Is there a more politically and ideologically diverse alternative for Lemmy?
I know the real answer is reddit but I really don't want to go back now that I've already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn't. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I'm pretty much ready to move on. I just don't know where else to go.
I'm sure this will come if the wrong way but if you're genuinely concerned about discovering diversity of thought, you're going to have to tell us what your positions are for example.
I'm all for finding diversity, but so often what people who post these are looking for is an echo chamber. Like if you're really wanting to be challenged, and you're a conservative, go to https://socialistworker.org/ and read up.
But if what you're concerned about is the nerds in Lemmy seem to be left leaning, that's just the nature of smart creative people. We value skills and creativity over hierarchy and structure.
If you're after moderate right flavored discussion I sympathize but you'll have trouble finding it as the broader right has been consumed by alt right and far right. If your point is that those viewpoints specifically are missing from Lemmy then I'd say it's a good riddance. I just wish Lemmy was as hard on some immature leftie takes.
I’ve skimmed some of your comments, and honestly it looks like you’re already getting a diverse experience considering your political and ideological way of thinking. That’s not a condemnation, but a quick observation.
Personally, I've found a fairly wide breadth of viewpoints on Lemmy. Perhaps what you're experiencing is the stress that diversity brings? It's a well-known effect of engaging with different viewpoints.
As my counselor keeps trying to get me to do: sit with your discomfort for a few minutes before reacting or taking any action. Think about your feelings and where they're coming from.
Social science research suggests that people tend to react with anger and irritation when confronted about their biases—particularly when those biases are accurately labeled as such. Although such interactions may be unpleasant, they also tend to lead to behavioral change, and so should be welcomed as opportunities for growth. Bias is a measurable condition, but it is not a permanent one, on either the individual or the organizational level. By acknowledging it we can counter it, expanding our pool of potential collaborators and improving financial performance.
Lemmy is already diverse, you just gotta find the right instance, or multiple instances! The whole point of joining your platform to the federation is for visibility and control
Yeah it's hard to say. Fark? HackerNews? Bluesky? Tildes? You'll just have to try a bunch and see what catches on with you. You're welcome to try Lemmy again anytime, so who's to stop you from a break from it?
I've been saying for a year, Lemmy and the Fediverse is specifically designed to be like a series of echochambers, since the community, the moderation and local userbase are designed all around that. Ultimately, you have the freedom to choose who and what to allow and block yourself.
Personally I think you are subjecting yourself to grief by interacting with hexbear and lemmygrad but I'm not here to scold or police what you choose to do.
I think one major difference that can make your experience negative is that posts on Reddit can't show below zero, and people here use the downvote button more often because they have strong feelings on a topic. In my experience on controversial topics you would have various threads where both sides of an argument receive downvotes which is a sign there are diverse perspectives. You just have to live with and not be bothered by a negative score, it means nothing. Some examples:
Israel vs. Palestine narratives (Lemmy overall leans a little more toward Palestine but I've seen either get downvoted depending on community over the months)
pro-Biden vs anti-Biden (this is a very controversial one and sure some of it is anti-American propaganda and "both sides are the same"-type of sealioning, still both perspectives get downvoted).
Ukraine (this one is easy, you're either on a community under .ml moderation or not, which determines the overall narrative)
This is all to say that the best way to get 'diverse' opinions on Lemmy is to hop around various communities, brace yourself for downvotes and just try to be genuine about it. For non-controversial content we all gotta do our part, speaking of which I haven't posted much OC lately so I'll get onto that soon in a couple days.
Tildes might work for you. Politics is a banned subject, but you'll get polite discourse on most subjects.
I found it stifling, personally. But if you like overly verbose, overly polite discussions where all opinions are respected as long as it's long winded and politely communicated, well, that's your place.
Lemmy is a federation of servers. "Lemmy" is not one political group with one viewpoint. If you're looking for different viewpoints, try different groups, or different servers.
In another comment you said this about the comments you read:
they're made in bad faith
I don't think this is true. I think that what you think is "bad faith" is actually "people who disagree with me". So far, most users of Lemmy appear to trend politically left by American standards, but that's only because American standards are so absurdly skewed to the right that it appears to stand out. By American standards, "truth" is left-wing.
I don't think there is one, unfortunately. I agree that lack of ideological diversity is a problem with the Fediverse in general, but it's a problem that likely won't go away unless the Fediverse becomes mainstream.
Honestly? It's tricky to find communities that give you a spread.
I can recommend picking an instance that has a secondary alignment with you (for example, country/state), as they'll tend to pick up posts in All that may be of interest other than politics.
(Though tbf, our instance still leans left on whole. Just not so crazily)
While I see a lot of posts that would have this problem, at least the discussion are a bit more balanced compared to when the same stuff would happen on Reddit. So for example fuck cars is about the same in terms of posts, but here I tend to see a bit more back and forth and a balanced perspective on how the comments are up voted. On Reddit, any comment vaguely questioning the circle jerk will be down voted into oblivion and receive nothing but angry replies.
The amount of apolitical posts is a bit disappointing though.
I'm not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.
What's more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it's often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.
I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be "special interest instances" that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.
What have you tried? There are communities of all types on here. If you say something, there are definitely people who will agree and others who will disagree. Most will express it quite badly and few will give a thoughtful response. Reddit, I find, was much worse at nuance.
/r/askmen for example was open to anybody asking questions while /r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn't allow diverging views. /r/science turned into a place for science memes. /r/politics was just a battleground for left and right wingers calling each other names, and places about men's health were consistently attacked by other subs. Reddit seemed like twitter's second coming - with communities.
I'm on an large instance which doesn't federate with Grad, so I don't see the Right-winger playing to be leftist by supporting right wing dictators
Tons of communities don't get that much political beside the respect basic human rights and sometimes comment the news
Even with the European election ongoing, I don't see much political discussion on European communities
So may-be try more "casual/fun" communties than the political one.
If you use the "local feed" it may be worth checking another instance. I heard good stuff of Blahaj Lemmy which as no downvote and act mostly as a safe/relax space for queer but is open to non queer people
I can't tell if you're the problem or if it is Lemmy.
I don't think there is an alternative as of now.
However: I think Lemmy will grow. As of now it doesn't due to the limitations of the software developers... Which is my personal little pet peeve. But it's currently in the process of diversifying itself. New projects like Piefed and others are being developed to tackle the current issues and limitations that don't get addressed by the Lemmy developers. I think there is a good chance that Lemmy is going to change in the near to mid future.
(And I don't get all the drama and political arguments anyways. It doesn't contribute anything to my life discussing world news/politics and it's bound to be negative... I'd like some more nice personal projects, soldering electronics, Linux communities and maybe posts about woodworking or lewd stories. Arguing about politics is a valid thing to do, but also boring in my perspective and this place is full of it.)
I agree and started putting effort into Mastodon. It took a week or two of filtering and browsing to find users and content but I've definitely found a more engaging base of content to interact with that is nice.
I was an engaged redditor who switched 100% to Lemmy and I do not feel quite satisfied with the comments and content.
I'll stick around, but I find myself on Mastodon and using Ground News more often.
Btw I have comments in my history of how frustrated I was about finding content on Mastodon, but suddenly it clicked after I spent a bunch of time on it. Not a raving endorsement but ultimately I do enjoy it.
Another side note, I was looking for some top users to follow and some have 10k followers, cool. Then I find some federated threads accounts with millions and realize how small we are in comparison. I know why, and I understand it, but it's truth that small user bases have less ideas.
I thought we have quite a diversity here with extreme right wing on hexbear, extreme left wing on lemmygrad, center with lemmy.world, (clasic) liberalism on dbzer0, and everything between like blahaj, beehaw, redhat, slrpnk, etc.
I'm not sure of better alternatives, only different. Mastodon or even Threads might be your solution. I also took a look at the comment history to get a sense of what you mean and I think I get it since I also get a fair share of negative interactions.
I think it's actually because of Lemmy's size that you get some pretty fringe views on here. Heck, if anything, the diversity you seek might mostly be all the views in-between that get drown out by the loudest fringe views. I'm sure there plenty of us lurking, since it's so exhausting engaging with lemmings at times. I'm by no means a moderate, but simply trying to defend a news source as legitimate can feel like a disheartening chore.
Anyway, I don't really know where to go for that and if you find out, I'd love to know. I don't necessarily agree with you on your views, whatever they may be, but I certainly can agree that we need a little wider range of views (and perhaps a bit more civility when someone expresses a different perspective).
Check us out hilariouschaos.com and let me know. Our premise is to shoot the shit,talk shit, shit post, post content you create, talk and have fun.
We're not interested in being like what you're experiencing. We're here to have fun. Shit doesn't always have to be about politics. I hope you check is out. Thanks
Though it’s only tangentially related to your inquiry, you should check out improvethenews.org
It’s basically what you are looking for but with news stories, though it’s primarily focused American news. It allows you to read the different narratives without actually visiting cancer news sites like Sky news.
I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now myself. I honestly don't think there is anywhere on the internet. Everything eventually morphs into an echo chamber, and then an echo chamber of extremism. If you find something, please let me know. I'm so tired of being constantly surrounded by extremists on either side of the political spectrum.