Is it just me or do Lemmy communities tend to skew left wing? Why might this be?

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SentientFishbowl@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I can’t say I’ve been using Lemmy for long, but from the get-go it seems that the communities, memes, opinions that get upvoted seem to reflect left-wing ideas.

I’m certainly not complaining, it honestly feels like a breathe of fresh air compared to other social media sites that seem to shift further and further to the far right, though I am curious to hear why this might be the case? Does FOSS tend to attract more left-wing minded people, or does this just happen to be a broadly left-wing microcosm/bubble?

Hope you all have a great day.

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chumbalumber@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The philosophy behind FOSS is inherently left wing and anarchist; communities working together to provide and produce tools for the common good, without a profit motive. Coupled with the lack of advertising and promotion of the sites, people have at seek them out, leading to a self-selecting user population that skews left :)

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- Fecundpossum@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I would say that FOSS typically draws a more educated crowd, and right wing rhetoric and propaganda typically target those of lesser education and lower cognitive ability, simply because those people are the most likely hosts for rightoid brain worms. Why do colleges skew heavily left, gee it must be brainwashing /s
  
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  - chumbalumber@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Eh, there’s plenty of educated right wingers. Not fascists as much, but the kind of fiscally conservative economists who preach austerity are often as not highly educated, just lacking in empathy.
    
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- Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think pretty much everyone views their political ideology as “the one that stands for freedom”, and it just comes down to what it means to be “free”, and the follow up of free from what.
  
  I feel like libertarians would love the concept of FOSS and decentralization, and I don’t think anyone would argue they skew left.
  
  So, I disagree that FOSS is inherently left wing. I think it’s attractive to the left wing for many good reasons. I think people project their own politics onto whatever they love, and things can be loved by very different groups for different reasons.
  
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- VinesNFluff@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  As a left winger myself…
  
  … I’m not sure Foss is inherently left wing. Inherently anti authoritarian for sure, but I can totally see a libertarian type making a pro-FOSS argument from a capitalistic-individualistic and it being rather sensible. (Aaaaas long as we ignore the ways it’d contradict other beliefs right wing liberals tend to hold, but yknow. Compartmentalisation is a human superpower)
  
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  - chumbalumber@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think I’d still argue the free open source part is inherently left wing. Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
    
    Something like bitcoin is the kind of tech project of that mould that i think attracts the right wing libertarian. Just my opinion though.
    
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- Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  FOSS isn’t inherently left wing. It is often charitable work but that’s far from unique to the left wing. That can also just stem from “I wanted this program to exist and it didn’t, but I don’t want to put even more effort in to monetize it.” Plenty of FOSS projects start as someone wanting to learn something early on in their career as well (which is both a pro and a con because … if you’re learning you might be making some bigger mistakes).
  
  Anarchism … I just don’t really agree with that at all. Lots of larger FOSS projects do very much have governing bodies that decide what to do and how it shall be done. In many cases FOSS authors are a one person governing body making all the big decisions.
  
  Organized charitable work is far from anarchy even though anarchism dreams of everything being organized charitable work.
  
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- BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  @haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com, I thought you mike like this comment 🏴🙂
  
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Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean you signed up on lemmy.marxism-leninism. Yeah they tend to lean left, lol.

But yeah your observation indeed is is correct. Not only does lemmy lean left it often leans pretty far left too. It might feel like a breathe of fresh air but it’s still a bubble and echo chamber. It’s the same as truth social but the exact opposite. Nothing wrong with that per-se but it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Factual information is regularly downvoted here not because it’s false but because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

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- MagicShel@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t come here for the far left. I come here for the lack of the far right. The far left are some crazy nutters, too, but I think for the most part they are well meaning and that’s a damn sight better than the far right who just wear hatred on their fucking sleeves.
  
  It means I get some shit for not wanting to live in a big city or being happy driving a car, but I take solace in the fact that I’ll be long dead before far left ideals take hold in any significant way. Meanwhile… fascism is a far more immediate threat, and that’s the one group of fuckers I give myself leave to unabashedly hate.
  
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  - Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There’s no scarcity of hate on Lemmy either. It simply flies under the radar for most part because it’s directed at things we hate too. Exactly as is the case on far-right forums as well. Just read the comments of any thread about Elon, Police, Ai, Facebook, Twitter, Capitalism, Israel and so on. You even admit participating in it yourself.
    
    The far-right thinks of themselves as well meaning just as well. Nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guys. Claiming they intend to be hateful and evil is disingenuine. That’s only how you view them. Their view of us is hardly any different. Both views are wrong.
    
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  - TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Even if the left is overall more tolerant, there’s still plenty of toxicity that alienates people and pushes them rightward.
    
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- LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think the idea that MLs are a far left ideology is pretty questionable honestly. But that is the conventional wisdom certainly.
  
  The definition most people use for left and right isn’t really consistent or coherent. If you do try to iron out those inconsistencies, you’ll find that MLs don’t really fit with the rest of the left.
  
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Skanky@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because reality has a left-wing bias.

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- griD@feddit.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Damnit this would be my immediate response, too.
  
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- corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Heh. Because lefties are just conservatives who got mugged by reality, and once that happens there’s no going back? ;-)
  
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  - pearable@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’m a lefty, life has never mugged me. I’m a leftist because bad things happen to everyone and the solutions isn’t to hurt people until they’re better people. Giving people time and resources just makes people and society better.
    
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xeger@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It has to do with profit motive. The Fediverse, and the Lemmy sub-protocol, arose when for-profit enterprises (TwitX and Reddit, respectively) began prioritizing their own bottom line over the enrichment of their users.

This has always been the Faustian bargain of social media: you are the product and you receive free content at the cost of advertisements and data mining.

Once the monopolists of the social sphere overstepped their bounds - got too invasive, or tried extracting value directly from the end user - free alternatives formed.

Naturally, the only people self-aware enough to be put off by the exploitation of these monopolists were left-leaning. There’re a lot of people out there who will pay to be cocooned in an echo chamber (viz Truth Social) but leftists like to pretend they’re too good for that shit.

So here we all are, enjoying a methodone drip of social media without all of the optimization and dopamine-tweaking hooks that for-profit socials live by.

It’s not a bad outcome, really, and if someone somehow wants to start a counter-culture right wing node on the fediverse, nothing is stopping him except a total lack of willing participants.

Say what you will about leftists; at least they try new things - and conservatives, as you would expect from the name, do not.

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- cows_are_underrated@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  It’s not a bad outcome, really, and if someone somehow wants to start a counter-culture right wing node on the fediverse, nothing is stopping him except a total lack of willing participants.
  
  And the fact, that most instance would instantly defederate
  
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djsoren19@yiffit.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This almost feels like bait, your instance is Lemmy.ml. The ml stands for Marxist-Leninist, your home instance is literally the home for far-left ideology. You’ll still see a leftist bant for the reasons commenters have mentioned, but the single biggest reason is that your instance is owned and operated by them.

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- SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s the second largest instance, plus it’s the original instance. I can see why one or both of those facts might draw someone. Maybe they thought it was hosted in Mali!
  
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  - imaqtpie@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Lemm.ee is actually bigger in terms of userbase now. And SJW about the same size. But .ml still hosts a lot more communities so I guess that also counts for something
    
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- Kiosade@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wait that’s really what it stands for? I keep seeing some commotion over it every so often but I thought it was just an abbreviation of a country or something.
  
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  - Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Its the top level domain of mali, but the devs picked it because it can also mean marxist-leninist.
    
    Sort of like how twitch uses .tv, even though it isnt situated in tuvalu
    
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- bamfic@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  it stands for what now? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ml
  
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- Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, there are some serious whackos on there. It’s a very vocal part of the population. I highly recommend folks try other instances if they aren’t hard-left.
  
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nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
the right loves corporations they don’t go out of their way to avoid them

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Crackhappy@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
People seeking to be free from corporate overlords, and desiring a place to speak their minds and who also don’t have an issue with spending a little time and effort tend to have a more liberal mindset. Regrettably as primates, we also have a tendency to form tribes and give short shrift to any viewpoints outside of those we ourselves believe in. I personally would prefer a dialogue of equals where we can debate our differences and agree to disagree or even find the places where we do agree and can come together. However, that enlightened state of being escapes most all of us. Instead, I will regress to thumping my chest and hooting at you.

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- czardestructo@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  throws poo
  
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skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
[deleted]
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- hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  lemmygrad and .ml are far from being anarchocommunist. They are authoritarian as hell.
  
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  - bizzle@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Tankies made anarchists face the wall, never forget
    
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- airportline@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Depends on the server you’re on. Lemmy found popularity when a group of communists had their subreddit(s)banned
  
  That’s actually part of the reason why the original devs started Lemmy.
  
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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It skews young, and young skews left.

Now If only young voted…

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- Kolrami@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lemmy users seem older than most social media to me. Why is Star Trek TNG so popular here if not?
  
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  - Not_mikey@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My guess is the fat part of the bell curve is 25-40 here, probably similar to Twitter, younger than Facebook, older than tik tok and maybe Instagram.
    
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  - scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    TNG has young fans and you can have enough old farts like me around to populate a TNG forum while the whole is still mostly younger.
    
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  - corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Re-runs.
    
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manicdave@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There are sections of both the right and the left that have anti-authoritarian tendancies.

The libertarian right tends to view things purely in terms of government over reach, whilst the left tends to view things in terms of the power of capital.

Leftists saw Facebook pushing propaganda for the highest bidder, Reddit trying to be safe to sell to investors and twitter basically becoming a project to reflect Elon Musk’s personal opinions.

Out of that came a bunch of attempts at creating new social networks. The right wing attempts were not cognisant that the aforementioned were the natural result of trying to get rich off it, while the left attempted to make it impossible to get into that position.

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Snailpope@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
One could argue that as alot of us are exredditors we would be the more progressive or left side of the crowd. Something happened we didn’t like so we left it behind for something we hope will be better and put in the effort to make it so as opposed to staying with what we know and really waiting things out before choosing a new direction. It would have been easy to stay with reddit, hell I could go back in an instant and it would be like I never left, but I chose this new path and I’m sticking with it. That is what progress is all about

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b3an@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Education.

No for real, a lot of right-wing thinking comes from just parroting disinformation and being in their own echo chamber circles.

Educated people are more likely to ‘lean left’. Why?:

Environment: Higher education institutions often emphasize critical thinking, questioning of traditional norms, and exposure to diverse perspectives. This can lead individuals to adopt more progressive or liberal views.

Diversity: College and university settings are typically more diverse, exposing students to different cultures, ideas, and lifestyles.

Rationalism: Educated individuals may place a higher value on scientific reasoning and empirical evidence, which can align more with policies and positions typically associated with the left, such as support for climate change action and public health initiatives.

Perspective: Higher education can lead to an understanding of economic inequality and systemic issues. Educated individuals might support policies aimed at reducing inequality and improving social welfare.

Career: Many educated individuals work in fields such as academia, healthcare, and social services, where left-leaning values like equity, public good, and social justice are prevalent.

Generational: Younger generations, who are more likely to be college-educated today than in the past, tend to have more progressive views on social issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial equality.

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- CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Educated people are more likely to ‘lean left’
  
  I would qualify that as “Educated people with a conscience and a good ethical or moral base”.
  
  There are plenty of very smart, very evil right wingers out there.
  
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  - b3an@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Mitch McConnell, Manchin, Shkrelli, Ben Shapiro… I suppose you have a point.
    
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Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think all the right wingers who were dissatisfied with reddit migrated to voat?

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- Shyfer@ttrpg.network ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exploding heads, too, but everyone defederated from that.
  
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  - DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Truth Social and whatever Jack Dorsey and Thiel are up to
    
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Linkerbaan@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
People looking for a Reddit alternative don’t tend to be conservatives and liberals. r/worldnews fits their needs perfectly.

Thus the migration is either to a left platform like Lemmy, or truth social etc for super right winger.

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morphballganon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Right-wing propaganda would have you believe that most good things are left-wing (and thus bad).

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- CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Right-wing propaganda would have you believe that most good things are left-wing
  
  One of the few things I agree with them on!
  
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viking@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I wouldn’t say FOSS is inherently leftist, but it’s certainly not a capitalist approach.

And Lemmy has been developed by two outspoken Marxists, so the earliest adopters before the larger waves of reddit exilees had a similar mindset.

Add to the fact that most of the oldest and therefore largest communities are hosted on lemmy.ml, which is run by the original devs, and features moderators who by and large also share a similar mindset (and suppress critical comments quite a bit), and you’ve got a lefty echo chamber going, that’s spilling into the newer communities on neutral instances, giving the whole platform a left touch.

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- slurpinderpin@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I once wrote a comment on a lemmy.ml page about China being authoritarian and my comment was removed, with a note saying “China isn’t authoritarian, stop spreading misinformation” LMAO. Delusional people
  
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  - awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They’re not delusional, they’re paid.
    
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  - viking@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Indeed. I happen to live in China, and everybody calls it authoritarian, especially the locals.
    
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- Broken@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is my understanding as well. History of the platform skews it left.
  
  But I also don’t think in terms of left and right (though its hard to get away from the terms so widely used). For instance, most people tend to describe the difference in terms of money and profit (capitalism). I look at control and freedom. I don’t want governments controlling what we see, hear, and say. I want us all to control our own lives. Lemmy/Fedi is completely supportive of that concept.
  
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  - awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I don’t want governments controlling what we see, hear, and say.
    
    Might want to find a new instance
    
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Quereller@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Maybe because it was originally developed as a platform to discuss Marxism and Leninism?

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tunetardis@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think people here tend to question and fact-check posts and comments a lot, which is a healthy thing. Now some say reality skews left, in which case could it be that the right have left because the left is right?

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- CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  the right have left because the left is right
  
  Nice. I’m stealing this!
  
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Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For the most part, the same ethos that powers the Fediverse is the same ethos that powers all open-source. So naturally the people that would be more keen to adopt it are the people who believe in the Open Source model in general.

I can’t think of anything less right-wing than open source; it’s essentially software communism (“from each according to their ability to each according to their need”) Sharing isn’t a right-wing value.

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vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Federation is anathema to boot licking authoritarian fascists.

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retrospectology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think it’s more that you don’t get many right-wing extremists and the mods don’t protect the ones that do exist from seeing things they don’t like.

There are still a lot of neoliberal kind of conservatives on lemmy, and then also right-wing types in the form of tankies, but for the most part I think the light touch by most of the moderators means that facts (which favor the “left”) tend to be allowed to persist in a way they don’t on many social media that see profit in extremist content.

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eldavi@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
tankies created lemmy to share with all leftists and it started moving to the right in the last wave of reddit changes.

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- FISHNETS@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is that the case? I know tankies are behind Lemmy, but did they explicitly create it with the purpose of being shared with leftists?
  
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  - DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They made it to do a praxis
    
    Sometimes that’s making a FOSS project, which shouldn’t be need an explanation besides the definition for why leftists would like it.
    
    Sometimes that’s so you can yell at shitlibs for being shit at being liberals. That’s the fun part.
    
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MockingMoniker@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They’re all psycho left.

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FryHyde@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah I dunno man. Ever since I made my account, half the posts I’ve seen have been complaining about whatever the hell tankies are, and almost all the rest are jokes about arch linux. The politics stuff seems more niche than just “left”, but I haven’t dug too deeply into it. There are other active communities if you dig around. Mostly I dig on star trek memes and programmer humor and it’s a good time.

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zcd@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A significant percentage of the rightwing posters you will find online are very enthusiastic about warm water ports. Lemmy is small and new enough that the influence campaigns are not directed this way

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- awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hard disagree, they’re here and able to operate relatively freely with no central admin fighting disinformation.
  
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  - zcd@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Unfortunately you’re probably right
    
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sunbytes@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I see a bit of everything on here, but I do like that voicing leftist ideals (not sure about left wing) doesn’t get you shot down immediately from all sides (as it would in a lot of other places).

I imagine that in general leftists exist, but avoid posting in other places due to the abuse they’d receive for doing so.

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shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s not totally leftist. I am most definitely a libertarian. I am interested in free and open source software, though, because I care about online privacy and self-sovereignty. I mean hell, even if you just look at my instance, I am on an instance about a particular cryptocurrency whose goal is financial privacy, which is a big middle finger fuck you to the government. They would like to know the consistency of your last bowel movement and I would rather them not know that.

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aasatru@kbin.earth ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I'm just here because I hate capitalists.

I also hate stalinists, so the joke is on me I guess.

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JCreazy@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t like being labeled as a political side. I’m here because there is no ads and it’s free and open source. If that is part of a political ideology, I am not attached to it. Lemmy is very left which is fine but sometimes it goes a little too left in some instances.

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