Nah, I just find amusement in someone who ostensibly considers themselves political (volunteers for the Dems!) being affronted when accurately told that being leftist entails more than what talk about on NPR and NYT. Even the Wikipedia summary of leftism states the modern left is anti-capitalist and liberalism is “center-left” at best. It’s just an example of the allowed spectrum of opinion and an example of how much the politico class ignores political theory outside that spectrum.

And we push back on it because allowing the right wing, mainstream media, and liberal parties to define liberalism as the left is exactly what helps push the Overton window to the right.

Instead of running away when confronted with that fact and creating a space for centrists to feel more comfortable, maybe y’all could listen instead.

No. My point was that as Reddit became more mainstream, it became more conservative. As it became more conservative, more conservative spaces were created like the Donald and gamergate subs. And people and ideas from those spaces ended up seeping into other “non political” subs, like technology, gaming, movies, etc.

The amount of xenophobia, transphobia, anti-feminism, etc. I saw in general purpose subs grew post Digg migration, especially in gamer subs as gamergate happened in 2014.

Conservatism and centrist liberalism are the dominant political beliefs in the US, UK, and seemingly most of Europe too. Those voices will outnumber and browbeat leftist voices over time if they join an online platform en masse, in my experience.

No one is going to change the world by posting. Very few people have the time or energy to discuss or debate every day. I’d rather just not deal with an entire host of opinions and takes that I already deal with every day in real life.

What I’ve learned over my time using sites like Digg and Reddit is that allowing conservative views to fester and form their communities on a platform allows them to organize and grow and seep into other “non political” spaces. The Donald, gamergate, transphobia, general reaction, whatever.

And the “anti-politics” enlightened centrist types are enablers that allow this.

If people come here and go “wow they sure are critical of Israel, America, Trump, and billionaires. I hate this”, then they’re self selecting themselves from joining and I just don’t think that’s a loss.

The measurement of a platform to me is the quality of the users, not the quantity.

Lol @ “who volunteered for the Democrats”. Ain’t that a microcosm of every American politico (especially Democrats) ignorant of actual political theory.

Imagine getting upset that someone accurately described “leftism” to you. I can only imagine it’s major cognitive dissonance after a lifetime of consuming mainstream political media calling liberalism “leftist” and pushing the overton window right.

Lemmy.world already is the “normie” instance catering to liberalism. Your friend either ran into the more progressive parts of that instance or an actual leftist from a federated one. Either way, they got told an accurate take.

Anyway, can we please stop all the attempts to make this place comfortable for conservative and right wing views in the name of “growth”? Have y’all actually been on a default subreddit in the last 15 years? Would that be worth it here?

Sounds to me more like it’s getting worse then, not better.

I don’t listen to podcasts often. But I like:

• Citations Needed: a podcast about media. Basically goes into how media covers some events and topics from a leftist perspective.

• Cane and Rinse: video game discussions and analyses. Each episode covers a specific game

I’m sure there are fine people on Reddit who don’t know about Lemmy, but your quoted examples consist mostly of certain type of faux-“apolitical” person and that’s where the solutioning is stemming from.

I don’t think bringing the average default sub Redditor over would be a net positive for the platform.

Sounds like we’re filtering out the exact type of people I would never want to come from Reddit. Dunno why y’all want them.

Anarchists discuss basically all of that and aren’t right wing

deleted by creator

Why don’t you first?

If anything is too bad, it’s .world being so prominent.

Half this comm’s activity is spreading FUD about the platform and being a gathering place for all the people developing their alternatives to huddle and advertise those.

Change your default sort.

Yeah whatever, that’s a feature. Reddit became worse once it became a safe place for conservatives and center-right liberals to gather.

Conservative, TheDonald, KiA, red pill, et. all made Reddit worse.

I don’t want a second Reddit. Can better avoid eternal September issues if they self select to fuck off

But I guess that’s what .world is for.

Because if lay users can see how I vote within the app, then I might start being harassed by people for daring to downvote them or daring to upvote someone. And may stay tracking my voting habits.

In which case, I’d probably stop voting.

Having a barrier to that info is better than no barrier even if it’s not impossible, imo.

I typically operate under the assumption that basically anything I decide to post on a public forum is not private.

Call me crazy, but I care less about the instance admins being able to see my vote history than regular users. For me the latter will produce a chilling effect on how I operate with the site moreso than the former, even if admins have more power that can be abused. I was already aware of the votes not actually being public and the idea admins could see that info seemed to be a given, but I still think there’s a difference between having a motivated malicious user go out of their way to look (making an instance, looking on a different platform, etc) vs making it simple for lay users to see that info within the platform itself (which I what I think is under discussion, currently).

And honestly, if a solution could be determined to help make votes anonymous but still allow admins/mods to deal with bots/trolls, then I’d be all for it.

Yeah, some people work. Have you read Manufacturing Consent?

Either way, the summary is pretty accurate after watching. He devoted 30 seconds to recognizing that anti communism was a major pillar of the news media back then, at least. But that is a major reflection of exactly how they weren’t “unbiased” and basically shows how the regulations and fairness doctrine did very little to expose Americans to ideas outside those accepted by the elites who owned and ran NBC, CBS, ABC, and NYT/WaPo. So to claim that it’s mostly true that they were “unbiased” back then is still a bit ridiculous after such an acknowledgement. “They were mostly unbiased unless you count mainstream, elite American opinion of the 50s/60s as a type of bias”…

Again, no look at the structure of the news media and how they treated the US government’s and major corporations’ words as a major form of sourcing, the importance and influence of advertising, etc.

He has a handful of chosen examples. Manufacturing Consent has case studies documenting coverage of specific events from these media sources.

The populace wasn’t more educated when everyone got their news from the same 5 sources (and a more educated populace is what we should want from our news media.)

They just all mostly agreed and said the same things. There was still bias, it just wasn’t as partisan and people were less likely to disagree because there wasn’t anyone saying otherwise. The faux neutrality was a facade.

If that’s the summary, then the video is overly simplistic and doesn’t understand the actual concept of media bias. The news was biased then too, especially foreign coverage, and it was biased before then. I mean, this goes all the way back to the USS Maine at the very least.

Anyone who wants to talk about media bias and hasn’t read Manufacturing Consent or other similar work needs to be banned from the topic. Learn about the propaganda model. Maybe also read about the Committee on Public Information and Edward Bernays while you’re at it.

I can’t take anyone seriously who really thinks the overall news landscape was less biased when there were only a handful of networks determining news on TV and less alternatives in the print media as well.

Edit: Longer, but better

16 years ago, that was Reddit for me.

Guess we’ll see.

Also, to push people to other instances to avoid centralization.

Best instance stays winning.