I’ve been using Lemmy for a while now, and I’ve noticed something that I was hoping to potentially discuss with the community.

As a leftist myself (communist), I generally enjoy the content and discussions on Lemmy.

However, I’ve been wondering if we might be facing an issue with ideological diversity.

From my observations:

  1. Most Lemmy Instances, news articles, posts, comments, etc. seem to come from a distinctly leftist perspective.
  2. There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).
  3. Discussions often feel like they’re happening within an ideological bubble.

My questions to the community are:

  • Have others noticed this trend?
  • Do you think Lemmy is at risk of becoming an echo chamber for leftist views, a sort of Truth Social, Parler, Gab, etc., esque platform, but for Leftists?
  • Is this a problem we should be concerned about, or is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?
  • How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?
  • What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of having a more politically diverse user base on Lemmy?

As much as I align with many of the views expressed here, I wonder if we’re missing out on valuable dialogue and perspective by not having a more diverse range of political opinions represented.

I’m genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on this.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    We already have people praising Liz Cheney.

    You could say “I am noticing a distinct lack of Neo Nazis on Lemmy”.

    To which I say why change that.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).

    They hang out in /modlog.

  • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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    3 months ago

    Yeah, it’s not necessarily bad but it affects my point of view

    Some might deny it, some might agree but decide it’s for the best and apparently, others will just denote the least left of the leftists as conservative scum

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I don’t think so, there is a lot of very different opinions but all debatables. The only thing which, at least in the instances in my Timeline, are far right wing or faschist users.

  • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 months ago

    Since my (leftist) instance is blocked, OP probably can’t even read this comment.

    That irony aside, although I disagree that federated Lemmy as a whole is homogenous, it’s only natural that an alternative social network would skew away from the mainstream, and that instances would be relatively homogenous internally.

    I believe this is by design, but to expect something else is unrealistic. The only options for Lemmy would be for it to be either further left or further right than Reddit. And there are a couple fascist instances, though they are blocked.

    • arisu@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      Since my (leftist) instance is blocked, OP probably can’t even read this comment.

      That’s lemmy.world for ya

  • Squido@discuss.online
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    3 months ago

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

  • Filipdaflippa@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Wait you’re saying that calling people nazis if they have a different viewpoint than you doesn’t foster diversity? Who would have thought.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’ll offer this thought…

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

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

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

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

    • Taalnazi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      ‘Openly courting fascism’ is a bit of an understatement, tbh. Elon Musk did a sieg heil and Trump wants to deport minorities. Can’t get clearer than that.

  • Wooki@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    lol posting this on the most notoriously censored instance, on a platform intentionally removed from the fediverse for this very reason.

    Echo chambers are the flavour of lemmy. Think wrong is quickly censored.

  • ronflex@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Election time was so irritating, Lemmy basically reigned in Harris as the next messiah; I had to end up blocking political keywords to make it usable. Kamala Harris is an absolute joke and the DNC is an even bigger joke. I remember seeing one post where someone basically claimed she has a spotless political career and I’m just thinking, 😮‍💨, really?

    The problem with left leaning individuals on the internet is we have a lot of drive and conviction behind our ideas which is a good thing, but that should translate into real life activism or doing something that will combat the current political system and promote change. But we are beaten down since that’s basically a total pipe dream, we realize what the problem is and feel powerless to fix it. What’s

    Now, whats a good way to regain some of the power over your “opponents”? Silence their opinion, whether that be outright censorship or in other ways that are antithetical to getting the point across.

    The American political system has us fighting amongst one another to keep people distracted from who is really fucking everyone up the ass daily. And it continues to work. We need to stop this petty squabbling and use all this wasted energy on something useful that could actually bring us together, like maybe instead of just browsing social media all day, you could go out in to the real world.

    I am left-leaning and live in a predominantly conservative area. Very red. When I go out, people usually don’t just randomly talk about Trump all day, that’s just not reality. Most people dont make their political views their entire personality. I hear way more about Trump from social media than I am ever do from people in real life. And I assure you, I don’t seek it out.

    You have way more in common with the other side than you realize. Social media allows the worst aspects of peoples personality to come out since you don’t have to look at a human being in front of you that has feelings, goals, beliefs, dreams, et al. just like you do. Have some god damn compassion and maybe try to understand why people on the other side have come to the conclusions they have, instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      Election time was so irritating, Lemmy basically reigned in Harris as the next messiah

      You must have been using a different site than me. My experience was the opposite. Just a flood of bullshit to convince people not to vote for her (or not to vote).

    • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I concur. I got downvoted just for pointing out the left has an issue courting young male voters. I’m so sick of my own party.

      • ronflex@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Appreciate ya, and agreed there too. Like UltraGiGaGigantic said, it’s unfortunately not a party for the people. Neither are, really. Something American Democrats should consider is dropping the whole “vote Blue no matter who” kind of mentality. The huge base of people with that are part of the reason the DNC is able to maintain status quo and not have to actually do anything people want. If a large enough group of people were able to get together and agree on shit for once, a third-party or independent candidate might be possible. But the parties are basically treated like sports teams. Like, you’re either team A or team B and theres no other option. except it’s just a game at the end of the day. The system is set up to continue to enforce the two-party dichotomy, unfortunately.

  • Zero22xx@lemmy.myserv.one
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    3 months ago

    Personally, I don’t buy this echo chamber shit. Before social media, you choose your spaces and your company and did not have to put up with random jackasses butting into your conversations to tell you how much they hate gay people or whatever.

    The abnormal thing is this expectation that we’re all supposed to meet in the middle with any asshole at all times. I’m happy with a townhall meeting once in a while but I don’t want to or need to put up with bigots and people who are otherwise socio-politically the opposite of me on a daily basis.

    I want to be in the company of people that don’t make me feel like shit and who I can see eye to eye with. That’s not being closed minded or wanting an echo chamber, that’s normal.

  • Gjolin@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    There is the same kind of special snowflake attitude on here that ruined Reddit. You people only want to have your exclusive social bubble where you can sniff each other’s farts. I’m not interested in that.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    We shouldn’t be encouraging or squelching any political diversity whatsoever, we should be honing in more and more on how things actually are in the world, and the effects things are likely to have, regardless of who it pisses off or pleases.