Is it just me or do Lemmy communities tend to skew left wing? Why might this be?
Is it just me or do Lemmy communities tend to skew left wing? Why might this be?
I can't say I've been using Lemmy for long, but from the get-go it seems that the communities, memes, opinions that get upvoted seem to reflect left-wing ideas.
I'm certainly not complaining, it honestly feels like a breathe of fresh air compared to other social media sites that seem to shift further and further to the far right, though I am curious to hear why this might be the case? Does FOSS tend to attract more left-wing minded people, or does this just happen to be a broadly left-wing microcosm/bubble?
Hope you all have a great day.
The philosophy behind FOSS is inherently left wing and anarchist; communities working together to provide and produce tools for the common good, without a profit motive. Coupled with the lack of advertising and promotion of the sites, people have to seek them out, leading to a self-selecting user population that skews left :)
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I mean you signed up on lemmy.marxism-leninism. Yeah they tend to lean left, lol.
But yeah your observation indeed is is correct. Not only does lemmy lean left it often leans pretty far left too. It might feel like a breathe of fresh air but it's still a bubble and echo chamber. It's the same as truth social but the exact opposite. Nothing wrong with that per-se but it's a good thing to keep in mind. Factual information is regularly downvoted here not because it's false but because it doesn't fit the narrative.
It has to do with profit motive. The Fediverse, and the Lemmy sub-protocol, arose when for-profit enterprises (TwitX and Reddit, respectively) began prioritizing their own bottom line over the enrichment of their users.
This has always been the Faustian bargain of social media: you are the product and you receive free content at the cost of advertisements and data mining.
Once the monopolists of the social sphere overstepped their bounds - got too invasive, or tried extracting value directly from the end user - free alternatives formed.
Naturally, the only people self-aware enough to be put off by the exploitation of these monopolists were left-leaning. There’re a lot of people out there who will pay to be cocooned in an echo chamber (viz Truth Social) but leftists like to pretend they’re too good for that shit.
So here we all are, enjoying a methodone drip of social media without all of the optimization and dopamine-tweaking hooks that for-profit socials live by.
It’s not a bad outcome, really, and if someone somehow wants to start a counter-culture right wing node on the fediverse, nothing is stopping him except a total lack of willing participants.
Say what you will about leftists; at least they try new things - and conservatives, as you would expect from the name, do not.
This almost feels like bait, your instance is Lemmy.ml. The ml stands for Marxist-Leninist, your home instance is literally the home for far-left ideology. You'll still see a leftist bant for the reasons commenters have mentioned, but the single biggest reason is that your instance is owned and operated by them.
One could argue that as alot of us are exredditors we would be the more progressive or left side of the crowd. Something happened we didn't like so we left it behind for something we hope will be better and put in the effort to make it so as opposed to staying with what we know and really waiting things out before choosing a new direction. It would have been easy to stay with reddit, hell I could go back in an instant and it would be like I never left, but I chose this new path and I'm sticking with it. That is what progress is all about
People seeking to be free from corporate overlords, and desiring a place to speak their minds and who also don't have an issue with spending a little time and effort tend to have a more liberal mindset. Regrettably as primates, we also have a tendency to form tribes and give short shrift to any viewpoints outside of those we ourselves believe in. I personally would prefer a dialogue of equals where we can debate our differences and agree to disagree or even find the places where we do agree and can come together. However, that enlightened state of being escapes most all of us. Instead, I will regress to thumping my chest and hooting at you.
There are sections of both the right and the left that have anti-authoritarian tendancies.
The libertarian right tends to view things purely in terms of government over reach, whilst the left tends to view things in terms of the power of capital.
Leftists saw Facebook pushing propaganda for the highest bidder, Reddit trying to be safe to sell to investors and twitter basically becoming a project to reflect Elon Musk's personal opinions.
Out of that came a bunch of attempts at creating new social networks. The right wing attempts were not cognisant that the aforementioned were the natural result of trying to get rich off it, while the left attempted to make it impossible to get into that position.
the right loves corporations it doesn't go out of its way to avoid them
I wouldn't say FOSS is inherently leftist, but it's certainly not a capitalist approach.
And Lemmy has been developed by two outspoken Marxists, so the earliest adopters before the larger waves of reddit exilees had a similar mindset.
Add to the fact that most of the oldest and therefore largest communities are hosted on lemmy.ml, which is run by the original devs, and features moderators who by and large also share a similar mindset (and suppress critical comments quite a bit), and you've got a lefty echo chamber going, that's spilling into the newer communities on neutral instances, giving the whole platform a left touch.
Education.
No for real, a lot of right-wing thinking comes from just parroting disinformation and being in their own echo chamber circles.
Educated people are more likely to 'lean left':
Environment: Higher education institutions often emphasize critical thinking, questioning of traditional norms, and exposure to diverse perspectives. This can lead individuals to adopt more progressive or liberal views.
Diversity: College and university settings are typically more diverse, exposing students to different cultures, ideas, and lifestyles.
Rationalism: Educated individuals may place a higher value on scientific reasoning and empirical evidence, which can align more with policies and positions typically associated with the left, such as support for climate change action and public health initiatives.
Perspective: Higher education can lead to an understanding of economic inequality and systemic issues. Educated individuals might support policies aimed at reducing inequality and improving social welfare.
Career: Many educated individuals work in fields such as academia, healthcare, and social services, where left-leaning values like equity, public good, and social justice are prevalent.
Generational: Younger generations, who are more likely to be college-educated today than in the past, tend to have more progressive views on social issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial equality.
Education is also 'pushed' by a lot of adults when I was a kid. I thought it was kinda normal / lame because duh, of course it's important. I didn't get grasp deepl WHY until I was older and realized it's really a root causal issue of today's problems.
People looking for a Reddit alternative don't tend to be conservatives and liberals. r/worldnews fits their needs perfectly.
Thus the migration is either to a left platform like Lemmy, or truth social etc for super right winger.
For the most part, the same ethos that powers the Fediverse is the same ethos that powers all open-source. So naturally the people that would be more keen to adopt it are the people who believe in the Open Source model in general.
I can't think of anything less right-wing than open source; it's essentially software communism ("from each according to their ability to each according to their need") Sharing isn't a right-wing value.
I think it's more that you don't get many right-wing extremists and the mods don't protect the ones that do exist from seeing things they don't like.
There are still a lot of neoliberal kind of conservatives on lemmy, and then also right-wing types in the form of tankies, but for the most part I think the light touch by most of the moderators means that facts (which favor the "left") tend to be allowed to persist in a way they don't on many social media that see profit in extremist content.
Maybe because it was originally developed as a platform to discuss Marxism and Leninism?
I don't like being labeled as a political side. I'm here because there is no ads and it's free and open source. If that is part of a political ideology, I am not attached to it. Lemmy is very left which is fine but sometimes it goes a little too left in some instances.
Federation is anathema to boot licking authoritarian fascists.
Tech-savvy people tend to trend left. And with the reddit exodus, only those that cared about API access and privacy left.
Yeah I dunno man. Ever since I made my account, half the posts I've seen have been complaining about whatever the hell tankies are, and almost all the rest are jokes about arch linux. The politics stuff seems more niche than just "left", but I haven't dug too deeply into it. There are other active communities if you dig around. Mostly I dig on star trek memes and programmer humor and it's a good time.
It's not totally leftist. I am most definitely a libertarian. I am interested in free and open source software, though, because I care about online privacy and self-sovereignty. I mean hell, even if you just look at my instance, I am on an instance about a particular cryptocurrency whose goal is financial privacy, which is a big middle finger fuck you to the government. They would like to know the consistency of your last bowel movement and I would rather them not know that.
If by "skew" you mean "bend over backwards", then "Yes".
ActivityPub and most of its connecting software is open source, so naturally you'd get a lot of people who are drawn to that. If you'd draw a Venn diagram, then there would be simply quite a bit of overlap of left leaning people, techies, open source advocates, etc.
I'm just here because I hate capitalists.
I also hate stalinists, so the joke is on me I guess.
Because demographics
I see a bit of everything on here, but I do like that voicing leftist ideals (not sure about left wing) doesn't get you shot down immediately from all sides (as it would in a lot of other places).
I imagine that in general leftists exist, but avoid posting in other places due to the abuse they'd receive for doing so.
I'd argue it is not really left wing. Or maybe not JUST left wing. Sure these people have some left ideas, but that is not all, and for sure is not the most important.
This is what the word "Tankie" refers to.
They (tankjes) go out of their way to argue for totalitarian governments and dictators. As it it is some kind of fetish.
They deny the wrong doing of countries like Iran, china, Russia and other totalitarian states as if all the wrongdoing by these countries actually are not real and just some big plot by the evil western propaganda machine.
They deny tainnamen square massacre, maidan is a cia coup, Iran is actually not that bad.. the list is endless.
They are worshippers at the altar of totalitarianism, the trump supporters but then for people like Putin, khameini, xi. Tankjes cheer on countries like north Korea while it starves it's citizens, deflect human rights issues in Iran with whatabout ... Saudirabia, muricah, etc.. Tankjes believe Hamas are fighters for the people, chant "from the river to the sea" while with the same breath saying it is all the wests own fault, Jews caused it all themselves... You know, the abusers credo... "Look what you made me do".
Please don't construe any of my above remarks as saying "west good, west blameless".
But that is my opinion. Left wing is not a feature of what is going on on these instances. It is just noise between the vitriol.
My advice, block Hexbear, lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml on instance level. And if you come across one of their loons arguing the above point, block the user and move on. Nothing of value is gained by engaging these Trolls that spread misery across the internet.
A lot of people have pointed out inherent ideological components of this platform, but I would also suggest that the lean is likely in part from network effects.
How did each of us find our way here? Someone likely mentioned the platform on another social site, or linked a meme, or shared other content.
If the site has lots of left leaning content that gets shared by left leaning people in places where such people gather, it's going to bais the new arrivals in a similar direction. This is true of most social spaces, I think. And it's good! I want right wingers to hang out in right wing spaces like Twitter, just like I want them to hang out at their own bars and clubs, away from me.
They're all psycho left.
Depends on what you consider left wing. It seems shitlibs are taking over, they are not left wing.
What unemployment and obesity does to a mf