Ask Lemmy

If you came to talk politics, your gonna be a minority. If you came for hobbies, it's a pretty chill place. Just block the major ragebait type communities and it's all good.

Echo chamber probably isn't the best framing for it. I would say that the ethos of FOSS and the values of privacy which might incline a person towards these platforms is generally more in line with liberal views than conservative ones. What I've seen personally however, is that it's not about whether you're right or left, but in how you articulate your ideas. Low-effort posts that go against the grain, may very well be downvoted, whereas a well thought post that runs against that same grain might be met with discussion, but not necessarily downvotes.

Here's my one and only reply, who the fuck cares if you get downvotes. This isn't reddit and you shouldn't base your whole life on Internet points. If you don't like the progressive viewpoints that most places like this attract to open minded and free thinkers, then either block those communities or find someplace that's a better fit for you. I find people with similar viewpoints, but newsflash, the world outside MAGA world isn't a right wing mob. The majority of the world are more "leftist".

I haven’t seen that. The Fediverse in general is more left & libertarian than liberal or conservative. You almost by definition have to be a little quirky and care about privacy or the shared commons enough to seek out alternatives to centralized, corporate social media. So, in terms of American politics, you’ll find more true independents and people who vote for 3rd parties than your normie conservative Republicans or liberal/neoliberal Democrats.

So, dissent in general is definitely appreciated on the Fediverse — we’re all here because we opted out of some popular social network — but if you’re trying to hate on or control some people you’ve never met, you’ll probably get downvoted by leftists and libertarians. But being downvoted doesn’t make it an echo chamber. It usually means you stepped outside yours.

Given that anyone could set up their own instance with whatever rules they like, I don't think it would make sense to say that "Lemmy" is "liberal". It's kind of like asking if email is liberal.

However, it is certainly the case that different instances have different political leanings as established by the instance administrators.

Likewise, communities are governed by their moderators, but as this is Lemmy, if you don't like the way the moderators run their community, you can create a community of your own. Then you can have an echo chamber filled with everyone who agrees with you!

So, it is what we make of it. We can have liberal, center, or conservative echo chambers if that's what we want, or we can have knock down drag out fights with people who will never agree with us.

It's important to remember that in Lemmy downvotes are like the points in Whose Line Is it Anyway: they don't matter.

No, I've seen a diverse range of views, including several explicitly postliberal ones.

Unless you're using "liberal" as lazy shorthand for the US left-wing, in which case still no, because it's not an echo chamber, but yes, views that are left-of-(American)-center are predominant.

Without criticizing the use of “echo chamber” - Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is not liberal, but leftist. The entire concept of decentralization/federation/FOSS is leftist.

If this is the first time you are hearing that liberals and leftists are different things (not unusual for those who have gone their whole lives trapped in right wing “echo chambers”): The key difference between liberalism (which is centrist) and leftism is that liberalism enables and encourages the consolidation of wealth & power (rightward drift) while leftism actively advocates against the excessive accumulation of wealth & power, as doing so eventually creates inequity and oppression.

There are plenty of products out there that have authoritarian/right wing owners and moderators, and those are the places right wingers tend to congregate. But software like Lemmy that is built entirely on leftist principles - like democracy and free access to the means of production (i.e. source code) - is going to inherently attract more leftists.

More left wing than right wing just like Reddit.

With federation lemmy is many different echo chambers.

What is "liberal" in your understanding? Cause that term is like Plasticine.

Lemmy is Free Open Source Software allowing anyone to host a content aggregator website. Lemmy instances can federate with each other to make it look like one big website to users. It was created from the ground up to avoid corporate influence.

A group of people working together towards a common goal while doing their best to avoid corporate influence is probably going to be mostly liberal minded.

I don't see much of an echochamber though, although that's probably because I block a lot of it. I prefer a post have a well thought out argument rather than "lol conservatives dumb". If someone had a well thought out reason for being against a liberal policy I'd give it an upvote. It's just that these rarely exist. It's mostly just reactionary comments.

If you want somewhere that definitely isn't a liberal echo chamber there is always Lemmygrad. It's so much not a liberal echo chamber that a lot of liberal instances have them blocked. It's also awesome.

I think you don't understand the term liberal properly though.

Less so than reddit.

In the politics communities, yes. Just block them. You will be a happier person.

Very much so. Some subs more than others though.

It's one thing to lean left, but to drown out other views, well that's the big problem. Being able to hear other views, and even sometimes arguing topics only ends up making your arguments better. But too many subs don't want that. Honing your argument as to why your view is better is a good thing. Shoving your fingers in your ears and screaming no, no, no just because someone is a little less or a little more liberal or conservative than yourself is the problem.

These types of posts and discussions are worthless when the participants don't even agree on the definition of the terms being bandied about.

Yes I think so. The large majority prefers downvoting, and that's why the largest instances have it enabled.

You can still join an instance that has it disabled though. I personally strongly prefer no downvotes and that's why I'm on Lemmy.today.