This is such a strange take to me.

I was on the broader fediverse for a year or so before lemmy took off, and I got used to the very strong left leaning environment I found there, where compassion for your impact on the people around you was built in to the norms of many of the communities. I wasn't used to it, but I was so glad to have found it.

And then lemmy happened. And unlike the rest of the fediverse, which was largely populated by people escaping twitter because it had been taken over by a fascist, the lemmy population was largely people escaping reddit because they could no longer use 3rd party apps. And the difference in ideology between those two groups is night and day.

To me, the broader fediverse feels left wing and comfortable. Lemmy feels centrist, where half of my time as an admin is banning trolls and bigots spreading hate.

tl;dr - Your definition of leftist is not my definition of leftist.

Given that in the US leftist perspectives on anything are few and hard to come by, I welcome Lemmy's primarily leftist slant on things. Should one want to get a fascist or center/center right perspective, pretty much everything in the mass media in the US will provide that.

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Yes

• Yes

• Yes

• Maybe; yes

• It's a mindset thing. The more you interact with others positively while disagreeing, the better things will get. This only applies to reasonable disagreements.

• People will learn more, but people will be wrong more. Unchecked political diversity drives away normal takes. No political diversity makes people afraid to voice disagreement.

Lemmy is the definition of a left-wing echo chamber. We all see it and if you downvote me for pointing this out - you are lying to yourself.

I have noticed this trend. On the one hand, "Truth has a liberal bias" has always been true. If a community is geared towards truth and evidence, like as not it will lean left. There is copious evidence for this, for any random topic.

On the other hand, it has resulted in a lot of "I downvote complexity" behavior, which is, in my view, problematic. It is very easy to take stances of ideological purity online, and behave as if any recognition of greater complexity is EVIL!!1! I see this again and again. This is a way to make your ideological movement irrelevant and unworkable.

As much as folks decry the rigor of the MAGA right, where fealty to Trump is the only virtue, the Progressive left exhibits the exact same rigor, the exact same intolerance for deviation from its allies. Both Progressives and MAGAts see this as a virtue, but it very much is not: it locks you into a worldview that eliminates important complexity and any ability to see things from alternate perspectives. If you have a belief that your perspective is the only correct one, then the vast majority of the time, you're wrong.

Personally, I don't buy this echo chamber shit. Before social media, you choose your spaces and your company and did not have to put up with random jackasses butting into your conversations to tell you how much they hate gay people or whatever.

The abnormal thing is this expectation that we're all supposed to meet in the middle with any asshole at all times. I'm happy with a townhall meeting once in a while but I don't want to or need to put up with bigots and people who are otherwise socio-politically the opposite of me on a daily basis.

I want to be in the company of people that don't make me feel like shit and who I can see eye to eye with. That's not being closed minded or wanting an echo chamber, that's normal.

Since my (leftist) instance is blocked, OP probably can't even read this comment.

That irony aside, although I disagree that federated Lemmy as a whole is homogenous, it's only natural that an alternative social network would skew away from the mainstream, and that instances would be relatively homogenous internally.

I believe this is by design, but to expect something else is unrealistic. The only options for Lemmy would be for it to be either further left or further right than Reddit. And there are a couple fascist instances, though they are blocked.

You sure you’re a leftist? I see more leftism allowed to exist on Lemmy than other platforms, but the majority of it certainly leans neoliberal.

Try criticizing NATO or the Democrats in Lemmy communities. See how fast the powermods and groupthink kick in to put a stop to it.

But of course the rightwing stuff gets targeted, too. The mods here seem keen to mirror the narrow pro-neoliberal Reddit viewpoint of what is acceptable speech. Anything beyond that will result in a strike against the user or instance.

ETA: just got banned from another Lemmy.world community for pointing out the original NATO commanders were Nazis. There you have it.