Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?
as a person that came from the 3rd world country and new in fediverse environment, i genuinely would like to know about this.
edit: thanks for the replies! sorry, i literally don't know the reason since i'm not a western lol. twitter/x is too biased especially when musk openly supports trump so i came here and seeing fediverse is mostly are harris or biden (when he's still up for the candidate) supporters. don't know about reddit tho, i only use reddit as a forum for linux and programming stuff.
Lemmy in general is developed and maintained by Communists, for starters. FOSS in general, especially FOSS social media, is a Leftist answer to already existing Capitalist Social Media.
There are right-wing instances like Exploding Heads, which is a Nazi instance, but they are defederated from every major instance.
There probably are some right-wing instances, but I'm guessing they all got defederated for... reasons...
Conservatives already have their own platforms e.g. truth social, twitter, 4chan, others
The very format of Lemmy is more egalitarian. For example, it gives an enormous amount of power to individual users to filter out unwanted content, and decentralizes content moderation over a variety of instances. This doesn't appeal to some right-wing ideologues who seem to value more hierarchical, centralized systems. Basically, Lemmy is more democratic (or has the potential to be more democratic) than other platforms.
There are plenty of Trump supporters here. Every comment from someone who implies one shouldn't vote for Harris because of the Israel-Gaza war is likely someone trying to suppress Democrat turnout. Single issue voting is the only way the GOP ever win.
I think a lot of the people on Lemmy came from Reddit when the whole API thing happened. It was pretty much a boycott. I assume most of the people who cared enough about that to leave were mostly left-leaning.
I don't like the deranged trumpists but unfortunately there's not much Christian discussion on here and
!christianity@lemmy.world gets downvote brigaded
I like it this way. It's not an "echo chamber" because we do have some interesting liberal vs leftist discussions. I think I've already heard quite enough conservative nonsense though; they aren't entitled to my consideration forever.
You either refuse to acknowledge all the terrible things he's done, or you approve of the things he's done.
People who refuse to acknowledge, are going to look at all the "fake news" on this site about His Oranginess, and quickly decide that it's nothing but propaganda and go somewhere "more reliable".
Those who agree, stick around a little longer. They will argue and defend the horrible things, because they think there are more like them that will come out and back them up as a fellow defender of racismmisogynyhomophobia "Good old family values". But they will be downvoted to oblivion and have trouble finding a friendly voice. Eventually, they too will go where they can have a more comfortable discussion with people who are as terrible as they are.
And ironically enough, if you went to Truth Social, and asked why there weren't more Biden/Harris supporters there, they'd give you the exact same answer in reverse.
Reddit's early days were also far more left leaning then they eventually became.
When you have a small niche of nerds who enjoy discussing topics and ideas, then far right wing points will get downvoted to hell because they are, quite frankly, dumb, divorced from logic and the real world, and don't stand up to actual critical scrutiny.
Reddit got more right leaning as it grew and expanded into the general population and more dummies started upvoting dumb posts, then got more right leaning when right wing political orgs took notice and started trying to influence it, and now seems even more right leaning because they've changed their algorithms to prioritize controversial comments and posts that get people angry because it boosts engagement.
They're here, anything pro trump is often downvoted, and most things heavily critical of the Dems are also often downvoted.
For better or worse, there's not a lot of right wing stuff that makes it into the positive on votes.
If you sort new, you'll see it pop up from time to time.
It's hard to tell sometimes, but it certainly feels like some political regimes are trying out dropping propaganda here or there into the conversation. I'm sure most of it is from genuine users, but there are some comments that just look like they're here to stir up dissent.
There are a couple masquerading as Green Party supporters, and you do see blatently pro-Trump posters occasionally, but most of them are lurkers who, if they comment, hide behind criticizing Democrats rather than voicing pro-Trump sentiments.
Look for the people who were smashing Biden for the debate behavior while ignoring Trump's Alzheimer's symptoms. The people being nitpicking Harris or Walz, while being silent about the Couch-Fucker and Orange Stalin. Those are the pro-Trump lurkers. There aren't many, though, because they don't thrive outside of an echo chamber.
Lemmy's an echo chamber as well, but you'll find plenty of people who criticize both parties, and while a lot of people like Kamala, very few claim she's perfect, or worship her. And there's plenty of legitimate criticism of the Democratic party, and strong sentiment about a need for change in US politics. This is the sort of discussion and debate which would not be sanctioned in most conservative forums, and could easily get you banned. So I think it's fair to say Lemmy is far less echo-y than most.
They absolutely exist. But in general, I think most people here are informed and choose a wide variety of information to consume. That is exactly the opposite of most Trump supporters.
They're here, you can find them if you look in the right places - however, most fediverse admins are technically apt and left leaning so Trump bullshit often gets folks banned and, when it doesn't, they usually get a very negative response.
I've been accused of being a Trump supporter multiple times because of comments on Gaza... as I read top comment of a dumbass calling people who denounce Harris as confirmed Trump supporters....
Anyways it's the same in practically any niche technology, you just tend to see more leftists because they happen to be the ones creating and using said technology.
There's still a large portion of Republicans who use cable/satellite TV, but don't have internet besides their cellphone plan. They'd only come if lemmy became a popular de facto social platform like Facebook.
There are/were some users and communities... a couple of Lemmy examples I remember...
Wolfballs was a conservative troll Lemmy server that was quickly defederated by major servers for their antics. They shut they server down after some years, way before Lemmy got to the size it is now.
Old_Geezer (@marathon@lemmy.ca) was a prolific poster and was a long time Lemmy member on Lemmy.ca, had some decent takes, but modded a geopolitics community where daily he posted the right-wing version of Russian propaganda, banning anyone that posted stuff there that went against that narrative. About 3 months ago, he was getting tired of the community pushback, eventually got banned by admins for his moderating behaviour.
!conservative@lemm.ee is an example of an active conservative community on Lemmy. You can see there is one regular poster and nearly all the posts are net downvoted. I request people don't go there just for the purpose of picking a fight.
Most community mods and site admins don't proactively remove conservative opinions as long as they aren't personal attacks or trolling, and that they're not being xenophobic in a community that's meant to have safe discussion for a group (e.g. anti-trans rhetoric in a trans-oriented community). However conservative opinions do get downvoted heavily by users, occasionally getting reported which sometimes leads to comment removals and bans. So it can be tiring to keep participating in a generally left-leaning network that rejects or is hostile to them.
The biggest Trump supporting Fediverse server (truth.social) actually disabled federation from the get-go. It's still just a Mastodon fork, but they could federate at any time! Plus, if you have an account on there, you're legally entitled to the source code of their web service.
Luck perhaps? I don't think I have seen any politics post that didn't have at least one in the comments. It could also be that the majority of them are on instances not federated with the big boys. A lot of those I've blocked were on .ML or Hexbear. Among other undesirable things.
I think the hard-right people have mostly self-exiled to their own echo chambers like truth.social and other places that are Donald-used-and-approved. I think he's also active on Twitter again now that Musk has destroyed all content moderation on the platform. They follow their great leader and unless and until he starts posting his demagoguery on Lemmy they have no interest and no reason to come here.
Well Truth Social is running off Mastodon so they are kind of here. Just invisible (I don't tihnk truth social is federated with anything). When I was on Kbin I at least saw quite a few conseravatives. Can't really speak to this instance since on my end it all just appears as the same.
In my estimation trump is more likely to avoid a war with china then Harris. So given two terrible choices I choose trump.
They both represent the purple party, and are basically the same for most issues, they are both pro genocide for instance.
But I don't find that a interesting topic of conversation, the captured us political system is broken and the way to address it is with voting system reform. That's the real conversation
update: thanks for the downvotes, its a good reminder of why i don't participate in the political communities here.