Having tried all three, its a stark difference in how much more social Lemmy is comparatively. Its not even close. Almost all posts I've encountered on lemmy have interaction; whereas, more often than not, posts on the other two platforms have no interaction. Wonder what the driving factor is behind this difference?
The format is certainly more conducive to discussion. On the flip side though since communities reside in spaces and are moderated by individuals here, compared to the more 'broadcast' nature of using tags on Mastodon, you end up with some really bad echo chambers on Lemmy. Just a quick look at a basic news community between instances will show a massive slant depending who runs it. With Mastodon people talk more globally and the obnoxious ones just get blocked en-masse rather than so much being at a mod's whim.
These are two sides of the same coin, one side you called community and the other side you called echo chamber. Whether a particular community/echo chamber is βbadβ or βgoodβ is a matter of your interpretation.
To reword using more proper terms for the system, 'communities reside in instances'. A community called 'news' on .world's instance is a far different thing than on hexbear for example.
An echochamber is just a trait of a given community where any dissenting views from the home instance mods are reported and deleted. At least those actions are visible via the modlogs on here so it stays transparent though.
The problem with "free speech" instances is that it supports the dominant narrative, regardless of validity, and in many cases this results in far-right views being dominant as they aren't removed and everyone else leaves. This means some degree of "censorship" is required to run an instance. Further, everyone has a bias, so it's important to make that bias clear. The difference between news on .world and news on hexbear is liberal-domination or leftist domination in views.
I'll generally agree to all that. What I notice though is that far left instances (and I imagine far right as well, though I don't think I've really seen any on Lemmy) are far quicker to delete and ban than a more centrist instance who are more prone to let the argument play out unless it gets outright hostile/personal. When that delete button is too easy to use you get where someone can't have a proper discussion at all.
There's a difference in how "censorship" is conducted on, say, Lemmy.world vs Hexbear.net. Lemmy.world does soft censorship, they outright defederated from the 2 largest leftist instances. In a manner, this can be seen as banning every account from the 2 largest leftist instances, an extreme act of censorship, but it isn't recognized as such because it is soft. Outright removals of comments and posts are seen as hard censorship, as you remove viewpoints and people, which Hexbear does frequently with liberals and other right-wingers.
Lemmy.world uses this curated audience as a "narrative ecosystem," by removing any input from the largest leftist instances, there's no real leftist pushback against the dominant liberal narrative, and when there is, it usually gets heavily downvoted or removed. Hexbear on the other hand takes a more honest approach, and just says outright that liberalism isn't allowed and is bannable.
I wouldn't say the leftist communities are more heavy handed, but that they are more honest and forthright with how they exert control over their communities, it's more transparent.
I'd expect if there was an equivalent of 'gab' or 'truth social' they would be defederated too. I can understand an action like that because people join these places specifically because it's an echo chamber fitting their viewpoints and they're allowed and even encouraged to be hostile to outsiders.
With the way the fedi is set up you can certainly set up multiple accounts, and I'm sure there are more than a couple from those instances cut off that create accounts elsewhere to have those conversations. The difference being that they're expected to behave in a civil fashion rather than just screaming at others.
On my single-user instance I haven't defederated anyone and only blocked a handful of outright spam/troll accounts and a couple who seem to have a single life purpose to push an agenda.
There actually are those instances, they are just broadly defederated, lol.
There are definitely people that make accounts elsewhere to "engage beyond the wall" so to speak, but Hexbear and Lemmygrad for example exist for their own users, not as a "base of operations" for widespread brigading like some claim. It's nice to visit spaces free from liberalism and constant arguing, as a Marxist-Leninist myself. I also think the "screaming" type of behavior is more frequently found on liberal instances than leftist ones, but that's anecdotal and I have no way to prove it, other than the suggestion that perhaps our implicit bias clouds what we percieve as civil and what as "screaming" in the context of comment debates.
See I don't mind a decent conversation with them either. I actually hold a lot of 'leftist' views myself. What gets to be troublesome is when people come in with a perspective that what passes for liberal in the US is violently evil. Our system is very flawed, easily viewed by the way the electoral college allows for a person with less of the popular vote to win. However, it's what exists and without some massive uprising changes are going to be slow at best.
Look at the chaos that came from the George Floyd murder. That went on for a few months and little of major note changed. Or the occupy Wall Street that just kind of petered out to nothing. The media moves on to the next shiny thing and people lose interest. The most recent with the killing of a CEO was just a couple weeks ago and you can already feel the fervor for it slowing down.
People have good reason to want changes, and so many times 'liberal' and 'leftist' people have similar stated goals. It often feels that the liberals are being fought from both sides, one actively against them in principal and the other yelling for trying to work with the system as it exists.
Liberalism is the dominant system, though, and revolution is still the only way we will be able to get meaningful change. Liberal identifying people can be disillusioned with the system they perpetuate, but have yet to meaningfully change the system. Leftists globally have a much better track record at getting change.
A big part of it is Americans at large object to any kind of coercive governance however it manifests. I can't in good faith say that nations like China or N Korea that exercise such tight control over the public media and messaging are a net good to their population. Cooperative social goals for universal housing, healthcare, a decent standard of living are good, but we have a huge portion of 'bootstraps' minded folks that get in the way. In the meantime we get this piecemeal patchwork that we have that over time has lent itself to rights for minorities of various stripes that eventually get adopted as the norm. Right now we're sitting at a spot where the pendulum of progress is being pushed hard back right, how to stop that is the tough question.
Over 90% of Chinese citizens approve of their government, regardless of what you believe about their system they seem to enjoy it. You should listen to others outside the west more.
tags?
do the research to track down exactly who to interacting with.
then what would be the use of tags? Force of habit. Something to do to pass the time?
You can follow tags for a while in Mastodon, that way you don't have to follow a specific person but more a topic.