Hi new user here. Iā€™ve been checking out Lemmy but the amount of bias is ruining it for me. For example the front page right now has 7 out of 20 submissions that contain the word Trump in a negative context. I donā€™t care about Trump but when the front page is all political posts attacking Trump I have to wonder about the health of the site.

In the most simple sense, could Republican submissions survive on Lemmy politics community ignoring the voting behavior or would the site and moderators itself actively suppress it to ā€œkeep the peaceā€? I think this gets to the heart of the question and again, this isnā€™t political to me, itā€™s purely mechanical. I think that if a social media site has a community called ā€œpoliticsā€ that is solely made up of stories promoting one party while shitting on the other then the entire site is inherently flawed. It isnā€™t being genuine in what it offers and is incapable of providing it.

Itā€™s like if you had a community named ā€œcarsā€ but youā€™re only allowed to talk positively about certain manufacturers. Imagine most people either like Ford or Chevy but on the ā€œcarsā€ community it ā€œjust so happensā€ that everyone there likes Ford.

You can post about Chevy but you have to be careful about how reliable the information is. You have an article that says Chevyā€™s new SUV produces 500 horsepower? Well, that source isnā€™t reliable. In fact this Ford biased source did a study showing it only produces 400 horsepower. You think that isnā€™t a reliable source? This Ford biased bias checker agrees that your Chevy source is biased but our Ford source is not biased. No, we canā€™t just give people information and let them decide for themselves. Thatā€™s dangerous. We can only give them our rock solid Ford sources in order to protect humanity.

Did you comment that you sometimes prefer Chevy for certain things? Well, in this Ford biased community thatā€™s not going to go over well. Now you have 1000 downvotes and 100 comments calling you an idiot. Try to defend your opinions? Too bad, you can only respond every 15 minutes. You have too many downvotes. Well, look at that, the dumb Chevy poster realized he is a moron and had nothing to say in response. Clearly the Ford posters were right again. After all, just look at all those downvotes and comments and the Chevy poster didnā€™t even reply.

So what do you end up with?

You get a ā€œcarsā€ community, a ā€œfordā€ community, and a ā€œchevyā€ community but youā€™re not allowed to talk about Chevy in cars. You can only organically talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. That is until the site administrators start getting involved and deciding that really it isnā€™t safe for humanity to let Chevy people talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. Theyā€™ve been posting unreliable sources in there, using bad language towards Ford posters, and so on. Itā€™s a dangerous hate community so weā€™re going to shut it down. You can talk about Chevy in the cars community if you want.

Then you get biased Ford stories under the ā€œcarsā€ community showing up on the front page. Anyone who prefers Chevy will never have their submissions seen because it is relegated to a smaller community that algorithmically wonā€™t show up. If it somehow does get big and popular enough the admins step in and boot it or artificially step on promoting it.

Again, I donā€™t care about politics and you can substitute Biden for Trump and make comparisons to other social media sites. Iā€™m simply asking if Lemmy is offering anything different with regards to this situation.

Can someone explain how it is different from the Reddit moderator and suppression rules? So far Lemmy is producing the same biased garbage I see on Reddit so Iā€™d like to know if this is a function of Lemmy itself like it is on Reddit or if itā€™s just echos of Reddit that could one day go away. Is Lemmy something new or is it just for people who loved NuReddit but are mad about the API changes?

  • Cyv_
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    7ā€¢1 year ago

    Who are you fuckin thanos? The world isnā€™t balanced, both sides arenā€™t equally shitty. Obviously you disagree, so if you donā€™t like seeing opinions you disagree with make your own instance, or leave lol. Why you still here whining when you made up your mind the moment you posted? You can do what you want but this is just silly.

    ā€œHey guys I donā€™t like the content on the front pageā€

    ā€œOk uh, well thats what users wanted to see soā€¦ Youā€™re outvotedā€

    ā€œBut I donā€™t like itā€

    ā€œYou can curate your communities I guess?ā€

    ā€œBut so many people disagree with me and I donā€™t like it, it must be site wide collusion to manipulate the content because thatā€™s way more likely than people just generally disagreeing with meā€

    ā€œā€¦ Ok bud well byeā€

    ā€œBut wait I donā€™t like it it challenges my preconceived notionsā€

    • @whyisitalways@lemmy.worldOP
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      0ā€¢1 year ago

      Well, that isnā€™t at all what happened, but okay. This was a platform discussion and probably beyond most users here even understanding. Not because theyā€™re stupid but because they donā€™t really understand how social media algorithms and rules work to curate content in certain ways.

      • Cyv_
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        5ā€¢1 year ago

        If you wanted to ask about algorithms or if mods/admins can manipulate content then you can just ask that. Instead you asked if the platform was biased, and brought up negative trump posts as an example. Of course people thought you were upset because the dear leader was being smeared. Just ask the damn question without all the ā€œok but the biden stuff is just as bad and also this isnā€™t about politics, now lets talk about politics as an example of the bias Iā€™m seeingā€

        Can you see how taking the question of ā€œdoes this website allow vote manipulation by admins or have algorithms biased against certain viewpointsā€ and framing it around ā€œI see a lot of negative posts about the man being indicted for an attempted coup, and that feels wrongā€ might give people the impression your just upset people are shitting on trump?

        We know how social media works thatā€™s why many of us are here. To avoid the algorithm rage baiting bullshit. And you walked in like ā€œhey folks do you guys just manipulate information here? I feel like you do. Hereā€™s a highly controversial example where I feel you are. But please donā€™t bring up my example, because its not about politicsā€