oh 100% i avoid it completely. i advocate for things in my own space and my own community. I'm not wasting my time talking about this shit online with any of you. i already know what im doing in november and i know what i gotta do in my local community and i dont give a flying fuck what anyone on here has to say about any of it. aint trying to change a bunch of random stranger's minds (especially when i know we already pretty much agree on all the shit im already going to be doing)
and instead of policing my communities to attempt to help create a politically tasteful environment for myself, id rather just ... fucking avoid completely any political environment. problem solved, life easy
No. Being politically active is of the upmost importance to me right now. I'm exhausted, but this election year is a matter of survival for queer people.
Look if somebody is spewing propaganda and nobody is there to report the person to the mods and/or provide an opposing comment then the propaganda is going to run wild
I think you overstate how significantly social media impacts your local community and livelihood. like, it does, but not nearly as much as what you could do out in the world
I try to (except from here I guess). I feel like a lot of political discussions here lack any nuance, and are often very US-centric. I'm moderately left wing myself, but I still often feel like I have little in common with the sometimes extremely left viewpoints here. They are usually also seem to be defended in a very black and white way. If you don't agree you're quickly deemed a fascist or nazi.
Honestly, I feel like online discussions often don't really achieve anything. Differing opinions are downvoted and often met with name-calling or accusations. I'd rather discuss in-person with friends and colleagues across the political spectrum, that tends to actually lead to a friendly sharing of thoughts rather than the unsatisfactory hate spewing you get online.
I only avoid discussions with the hardcore leftist anarchist/communist groups because there is a big overlap between those communities and absolutely brain dead moderation policies.
Comments that have been removed/gotten me temp banned from Lemmygrad and .Ml include:
“millions of people died under Stalins rule”(banned, “misinfo”)
Someone commented “nuke Texas”
I said something to the effect of “yes blow up the 49% of Democratic voters”
-comment removed, comment calling to nuke Texas left up
Having comments edited by bots and mods so you don’t hurt anyone’s fee fees
There are other examples if I go through the mod log. Lemmy.Ml in particular takes an absolutely wild amount of mod/admin actions compared to any instance.
Tl;Dr: yes but not because of politics, because Lemmy leftists are the fucking worst
Not necessarily, but I do engage less with it because there seems to be a lot of group think here (seems the majority are leftists and alternative viewpoints get downvoted).
If it was more distributed across the political spectrum, I might be more interested.
if a dozen people independently decide that your ideas are indefensible, to you that looks like a group, but really it's just a bunch of people reading something shitty. to dismiss that as "group think" sort of highlights something about you more than the platform, doesn't it?
You seem to be assuming the platform is a random, representative sample of the general population, which I don't think holds up. I think it's much more likely that there's a reason the platform skews left, and my guess is that it's a mix of:
the devs are pretty hardcore socialists, so the people who could put up with that in the early days were left-leaning - this is backed up by lemmy.ml generally being more leftist than most other instances
people too far right for other platforms probably already left for places like Truth Social, Voat (is that still a thing?), and similar platforms
people too far left for other platforms didn't have a clear place to go AFAICT
people annoyed by Reddit's corporatism probably lean more left on average; Reddit already leans left, so this would attract the more extreme of that population
That's my take. I honestly don't read too much into it, so I generally don't bother with the political posts because the discussion seems a bit too group think-y to really be constructive.
If you have statistics from a broad, random sample that demonstrate that lemmy opinions are well distributed, I'm happy to change my mind. But "eat the rich" as a meme here really isn't a thing I've experienced in real life, so I really don't think lemmy is all that politically diverse.
Block certain communities, block certain people that sometimes go outside them with political posts. I'm guilty of that now and then so you should block me to.
My bad, I am posting while on my breaks at my part time jobs so sometimes I screw up. But lemmy is for everyone, you should make it how you want. Start utilizing the tools here to shape it your way.
I hate politics because it's always the same argument; one side believes that humans are people and deserve to have rights, and the other doesn't. The fact there is even an argument over this shit at all makes me want to just blow this entire planet to fucking pieces.