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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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.
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.
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.
You’re going to get yelled at by lefties on any instance. That’s how federation works.
Leftists famously hate other leftists
Yep, I got an absolute novel length comment from some far left .ml person as one of my first interactions on Lemmy.
Well_theres-your-problem.gif
I guess… Well, I have trouble seeing the fediverse expand that far then. Which is fine but there have been a lot of pleas to make this a viable alternative to corpo social media.
I don’t think it helps that politics absolutely dominates Lemmy, where Reddit has enough diverse subreddits that you could probably just avoid politics all together.
It’s much harder to get away from it here. But hopefully, as Lemmy grows then we start to see more and more users in the non political communities and people can have a laugh without people jumping down their throats. People just need to stick to it and give it a good go and help build something great.
It’s a circling the drain problem. Even though Lemmy is (slowly) expanding.
Lemmy doesn’t have the raw numbers userbase to just have anyone come in, and find a niche topic with an active community.
But because any average user can’t come in and just find their niche community, they don’t stay.
Meanwhile politics HAS active communities. So politics grow. And thats where Lemmy is growing.
But I can’t find a community for “How I met your mother”. A tv show that concluded like 10 years ago. But the show takes place in the future, recounting stories from “the past”. Which means, in real life, Tracy, the mother who Ted is talking about, died in 2024. The story is being told in 2036. But the show aired in real time during “the past”. Which means if Ted is talking about April 2008, that episode aired in April 2008. But the whole
98 seasons (real fans don’t count the 9th season that never happened) is being told in one afternoon in 2036. Which means we could be talking about the last ciggerrette of each character as they happen in real time. I think the next one is in 2028.Instead…we talk about trump here…and seemingly nothing else. Ever.
I’d like [email protected] and /c/Cleveland to grow so we can talk about eyebrows and how great Jose Rameriez is.
That’s the thing though American politics get discussed here. With their perceptions of left and right.
Last season was great. It was only the finale that sucked…
(and, yes, if you want a HIMYM community, just let me know and I can make it on https://metacritics.zone/)
I mean, yeah, go ahead and make it. But based on my quick look of your instance, none of the communities are active. That’s the part we need to work on for ALL your instance.
Yeah, and this is the part where Fediverser was supposed to help. Not just with the mirrors to help bootstrap the content, but also with the whole part of Community Ambassadors. Sadly, no one got into the ambassador part.
An idea would be to allow “plug-in able” content sorting algorithms or content filters.
I hear so many stories of people slapping tons of filters in their clients (block all comments from ml users, block “Elon” and/or “Trump” keywords)… I think tons of people are running almost identical filters. Why not bake right into the Lemmy core the ability to pull filter sets from say, a public got repo?
Same with sorting. I’d love to have a “hot” algorithms that “punishes” posts based on comment sentiment analysis. Again, let me choose my sorting algorithm from a git repo. Let some person or persons develop a “good vibes” algorithm which keeps toxity off the top of my feed.
IMO, this is the way. Sorting by engagement has obvious issues. Introducing other weights to augment a system would make a huge difference in user experience.
You can’t change the people. Look at this comment section. OP said they don’t want to be yelled at and everyone took that cue to give a lecture. Completely no self awareness. Can’t change that.
But you can improve the algorithm. And IMO if you could crowdsource that dev in a way that doesn’t impose on mainline development.
Yeah, I like all these ideas. I wondered about some sort of pooled “ban/ignore” options at the individual level. So, rather than ignoring by an instance, if I trust that Janet has good tastes and filters out children and trump, maybe I can just have an ongoing list that draws from her blocks and vice versa if she feels similar.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I really like the idea of people with likewise sensibilities being able to act as their own cross-community mod team, without impacting other groups with different sensibilities.
I will join an HIMYM community if you create one. I am a big fan.
I don’t think it helps that politics absolutely dominates Lemmy, where Reddit has enough diverse subreddits that you could probably just avoid politics all together.
I think that’s the problem with all “alternative” social media… both ones that I like and stand behind like lemmy… and the opposite end, the Parlors, MeWe’s, Truth Social etc…
The point is… mainstream people talking about shows, video games etc… rarely hit any kind of limitations in the public spaces. I myself still go on reddit to see communities of specific shows, games etc… and… it’s fine for that. If I were to try and make the suggestion for a show or movie subreddit to move to lemmy, it would be a tough case.
The ones who see the flaws and limits of the corporate platform… are the ones either teetering at the edge of socially acceptable, or over it.
Whether that’s say us lefties that believe All Cops are Bastards, or right wing guys that think america was better in Jim Crow era. Bottom line is… people looking for alternatives, are doing so because the existing platforms are likely to censor them… which means the alternatives will be disproportionately more extreme.
Seriously people here seem to attach politics to a picture of a sandwich if God forbid the company logo is on the paper to the side.
Yeah, please don’t give up. I need more people like you here.
The key is finding the communities you like and blocking the others, and users, that you dont.
There’s an up-front time-cost but it’s easy to adjust and makes for a great experience.
Please do stay!
Yeah, a lot of the fediverse has an extreme left slant, and that’s coming from someone living in a rather left-leaning country.
As someone who jumped the reddit ship during the blackout protest and has been here ever since, mostly out of principle, it has slowly been getting better as more people filter in.
Some instances have blocked the furtherist-left instances and banned the most abrasive users from those that remain. It’s not at all how jeffw described.
I just got yelled at because I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism? Which feels weird.
That’s a terminology issue that you’re going to run into in any sufficiently political community. ‘Left-wing’ in casual use in the US refers to “everyone except the Republicans and some moderates”, but “left-wing” in any serious political talk refers to anti-capitalism.
are they really anti-capitalism?
or just calling for properly regulated capitalism?
According to capitalism, capitalism is the only regulation capitalism needs. Capitalism regulated by something other than capitalism is anti-capitalism.
The bigger issue is that so many people misconstrued capitalism and markets. They are two different things. You can have markets, well regulated markets. And not have capitalism. Even under authoritarian leninist governments they have markets. There were markets in Soviet russia, there are markets in-state capitalist China. Even in North korea. But they do not let the wealthy regulate and decide the markets as capitalism does. They have plenty of other issues however.
According to capitalism, capitalism is the only regulation capitalism needs. Capitalism regulated by something other than capitalism is anti-capitalism.
Respectfully, I don’t think this is true.
Even Adam Smith warned about the dangers of monopolies and the fact that businesses would try to crate them, collide againat consumers etc. That’s kind of the foundation of anti trust legislation.
Now, modern republicans have endorsed the view of capitalism that you’ve noted but to say that’s the how Capitalism works is like saying Soviet Russia is how communism works.
Respectfully, Adam Smith did not invent capitalism. He is seen by some as the father of it. But much like marx and Lenin and many others. Put together a popular outline of the thought at the time.
Even then he needs to be understood in the context of the times he lived in. He was very Progressive and educated for his time. But even if he believed that government should have some say in capitalism. Government back then meant wealthy white land owning males. I.E the capital class. I.E Capital controlling capital. Not the workers. Not women. Capitalism has always been about oligarchy. It was literally a response by the mercantilist class against the Royals.
Neither capitalism or socialism works for anyone but the vanguard/oligarchs.
You can’t just define capitalism however you want.
Most people understand that businesses need regulation, that’s the point and basis of so many agencies and bodies that it’s almost comical.
The real argument is how heavily it should be regulated. Yes, some folks, particularly those with a lot of capital don’t want regulations. That no more means capitalism itself doesn’t want or need regulations than say, a soccer player with a strong punch who wishes you could just punch other players means soccer wants players to be able to punch each other in the head.
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Adam Smith, in modern terms, would be a social liberal. Probably some kind of ordoliberal. It’s Marx where the modern definition of capitalism comes from and it’s pretty much “what capitalists do, systemically, to stay in power”: Accumulate their capital, evade regulation, generate monopolies, seek rents, etc.
Properly regulated capitalism is my Left but…
Then you are technically left. Although leninists Will loudly denounce anyone who doesn’t follow their authoritarian ideology as being no true Scotsman.
Capitalism as I stated above is regulated by capital. Anything other than capital regulating capitalism is not capitalism. The whole point of capitalism is that Capital regulates itself. If you want something other than Capital regulating capitalism, i e the people or government. Then you are against Capital regulating itself. And therefore anti-capitalist.
The tricky bit is. That wealthy oligarchs have spent centuries at this point conflating markets and capitalism. They are two different things. Markets have existed for centuries, Millennium even. It’s one of man’s oldest inventions. Coming right about the same time as agriculture. Predating capitalism by thousands of years. Capitalism as a concept is barely older than the United States itself.
That’s a very absolutist view of the meaning of Capitalism.
With that view, how could anyone be against Capitalism then?
It’s technically never been tried with that definition.
It’s not absolutist. Mildly reductive perhaps. But not remotely absolutist.
How could anyone be for it? It’s literally rule by the wealthy. It was a response created by wealthy mercantilist. Frustrated that no matter how much money they had there was an echelon of power always denied to them.
It’s always been tried with that definition. At the founding of the United States, wealthy white land owning males. The capital class with all the capital controlled it. It was oligarchy from it’s establishment. It was more beneficial on average than mercantilism. But still a failure.
Even today in China. The vanguard, their capital controlling class controls and regulates their state capitalism. Capital regulates capitalism. Not the people.
‘Left-wing’ in casual use in the US refers to “everyone except the Republicans and some moderates”, but “left-wing” in any serious political talk refers to anti-capitalism.
Please list the mainstream “leftist” parties in any G20 nation that are “anti-capitalist”; and by mainstream I mean they have more than two representatives at the federal level.
Socdems are leftist, even if you might disagree with their whole non-revolutionary approach. Definitely more leftist than the billionaire-creating CCP which yes is in the G20. China is part of that club. The whole EU, constitutionally, is not capitalist but a social market economy.
Mainstream leftist parties aren’t necessarily leftist, especially economically leftist. E.g. the Democratic party in the US.
I dobtwrhinj it’s any serious political talk (otherwise most countries are having unserious talks about their Left and Right wings) but maybe in serious political theory talks?
Like, Germany’s Left parties mostly don’t want to dismantle capitalism but I wouldn’t dismiss all conversation about them and putting people on that Left Right spectrum to be unserious.
Like, Germany’s Left parties mostly don’t want to dismantle capitalism but I wouldn’t dismiss all conversation about them and putting people on that Left Right spectrum to be unserious.
Even the SDP is pro-forma still for the abolition of capitalism.
I always thought they were more traditional socialist democracy?
But I doubt many of their voters believe a vote for them will bring about the end of capitalism…
I always thought they were more traditional socialist democracy?
… what do you think socialism is, exactly?
Generally, classically I’ve understood Socialism to still involve central planning of industry/production.
Whereas most modern socialist democracies tend to heavily regulate industry and enact social welfare programs to minimize the effects of different classes etc.
Generally, classically I’ve understood Socialism to still involve central planning of industry/production.
Socialism is worker control of the means of production, which can take many forms. What it is, most distinctively, is incompatible with capitalism, which is investor control of the means of production.
Whereas most modern socialist democracies tend to heavily regulate industry and enact social welfare programs to minimize the effects of different classes etc.
The most successful socialist parties in the West take the view that the harm of capitalism should be reduced while it still exists; they still believe in the eventual abolition of capitalism.
And the harm reduction comes in the form of removing parts of the economy from capitalist control, which is … anti-capitalist.
I don’t disagree but there is a distinct difference between social democracy and a socialist democracy, or democratic socialism.
The former is a capitalist system with some welfare systems in place, the latter is socialism without the one party state.
They very much expect the SPD to defend things like co-determination laws to the death, though. They also expect the SPD to implement referenda that say that landlords with over 1000 apartments should be expropriated, that they’re dragging their feet on that kind of stuff (“but the markets might get uneasy and that would have consequences”) is one of the reasons why they don’t poll well.
Can you imagine a US city the size of Berlin pushing through a referendum to expropriate landowners? That’s how far apart the overton windows are. There’s hardly even overlap.
I would say mixed-marked advokates fit into left wing as well, social democray and so forth.
You know left “lite”
Interesting take.
I think what you‘re talking about is called „anecdotal evidence“. Destroying capitalism is definitely not the „mainstream“ on lemmy, far from it. Although We dont have „normie-lizing“ moderation and bot armies that bury every post thats out of the norm.
Of course we attract a lot of freedom loving people. Freedom, turns out is an extremist left view. Asking to be paid for work done, asking to be able to work from home, etc.
I would ask your friend to show you more than one incident and also ask them to be open to making a new experience.
And although everyone will hate me for it: if you want fediverse lite (or bastardized corpo fediverse) you can always test bluesky and threads. They are more mainstream since they have larger user counts.
Not sure this is the way to share comments but in this post we already have people arguing about liberalism creating fascism etc:
https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/1703782/-/comment/9075608
I think she deleted accounts but if you really want I can hunt down the last time folks got angry at me for the same thing.
Are you aware that when they use the term liberalism, they likely mean economic liberalism?
I think the way to do it would be this but you probably can do it a lot more ways.
Lemmy (and the fediverse as a whole) are not supposed to be a drop in replacement for reddit and other corpo media. No central moderation or “direction”, just a ton of servers with very varying user counts, ideas and ways to do things.
When on the fediverse, you will definitely encounter bad stuff. You will learn to use the block button and maybe block whole instances. Thats how you make your own “bubble”.
Since the fediverse is federated, horizontally organized and has freedom of association, it is hugely different from any other social gathering in the outside world. All our Lives we live in hierarchical structures: Families (more or less), Schools, Companies, etc. That can be the reason why it feels alien. But I dare you to try and see if “freedom” cant feel nice to you.
It will never feel like reddit or other places on the corpo web. If you need that, its not the place for you. If you can be open to a new experience and just decide between listening to an opinion or blocking it, you might have a lot of fun. Good luck
I don’t think it’s the non hierarchy, I think it’s the being called a fascist enabler for supporting mainstream Democrat positions etc that is offputting.
I have trouble recommending this place to others because of some of our less than delightful members.
Reddit was big enough that once you got into niche communities, the angry crazies were either banned or hadn’t found community or whatever. Lemmy is still small so we don’t have that. So, was just hoping for an instance or whatnot that was less communism and linux and more friendly to an average person.
Yeah, i cant help if you wont use the block button. The not banning people is part of the horizontal structure. I suggest you open up to the concept. Otherwise youre just out of luck.
Also nobody here gives a shit if you recommend lemmy to anything. Thats reddit thinking. We dont make money, dont have the slightest benefit from someone getting a recommendation coming here. au contraire, we give people refuge who are sick and tired of the way reddit treats its users. If your friends are happy on reddit, please god leave them there. We do not want them here.
There have been a bunch of pleas to grow the fediverse, as stated in the opening.
And the block button isn’t a particularly good recommendation for new people.
Out of curiousity, say there was an instance that allowed all speech and had great content. Would you tell a trans friend “hey it’s great, just block every time you see something hateful.” Or can we see how that would be an unpleasant experience.
Anyway, if you don’t want a larger fediverse, that’s groovy but that seems contrary to the nature of almost every post here.
We‘re talking about different things.
I have trans friends that are fine here. They will absolutely shit on you for not dismantling capitalism though.
See my point?
Everyone has the right to their opinion. You want extras? Either get on an instance that backs your exact flavor or make your own. Freedom of association, baby!
Also, you know what I dont like? Smartasses. Yes, there are people here that dont want this place to grow and others do. Neither of them is wrong. The only one who is wrong is the one trying to convince them otherwise repeatedly.
If you have any other questions, I‘ll gladly help. If you want to convince me why I‘m wrong, you‘re getting the block treatment. Your decision.
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).
Many people block all political communities and keywords. It’s definitely viable.
If you block political words and Linux this place is a ghost town…
… Except for LotR memes of course.
"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
Roughly speaking, Lemm.ee is more libertarian some libright. Slrpnk is libleft but is home to pleasant politics community. Dbzer0 is anarchy leftist. World is closest to US centrist. Lemmy.ca is kind of Reddit’s onguardforthee vibe, Left/NDP wing.
Thing is that influences from other more ideological instances will make it onto All threads. “Lib-shaming” is something some folks at lemmy.ml, hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml like to do frequently, which is where those experiences might have come from.
Check the various compatible kbin and mbin servers as well. I’m posting from fedia.io, an mbin server
fedia.io here too, it’s the one I recommend to others as well. No specific “angle”, just works, based in Europe.
Fedia’s been closed to new sign-ups for a minute, but to anybody considering Mbin, have a look at this: https://joinmbin.org/servers/
Either way, a user’s feed will be as much about what things they choose to subscribe to and block, as what things their home instance does. For the most part instances share communities / posts / votes with each other which is the whole “federation” part.
It might be jarring to somebody who is used to just browsing “all.” I’d tell new users it might be a little bit of work to get comfy. That might well involve blocking a handful of toxic users. On the plus side, you don’t get ads and trackers up the ass and it’s small enough yet that you won’t feel like most comments get drowned out by noise.
Posting from kbin.melroy.org, Mbin developer/creator ;)
Oh I don’t know much about those, I’ll take a look! Thanks!
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.
That’s funny because the majority of Lemmy.World are people who left Reddit during the 3rd party app-ocolypse. Though I suppose many of them also saw Reddit becoming more and more pro-Nazi as time went on. The loss of the apps was just the kick in the pants needed to actually leave.
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.
Lemmy.world is the most mainstream instance. You may find small instances that have more political center types, but for all the “issue” is that the fediverse is federated. So lemmy.ml users can comment on your post on lemmy.world as well.
i think the content and the ‘home base instance’ can be completely separate. its all about what they would choose to subscribe to.
theoretically you could be on lemmy.world and not subscribe to or access any of its local content. conversely, an ‘onramp’ instance might not have much of any local content but have access to hundreds of remote instances. (mine for example)
it can be kind of confusing for new users.
My instance doesn’t really take a political stance, you’re welcome unless you’re an extremist (left or right, doesn’t really matter to me).
Edit: But I think you’re not gonna get better content anywhere that’s federated, after all, your instance doesn’t matter that much if you’re seeing the same content everywhere.
Yeah, I’m not sure what the solution is or if there even is one. To paraphrase Randal in Clerks “lemmy would be great if it weren’t for all the lemmings.”
(I think a lot of folks are great but that small, albeit very vocal group… Ugh.)
Lemmy.world is too left?. It always looked normal to me. Although, I do want the total annihilation of capitalism, so…
Normally big instances are the most generalistic and less “politically biased”, but sometimes a more small and focused instance could be better for the things you want.
It’s… Fine for me, I’m learning to just eye roll and move on but it can sometimes be fairly u pleasant and aggressively Left. (I think I got called a fascist for pointing out problems with PR electoral systems with a “how dare you oppose a system that…”
Too bad that’s your experience. Yes it is true that some comrades can get “intense” at times. I think that, more than the ideas, it is how to express them that is at fault by their part.
