Ask Lemmy

Opinions are like assholes, as they say. I don't care for diversity of opinions. I care more about diversity of experiences, viewpoints, personhoods, modalities of existence. People just saying what they think about something doesn't mean anything to me, coming from strangers. There is so much to celebrate in diversity, but opinions aren't on that list for me.

Yes, this is an echo chamber. Yes, most things are very samey. You don't see alternative opinions because this is a TINY community. Like crazy tiny. Lemmy has what, 60,000 active users? You know a ton of those are bots too. Even after a reddit exodus that site gets what, 2 million daily users*? So you've got a crazy small group but it's also very similar in type of person who is here. It's overwhelmingly educated middle aged men with a tech background or focus. So you've got a limited pool of opinions to draw on, and then EVEN if you do occasionally get a different opinion, even within that narrow band of experience it can get voted down or swarmed.

Look, I only lurk here occasionally, and I see stuff I disagree with constantly. I see stuff in this thread I disagree with. But I don't post about it because it's not worth it. I also don't have time to argue a minority opinion on the internet, and my life is better since I stopped doing that. And I guarantee I'm not alone. But I ASSURE you this is a bubble.

...but if it makes you feel better though, most people live in bubbles. I have been lucky to grow up in a very different place than I live, and I've found that politically, most Americans absolutely talk past one another because they are incapable of understanding "the other side" because they've never truly talked to people on the other side or listened to them, much less lived with them and understood them. This isn't enlightened centrist BS, I have a side I agree with, but I also don't misrepresent the views of people I disagree with based on no actual knowledge. And with non politics it's very similar - small groups beget small opinion spaces based on a small pool of experiences. Whether that's cars or AI or Linux.

We used to get exposed to people with different life experiences and opinions in so-called "third places", and we don't have them anymore. Way fewer people go to chuch and the middle of the road protestant mainline has been subsumed. Social clubs like the elks and masons are far less popular. 12% of the population doesn't serve in the military with a socioeconomic cross-cut. Kids don't even have malls, sports start specializations early, and the Internet, almost worst of all, has made it easier than ever to get a social fix consuming only content from those most like you or what is algorithmically fed to you.

Anyway, things are bad, I do not have a solution, but I have a little bit of time and feel compelled to post when you are practically begging for unpopular opinions. So my unpopular opinion is holy shit is this place an echo chamber, and if you don't feel that deep in your bones you need to immediately drive 2 hours outside of whatever city you live in and go to a pancake breakfast hosted by some local scout troop, go to some small town festival and talk to people, or hell go visit a church of a religion you don't belong to. And don't talk to people your own age, or same familial structure. Talk to someone who thinks voting is dumb. Talk to someone who doesn't care which Linux distro you're on because they don't even HAVE a computer, they just have an iPad.

...and yes, realistically you're probably not gonna make a connection that way without moving somewhere, and I'm obviously being mostly flippant, but at least don't turn on conservative tiktok or watch Fox News and expect that to be "the other side". Experiencing a different bubble is "growth" I guess, but people aren't the bubbles they live in, and actually talking to them is a way better way to understand WHY we disagree, not just how. Again, like I said, I don't have real solutions on how to do that. I just have the answer to your question and yes this place is a bubble.

*Note I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass, but I bet I'm close on orders of magnitude. And yes I know reddit is half bots too.

It's not very diverse at the surface level, but go deeper into the Fediverse and you'll find some real crazy shit.

There is a certain orthodoxy that is generally accepted. If you go against it you’ll get downvoted into oblivion. On the other hand, there are certain viewpoints that I find appalling and I also downvote.

I also hold some opinions the consensus of Lemmy doesn’t like and I don’t let Lemmy discourage me from sharing them when I feel it is the truth, my understanding of the truth. I accept the downvotes. You gotta be willing to stand up to the mob if you’re going to change minds. And, accept that you won’t change minds. But, you have to be there telling people what you think.

I've disagreed with some things here but I haven't felt the need to comment on it. Maybe that's left over from the reddit "don't argue with idiots" mentality I gained though.

I'm concerned in a general way that the federated design of Lemmy / Mastodon etc. is by its nature (arguably even by its intent) likely to lead users to construct isolated media bubbles. But I don't know how to improve it. I'm not going to subscribe to a (hypothetical as far as I know) fascist community just to "broaden my mind," that wouldn't work.

It's hard to know how much of the division we see and feel is meatspace division facilitated by social media, and how much of it is social media reflecting divisions in meatspace. There's no reason to suppose the answer would be simple or easy.

Are you familiar with tolerance of intolerance?

Yeah so basically when you give right wing ideology any foothold, they eventually take over.

Just like with the rest of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I used to have the mindset that censorship of right ideologies wasn't really ok because surely people would just see how selfish and cruel they were and not give them any time.

But I sure was wrong about that.

Now I take a stronger stance on the matter. Hate has no place in the world. Tolerating it only allows it to flourish.

Otherwise I don't think other opinions should be censored. Just those promoting bigotry and hate.

And yes there are objective definitions of that. It's actually pretty simple.

Do you hate someone for being part of a group or identity, OR because they are a shit person ?

First one is bigotry and hate. Second one is not.

I don't hate Trump cause he's a Republican. I hate Trump for all the shit he has done.

That said, Criticizing political groups (their politicians) does not fall into being bigoted because I judge based on actions and their intolerance/hate. Like trying to harm trans people. That's a no no.

We have to be intolerant of intolerance.

If we aren't, it just keeps making a comeback. Because scapegoating is an easy play by politicians. Always has been.

Lol, no. Where else am I going to hear from the proudly atheist, anarchist, socialist, not-mainstream-and-not-interested folks? Even folks on the outer edges from my own position, like hexbear and lemmygrad, educate in their own way: not so much about what they think but about why they believe what they do. That doesn't mean I want to go roll my brain around in that full time, but I am absolutely better for having encountered them.

I love these comments and opinions when I see them in the wild, and while I may completely disagree, when they are presented courteously they are fascinating and informative.

This next bit is long, but relevant: it's about getting yourself to a point where you are able to see and enjoy the diversity that is already here. Just my opinion, skip it if you want.

You don't have to agree with something to be able to read it. And you don't have to possess, or even form, an opinion of your own just because others express theirs strongly. That need comes from innate human evolution, a deep quiet fear that if you stray too far from the pack or disagree too strongly you will be ostracized and not survive, but in the here and now in online spaces it's just a fear. You can, within your own tolerances, choose to set that aside and just read whatever you want.

Or to see it from the opposite direction, ALL people, including you, including me, derive comfort and security from being in agreement with the herd. But these days, in online spaces, and in every open space where public discourse occurs, that is no longer natural discourse, but a mindfuck: something manipulated beyond recognition by hooking into our primal human fears and using that subtly activated fear as a leash to drag people into thinking, and then doing, what they would otherwise not be inclined to think or do on their own.

That's what fucks it up for the rest of us. Propaganda, bad actors, and endless marketing. Remember how it was when the internet was young? That's the difference between then and now: those three things weren't there then, and the internet was a space as great as we could all make it. But they sure are there now. And if you're human, you too are susceptible to it. I know I am.

So you carefully choose your spaces, you make the effort to know and respect your own tolerances, you take the time to look up sources on your own, and you curate your own feed like your sanity depends on it, because it does.

Some young person told me off many moons ago about how "all people [his] age are overwhelmed" and how he could not be held accountable for his own shitty behavior online because of his resultant "anxiety," while at the same time absolutely refusing to curate his own intake. To me, he was drowning in a flood of negative, low-value content he refused to turn off or even slow.

I feel bad for him because while it is absolutely true that everything, coming at all of us all the time, is a tsunami of mental and emotional overwhelm that never stops, he CAN easily take control of what he chooses to see, and choose to cut it off when it's too much. No one's going to do that for him. But I can choose to do that for myself, and I do.

And that's how I can easily read differing opinions without being threatened by them: they are just that. Opinions. Not even necessarily factual. When you get to that place, the world is your oyster, but it takes constant vigilance. Get lazy and you're back to just doomscrolling the propagandized mainstream mental and emotional manipulations again.

But hit that sweet spot in your own feed and viewing tolerances, and that's when you can see and appreciate the diversity that is already thriving here. Instead of a glance and a discard in a world of one-line comments -- what doomscrolling and social media are made of and count on -- you can actually read, really read and not just skim, and recognize when something is worth more than five seconds or not. The more you actually read and don't just skim, the better and faster you'll become while still enjoying the pleasures that deep reads will bestow.

People are still making ten course meals of real content, but most readers are still hanging out at the food trucks. Only you can find what you're really looking for, but chances are excellent it's already here and you've either trained yourself to look past it, or actively cut it off by blocking it because it was too much trouble to deal with (high noise to signal, bad actors or behaviors, poor moderation, spam, etc). Look again.

I especially tip my hat to dbzer0 forcing new users to write a brief essay on anarchism just to sign up. I don't know if they still do that, but their requirement made me think about something I already knew from the distant past that I had not thought about in years -- Sacco and Vanzetti came to mind, though they are perhaps not the best example of real anarchism, lol -- and given recent world events it has been a VAST personal relief to know that there is a huge, thriving set of alternative philosophies that are NOT just designed to move masses of people through orphan-crushing and value-extraction machines until we all die. (And that's before you get to the scam that is politics in the US.)

So yeah, I've learned more about grassroots populist movements and beliefs just browsing Lemmy in three years than I ever learned in the space of many decades prior, and I can honestly say that while my values have remained the same, my entire worldview has been transformed by quietly hearing and listening to others talk about their own, even when I did not agree.

TL;DR: If you're not seeing diversity, that's a sign to carefully broaden your own scope and tweak your own viewing boundaries.

I'm not too worried at the moment. Lemmy is much newer and smaller than the social networks we're all used to, as well as being an open source social network. It makes a lot of sense that this site attracts a lot of like-minded people to it. Hopefully as more people join, we'll see more open (respectful) discussion.

On the flipside, the more people join Lemmy, the bigger of a target it'll be for bot farms and zone-flooding shenanigans, so maybe its smaller size and appeal to specific kinds of people isn't the worst thing in the world either?

I disagree with most people saying it's not a problem. It's funny, because in the responses most people are saying the same thing. It's a bit of an echo chamber in general here. I do agree with most of the echos, but I also recognize it's an echo chamber. When I do disagree with an opinion, it is not often well recieved. It's also not as likely to be taken seriously since I am one of the few oppsoing it. This can cause more confirmation bias, and even fear mongering to some extent. Which I always find sensationalized headlines here absurd because the truth is absurd enough. We dont need to exaggerate details to make it worse, but unfortunately those headlines get more clicks.

People are quick to comment on a headline without reading the article, as long as it supports something they already believe in. And even if something ends up not matching the headline, you get a response of "well I wouldn't be surprised if it really did happen" without any evidence. This is human nature, but I still think it's important to recognize.

I wish more people would leave the main platforms, but the reason I'm here is bc the main platforms had been taken over by bots pushing the narrative of paid sponsors and corporations.

I'm just not sure how any opinions on an open source platform could possibly be any less diverse than billions of advertisements talking to each other designed to kill human conversation?

Not particularly. I already have a pretty solid understanding of the viewpoints of the right, they never stop screaming them at every opportunity everywhere else on the internet. I find it a lot more interesting to see the differing viewpoints on the left.

There's still a good amount of diversity here, the overton window is just way further left.

Yes. Was just thinking about this earlier. I don't like AI, and clearly most people on here don't either, but I'm worried I'm in an echo chamber.

The amount of tankies is also bothersome. You can be against capitalism without being a communist, and I don't really see anyone like that here.

I think there are plenty of diverse opinions but far less bots and also in order to be drawn to the fediverse you have to be smart enough to figure out how to sign up and use it and also smart enough to see the value in decentralized social media, 90% of people just don't get it and because that is the bar to get you get the opinions from a community composed of smarter, more informed, more open minded people. That doesn't mean we disagree, I got banned from the stable fusion AI image generation instance cause some of the art made it into the top posts and I started talking trash about AI and it's ethical usage. I stopped using my lemmy.word account cause they defederated a piracy instance and I rather pirate content than give fascists or billionaires my money, an issue many people would disagree with me on here.

I've been apart of nerd herd for a while, I've gone from Slashdot, to RSS feeds, to Digg, to Reddit which reigned the longest but I'm mostly out of that hell hole aside from trouble shooting help, I was even on facebook when you had to have a college email to sign up (also out of that hell hole), and now I'm full sending Fediverse. All of these things have been best at the beginning, these communities were all made beautiful because they were not the masses, they were the people that hungered for something more. I think the fediverse is very promising, though I do worry what will happen when it becomes more mainstream, I think we got a long while till that happens and I'm also interested to see how it will go down but at the end of the day, if it enshitifies like everything else, people like me and this ones on here will find something different, maybe it's a completely different internet like lora communities, who knows but to answer your question no I'm not worried.

a lack of diversity and opinion is fine but people will talk without knowing what the fuck they're saying and parrot useless football team politics catchphrases and it's very anti-intellectualist and annoying and I kind of hate liberals and also the internet

I see plenty of diversity without adversity. But there are also just some opinions that are indefensible and the majority agrees that the people with those indefensible opinions shouldn't be allowed at the table.

There's plenty of diversity here. Loads and loads. I see it in every single thread.

But it's different than the diversity on other platforms. The diversity on other platforms is like "should we feed the homeless or should we bomb another country?". And the diversity here is more like. "Obviously we need to feed the homeless, that's not a question, but we differ on how we accomplish that goal".

If you're looking for that other sort of diversity, you need to find a site with more sociopaths.

I have never understood this idea that you need to see some sort of opposition to know that you're of the right opinion, rather than value insightful opinions that may, for example, take on root causes or offer more nuanced takes, or whatever other mechanism that pushes our views in a meaningful direction. This is where Lemmy excels. Pure opposition for the sake of it only results in meaningless arguments and turning the same wheel of discussion that has been turned for ages in online spaces where someone gets attacked, and nobody changes their mind, imo.

I agree with this opinion, lol.

Lemmy is an echo chamber, even a comically specific one. Reddit had that reputation in the early days too, although Lemmy is dealing with the fact it's a technical FOSS thing disproportionately certain people will appreciate, on top of it.

I'm doing my part to get downvoted a lot. In the meanwhile, just keep touching grass and listening to people you disagree with. Especially if they disagree with you in a new and unexpected way. I'll add looking at polling and demographics as well, since it's the only way to identify which bubbles you're in. Even IRL they're impossible to escape totally.

Say anything against the grain and you're banned from the instance. A problem with individuals having complete control of their instances, and there's really no way to do it otherwise. Obviously that's not all instances, but a lot of people who set one up also have their own personal narratives they want to push.

you should probably feel some amount of discomfort with your own views and be willing to adjust them as your exposure to better reasoning and evidence supports a different view

but I also don't think we should have obligatory "both-sides" on everything either, sometimes it's OK to have a consensus, like the Holocaust was wrong - I'm OK that most people on Lemmy agree with that view

I think there's plenty of diversity. However there is a tendency on certain instances to completely dogpile anyone who has the Wrong Opinion on certain issues, with extreme hyperbole.

Take the AI thread going on. People keep referring to environmental costs as if using an AI query is the equivalent of burning down a whole tree. You consume way more energy just charging your phone. Watching a video. Playing games. Yet using an AI is bad enough to get you called a fascist, an eugenicist and other fun things. The lack of perspective is staggering but certain section of Lemmy users have just decided that AI is evil and any nuance is wrongthink. Even just accepting the reality that AI isn't going to go away is seen as evil comparable to murder.

Other example is the db0 blocking feddit.org debacle.