren’t even members of the party (while in office) and the party itself has never been politically relevant.
I think these days the word is associated more with Silicon Valley techno-libertarians (a group I identify with). These guys favor the free market over government regulation (which isn’t really relevant to Reddit) but they’re also very sympathetic to free-as-in-speech open-source software.
The idea of federation isn’t communist
The idea of preventing private ownership and rent-seeking of communication platforms is.
If it’s libertarian it’s libertarian socialist. There’s no property or capital on here, posts get boosted by collective voting, not based off your following or account. There’s not even an idea of karma, your account means basically nothing here. A capitalist libertarian social media would be something like nostr or what bluesky is claiming it’ll eventually do where you completely own your account and your following and you can use that social capital as you wish.
I think this is an example of where the left-right axis isn’t the most adequate way of viewing things. The Fediverse in general is anti-authoritarian. You can be all the way from a far-left anarchist to a far-right anarcho-capitalist and still be anti-authoritarian, just like both tankies and nazis are authoritarian.
My experience as well. Though I avoid political munis these days.
I left Reddit because of the pro-genocide mods
We don’t take kindly to folks who don’t take kindly 'round here.
Most likely your instance is defederated from all the nazi-adjacent instances 🤷
Yeah. It’s the advantage but also disadvantage of the Fediverse. If you’re on the wrong instance you won’t even notice that certain ideologies are right out blocked by the instance owner. This can go into all political directions. You wouldn’t even notice this happening unless you do research on which instances are blocked by yours.
Personally I’m cool with that. I don’t think daily exposure to actual fascists is good for one’s head. And I wouldn’t mind .ml getting the axe too (though I’m not gonna be the one pestering my instance admin about that) because Tankies are equally as draining.
“Without echo chambers, the weak trump supporter gets bullied and humiliated, leaving defeated and confused back to his herd. Nature is beautiful. “
David Attenborough, maybe
Closer to reality than you think. He did a parody narration of “the MAGAs”.
There are plenty of Trump supporters here. Every comment from someone who implies one shouldn’t vote for Harris because of the Israel-Gaza war is likely someone trying to suppress Democrat turnout. Single issue voting is the only way the GOP ever win.
The Gaza posts always make me laugh because they completely ignore that Trump would just glass Gaza.
The only reason Trump hasn’t showed how terrible he’d be on Gaza is because he isn’t president right now.
Another brand new account posting the same tired bad faith party lines.
Everyone who doesn’t stand behind me absolutely is my enemy.
Op here’s one ^
Sorry pal. Harris gonna win.
You: “Hitler can’t take back office, but we do need to continue the concentration camps. People who don’t want concentration camps are directly supporting Hitler.”
My brother in christ you cannot compromise on fucking genocide. Liberals like you are so fucking scared of the orange man that you are willing to let hundreds of thousands die without even asking for better.
If all you’re voting on is how they respond to Gaza, Harris isn’t great but Trump is exponentially worse. He’s openly said that Israel should continue what they’re doing. In fact, in every metric of comparison Trump is exponentially worse. It’s not that we’re scared of Trump, it’s that he is so much worse in every regard.
Yeah no shit but im not gonna settle for genocide. Slower genocide is still genocide and if I can do anything to prevent the murder of hundreds of thousands of people I will do so. I genuinely believe that witholding my vote and protesting has a chance of altering Harris’ position here.
What good does altering Harris’s position do if she doesn’t win?
If she wins without ceasing material support for actual genocide then we have failed as a people. Politicans are beholden to us not the other way around. It is our demands they should listen to not the demands of raytheon, boeing, palantir, and others that uphold their wealth and power.
Thats not even mentioning the fact that not supporting genocide basically guarantees her win. This is an incredible popular position that many many people passionately care about. She supports genocide because she wants to
Found the trump supporter.
Lmao, I’m not voting for a kid diddler either
It’s so hard to take people seriously who talk like turbo redditors. My BrOtHeR iN lOw KeY cHrIsT.
Thats fair but it’s probably just a generational or regional divide. For instance, I personally can’t take people who use that form of text capitalization seriously. No shame though I just associate it with 7th grade
The orange man is not the solution here, to be clear
Yes, of course. I would never encourage people to vote for a fascist
Somehow people think that pointing out that anyone who isn’t Trump are pro-genocide means that Trump somehow isn’t pro-genocide.
Like you’re not allowed to think about two problems at once. Or that there are no other options…
I get that but I’m not gonna criticize trump for being pro-genocide bc we can’t do shit fuck about that. Atleast with Harris there is a slim chance of changing her position on the matter by witholding votes and being vocal about it. Stop doing genocide has gotta be the most reasonable political demand to exist right?
Yes. Exactly! The reason people keep bitching about Harris and genocide is because they hope something might actually happen about it.
Biden was an absolutely terrible candidate (that I was going to vote for) and probably the only person who could lose against Trump. Because people constantly bitched about how bad he was they changed the candidate.
Harris doesn’t get to use Trump as a not-as-bad-as screen, and given that we don’t have the option of not voting for her, everyone should be applying every other available form of pressure to discourage her from enabling genocide or otherwise maintaining the status quo.
You’re willing to let millions die for how many more generations in Gaza with Hamas in charge, and tens of millions if Iran shoots its shot at Israel? Grow up.
Reddit’s early days were also far more left leaning then they eventually became.
When you have a small niche of nerds who enjoy discussing topics and ideas, then far right wing points will get downvoted to hell because they are, quite frankly, dumb, divorced from logic and the real world, and don’t stand up to actual critical scrutiny.
Reddit got more right leaning as it grew and expanded into the general population and more dummies started upvoting dumb posts, then got more right leaning when right wing political orgs took notice and started trying to influence it, and now seems even more right leaning because they’ve changed their algorithms to prioritize controversial comments and posts that get people angry because it boosts engagement.
While very true, dont discount apathy and lurking. I may have made 15-20 comments on reddit for tge 10+ yrs I was on the platform. There were so many ppl 1. That typically someone else would respond. Two reddit descended into ppl who just want to argue semantics. Here without the karma farming people have more genuine responses
Over on mastodon on the other hand… I get the feeling people brought some of the negative aspects of twitter over there. Still overwhelmingly positive but I tend to get more info on lemmy now than mastodon Imo
I don’t think there’s any less karma farming on here. People still look at their up and downvotes, and I don’t think there was a legitimate industry for selling high karma accounts on Reddit. Not one that would make a difference at scale anyways.
The problem with Mastodon and Twitter is structural, it’s based around following people, not topics. It is inherently problematic because a) personalities and status get elevated over the logic of the argument, b) following people instead of topics inherently feeds people’s egos in a problematic way, and c) a given person can use their followers problematically (brigading, etc). On Reddit / Lemmy by following decentralized topics it eliminates or reduces most of these effects, though the mods controlling each subreddit can exercise some of the same influence.
The problem with Mastodon and Twitter is structural, it’s based around following people, not topics.
I’ve long thought this but infrequently find other people who think the same!
On here (and reddit, rip) and most forums, I don’t really look at the user name. I just read the content I think that’s a better setup.
People still look at their up and downvotes
You can turn that off in the UI. I did that and it mostly makes the place more tolerable, though I do find myself peeking sometimes.
Early Reddit was very libertarian, you would not believe how big Ron Paul was. It went more to the left once it got a mainstream audience
There’s only one way you can support Trump today.
You either refuse to acknowledge all the terrible things he’s done, or you approve of the things he’s done.
People who refuse to acknowledge, are going to look at all the “fake news” on this site about His Oranginess, and quickly decide that it’s nothing but propaganda and go somewhere “more reliable”.
Those who agree, stick around a little longer. They will argue and defend the horrible things, because they think there are more like them that will come out and back them up as a fellow defender of
racismmisogynyhomophobia“Good old family values”. But they will be downvoted to oblivion and have trouble finding a friendly voice. Eventually, they too will go where they can have a more comfortable discussion with people who are as terrible as they are.And ironically enough, if you went to Truth Social, and asked why there weren’t more Biden/Harris supporters there, they’d give you the exact same answer in reverse.
We had an opportunity years ago to fix this problem. Long before Trump ever showed up on the scenes as a political individual. We needed in schools to be teaching how to pick out real news from fake news. How to pick out fact from propaganda. Hell out to read a newspaper properly.
How to logically pick a part in argument. We chose not to. We as a society, decided not to put our money towards that. Now people read a headline, and based purely on the headline, make a statement such as “throw the guy in jail for the rest of his life for that one “.
I sat on a jury trial. It was a murder trial, if you went purely by what was in the local newspaper, you would’ve seriously questioned why the guy didn’t just take a plea deal. If you sat in that courtroom day after day, listening to it you’d realize this is a lot tougher than what you realize. we had a hard time figuring out if the guy was even in town at the time of the murder.
But for those that weren’t involved in the trial, they’re convinced the guy belonged in jail for the rest of his life. Because people didn’t sit down and really read the newspaper and ask important questions. Because we don’t hold our journalists to a higher standard and force them to give all the information And tell both sides of the story.
I have no idea how you solve the problem anymore. Because at this point, even if you tell the complete truth about any given politician, no one‘s going to believe what they’re reading anymore because there’s another so-called journalist out there saying the exact opposite and people say well I don’t know what to believe then. And can’t figure out how to critically think about this and ask questions.
Here in Lemmy we are guilty of the same sort of thing, same as over at truth social same as over at Twitter same as over Facebook.
As a society, I’m sorry for the language here, we are well and truly fucked.
I truly don’t know what the answer is.
Also sidenote 10 bucks says somebody comes back with a stupid comment of well since you don’t know what the answer is obviously you’re just saying that we shouldn’t do anything and just give up.
If you’ve never watched the movie 12 Angry Men, do yourself a favor and watch it. You are going to love it and it has everything to do with your comment.
Thanks for the recommendation
I have no idea how you solve the problem anymore. Because at this point, even if you tell the complete truth about any given politician, no one‘s going to believe what they’re reading anymore because there’s another so-called journalist out there saying the exact opposite and people say well I don’t know what to believe then. And can’t figure out how to critically think about this and ask questions.
Reverse cargo cult.
Neglecting public education is really going to keep biting us in the ass.
Something like half of US adults can’t read at a sixth grade level.
If we took some of the idiotic venture capitalist “it’s cat gifs on the block chain” nonsense and put it into education and infrastructure, we’d be so much better off.
I don’t really know how to get from here to there, either. Give me magic powers to Thanos snap away some people, maybe?
We needed in schools to be teaching how to pick out real news from fake news.
Obviously there are issues with education in this country but it’s always an easy scapegoat for these kinds of issues. Plenty of states have skills like this in their common core, I would venture to say you’re incorrect on that point.
Fair enough I graduated in the early 90s at that time we didn’t have it. At least not at the level that I felt that we should’ve. If I’m wrong on that, then I apologize.
No worries, you just hear a lot of misguided criticisms of the education system a lot of which are based on anecdotal experiences. I wish everyone would keep tabs on what kids are learning and have a more hands on approach to curricula.
So what you are saying is I should be volunteering for the geography classes to help reinforce the flat earth ideals? 😁
Oh fucking christ, a flat-earther. You people are even worse than the fucking round-earther scum on this platform.
I swear you people will never accept a velociraptor-shaped earth, prolly cuz your brains just aren’t big enough to process the geometry.
Edit: I really hoped the /s would not be necessary…
Did you miss the incredibly obvious joke?
You either refuse to acknowledge all the terrible things he’s done, or you approve of the things he’s done.
This is two ways. You literally said either / or.
No! I have been defeated!! I now have no choice but to vote Republican! Damn you, Orbituary! <Fist waves dramatically>
How did you get that from my comment?
It’s all good. Just having fun.
The brackets were implied by OP.
I.e. “one way: (be ignorant || approve)”.
Not sure who down voted you. Or even why
I like it this way. It’s not an “echo chamber” because we do have some interesting liberal vs leftist discussions. I think I’ve already heard quite enough conservative nonsense though; they aren’t entitled to my consideration forever.
There is a conservative comm on lemm.ee
It’s a shit hole though as expected
Remember when they banned the word “fascist?”
Self-awarenes doesn’t seem to be their strength.
Is there? Damn I just kinda picked an instance randomly before I really understood what that meant. Now I’m sad.
Trump supporters tend to hang out in the /modlog community. Try there first.
They are, but defederation helps keep the echo chambers separate.
On DB0, we get both sides. It makes for a pretty interesting experience. I haven’t felt a need to actually block anybody.
Nice to meet a fellow non-blocker in the wild 👋
He just blocked you
There’s dozens of us!
Doesn’t that just create an echo chamber here?
Yep, here too. Exactly my point. Lol
Openness exists on a spectrum
Decentralized network designed to stand up to big tech by gay trans furries. Not much appeal for those folks round these parts.
Designed by communists as well, not the favorite of coservatives
They all on truth. And by truth i mean not the truth, i mean the a-social network truth.
You haven’t seen any of the “genocide Joe” trolls?
They’ve all but vanished after Biden dropped out of the race.
you’ve stopped seeing comments about Biden once he became irrelevant?
No, I stopped seeing”genocide Joe” comments. People still discuss Biden, he’s sill President.
until he fucks off soon. the whole point of genocide Joe comments is that people don’t want four more years of him.
but of course thankfully Harris says she’ll help the genocide too so we’ll see how that goes.
Shh stop pointing out basic reality to liberals, they’ll get scared and start sending you death threats
They’re popping back up again recently, attacking Harris of course
Too difficult to come up with something for Harris that rolls off the tongue as easily as “Genocide Joe.”
yes I think the bigger problem here is right wing propagandists masquerading as lefties.
My honest interpretation is that there are actually very few right wing propagandists masquerading as lefties, but they are very effective at bringing hapless idiot lefties to their narrative.
yeah, some mix of that too for sure.
Oh you mean ml?
Careful with that troll word, there are mods that will ban you for saying it. They tell you to report trolls to them, so I did (a very obvious troll) and I got banned. Pretty neat you can’t appeal, and you can’t find out which mod did it either.
Modlogs?
Just show mod. Not which mod.
Doesn’t show what mod did it.
Use the photon UI on desktop.
Just tried it, still doesn’t show which mod is banning or deleting.
Mine didn’t show that. Interesting
You can only see which mod did it if you’re an admin
What are you taking about? Lemmy.world loves to ban those pointing out genocide supporters. Cause totally every one who wishes Israel to stop the genocide is a dirty republican. At least that’s how the mods treat them
There are a couple masquerading as Green Party supporters, and you do see blatently pro-Trump posters occasionally, but most of them are lurkers who, if they comment, hide behind criticizing Democrats rather than voicing pro-Trump sentiments.
Look for the people who were smashing Biden for the debate behavior while ignoring Trump’s Alzheimer’s symptoms. The people being nitpicking Harris or Walz, while being silent about the Couch-Fucker and Orange Stalin. Those are the pro-Trump lurkers. There aren’t many, though, because they don’t thrive outside of an echo chamber.
Lemmy’s an echo chamber as well, but you’ll find plenty of people who criticize both parties, and while a lot of people like Kamala, very few claim she’s perfect, or worship her. And there’s plenty of legitimate criticism of the Democratic party, and strong sentiment about a need for change in US politics. This is the sort of discussion and debate which would not be sanctioned in most conservative forums, and could easily get you banned. So I think it’s fair to say Lemmy is far less echo-y than most.
I think that your metrics for picking covert Trumpers based upon that appaling debate is incorrect and simplistic. I watched every second of that shit show and believed that we were doomed for another 4 years of the orange turd.
Trump lied during the debate. Some estimates were that he lied upwards of 250 times in his 45 minutes at the mic. Those numbers seems off, but who knows? I don’t know the true figure, but it was insane. However, it is also not the fucking point. Trump is a serial liar. He lies to his family, he lies to the people, he lies to the courts, he lies non-stop. He would have lied if Biden performed outstandingly in the debate. He would have lied if Biden put in a middling performance. And, he lied when Biden performed badly. Are we supposed to be clutching our pearls in shock that Trump lied?
So, we can’t judge Biden’s terrible performance by the ‘other guy’. We need to judge whether Biden could win in November. And if you had of watched all 90 minutes, like I did, there was zero confidence that he could. The GOP campaign would have portrayed Biden’s lost moments a million times, over and over and over again. And they’d be stupid not to. And yes, Trump lied in the debate. Let’s try and turn the broken bus around on the seemingly new information that a serial liar lied on stage.
The proof of this was the instant jump in the polls once Harris became the candidate and the growing support since. Is the argument that all these covert GOP critics suddenly turned Dems? Or, perhaps, changing to Haris was the sensible thing to do, and perhaps, just might keep the orange turd out of the white house.
I think that your metrics for picking covert Trumpers based upon that appaling debate is incorrect and simplistic.
Well, yeah, it’s simplistic. I’m generalizing.
I watched every second of that shit show and believed that we were doomed for another 4 years of the orange turd.
I agree. Biden had a bad night (and, it appears in retrospect, had been declining for a while). Trump has been a deranged narcissistic sociopath since day 1; Biden was held to a higher standard than Trump. Biden performs poorly, and the heart sunk out of the Democratic faithful. Trump performs poorly, and that’s just par for the course, because all Trumpers care about is hurting liberals.
However, I admit I don’t know what you’re arguing; I think we agree on most of this. The Harris bump was because (as I said) it gave liberals hope that they could win. The bump came from undecideds who suddenly saw an energized, engaged, and competent viable candidate as an option; or people who before saw only two decrepit old white men (The Patriarchy) feebly flailing for control, and suddenly one of the candidates was strong, under 60, female, and a minority!
We’re answering OP’s question why there aren’t more Trumpers on Lemmy. There are; they’re just hidden, and how they respond to the debate outs them. The debate was just an example:
- Non-Trumper: If Joe had a cold, it looks like a staffer gave him Nyquil instead of amphetamines. He’d have paid for the uppers the next day, but it if ever there was a time to push yourself and pay the price later, this debate was it. He was horrible. Trump was his usual lying self, rambling nonsense, and looked like his usual re-animated corpse.
- Trumper: Biden was awful; he’s obviously going senile, unable to answer questions, losing his train of thought, weak.
Democrats are far more critical of their own candidate than Republicans are of their’s, and that’s how you identify the conservative lurkers. They’re there, and they’re not hard to recognize.
This subsequent post of yours is more substantial in explaining your position and I generally agree with all of your points.
My post was with the absurdist position that critiquing the Biden performance around the time of the last debate made you an enemy of progressive politics. Joe had fired his last good shot in 2016. He’s a good man, a heroic fighter for his age but Trump was always going to steamroll him this time. It doesn’t matter that Joe had a cold, or that he sometimes made excellent policy points, the optics were that he was meandering and frail. It wasn’t that the debate done him in by itself - Obama sometimes had a bad debate (particularly his first one) it was that his performance on the night confirmed what was evident for months. By the time Joe started arguing with Trump about who could beat who in golf the jig was up.
Despite Trump’s own senior moments, despite his atrocious behaviour, despite his obvious lies, the feeling was Joe is doomed. And so was the most important election since last time, and that says a lot. The fact that it is not impossible that he still won’t get in again is beyond worrying. But with Harris there is a decent chance.
I hope that clears up my position? It was more a vent against all those who insisted that we ride the Joe bus over the cliff and disbelieve our own eyes while we did it.
Yeah, I think we’re on the same page. The Biden administration did good, but we’d come to a depressingly low point in politics.
I’m encouraged that more conservatives are feeling it’s safe to pop their heads out and criticize Trump, and the radical right who’ve been able to hijack the party thanks largely to party policies started during Ronald Fucking Regan’s administration. But if they do it on Lemmy, they’re assumed to be liberals which may increase the perception of there being few conservatives on Lemmy.
Lemmy is still more generally politically Left than American Left, which is, after all, pretty centrist compared to western Europe. This feeds even more into OP’s question about why there aren’t more conservatives on Lemmy: if you look at Lemmy as a European, the pro- Trumpers are neo-Nazis, not conservatives; the center is so far right, anything more right is essentially legally banned in Germany.
Thats a pretty sophisticated bit of analysis, particularly for Lemmy.
I still find it amazing that the vote will be as close as it undoubtedly will become. I mean, Trump is not only for himself, but he is also plainly destructive. He’s now touting the low-information ‘Joe Rogan vote’. Young white guys who haven’t been following anything.
Oh ffs, it’s non-binary. I can support certain policies while standing 10 down against others. I can look for alternative candidates without being Nazi, shill or troll. I’m fact, that mentality is from the GW Bush playbook, “if you’re not for us, you’re against us!” Which to be fair, I’m against politicians who rake in corporate, PAC and billionaire dollars, mainly because they’re proud corporate and against we regular people.
But isn’t that exactly what they were saying? If you go on X, for example, you can literally be banned for using the word “cisgender”. Musk considers it a slur. Here, you can voice any opinion.
However there’s a different between agreeing with some right-wing policies and being a full-on MAGA fascist. Full-on MAGA fascists shrivel up and die when exposed to any discourse that hasn’t been heavily censored and editorialized in their favor. So naturally they’ll avoid places where different opinions are shared. This alone is enough reason to call this place an echo chamber, because a (sadly) very prevalent set of opinions isn’t represented here.
And I can, for example, get away with referring to MAGA fascists as MAGA fascists knowing full well that not a single one of those Trump-fellating pussies will say anything against me for it, and even if one does, the community will not have their back.
No these people are definitely leftist. Why would we criticize trump when we know there is no chance of altering his policy. Atleast with the democrats we might (and thats a big maybe) push them left by witholding our vote and being vocal about our opposition to genocide