Lemmy's default instance leans heavily to the contemporary american idea of leftism. This doesn't affect the actual software in any way, only that community is a bit disturbing.
I do not mean ideologically. Just in conversation. More of us learning to talk with one another better is a really good thing.
The American idea of leftism varies widely, and on all axis too.
A similar thing can be found in the right.
Both have populist factions that have a lot in common. Many identify as indie too. They lack a solid party home.
Both have moderate and conservative factions too.
Authoritarianism is also on the rise generally.
All of this can be disturbing. I find the economic policy that way right now myself. Labor seems to be organizing though. Others see that as disturbing!
What I know, having had a ton of conversations in various venues around the nation is the body politic is far more complex. Everyone is listening to some loud or compelling voices and not talking with one another near enough to garner a better sense of where people are at and how policy might make a whole lot better sense.
It does not have to be disturbing. Shouldn't in my view.
The creators say they don't want people not of their ilk joining so this idea that open debate is welcome is disingenuous. They don't allow anyone to federate with the main instance either if they don't also toe the political line.
Can you explain what "don't allow anyone to federate with the main instance" means in this case? Is it like you can host your own server, but the "index" of servers at lenny.ml won't list you unless you meet their standards?
Seems acceptable to me (anyone else can host their own index right?) just trying to understand.
Yes it’s like that. Mastodon has the same thing going on, where the main index from their official site and the biggest instances won’t peer with you (let your users and theirs interact in each other’s instances) unless you implement their rules and moderation requirements in your instance. For mastodon what that means is that instances that aren’t progressive/far left aren’t welcome and are essentially not viable because they have no user base or network effects to seed their community with.
I'm imagining - finding a topic or person or something that you want to follow, and then, your 'instance' / host pops up with "the thing you are trying to get data from is banned from this host".
Seems like an excellent opportunity to upsell someone to starting their own host / own rules system.. Star your own droplet for $10 a month maybe?
Mastodon provides you with a 'federated timeline'. Basically your feed is a list of all posts the instance your account is on knows about, based on what the instance owners have configured. So you see all the posts directly from users in your instance, made on your instance, and also posts from other users in your subset of the fediverse, determined by what other instances your instance peers with. You can interact with users from other instances by referencing their handle and instance. So instead of @bob it would be more like @bob@xyz where xyz is the instance. You can follow a user from a different instance. Oddly, even though you can filter your federated timeline to your local instance, you cannot filter it to any other specific instance - for that you would need to create an account on that instance and view its local timeline. So basically it gives you a broader audience and user community than just your specific instance.
Fascinating. Well that clearly doesn't work. It's almost like having an index at all forces a ranking or framing. And so perhaps the index itself is what needs to go.
I find the answer in most cases is worries over personal judgement.
More of us quit doing that and more people will have that conversation.
I usually lead with, "ignore the talking heads on TV."
Worked wonders for me. I enjoy politics and culture again as do others I talk to.
The other basic worry is inability to manage a conversation coupled with the idea of ideology being the means to better ends rather than the reasoning tool it really is. A person who maintains one ideology, sans a working understanding of others, will feel threatened when its merit is challenged.
Fact is we have many solutions to the problems we face with no requirement they all conform to a single ideological frame.
I tried to do this on a few different sites, but in my experience, there simply aren't enough good-faith actors. The dirtbag left[0] reigns over the nice fellows in leftist circles on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. They don't want to engage capitalists in debate... they don't even want anyone in their own ranks playing devil's advocate. They want to call you a chud and take a screenshot of it.
For what it's worth, the same query applies left, right, whatever.
I like to lead with how is it all for you and how did you arrive where you are politically?
Common struggles, life stories, other things help start a conversation.
Then it's give and take.
The idea of any side, particular ideology being right, best fit, one size fits all is crazy! That isn't reality.
Talk about it from there.
Many would agree money in politics is bad, for example. I sure do. Another interesting chat is the for profit motive.
Compare and contrast public utilities. The one where I live is straight up government, runs at cost plus. A few miles down the road it's private. Runs at cost plus margin, plus...
All other variables are the same, and what's the impact?
Power is very reliable where I live. It's not so much down the road. Why?
There are many things to discuss like this and get a sense of where the ideologies apply well and where they don't, and after a time, people begin to realize "their team" is playing them for profit due to corruption.
And they are! Make no mistake!
Gets better from there.
I am having these every chance I get. Every time I get someone out of the ideology as means to better ends trap, that's someone who will consider policy, features, benefits, costs, risks and that's all we can ask for, and all we need.
It's also someone willing to talk about money in politics, legal corruption here and what that all really means in terms of ordinary people getting reputable, meaningful representation.
All of that is a foundation for action later on when this stuff bubbles up into something we can actually act on.
If you want leftists to engage with you in good faith, you simply need to ask the right questions. Questions that demonstrate a baseline of familiarity with the history and theory being interrogated.
The Left isn't averse to debate. The Left is averse to repeating the same tired arguments about iPhones and authority and "human nature" until the heat death of the universe. Things that have been addressed in great detail for over a century.
There is actually a lively debate taking place. It just typically doesn't take the form of Zizek vs. Peterson SuperBowl style spectacles. It takes place in literature, and in meetings among organizers trying to actually accomplish their goals. People like that don't give a flying fuck what John Stossel or Ben Shapiro have to say. This mainstream "debate culture" is so far detached from the actual struggles taking place.
I assume you didn’t mean this irrelevant ironically, but it reads as irony.
For what it’s worth if your leftists will only talk to people who already accept their worldview and assume everyone else is like Ben Shapiro, it validates the point that they are not available for the kinds of discussion we are talking about.
I agree with all of that, but I think you’re making the case that leftists are in fact averse to debate. If an outsider can’t interact with a couple people on social media without having already read all the important literature and knowing the “established” answers to pesky questions like “why do attempts at establishing communism so often result in authoritarian conditions,” then the community is not open to being prodded. Many of these communities are intentionally insular. Why would they be open to people questioning their philosophy when most of society does that already?
I mean, there is a large (by Lemmy standards) Leninist server, which is indeed pretty left. But the idea that Leninism is widely embraced by the contemporary American left is a bit hysterical.
Leninism may not be by but Maoism was explicitly adopted by parts of the radical left in the 70s, many of whom are still influential for the current generation.
I'm not the person you replied to, but today's American leftism practically mandates a belief in blank-slatism on race, gender, and IQ, to an extent that’s inimical to sincere science in those areas. And that ends up having a wide impact on science generally and policy generally.
Oh they don't like it when you repeatedly point out your favorite very sincere scientific facts collected by sincere scientists with the best calipers?
Modern American leftism, at least on social media, is really weird.
You have a lot of these so-called leftists rebelling against the philosophies of Marx and other communist philosophers on very fundamental issues (e.g. gun ownership for the proletariat, or the freedom of speech) all because of the current political climate in America. At the same time, these people will support and protect Big Tech and other capitalist interests when it is politically convenient to do so. I've heard American leftism once jokingly called Socialism with Silicon Valley Characteristics.
Ask any one of these new-age leftists what they think of Alex Jones' YouTube channel being banned, and they will hit you with a response that would disturb any of the Gen X leftists who grew up in an era where Communist was a dirty word and the protection of free speech was a top-most necessity. New-age leftists have grown up in the left-sympathetic social media era and cannot conceptualize the pendulum ever swinging the opposite direction.
In practice I think mainstream liberals are the gleefully censorious ones, not leftists. In a sibling comment I called these guys losers, but you can't argue that they're not walking the walk by setting up their own platforms. The people in these alt communities have been kicked off Reddit for rightfully pointing out how astroturfed it is by advertisers, police, and military agencies, so I'm not sure if you'd find much love for big tech among their ranks.
Setting up your own community with specific standards is totally fine imo.
>Setting up your community with specific standards is totally fine imo
In some sense I agree, but what happens when these communities begin to overflow with people, and chaos increases? It leads to opinion suppression( no I'm not talking about extreme opinions on any side of the political spectrum , I'm talking about opinions which differ from the status quo ), echo-chamber creation, and worst of all, unnecessary aggressive behaviour and mud slinging.
This criticism could just as easily apply to Reddit. The entire thing is an echochamber of American civic religion and they ban any subversive communities. Their director of content policy was plucked straight out of the Atlantic Council for f sake.
The thing that's weird is trying to group a bunch of people with differing sub-views on things into one "leftist" group and then trying to judge them all at once. Obviously they'll seem odd when you do that.
American rightism essentially leans towards Christian theocracy.
Does that lend itself more to your intellectual curiosity?
There are obviously other political spectrums, but those are all extremely insignificant minorities. Surely you don't only find satiation to your curiosities in said extreme minorities, that seems rather unfulfilling as any meaningful advancement in them is highly statistically unlikely in you or your direct childrens lifetimes.
For the same reason all the orthodox authoritarian ideologies are disturbing. Why would I want to join an online discussion forum where free thought isn't welcome?
Having "leftist" in the description makes people (at least myself) automatically jump to the conclusion that one can get cancelled/banned/deplatformed for posting any thought or argument that disagrees with the mainstream. I'm not a conservative or anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but this culture really creeps me out.
Also in the About page the author of the software says things like:
> [Reddit's] libertarian founders have allowed some of the most racist and sexist online communities to fester on reddit for years
(Implying that this community wouldn't permit certain types of discussion, defined by very broad and ambiguous terms that were weaponized such that they can be used against anyone who disagrees with the leftist ideology in any way).
And criticizes reddit for being:
> liberal, and pro-US, not left (leftism referring to the broad category of anti-capitalism)
I wouldn't be comfortable with participating in a discussion moderated by a person who says things like that.
Also, as a person who grew up in a country ruined by "anti-capitalism", I find that trend in American culture extremely disturbing. Can you think of any anti-capitalist country (now, or at any point in history) that you'd like to live in?
Luckily this is a free software and anyone is free to run their own instance.
Politics aside - I wonder if it would be possible to create an instance focused on free speech, without automatically attracting all the worst people?
> Why would I want to join an online discussion forum where free thought isn't welcome?
Every community has ideas about what's right and wrong, and there will always be people who disagree. Moderation will always be required because that's just the nature of communities.
> Politics aside - I wonder if it would be possible to create an instance focused on free speech, without automatically attracting all the worst people?
To the point I just made: no, it's not possible refrain from moderating a community and then avoid having people there who engage in behavior you don't like. If your definition of "free speech" includes a complete lack of moderation, then you'll always run into this problem.
You seem to place authoritarianism and capitalism on opposite ends of some spectrum, but they're unrelated. Russia, for example, is both authoritarian and capitalist.
Capitalism != individual freedom != democracy. Those are all separate axes.
> Having "leftist" in the description makes people (at least myself) automatically jump to the conclusion that one can get cancelled/banned/deplatformed for posting any thought or argument that disagrees with the mainstream. I'm not a conservative or anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but this culture really creeps me out.
Outside of maybe 8chan, what is a community that won't ban you for saying something they find harmful? Left/right/liberal/conservative communities all have this.
It's totally fine if a self-described left-leaning community is not for you, but there's nothing weird or creepy about it.
One way in which capitalism is closer to individual freedom is the notion of voluntary transactions between two parties. That is what ultimately makes up the market dynamic of supply and demand. There are some limits to this - for example with monopolies - but in the typical case I think this reasoning holds.
Somebody can correct me if my timeline is off, but I think Lemmy was largely embraced by exiled Chapos, much like Voat became a Groyper den.
I don't think it's even worth considering such a community left-wing. They're more like an anime poisoned grooming circle that embraced red aesthetics for shock value.
However pathetic that sounds though, I'm the bigger loser for even being familiar with this nonsense.
I haven't said anything meaningful about politics.
What I said, perhaps a bit too abruptly to be well understood, was "the use of a non-meaningful piece of slang that is almost entirely held by a specific group of poorly informed folks is a red flag that any attempt to discuss politics will end in a likely mix of muh jerbs and dumbocrats."
The phrase "leftist" properly applies to a group of people who essentially haven't existed in the United States in around 80 years.
It would be like if someone went to a baseball stadium and started calling people soccer hooligans. That is not a person from whom to learn sports.
Thanks for the attempt at a table turn. You've been a delight
The American left manages to combine the worst of the traditional far left - authoritarianism, enforced collectivism, a total lack of ideological flexibility combined with an as total lack of historical insight - with a willingness, nay eagerness to use non-state commercial actors to enforce their doctrine. It is as if they read Ayn Rand and decided that she got everything backwards so they made their own philosophy of Subjectivism, with a sprinkling of critical theory and a dash of Maoism.
i genuinely think this sort of good, do for ourselves, improve the world attempt- software as public good- is something that the left has a far far stronger bead on. the right, for all their history of rugged individualism, doesn't have a participatory background, doesn't have techno-inclusivity & open cyber-frontiers in their value-system.
it's unastounding to me in the extreme that the right has very little presence on most of the fediverse.
Society as a whole, consistently tends to be more left wing than people appreciate. If you survey people in private, they show both selfish and collectivist opinions. In public, in some economies, declaring the collectivist view is harder. Collectivism, is essentially "left wing". It's the sense there is some basic equity out there, nobody "deserves" more (or less) than the individual. (obviously this is modulated by reality, economic and political)
I like to believe 'we' are in a real majority. The point is the same, even if this isn't true: It's not some mythic 50/50 world, and there is no phantom "equity" out there which is a "balance" between libertarian-right, centerist and left views.
Apes, penguins, take your pick. Collectivism is out there. Its a basic model. I'd call it "herd mentality" but that tends to have negative connotations. Sure, there are apex elements in collectivism. It doesn't undermine the main thesis: There is more collectivism, essential left-wing thinking, than a lot of people credit.
In the US, because of individualism, this is often ignored. The belief "most" people in the US simply want to a) be left alone to b) sink or swim on their own and c) pay less taxes is a bit distorted. Really? They just want c).
The United States leftism leans heavily to the contemporary idea of all other developed western nations rightism... so are we to be seen as a bit disturbing by the rest of our nation peers? (hint, they mostly seem to :D )
Im saying that the current state of our (US) moderate left is effectively most other places moderate right.
Our far left is most other places moderate left. Do you not see this to be true?
Our far right is just full blown fascist/Christofacist now. We have $10,000 bounties on the heads of those assisting in seeking medical care in one of our largest states now.
I do not mean ideologically. Just in conversation. More of us learning to talk with one another better is a really good thing.
The American idea of leftism varies widely, and on all axis too.
A similar thing can be found in the right.
Both have populist factions that have a lot in common. Many identify as indie too. They lack a solid party home.
Both have moderate and conservative factions too.
Authoritarianism is also on the rise generally.
All of this can be disturbing. I find the economic policy that way right now myself. Labor seems to be organizing though. Others see that as disturbing!
What I know, having had a ton of conversations in various venues around the nation is the body politic is far more complex. Everyone is listening to some loud or compelling voices and not talking with one another near enough to garner a better sense of where people are at and how policy might make a whole lot better sense.
It does not have to be disturbing. Shouldn't in my view.