Is Lemmy a biased platform?
Is Lemmy a biased platform?
Hi new user here. I’ve been checking out Lemmy but the amount of bias is ruining it for me. For example the front page right now has 7 out of 20 submissions that contain the word Trump in a negative context. I don’t care about Trump but when the front page is all political posts attacking Trump I have to wonder about the health of the site.
In the most simple sense, could Republican submissions survive on Lemmy politics community ignoring the voting behavior or would the site and moderators itself actively suppress it to “keep the peace”? I think this gets to the heart of the question and again, this isn’t political to me, it’s purely mechanical. I think that if a social media site has a community called “politics” that is solely made up of stories promoting one party while shitting on the other then the entire site is inherently flawed. It isn’t being genuine in what it offers and is incapable of providing it.
It’s like if you had a community named “cars” but you’re only allowed to talk positively about certain manufacturers. Imagine most people either like Ford or Chevy but on the “cars” community it “just so happens” that everyone there likes Ford.
You can post about Chevy but you have to be careful about how reliable the information is. You have an article that says Chevy’s new SUV produces 500 horsepower? Well, that source isn’t reliable. In fact this Ford biased source did a study showing it only produces 400 horsepower. You think that isn’t a reliable source? This Ford biased bias checker agrees that your Chevy source is biased but our Ford source is not biased. No, we can’t just give people information and let them decide for themselves. That’s dangerous. We can only give them our rock solid Ford sources in order to protect humanity.
Did you comment that you sometimes prefer Chevy for certain things? Well, in this Ford biased community that’s not going to go over well. Now you have 1000 downvotes and 100 comments calling you an idiot. Try to defend your opinions? Too bad, you can only respond every 15 minutes. You have too many downvotes. Well, look at that, the dumb Chevy poster realized he is a moron and had nothing to say in response. Clearly the Ford posters were right again. After all, just look at all those downvotes and comments and the Chevy poster didn’t even reply.
So what do you end up with?
You get a “cars” community, a “ford” community, and a “chevy” community but you’re not allowed to talk about Chevy in cars. You can only organically talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. That is until the site administrators start getting involved and deciding that really it isn’t safe for humanity to let Chevy people talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. They’ve been posting unreliable sources in there, using bad language towards Ford posters, and so on. It’s a dangerous hate community so we’re going to shut it down. You can talk about Chevy in the cars community if you want.
Then you get biased Ford stories under the "cars" community showing up on the front page. Anyone who prefers Chevy will never have their submissions seen because it is relegated to a smaller community that algorithmically won't show up. If it somehow does get big and popular enough the admins step in and boot it or artificially step on promoting it.
Again, I don’t care about politics and you can substitute Biden for Trump and make comparisons to other social media sites. I’m simply asking if Lemmy is offering anything different with regards to this situation.
Can someone explain how it is different from the Reddit moderator and suppression rules? So far Lemmy is producing the same biased garbage I see on Reddit so I’d like to know if this is a function of Lemmy itself like it is on Reddit or if it’s just echos of Reddit that could one day go away. Is Lemmy something new or is it just for people who loved NuReddit but are mad about the API changes?
You're viewing a single thread.
There aren't two sides to every issue, reasonable people can't differ on everything. Your trump example illustrates this perfectly: at this point no reasonable person has a positive view of him.
That may be but I do know that many reasonable people are sick of hearing about him. This isn't really about Trump it's about how Lemmy functions algorithmically being too closely modeled on Reddit resulting in a biased platform. The destruction of Reddit's politics subreddit occurred many years after its' launch and with a lot of active interference from the site owners and moderators whereas on Lemmy it is starting in a biased state. It also doesn't have to be about politics, it can be any number of contentious topics. My concern is that Lemmy is just copying Reddit and therefore will end up in the same place. What is new here? Why is Lemmy not going to turn into bought and paid for shill posts and comments astroturfing everything like Reddit?
You're observing the current state of american politics manifested in a discussion platform - one side is saying "hey maybe there are things more important than shareholder value?" and the other is banning books because they were written by minorities and taking kids away from their parents for providing them healthcare.
Regardless, you're the one who brought up posts mentioning trump. He's in the news a lot because it's finally looking like he'll see some consequences for all the criming he did.
That's just your bias. Everyone is biased but social media platforms don't have to be designed to kettle people and feed their biases as correct. Let me put it this way using your own words..
current state of american politics manifested in a discussion platform
If that is true, can you show me the people talking about banning books because they were written by minorities and taking kids away from their parents for providing them healthcare? Even further, can you show me them talking about it in the POLITICS community?
I'm willing to bet that you can't because this isn't representative of the current state of American politics. It's a one sided biased discussion absent this "other side" you're referring to yet that "other side" is equal in numbers so where are they? Why are they so completely absent?
If I do post anti-Biden stories in politics or make anti-Biden comments in politics how long until I'm limited in some way compared to anti-Trump users? That is what I'm getting at. Does the platform support functionality to bias communities or does it actually rely on the users like old social media? Will my comments be time restricted? Will I be shadow banned? Will people have to click to expand my comment? How much will the platform itself interfere in these ways that create echo chambers?
Those backwards cunts do not exist in equal numbers, they're just fucking loud, and due to being extraordinarily fucking dumb, probably only figured out how to reddit in the past year or two, so good luck finding any here lmfao.
They absolutely do exist in similarly equal numbers. Just because you censor people it doesn't make them go away in the real world.
lmao, sure thing bro
The whole "they're a fringe minority" claim is bizarre when Trump won the election and last election set records. Republicans and Democrats are roughly equivalent in numbers and so are their fringe crazies, who are increasing in number. Eventually the much larger majority of Americans who isn't affiliated with a party and doesn't vote will weigh in on this nonsense.
Whatever you say, sweetcheeks.
I just wanted to stop in and say go fuck yourself.
Your trolling in not as clever as you think.
I can tell you're a trumper because you think we have the same cult of personality around biden. I'll let you in on a secret: none of us like him that much.
I'll let you in on a secret. No one likes Trump or Biden.
Perhaps, if you're sick of hearing about a major American politician, unsubscribe from a community that is exclusively focused on American politics?
Just a thought.