Ask Lemmy

Why do we have to endlessly debate stupid opinions on social media in the first place? What possible good will come out of being exposed to more scam artists, bots, bigots, and pro-genocide accounts? All it's done as far as I can see is make things worse in the real world and grown political movements that cause mass harm to others.

Most social media websites are putrid dumpsters full of Karens arguing about how many homeless and immigrants it's moral to kill. Can't we have one place that isn't fascist trash?

If you feel like you're missing the trash just join X, Reddit, Facebook, nextdoor, Instagram, truth social, a news article / YouTube comment section, or turn on most cable news networks.

That shit is everywhere, and it's spaces like this one and mastodon that are the exception purely for showing that not everyone is a bigoted, lifeless asshole who wishes harm upon others because they're rotten inside, want to turn a quick buck, have no hobbies nor talents, and/or are anhedonic.

I worry about that sometimes as well. Whenever it happens I try to look at the facts that back the opinion. Are there facts? Sometimes the reason there isn't a dissenting opinion is that there isn't a factual basis to have a dissenting opinion. We can see in our society that many current discussion problems exist because people want their fantasy/feelings/traditions/politics to be equal to facts. Facts can be distorted so it is important to try to figure out where an opinion comes from and the basis actively supports it or just wishes it did. Often people claiming censorship, are complaining that their opinion isn't accepted and that their fantasy/belief should make their opinion equal to an opinion based on fact.

It doesn’t help that one of the main instances will outright delete comments for being pro capitalism and the users of said instance will downvote any comment that doesn’t get removed but isn’t anti capitalist enough.

But the so called tankie triad is reviled enough that I would say it is actually proof of diversity of thought. There are conservative communities and instances but for the most part they don’t get much engagement because the content is usually pretty low quality even if it gets seen at all as many people will block or instances will defederate from those types of hosts.

I would consider myself more right wing than most users on the fediverse but even I don’t have much desire to engage with MAGA/fascist right wing content.

I live in south currently and it feels like IRL is the echo chamber.

I genuinely did not know there are americans actually opposed to Israel until I came to lemmy. And I especially did not know it was a big group.

I don’t "worry" about it. I accept that it is. It's just the nature of humans and social groups. Can't do much about it. What you can do is increase your number of sources to gain the other perspectives.

No. I'm perfectly secure in my absolute hatred and rejection of bigotry and violence.

Yeah it absolutely would benefit from a wider range of opinions. That's why a large portion of my comments are "against the grain", I don't see the value of reinforcing prevailing opinions in an echo chamber. I hope that as Lemmy grows we will see more diverse opinions, but what I think is more likely is that the hard-core leftist part of Lemmy will sort of secede and defederate so they can preserve their echo chamber while the rest of lemmy gets taken over by "normies"

Great point, I agree with you!

One reason you're noticing a homogeneity of opinions on here is the fact that Lemmy isn't botted like larger social networks. Larger networks have bots farms pushing all sorts of narratives for various reasons, and the one thing they accel at is finding people to argue with.

You are also certainly in a bubble on Lemmy. You have to know it exists and care enough to use it over other platforms. Most people choose the path of least resistance.

I don't know what your talking about. I'm very active on Lemmy, precisely because there is a lot of actual debate.

What I don't get, that Reddit had a LOT of, is trolls, bots, novelty accounts, puns, and especially Russian Propaganda Farmers who are just showing up to argue for the sake of arguing.

I also don't get a lot of MAGA trolls. Debate is one thing, but anybody who is still sticking by MAGA at this point is a truly sick person, and I'd rather not have to engage with psychopaths, thank you. I don't have anything good or polite to say to them, and they can't be moved by logic or morality, so what's the point? They just want to cause problems, because they think that's entertaining.

Is this the right room for an argument?

This has uh, not been my experience.

No. I see idiots arguing about the tiniest possible things on here. Actually no clue what you are on about.

Actually, I sometimes get lots of downvotes in things I think I see pretty clearly. So I understand what you mean but still I see some controversy.

This isn't a fucking poll. It's a website with a bunch of jackasses on it. You want better sampling start poking for your opinions instead of shitting them out on whatever social media site.

This makes me worried that I'm in some sort of echo chamber

You are. Just consider how small the amount of people knowing about lemmy is, now take the ones who are interested in it (over using something like reddit) and now pick the ones who are technically capable to register an account. Those are us, those who have gone through this selection process.

What levels of diversity are you expecting? I am here exactly to avoid the extreme polar opposite diversity many mainstream platforms offer. I see people agreeing and disagreeing but they are still having some common ground which enables the disagreement to look civil. Considering the mainstream social media this can look like a lack of diversity, but it's actually how it is supposed to be in a civilized world...

hatred is minimal here