Is there a more politically conservative part of the fediverse?
Is there a more politically conservative part of the fediverse?
I'm a conservative. I don't mind the liberal stuff here. It's good to learn the other side, but I don't want a liberal echo chamber. I'd like to be more politically balanced in the fediverse. Is there any way I can do that?
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The Fediverse mostly consists of several different groups. There are the people who built it, the open source enthusiasts who want an internet separate from big tech. Then there are the people fleeing other platforms, like the Reddit API thing. There are also a few curious people, but the Fediverse isn't very inviting unless you have a reason to join it.
Tech enthusiasts have historically been quite highly educated, and a higher education gives you a higher probability of becoming less conservative. That's not an insult at your intelligence or anything, it's just an observation I've made over the years. The tech crowd also has some conservatives who went against the "flow" and got spat out, which formed their own cliques.
The people who got rejected often come together to form an echo chamber. Communists came to Lemmy after Reddit banned their extremist subs. Conservatives came to exploding heads and such after banning their extremist subs. If you wanted to stay in contact with these people, you got pulled into their little echo chambers where everyone egged each other on.
The tech enthusiast space has very similar cliques. There are the trans-positive, LGBT+ supportive groups, and the "tech bros" that don't really care. Both have built and are building Fediverse systems. If you've been around Mastodon when the Harry Potter game came out, you've seen plenty of toxic behaviour from both sides because of JK Rowling being an asshat.
In my experience, most general purpose servers are left-leaning. It helped that Reddit has quite a few left-leaning subs that protested and brought a bunch of people over here to the Lemmyverse.
Another challenge is the fact that most right-leaning people put a lot of value into free speech. Free speech is obviously a good thing, but free speech has its extremists. Instances that promote very free speech quickly attract the terrible "I should be able to call toddlers sexy, it's free speech" and the "banning should be illegal because free speech exists" crowd. Tbose people have been kicked out of every other platform, so they'll find a platform where they can be absolute ass holes to everyone around them again under the guise of free speech. This leads to unmoderated or poorly moderated servers that quickly separate from the rest of the network as more toxic people come in and moderators on other servers take action.
I personally think we need healthy discussions between conservatives and liberals. There's nothing wrong with looking forward, but we should also appreciate what we have. The centrist "I'll just pretend not to take any side" approach is flawed, differences in opinion are what make discussions online interesting.
Sadly, as you can see in the comments here, a significant part of the Lemmyverse will assume you're a terrible person if you don't call yourself liberal. I'm afraid you won't find what you're looking for here until the Fediverse gains more people that don't fall into the perils of extremism and imaginary boogeymen associated with political orientations.
I think that's a very objective view of the landscape here. I hope it comes across as inviting as it is informative, to me at least.
To add, I think people here are a little less reactionary than on platforms like reddit. At least for the time being. I certainly want the whole of the civil society represented here including conservatives. Dialog will get us out of the divisive place we've come to. We share a lot more than we differ.