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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Not really. I mean that "because..." part.
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new. It's part of its lifestyle. EVERY new, massive social "site" (or online service) is expected to be left-leaning by default. It may later change its political viewpoint, but in its relative infancy it's left.
Rightism is more about actions taking place in real-world. As such, the technology isn't perceived as more than a tool, used for specific purpose only, rather than part of, or the foundation of a lifestyle.
...and of course there's a plethora of alternative political views, options and convictions that are a mix of either extremes of the spectrum - if you meet a person online, it shouldn't be surprisied to learn about "pro-life", but also "anti-Trump" and similarly puzzling approaches to various aspects of life.
tl;dr: it's not about bots. It's because Lemmy/Mastodon isn't popular enough to serve as a tool for right-wing politics.
I don't know, there has always been a huge libertarian contingent of the tech industry as well. I'm not sure which is bigger. I hope the leftism.
Yeah crypto bros aren't exactly leftist, neither is the hypercapitalist Silicon Valley crowd, and I've encountered plenty of other tech enthusiasts with worrying opinions.
I feel that comment is on the vibe of “liberals are leftists”.
Edit: “that comment” as in the one above the one I’m replying to…
Libertarians are not leftists.
Ayn Rand style, "Don't tread on me" objectivists, no. But they just co-opted the term. Libertarianism is pretty much anarchism, which is incomoatible with right wing beliefs, no matter what an-caps try and tell you. A right wing social order necessitates hierarchy, which anarchism is diametrically opposed to.
Libertarians promote "natural" hierarchy; the ones based on slavery, inheritance, and other mechanisms of white supremacy. And ultimately, the hierarchy of money which translates to power. To say they don't believe in hierarchy when they're the party of the robber baron who believe the bosses have the right to murder striking workers, even child workers, is frankly silly.
It's not on anarchist ideology really because of this and only appeals to disinfranchised people if they haven't bothered to do the math.
It's like you only read two words of my comment. The dickhead rightoidswho call themselves libertarian are NOT libertarian. It is a left wing ideology. You cannot have a society that is both right wing and libertarian. It is impossible.
That is exactly why those fuckheads bring in bullshit like "natural hierarchy", to jam their square beliefs into the round hole that is a classless ideology.
They took a word that already had a meaning, and tried to invert it.
Yes, it is beyond bonkers to suggest that crypto fascists want to flatten hierarchies. That is why it's maddeningly stupid for them to call themselves libertarians. Agreeing with them and calling them libertarians is just feeding their lie.
My point was that anarchism is not compatible with capitalism because capital is a form of hierarchy.
And I read your post. Yes, tea party libertarians ultimately lean more big government authoritarian than strict libertarians should.
But libertarians, even ones that aren't in bed with the GOP, aren't anarchist because they ultimately use the power of money and privilege to create hierarchy and control others. They just don't want democracy (i.e. governments) interfering in that power.
That's not anarchy but feudalism.
That's exactly what I've been saying... that is why they cannot call themselves libertarians. It's a corruption of what the term means.
While yes, libertarian is originally a leftist term, that’s not what I meant.
I meant the first comment saying most people on new tech are leftists is wrong. Most people who are technophilic are liberals. As in US style Democrat liberals. Which are NOT leftists. At all.
Why on earth would you say most tech heads are liberal?
Why would you say they aren’t ? They all buy in hard into capitalism.
Where are all these leftist techies?
You think every tech enthusiast "buys hard into capitalism"?
Hyperbole my friend. Exaggeration.
But to be much more precise and literal: a good amount of them. Likely even a majority, do.
Depends on which libertarian ideology is being expressed. Left libertarians - anarcho-syndicalists libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists are all libertarians. The right wing of anarchism aren't leftists, the left wing are.
Communism and libertarianism have nothing to do with each other. What are you even talking about?
I'd say I'm generally conservative and have been dabbling in alternative social media for a number of years. Some of the biggest Mastodon instances are/were right leaning. Gab.ai started off as a proprietary site and then migrated to Mastodon. Truth.social was always based on Mastodon. I've never been active on them because I don't like echo chambers though. I've never really had a desire to have my thoughts reaffirmed by strangers...
I would assume they're presence isn't felt in the fediverse because the concept of de-federating is working? Gab is likely cut off by others and truth social never federated with others to begin with. I don't think Truth ever intended to though, and really just wanted something they didn't have to build from scratch.
The only Mastodon instance I actually have an account with now is somewhat right leaning but it's not their emphasis. Even then I'm not too active on it.
From what I gather, Mastodon attracts little attention in conservative circles.
One of main reasons I've heard is that "there's hardly anyone to talk with". Beats me if it's default, general conservative opinion...
Thanks to Big tech censorship, there are lots of people who are more anti-establishment right on the fediverse. Lots of fairly large instances. Some of them are real nasty pieces of work filled with folks dropping n bombs and swastikas, some of them are filled with some of the sweetest religious right folks you ever met in your life.
I think one of the biggest differences is that you don't have the Jerry Springer algorithm trying to match up a bunch of black people with a bunch of KKK members. Most far right instances don't defederate anyone, but many of the far left instances defederate the moment anyone looks at them funny so despite sharing a platform, typically there just isn't that much engagement between the two groups. In the middle of there are instances that are more than happy to federate with both as long as they aren't too big of jerks.
Did you come up with "Jerry Springer algorithm" expression? Very apt way to express it.
After realizing that it would put a bunch of black guys and a bunch of KKK members in the same space intentionally because it drives overall engagement, it became clear that's what it was. haha
Yet despite the clear creation of echo chambers, which I think is inevitable given how freedom of association works so smoothly and easily online, the Fediverse forces them all to "live next to each other".
It's not an entirely separate service I need to go on if I want to see what all the Nazi kids are up to these days.
This forced adjacency and inability to create any blocks stronger than defederation (which is pretty weak, really, compared to what other services can do) is going to have overall beneficial effects in the long-run, I think. Though it'll certainly cause its fair share of headaches too.
I'm actually happy to see the reduction in echo chambers for myself because it does 2 things:
For someone who thinks for themselves, seeing extremism in some cases actually makes you less extreme because you see it and realize you don't agree with it at all.
I mean, they're there to talk to... If you like jacking each other off... I don't.
Both of those sites have been ostracized (defederated) from the mastodon fediverse. The mastodon fediverse is in general quite left.
Yes, I said that. Well technically I said Gab was. Truth was so forked I don't believe there was even an option to defederate them. They intended on a walled garden on their own.
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon