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 :)
I would say that FOSS typically draws a more educated crowd, and right wing rhetoric and propaganda typically target those of lesser education and lower cognitive ability, simply because those people are the most likely hosts for rightoid brain worms. Why do colleges skew heavily left, gee it must be brainwashing /s
Eh, there’s plenty of educated right wingers. Not fascists as much, but the kind of fiscally conservative economists who preach austerity are often as not highly educated, just lacking in empathy.
You’re speaking of pundits and politicians whose opinions are public and widespread. There is little reason to believe that those folks are sincere in their public statements. They are motivated by greed to lie in an effort to sway the opinions of uneducated people.
Among the general public, those that sincerely hold conservative political views are cognitively impaired. Source: they vote for things that are objectively against their own prosperity.
As a left winger myself…
… I’m not sure Foss is inherently left wing. Inherently anti authoritarian for sure, but I can totally see a libertarian type making a pro-FOSS argument from a capitalistic-individualistic and it being rather sensible. (Aaaaas long as we ignore the ways it’d contradict other beliefs right wing liberals tend to hold, but yknow. Compartmentalisation is a human superpower)
I think I’d still argue the free open source part is inherently left wing. Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Something like bitcoin is the kind of tech project of that mould that i think attracts the right wing libertarian. Just my opinion though.
Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Because you do stand to gain regardless. “I have my code on the source of <major FOSS project every tech guy has heard of>” is like. Amazing portfolio material for any job interview. I had a friend get a job in the games industry (though they regret it to this day because the game industry sucks–) with nothing on his resumé except for a smattering of mods for popular games.
Any pro-capitalist person with a functioning brain will acknowledge the role of non-monetary “Profits” in every human relationship, yanno?
That’s true, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the FOSS ethos runs in direct conflict with the ideals of capitalism and private ownership, and libertarians are nothing if not fanboys of those things.
Being able to do what you want is a part of private ownership. Some people just like making their code available to everyone.
Depends on what you consider left wing. It seems shitlibs are taking over, they are not left wing.
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.
I don’t come here for the far left. I come here for the lack of the far right. The far left are some crazy nutters, too, but I think for the most part they are well meaning and that’s a damn sight better than the far right who just wear hatred on their fucking sleeves.
It means I get some shit for not wanting to live in a big city or being happy driving a car, but I take solace in the fact that I’ll be long dead before far left ideals take hold in any significant way. Meanwhile… fascism is a far more immediate threat, and that’s the one group of fuckers I give myself leave to unabashedly hate.
There’s no scarcity of hate on Lemmy either. It simply flies under the radar for most part because it’s directed at things we hate too. Exactly as is the case on far-right forums as well. Just read the comments of any thread about Elon, Police, Ai, Facebook, Twitter, Capitalism, Israel and so on. You even admit participating in it yourself.
The far-right thinks of themselves as well meaning just as well. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guys. Claiming they intend to be hateful and evil is disingenuine. That’s only how you view them. Their view of us is hardly any different. Both views are wrong.
If you think hating on fascists is just more of the same (and to be clear, there is a lot of ambiguity in what you said) then I’m going to have to disagree. There is no nobility in loving your enemy until they exterminate you.
As for the rest, you come at me a bit argumentative, but I don’t really disagree. But does it make it an echo chamber if I don’t fight everyone I disagree with? I’ve been arguing on the internet since before the WWW existed and nothing has changed, least of all anyone’s minds. I get upvotes when I manage a particularly eloquent turn of phrase that captures the zeitgeist, but as gratifying as that is I enjoy the back and fourth a lot more. I’d rather have someone thoughtfully and respectfully disagree with me.
Even if the left is overall more tolerant, there’s still plenty of toxicity that alienates people and pushes them rightward.
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.
it stands for what now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ml
Yes, the TLD belongs to Mali. But the reason why the creators of lemmy.ml picked that TLD is because they’re Marxists. They’re also the creators of Lemmy itself, which is another reason why Lemmy communities tend to be pretty far left: the first instance was literally Marxist, and presumably most of the early users leaned in that direction.
It’s funny, the grand majority of users here are from Reddit. The influx was insane, I remember clearly seeing the numbers.
I think there are a lot of bad actors here. People with floods of accounts. I don’t know why this is tolerated to the degree it is… But my theory is that there are far less crazies than many might guess. Most folks here are great.
Yeah, there are some serious whackos on there. It’s a very vocal part of the population. I highly recommend folks try other instances if they aren’t hard-left.
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.
This is my understanding as well. History of the platform skews it left.
But I also don’t think in terms of left and right (though its hard to get away from the terms so widely used). For instance, most people tend to describe the difference in terms of money and profit (capitalism). I look at control and freedom. I don’t want governments controlling what we see, hear, and say. I want us all to control our own lives. Lemmy/Fedi is completely supportive of that concept.
I don’t want governments controlling what we see, hear, and say.
Might want to find a new instance
I once wrote a comment on a lemmy.ml page about China being authoritarian and my comment was removed, with a note saying “China isn’t authoritarian, stop spreading misinformation” LMAO. Delusional people
They’re not delusional, they’re paid.
Why would they be paid for a software that can be used for free, to create larger servers than their owns, with completely separate communities they have nothing to say about?
Doesn’t seem like a very effective strategy
Because the Fediverse is a great target for propaganda, which is invaluable for some authoritarian countries.
Lemmy is an echochamber with relatively limited, uncoordinated moderation. 1,000,000+ monthly active users, and lemmy.ml is a flagship instance.
A non-zero percentage of the rightwing posters you will find online are very enthusiastic about warm water ports. Lemmy is small and new enough that the influence campaigns are not directed this way
They’re all psycho left.
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.
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.
Right-wing propaganda would have you believe that most good things are left-wing (and thus bad).
Right-wing propaganda would have you believe that most good things are left-wing
One of the few things I agree with them on!
Because reality has a left-wing bias.
Heh. Because lefties are just conservatives who got mugged by reality, and once that happens there’s no going back? ;-)
I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’m a lefty, life has never mugged me. I’m a leftist because bad things happen to everyone and the solutions isn’t to hurt people until they’re better people. Giving people time and resources just makes people and society better.
In general and on the aggregate, I am with you.
However, as an anecdote, I took in a couple of very conservative Christians who got evicted, gave them time (to pay off bills) and resources (food, water, power, internet, a bed, a roof…now at 4 months), and they’re not lifting a finger to help around the house and expect our kid to do their dishes and take out their trash.
Sometimes people are just selfish greedy assholes and there’s no changing that even with time and resources. And trust me they will be getting evicted from my house quite soon (with proper notification by state law).
I hope this experience doesn’t make me a bitter old fool. I truly do. Because I love the concept of helping others, it just tends to backfire more than I’d like.
I think people here tend to question and fact-check posts and comments a lot, which is a healthy thing. Now some say reality skews left, in which case could it be that the right have left because the left is right?
the right have left because the left is right
Nice. I’m stealing this!
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.
I think all the right wingers who were dissatisfied with reddit migrated to voat?
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.
