Not a lot of niche sub critical mass yet (though this is not its fault at all)
But holy moly, it’s a political purity test! Like, I think of myself as pretty socialist, way far off center, but I feel totally alone veering off certain topics or even acknowledging certain things! I’m (mostly) not getting banned, and I am not leaving, but still.
But holy moly, it’s a political purity test! Like, I think of myself as pretty socialist, way far off center, but I feel totally alone veering off certain topics or even acknowledging certain things! I’m (mostly) not getting banned, and I am not leaving, but still.
I saw people advocating for damaging people's Teslas and it was fucking stupid. Beyond the fact that many people are not in a position where they can just get rid of a car over political reasons, it is likely many or even the majority of Tesla owners do not vote Republican (conservatives have been much slower to adopt EVs): you're very likely going to damage vehicles owned by totally innocent people.
I own a non-Tesla EV but either way it would be excessively expensive to switch to another car on a whim, and I sure as hell am not going to deprive my family just because seeing my car's brand hurts people's feelings.
If this is your form of protest at least target someone who has materially contributed to this state of affairs, and by that I don't mean random Republican voters.
For the moment, I just don't engage in political discussion on Lemmy. It is way to extreme for me in general. It makes sense tho that those who don't feel their opinions fit anywhere else (or get them banned etc.) gather in a place that allows for freer discussion, which I think is a good thing really.
And also just posting about niche music makes me happier than getting angry online so.. That's been a good motivation.
It's not about downvotes. It is about me not wanting to spend my free time on something as pointless as arguing politics on the internet. Generally extremely unfulfilling and I feel like I lost out afterwards.
Like I get why people enjoy it but for a lot of people it is mainly a negative experience..
frankly, lemmy is literally only place I have found where you can discuss politics reasonably. I also try to rid myself of any pride about being right about anything and actually look forward to being called out if someone thinks i'm wrong. Then I can take a look at what they say and adjust my own opinions if the other guy makes sense.
Though i dont go to .ml, they seem more interested in witch hunts than making anything better.
in reddit you have to walk on eggshells when your in those subs, even if your "agreeing with everyone else", one simple misconstruement will get you banned.
in reddit you have to walk on eggshells when your in those subs, even if your “agreeing with everyone else”, one simple misconstruement will get you banned.
The rando-ban problem on reddit is its biggest flaw. I'm afraid to submit anything there. And I generally only comment in small subs.
i did that unbeknownst they were haivng a ban wave last week, and subs upping thier spam removal filters, plus they dont like if you report too much, or report something the MODS dont like, from what ive gathered if a mod responds to your "report of another player" you are mostly getting a warning, or ban from thier subreddit, and this also it constitutes as account-wide violation once you get banned by a mod for reporting someone. and its also corroborated on the "modsupport" sub that they hate having to deal with Report abuse in general.
Honestly I think your approach is closer to the ideal: it's pretty poisonous to the mind if most of the content you take in is political in nature. You need to explore other stuff too, broaden horizons and all that.
I've been learning how to design parts with CAD software and 3D print it. Also got a home server going to host games and media, among other things. These hobbies keep me sane, and that's what I'm ultimately getting at: people need to get a hobby that isn't about being mad on the internet.
Also instead of just whining on the internet, its far more effective to engage in local politics and build up a base of people there than hoping that "someone" will do "something" about the whole country. That "someone" has to come from somewhere: create the grassroots that can be the base from which change springs.
I feel like 3 kinda comes with the territory of politics. The sort of people who mod political forums have more rigid ideas of what ideas should prevail in the discourse than someone modding a board for embedded electronics, not that that's an inherently bad thing.
It just feels worse because a greater portion of Lemmy is politics; here I've caught bans for being insufficiently pro-Kamala months after the election or not going along with a china bad circlejerk, but at reddit people catch bans for "John Brown did nothing wrong" or just posting footage from Palestine.
the gaza/palestine thing is very tricky, many of the subs have been infiltrated by pro-israeli mods, early on the war, they were spamming "jews are doing nothing wrong, if we jews dont destroy them they will destroy us", i pointed out in one, where the war was instigated and started by the same person who is keeping himself out of jail in israel.
Pro-zionist sentiment was definitely prevalent on here following Oct 7th. It took many months for anti-zionist sentiment to outpace it, thanks to many people debunking their misinformation and sharing articles that showed the reality that most Western Media downplayed if not ignored
On places like reddit, we mostly continue to see more and more banning of anything anti-zionist. r/Palestine might be the only place left that isn't aggressively pro-zionist on there
on r/worldnews my whole acct was suspended for 7 days for contradicting bibi, and HAMAS, who started the war, the commentor threw a fit and made a nasty comment and reported me, sometimes you can tell who reported you by looking at your previous message.
Adi Callai has done a phenomenal analysis of the situation, The Gaza Ghetto Uprising. I highly recommend if you're interested.
Reddit is a lost cause, seeing how worldnews was regulated to promote Zionist disinformation was enough for me to leave. I think the kind of open source and federated communities such as Lemmy have much potential. Hard to say if they will be or not when it comes to genuine organization of working class people, but hopefully it can help in some way.
I’ve caught bans for being insufficiently pro-Kamala
I talked some shit during the election and didn't cop a ban lol. I guess you either had more visibility or were in even more extreme places than I was?
Apparently anyone not wanting to live in a grey soviet tower block and have all their worldly possessions be redistributed by the state is a "fucking Lib"
People who call themselves "leftists" and hate "liberals" are almost always Stalinists or Communists. "Left" is actually a word that covers an entire spectrum of left of center: liberals, ultraliberals, and radical.
The irony is that the Stalinists are using a misleading inclusive word "leftist", but historically Stalin and Lenin considered all the other leftist parties in Russia to be their main enemy, not people on the right. Members of these 2 leftist parties were their very first victims. All of them were killed or sent to the Gulag. And then later Stalin made an alliance with Hitler.
I’ve gotten banned somewhere for ostensibly malicious ninja editing, can’t even remember the community, but I do remember the topic. I dared clarify some factual thing.
But it wasn’t part of a particular bandwagon of hate, so no dice.
i argue that there arent really any niche communities. if I see a site with slow and limited posts, and 0 comments on most of those posts, can I really call that a community? i like video games and furry stuff. the video game and furry stuff sites have next to nothing on them. apparently the only 'geeks' here are Linux users who only talk about Linux distros or tankies who hate everyone and everything
I need to force myself to post/comment more in these subs though. Like I am trying to keep an eye on /c/thelastairbender for instance, but there are more.