Since Trump, I’m finding the Lemmy.world experience to be increasingly akin to an echo chamber and it’s quite frankly starting to bore me. (Inb4, I’m a left winger and I don’t like Trump, but I’m much more interested in a good spirited debate or novel points of view than I am in Orange man bad Nazi circle jerks)
If I wanted the same repetitive comments to be upvoted and any different opinion at all to be downvoted and even blocked/banned, I’d have just stayed on Reddit.
Are there any instances where different, opposing and novel points of view are celebrated and debated rather than simply derided and downvoted?
What kind of diversity of thought are you looking for?
Could you give an example?
Is there an intellectually honest point of view that Donald Trump isn’t a fascist?
I don’t think he’s a fascist necessarily, although he is a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist. So that makes him… oh.
Small, niche communities, and unfortunately you’ll probably need to know what ideas you’re interested in ahead of time to get there.
People with intelligent but divergent ideas are always outnumbered by people pushing an agenda, and they end up getting moderated together because it’s hard to know the difference, superficially.
Note that it’s entirely possible to have an echo chamber that’s divergent from bigger echo chambers, and that’s were a lot of people are pointing you, because of the instance you asked on.
I have an alt on .ca, I find there’s a pretty good mix of beliefs there. And a fair number less tankies than where this alt I’m on is…
I think Lemmy is at an all-time low for patience towards non-conformist opinions due to recent events being… upsetting. Give it some time and folks will be more willing to consider other ideas i think
It’s emotional times so I understand that rationality ends up taking a back seat in the mind. I hope you’re right!
Bored of the truth?
“Opinions are like arseholes”, but when you’ve seen 1,000 very similar arseholes you’re probably going to want to see some different ones.
The truth? on .world? lmfao
If by “diverse” you mean “has western conservatives”, then considering how the entire concept of the fediverse is progressive, you’re not going to find many of them here. On Reddit, there’s r/AskPolitics which overall leans liberal and is US centric but is more open to discussion than other subreddits. There’s some other debate subreddits as well which you might be interested in. They’re helpful for developing political views, but after that hearing the same BS from people who have fundamentally different values gets tiring and people leave so that’s why there aren’t many of those spaces.
If you’re open to other viewpoints that are opposed to both Republican and Democrat, leftist instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and dbzer0 have that, and they can have very different stances on other issues as well (i.e. Lemmygrad vs dbzer0). They can still be echo-chambery (which is hard to avoid) but they also tend to have more users that are interested in intellectual debate.
As far as what instance actually has the most diverse points of view, I’d say lemm.ee which federates with basically everybody and I’ve seen users there from all over the political spectrum. However, there’s isn’t much in terms of political discussion there compared to other instances.
Is db0 left wing? I felt like they lean closer to .world than left.
They try to be anarchists but they’re mostly from western countries so they have permanent programming they refuse to shake off (i.e. calling anyone that doesn’t think eurocentric anarchism is the only real left wing ideology a tankie.). Compared to .world’s Hillary Clinton though they’re like Marx.
They claim to be anarchist and I’ve seen a lot of users from there criticize Democrats, although they hate Marxists also, so I’m not sure. They’re also one of the few instances that federates with Hexbear, but they do block Lemmygrad.
Imagine your issue with .world being that it’s too left-wing
I’d be getting bored if it was an echo chamber of any flavour.
As I’ve said in other comments, I’m here to learn and part of that means exposing myself to people that do not think alike to me. I’m not hear to circle jerk about how right we are, maybe that was fun then first few thousand times, it’s just boring now.
Ideally I’d like to get involved with a broad spectrum of people that somewhat represent the society that we live in.
Maybe I should just get offline and go to the pub.
What is it that you’re trying to learn? Like, are you interested in what Communists think? Anarchists? Why? Is the virtue of these POVs being different a fascination of yours, or are you trying to find the correct stance through comparison?
Not OP, but personally I think diverse discussion is some of the more important work a person can participate in.
There is too much potential energy in our networks when we don’t understand each other, and I support a calm controlled release of that energy. I am scared of how people will leverage that energy at the expense of many.
So I want to exist in a place of diverse thoughts so I can help the world calmy understand itself.
That, I think, is only virtuous if misinformation and hateful ideologies like fascism are thoroughly stomped out, rather than platformed. Too many people think themselves knowledgeable enough to speak, yet add to a miasma of misinformation. Moreover, some points of view are friendlier to the ruling class, and therefore get materially boosted via the media and other such mechanisms despite a lack of truth.
I agree that misinformation gets platformed. And that the information landscape we navigate naturally supports those who own it and have the most powerful megaphones.
I also don’t believe that there is a perfect ideology. We would all have to be identical to make a perfect world. Though I do think that by making thoughtful connections we can process the world differently. And that how we see the world is how we navigate it.
Therefore, to be a healthy memeber of society you cannot protect your beliefs from criticism. To navigate a collective world you have to try and see others’ maps. Otherwise you’ll be baffled by the decisions of others, and you won’t be able to communicate about important topics.
So direct, calm and curious conversations with those who disagree are vital to living in harmony. At least in my opinion. I don’t think we can guess good enough, I’d rather ask directly.
How do you fight fascism without understanding why it’s supporters do what they do?
I don’t think many people would oppose the virtues of good criticism. That’s a core tenant of Marxism-Leninism, in fact (at least, among comrades). I, however, don’t really think internet debate is the proper stage for such criticism. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah at the end of the day I can agree. You need to be in a pretty remote alcove to not get trolled. It can end up as a big waste of time.
No.
A better question is which instances have dominant points of view that actually align with the material reality we inhabit. Difference of opinion is only valuable when the opinion is grounded in factual understanding of the real world. It’s valuable to have different views and interpretation of the facts, but if a view is divorced from reality then it’s just noise.
just like vanguardism
Can you elaborate?
I don’t like the state and like the idea of a vanguard party even less and I belive that user to be vanguardist
thank you for providing an example of dialogue that’s detached from reality
so you are not a vanguardist?
or am I wrong about vanguardism being bad?
please elaborate
It’s detached from reality because you’re just randomly chucking in some political terms you learned on reddit under an unrelated comment thinking it’s some kind of slam-dunk.
no, I know what a vanguard party is and that I don’t support it, now we’re arguing about why I don’t support it
You are wrong about vanguarism being bad because history clear shows that it is the most reliable method for actually combating capitalism. Anarchists refuse to accept this basic reality and continue advocating approaches that have failed time and again for over a century now. It’s quite telling that this ideology exists primarily in the western imperial core.
no, I just think that freedom is more important than defeating capitalism
I’d rather take my hrt, guns and free speech over a vanguard, sorry
also see how it has worked in russia, how the soviet union has defeated capitalism and how capitalist western germany was almost economically stronger than the entire ussr (including eastern germany)
What do you think the “State” is? Marxists and Anarchists generally disagree on what constitutes the state, Marxists see it as a tool of class oppression and Anarchists see it as a tool of hierarchy. Neither Marxists nor Anarchists seek to perpetuate the State.
As for a Vanguard, all that means is the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class. Since political knowledge is unequal, there will always be more and less advanced among a class, whether you formalize it into a party or not. The consequences of refusing to formalize this difference means you can’t democratize it or protect against bad actors, a problem elaborated on in The Tyranny of Structurelessness.
Furthermore, there is historical proof of the effectiveness of Vanguard parties in establishing Socialism and improving the lives of the Working classes, from the peasantry to the proletariat. Calling such a strategy “detached from reality” is wrong, there is clear theoretical and historical evidence for the practicality and effectiveness of Vanguard parties.
I actually belive the state in its current form to be a tool of economical, personal and class opression
and I belive no state can exist without at least 2 of the above, but I want none of the above
What’s your proposed solution? You can’t force everyone’s political knowledge to being fully equal, so there will be a vanguard whether you formalize and democratize it or let it form naturally and behind closed doors. Further, you can’t get rid of both class and hierarchy without returning to tribal forms of hunter-gatherer societies, large industry requires administration. A horizontal network of communes retains classes by turning everyone into petite bourgeoisie, so you either want to abolish hierarchy, class, or industry.
if I had to choose I’d rather end all hirarchy
Do people do good, spirited debates anymore? Most of what I see would be more akin to wrestling a pig.
We have to be the change we want to see
Debating online is largely useless for convincing the other party. Sometimes onlookers learn, but if it’s a debate neither party usually concedes. Education works, ie someone asking for more information, but that’s about it.
db0 is federated with world hexbear beehaw ml and many others.
Not with Lemmygrad, though, so if their goal is to be as broad as possible dbzer0 doesn’t cut it.
You might be better off looking for a community where the moderation optimizes for that kind of discussion (ex. Removing low effort comments, requiring citations, academic oriented, etc). It’s harder to find an entire instance that matches those points, but there should be a few communities like that
Then you can use the subscribed feed only, or block the communities you don’t like
Closest I can think of is Hexbear’s News Megathread, but it isn’t really for debate, just analysis of current events. Is there a comm like that elsewhere?
Gotta second this, it’s a little hard to find from a separate instance- you need to go to /c/news@hexbear.net and pick it from the pinned threads
The mega access was one of the biggest factors in making a Hexbear account for me, to be honest. A lot of great info in them (plus I like the casual chatting format of the general mega when I don’t want to make a full post).
i agree with this
i started a free speech community and theres no downvoting allowed which encourages healthy arguing instead of comments just getting buried in downvotes or removed
i started a free speech community
Which one is it?
not telling
That’s a good idea!
Perhaps surprisingly when it comes to breaking the echo chamber and having diverse political points of view and approaches (on subjects like identity politics, intersectionality, geo politics, organization building, strategy…etc) I’d say even ML circles have a lot more of that than just vaguely leftist safe liberal stances (at the very least they might have novel ideas and no orange man bad meme).
If you want more diversity of opinions you can expand in different directions, but I hardly see what good would be a place that has both fascists and anti-fascists for example and most of us are tired of picking internet fights. I suppose as long as you’re aware of which kind of discussion you’ve more tolerance for you’re good, but whether it’s tolerance for the occasional black crime rate statistic or an esoteric graph of the falling rate of profit, you’re not likely to find a space that has both.
In general I’d go with Cowbee’s recommendations though (for something that’s still obviously fairly leftwing)
Register and account on another instance that passes the litmus test of federation with .ml and hexbear. Block .world on that new account. Don’t block all those instances .world told you to blindly hate.
This.
The leftist instance have a good mix of leftist and liberals that are brave enough to do what they’re told not to do.
I’m about to say the same thing differently.
Eliminating .world filters the majority of the propaganda and bad faith users. What remains is leftist because once we pierce through the propaganda and bad faith, we all agree that left is human.
We’ve three core groups: social democrats, authoritarian socialists & communists, and libertarian socialists & communists. Each focuses on a different part of our timeline. Respectively: the present, the means to overcome the human paradigm, and the ideal solution as we understand it.
There’s communities I like on .world, so I just ban the most insufferable users and comms.
Voyager allows blocking of the instance whole while allowing specific communities.
Your best bet is to be in a lot of instances. My experiences so far is that basically any singular instance has its bias’, and while some unapologetically ban users for disagreeing with them, the ones that don’t still down vote for disagreeing with them.
While one of these forms of censorship is worse than the other, it’s all censorship, and the only way to see a variety of views is to stay in the varying instances.
Same goes for countries. Big ones cause problems IMO
I think you are going to have a hard time finding a place to talk with a group that overall deals in bad faith arguments and hate speech. They also tend to silo themselves off to their own platforms over concerns that their hate speech gets them moderated (because Free Speech != does not mean speech without consequences or needs to be tolerated by everyone).
If you really want to see the MAGA “point of view” you are probably better off going to them on Truth Social, Gab, 4chan, The_Donald, etc.
This is kind of the derision that I’m talking about. (I am assuming that you are talking about the right wing). Whilst there is some truth to it, you disagreeing with them doesn’t mean that it isn’t interesting, or worthy of discussion or debate.
I do agree that hate speech should be banned and that isn’t what I’m interested in.
I’m not interested in the MAGA point of view per se, I’m interested in a diverse spectrum of ideas and opinions that reflect a real cross section of society, where undoubtedly some of them will be MAGA people. Whereas there is a very strong left leaning bias here.
.world is very liberal, it isn’t really accurate to call it “left leaning.” You aren’t going to find many MAGA people on the fediverse.
In the UK there is some similarity between liberal and left wing ideas, despite them being distinct political groups. Liberalism was originally seen as very left wing, a lot of people are now arguing that there is more in common with right wing politics, small state and such.
I’d say my experience here has been much more left wing than liberal though, just my opinion.
Liberalism was only “left” when Capitalism was progressive, which was only true in comparison to Monarchism and Feudalism. Liberalism is a firmly Capitalist ideology, while Socialism is leftist.
It seems like you don’t realize that the world is extremely polarized. It’s not just Lemmy.
The issue is that you can’t have discussion or debate with:
- statements in bad faith
- statements not based on reality (conspiracy theories/misinformation/“alternative facts”
So the issue is once you have removed those, you aren’t left with many people holding a very broad spectrum of viewpoints outside of niche topics (Vi vs Emacs).
It’s extremely big headed to think that only the people who agree with you are arguing honestly and have not based their arguments on any incorrect information.
I’m here to learn and grow, not to circle jerk with my friends about how right we are.
I don’t think it’s always a difficult task to tell if someone is arguing in bad faith or not, and someone basing their argument on incorrect information is not that (and I assume you know that). So trying to say that I see a mere disagreement on a topic the same as one made in bad faith sounds like you’re trying to conflate the two, making it a bad faith argument.
But if pretending a ‘difference of opinion = bad faith argument’ is what you’re looking for I guess good luck. That is what I would call a “circle jerk”, but to each their own. Not sure how that type of discussion with no basis in reality can help anyone to “learn and grow” though.
