this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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I know the real answer is reddit but I really don't want to go back now that I've already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn't. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I'm pretty much ready to move on. I just don't know where else to go.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I'm sure this will come if the wrong way but if you're genuinely concerned about discovering diversity of thought, you're going to have to tell us what your positions are for example.

I'm all for finding diversity, but so often what people who post these are looking for is an echo chamber. Like if you're really wanting to be challenged, and you're a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.

But if what you're concerned about is the nerds in Lemmy seem to be left leaning, that's just the nature of smart creative people. We value skills and creativity over hierarchy and structure.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

I like hearing both sides of every argument even when I don't agree with it. On reddit I could read the top comments first and then sort by controversial to hear the opposing arguements. Here I can't do that. There usually are no opposing arguments or if there is they're made in bad faith. It's almost like I need to choose a team and then subscribe to the ideologies of that team when in reality I'm more of a pick and choose type of person.

you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example

There are very few "positions" I hold. When it comes to most subjects I'm not informed enough to form strong opinions so I generally float somewhere in between. For most hot topics I see on Lemmy every day I can usually make good arguments for both ways. I may lean to one side or another but I'm often just a few well written comments away from tipping to the other direction.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (22 children)

you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example

There are very few “positions” I hold.

The "positions" term is usually a shorthand for the eventual distillation of your values. If you haven't arrived yet at your positions, have you examined on your values? Values are usually far more primitive in the sense they don't conform exactly to specific public policy, but there is usually public policy that encompasses specific values.

While its certainly possible for a person's values to change over time. We usually arrive at what most our values are in our 20s. These are things such as:

  • Your belief in the value of life; Your own vs everyone else's in society, in the world.
  • Your adoption or rejection on any specific religion or faith
  • Where you decide the right balance is between individualism vs collectivism
  • Your belief in personal responsibility and autonomy vs societal responsibility and obligation

I believe it is very important for each of us to examine who we are, what our values are, and then use our intellect to decide/craft which positions can be arrived at with guidance from our values.

When it comes to most subjects I’m not informed enough to form strong opinions so I generally float somewhere in between. For most hot topics I see on Lemmy every day I can usually make good arguments for both ways. I may lean to one side or another but I’m often just a few well written comments away from tipping to the other direction.

This is where your responsibility comes in. If you're not informed enough, become so. Listen critically to arguments, don't simply accept on face value what other proclaim is true. If you're hearing a logical argument that seems to contradict your understanding, yet aligns with your values, challenge yourself to explore it. The phrase "steel sharpens steel" applies here. If you have healthy and strongly defined personal values, the arguments of your positions should be equally strong and stand up to scrutiny. If your positions are found faulty by your own examination, adopt all or elements of the argument that knocked your position down because its is the right one for your values and ability to critically apply logic with all the information you have available.

You made other statements about choosing a side, but realistically it isn't just two sides. Its dozens or hundreds of nuanced views, and every single one could be flawed in some way, or incomplete. Accept that in many situations there isn't a "right" answer. All sides represented could be wrong and the best you can do is admit this choose the least worse. This constant reexamination and frustration is both the beauty and the horror of being human.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's almost like I need to choose a team and then subscribe to the ideologies of that team when in reality I'm more of a pick and choose type of person.

This sums up my feelings lately very nicely. I'd say I am generally well aligned with the culture on here, and share most leftist views. However there are certain topics, and even just sub aspects of certain topics, that will net you a lot of downvotes very quick and condescending proselytizing comments if you even slightly differ from the general consensus in your views.

I'm not sure what could be done about this though, I certainly dont want Lemmy to be more welcoming towards alt right bullshit and such. But talking with a bunch of queer leftists about queer leftist things all the time is like that old south park episode where the parents become pretentious wine snobs and start getting high on their own farts. Boring, pointless self aggrandizement.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I'm a queer leftist but get kinda sick of the three topics on lemmy: linux good/america bad/Rust sometimes OK.

I want like...aquarium subreddits that are active. I wanna see mountain bike subs with good advice and live threads. I wanna see local subs that have the hottest details on obcure things like the best nude community gardens or some shit, haha. I wanna see Subaru forums where you can learn how to add a better sound system or replace an intercooler. Hell, even local city subs, where they talk about the best protected bike lanes now that summer is approaching.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

I think some mods are a bit too happy to use their mod tools. I've seen opinions get moderated away because they anger people, not because they are wrong.

A mature society is able to discuss things without banning opinions they don't agree with.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (33 children)

The amount of tankies and idiots with idiotic opinions is way to high on here. And in general I realy get what they are saying. Other platforms with a bigger user base don't have that big of a problem with diversity. It bothered me too, it seems like the whole of lemmy has a very idiotic position on a lot of things and saying anything that is even in the slightest against that gets you down voted. That is something that sadly developed over time. In the early days everyone was way more friendly and less radical people were on here.

that's just the nature of smart creative people

Well. No. Say that to yourself, but ideology and belive is a lot more complex than: I am smart, so I am left. Your believes mostly stem from influences in your childhood, like parents, friends, people you trust. It's dangerous to lift yourself above others with different believes.

Like if you're really wanting to be challenged, and you're a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.

The problem is that a socialist worker doesn't realy have a place to go to challenge their own opinion. Lemmy sadly has gone the way of an eco chamber. And for political discourse you need other people that have an opinion like yours that support you in your arguments. Currently it's more like "this guy has a bad opinion, downvote him to hell"

It's not enough for me to leave, because in general I realy like it here and with enough comunitys blocked it has become bearable.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

I've seen a LOT of strawman attacks. It usually seems to be honest miscommunication, but underneath that... It looks like predisposition to combative and somewhat-dismissive hot takes.

And it works. Certain members have swung entire conversations and down votes by implying a person said something they didn't.

It's not unique to online fora, but the concentration seems off here.

Some of this just looks like people feeling like big fish in this small pond and finding a degree of confidence or even righteousness from the voting patterns.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (3 children)

If you're after moderate right flavored discussion I sympathize but you'll have trouble finding it as the broader right has been consumed by alt right and far right. If your point is that those viewpoints specifically are missing from Lemmy then I'd say it's a good riddance. I just wish Lemmy was as hard on some immature leftie takes.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (12 children)

I’ve skimmed some of your comments, and honestly it looks like you’re already getting a diverse experience considering your political and ideological way of thinking. That’s not a condemnation, but a quick observation.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Lemmy is already diverse, you just gotta find the right instance, or multiple instances! The whole point of joining your platform to the federation is for visibility and control

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago

There's some irony to how good thread this turned out to be

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Yeah it's hard to say. Fark? HackerNews? Bluesky? Tildes? You'll just have to try a bunch and see what catches on with you. You're welcome to try Lemmy again anytime, so who's to stop you from a break from it?

I've been saying for a year, Lemmy and the Fediverse is specifically designed to be like a series of echochambers, since the community, the moderation and local userbase are designed all around that. Ultimately, you have the freedom to choose who and what to allow and block yourself.

Personally I think you are subjecting yourself to grief by interacting with hexbear and lemmygrad but I'm not here to scold or police what you choose to do.

I think one major difference that can make your experience negative is that posts on Reddit can't show below zero, and people here use the downvote button more often because they have strong feelings on a topic. In my experience on controversial topics you would have various threads where both sides of an argument receive downvotes which is a sign there are diverse perspectives. You just have to live with and not be bothered by a negative score, it means nothing. Some examples:

  • Israel vs. Palestine narratives (Lemmy overall leans a little more toward Palestine but I've seen either get downvoted depending on community over the months)
  • pro-Biden vs anti-Biden (this is a very controversial one and sure some of it is anti-American propaganda and "both sides are the same"-type of sealioning, still both perspectives get downvoted).
  • Ukraine (this one is easy, you're either on a community under .ml moderation or not, which determines the overall narrative)

This is all to say that the best way to get 'diverse' opinions on Lemmy is to hop around various communities, brace yourself for downvotes and just try to be genuine about it. For non-controversial content we all gotta do our part, speaking of which I haven't posted much OC lately so I'll get onto that soon in a couple days.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

Tildes might work for you. Politics is a banned subject, but you'll get polite discourse on most subjects.

I found it stifling, personally. But if you like overly verbose, overly polite discussions where all opinions are respected as long as it's long winded and politely communicated, well, that's your place.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Lemmy is a federation of servers. "Lemmy" is not one political group with one viewpoint. If you're looking for different viewpoints, try different groups, or different servers.

In another comment you said this about the comments you read:

they're made in bad faith

I don't think this is true. I think that what you think is "bad faith" is actually "people who disagree with me". So far, most users of Lemmy appear to trend politically left by American standards, but that's only because American standards are so absurdly skewed to the right that it appears to stand out. By American standards, "truth" is left-wing.

Ask yourself what you're actually looking for.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also, I've spent time on Reddit, it was only bad faith arguments in controversial. Like bots pushing propaganda bad.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I don't think there is one, unfortunately. I agree that lack of ideological diversity is a problem with the Fediverse in general, but it's a problem that likely won't go away unless the Fediverse becomes mainstream.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

What kind of ideology would you like to see more? I mean I've stumbled onto the whole left-right spectrum here? Few/no fascists, ultra conservatives I guess?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (7 children)

How the actual fuck is the answer Reddit?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Honestly? It's tricky to find communities that give you a spread.

I can recommend picking an instance that has a secondary alignment with you (for example, country/state), as they'll tend to pick up posts in All that may be of interest other than politics.

(Though tbf, our instance still leans left on whole. Just not so crazily)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

While I see a lot of posts that would have this problem, at least the discussion are a bit more balanced compared to when the same stuff would happen on Reddit. So for example fuck cars is about the same in terms of posts, but here I tend to see a bit more back and forth and a balanced perspective on how the comments are up voted. On Reddit, any comment vaguely questioning the circle jerk will be down voted into oblivion and receive nothing but angry replies.

The amount of apolitical posts is a bit disappointing though.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.

What's more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it's often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.

I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be "special interest instances" that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Kbin interacts with Lemmy and seems to me to contain reasonable people willing to have respectful discussions

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

speak for yourself nerd

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (7 children)

What have you tried? There are communities of all types on here. If you say something, there are definitely people who will agree and others who will disagree. Most will express it quite badly and few will give a thoughtful response. Reddit, I find, was much worse at nuance.

/r/askmen for example was open to anybody asking questions while /r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn't allow diverging views. /r/science turned into a place for science memes. /r/politics was just a battleground for left and right wingers calling each other names, and places about men's health were consistently attacked by other subs. Reddit seemed like twitter's second coming - with communities.

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[–] Ziggurat 10 points 8 months ago

What made your experience negative ?

  • I'm on an large instance which doesn't federate with Grad, so I don't see the Right-winger playing to be leftist by supporting right wing dictators

  • Tons of communities don't get that much political beside the respect basic human rights and sometimes comment the news

  • Even with the European election ongoing, I don't see much political discussion on European communities

So may-be try more "casual/fun" communties than the political one.

If you use the "local feed" it may be worth checking another instance. I heard good stuff of Blahaj Lemmy which as no downvote and act mostly as a safe/relax space for queer but is open to non queer people

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