Is there a more politically and ideologically diverse alternative for Lemmy?

you’re going to have to tell us what your positions are for example

There are very few “positions” I hold.

The "positions" term is usually a shorthand for the eventual distillation of your values. If you haven't arrived yet at your positions, have you examined on your values? Values are usually far more primitive in the sense they don't conform exactly to specific public policy, but there is usually public policy that encompasses specific values.

While its certainly possible for a person's values to change over time. We usually arrive at what most our values are in our 20s. These are things such as:

• Your belief in the value of life; Your own vs everyone else's in society, in the world.
• Your adoption or rejection on any specific religion or faith
• Where you decide the right balance is between individualism vs collectivism
• Your belief in personal responsibility and autonomy vs societal responsibility and obligation

I believe it is very important for each of us to examine who we are, what our values are, and then use our intellect to decide/craft which positions can be arrived at with guidance from our values.

When it comes to most subjects I’m not informed enough to form strong opinions so I generally float somewhere in between. For most hot topics I see on Lemmy every day I can usually make good arguments for both ways. I may lean to one side or another but I’m often just a few well written comments away from tipping to the other direction.

This is where your responsibility comes in. If you're not informed enough, become so. Listen critically to arguments, don't simply accept on face value what other proclaim is true. If you're hearing a logical argument that seems to contradict your understanding, yet aligns with your values, challenge yourself to explore it. The phrase "steel sharpens steel" applies here. If you have healthy and strongly defined personal values, the arguments of your positions should be equally strong and stand up to scrutiny. If your positions are found faulty by your own examination, adopt all or elements of the argument that knocked your position down because its is the right one for your values and ability to critically apply logic with all the information you have available.

You made other statements about choosing a side, but realistically it isn't just two sides. Its dozens or hundreds of nuanced views, and every single one could be flawed in some way, or incomplete. Accept that in many situations there isn't a "right" answer. All sides represented could be wrong and the best you can do is admit this choose the least worse. This constant reexamination and frustration is both the beauty and the horror of being human.

It's almost like I need to choose a team and then subscribe to the ideologies of that team when in reality I'm more of a pick and choose type of person.

This sums up my feelings lately very nicely. I'd say I am generally well aligned with the culture on here, and share most leftist views. However there are certain topics, and even just sub aspects of certain topics, that will net you a lot of downvotes very quick and condescending proselytizing comments if you even slightly differ from the general consensus in your views.

I'm not sure what could be done about this though, I certainly dont want Lemmy to be more welcoming towards alt right bullshit and such. But talking with a bunch of queer leftists about queer leftist things all the time is like that old south park episode where the parents become pretentious wine snobs and start getting high on their own farts. Boring, pointless self aggrandizement.

I think some mods are a bit too happy to use their mod tools. I've seen opinions get moderated away because they anger people, not because they are wrong.

A mature society is able to discuss things without banning opinions they don't agree with.

I've seen a LOT of strawman attacks. It usually seems to be honest miscommunication, but underneath that... It looks like predisposition to combative and somewhat-dismissive hot takes.

And it works. Certain members have swung entire conversations and down votes by implying a person said something they didn't.

It's not unique to online fora, but the concentration seems off here.

Some of this just looks like people feeling like big fish in this small pond and finding a degree of confidence or even righteousness from the voting patterns.

Can you expand more on those idiotic positions?

The amount of tankies and idiots with idiotic opinions is way to high on here.

On an internet site?! I'm shocked! Shocked!

I mostly sign jokes and shitposting communities, but the people there are surprisingly calm and diverse. I mean, surprisingly for an internet community; most could pass just as a very weird group in another context.

But if you go signing for politics communities on the internet, you'll get the expected result.

I agree but I also think it’s up to them to build that space.

If your a classical conservative and believe in personal and fiscal responsibility, then it’s your job to create or contribute to a space for this.

I think this is the problem, those people let the crazies in and then turn around and blame the victim.

Man, I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a nail get hit so hard right on the head but I'm coming up empty.

Then express yourself to let them know what you stand for, and what do you expect from them.

We can only know what you show us. The rest we have to fill in based on what you’ve said in the past. That’s how this stuff works. It’s a back and forth. For it to work, you actually have to contribute.

👌👌👌👌👌👌💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

Reddit was the same way to be honestly.

I can understand what you mean. The prevailing narratives tend to be America bad, cars bad, capitalism bad, Linux good, on and on. But in the vein of how you assert that you don't want people to assume what you believe, going into a community painting users with a broad brush is going to fill the gap with your pre-conceived biases, and that isn't conducive to good discussion. I say give it a chance, even someone that writes along the lines of what you expect may still have a tiny sliver of something that surprises you. I look at some of the more notorious users like FlyingSquid, PugJesus, PP_BOY etc. and I've agreed with them and disagreed with them on various topics, even if they were in line with 'the narrative'. Other users I attempt to converse and sometimes it works out while other times I have to stop at the 3rd reply.

I'm making an effort to be better, trying to curb the ratio of responses I do that have only memes and add more original thoughts or detailed opinions to my newer comments.

I'm kind of surprised you think reddit was any different from that!

I keep post scores hidden so getting downvoted isn't much of an issue for me because I won't know unless I go out of my way to check.

On some conversations you might be better off seeing the score. Some people will agree in terms of a vote but aren't going to back you up in the comments. I've had a few conversations where the comments are demoralizing and the score shows me I'm reaching at least some people (or vise versa).

Also, something I learned from Twitter and Reddit after engaging with people too much ... sometimes the right answer is just to use the block button liberally and call it a day. Some people are not interested in discussion or good faith debate they just want to yell at people on the Internet and feel smart.

I had a person I bumped into saying (all of this paraphrasing) "the press has gone to shit" because of a headline and I was like "can we not be so dramatic this is a small website, surely a bad headline from a small operation is not a new thing" then they responded with "how many headlines do you see with X Y or Z even in those mainstream outlets? It's all gone to shit." I ran a few searches and found a rate of about 1 article per paper per year that met their alleged example... And then they said that was malicious compliance, I'd ignored their argument, and I wasn't acting in good faith... Like mate, I just literally took 15 minutes to check your claim out and came back to tell you; how much more good faith do you want? That was a block, that person is clearly a total waste of time, and I don't want to interact with their "doomerism."

In a sense it's a blessing lemmy is kind of small because blocking one loud person that has a lot of opinions that irritate you can go a long way.

The main issue for me is that I can reliably guess what kind of replies certain topics get and what is popular and what is unpopular. It's kind of like having a friend who never says or does anything that surprises you. Why even bother asking for their opinion when you already know what they're going to say.

I was definitely feeling this way a couple weeks ago ... ironically the worst was the weekend my birthday fell on. It just felt like everything I came across was a hot take lacking nuance.

It comes and goes... Some weeks people can/will surprise you. Some topics... I think it's better to just leave the mob alone and let them have their echo chamber.

Having a good idea what opinions you're likely to see doesn't mean there's no point to asking. Certain opinions being prevalent is expected in any community. Any time I make a post, I can be pretty sure there will be certain kinds of responses, but there are typically some that surprise me also.

If you find that the community mentality is so entrenched that people are hostile or disparaging, just block the most offensive profiles and move on with your day.

I block quite a few profiles every day. That's just how it is these days, when charlatans can convince millions of people to vote and vehemently influence against their own self interest.

Agreed, I recall this.

Pretty ridiculous the comments that were removed.

Not really interested in discussing things with fascists, but I've rarely seen anyone here who's to the right of, like, a milquetoast social democrat.

That is true, but I did find a lot of people on Twitter and Reddit who I could have productive and interesting disagreements with, even though I naturally mostly followed and subscribed to people and things I did agree with.

I'm not sure if Lemmy has a large enough userbase to warrant paying shills to sway opinion.

What would the purpose of that be? Get 20-30 politically inactive Arch Linux users to vote for Biden?

Bro if you think the DNC even knows what Lemmy is, letalone is teying to influence it, then you need to check yourself into inpatient psychiatric care ASAP. Give me a fucking break LoL.

Lol you mad.

Yes, that's probably true. For me, however, neutrality presupposes diversity - at least to a certain degree. As in the maxim of quality journalism: the assumption here is that a journalist can never be truly objective. This is why an attempt is made to allow opposing perspectives on a topic to have their say, so that the reader or viewer can form their own opinion.

Of course, this principle does not work in an environment in which differing opinions or perspectives are generally unwelcome. This is probably the case with Lemmy and other Fediverse applications for some topics. But I think that this doesn't just apply to the Fediverse, but to social media in general. It seems to me just as you say: if you only encounter rejection on a platform, in a community or on an instance if you disagree with the majority, you will move elsewhere - which in turn will probably lead to you eventually finding yourself in an environment where the majority of others are of the same opinion.

Of course, it would be highly desirable if people were more open-minded, but I'm afraid that's a utopia. In any case, I don't have the impression that the advent of social media has fundamentally brought open exchange forward.

On the contrary, I have the impression that political discourse in many countries, for example, is now characterized by the very strategies that make social media posts successful: the abbreviated presentation of complex contexts, the invocation of enemy stereotypes, sometimes even straight-up trolling. But perhaps this is just a perception error on my part.

Absolutely. There's a small handful of sites full of insufferable stalinists. Thank god I didn't discover Lemmy when I was 14, I might have been swallowed right up.

Just block those instances, your experience will be better immediately. And don't hesitate to block individual users, even if they're not breaking any rules or anything. Finding something to be annoying is plenty of reason not to want it as part of your internet experience.

That's the solution.

I think the .ml ones are tailored to be extreme opinions in one direction

Rofl 🐮

caribou diaper baby ... that was particularly deranged and such a strange insult lol

That made me laugh. It's more hilarious than an insult. Maybe they are comedians in their free time?

I mean, my eyeballs read 'Men's Health'...

I see, that then I misunderstood that and OP might have a point?

Because they are literal Nazis.

Oh it’s still incredibly USA centric, at least as far as the content shared and discussed in English is concerned. The userbase just gets their biased talking points from Russian bot farms instead of US media outlets lol. I guess that counts as more global.

I use Android, so Fedilab was the app I'm using.

I didn't want my feed to be an endless stream of news or other languages. So first I joined a smaller server, with a topic I care about.

Then I followed a few journalists, and followed tags I care about like cycling, my hometown, tech news relevant to me, and TV shows.

Lastly after I had that base of content... I went looking for people. When someone posts something I like, I check their other posts... do I like those too? If he's then I look at who they follow. Big accounts usually don't follow a lot of others. This is endless but really gave me a consistent group of people who I care what they think and say.

Not easy but worth the time over the course of a week or two.

Also I watched the #followfriday tag where people lost accounts they follow and why.

Also, look at the top accounts lists that exist. Threads accounts have millions of followers so it's a good bet it'll be good.

If it makes you feel better, I don't particularly hate an outgroup (like reddit) and I'm not really here for that reason (although I like the app options here too). Maybe that's a minority view, but hate is just too emotionally draining for me. Maybe I stick around because those Trek and Linux nerds won me over, haha.

But yeah, maybe if you like hearing folks over at Lemmygrad (or even... Hexbear?!) federation is still your best bet because you'll never get that on the more mainstream sources. If it's a bad experience, maybe you need to tweak your approach. Just brainstorming though, I really don't know the ideal platform for open discourse.

Like what?

You threatened their worldview by pointing out that Lemmy is an echo chamber. People get angry when they feel threatened.

One man's far end is another's centrism. I don't think there are too many truly centrist places left because the Gulf between left and right is so wide the center is just a giant ball of contradictions or meaningless statements.