Hi! In thinking about how to help the fediverse grow, I wonder if there are more mainstream Lemmy instances?
I’ve pointed a couple folks to Lemmy.world and it’s uhhh, pretty hard Left for them (as one girl, who volunteered for the Democrats said “I just got yelled at because I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism? Which feels weird.”) We’re much farther Left than reddit which itself was definitely Left of centre…
I don’t know if decentralized open source social media actually attracts many mainstreamers but assuming we want to grow the fediverse, I’d like to have somewhere I can point people to without feeling very nervous for them.
Thanks!
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I’m like your friend. F— leftists and f— conservatives. I’m a hard core liberal and y’all can suck my d—.
I find lemm.ee is better than most but yeah as others have said, since everything is federated and the majority mass of users are hardcore leftists there’s no way to really avoid them. Just get used to the downvotes and easily offended snowflakes and instabans and hope that as more people leave the mainstream social medias for federated socials that these people will be watered down.
Lol @ “who volunteered for the Democrats”. Ain’t that a microcosm of every American politico (especially Democrats) ignorant of actual political theory.
Imagine getting upset that someone accurately described “leftism” to you. I can only imagine it’s major cognitive dissonance after a lifetime of consuming mainstream political media calling liberalism “leftist” and pushing the overton window right.
Lemmy.world already is the “normie” instance catering to liberalism. Your friend either ran into the more progressive parts of that instance or an actual leftist from a federated one. Either way, they got told an accurate take.
Anyway, can we please stop all the attempts to make this place comfortable for conservative and right wing views in the name of “growth”? Have y’all actually been on a default subreddit in the last 15 years? Would that be worth it here?
Hey you’re doing the thing
Lemmy.world is considered the “normie” instance. Even if you manage to find another instance, it won’t matter that much anyway since most interactions are from federated users. The only way to avoid leftist views on Lemmy is to avoid politics completely (which isn’t viable).
The worst enemy of a leftie are other slightly different lefties lol
The good think of federation is that you can mute/block morons. And because there’s no “algorithm” you are not shown content that the server thinks you are interested. So you have to be proactive and follow what you want to see, and mute the ones you dislike.
Also, you can have multiple accounts for multiple purposes. It’s sane not to discuss politics with other people from other cultures all day, so you can have a dedicated account for that. And other account to have fun in a sane way, which includes muting politics.
In the case of this girl, she was american like the majority of lemmings I believe. But for people from the other hemisphere, the cultural shock may be even worse. My advice for those is always: Just mute. Don’t argue and don’t feed trolls. Nobody is gonna change opinions anyways.
So if you can’t handle that there are other opinions, you either need to find the communities which support your opinions or go back to corporate internet, which filters out uncomfortable stuff for you.
In other words you’re looking for a conservative instance? Fuck off, we ban them.
Fediverse is anticapitalism at its core, it’s a way to escape ads and money influencing algorithims and what can be said. If you don’t like power to the people, join truth.social or some other unfederated instance.
Why not just join non-political communities and focus on the content that they enjoy. If people are nervous about meeting assholes on the internet perhaps they should stick to cable tv or netflix.
I think one of the issues is “normies” do not want to learn the lore like:
“don’t bother with anyone with lemmygrad after their name”
“Block these communities on day one”
“Be sure to pick an instance that you researched aligns with your moderation tolerances”
If you have to do setup stuff, many folks are already out. Someone may see that as a feature, but I don’t see Lemmy growing much more with that “feature”.
So if you’re happy with the size of things, mission accomplished. If you want to discuss “how to grow Lemmy” well, the above topics need to be addressed.
"I just got yelled at because I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism?
Based
Also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between leftist and left wing from someone but this is America dammit it’s the culture
Lemmy is different from Reddit in one important way.
Reddit is a product. You install the app, you look at the ads, the mods and admins curate an endless feed of cartoons and safe ragebait and awwwunexpectedsmiles.
Lemmy is an environment. If you’re passive, then any random thing may happen to you. So you have to be proactive in this environment.
- You could subscribe to communities that are non-politics/news, non-meme, non-tech, and browse these “subscribed” communities.
- You could use blocklists, as described elsewhere in this post.
- You could find an instance that does some of this work for you, by defederating and blocking certain types of opinions and behaviors. This seems to be what you want, and many people have provided suggestions.
These are all ok. But the one defining characteristic of Lemmy is that it is not just another product.
Mods please install an upvote twice button.
I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism?
Yes. Yes indeed you can’t. How to go about that is up for grabs but if you think that leftism is all about preserving the system that allows oligarchs to accumulate more capital and power, to allow a minority to exploit the majority, I don’t know what to tell you.
…besides that you’re probably American because only y’all are so damn confused about the whole topic.
Left “wing” in normie US is a broad neighborhood.
Left “ism” in normie US is a study of progressive politics with deviation from center exponentially growing as you go “more left”.
Lots of “left wing” folks in the US are low on the leftism deviation curve, but due to the way things work in the US they are definitely “left wing”.
So you absolutely get fiscal centrists with much “lefter” social opinions. And other “left-lite” view combos.
I think to grow Lemmy non combative, but non compromising spaces should exist. Much how some are warped right by spending too much time in the “manosphere” content, folks can be convinced of increasingly progressive politics by being welcomed here. Mind, I’m not saying anyone should cater to anything they don’t agree with, but God damn Lemmy could be less combative. Purity testing mild left folks drives them right. You don’t have to compromise your morals or positions to accomplish this.
So I’d close by saying Americans aren’t “confused” about anything, they’re just less exposed with further left policy / theory, due to being exposed most to milder progressive concepts.
On the right, maga is remarkable because it’s drawing many conservatives quickly up the exponential deviation ladder at a quantity not really seen before.
I’m on sh.itjust.works. Which is actually run like a democracy, funnily enough.
According to a post made in our Main Community, sh.itjust.works is the fifth largest Lemmy instance by total posts, after lemmy.world, hexbear.net, www.hexbear.net, and lemmygrad.ml. So figuring Hexbear got duplicated, and anyway hexbear and lemmygrad are commonly defederated with because tankies, that puts sh.itjust.works at #2 on this side of the Silicon Curtain.
It shows lemmy.world at 390k total posts, with sh.itjust.works at 65k. Sh.itjust.works has very, very few of THE communities people use. !Games!games@sh.itjust.works is the biggest one by subscriber count.
So sh.itjust.works is a popular place to access other instances from, and I think others like lemm.ee and lemmy.ca are in the same boat.
“Join this instance, they’re not as radical left as lemmy.whatever” misses the point. Who cares which door of the building you walked in through when everyone congregates in the same room anyway?
Does hexbear run two instances or is that a mistake?
Wouldn’t really make much of a difference in what server you choose, if the goal is to get “away” from Lemmy.world. The majority of users is from there.
Maybe it’s not the server, but more the community that’s an issue for you?
All I will point out is that the overton window in the US has shifted to the point where a double Sieg Heil at your president’s inauguration is within normal discourse .
Anyway, lemmy can be pretty “normie” for you so long as you stay out of political discussions. But if you want to actually discuss politics within the US overton window, lemmy is going to be very hostile. However if you come with an attitude to learn instead of debating/arguing, then I suspect most people wouldn’t flame you. But if one starts doing genocide denial for Israel etc, then they’re going to have a bad time.
shifted to the point where a double Sieg Heil at your president’s inauguration is within normal discourse
Haha thank you. I’m not even American but to me it’s pretty shocking to find out that this place, world of all instances, is too ‘extreme’ for people. Maybe I really am a dirty radical but I think that if people who consider themselves democrats are still fucking clutching their pearls about the left wing being too left wing while Elon Musk does open nazi salutes and trans people get their rights and dignity stripped away, then it’s no wonder the USA is so fucked.
You guys clearly need a new political party because your choices are overt right wingers, or spineless right wingers that like to pretend they represent the left.
Edit: maybe the bad men will see the light if we all hold hands and sing kumbaya. I’m sure that all of the people who are already finding themselves victims to this will thank you for taking the high road and not scaring too many centrists.
Db0 is the best instance with the least friction from mods and admins.
Reddit was only ever left of center for Americans. To many/most non Americans, America consists of a far right party and a center to center right party.
What you’re seeing is the result of a platform that wasn’t first created by and for American audiences, and whose initial takeup wasn’t dominated by American perspectives.
Agreed. I got lost at ‘Reddit is left…’
Huh?Until r/TheDonald you wouldn’t really see right wing concepts on the frontpage.
I’m not American.
Lemmy is much farther left than any of our national discourse.
I get that American parties are farther Right than most but the discourse here is much farther Left than almost all political discourse. Edit: I’m happy to be corrected, show me a serious party in a position of power in a Western democracy committed to ending capitalism!
I’m not saying that if you don’t want to destroy capitalism that you’re not left. I’m saying that the perspective that reddit itself was “definitely left of center” is not a widely shared perspective, and if you believe that reddit of all places was left of center, then lemmy, which actually is left of center, is going to feel very left of center.
I’d strongly disagree. I think reddit is generally on the left side of most cultural and political institutions.
To each their own though.
Then honestly you must live in some radically conservative country.
Canada.
No mainstream party suggests UBI as a matter of principle for example.
Our overton window is only a few degrees to the left of the US.
Also the Ontario Liberals conducted a UBI pilot in Hamilton during the 2010s with the goal of proposing some form of it as a policy if results were positive. The OLP lost to the PCs in 2018 and Ford canned the project.
Then there’s been the UBI experiment in Manitoba during the 70s.
There it is.
Your “country” is a collection of mining and timber companies in a trench coat.
Who is much more left wing than Canada?
I don’t think that UBI is the predominant reddit viewpoint either - I think that’s just the subs you’re in.
I’m Canadian too, and I certainly don’t consider reddit as left of center on average. It’s almost like 4chan lite.
But on that note, if you’re looking for Canadian instances, there are a few good ones.
The obvious one is lemmy.ca, but the other (bigger?) one is sh.itjust.works which is bilingual and I think is québécois.
Presumably a Canadian instance would have relatively Canadian political leanings, although as has been said before, instance doesn’t really matter.
I agree that most of Lemmy is rather cynical and very far lest
The world is a hugely diverse place that doesn’t easily fit into a left or right category from the perspective of politics in an individual country. While I agree that the US is a conservative country, this narrative is a bit exaggerated. The median global opinion on various issues would be all over the place from a US perspective, from far right to far left or even defying any categorization. As a result saying that the US is to the right of most of the rest of the world is a huge oversimplification.
The US has a nazi sympathising president, backed by a billionaire who gives nazi salutes in public. So I don’t agree that saying the US is to the right of most of the world is incorrect.
Well, there is a distinction between the the leadership and the populace. The context here was about the populace, since that is who is participating in these online conversations. I agree with you that the current government is an extreme right one. And yes many people did vote for this but I suspect many do not support his full agenda, they were just fooled into thinking this was the least bad option.
A nazi sympathising president was voted in, because the overton window has shifted sufficiently to the right to allow that to happen.
