What are the biases of Lemmy?

Subject	Mentions
Pro-Privacy	2
Left-Wing	9
Anti-Capitalism	5
American	5
Older	2
Pro-Linux	3
Tech people	5
Anti-Ai	4
Pro-LBTQ+	3
Anti religion	3
Pro-Communism	3

Subject	Mentions
Nintendo hate	3
Pro-SteamDeck	1
Anti-GOG	1
PC over console	1

I'll go first.

I think there is a strong pro-Linux bias. It wouldn't surprise me if 40+% use it on here.
People from the US seem over-represented, but less so compared to Reddit
There is a far stronger anti-capitalist sentiment on here than other social media
The average age seems to be much higher. I joined when I was 16 and feel quite young unlike on other social media.

I'll add:
AI bad
Piracy ok
Political posts are more frequent (Bias towards political expression)
More tech enthusiasts
- "AI bad" overrides "Piracy ok", though. I've seen threads in the main piracy community where the general consensus seemed to be that copyright should be used as a weapon against AI.
- Piracy ok
  I'm not sure how true that is for the largest instance (lemmy.world) but apart from that it seems quite on point
I think you're right on all these points, though it depends a bit on what part of the Fediverse you're exposed to.
On the point of anti-capitalism, I agree, but (again, depending on the part of the Fediverse) there's also an incredibly high amount of open-minded people here, compared to other more mainstream social media (like Reddit). I speak much from my perspective of being from lemmy.zip, which I'm impressed by the healthiness of the community since I joined. But there are also less "healthy" instances like lemmy.ml which is considered by many to be infested with tankies (anti-capitalism?).
And yes, the average age seems to be around mid-30s to me, based solely on how people speak and what they reminisce about.
- I think what muddles the water on the "Leftwing" character of Lemmy is that there are two kinds here: those whose personal Principles (mainly around the importance reducing the suffering and increasing the happiness of others, rather than just themselves) which lead them to support leftwing policies and those support Political forces or ideologies which are deemed Leftwing, and hence see themselves as Leftwing.
  IMHO it's last group that explains in Lemmy things like authoritarian leftwingers (i.e. tankies) and people who think they're leftwingers because they tribalistically support certain mainstream political parties who claim to be Left but are at best moral liberal and even that second to their very rightwing broader stand on general Equality and quality of life for the many (such as the US Democrats, UK Labour, German SPD and so on).
  My impression is that Lemmy has a much higher proportion of Principled Left-wingers than the wider society.
  This is probably why if you're not in an instance that blocks the tankie instances, in between the tankies, the principled types and the mainstream "leftwing" party tribalists it almost feels like there are 3 kinds of "Left" in Lemmy.
The average age seems to be much higher. I joined when I was 16 and feel quite young unlike on other social media.
Enjoy. Less echo bubbles. This goes in both directions, but mainly I value that younger people are able to be part of "mature conversations". Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to underestimate your worldview or anything. It's just that I'm remembering when I was around your age, the Internet was in a raw form, and it felt much like this. I was amazed to be able to talk with other adults and learn about their tastes on say books or movies when I joined some theme specific chat channel (via protocol IRC). At some point this changed drastically (e.g. Facebook connecting people from real life/ schools).. and I think nowadays TikTok, Insta, and for the most part, even YouTube are just centered around being young, pretty... very much like mainstream TV.
- Yeah, I enjoyed that about reddit at that ave too. As an isolated teen it's all I had
I agree that the average age is higher. You're the only other confirmed teenager that I have encountered while on Lemmy. I joined Lemmy when I was 17 during the Reddit emmigration.
- 16 atm.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

Most of Lemmy is anti-AI, especially generative AI.

Which seems uninformed and ridiculous as Deep Learning for classification and regression problems is an absolute valid tool that cannot be replaced anymore in many domains. I don't care about LLM bullshit, but being "against Deep Learning in general" is stupid.
- Nobody* is talking about machine learning when they say “AI” these days. They mean LLMs and generative AI and especially the way it is being forced into everything and destroying the environment to do so.
  not literally; there is certainly at least one person out there who objects to machine learning, deep learning, or whatever you want to call it. However this is not the general sentiment.
- Biases are indeed usually uninformed and ridiculous.
- Anti ai nowadays almost exclusively means the over insertion of llms into ordinary life and/or the over trust of a blackbox computer program. People aren’t throwing hands because of alphafold as much as they are a prime minister using a language model to make policy decisions
- Oh are those the ones being shoved into all our orifices?
Are people anti non-generative AI? Or is broader AI just getting dragged in to the justified anti genAI sentiment?
- I think it's both. Some people dislike all AI because of generative AI like LLM's, but many people seem to care about making the distinction between generative AI and traditional ML.
- Are people anti non-generative AI? Or is broader AI just getting dragged in to the justified anti genAI sentiment?
  I formed this question to myself and was about to post it, but then I remembered Lemmy also hates self-driving cars which are likely Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) or Recurrent Nerual Networks (RNN) which are not part of Generative AI at all.
Yes, a lot more compared to other social media. Especially LLM's and other generative AI ran by big corporations. There are some AI communities on here, but they're all mostly focused on hosting/running it yourself.
Isn't the dbzero Lemmy instance pro AI?
Too much negative experience with reddit using AI to moderate

People before profit.

Cities should be walkable

AI as we know it was unethically developed and is more marketing than solution.

Trans rights are human rights. Even more, gender is a spectrum, so everyone really, is a tiny bit trans.

Fuck Israel.

Punch fascists.

Instant nudeln eignen gut für MaiMais

How is everyone a tiny bit trans, as you say? Genuinely curious since everything else you said resonates quite strongly with me, I'm just not sure what you mean by that point in particular.
- It’s a spectrum so there are two extremes, you’re either at one extreme the 100% pure male or the other the 100% pure female. There can only be one person at either end. Therefore unless you, particularly, are one of the extremes (and let’s be honest those two people have no clue it’s them) you are on the spectrum somewhere in between. Meaning you are a tiny bit trans.
I mean if this was an ad for Lemmy, it would work on me. Though I'm not sure what the fuck the last one is but it sounds fun anyway, Melden Sie mich an.

Lemmy prefers Star Trek over Star Wars.

Unfortunately it's just harder to be a Star Wars fan since Disney bought it.
- Unfortunately it’s just harder to be a Star Wars fan since Disney bought it.
  Paramount is trying very hard to create the same difficulty to love Star Trek with their Section 31 movie.
- Disney ruined it.
- As opposed to the easy time to be a fan, like during the "Meesa propose..." speech.
I'm a both-sides-kind-of-guy on this issue
- As an avid fan of both since I was a kid, I don't think these two are really at odds with each other.
I'm more a The Expanse type of person
- I’m more a The Expanse type of person
  So say we all! Oh wait, that's a different one too...
I like both, the new series they're doing in wars have been great
But what about Star Gate?
- Touché! I would argue 'Gate has better representation on Lemmy than 'Wars. "Would you not agree, Daniel Jackson?" /Teal'c
- Probably not big enough fan base as it's quite niche, only ever was on Syfy and usually on cable. Trek and wars had more lore and cinema.

It is very left, sometimes infuriatingly so when the people here defend autocratic countries such as Iran.

Or communists defending the CCP seemingly entirely due to their name
- That's mostly .ml users not most of Lemmy and none of PieFed
- Wait til they hear the CCP is more capitalist than actually communist, of course they don't read up on history
"Maduro must have won the election fair and square because the US said he didn't."
Always will be that way, too.
IIRC, Lemmy.ml was the first instance; the ones who built Lemmy. We're kind of the "normies" who've invaded their space.
I appreciate them for building Lemmy and letting it remain free ("freedom" free). Still, I'll argue with people who are saying crazy stuff like NK being a good place for its citizens to live...
Arguing that Israel and the US shouldn't indiscriminately bomb Iran is not the same as defending their leadership.
- I've seen both.

Lemmy is not neurotypical and it shows up with various discussions. Discussions here tend to assume autism or AuDHD as typical behavior, when it is only typical for the group of people assembled here.

Also half of all lemmings are transgender. No idea why.
- Woke and DEI, is why. Now put the damn socks on and get to work. Once Arch is installed, you may indulge in one Blåhaj
- Trans people are almost attacked or banned all other platforms or at least astroturfed, it does make sense

anti religion.
full of leftists or liberals
people are more concious about their personal data.

More leftists, fewer liberals.

IMHO Lemmy feels similar to how Reddit felt 10-15 years ago. The community seems closer to my age. The population is smaller. The content is less formulaic.

The biases shown here feel like a distillation of the broader internet (similar to what Reddit used to be). We like animals and nature, we hate intrusive powerful forces like large corporations or invasive governments. We share a shit-post-y sense of humor. We tend to lean left politically. We love to feel like we know more than we actually do.

On any given subject, if you ask “What would the internet think about this?” you will probably find that same opinion reflected strongly here.

The community seems closer to my age.
I feel like the community is split between 25~40s and pre-teens, lol
Though to be fair, it feels like a 70:30 split.
There are a lot of Reddit refugees here. Many came over because Reddit sucks. Others came during the API debacle. Some seem to have come here because they were banned from Reddit due to not really knowing how to follow the social rules of the internet.
The AskLemmy Community, for example, will have posts like this next to each other (if you sort by New):
What's the biggest issue you've seen when someone tried to shift to Linux?
Why do older people say im mature for my age but my friends still say things like hey buddy/pal??
It just struck me from the comments on this thread, but I think there's a correlation between the feeling of reddit 10-15 years ago and the average age here.
If we go by the estimates that most people are 25-45 around here, that's all of us that were probably hanging out on early reddit 10-15 years ago. Like, I joined reddit when I was about 17, I'm 33 now and moved here a year ago and definitely feel those early reddit vibes. It feels similar because that was us. Am I talking crazy?
- Nah, you are speaking sense. I think Lemmy was really pitched as a Reddit alternative (or at least that was my experience)and it makes sense that the first flood of people who got excited about that are people who miss how Reddit used to feel.

I've run into:

Pro-liberalism
Pro-LGBTQ+
Pro-Linux
Pro-Communism/Socialism
Pro-Agnostic
Pro-Indie(movie and video games)
Pro-Body Autonomy
PC Master Race

This probably sounds like a dodge of an answer, but...

It depends on the Lemmy instance. Some are anarchistic, some are very left wing anti-establishment, some are hardcore tankies, and I've heard somewhere there's a right-wing instance? Some hate certain technologies, some love those technologies, etc.

I don't think it's realistic to lump all Lemmy instances (and users) together under a single ideological umbrella. That's like lumping everyone from America or any other county together for their opinions.

.world is the right wing instance
- I'm on .world, and I'd happily throw all the billionaires into an industrial shredder.
- This brings up another facet: when it comes to ideological biases it's all subjective.
  I consider lemmy.world slightly left of center overall, but again with important caveats that some communities within it are pretty left wing and some are pretty right wing. But maybe to someone pretty far on the left of the political spectrum the instance seems very right wing, while to someone pretty far to the right it seems like almost everyone are 'rabid pinko commies'.
  Basically, things are more complicated than they may look.
- I wouldn't put it that far, they are closer to reddit
- I've been on .world for over a year now and haven't really seen anything I'd call blatantly right-wing. But if this is right wing and the rest of lemmy is even more leftist, I'll gladly join the rest of yas elsewhere.

World == USA

Incredible US bias here to the point where many discussions completely ignore the existence of the rest of the world.

Lemmy is actually worse than reddit here. The only network that at least tries to be cosmopolitan is Mastodon and that's why it just feels so much healthier there.

I mentioned how HDDs could be broken down fpr secure data erasure and then trashed (read recycled).
Lemmy user immediately read and assumed "landfill".
Well...There are countries in the world that don't have massive landfills (we in Germany replaced those with coal mine pits :p)
mastodon is the least usable fediverse app, idk how yall get an interesting feed on there, still no quote posts is wild
Yeah. I've had several discussions talking about what happens in other countries and someone starts complaining about how it is typical American behavior.

Clearly a severe leftist bias. Not just in the context of US politics.

It's not a bias if you're right
- No, we're left, please pay attention 🙃

Thinking we're better than everyone who's still on Reddit

It's not bias if you're right
Reddit is mostly bots, so yes it's better. Like 50% bots, and not the good kind, the one that steer the narrative to pro-right and pro Israeli . Plus reddit has done massive amounts of purges.
Reddit is full of Russian fuck bots arguing over which chump to pull one over. I don't think it's a high bar.
- R/ conservative is the most obvious one, where they completely suppressed the Epstein files discussion

Nintendo is worse than EA, Activision, Konami, Ubisoft, Epic, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Nestle, and the IDF combined.

There may be some things they do that annoy me, but there also a lot of things they do that I like, and I don't think they're anywhere near the worst in the industry right now. It is just so very tiring that it is seemingly impossible to discuss anything related to Nintendo at all without threads immediately devolving into a circlejerk about how much some of y'all hate anyone who dares to even enjoy their games.

I don't think Nintendo sucks. I'm also older and remember what they did to gaming when it started. They still put out title after title of quality games.
- They still put out title after title of quality games.
  Me doubt

Linux/SteamDeck = Good Anything else = bad

Porn games should be available for all, but GOG sucks because they did something shitty years ago.

The only thing worse than a right winger is the wrong kind of leftist. (I feel this is a global thing not only US)

Anyone who supports the current governments of Russia or China are not really leftists.

All capitalism is bad, and any attempt to rein it in is failure before any attempts.

I’ve seen people advocate for communism here and asked them to name an example of a communist government of a major country that hasn’t devolved quickly into a dictatorship, and let me tell you, the hysteria and rage could power a small city. I’m fairly progressive, I like to think, but it seems like a lot of lemmings have gone so far down the anti-capitalist rabbit hole they’ve literally come out the other side in China and are wearing Mao stickers.
- an example of a communist government of a major country that hasn’t devolved quickly into a dictatorship
  I'm not feeling rage or hysteria, but I find a number of issues with this "test" that could easily cause frustration with anyone who has major criticisms of capitalism. My response is long not because of some irrational anger, but because things are complex and nuanced.
  You consider yourself to be "fairly progressive"? I'm going to give you an analogy. It's not great, but it hits on a few major issues relevant to your "test". Imagine a MAGA fan asked you in 2026 to "name a thriving woke government agency" or "a government agency that still advocates for DEI" to make a point about your ideals. How does that sound to you?
  First, you'd like argue that the term "woke" and "DEI" means different things to different people. That the term has been transformed into some deranged negatively charged approximation used as almost a slur colloquially. The same is true for "communist/ism" and "socialist/ism". The current US "powers that be" have taken ownership of terms originally used by progressives. Woke was an "eyes open" state of awareness of the systemic racism baked into society. Now it is often considered "naively believing that forced equality makes things better". DEI was an attempt to correct these systemic issues by encouraging or even enforcing diversity in groups of people who make decisions and influence decisions. Now it, and I'd argue "Affirmative Action" as well, is starting to mean a movement to "give power/opportunity to people because they are minorities whether or not they are sufficiently qualified". Understand, I'm not in agreement with the transformation of these terms or the sentiment of the new "meanings" but I see them being used in the US in this manner more often. This makes every conversation confusing if you want to have a legitimate discussion of the ideas. It doesn't help that the terms socialism and communism were never concrete terms to begin with.
  Second, you'd be aware that there is literally a powerful force actively attempting to purge the original concepts of "woke" and "DEI" from government agencies. The current administration is working very hard to sabotage any agencies that recognize inequality or try to diversify. The administration has likely broken the law in its efforts to oust any agency leadership who promote these concepts. The administration wants to make the lives of any workers who agree with those concepts very difficult. Any agencies that are based on those core concepts are being spun down or turned into shells that somehow still have a name that implies they haven't changed but in reality their leadership is working to ensure that the agency now serves the opposite function.
  That's what it is like being openly socialist or communist in today's world. Everything bad is "socialist" or "communist" - it has been since the revolution in Russia. People have a knee jerk reaction on hearing those words. It's strongly associated with North Korea, Stalin, and the CCP. Endless stories of violent authoritarianism, surveillance states, and the suppression of free speech. Tons of media - Animal Farm, 1984. As an aside, consider the violent suppression of climate or pro Palestine protesters, or the use of surveillance technology to spy on citizens... in capitalist nations.
  Back to my point - if you are advocating for socialism, the West will work diligently to prop up existing capitalist leadership to prevent your success, possibly even help them rig elections. Propaganda will be spread among your population. If you manage to get elected, expect to be labeled extremist or even terrorist. Expect embargos, sanctions, and other economic warfare. Expect actual terrorists funded by the West to attempt to sabotage your nation. Expect or attempt to perform coups. Lobbyists would be throwing money you desperately need at your nation if it would just capitulate. Yes, even citizens might work against you because they are quite wealthy and powerful and your going to upset that. Or maybe honest citizens who've heard capitalism is great and socialism is bad and they don't want to live in a bad nation. What's the most effect method to survive a situation like that? You are under siege, paranoid, distrustful, woefully outmatched. Use your authority to defend your ideals and your hold on the government, sell out and become corrupt, or get squeezed out by a political opponent (or ally, trust noone) that is working for and funded by the West looking to restore their influence over your nation. Now you have a dictatorship.
- If they ever picked up or even looked history on communism, they would actually won't advocate for it
Don’t pay attention to the trolls from .ml and hexbear.

I haven't seen much Zionist propaganda here (unlike major subreddits, for example) and, when it is posted, it's e-boo'd with downvotes. 👍

Since the rules preclude it, we can't discuss what Lemmy is most biased about. The remaining biases tend to be in the tech/nerdcore genre, which makes sense, since many average Joe users have problems navigating the registration/instance selection process, keeping their numbers down on the platform.

Im still pretty unclear on the whole instance selection thing. I just tried a few until one worked.
If in doubt, just try it until it works. If it still doesnt work either learn why or give up.
- The secret is that it doesn't matter all that much beyond who that instance is federated with. Any of the popular ones will feel similar from the get-go and only more and more so as time goes on.
The rules specifically target US politics and I feel a lot of political bias on here goes beyond the US IMO.

For as politically Left as Lemmy tends to run there still seems to be a high level of mysoginy.

I think that comes with the techy side of lemmy. IT is still very much a male-dominated field and while it's better now than it was maybe 10 years ago, the mentality lingers and women in tech still run into a lot of misogyny. It makes sense that more tech minded users who tend to work in or have a big interest in IT have that mentality.
Even posting this, I'm a bit hesitant. To be clear, Lemmy is significantly less awful in terms of a lot of things, but I agree that I have seen some loud voices when it comes to misogyny.
- Techy bias and recruiting from Redditors in the first place
- I think that comes with the techy side of lemmy
  That's kinda what I've always figured.
  Even posting this, I'm a bit hesitant.
  Yeah, honestly surprised I haven't been hounded for even suggesting it.
Yes, but there mainly seems to be a large gender discrepancy.

In no particular order: Anticapitalist, pro LGBT+, lots of stoners, most users from Americas and Western/Central Europe, lots of computer nerds, some anarchs, some tankies, anti religion

Honestly similar to leftist parts of Reddit BUT with the voice of reason usually coming out on top in the comments. That means in comparison it's less alarmist, less extreme in general and just more nuanced.

One topic that I think is a blind spot is the anti religion part. Many users don't distinguish between anti religion and anti spirituality, the latter frankly being none of their business. It's oddly accepted to be aggressively atheist here. Another blind spot is the prevalent defeatism. It's not everyone but I don't think people are aware of what they're doing to their own mind when they only focus on bad news all day.

Two things that I haven't seen yet.

Much higher general tech and math/stats literacy than other spaces on the internet
An overwhelming hatred for Nintendo when most of the rest of the internet swallows their boot in order to play their new games because let's face it, they make some of the most well-polished 3D platformers.

The hivemind has a doublethink of "Guns are bad, police should be allowed to confiscate them" and simultaneously "Abolish the police".

Also, purity testing. The Lemmy hivemind has decreed that: if you haven't committed an assassination against a dictator, you're not a leftist, you're complicit, and you deserve to be oppressed.

Already mentioned was the pro Linux and everything else sucks. Also, the Nintendo hate.

What I haven't seen is the high acceptance/love of furry content. I didn't know people could draw animals that hot. Not that it awakened anything in me.

You made me realise all the shit I've filtered. Def a furry bias and a anime girl bias here lol

From what I've seen Lemmy is pro-EU, pro-privacy, pro-Linux, very left-leaning, anti-capitalism, and strongly anti-AI.

How much time do you have?

You can keep it to the top 3 subjects you feel differ most or haven't been mentioned in this thread

American bias, millennial bias, left wing bias

I've got 2 out of 3!

Depends where you look. I also have no idea whats that 'general Internet' you mention. I mean, what are its biases?

Holy shit, what aren't? It would be a shorter list.

Baked beans are Nature's magic vegetable

Depends which beans you’re baking

When there are human there is going to be biases

Most folks here seem to lean to a moderate left also, Conservatives are apparently grouped in with Republicans an MAGA.

While it’s nice to see the community grow there really isn’t any diversity, for lack of a better word, in the political discussions made here.

Good

+1 for:

Left-Wing

Anti-AI

Tech People

Anti Capitalism

Coming from someone left wing, messing with tech since I was a kid, terrified of late stage capitalism, and who hates Sam Altman's lying, con artist guts even more than I hate Musk.

But… jeez. I’m like a far right tech bro on Lemmy.

All of them