Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
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they’re too stupid to figure out lemmy
Please let's not introduce elitism into Lemmy. I just got here and stumbled upon this post. The social network you use does not make you superior. As much as I agree with anti-racist censorship, there is no need to speak as if Lemmy users are superior beings. It was annoying when Redditors did it back in the day and it will continue to be now.
Exactly this.
As an analogy, I personally think the Linux desktop is better than Windows but I don't think desktop Linux users are inherently better than Windows users.
Sure, desktop Linux users are probably more tech savvy on average but they are probably also more likely to be less socially capable imo. (like me)
Quite. Remember narwhaling bacon? Never again.
I'm glad that Beehaw doesn't do it, but the other instances shouldn't be federating the Tankies.
Authoritarian, genocide-denial, Stalin-praising politics have no place on the left.
That is the one thing that still makes me unsure of whether I should fully support Lemmy or not. I know how the federation works and that those communities can be easily excluded, but what is off to me is that the two main devs of Lemmy itself (and the Android app) are themselves tankies.
Yeah I've been going back and forth between this one and lemmy.ml and a recent thread on Ukraine made really really appreciate that beehaw has that instance blocked
Yeah it's not like theyre uncomfortable with socialism in general, this is like full on self identifying STALINISM. That's something that comes with it's own mess of human rights totalitarian crap, and pointing out that the US has also done terrible things(and oh boy has it) doesnt make that any better.
Like they arent the power to the people kind of socialists their logo is literally a tank.
I consider myself a socialist.
But Stalinists and other authoritarians have essentially reactionary politics.
Personally I'm not sure I consider tankies leftists. Although communism is a leftists ideal, it's based on the premise of people being equal and deserving of basic needs. Tankies often embrace misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and authoritarianism and deny or even support injustices against other humans. Not very leftist of them imo
The beauty of it is that we don't necessarily have to use lemmy.ml at all. Beehaw and Sopuli.xyz, two of the largest instances outside of lemmy.ml and the tankies, don't federate with the tankies. It some ways it's a good thing, as it encourages people to branch out instead of clustering around a "main" instance.
I don't understand the reddit users who are claiming they don't want to join Lemmy over political reasons. They could create their own instance with whatever rules they want and push whatever political agenda they want. The fact that the platform is decentralized means everyone can get with they want.
True. Let’s be honest though, in a world where people are used to huge centralized platforms like Twitter and Reddit, the Fediverse is unfamiliar and confusing. Not sure what can be done about it other than educating people. But there may always be a slight barrier to entry.
How can someone honestly claim to be “in the middle” when one side openly embraces Nazis, sexism, and other forms of bigotry? What’s the middle ground there?
There’s a difference between needing a safe space and not wanting to hang out with the KKK.
It's an Overton Window thing. They've watched so much "fair and balanced" far-right media that it has made them believe that they're centrists.
I think the answer is the words we use, which are incredibly myopic, literally two-dimensional with LEFT and RIGHT.
This reduction to the binary is exhausting, and probably forces people to think in bad faith. It is all bad faith. The middle ground is meaningless. Bigots don't like to be called out as bigots, and many people are too afraid to call bigots out.
I think the step forward is to be significantly more precise with our language, avoid the temptation to simplify, and to stop using tired labels that are easily hijacked by bad actors.
Yes. This is a different platform, I'd rather we don't just transplant all the reddit problems here.
Lemmy is inherently political. It was and is a revolt against reddit's staff, their business model and the influence of US politics, media and corporations on their platform due to their advertising model. This place wouldn't exist if there wasn't political differences.
We're not here to impress people who were banned for spreading Nazism. Go to all the reddit-clones that started in the early 2010s when reddit got called out for hosting toxic racist-or-fascist hate communities and communities sexualizing minors (e.g. /r/jailbait).
Everything is inherently political. If anyone thinks it isn't, it's just because the politics favour them.
The fact that guys like that dont feel welcome on Lemmy is a testament to Lemmy getting it right. I think it differentiates itself from the awful social media clones of the past like Voat or Vidme. I'll leave it at that because we should probably shy away from outrage bait. As much as I'd like to i cant do anything about him and he is driving his buddies away from us
I’ll leave it at that because we should probably shy away from outrage bait. As much as I’d like to i cant do anything about him and he is driving his buddies away from us
yeah, i'm not donning my mod hat here or anything but i think it's nice and generally a good idea to not linger too much on weirdos and cranks you hate online. i think it's an easy way to ruin a community's vibe if you're not careful or let it go on too much, and even if everyone in the conversation is otherwise acting cordial. there's just... not much value in doing that, you know? we're not talking a major politician here. these people do not "matter" in any meaningful sense.
What does political even mean here? I guess the usual "Don't be racist, don't be homophobic, don't be transphobic etc." I really don't see much real political topics in my frontpage (local and all).
Historically, Lemmy has been very political (Marxist, pro-Russia/war, etc). But as of a few days ago the userbase is now mostly reddit users, so it feels quite different now. This is especially true if your instance admins choose who to federate with.
Oh no... Well I really really hope that this is in the past with the new users. Nothing but unpleasant experiences with Tankies.
I suspect most of them sit on lemmygrad. This is the beauty of instances and federation - nuance! Some users might be assholes on some instance communities, but if they're not maintained in a way people are happy with, they can splinter off and make a better place. For instance, Beehaw can maintain a gaming community which is set up to be safe and avoid bullshit gamergate stuff, and they can call it "Gaming" because it's not the only instance that can host one of those.
The issue with default subs and subs with obvious names on Reddit is that they build a certain personality and approach, foster certain views or don't moderate well, and then new people come in and amplify that because that's how they've seen the interaction working before. In that case, the best you can do is make a secondary one that has more strict rules - /r/truegaming, /r/games etc etc - which are difficult to grow because they're unlinked. Being on beehaw means it's part of the beehaw umbrella, so has to abide by the rules of the instance. Kind of a neat system.
I didn't commit to Lemmy in the past for this reason. Lots of tankies and cranks. Figured the space wasn't for me. But there are now other instances that are popular and other posts being made by people who don't share the views of the original userbase, which I think is great. Those guys can still hang out in their own space and I can hang out in mine.
Be racist, homophobic, transphobic. For some people is part of their political identity.
As this is a post on Beehaw, I'm going to abide by the rule and omit any unsavory words I was originally going to include 🙂
Whether intentional or not, the slur filter was one of the most genius things the Lemmy developers have ever done. No one was under any false pretenses that it was the absolute best way of moderating a space. In fact, everyone knew from the get-go that it had its fair share of problems! But it did one thing splendidly: it acted as a barrier against people obsessed with free speech who claim a slur filter is a tool used by some nebulous participants in the current culture war. I'll refer to this comment made by user uabstraction on Hacker News 2 years ago.
Even to this day you see those people using the slur filter as a talking point against the devs, the software, the wider community, etc. even though it hasn't been hard-coded or required for over a year at this point!
Meanwhile, as they continue to avoid Lemmy and prophesize its downfall, the people actually participating on Lemmy are growing a community and just generally vibing! No one is fainting at the thought that they can't say a slur.
claims he isn’t far right
Right-wing extremists do this to make it seem like their position is widely held and "normal." The worst extreme right-wing party we have here in Finland (Valta kuuluu kansalle or "Power Belongs to the People", aka Valta kuuluu Kremlille or "Power Belongs to the Kremlin") claims to be center right. The head of the party is a pro-Russia flat earther who doesn't believe in climate change, and the party is staunchly anti-immigration
I don't like politics precisely because of polarization and extremists. My first experience in the fediverse wasn't good either. Russian invasion to Ukraine happened two months before, Elon Musk stated his intentions to buy Twitter, and I joined a random Mastodon instance. Guess what? Tankies supporting and defending Russia and anything related to communism.
Luckily, I discovered that there are a lot of more Mastodon and Lemmy servers, and I'm in those that I can call "home".
It's obvious that I don't want to see far-right or alt-right content while I can. But I don't want to see tankie or far-left content either. Like someone said in this post, discussing with a commie and disagreeing, even being in the left political spectrum, makes you a "fascist" or something similar.
It is funny how the only viable Reddit alternative I’ve found so far (here) isnt led by weird libertarian tech bros but communists lol
I'm amused by the idea that what is functionally an anarchist technology has been so effectively moulded by Marxist-Leninists.
Technology running on technology originally developed by the American Military-Industrial Complex. It is an odd mixture of influences.
The “centrists” that all all in favor of letting the oppressor and the oppressed talk their differences in a neutral playground are great.
Requires a level of love for the status quo and lack of reflection that never ceases to amaze.
Dude, you are not in the center. You are three steps from the neonazis and a thousand kilometers from the tankies. Even if you are opposed to the “extremes” and “mu horseshoe” yo are not equidistant.
Not speaking for anyone but me, but sometimes when people say they something is too political it really means too much "extreme" political views. Personally I don't want to interact with extreme auth-left or auth-right content. I think politely discussing why access to housing should be guaranteed by government, or arguing for lower corporate taxes or whatever, isn't what bothers most people.
Fortunately Fedi allows instances who are fine with it host those users, and I don't have to see it. And Lemmy -the project- isn't political, it's just software for which I'm grateful to the devs.
I was almost gonna agree until the end but unfortunately, I really can't agree with the notion that technology is not political.
The project is political. The license they chose for the software, what they're using to develop it, how they fund the development of the project are all very political things.
Yes exactly, I call myself very left but the minute I tried /kbin a thread about china from lemmy.ml showed up and there full of Tianomon Square deniers I tried to engage but just after half an hour I was almost done with the whole reddit alternative and was on my way to delete my account.
People are put off of extremist places and don't want to join them, think they are lost already to the extremists. Both online and in real life.
I wish the fediverse is able to contain all the ideas, all the political positions and that disconnecting/blocking an instance is only used for behaviors like spamming. Not giving every political stance the opportunity to be a part of the same world fuels extremists.
Beehaw and other instances can kick all the users with far-right beliefs. That's fair. But Lemmy users shouldn't be blocked to listen to or even interact with them, in their own instances, if they wanted. Don't help creating political ghettos.
What's funny is there is nothing stopping them from making their own instance. I think the hesitation stems from them coming to grips with reality that few people really want to engage with their messaging when they step out of their bubble.
Because they can't make people who don't agree with them miserable if they're all relegated to their own bubbles.
My teenage son and I recently had a conversation about how the people complaining something is "too political" are the ones with a political agenda you have to watch out for. He pleasantly surprised me by being 2 steps ahead of me (he told me he liked the thing people were criticizing because of the political aspects).
Is there a Lemmy equivalent of r/SelfAwareWolves?
Nooooo! People have different opinions to me! They better not join Lemmy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll admit that I struggled to figure out Mastodon when twitter changed hands. For me it was either too confusing or not worth figuring out. Maybe it was just the nature of it being more about personal posts, so each server was much more different.
I had no such trouble with Lemmy/Beehaw. Drop-in replacement. That said, I don't think I'm a communist? I'm not a raging capitalist either though? I'm just kinda here.
If you joined beehaw, you aren't exposed to lemmygrad which is what they may be talking about. Some of them are far, far left and because they outnumbered other Lemmy users, the general vibe of viewing posts was a little extreme.
They are dropping away on the community browser so they may be relegated to niche rather than dominant as more users join.