Hi new user here. I’ve been checking out Lemmy but the amount of bias is ruining it for me. For example the front page right now has 7 out of 20 submissions that contain the word Trump in a negative context. I don’t care about Trump but when the front page is all political posts attacking Trump I have to wonder about the health of the site.
In the most simple sense, could Republican submissions survive on Lemmy politics community ignoring the voting behavior or would the site and moderators itself actively suppress it to “keep the peace”? I think this gets to the heart of the question and again, this isn’t political to me, it’s purely mechanical. I think that if a social media site has a community called “politics” that is solely made up of stories promoting one party while shitting on the other then the entire site is inherently flawed. It isn’t being genuine in what it offers and is incapable of providing it.
It’s like if you had a community named “cars” but you’re only allowed to talk positively about certain manufacturers. Imagine most people either like Ford or Chevy but on the “cars” community it “just so happens” that everyone there likes Ford.
You can post about Chevy but you have to be careful about how reliable the information is. You have an article that says Chevy’s new SUV produces 500 horsepower? Well, that source isn’t reliable. In fact this Ford biased source did a study showing it only produces 400 horsepower. You think that isn’t a reliable source? This Ford biased bias checker agrees that your Chevy source is biased but our Ford source is not biased. No, we can’t just give people information and let them decide for themselves. That’s dangerous. We can only give them our rock solid Ford sources in order to protect humanity.
Did you comment that you sometimes prefer Chevy for certain things? Well, in this Ford biased community that’s not going to go over well. Now you have 1000 downvotes and 100 comments calling you an idiot. Try to defend your opinions? Too bad, you can only respond every 15 minutes. You have too many downvotes. Well, look at that, the dumb Chevy poster realized he is a moron and had nothing to say in response. Clearly the Ford posters were right again. After all, just look at all those downvotes and comments and the Chevy poster didn’t even reply.
So what do you end up with?
You get a “cars” community, a “ford” community, and a “chevy” community but you’re not allowed to talk about Chevy in cars. You can only organically talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. That is until the site administrators start getting involved and deciding that really it isn’t safe for humanity to let Chevy people talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. They’ve been posting unreliable sources in there, using bad language towards Ford posters, and so on. It’s a dangerous hate community so we’re going to shut it down. You can talk about Chevy in the cars community if you want.
Then you get biased Ford stories under the “cars” community showing up on the front page. Anyone who prefers Chevy will never have their submissions seen because it is relegated to a smaller community that algorithmically won’t show up. If it somehow does get big and popular enough the admins step in and boot it or artificially step on promoting it.
Again, I don’t care about politics and you can substitute Biden for Trump and make comparisons to other social media sites. I’m simply asking if Lemmy is offering anything different with regards to this situation.
Can someone explain how it is different from the Reddit moderator and suppression rules? So far Lemmy is producing the same biased garbage I see on Reddit so I’d like to know if this is a function of Lemmy itself like it is on Reddit or if it’s just echos of Reddit that could one day go away. Is Lemmy something new or is it just for people who loved NuReddit but are mad about the API changes?
“I don’t care about politics, but it really bothers me that you guys don’t like Republicans” lol
Maybe don’t cry about people shitting on the party trying to erase people from existence and force women to make health choices they don’t want?
I mean if it’s a contest about dehumanising groups of people I think the right-wing is doing a far superior job to the left…
It seems a bit silly to bring this quote up against the side that is actually angry about demographics getting dehumanized
Yes, I know the right in your country thinks of the other half of the country as screaming soyjaks, and no, I never said it was good. I’m seriously surprised at how you didn’t fall into civil war after both halves seeing the other as monsters that must be exterminated for being “Anti-American”
I mean if it’s a contest about dehumanising groups of people I think the right-wing is doing a far superior job to the left…
Deflecting and politicizing the discussion. My point is people should stop being segmented and separated into echo chambers and I want to know if Lemmy can help with that or if it’s merely copying the playbook from sites like Reddit. It doesn’t matter who is doing it worse both “sides” are doing this and they say the EXACT same things about each other.
I can’t tell if you’re saying I’m dehumanizing the GOP or agreeing that the GOP is trying to dehumanize and erase trans people from existence.
Yeah and that is what I’m talking about. It is frankly disgusting to have to read all this dehumanzing one sided garbage. The comments in this thread are perfect examples of dehumanizing people and using that as a justification for bias. “No reasonable person supports Republicans” and “Republicans have never done anything to garner support from rational people.” It is the shift from “we disagree about things that impact our lives” to “you are completely crazy and wrong about everything so you deserve whatever I do to you.”
erase people from existence and force women to make health choices
Biased Republicans would say similar things. That you shouldn’t complain if Republicans are shitting on Democrats because they’re the party that wants to let drag queens molest children and start WW3 in Ukraine or whatever. Normally when two people talk they can realize that the other person is in fact just a person like them and you can be empathic towards each other. This isn’t happening though because the people working themselves into a frenzy about “the other” are kept isolated and encouraged to keep going down that path of irrational hatred.
We have social media platforms actively separating people and promoting their thinking that the other side are deranged lunatics who need to be exterminated or severely restricted using the power of the government. This is really wrong and I’m hoping Lemmy can offer an alternative similar to the origins of social media where people could share and talk, that’s it, we didn’t have heavy handed moderators, admins, and algorithms getting in the middle of everything and creating isolated bubbles of people dehumanizing each other.
It’s a false equivalency to compare Republicans saying Democrats support drag queen child molestations or WWIII in Ukraine or whatever and Democrats claiming Republicans want to force women to make health choices.
Because Democrats haven’t passed any laws which would allow drag queen child molestation or induce WWIII in Ukraine, while Republicans actively campaigned for and managed to successfully repeal Roe vs Wade.
Like, do you see how one side’s accusation has more concrete evidence than the other?
Explain to me how a Republican would say Democrats are trying to erase people from existence.
No. What I said is I don’t like biased stories on my front page. If I see 7/20 stories hating on Trump I have to wonder, where are the Biden stories? I’d prefer to see 0/20 stories hating on Trump and 0/20 stories hating on Biden. I’d tolerate seeing 4/20 stories hating on Trump and 4/20 hating on Biden (or some ratio that isn’t 100% biased in one way). I do not want one sided political propaganda being intermixed regularly into my feeds.
I mean if Biden was also being indicted for multiple felonies and being accused of basically selling out his country, you’d probably also see a few more stories hating on him no?
Those stories are occurring. See the Chinese bribery stuff or whatever. No, I’m not inviting a discussion about if this is equivalent or not. I am merely pointing out there you can go to a biased right wing social media site and it’s the same thing in reverse. There is no absence of stories about corruption with Biden that are supported just as much as any stories about Trump but those stories are absent here.
Who are you fuckin thanos? The world isn’t balanced, both sides aren’t equally shitty. Obviously you disagree, so if you don’t like seeing opinions you disagree with make your own instance, or leave lol. Why you still here whining when you made up your mind the moment you posted? You can do what you want but this is just silly.
“Hey guys I don’t like the content on the front page”
“Ok uh, well thats what users wanted to see so… You’re outvoted”
“But I don’t like it”
“You can curate your communities I guess?”
“But so many people disagree with me and I don’t like it, it must be site wide collusion to manipulate the content because that’s way more likely than people just generally disagreeing with me”
“… Ok bud well bye”
“But wait I don’t like it it challenges my preconceived notions”
Well, that isn’t at all what happened, but okay. This was a platform discussion and probably beyond most users here even understanding. Not because they’re stupid but because they don’t really understand how social media algorithms and rules work to curate content in certain ways.
It feels like you’re fishing for a “go fuck yourself, and your poorly disguised concern trolling” comment. Congrats, you’ve caught one.
Actually I’m asking what I asked and interacting with Lemmy for the first time. Did I know it would be contentious? Yes, but that is part of the point. I wanted to see how contentious content is treated so you’re somewhat right.
It looks pretty good actually. I was able to post and comment with a new account without being restricted 100 different ways even while posting something that might upset some people. I don’t want platform level restrictions being driven by stupid group think and brigade activity. That’s about it.
There aren’t two sides to every issue, reasonable people can’t differ on everything. Your trump example illustrates this perfectly: at this point no reasonable person has a positive view of him.
That may be but I do know that many reasonable people are sick of hearing about him. This isn’t really about Trump it’s about how Lemmy functions algorithmically being too closely modeled on Reddit resulting in a biased platform. The destruction of Reddit’s politics subreddit occurred many years after its’ launch and with a lot of active interference from the site owners and moderators whereas on Lemmy it is starting in a biased state. It also doesn’t have to be about politics, it can be any number of contentious topics. My concern is that Lemmy is just copying Reddit and therefore will end up in the same place. What is new here? Why is Lemmy not going to turn into bought and paid for shill posts and comments astroturfing everything like Reddit?
You’re observing the current state of american politics manifested in a discussion platform - one side is saying “hey maybe there are things more important than shareholder value?” and the other is banning books because they were written by minorities and taking kids away from their parents for providing them healthcare.
Regardless, you’re the one who brought up posts mentioning trump. He’s in the news a lot because it’s finally looking like he’ll see some consequences for all the criming he did.
That’s just your bias. Everyone is biased but social media platforms don’t have to be designed to kettle people and feed their biases as correct. Let me put it this way using your own words…
current state of american politics manifested in a discussion platform
If that is true, can you show me the people talking about banning books because they were written by minorities and taking kids away from their parents for providing them healthcare? Even further, can you show me them talking about it in the POLITICS community?
I’m willing to bet that you can’t because this isn’t representative of the current state of American politics. It’s a one sided biased discussion absent this “other side” you’re referring to yet that “other side” is equal in numbers so where are they? Why are they so completely absent?
If I do post anti-Biden stories in politics or make anti-Biden comments in politics how long until I’m limited in some way compared to anti-Trump users? That is what I’m getting at. Does the platform support functionality to bias communities or does it actually rely on the users like old social media? Will my comments be time restricted? Will I be shadow banned? Will people have to click to expand my comment? How much will the platform itself interfere in these ways that create echo chambers?
Lemmy is not a single site owned by a single group. Each Lemmy instance is in effect its own website and they can communicate with each other which Is the federation part. Some instances cater to certain kinds of people and communities will skew towards a political direction.
If you are a hardcore right winger there are instances full of right wing extremist waiting for you to join their echo chamber. Same with the left wing nuts, there exist Lemmy instances specifically for them to congregate together. You can do some hunting and find them easily.
The only thing is that most other Lemmy instances will defederate from these kinds of instances since political extremist on either side tend to be hateful and zealous individuals who vocally express their violent fantasies of lynching anyone who doesn’t 100% agree with them. Most lemmyverse instances deem this kind of hateful speech unacceptable and will block them from cross - communicating.
Here is an example of a right wing Lemmy community:
Which Lemmy instance is not biased? Also, algorithmically, how much is Lemmy going to produce bias? Like I said that is my primary concern. Reddit is designed to produce bias and suppress unpopular opinions. Is Lemmy modeled after this design or did it ditch the stuff like shadow banning and time locking commenting based on “karma”?
There is no shadow banning, no time locking comments based on karma, and all that?
Heavy US bias on the site. There is nothing Republicans have done over the years to garner any support from rational humans. Sometimes things seem very one-sided because they fucking are.
That said, I installed the lemmy keyword filter userscript which has been doing a decent job of keeping shit I don’t want to see (god damn reddit posts) off my feed.
There is nothing Republicans have done over the years to garner any support from rational humans.
This is the kind of over the top laughable bias I am talking about. That’s fine if you’re biased as a user because I’m talking about algorithmic and moderator/admin bias. This is a perfect example of the crazed bias I am referring to.
Honestly, it simply reads like paid political shilling. Who really says stuff like this? Who is so far down the political party rah rah that they couldn’t even admit their opponent political party has done a single thing a rational person would support? It just reads like dehumanizing tripe.
I don’t want to use a social media platform that exposes me to this kind of nonsense under the guise of being general political discussion and plasters the front page or my feed with it. Like I said, 7/20 stories attacking Trump on the front page. That amount of energy being expended to bias people in these extreme ways smells like paid advertisement not organic social media.
That’s even fine to me. Feel free to pay people to shill your politics BUT I want a platform that isn’t secretly biased in favor of this and putting their thumb on the scales anytime decisions get made. Not to mention invested in exposing me to this garbage in the hopes of vacuuming up political ad spend and working users into a hate frenzy because it increases page views.
People are pissed about the political situation in the US (imo for good reason).
Rolling up and immediately accusing people (who are imo righteously angry) of being paid shills sounds eerily similar to the bus full of paid protestors disingenuous dog whistle bullshit the right wing media uses to discredit and derail discussions about important matters.
Lemmy doesn’t tip the scales, the front page is generally whatever is newest, or more upvoted/boosted/whatever. That’s what users vote on. If you disagree vote against the posts you don’t like, and if that doesn’t help then the simple fact is that the majority of users disagree with you or want to see that content. At which point you can either complain about it, or curate your subscribed magazines/communities accordingly. Or leave.
Also why does it shock you that news about trump is big right now? He’s a presidential candidate for the country with the biggest military in the world, and he’s being indicted and charged on multiple federal crimes. Its just a big fucking deal regardless of your politics. And to be clear, fuck him, and republicans, but yeah. Of course people have an opinion on this, its world changing stuff. How can you be so naive lmfao.
As for fear of paid shills, you have that everywhere. I’d argue less so on something like lemmy considering its size. its always easier to just pay facebook to boost your anti vax post than build or buy a legit forum account for some random forum, then hand craft rage bait posts and use a bot army to upvote them. And on Facebook you’d reach billions of gullible mommy advice pages. Cost benefit wise I really don’t think the fediverse is worth that cost yet.
Hey, you do you. For me, a party who backed a twice impeached president; the party who continues to back a thrice indicted ex-president; the party who takes away women’s rights; the party who champions white nationalism; a party who backs anti-science rhetoric, and I could go on but you get the point. A party like that has nothing redeemable. Don’t get me wrong. I used to disagree with conservative friends and we’d have great discussions over beers. But that was decades ago. If someone says they are conservative, OK, let’s talk about things. A person who says they are Republican is no longer worth talking to. To be a Republican means you’ve swallowed all the nationalistic fascist bullshit.
And to be honest, that really sucks. The Dems suck. I hate the Dems. Just corporate stooges who only seem to pay lip service to the average Joes in the country. It’s awful. As long as we are stuck with a two party system, it is much better to have dynamic, reasonable people leading those parties. That’s not what we have.
So, finally, what have Republicans done over the past few years that should garner any support from rational humans? I’d be interested in hearing. Perhaps I am being overwhelmed by the crime and hate, and just missing the jewels in the rough. If you don’t have anything, it’s like getting mad at people saying shit smells, when you may be one of the few who actually enjoy the smell of shit.
Defending any of your two geriatric parties against the other makes all of you look like toddlers fighting over what standard football is the best.
They’re literally the same party, and as long as you don’t realise and vote third parties you’ll rot in this vicious cycle
