Hi new user here. I’ve been checking out Lemmy but the amount of bias is ruining it for me. For example the front page right now has 7 out of 20 submissions that contain the word Trump in a negative context. I don’t care about Trump but when the front page is all political posts attacking Trump I have to wonder about the health of the site.
In the most simple sense, could Republican submissions survive on Lemmy politics community ignoring the voting behavior or would the site and moderators itself actively suppress it to “keep the peace”? I think this gets to the heart of the question and again, this isn’t political to me, it’s purely mechanical. I think that if a social media site has a community called “politics” that is solely made up of stories promoting one party while shitting on the other then the entire site is inherently flawed. It isn’t being genuine in what it offers and is incapable of providing it.
It’s like if you had a community named “cars” but you’re only allowed to talk positively about certain manufacturers. Imagine most people either like Ford or Chevy but on the “cars” community it “just so happens” that everyone there likes Ford.
You can post about Chevy but you have to be careful about how reliable the information is. You have an article that says Chevy’s new SUV produces 500 horsepower? Well, that source isn’t reliable. In fact this Ford biased source did a study showing it only produces 400 horsepower. You think that isn’t a reliable source? This Ford biased bias checker agrees that your Chevy source is biased but our Ford source is not biased. No, we can’t just give people information and let them decide for themselves. That’s dangerous. We can only give them our rock solid Ford sources in order to protect humanity.
Did you comment that you sometimes prefer Chevy for certain things? Well, in this Ford biased community that’s not going to go over well. Now you have 1000 downvotes and 100 comments calling you an idiot. Try to defend your opinions? Too bad, you can only respond every 15 minutes. You have too many downvotes. Well, look at that, the dumb Chevy poster realized he is a moron and had nothing to say in response. Clearly the Ford posters were right again. After all, just look at all those downvotes and comments and the Chevy poster didn’t even reply.
So what do you end up with?
You get a “cars” community, a “ford” community, and a “chevy” community but you’re not allowed to talk about Chevy in cars. You can only organically talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. That is until the site administrators start getting involved and deciding that really it isn’t safe for humanity to let Chevy people talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. They’ve been posting unreliable sources in there, using bad language towards Ford posters, and so on. It’s a dangerous hate community so we’re going to shut it down. You can talk about Chevy in the cars community if you want.
Then you get biased Ford stories under the "cars" community showing up on the front page. Anyone who prefers Chevy will never have their submissions seen because it is relegated to a smaller community that algorithmically won't show up. If it somehow does get big and popular enough the admins step in and boot it or artificially step on promoting it.
Again, I don’t care about politics and you can substitute Biden for Trump and make comparisons to other social media sites. I’m simply asking if Lemmy is offering anything different with regards to this situation.
Can someone explain how it is different from the Reddit moderator and suppression rules? So far Lemmy is producing the same biased garbage I see on Reddit so I’d like to know if this is a function of Lemmy itself like it is on Reddit or if it’s just echos of Reddit that could one day go away. Is Lemmy something new or is it just for people who loved NuReddit but are mad about the API changes?
“I don’t care about politics, but it really bothers me that you guys don’t like Republicans” lol
Maybe don’t cry about people shitting on the party trying to erase people from existence and force women to make health choices they don’t want?
Dehumanising your "enemy" is the first step to be able to kill them
I mean if it's a contest about dehumanising groups of people I think the right-wing is doing a far superior job to the left...
It seems a bit silly to bring this quote up against the side that is actually angry about demographics getting dehumanized
Yes, I know the right in your country thinks of the other half of the country as screaming soyjaks, and no, I never said it was good. I'm seriously surprised at how you didn't fall into civil war after both halves seeing the other as monsters that must be exterminated for being "Anti-American"
Well, there were scuffles between so-called ANTIFA-BLM and Proud Boys.
But what does it have to do with my point?
Deflecting and politicizing the discussion. My point is people should stop being segmented and separated into echo chambers and I want to know if Lemmy can help with that or if it's merely copying the playbook from sites like Reddit. It doesn't matter who is doing it worse both "sides" are doing this and they say the EXACT same things about each other.
The reason it's polarized is because of what Republicans stand for though. It's not possible to coexist with people who want other people dead just because of their skin color, gender, or sexual orientation. I'm not gonna play nice with people who want my friends dead just because they exist.
Sensational nonsense and Republicans have similar sensational nonsense to say about Democrats. Both political parties are in favor of less rights for you and more money for themselves. That's about it. I even called this years ago when I told a friend that BOTH gun rights AND abortion would be successfully attacked in the near future and used as a wedge to further erode rights. One party wants you to have less of this right, the other wants you to have less of that right, no one is talking about expanding people's rights or reigning in government power. You just argue about which rights are more important than others and how the ones you don't care about should be gotten rid of or at least it's okay that your party wants to get rid of them because you don't care about "the other" who thinks it is important to them.
When did half of the country want people dead? Maybe that's just a distortion of reality
The site presents posts based on user upvotes/boosts. The bias you see is the bias of the userbase. You wanna counter it? Vote and add to discussions. You just want it magically balanced? Curate your subscribed content like hell, or use multiple different websites with different biases. Forum style sites will always lean one way or the other, because whatever gets upvoted becomes the front page and attracts like minded people when they visit.
I mean I think that's great. Fair discussion in good faith should always be welcomed.
The problem is when debates in bad faith or based on non-factual information happen.
Consider COVID, which god knows why became politicized - where one side supported taking basic precautions in the form of wearing masks, hygiene, distancing, and getting vaccinated, while other side did not.
Scientific and medical consensus was nearly unanimous in supporting the former - the two sides of this discussion were not factually equal. One side was working off of false information.
In this case trying to foster "balanced" discussion just ends up supporting the spread of misinformation.
This is what the poster who said that "reasonable people can’t differ on everything."
There are things where it's ok for everyone to agree on. It's not always a sign of some algorithmic conspiracy to force an echo chamber.
Just so you know that isn't particularly true. The media made COVID stuff political at first. A quick check shows 50% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats were vaccinated in 2021. A difference that could be explained by factors like rural vs urban availability. The least vaccinated group was black men.
What mainly became political was the response. Wearing a mask or getting vaccinated were widely done by people in both parties. The only difference was feelings about if the government should be forcing people to do those things. This was spun as "republicans are stupid and anti science" in order to talk past the actual points of contention which were entirely focused on being forced by the government to do things which frankly didn't have any scientific basis anyway.
Also most of the criticism of the vaccines and mandates was ultimately proven correct. It was, factually, the government that was spreading misinformation while coordinating with social media to ban anyone who ran counter to their narrative. That part is all proven history at this point. The government told everyone this was a safe and effective vaccine that was the only answer to "going back to normal." In reality it was not safe and several issues were noted with the vaccines after this campaign where anyone questioning safety or efficacy was banned from social media. It was not effective and the people making those statement knew it wasn't effective and hadn't been properly tested to support those statements. Also it clearly wasn't the "only way to go back to normal" since many people just didn't take it and everything went back to normal.
The whole "misinformation" nonsense being pushed now by the government is merely them being mad that people called their bluff and they would like that to not happen again in the future. The idea that people can't be trusted to discuss things amongst each other without the government being there to hit the brakes at any moment is scary. We have freedom of the press for the reason.
I can’t tell if you’re saying I’m dehumanizing the GOP or agreeing that the GOP is trying to dehumanize and erase trans people from existence.
Me no American, me no weird acronyms, making sure trans people really meant it before transitioning is not a genocide
Excellent concern trolling!
Yeah and that is what I'm talking about. It is frankly disgusting to have to read all this dehumanzing one sided garbage. The comments in this thread are perfect examples of dehumanizing people and using that as a justification for bias. "No reasonable person supports Republicans" and "Republicans have never done anything to garner support from rational people." It is the shift from "we disagree about things that impact our lives" to "you are completely crazy and wrong about everything so you deserve whatever I do to you."
Biased Republicans would say similar things. That you shouldn't complain if Republicans are shitting on Democrats because they're the party that wants to let drag queens molest children and start WW3 in Ukraine or whatever. Normally when two people talk they can realize that the other person is in fact just a person like them and you can be empathic towards each other. This isn't happening though because the people working themselves into a frenzy about "the other" are kept isolated and encouraged to keep going down that path of irrational hatred.
We have social media platforms actively separating people and promoting their thinking that the other side are deranged lunatics who need to be exterminated or severely restricted using the power of the government. This is really wrong and I'm hoping Lemmy can offer an alternative similar to the origins of social media where people could share and talk, that's it, we didn't have heavy handed moderators, admins, and algorithms getting in the middle of everything and creating isolated bubbles of people dehumanizing each other.
It's a false equivalency to compare Republicans saying Democrats support drag queen child molestations or WWIII in Ukraine or whatever and Democrats claiming Republicans want to force women to make health choices.
Because Democrats haven't passed any laws which would allow drag queen child molestation or induce WWIII in Ukraine, while Republicans actively campaigned for and managed to successfully repeal Roe vs Wade.
Like, do you see how one side's accusation has more concrete evidence than the other?
The law hasn't seemed to matter much lately. You could use illegal immigration as an example. The law says it's illegal but Democrats as a party have openly supported people who break this law and generally ignore that it is being broken. Sometimes even encouraging people to break the law in public forum. You could use drug laws as another example. Democrats openly supporting people who use or abuse drugs from a health, safety, social care perspective but ignoring that they're the ones supposedly writing the laws they claim to be protecting people against. Republicans, including Trump, have sort of rebranded into the "party of the law" because of this.
This is relevant because Republicans, as the party of the law, use the law to effect change. The Democrats, as a party that promotes caring for people over the letter of the law, often does not use the law explicitly to effect change. They use interpretation. Therefore your response is that Republicans are passing laws that hurt certain people so it can't be possible that Democrats are similarly bad. Except that ignores things like Biden even having the privilege to deploy troops in Ukraine. It ignores all the things that happen outside of the law and within interpretation of the law and how the courts work in the real world that isn't simply "passing a new law."
Illegal immigration, for the vast majority of our history, has been a misdemeanor. Our nation is founded on white people stealing land. Who are we to refuse others?
I have no idea what you mean about Dems not changing laws though.
There is a difference between "refusing others" and allowing people to illegally enter the country and participate in society getting identification, holdings jobs, etc. In fact I find Democrats support of this disgusting because it is exploitative. They love to have illegal immigrants come here and give them just enough so they can go work on a farm or in a factory but not actually make them citizens capable of obtaining labor protections and not just being fodder for corporations.
Weird, the Dems I know are all talking about those issues of expediting a path to citizenship. Idk which Dems you’re talking to
He isn’t talking to any. He’s regurgitating right wing talking points. His entire argument is in bad faith. He’s a troll.
Explain to me how a Republican would say Democrats are trying to erase people from existence.
You do remember that our Democrat administration is pushing for cluster bombs in Ukraine? How does that compare to transgender rights in America?
This is a common tactic to demonize your opponent and it was widely demonstrated during the BLM protests. It was repeated all over the nation at these protests whenever anyone criticized something like burning down buildings. "How can you care about burning down buildings when black bodies are being killed in the streets?"
This emotional appeal to DEATH. People are DYING. We can't be RATIONAL because people are DYING and THEY are the ones causing it! Meanwhile the people saying this turn a blind eye to the forever wars America is engaged in resulting in millions of death. Literally cluster bombs are being rolled out and you don't hear a beep suddenly about "people are dying."
If I point things out like this I become a Republican in the mind of the deranged Democrat biased poster. That's fine but it works the same for biased moderators and admins who start to thumb the scales. It also works the other way if you go point out legitimate criticism of Republicans in biased Republican forums.
This is a discussion of bias not political beliefs.
Except democrats are not trying to groom children, whereas the GOP has enacted anti-trans and anti-healthcare policies. One statement is a conspiracy, the other is based on facts. You’ll find more facts on Lemmy
Also, the GOP is traditionally the more hawk-ish party lol. Just because a few loud voices are pro-Putin doesn’t make them doves.
There is one party from where I stand partner.
No. What I said is I don't like biased stories on my front page. If I see 7/20 stories hating on Trump I have to wonder, where are the Biden stories? I'd prefer to see 0/20 stories hating on Trump and 0/20 stories hating on Biden. I'd tolerate seeing 4/20 stories hating on Trump and 4/20 hating on Biden (or some ratio that isn't 100% biased in one way). I do not want one sided political propaganda being intermixed regularly into my feeds.
I mean if Biden was also being indicted for multiple felonies and being accused of basically selling out his country, you'd probably also see a few more stories hating on him no?
Those stories are occurring. See the Chinese bribery stuff or whatever. No, I'm not inviting a discussion about if this is equivalent or not. I am merely pointing out there you can go to a biased right wing social media site and it's the same thing in reverse. There is no absence of stories about corruption with Biden that are supported just as much as any stories about Trump but those stories are absent here.
But you are literally inviting a discussion about equivalency when you claim that a discussion board with a left wing bias is simply the "same thing in reverse" as a discussion board with a right wing bias.
The scale and severity of the accusations against Trump and those against Biden are on completely different levels. Trying to claim that they should be discussed or compared on similar levels is outright disingenuous.
You're implying the existence of an administrative or algorithmic bias that is somehow censoring right wing talking points while ignoring that several popular right wing talking points are of highly questionable veracity.
No, they're not. You said accusations. Remember Trump Russia? Well now this is Biden China. If you think Jan 6th was an attempted coup and that is why this is so serious then you can also acknowledge that Biden China is using the legal system to attack his political opponent, Trump, which is just as serious an accusation. It is similarly a coup like situation. Unless I misunderstand what you mean.
I'm not implying this that is already a proven reality. Both the bias censoring them and many being highly questionable. The tactic for censorship is pointing out what isn't true and ignoring the things being censored that are true. You could do the same thing for Democrat talking points, grabbing hold of the ones that are nonsense to justify censoring legitimate criticism.
It's like if someone says eating toothpaste cures COVID because their friend tried it and it worked but another person says vitamin D cures COVID here are several peer reviewed studies and you just lump all of that into a category called "COVID misinformation." That is the current situation. Meanwhile the people doing the categorizing are saying "this new experimental untested COVID vaccine will absolutely protect you and you 'WILL NOT DIE' if you take it and it's also the only way we can ever 'GO BACK TO NORMAL'" but we all know that was also utter garbage misinformation. So the problem is the censorship by those spreading misinformation who are using the toothpaste claim to suppress the vitamin D information. I don't see the problem as the toothpaste claim. People are supposed to be the most educated of any nation in the world in America they shouldn't need government backed protection from unsupported claims on the internet.
Again, the Chinese bribery stuff is a conspiracy. Why would a conspiracy get upvotes from rational people?
It's "a conspiracy"? That doesn't really mean anything. You didn't even say it's a conspiracy theory. Is Trump not being tried for a conspiracy at the moment? Not a conspiracy theory, the crime, it has conspiracy in the name. Your comment is just muddying the water. It's pretty obvious the Bidens are involved in bribery with the CCP to some degree and that is by the facts. No different than Ukraine and Burisma. Ukraine was branded the most corrupt country in the world and the Bidens just happened to be all mixed up in their energy sector and governance. This is before the latest events even.
Here is a simple example.
Biden said he never got involved with his sons business dealings. That was his cover when all the Burisma stuff came out. Well, we know factually that is a lie now. Where is the story about this specific example on the politics community here? It's a factual story illustrating Biden lied about business dealings with his son when he was questioned if these dealings could make him impartial. He lied in response to be asked if he could be impartial about Ukraine or if he might be involved financially in the situation. Where's the coverage here historically when this story broke?
It's just one of many examples of what is valid political news story about the current US President but where is it on Lemmy? Yet what I do see is 10 submissions on my front page about the same Trump story and he isn't even the current President. That is the bias and if you're not intentionally being a blind shill you can see it plainly. The question was not if Lemmy USERS are biased, obviously they are, the question is about the platform itself.
Find me one legitimate news source that states it’s “likely” that the CCP is bribing Biden.
If you are even entertaining the thought that the Trump shit is a conspiracy, you’re a joke. Listen to the tapes.
Any news source I found you would merely dismiss as not being legitimate. You don't seem to know that conspiracy is a word that means something. This is different from "conspiracy theories" the popular phrase. Trump is being charged with conspiracy... it's kind of hilarious to me you saying I'm a joke if I think the "Trump shit is a conspiracy" he's being charged with conspiracy! I think that makes you the joke because it's funny to me at least.
Not at all. Any site that is widely respected is fine. You can google news reliability websites if you’re not sure.
Who are you fuckin thanos? The world isn't balanced, both sides aren't equally shitty. Obviously you disagree, so if you don't like seeing opinions you disagree with make your own instance, or leave lol. Why you still here whining when you made up your mind the moment you posted? You can do what you want but this is just silly.
"Hey guys I don't like the content on the front page"
"Ok uh, well thats what users wanted to see so... You're outvoted"
"But I don't like it"
"You can curate your communities I guess?"
"But so many people disagree with me and I don't like it, it must be site wide collusion to manipulate the content because that's way more likely than people just generally disagreeing with me"
".... Ok bud well bye"
"But wait I don't like it it challenges my preconceived notions"
Well, that isn't at all what happened, but okay. This was a platform discussion and probably beyond most users here even understanding. Not because they're stupid but because they don't really understand how social media algorithms and rules work to curate content in certain ways.
If you wanted to ask about algorithms or if mods/admins can manipulate content then you can just ask that. Instead you asked if the platform was biased, and brought up negative trump posts as an example. Of course people thought you were upset because the dear leader was being smeared. Just ask the damn question without all the "ok but the biden stuff is just as bad and also this isn't about politics, now lets talk about politics as an example of the bias I'm seeing"
Can you see how taking the question of "does this website allow vote manipulation by admins or have algorithms biased against certain viewpoints" and framing it around "I see a lot of negative posts about the man being indicted for an attempted coup, and that feels wrong" might give people the impression your just upset people are shitting on trump?
We know how social media works that's why many of us are here. To avoid the algorithm rage baiting bullshit. And you walked in like "hey folks do you guys just manipulate information here? I feel like you do. Here's a highly controversial example where I feel you are. But please don't bring up my example, because its not about politics"