Fediverse

Fediverse is anticapitalism at its core, it's a way to escape ads and money influencing algorithims and what can be said. If you don't like power to the people, join truth.social or some other unfederated instance.

I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism?

Yes. Yes indeed you can't. How to go about that is up for grabs but if you think that leftism is all about preserving the system that allows oligarchs to accumulate more capital and power, to allow a minority to exploit the majority, I don't know what to tell you.

...besides that you're probably American because only y'all are so damn confused about the whole topic.

Why not just join non-political communities and focus on the content that they enjoy. If people are nervous about meeting assholes on the internet perhaps they should stick to cable tv or netflix.

"I just got yelled at because I can't be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism?

Based

Also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between leftist and left wing from someone but this is America dammit it's the culture

I'm on sh.itjust.works. Which is actually run like a democracy, funnily enough.

According to a post made in our Main Community, sh.itjust.works is the fifth largest Lemmy instance by total posts, after lemmy.world, hexbear.net, www.hexbear.net, and lemmygrad.ml. So figuring Hexbear got duplicated, and anyway hexbear and lemmygrad are commonly defederated with because tankies, that puts sh.itjust.works at #2 on this side of the Silicon Curtain.

It shows lemmy.world at 390k total posts, with sh.itjust.works at 65k. Sh.itjust.works has very, very few of THE communities people use. !Games[email protected] is the biggest one by subscriber count.

So sh.itjust.works is a popular place to access other instances from, and I think others like lemm.ee and lemmy.ca are in the same boat.

"Join this instance, they're not as radical left as lemmy.whatever" misses the point. Who cares which door of the building you walked in through when everyone congregates in the same room anyway?

Lemmy is different from Reddit in one important way.

Reddit is a product. You install the app, you look at the ads, the mods and admins curate an endless feed of cartoons and safe ragebait and awwwunexpectedsmiles.

Lemmy is an environment. If you're passive, then any random thing may happen to you. So you have to be proactive in this environment.

• You could subscribe to communities that are non-politics/news, non-meme, non-tech, and browse these "subscribed" communities.
• You could use blocklists, as described elsewhere in this post.
• You could find an instance that does some of this work for you, by defederating and blocking certain types of opinions and behaviors. This seems to be what you want, and many people have provided suggestions.

These are all ok. But the one defining characteristic of Lemmy is that it is not just another product.

Wouldn’t really make much of a difference in what server you choose, if the goal is to get “away” from Lemmy.world. The majority of users is from there.

Maybe it’s not the server, but more the community that’s an issue for you?

Please join a small instance. Lemmy doesn't work if people don't spread out. Just choose some small instance that seems chill. You can search and sub to any community. It really makes no difference.

Unless you’re willing to go with a very closed off instance you’re still going to be interacting with the broader fediverse which is very left.

I don’t think that’s really going to change unless there is another big migration and I don’t necessarily want it to. But I would like if Lemmings would be kinder to one another and realize that not having read 800 pages of leftist theory doesn’t mean you’re an evil imperialist. Everyone is on their own journey to understanding the world and I think a lot of people here are so judgmental that they would be fighting with their own past and future selves if they could meet them. It’s OK to disagree sometimes. Yes, even when people hold harmful views. We all do to some extent.

All I will point out is that the overton window in the US has shifted to the point where a double Sieg Heil at your president's inauguration is within normal discourse .

Anyway, lemmy can be pretty "normie" for you so long as you stay out of political discussions. But if you want to actually discuss politics within the US overton window, lemmy is going to be very hostile. However if you come with an attitude to learn instead of debating/arguing, then I suspect most people wouldn't flame you. But if one starts doing genocide denial for Israel etc, then they're going to have a bad time.

Reddit was only ever left of center for Americans. To many/most non Americans, America consists of a far right party and a center to center right party.

What you're seeing is the result of a platform that wasn't first created by and for American audiences, and whose initial takeup wasn't dominated by American perspectives.

The instance you're on only matters in so far as which other instances they've defederated.
You can probably find more centerist instances, but it doesn't really matter because your friend is probably just going to be in the same communities anyways.

I'm not really sure I'd call reddit left of center, though.

Not really, it's taken me quite a while to curtail the content I see to just stuff I actually want to see. Keyword filters are helpful tho not perfect since a lot of people will self censor and thus bypass the keyword filters.

You’re going to get yelled at by lefties on any instance. That’s how federation works.

I just got yelled at because I can’t be Left wing unless I want to destroy capitalism? Which feels weird.

That's a terminology issue that you're going to run into in any sufficiently political community. 'Left-wing' in casual use in the US refers to "everyone except the Republicans and some moderates", but "left-wing" in any serious political talk refers to anti-capitalism.

Although I'd agree that lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear are far-left, with only one specifically right-wing instance that I can think of, I don't think that most of the remaining Lemmy users on lemmy.world, lemmy.dbzer0.com, lemm.ee, beehaw.org, or any of the other big Lemmy instances are particularly extreme in their views.

On average, Lemmy users do seem to be more left-wing than right-wing, probably due to right-wing Redditors being less likely to mind Reddit's monetization of its userbase, and more likely to mind Lemmy's far-left instances.

While I don't think Lemmy should encourage far-right users to join, given that racism and bigotry degrade any platform that allows such speech, I do think that those on the right who are not extreme and are capable of having thoughts independent of the MAGA cult should be welcomed on any instance, given that echo chambers only serve to propagate existing views, rather than foster discussion.

The key part in joining any instance are the instances that either block it or are blocked by it, so perhaps one that blocks lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear by default, while minimizing the number of instances that in turn block it, would be optimal to have access to as many communities as possible.

Here's a list of Lemmy instances by number of instances blocked and blocking, for reference. Seems to not be quite up-to-date, and can't find the instance I'm on on the list, but it should still be somewhat helpful for comparing. Personally, I prefer being on an instance with as few blocks as possible (implementing those blocks instead on a user level as a means of curating my all feed), since the Lemmy community is already small enough as it is, but new users might not want to have to configure those blocks themselves.