I can’t say I’ve been using Lemmy for long, but from the get-go it seems that the communities, memes, opinions that get upvoted seem to reflect left-wing ideas.
I’m certainly not complaining, it honestly feels like a breathe of fresh air compared to other social media sites that seem to shift further and further to the far right, though I am curious to hear why this might be the case? Does FOSS tend to attract more left-wing minded people, or does this just happen to be a broadly left-wing microcosm/bubble?
Hope you all have a great day.
The philosophy behind FOSS is inherently left wing and anarchist; communities working together to provide and produce tools for the common good, without a profit motive. Coupled with the lack of advertising and promotion of the sites, people have to seek them out, leading to a self-selecting user population that skews left :)
I would say that FOSS typically draws a more educated crowd, and right wing rhetoric and propaganda typically target those of lesser education and lower cognitive ability, simply because those people are the most likely hosts for rightoid brain worms. Why do colleges skew heavily left, gee it must be brainwashing /s
Eh, there’s plenty of educated right wingers. Not fascists as much, but the kind of fiscally conservative economists who preach austerity are often as not highly educated, just lacking in empathy.
There are definitely plenty of well educated, intelligent fascists as well. It’s pretty dangerous to start thinking that what separates two ideological groups is intelligence.
You’re speaking of pundits and politicians whose opinions are public and widespread. There is little reason to believe that those folks are sincere in their public statements. They are motivated by greed to lie in an effort to sway the opinions of uneducated people.
Among the general public, those that sincerely hold conservative political views are cognitively impaired. Source: they vote for things that are objectively against their own prosperity.
The educated and the well-travelled may have a broader set of view points to see how many different ideas and values work (or don’t work) in practice.
I don’t disagree on some just lacking empathy. But I also think not all education creates exposure to a wide range of ideas and values that stick (or the education is just too narrow), so you’ll still find plenty of people who are educated on paper, but not cognizant of a broad set of world views. I also think we are too quick to label foreign ideas==bad ourselves. Empathy is a two way street. The key in navigating this may be in identifying when an idea comes in good faith or if it is hostile.
I think pretty much everyone views their political ideology as “the one that stands for freedom”, and it just comes down to what it means to be “free”, and the follow up of free from what.
I feel like libertarians would love the concept of FOSS and decentralization, and I don’t think anyone would argue they skew left.
So, I disagree that FOSS is inherently left wing. I think it’s attractive to the left wing for many good reasons. I think people project their own politics onto whatever they love, and things can be loved by very different groups for different reasons.
As a left winger myself…
… I’m not sure Foss is inherently left wing. Inherently anti authoritarian for sure, but I can totally see a libertarian type making a pro-FOSS argument from a capitalistic-individualistic and it being rather sensible. (Aaaaas long as we ignore the ways it’d contradict other beliefs right wing liberals tend to hold, but yknow. Compartmentalisation is a human superpower)
I think I’d still argue the free open source part is inherently left wing. Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Something like bitcoin is the kind of tech project of that mould that i think attracts the right wing libertarian. Just my opinion though.
Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Because you do stand to gain regardless. “I have my code on the source of <major FOSS project every tech guy has heard of>” is like. Amazing portfolio material for any job interview. I had a friend get a job in the games industry (though they regret it to this day because the game industry sucks–) with nothing on his resumé except for a smattering of mods for popular games.
Any pro-capitalist person with a functioning brain will acknowledge the role of non-monetary “Profits” in every human relationship, yanno?
Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from?
You are making a reductionist argument that the only thing that motivates a libertarian is profit. It is certainly a motivator but it’s certainly not the only one. Libertarian’s have a long history of association with FOSS, for example my own stretches back to the mid-90s. I have no desire to make money from it but I have a strong desire to stay out of the clutches of BigTech as much as possible and so I contribute to FOSS as I can.
Something like bitcoin is the kind of tech project of that mould that i think attracts the right wing libertarian.
A lot of libertarians push on cryptocurrency not because of a profit motive but because of the freedom and privacy aspects. To use myself as an example I don’t hold crypto as an investment but rather as a way of holding a currency that isn’t subject to the US Federal Reserve system.
Are there some libertarians who fit your descriptions? Absolutely there are, and they are generally referred to as Anarcho-Capitalists, An-Caps for short, but just like every Democrat isn’t a Progressive not every libertarian is an An-Cap.
Bitcoin is open source too. And I guess there’s a history of libertarians getting involved in projects like Linux as well (ESR comes to mind).
Still, I’d wager most are attracted to FOSS are left wing. A lot of capitalists can’t comprehend giving something for free to the community.
Yeah. It’s long been said Libertarians are just Republicans that want to smoke weed and distance themselves from the outwardly racist rhetoric. They are inherently selfish just like Republicans. They don’t want to help the poor, but they would balk at the notion of actively hurting the poor.
Yeah. I don’t know what the % breakdown is, but I get the sense that while the general community is inherently anti-corporate/anti-commodification, there are some that view this in the left wing sense of communities supporting each other and some who view this more of as a consumption/voting with your wallet individualized choice. They recognize that some or even all corporations are bad, but think opting out of those structures without directly challenging them is all that they need.
But like I said, idk what the actual distribution of these views are. It’s just the sense I get from seeing some of the comments.
FOSS isn’t inherently left wing. It is often charitable work but that’s far from unique to the left wing. That can also just stem from “I wanted this program to exist and it didn’t, but I don’t want to put even more effort in to monetize it.” Plenty of FOSS projects start as someone wanting to learn something early on in their career as well (which is both a pro and a con because … if you’re learning you might be making some bigger mistakes).
Anarchism … I just don’t really agree with that at all. Lots of larger FOSS projects do very much have governing bodies that decide what to do and how it shall be done. In many cases FOSS authors are a one person governing body making all the big decisions.
Organized charitable work is far from anarchy even though anarchism dreams of everything being organized charitable work.
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com, I thought you might like this comment 🏴🙂
I mean you signed up on lemmy.marxism-leninism. Yeah they tend to lean left, lol.
But yeah your observation indeed is is correct. Not only does lemmy lean left it often leans pretty far left too. It might feel like a breathe of fresh air but it’s still a bubble and echo chamber. It’s the same as truth social but the exact opposite. Nothing wrong with that per-se but it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Factual information is regularly downvoted here not because it’s false but because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
I don’t come here for the far left. I come here for the lack of the far right. The far left are some crazy nutters, too, but I think for the most part they are well meaning and that’s a damn sight better than the far right who just wear hatred on their fucking sleeves.
It means I get some shit for not wanting to live in a big city or being happy driving a car, but I take solace in the fact that I’ll be long dead before far left ideals take hold in any significant way. Meanwhile… fascism is a far more immediate threat, and that’s the one group of fuckers I give myself leave to unabashedly hate.
There’s no scarcity of hate on Lemmy either. It simply flies under the radar for most part because it’s directed at things we hate too. Exactly as is the case on far-right forums as well. Just read the comments of any thread about Elon, Police, Ai, Facebook, Twitter, Capitalism, Israel and so on. You even admit participating in it yourself.
The far-right thinks of themselves as well meaning just as well. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guys. Claiming they intend to be hateful and evil is disingenuine. That’s only how you view them. Their view of us is hardly any different. Both views are wrong.
If you think hating on fascists is just more of the same (and to be clear, there is a lot of ambiguity in what you said) then I’m going to have to disagree. There is no nobility in loving your enemy until they exterminate you.
As for the rest, you come at me a bit argumentative, but I don’t really disagree. But does it make it an echo chamber if I don’t fight everyone I disagree with? I’ve been arguing on the internet since before the WWW existed and nothing has changed, least of all anyone’s minds. I get upvotes when I manage a particularly eloquent turn of phrase that captures the zeitgeist, but as gratifying as that is I enjoy the back and fourth a lot more. I’d rather have someone thoughtfully and respectfully disagree with me.
I think the idea that MLs are a far left ideology is pretty questionable honestly. But that is the conventional wisdom certainly.
The definition most people use for left and right isn’t really consistent or coherent. If you do try to iron out those inconsistencies, you’ll find that MLs don’t really fit with the rest of the left.
Because reality has a left-wing bias.
Heh. Because lefties are just conservatives who got mugged by reality, and once that happens there’s no going back? ;-)
I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’m a lefty, life has never mugged me. I’m a leftist because bad things happen to everyone and the solutions isn’t to hurt people until they’re better people. Giving people time and resources just makes people and society better.
In general and on the aggregate, I am with you.
However, as an anecdote, I took in a couple of very conservative Christians who got evicted, gave them time (to pay off bills) and resources (food, water, power, internet, a bed, a roof…now at 4 months), and they’re not lifting a finger to help around the house and expect our kid to do their dishes and take out their trash.
Sometimes people are just selfish greedy assholes and there’s no changing that even with time and resources. And trust me they will be getting evicted from my house quite soon (with proper notification by state law).
I hope this experience doesn’t make me a bitter old fool. I truly do. Because I love the concept of helping others, it just tends to backfire more than I’d like.
It has to do with profit motive. The Fediverse, and the Lemmy sub-protocol, arose when for-profit enterprises (TwitX and Reddit, respectively) began prioritizing their own bottom line over the enrichment of their users.
This has always been the Faustian bargain of social media: you are the product and you receive free content at the cost of advertisements and data mining.
Once the monopolists of the social sphere overstepped their bounds - got too invasive, or tried extracting value directly from the end user - free alternatives formed.
Naturally, the only people self-aware enough to be put off by the exploitation of these monopolists were left-leaning. There’re a lot of people out there who will pay to be cocooned in an echo chamber (viz Truth Social) but leftists like to pretend they’re too good for that shit.
So here we all are, enjoying a methodone drip of social media without all of the optimization and dopamine-tweaking hooks that for-profit socials live by.
It’s not a bad outcome, really, and if someone somehow wants to start a counter-culture right wing node on the fediverse, nothing is stopping him except a total lack of willing participants.
Say what you will about leftists; at least they try new things - and conservatives, as you would expect from the name, do not.
