Why is almost everything on Lemmy political?

Submitted ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨timeless@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I joined Lemmy a few days ago and have been reading around. 90%+ of the content I see, even on non-politics related communities, is political in some way. I have no interest in that, so it’s tiring, especially when it’s inserted in the comments of completely unrelated posts.

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jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is a link sharing platform. Primarily links to news articles.

Don’t conflate politics to reading the news. If you have no interest in reading the news, you probably shouldn’t be on a link sharing site.

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- blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not true at all. On the other site you can curate subs so your feed consists entirely of puppies and pottery tips.
  
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  - jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Abomination. That shit should be banned. I report them to mods.
    
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ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No offense, but if you are an American adult and don’t understand why so many posts are political right now you probably need to be reading them. We are probably going through the most problematic power shift the world has seen in 100 years and if we The American People don’t start fighting back substantially we are looking at losing most of our rights as free citizens.

It’s that fucking serious.

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- SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Nope, head in sand and complain through anis.
  
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Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s the zeitgeist right now. The world is falling to dystopia and it’s top of our minds in our communal ride down. But yeah, def nice to be able to disengage /engage with non-dystopia as needed to not go crazy.

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spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because you’re not filtering by your subscribed communities.

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propofool@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
lemmynsfw.world doesn’t have that much politics …

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- Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I mean, they have political stances, for example, they think people should be able to access porn, trans and gay people are ok, cartoon porn is not the same as CP, and similar things.
  
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  - MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    But Loli porn is the same a CP there
    
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SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Everything is political

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OmegaMan@lemmings.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We’re all kind of living in hell because of our disfunctional system and fearful countrymen. So we’re just kinda trying to cope together by commiserating.

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yesman@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
99/100 times complaints about “politics” is a someone taking offense at being confronted with politics they don’t like.

But yea, if you like reactionary politics, Windows, or AI, Lemmy is going to be a bad time.

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- ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  or ai
  
  Don’t tell dbshitter that
  
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kreskin@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because Lemmy’s userbase was boosted by a lot of reddit banned people, and reddit bans people for political speech. I’d guess lemmys userbase doesnt represent a random sampling of the general population.

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- daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Is it really so many banned people? I thought most of us were here voluntarily due not liking reddit policies. I have my reddit account, I just don’t use it.
  
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  - Bongles@lemm.ee ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There was a huge influx of users when reddit broke third party apps, I have to imagine that was larger than reddit bans. But then not everybody stuck around so who knows.
    
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  - kreskin@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    granted, it hasnt been measured that I can find, so I’m talking about what I think, not what is known. It possible you’re right.
    
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  - wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I have mine, and frankly I still use it to read about college football and Star Wars and check AskHistorians and post about keyboards. For shitposting and actually engaging with humans – yes, many of whom are my political speed or even further left – I really prefer it here. I “left” during the Mod Rebellion and APIpocalypse when it kind of became clear things were not going to be getting better. If it dies, it dies. We got beans over here.
    
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0oWow@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I also did not come here for politics.

I came here as an alternative to reddit.

What I did to fix it was to find similar Lemmy communities to those subreddits. I also set up filtering to block out key words, names, etc.

It makes it a lot more bearable.

One thing I’ve noticed, Lemmy and Reddit are run in a large part by content bots when it comes to non-politics. There are some exceptions. I recommend you make peace with the bots and appreciate the content (all the while contributing content yourself of course).

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- DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  I also did not come here for politics.
  
  I came here as an alternative to reddit.
  
  Abandoning corporate enshittification and censorship is politics btw.
  
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  - SereneSadie@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Typical lemmy trollop, ignoring the blatantly obvious point made to go on some nonsense tangent.
    
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some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Block communities you don’t want to see. Browse and look for communities that aren’t currently hitting your front page and subscribe. Yesterday, I discovered one that was right up my alley that I hadn’t seen after nearly two years on Lemmy.

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BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. Best thing you can do do is sub to communities that don’t have it. As an example, the linux communities are pretty big and low on politics.

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- timeless@lemmy.ca ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A person could post a pic of the sky and somebody would somehow still find a way to insert s Trump comment. It’s a bit insane.
  
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  - rabber@lemmy.ca ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Just throw those people in the trash with your block button man, you have full power here
    
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  - themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It is a bit insane, because the world is a bit insane right now, and honestly I think it’s your fault.
    
    Well, not you specifically, and it’s not entirely your fault. But part of the reason tyranny and fascism have gripped power across the globe is that political discussion is considered impolite. It’s offensive to point out how absurd or dangerous a political policy is, so we just avoid the subject. Wouldn’t want to offend a conservative bigot by pointing out other people exist.
    
    And because polite people avoid the subject, only extremists engage in the debate. Nuance is lost, and the crazies take charge of the nuthouse whilst “normal” people, like yourself, fret about people talking about the problem.
    
    It would be fucking fantastic to look at a picture of the sky and not think of how air pollution is being deregulated, how Qatar is buying influence with the President by gifting him an airplane, how space is being monetized by a South African Nazi, or how we’re all likely to die of an airborne virus because the person in charge of coordinating our healthcare response has a brain that’s mostly worm poo.
    
    It would be wonderful to stop talking about politics, but not talking about it has led us, inexorably, to this point. We have a duty to discuss ideas when they affect all of us. We have a responsibility to point out stupidity and ignorance and make conservatives feel ashamed of it. It’s not fun for us, either, but if we were to follow your lead, we will end up murdering children in death camps. Which is exactly where we are.
    
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rabber@lemmy.ca ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I would say it’s quite literally because a lot of people who post on lemmy are intelligent and intelligent people pay close attention to the problems in the world aka “woke”

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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Politics need to be contained to their own communities. Propaganda everywhere (even if it’s propaganda that confirm your own views) drive people away.

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- RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m okay with far right people being driven away, actually.
  
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  - daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Not everyone who doesn’t want to talk about politics 24/7 is far right. In fact most are not. People be seeing far right in their own shadows nowadays. Stalin level paranoia.
    
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njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Well there are a lot of factors, and there are plenty of Niche communities you could pay attention to more often, but the most overwhelmingly significant factor is that shits really fucking bad right now. Like yeah we all wish we could live in a in a time where politics was boring and not life-threatening but that’s not how the world is at the moment. You just can’t escape reality. But you have to physically ignore things to try to remove politics from your world. I don’t even know how it’s possible, everything is being touched right now by politics, everything.

Unfortunately the vast majority of us are not privileged enough to be able to ignore politics in our lives.

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the_q@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because everything is political. We’re in the position we are now because people weren’t paying attention. Finding a place to stick your head in the sand ain’t here.

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- SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Merriam-Webster: politics
  
  Definition 1:
  
  a : the art or science of government b : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy c : the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
  
  And here we are on social media.
  
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PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Lemmy was originally founded by political extremists who wantted a space for their politics (tankies.) Its since grown past that, but that inflence is still present in many ways, most prominently in the influences of .ml. On top of this, politics is something inflammatory (and thus engaging) that affects everyone. Because its both engaging and broad-appeal, its going to be something everyone talks about. On the other hand, many niches, aside from being niche are often less inherently engaging (IE talking about a finished TV show). This makes it very hard to get the critical mass needed for a community to snowball into relevance. This means that (effectively) all you’re left with is the political communities and a couple niches that are broad appeal enough and have active enough users to be stable.

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AugustWest@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It only is if you want it to be. Subscribe to what you like and that isn’t your will see if you only view those things.

Use scaled as a sort occasionally to see other posts in your subscriptions. I switch back and forth.

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Jeffool@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
All I can say is be the change you want to see. Submit posts, maybe mod a community. I’m doing !gamedev, and it gets political sometimes, like any career field, but it is what it is.

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DarkFuture@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because the majority of Lemmy users are American and the United States is in the process of collapsing, or at the very least, steep decline. So it’s kind of the primary topic of discussion.

If you don’t like it, you can edit your feed to only show the subs you want. It’s pretty easy.

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cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Politics is life. The days of being able to hide from politics were ended by Donald Trump. You may be able to ignore politics again someday far in the future, but right now, politics is very interested in you and any attempts to ignore it will be at your own peril, because politics does not like being ignored.

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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The short answer is Lemmy has a theoretically near-infinite number of communities and no “engagement algorithm” so it’s up to us to curate what we want to see by blocking the communities we know we’ll never read, or, in some cases, blocking users that we can’t stand.

(Alternately you could curate just the comms you want and only browse “Home” communities)

If you want no politics there’s a number of hobbyist and nature-oriented communities, I’d start there.

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- wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I find that I want some politics, and the politics that leaks into News and elsewhere is just about right. I un-subbed from anything specifically with the word politics in it and I mostly avoid .ml, and generally I find it very pleasant around here.
  
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count_dongulus@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Idk, but I use Boost and added some keyword filters. Stuff like “trump”, “musk”, “israel”, “slam”, etc. And any time I still run across political crap, I either block the community or the user. Lemmy has been great now afterwards, no politics.

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jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Political discussions online rarely lead to satisfying resolutions. As a result, political discussions bleed into everyday discussion in the desperate hope that something, somewhere, will magically make sense.

Similarly, when businesses have meetings that don’t actually resolve matters, every meeting becomes a desperate chance to discuss things that matter in the hopes they’ll be resolved, so then every meeting that needs to happen will happen during every scheduled meeting, even wrhb ostensibly unrelated. This continues until meeting culture changes and even overall communication culture changes.

It seems natural and reasonable in such an environment for many people (like you) to want to disengage. Why continue doing something that never seems to lead to resolution?

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Opinionhaver@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have quite extensive content filter list that hides every post containing popular terms related to US politics. Often that means hiding two thirds of my front page. However, what remains is still all politics.

Why is it like this? I have no idea. Maybe they’re trying to keep this place as unattractive for new users as possible.

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corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Dude. Politics is huge right now because we’re going through a tough time globally. It’s a lot of people justifying cruelty and invasions.

These were the hot topics so that’s what grew fastest. Remember that Lemmy is still kinda new.

I know that if I need an oura-/smart ring community I can either wait or I can start one. I’m not gonna start one as it’d be negligent of me.

What do you want to see? What do you not? Find or start what you want, and block what you do not.

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farngis_mcgiles@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Politics affects every facet of life. Not being concerned with or effected by political shifts is a privelege. Just by moderators deciding what topics are and aren’t policical they are enforcing their political views onto the community. You see it constantly on reddit where someone posts something innoccuous then the mods lock the thread and ban further discussion.

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yum_burnt_toast@reddthat.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
a lot of people here migrated from reddit for political reasons, so a lot of the communities have been set up by those who tend to view things in a political way. it also seems that the general climate in the united states, where a large amount of the english language content is made, views nearly everything as political, either caused or reinforced by american politics dominating most forms of media.

it also cant be discounted that there are certain users whose sole motivation for posting in any community is either bait or propaganda, which can spoil any community that does not have very active moderation or rules prohibiting political posts or comments.

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- timeless@lemmy.ca ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What’s kind of crazy is that almost all political content is about Trump / Trump-related too. From what I’ve seen Lemmy is very progressive (me too), but I see almost no news about progressive / left-wing / liberal things happening? It’s all Trump-Elon-Republicans. It’s like I’m in a conservative community with the amount of Trump content around.
  
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  - givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Because Trump is president, and Republicans have the Senate, House, and SC…
    
    Like, they have all the “checks and balances” that are supposed to save us from a president like trump. But they’re not using them.
    
    Do you want to see more articles about what the left is doing?
    
    Post them.
    
    It’s that easy
    
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  - yum_burnt_toast@reddthat.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    there is nothing to feel excited or hopeful about from american progressives at the moment, so it is all cope posting. i am more disheartened by posts like the one that showed up the other day eith a link to a supposed story about a cybertruck owner who complained that he got laughed at by children. it is not news, it is not worthwhile, it has not enriched the lives of anyone who read it. it is an outlet to expend political energy for those who dont know what else to do. politics are unavoidable, and complaining about politics is natural and can be cathartic, but at this level it is drain that is part of a trumps political strategy.
    
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Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The choice to be on open-source, community-owned social media rather than corporate owned platforms is, itself, a political choice, and one that, in the absence of other focuses for discussion, will attract politically outspoken people. With no other core community here to focus discussion, everything will fall back to the things most people here have in common: FOSS, anti-corporate sentiments, etc., all of which are themselves inherently political topics.

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hisao@ani.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Maybe it’s just your subscriptions? I don’t feel the same way. Just curate your list more actively and make sure to browse communities from global pool of instances.

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