Do you think the mostly limited range of political views is a strength or a weakness of Lemmy? (For example, in terms of attracting new users.)
Do you think the mostly limited range of political views is a strength or a weakness of Lemmy? (For example, in terms of attracting new users.)
Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn't sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
You're viewing a single thread.
For people saying it's a weakness because it causes or is caused by censorship from the mods, are you directly experiencing it? If yes, on which instance?
I got involved in a few heated discussions with members, but I was never bothered by any moderator/admin. I'm not sure if this is due to my views (anarchism / libertarian communism) but I don't think so since they are not the ones of the main instances I roam (.world which seems quite soc-dem to me and all the tankies one).
To me all of this seems like an overall positive thing : the lack of hardcore far right dudes is a big plus, and I don't think the political views can really influence the quality and quantity of content you can propose otherwise (which is to my eyes why there is not that much people here). Like I don't think rightwing people will flee from Lemmy because of the political thing, but like i think most people do: mostly because there is not that many people and therefore that many content to begin with. But there again, I never directly experienced or witnessed political censorship or exclusion, and it seems a common experience so i might not have the best point of view.
I was banned on slrpnk because I said that Trump coming to power would be a dangerous thing for the world, people in Gaza included, and asked some questions about the point of view that was being expressed.
https://slrpnk.net/post/14823401
https://ponder.cat/modlog/2765?page=1&actionType=All&userId=201449
To me, the issue isn't that we need to make a safe space for MAGA. Those people tend to be so obnoxious that there doesn't even need to be a special rule for them to keep them out. The issue is that a lot of moderators seem to be nominating themselves the bosses of which are the permitted ideologies for people to talk about. Slrpnk does this, lemmy.ml does this. A lot of the niche "leftist" communities do it to anyone who's a mainstream liberal.
Some of the big lemmy.world communities also do their own brand of bad moderation, but it's usually not ideological, it's just stupid.
Okay thanks for sharing your experience, it seems indeed a very good example of how bad it can be Thanks also for the explanation about the instance in the answer
Oh. The mods on that "anarchist" comm are bad faith actors and I doubt that they are actually anarchists - more likely authoritarian wreckers. The only things that they liked before the election was spreading tankie, anti-Biden, and anti-electoralist/accelerationist propaganda. For example, they would post anti-Biden op-eds then ban anyone who disagreed or pointed out that accelerationism has literally never had a positive outcome in recorded human history for "electioneering".
That's an interesting theory... I think there are some selected mods who are exactly that, but I don't think that's exclusive to slrpnk. One of my little conspiracy theories is that those bad actors got really good on Reddit at how to "take over" a subreddit so they can start bending it to be the way they want it to be, and I think a couple of the slrpnk mods have wormed their way into the good graces of the admins there and then used the anarchism as cover for pushing authoritarian agendas. I guess it's possible that the slrpnk mod community as a whole is bad-faith actors, but I don't think so.
I got curious about that one slrpnk mod who I tangled with who was pushing Green Party propaganda and deleting my comments about it, and just checked to see what he's been up to since the election. My guess was that he would have switched to pushing "hard anarchism," violence, reasons to hate the right wing, guns, things like that to stoke division. Nope. It's been total crickets.
Turns out his passion for anarchism was fueled by the election, and since it's over, he hasn't had as much of a reason to be passionate about it. He posted 5 articles a few days ago, and right after the election he got in some kind of argument about the election which wound up getting a bunch of his comments removed, but other than that, no anarchism or participation of any kind. Weird how that works.
I think a couple of the slrpnk mods have wormed their way into the good graces of the admins there and then used the anarchism as cover for pushing authoritarian agendas.
That's exactly what I think. I don't think that it's slrpnk as a whole but that anarchism comm on the instance had very problematic mods (who have indeed gone silent, pretty much proving that they were bad faith actors). They constantly acted to spread propaganda and silence anyone who disagreed. IIRC, one even all but outted themselves as a state actor. They're all quiet now because they got what they wanted; successfully sewing enough discord in anarchist and other anti-authoritarian communities to prevent critical mass or embrace of effective strategies for positive societal change.
Yeah. I think they're pretty good at exploiting tribal thinking, such that "he's an anarchist just like us" or "he's a vegan just like us" leads people to rally around someone, and overlook weird things that they're doing.