Hi! I came here looking for an alternative to Reddit which is less of a liberal echo chamber. It looks good, even more responsive. But I wonder, how is the moderation here? Biggest problem I have with Reddit is that it is becoming increasingly impossible to have discussions about “sensitive topics”. Even if you are being civil, there is a chance you will just straight out get banned for saying something which liberals do not like. How does Lemmy compare? Thanks.
If you mean “liberal” as in neo-liberalism, then, you’ll probably be happy throughout most of the Fediverse. If you mean “liberal” referring to non-right-wing, you’re gonna have a bad time. The software behind Lemmy is created by Marxist-Leninists and much of Lemmy is rather leftist and is quick to stand up against abuse against marginalized groups.
That is helpful, thanks. Any alternatives? If it was just about the political stance you could say Twitter, but it doesn’t have the structure which Reddit has. You mostly follow people which makes the content sort of random, and mostly about politics in my experience. I like having groups which are about specific topics, like subreddits are.
I’ve had plenty of unpopular-opinion arguments here (example) and I’ve literally never had a post or comment removed that I know of. On reddit it happened several times from “both sides” of the traditional spectrum. I.e. the mods here are significantly less ban-happy than they were on reddit (although you’ll definitely get downvoted for saying certain things depending on which community / which instance). Also, because of the smaller size and the UI differences it actually doesn’t make too much difference if you get downvoted – your stuff won’t get hidden; it’ll just get a sort of scarlet letter of WE DON’T LIKE THIS MAN SAYING THIS, but everyone can still read it.
That is a good answer, thanks.
Much of the Fediverse is developed by people who are pretty left-of-center, as it is based in Free, Open-Source Software, which is itself based upon left-of-center philosophy. As another commentor mentioned, you’ll probably find some instances that are politically aligned with you but have been de-federated from much of the rest of the Fediverse for hate speech and encouraging terrorism.
However, as I mentioned exclusion is pretty directly in conflict with FOSS philosophies so, they are going to be small echo chambers and you might have but luck with proprietary platforms run by free speech absolutists.
I don’t need a community to be “politically aligned” with me, I want it to be neutral. But the problem is, it seems like that is not possible. Because when I say “you should be able to say anything, as long as you’re civil” that would already be considered a political stance. Because libs are going to say that that would be “allowing hate speech”.
Paradox of Tolerance. Allowing hateful, marginalizing speech to be unchecked increases measurable harm to marginalized groups. Neutrality is only ever siding against the oppressed.