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Is there a more politically and ideologically diverse alternative for Lemmy?

I know the real answer is reddit but I really don’t want to go back now that I’ve already grown used to life without it. I was hoping for Lemmy to be a viable substitute but it isn’t. I can see how this place is wonderful for the certain type of person but that person is not me. My experience during the past 6+ months has been a net negative and I’m pretty much ready to move on. I just don’t know where else to go.

atro_city ,

What have you tried? There are communities of all types on here. If you say something, there are definitely people who will agree and others who will disagree. Most will express it quite badly and few will give a thoughtful response. Reddit, I find, was much worse at nuance.

/r/askmen for example was open to anybody asking questions while /r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn't allow diverging views. /r/science turned into a place for science memes. /r/politics was just a battleground for left and right wingers calling each other names, and places about men's health were consistently attacked by other subs. Reddit seemed like twitter's second coming - with communities.

WldFyre ,

Lol are you complaining about the way people treat men’s rights subs??

gimpchrist ,
@gimpchrist@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, my eyeballs read ‘Men’s Health’…

atro_city ,

Prime example of such behavior.

Dark_Arc , (edited )
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

/r/askwomen was heavily heavily moderated and didn’t allow diverging views.

Oh my god yeah, that one was a bit ridiculous. I have a vague recollection of trying to help someone in a thread with like a domestic abuse situation or something and the mods quashed my comments because my comments had an opinion and I’m not a woman (mind you nothing I said was remotely sexist and it was a comment thread on an existing comment).

/r/signal was also a bit ridiculous. Rather than having a discussion on the merits of Telegram’s design vs Signal’s design for the average person, I got temp banned for “intentionally trying to compromise people’s security” or something like that.

Reddit seemed like twitter’s second coming - with communities

I will say Reddit never topped some Twitter Trumpies calling me a caribou diaper baby … that was particularly deranged and such a strange insult lol

atro_city ,

caribou diaper baby ... that was particularly deranged and such a strange insult lol

That made me laugh. It's more hilarious than an insult. Maybe they are comedians in their free time?

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

No idea, I think they were just that strange… Their entire reply was majorly conspiratorial to the point of complete derangement then it went into this deranged ad hominem “caribou diaper baby” and I think some more stuff I don’t remember.

I think they were probably a Twitter troll … honestly I left that conversation a few IQ points lower, I try not to think about it 😂

gimpchrist ,
@gimpchrist@lemmy.world avatar

Rofl 🐮

Ziggurat ,

What made your experience negative ?

  • I’m on an large instance which doesn’t federate with Grad, so I don’t see the Right-winger playing to be leftist by supporting right wing dictators
  • Tons of communities don’t get that much political beside the respect basic human rights and sometimes comment the news
  • Even with the European election ongoing, I don’t see much political discussion on European communities

So may-be try more “casual/fun” communties than the political one.

If you use the “local feed” it may be worth checking another instance. I heard good stuff of Blahaj Lemmy which as no downvote and act mostly as a safe/relax space for queer but is open to non queer people

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski ,

Kbin interacts with Lemmy and seems to me to contain reasonable people willing to have respectful discussions

Thorny_Insight OP ,

Yeah that too, though this issue is the most prevalent on certain .ml instances and can be avoided by not commenting there to begin with.

cabbage ,
@cabbage@piefed.social avatar

Absolutely. There's a small handful of sites full of insufferable stalinists. Thank god I didn't discover Lemmy when I was 14, I might have been swallowed right up.

Just block those instances, your experience will be better immediately. And don't hesitate to block individual users, even if they're not breaking any rules or anything. Finding something to be annoying is plenty of reason not to want it as part of your internet experience.

Thorny_Insight OP , (edited )

I don’t mind extremists as long as they’re intellectually honest and willing to have a good-faith discussion and don’t just immediately attack you personally when you challenge their beliefs. One of the biggest issues here is that when you bring up a point people immediately draw conclusions about you and then they reply as if you really are this caricature of the “other” that they’re imagining.

And yeah I’m very familiar with the block feature. My blocklist is around 600 users long. I’ve blocked like 3 people already today and it’s only 9am.

Arkaelus ,

Without the slightest hint of sarcasm or irony, this made me want to give you a hug.

Joxnir ,

Can I join in on that hug?

Arkaelus ,

The more, the merrier!

otp ,

That’s the solution.

I think the .ml ones are tailored to be extreme opinions in one direction

metaStatic ,

speak for yourself nerd

jeena ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

I thought we have quite a diversity here with extreme right wing on hexbear, extreme left wing on lemmygrad, center with lemmy.world, (clasic) liberalism on dbzer0, and everything between like blahaj, beehaw, redhat, slrpnk, etc.

otp ,

I don’t know much about hexbear, but why’s it extreme right?

jeena ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

Because they are literal Nazis.

Snowpix ,
@Snowpix@lemmy.ca avatar

They’re authoritarians like the Nazis, but they aren’t Nazis. They like Stalin’s approach to authoritarianism instead.

otp ,

They seemed to be pretty left-wing and “safe-spacey” from my limited knowledge

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Hexbear are not right-wing in the slightest. They’re basically Lemmygrad but with even more shitposting.

jeena , (edited )
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

I see, that then I misunderstood that and OP might have a point?

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

OP is correct in that right-of-centre views are relatively rare on Lemmy, for sure.

DarkThoughts ,

There are far right instances, they're typically just not federated.

gerryflap ,
@gerryflap@feddit.nl avatar

Hexbear are also far left. They’re just so far left that they hate the west more than China or sometimes even Russia for some reason. Afaik all far right instances are luckily defederated. Most of Lemmy leans heavily left. I considered myself left wing, and I’m also very much left wing nationally speaking, yet here on Lemmy I constantly encounter people who are so left wing that I pretty much completely disagree with them.

rufus , (edited )

I can’t tell if you’re the problem or if it is Lemmy.

I don’t think there is an alternative as of now.

However: I think Lemmy will grow. As of now it doesn’t due to the limitations of the software developers… Which is my personal little pet peeve. But it’s currently in the process of diversifying itself. New projects like Piefed and others are being developed to tackle the current issues and limitations that don’t get addressed by the Lemmy developers. I think there is a good chance that Lemmy is going to change in the near to mid future.

(And I don’t get all the drama and political arguments anyways. It doesn’t contribute anything to my life discussing world news/politics and it’s bound to be negative… I’d like some more nice personal projects, soldering electronics, Linux communities and maybe posts about woodworking or lewd stories. Arguing about politics is a valid thing to do, but also boring in my perspective and this place is full of it.)

FoD ,

I agree and started putting effort into Mastodon. It took a week or two of filtering and browsing to find users and content but I’ve definitely found a more engaging base of content to interact with that is nice.

I was an engaged redditor who switched 100% to Lemmy and I do not feel quite satisfied with the comments and content.

I’ll stick around, but I find myself on Mastodon and using Ground News more often.

Btw I have comments in my history of how frustrated I was about finding content on Mastodon, but suddenly it clicked after I spent a bunch of time on it. Not a raving endorsement but ultimately I do enjoy it.

Another side note, I was looking for some top users to follow and some have 10k followers, cool. Then I find some federated threads accounts with millions and realize how small we are in comparison. I know why, and I understand it, but it’s truth that small user bases have less ideas.

LyD ,

Can you give some tips on how to do that? I want to start using Mastodon but right now my feed just isn’t great.

FoD ,

I use Android, so Fedilab was the app I’m using.

I didn’t want my feed to be an endless stream of news or other languages. So first I joined a smaller server, with a topic I care about.

Then I followed a few journalists, and followed tags I care about like cycling, my hometown, tech news relevant to me, and TV shows.

Lastly after I had that base of content… I went looking for people. When someone posts something I like, I check their other posts… do I like those too? If he’s then I look at who they follow. Big accounts usually don’t follow a lot of others. This is endless but really gave me a consistent group of people who I care what they think and say.

Not easy but worth the time over the course of a week or two.

Also I watched the tag where people lost accounts they follow and why.

Also, look at the top accounts lists that exist. Threads accounts have millions of followers so it’s a good bet it’ll be good.

DarkThoughts ,

Imo it is fine as long as you stay away from Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad and Hexbear.

fuckingkangaroos ,

There’s a lot of extremism and censoring perspectives even on Lemmy.world

DarkThoughts ,

Like what?

fuckingkangaroos ,

Their world news community is a good example. They censor people that don’t align with their views, I’ve had comments deleted with no explanation. The kind of things that get a lot of votes there wouldn’t last on most other social media platforms, of any.

If you’re sincere I might go find an example, but in my experience usually people asking questions like yours are just trying to waste my time.

DarkThoughts ,

Are you sure you aren't confusing this with the [email protected] community?

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yes, lemmy.ml is a whole other level, and so are Lemmygrad and Hexbear.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Check us out hilariouschaos.com and let me know. Our premise is to shoot the shit,talk shit, shit post, post content you create, talk and have fun.

We’re not interested in being like what you’re experiencing. We’re here to have fun. Shit doesn’t always have to be about politics. I hope you check is out. Thanks

Skullgrid ,
@Skullgrid@lemmy.world avatar

Go to truth social for all your “political diversity” needs, or shut the fuck up about “left wing bias”

Thorny_Insight OP ,

How’s going from a far end to another going to solve anything? There’s no need to be so hostile

nandeEbisu ,

One man’s far end is another’s centrism. I don’t think there are too many truly centrist places left because the Gulf between left and right is so wide the center is just a giant ball of contradictions or meaningless statements.

Anyolduser ,

You threatened their worldview by pointing out that Lemmy is an echo chamber. People get angry when they feel threatened.

fah_Q ,

Congratulations this is a actually a very stupid question. Please return to Reddit where you belong.

Feathercrown ,

Be the change you want to see in the world!

And/or block certain extreme communities/instances.

taiyang ,

I’m not sure of better alternatives, only different. Mastodon or even Threads might be your solution. I also took a look at the comment history to get a sense of what you mean and I think I get it since I also get a fair share of negative interactions.

I think it’s actually because of Lemmy’s size that you get some pretty fringe views on here. Heck, if anything, the diversity you seek might mostly be all the views in-between that get drown out by the loudest fringe views. I’m sure there plenty of us lurking, since it’s so exhausting engaging with lemmings at times. I’m by no means a moderate, but simply trying to defend a news source as legitimate can feel like a disheartening chore.

Anyway, I don’t really know where to go for that and if you find out, I’d love to know. I don’t necessarily agree with you on your views, whatever they may be, but I certainly can agree that we need a little wider range of views (and perhaps a bit more civility when someone expresses a different perspective).

Thorny_Insight OP ,

I don’t even mind the fringe views. I even switched instances to one that federates with lemmygrad because of that. I know there are a diverse group of people here but many of them don’t comment because you get bullied for it. You can reliably guess which types of comment are the most popular ones and which ones are completely missing.

Another thing I have an issue with here is the fact that for the most part it seems that what is keeping this group together is not common ideas or goals but the common hatred towards an outgroup.

taiyang ,

If it makes you feel better, I don’t particularly hate an outgroup (like reddit) and I’m not really here for that reason (although I like the app options here too). Maybe that’s a minority view, but hate is just too emotionally draining for me. Maybe I stick around because those Trek and Linux nerds won me over, haha.

But yeah, maybe if you like hearing folks over at Lemmygrad (or even… Hexbear?!) federation is still your best bet because you’ll never get that on the more mainstream sources. If it’s a bad experience, maybe you need to tweak your approach. Just brainstorming though, I really don’t know the ideal platform for open discourse.

parpol ,

Diversity will come with a larger userbase. You could wait and come back after the next reddit purge.

Anticorp ,

I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now myself. I honestly don’t think there is anywhere on the internet. Everything eventually morphs into an echo chamber, and then an echo chamber of extremism. If you find something, please let me know. I’m so tired of being constantly surrounded by extremists on either side of the political spectrum.

nikita ,

Though it’s only tangentially related to your inquiry, you should check out improvethenews.org

It’s basically what you are looking for but with news stories, though it’s primarily focused American news. It allows you to read the different narratives without actually visiting cancer news sites like Sky news.

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