The more I use lemmy, the more it begins to just feel like all the same problems reddit had. It has the same problems with major communities having far left moderation standards that only apply to the right, the same hive mind users that just spam the same tired out leftist talking points over and over while refusing anything close to an actual discussion.
The only upsides are that downvotes aren’t used to punish you site wide, and the handful of non-leftist instances that exist, though they always end up defederated by all the major instances, effectively making them poor spaces for general discussion.
So what are your thoughts? Is this just the “more like under new management” from megamind? Is there hope for it to become a decent platform for everyone, not just the left?
I think it’s because the initial lemmy launch was very leftist-oriented, so most people who used it early on were probably quite leftist. Basically as Voat was to the far right, so is lemmy to the far-left.
Add to that Reddit and lemmy both cater to younger people, and younger people tend to skew left, you’re left with a very left-leaning audience.
So these leftist early adopters snapped up the popular names for communities, so we’re left with a leftist culture on the site, even as right-leaning people later on come to the platform.
At least that’s my take. And honestly, as a libertarian, I’m okay with it. I’m pretty good at filtering out biases, so I ignore the worst of it and try to give another perspective in areas that seem more open. I hate echo chambers of all varieties, so I also generally avoid the libertarian ones as well (i.e. /r/libertarian on Reddit as a cesspool). I dislike conservative politics, but I also dislike progressive politics and prefer an actual focus on small government that respects individual rights. Sometimes conservatives get that right, sometimes liberals do, and I’m up for discussing it in both cases.
Yeah, I don’t actually care that much if the community skews left, my main concern is how moderation ends up on major communities and instances. Specifically as to whether they act like reddit did, feigning neutrality to maintain appearances while the weaponizing the rules against the right.
I don’t think they really did that though. Maybe on some subs, but any unequal moderation is much easier to chalk up to subconscious biases than anything intentional (i.e. it’s easier to overlook rule breakage for a cause you agree with and enforce rules for causes you don’t). There are even laws on the books that police don’t need to apply justice equally, only that they need to apply them lawfully (i.e. it’s not a problem to hand out tickets to black people more frequently than white people, provided the tickets are legally valid).