whyisitalways

No my point is there is an absence of stories about Biden. At least that is it in a nutshell. Like I said elsewhere I'd prefer 0 stories about either one but at least equal representation of stories not just negative Trump stories endlessly. That isn't organic and it's obvious. There are many reasons it can happen but one is that the platform itself promotes bias and to me that is the most important factor on if I want to use a given platform. I don't even care if every story is about hating Trump as long as I can say Fuck Biden and not get banned for it by an admin. That's my only point. I don't care about either of them. If you're posting somewhere that saying Fuck Biden gets you banned but Fuck Trump is there every day all day then you're just participating in an echo chamber and taking party in a small community not the larger world community on the internet.

Your comment is childish.

Actually I'm asking what I asked and interacting with Lemmy for the first time. Did I know it would be contentious? Yes, but that is part of the point. I wanted to see how contentious content is treated so you're somewhat right.

It looks pretty good actually. I was able to post and comment with a new account without being restricted 100 different ways even while posting something that might upset some people. I don't want platform level restrictions being driven by stupid group think and brigade activity. That's about it.

There is nothing Republicans have done over the years to garner any support from rational humans.

This is the kind of over the top laughable bias I am talking about. That's fine if you're biased as a user because I'm talking about algorithmic and moderator/admin bias. This is a perfect example of the crazed bias I am referring to.

Honestly, it simply reads like paid political shilling. Who really says stuff like this? Who is so far down the political party rah rah that they couldn't even admit their opponent political party has done a single thing a rational person would support? It just reads like dehumanizing tripe.

I don't want to use a social media platform that exposes me to this kind of nonsense under the guise of being general political discussion and plasters the front page or my feed with it. Like I said, 7/20 stories attacking Trump on the front page. That amount of energy being expended to bias people in these extreme ways smells like paid advertisement not organic social media.

That's even fine to me. Feel free to pay people to shill your politics BUT I want a platform that isn't secretly biased in favor of this and putting their thumb on the scales anytime decisions get made. Not to mention invested in exposing me to this garbage in the hopes of vacuuming up political ad spend and working users into a hate frenzy because it increases page views.

No, it's more like walking into a room and asking, "Hey, is this a place where we can have free open discussions or are you a biased group of people who rely on authoritarian control to promote your views?" then getting the door slammed in your face and told something like the commenter who said "There aren’t two sides to every issue, reasonable people can’t differ on everything." A sort of smarmy response implying that there is no bias, only the truth, and this group is just reasonable people who accept the truth and anyone who won't accept their truth isn't reasonable and therefore isn't welcome.

That's fine and it answers the question. It is a group of people who rely on authoritarian control to promote their views. They do not want free and open discussion. They are happy to suppress and censor speech they deem "unreasonable" or similar.

Thanks, I didn't want to point it out, but yes. The mass downvoting with no response is a hallmark of Reddit and makes me think that yes, Lemmy is modeled almost identically after Reddit, and it will function in the same way as a result.

I remember back when downvoting was considered bad behavior because it was only supposed to be reserved for people breaking rules, spam, etc it wasn't supposed to be used to bury people that said things you don't like. Now not only is burying people with downvote brigades considered the thing to do but the site owners and algorithm actively uses that as a signal to terminate further participation by those users.

This is exactly proving my point. Algorithmically Reddit was designed to produce a biased echo chamber. Not from the start but slowly over time. Lemmy is just copying that design and sure enough it already appears to be a biased echo chamber. What I wonder though is algorithmically how much will this impact a user? Will I be unable to post as freely and as often now that I've been targeted by the hive mind?

I think that without those censorship aspects built into the algorithm impacting individual users then the bias actually can be reversed. It's hard to call people biased and bury them if they can freely respond and defend their positions and cite sources. Reddit relies on burying people so they can not defend themselves or cite sources which is what results in the echo chamber building in intensity.