I’d like to start a series seeking viewpoints from across the political spectrum in general discussions about modern society and where everyone stands on what is not working, what is working, and where we see things going in the future.
Please answer in good-faith and if you don’t consider yourself conservative or “to the right”, please reserve top-level discussion for those folks so it reaches the “right” folks haha.
Please don’t downvote respectful content that is merely contrary to your political sensibillities, lets have actual discourse and learn more about each other and our respective viewpoints.
Will be doing other sides soon but lets start with this and see where it takes us.
The biggest problem by far in my opinion is the “political correctness” and the one-sided discussions. Everyone just wants to circle jerk in their own bubble. Be it left or be it right. Both have the same problem and both keep banning the other and escaping to new social media bubbles in the process (e.g., truth-social).
Lemmy tends to be rather left-wing, at least most mods are. I tend to be a bit more right. I’m not racist, not against lgbtq and not insulting anyone personally. Yet, whenever it’s about politics, I have to be very careful how I voice my opinion because the moment I’m disagreeing with any of the mods on the slightest, most irrelevant neuance, I’m being banned or the comment deleted. Everyone is just immediately judgy if you don’t say it exactly as you mean it. This is really hard and annoying for me as a non-native speaker. This has not always been like this eventhough my views haven’t changed at all. It’s getting more extreme recently and I’m getting tired of it almost to the point of leaving Lemmy. We’re seing new social medias like truth-social form for that exact reason. And this kills the internet and it kills political discourse!
The solution: hear EVERYONE out. EVERYONE. Only remove obvious bots and propandists from certain countries from the equation. You can easily filter these two out by just looking at their profile history. You’re allowed to downvote (that’s what the button is for). You can reply. If you feel insulted, tell them or insult back. Don’t be a man-baby and bitch about everything you disagree and stand your ground! If you don’t want anyone to radicalize, this is the only solution. We need every spectrum here. Everyone except for the bots!
Lemmy in particular seems to have a high percentage of reasonable people. As in people who can be reasoned with, but might just be stuck in a ideological rabbit hole. I’ve found that by dropping hostility and acknowledging common ground I can quickly turn an argument into a productive discussion, where both sides learn something. This happens with people who are on the left or right of myself. So it’d be shame to overly ban one side and lose that.
It equally must suck for the mods, because I’ve seen some very very vitriolic comments here, again, on both sides. Removing these comments helps cool people’s heads, but unequal enforcement may be an issue. I’m also generally against censorship, I just absolutely hate the platform when some stupid toxic divisive topic/meme gets posted everywhere for like a month. I really don’t know where I stand on removing comments or banning people, seems like a fine line to walk
Yeah, the question “when to ban something” is indeed a tricky one.
I propose that all good-faith arguments must be allowed, no matter whether they advocate for sovjet communism (so called tankies) or ultra-liberal capitalism or what.ever.
The only reason to ban something is if it’s personally insulting (e.g. non-sarcastic name-calling) or having the direct intention to hurt someone.
I very much agree with you that people need to grow thicker skin and learn to listen. This entire ban thing is causing pillarization and polarization in society. Unless that tide turns, I see that ending in a civil war, all will lose.
However, that thicker skin goes for both sides. Whenever I’m in a more conservative area of the net, I quite quickly get banned for having the wrong opinions. I’m sure the left side started this easybanning but the right side has caught up there.
Also what is not helping is tht the conservative part of US politics has been taken over by actual extremists, in large part helped by polarizing “news” sources like Fox and oan and the such. These sources have shit to do with news and merely exist to rile their base and make people more resentful of “the left” or whatever that it supposed to be.
Now you have trump in there as well, he just had a nice public talk with a guy who wants to stone gays to death… What am I even supposed to do with THAT?
How is anyone supposed to have a normal conversation anymore when everyone immediately jumps to extremes?
Yeah, jumping to extremes is indeed a problem for serious, honest discussions.
IMO there’s just too much money that “news” sources make by being polarizing. They know it increases their view-counts. And to them, that’s all that matters.
I think we need neutral, neutrally-financed news sources. Question is just, how do we organize that?
What is your opinion about “woke”?
I’m hearing this everywhere but honestly I have no idea what that actually means. I’m from Europe.
This makes sense because you imply that political correctness is bad. But in the US a disturbing pattern has emerged that the racists and bigots complain that when they’re called out for their views, it’s because of too much “political correctness’”. It’s hard to fight for someone’s right to speak and engage with equal weight when all they’re doing is spewing hateful bigotry.
I’ve seen this mentality quite a lot online, and amongst a few of my friends, and I strongly disagree. One of the best things about the Internet is that anyone is free to create their own space and treat it however they want. The Fediverse is a natural extension of that idea, allowing anyone to make their own website and federate it into the larger community. But the community should be allowed to reject people. I wouldn’t tolerate someone who walked into my house and started arguing with me.
The community will naturally form spaces that are open to discussion, but I don’t think that should be forced. If the larger community agrees that there should be no outside discussion and you disagree with that, find a different community or make your own. Not all spaces are meant for everyone and that should be fine.
I recognize that larger communities build traction, but that can be disrupted (see Reddit / Lemmy & Twitter / Mastodon). I don’t think people will radicalize just because they push out people who they don’t want in their online spaces, especially since the Internet is so widely connected through federation, screenshots, link sharing, and even telling stories.
I don’t want to say that you’re not allowed to have your opinions and feel displeasure with the way Lemmy is moving, but I do want you to know that you can create your own community, either through your own hosted server or through a server that shares your worldview. The Fediverse is larger than lemmy.world and it’s up to you to find a place that you feel comfortable and accepted.
These two things are inherently contrary.
The way Lemmy is built, with treads and text based, it should be a forum where people discuss different topics. The problem is, it’s not. Everyone just wants to circle-jerk but says they are open for discussion. But they are not. People go the way of least resistance and nobody wants to truely argue.
This is the way it is right now and I don’t see how it will change in the future unless people start accepting some level of toxicity and get out of their comforty zone.
That is my opinion at least. I’m glad I’m not banned for this yet. And I’m glad that people respond and upvote and downvote. I actually enjoy getting the downvotes too because it means people read it and reflect on it. This is the way it should be. Talk, be heard, vote, respond, accept.
You can have multiple spaces in a community. Some for discussion, some not for discussion. You can also have different communities, some that allow discussion and some that don’t. To expand on the house analogy, if someone walked into a Star Wars themed bar with a shirt reading “Star Trek is the superior sci-fi show” and people got mad and tried to force the Star Trek to leave, they would be justified. That example is overly dramatic, but there are spaces online and offline where people want to enjoy or discuss a thing and should not have to be subjected to people who disagree with them. If some wants discussion, they can create a new space and advertise that space as friendly and open to discussion.
This post is a perfect example of being a space open to discussion. The OP wanted discussion and so people come in with that mindset. But if the OP said “What’s everyone favorite fruit?” and someone commented saying “I hate fruit”, that comment would not be appropriate for the post. It would be off topic and inflammatory and likely be cleaned up (removed) by a moderator. I know people believe that moderators can overreach, but those spaces belong to the moderators. If you don’t like how they police a community, find or make a new community.
I don’t think we should have to accept toxic behavior or content on facilitate discussions.
Perhaps the problem is that many folks are quick to label anything they don’t immediately understand or agree with as toxic, and if that’s what you mean I agree we need less of that.
That’s what I mean.
Sometimes people say somewhat radical things that aren’t meant to be toxic but come off as toxic. If we could just replace all of that biased political hate in the discussions with curiosity for the other’s opinion, then the internet would be such a great place.