[radicalriddler]

I would define myself as pretty progressive, but Reddit's been absolutely dog** due to all the anti-capitalist, populist rhetoric. Every post seems to be filled with comments these days of "eat the rich". Like, you'll have a gif of a dude petting a dog, and then in the comments, they'll be like, "Bro, you're financially oppressing this dog and that's why it's forced to be pet by you" (Hyperbole, but I've seen some crazy stuff).

I just wish, we could have a platform that was; not necessarily politically neutral, but where it didn't consume so much of the site.

Unfortunately when I visit Lemmy, I'm fronted with a lemmygrad.ml, and a "leftist" privacy focused one, which seem to be the only populated instances at the moment. So it doesn't inspire much hope.

[Saptarishi]

I pin the blame on too many users joining due to the mass popularisation of Reddit by YouTubers. At one point, almost every "popular" YouTuber seemed to have these "subReddit review" videos going on, which inevitably created a large boom in Reddits user base (it grew exponentially in the last 2-3 years). Suddenly Reddit went from being focused on fun/discussion/discovery/curiosity to mass populism and extreme echo-chamberism . The curious folks who originally were the soul of reddit were lost in the noise of "common" people barging in.

[Apocalypsenear]

Which is why Lemmy needs more users to promote diversity and mainstream usage. Right now its filled with leftists mostly because they get banned from sites like reddit.

The thing I enjoy about Lemmy is that you can join an instance and if you don't agree with the policies and the people there you can join a different instance.

[account42]

https://github.com/innereq/lenny#the-lemmy-problem

Having more users isn't going to help if the core developers are anti-diversity.

[uabstraction]

If not being able to say the N-word impedes your ability to articulate your political worldview, you should probably reflect on that.

[DoctorOW]

I was expecting your link to make some kind of point to substantiate your "anti-diversity" claim. This just shows they don't allow slurs on the platform.

[betwixthewires]

Not "on the platform." In the software. Lemmy is not a website.

[DoctorOW]

What do you need slurs for though

[betwixthewires]

It's not about that.

[sudosysgen]

It's a federated protocol. You can run your own instance that allows slurs and federate with whoever agrees. That's a non-issue.

[betwixthewires]

It is not populated by leftists because they get banned elsewhere, it is populated by leftists because the developers (who are also the admins of the earliest, biggest instances) are loud and proud self avowed Marxists.

Which is fine, write code, live by your beliefs, but enforcing them in software on other people who might implement it is what I have a problem with.

[streamofdigits]

Platform designers have a lot of control over features that influence (nudge is the official word I suppose) user behavior. But lets not kid ourselves, in large part the social media activity reflects also the attitude of people who participate.

Open source and federated platforms like lemmy will not magically fix the problem( * ). But they come with two killer advantages: 1) They are open, transparent and evolvable, hence diverse people can work on solutions and 2) Don't have private data monetization as their defining business model which frees up potential to explore less antisocial possibilities.

These "big picture" aspects will take some time to play out in full. But if you have the time there is nothing preventing you from setting up an instance that would strike the right balance (pun) and create history :-)

( * ) What would a "fix" look like? well thats not a easy question to get consensus on, but a workable definition is that at least people do not behave worse than in real life (as in person-to-person contact if you remember what that is :-)

[uabstraction]

Wait. You mean those "Heckin adorable Police Pupperino" threads that inevitably pop up on r/DogsWithJobs and r/Pics without fail every time the cops lynch another Black man?

[chromatin]

It also appears that lemmygrad.ml is run on the same machine as lemmy.ml. (Same IP, and when main instance when down for technically reasons, lemmygrad did simultaneously)

[SerLava]

Reddit banned the main catch-all leftist subs, and all of the accounts that posted there are now not allowed to congregate in a subreddit or it will be banned, and they can't create subreddits, regardless of what they actually posted