Think about things from the point of view of someone who has never used Reddit or the fediverse, but you’ve heard about them both from recent news articles and want to see what they are about.
Reddit:- You Google Reddit and your first result is Reddit.com. You click the link and are presented with the front page. You from scroll from a few hours and end up signing up and staying.
Lemmy:- You Google Lemmy and your first result is a wiki article for Lemmy Kilmister… Your second result might be join-lemmy.org, which you’re smart enough to realise it’s probably more likely what the news is about.
You click join-lemmy.org and are presented with a page of information about the fediverse, links to set up a server and pictures of code…
There is very little chance you’re going to investigate further.
If we want the fediverse to replace Reddit then either
A) Lemmy needs to improve its initial impression and Search engine optimization
B) We should be promoting a different platform with a better initial first impression.
I’d recommend kbin personally as it gives the same sort of experience as Reddit from the initial interaction.
I recommend kbin just because some of the people behind Lemmy are vocal far left wing. I want to support more moderates in the world.
What’s the moderate position between “trans people should not be allowed to exist in society” and “trans rights are human rights”? You have to understand every time you or anyone else says some shit like this you’re basically crying that people are taking a position instead of just watching the right wing try to ruin peoples lives.
The supreme court literally ruled to allow businesses to discriminate against people based on sexuality yesterday.
This. While things are new, and nothing has taken the place of “service that everyone uses”, LGBTQA+ people are going to avoid the unsafe places which is going to push discussions further and further right. A “moderate” position that treats the bigots the same as people who just want to live and feel safe isn’t moderate at all.
An actual moderate position there is to just not go out of your way to be an asshole. But some people want to be assholes and vilify those who may not be able to protect themselves. I can’t stand the people who want to ‘debate’ human rights. No, that line of thinking isn’t welcome going forward.
I firmly believe everyone has the right to live freely and to find their own path, provided they don’t harm others. Hate speech and violence have no place in our society, and I wholeheartedly stand with the trans community in advocating for their protection.
Nonetheless, here’s a viewpoint I have that I know is not accepted, but I’ll share it anyway. I believe the compulsion of speech, particularly insisting that all of society adapt their language to accommodate individual identities, is a terrible approach. The notion of forced speech is problematic to me, and worries me greatly.
That said, I believe it’s important to work towards a society that respects every person, but without mandating how we perceive them. Life’s journey is all about confronting adversity, and part of this involves learning to navigate the world as it is, not necessarily as we’d like it to be. Instead of dictating specific definitions, it might be more beneficial to cultivate a culture of empathy, understanding, and open dialogue around these issues. This perspective is unpopular and contentious, but it is a conversation that we should be willing to engage in.
Anyways that’s what I see as the moderate take, and it’s what I believe. I had to tiptoe pretty hard there and I’m sure what I said still comes across as hate speech to some but I don’t feel it is. It’s just my opinion. I wish there was a place I could express it and have an open debate with people about it. We can’t eliminate half of society, and we’re going to have to learn how to empathize with people we disagree with in order to actually see where they are coming from.
Nonetheless, here’s a viewpoint I have that I know is not accepted, but I’ll share it anyway. I believe the compulsion of speech, particularly insisting that all of society adapt their language to accommodate individual identities, is a terrible approach. The notion of forced speech is problematic to me, and worries me greatly.
Is this the fucking Jordan Peterson position? Whose speech has been compelled? A man walked into a Philosophy of Gender class this week in Canada and stabbed three people, so sorry if I’m a lot more concerned with the constant hate speech being levied against LGBTQ+ people than I am with the anomalous concept of “compelled speech” which has not as of yet been an issue and only exists in the fever dream of transphobes who want to actively misgender people while working in public positions in Canada.
That’s a lotta words for “I don’t respect what people want to be called”. When you call someone by the wrong name and they correct you, is that also compelled speech to you? Because that’s all pronouns are. By your definitions all of language is compelled speech, because you’re being forced into using specific words to communicate.
It can be your opinion all you want, but it’s one you should evaluate and change, because it doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
The problem is that nobody (or at least very few people of actual influence) are legitimately saying that trans people shouldn’t get to exist. I have yet to see any politician, for example, express such a belief.
Michael Knowles called for the “eradication” of transgenderism at CPAC this year. Please shut up (E: corrected the wording he used, because he said “eradication” not just that it shouldn’t exist)
I mean, you don’t have to be a tankie that defends North Korea or the uighur genocides, to respect those values? Which is the main problem with Lemmy devs and main instances.
You’re gonna need to be a bit more specific than that, because “defends” often does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to issues like that being discussed from a leftist perspective. Did they outright say North Korea is perfect or there was no human rights issues with the treatment of the Uighur people in China? Or did they say the situation in Korea is more complicated than is presented by the west because we’ve embargoed them for more than half a century at this point and point out how the Uighur genocides are not that different from what happens in ICE camps in the US to this day?
Bad things happen all over the world, and I don’t think China or DPRK are perfect by any measure of the word, but presenting them as the axis of evil and ourselves as the good guys is just silly. It’s not that they’re good, it’s that we’re cartoonishly evil too.
It worries me that you get a bunch of downvotes for this. People are way too accepting of political biases if they’re in the direction they prefer.
Because it implies that basic, milquetoast progressive values are “far left”.
No, no there are literally tankies. Lemmy.ml the ml means marxist-leninist and lemmygrad.ml is just straight up tankie CCP apologists
I’m liberal, but I’m not at the “censor users criticizing the Chinese government because they’re communist” level. I was also skeptical of what people were saying about the lemmy.ml admins (the original lemmy devs), but they’re anything but miquetoast progressive.
That doesn’t represent all of Lemmy though. I just wouldn’t recommend joining .ml
You need to do a little research before you get up on your high horse. They’re literal, self proclaimed communists. Lemmy was made because Reddit wasn’t left enough. They enjoy censorship and deny basic human right violations, and parrot CCP propaganda. They’re tankies. That’s why the devs instance isn’t federated with many of the major ones.
This is partly why kbin exists.
Wtf. I accidentally deleted my comment two times. Lemmy mobile UI fail!
In my experience, lemmy.ml and feddit.de (for example) are in more left wing then milquetoast progressives. It’s faszinating and refreshing, and I don’t mind people speaking their minds. But I prefer moderate, too.
I would rather say that the average Redditor is milquetoast progressive. Heck, I start to really enjoy this phrase 😉.
I think part of it is that leftists (myself included) don’t like being lumped in with tankies. I didn’t downvote though.
The lead devs of lemmy are tankies, basically meaning authoritarian communists of the genocide-apologist variety. They also run the lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml instances.
This is also why I signed up on kbin instead of on lemmy. The other lemmy instances are fine, but I don’t want to contribute to the influence of the lemmy devs any more than necessary. Hopefully they try to pull something stupid and get forked off the project.
Why would anyone downvote for that reason though? That reason is why I upvoted. I’m firmly left-wing but absolutely not far enough that I can support their BS views.
@cacheson This exactly. It’s why I didn’t join there and wound up here instead. Communism is a misnomer at this point - all that is left is the authoritarian/totalitarian/Putinistas. Tankies and Putinistas are the same to me. Trumpists are the same to me. The only time I’m associating with those people is across from them at their next US insurrection.
Oh don’t even get me started on the downvote brigades from angry leftists around here. Don’t you dare hold a moderate opinion around them, or they call you a nazi and tell you to go back to 4chan. You can read my post history. All I’ve ever expressed is the same sentiment expressed here, and I’ve been met with nothing but absolute vitriol.
Because we saw what happens with Reddit. People come in claiming to be “moderate”, and very quickly shit like T_D starts popping up. Also center of the road politics in the US has had rights taken away from millions of people in just the past year, and it’s going to continue to erode them from more. I’m not telling you to change your political stance, but I am telling you that people see them as an attack because they have literally been attacked by “moderates”.
Your post history shows you are solidly on the right end of the spectrum based on your expressed opinions while trying to justify yourself as moderate.
What you call “moderate” is likely viewed very differently by other people, since I assume you’re from the US, and US politics has become a far-right fucking shitstorm. The overton window has shifted so much over there that “moderates” are degenerate cunts to more reasonable people.
You have the freedom of speech, not the freedom to be free from the consequences of that speech. I read your post history and couldn’t really find a ‘moderate’ position, mostly far-right talking points and splitting hairs about semantics. If the shit that you’re saying is indistinguishable from Nazi and fascist rhetoric, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you that you may have to reexamine the people you caucus with.
I also saw that you claimed downvotes and disagreements are an important part of online social interaction, and yet you’re here complaining about “downvote brigades.” I thought that was pretty funny.
agree. Part of why I liked reddit was that I could customize my feed to ignore political diatribe (left and right) and just read the feeds that interest me. Lemmy is so infested with leftists that it spills over into every part of their community
One is the instances is owned by people who praise Stalin. Lemmy.world is not. And the code is open source so Lemmy is not really owned by anyone. All you have to do is switch instances.
I came to kbin hoping for exactly that, a moderate platform, and these upvote-downvote patterns are extremely concerning.
That’s like saying you don’t recommend Linux because you disagree with Linus Torvalds. Using Lemmy or Linux does not advance any particular political agenda. And for the record, I like kbin.
You know what does potentially advance a communist agenda? Buying a phone made in China. Which phones do you recommend?
Now you’ve got me wondering what Linus Torvalds thinks. The only opinion of his I know is that sound file that used to do the rounds “Hello this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux”.
