Hi new user here. I’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 don’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 “keep the peace”? I think this gets to the heart of the question and again, this isn’t political to me, it’s purely mechanical. I think that if a social media site has a community called “politics” that is solely made up of stories promoting one party while shitting on the other then the entire site is inherently flawed. It isn’t being genuine in what it offers and is incapable of providing it.
It’s like if you had a community named “cars” but you’re only allowed to talk positively about certain manufacturers. Imagine most people either like Ford or Chevy but on the “cars” community it “just so happens” 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 Chevy’s new SUV produces 500 horsepower? Well, that source isn’t reliable. In fact this Ford biased source did a study showing it only produces 400 horsepower. You think that isn’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 can’t just give people information and let them decide for themselves. That’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 that’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 didn’t even reply.
So what do you end up with?
You get a “cars” community, a “ford” community, and a “chevy” community but you’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 isn’t safe for humanity to let Chevy people talk about Chevy in the Chevy community. They’ve been posting unreliable sources in there, using bad language towards Ford posters, and so on. It’s a dangerous hate community so we’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 "cars" 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 won'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 don’t care about politics and you can substitute Biden for Trump and make comparisons to other social media sites. I’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 I’d like to know if this is a function of Lemmy itself like it is on Reddit or if it’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?
No. What I said is I don't like biased stories on my front page. If I see 7/20 stories hating on Trump I have to wonder, where are the Biden stories? I'd prefer to see 0/20 stories hating on Trump and 0/20 stories hating on Biden. I'd tolerate seeing 4/20 stories hating on Trump and 4/20 hating on Biden (or some ratio that isn't 100% biased in one way). I do not want one sided political propaganda being intermixed regularly into my feeds.
I mean if Biden was also being indicted for multiple felonies and being accused of basically selling out his country, you'd probably also see a few more stories hating on him no?
Those stories are occurring. See the Chinese bribery stuff or whatever. No, I'm not inviting a discussion about if this is equivalent or not. I am merely pointing out there you can go to a biased right wing social media site and it's the same thing in reverse. There is no absence of stories about corruption with Biden that are supported just as much as any stories about Trump but those stories are absent here.
But you are literally inviting a discussion about equivalency when you claim that a discussion board with a left wing bias is simply the "same thing in reverse" as a discussion board with a right wing bias.
The scale and severity of the accusations against Trump and those against Biden are on completely different levels. Trying to claim that they should be discussed or compared on similar levels is outright disingenuous.
You're implying the existence of an administrative or algorithmic bias that is somehow censoring right wing talking points while ignoring that several popular right wing talking points are of highly questionable veracity.
No, they're not. You said accusations. Remember Trump Russia? Well now this is Biden China. If you think Jan 6th was an attempted coup and that is why this is so serious then you can also acknowledge that Biden China is using the legal system to attack his political opponent, Trump, which is just as serious an accusation. It is similarly a coup like situation. Unless I misunderstand what you mean.
I'm not implying this that is already a proven reality. Both the bias censoring them and many being highly questionable. The tactic for censorship is pointing out what isn't true and ignoring the things being censored that are true. You could do the same thing for Democrat talking points, grabbing hold of the ones that are nonsense to justify censoring legitimate criticism.
It's like if someone says eating toothpaste cures COVID because their friend tried it and it worked but another person says vitamin D cures COVID here are several peer reviewed studies and you just lump all of that into a category called "COVID misinformation." That is the current situation. Meanwhile the people doing the categorizing are saying "this new experimental untested COVID vaccine will absolutely protect you and you 'WILL NOT DIE' if you take it and it's also the only way we can ever 'GO BACK TO NORMAL'" but we all know that was also utter garbage misinformation. So the problem is the censorship by those spreading misinformation who are using the toothpaste claim to suppress the vitamin D information. I don't see the problem as the toothpaste claim. People are supposed to be the most educated of any nation in the world in America they shouldn't need government backed protection from unsupported claims on the internet.
Again, the Chinese bribery stuff is a conspiracy. Why would a conspiracy get upvotes from rational people?
It's "a conspiracy"? That doesn't really mean anything. You didn't even say it's a conspiracy theory. Is Trump not being tried for a conspiracy at the moment? Not a conspiracy theory, the crime, it has conspiracy in the name. Your comment is just muddying the water. It's pretty obvious the Bidens are involved in bribery with the CCP to some degree and that is by the facts. No different than Ukraine and Burisma. Ukraine was branded the most corrupt country in the world and the Bidens just happened to be all mixed up in their energy sector and governance. This is before the latest events even.
Here is a simple example.
Biden said he never got involved with his sons business dealings. That was his cover when all the Burisma stuff came out. Well, we know factually that is a lie now. Where is the story about this specific example on the politics community here? It's a factual story illustrating Biden lied about business dealings with his son when he was questioned if these dealings could make him impartial. He lied in response to be asked if he could be impartial about Ukraine or if he might be involved financially in the situation. Where's the coverage here historically when this story broke?
It's just one of many examples of what is valid political news story about the current US President but where is it on Lemmy? Yet what I do see is 10 submissions on my front page about the same Trump story and he isn't even the current President. That is the bias and if you're not intentionally being a blind shill you can see it plainly. The question was not if Lemmy USERS are biased, obviously they are, the question is about the platform itself.
Find me one legitimate news source that states it’s “likely” that the CCP is bribing Biden.
If you are even entertaining the thought that the Trump shit is a conspiracy, you’re a joke. Listen to the tapes.
Any news source I found you would merely dismiss as not being legitimate. You don't seem to know that conspiracy is a word that means something. This is different from "conspiracy theories" the popular phrase. Trump is being charged with conspiracy... it's kind of hilarious to me you saying I'm a joke if I think the "Trump shit is a conspiracy" he's being charged with conspiracy! I think that makes you the joke because it's funny to me at least.
Not at all. Any site that is widely respected is fine. You can google news reliability websites if you’re not sure.
Who are you fuckin thanos? The world isn't balanced, both sides aren't equally shitty. Obviously you disagree, so if you don'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.
"Hey guys I don't like the content on the front page"
"Ok uh, well thats what users wanted to see so... You're outvoted"
"But I don't like it"
"You can curate your communities I guess?"
"But so many people disagree with me and I don't like it, it must be site wide collusion to manipulate the content because that's way more likely than people just generally disagreeing with me"
".... Ok bud well bye"
"But wait I don't like it it challenges my preconceived notions"
Well, that isn't at all what happened, but okay. This was a platform discussion and probably beyond most users here even understanding. Not because they're stupid but because they don't really understand how social media algorithms and rules work to curate content in certain ways.
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 "ok but the biden stuff is just as bad and also this isn't about politics, now lets talk about politics as an example of the bias I'm seeing"
Can you see how taking the question of "does this website allow vote manipulation by admins or have algorithms biased against certain viewpoints" and framing it around "I see a lot of negative posts about the man being indicted for an attempted coup, and that feels wrong" might give people the impression your just upset people are shitting on trump?
We know how social media works that's why many of us are here. To avoid the algorithm rage baiting bullshit. And you walked in like "hey folks do you guys just manipulate information here? I feel like you do. Here's a highly controversial example where I feel you are. But please don't bring up my example, because its not about politics"