Lemmy is always going to lean more radical than other platforms. Not only is the lead dev a Communist, but to pick Lemmy over Reddit is an ideological choice to begin with. There is an ideological barrier to entry, and this won't change until Reddit goes under.

I'm here because I DON'T want to have to read fucked up opinions. People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.

I'm all for difference of opinion, but not when one of those opinions is "we should oppress LGBT people" for example. 10-15 years ago, I'd have been more receptive to discussing opposing opinions, but shit has changed. A lot of those opposing opinions are now simply unacceptable to even entertain, because they've become a real, actual threat to my well-being. People aren't discussing tax policy anymore, they are discussing imposing states of emergency to do some kind of purge on undesirables.

Some people call it an echo chamber, I just call it chilling and having fun with like-minded people. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what forums have always been.

Echo chambers are never good, no matter the politics. Just reading this comment thread is proof. Some of these comments are fucking ridiculous.

Normally I'd say it was a weakness but the right has significantly departed from reality in most countries for way too long now. It's incredibly rare to find a right-winger who can be present in a discussion without spewing a whole lot of vile conspiracy hate fascist bullshit.

So I find their absence refreshing, desirable and a strength of Lemmy.

I don't care so much about the range of political views, just the quantity of them.

Too many people on Lemmy make their political ideology their entire identity, and it's just freaking exhausting.

Can we not just be people talking to other people about cool stuff? I just get sick of political ideologies masquerading as people.

Mostly mixed. The way i think it's a weakness is because I'm an anti authoritarian leftist, and i'd like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy. Despite hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy thriving, Solarpunk and dbzer0 feel a little lacking community wise. I'd also like a diverse political community, in general.

Another con is that if you even just disagree with a [bastard] moderator, they'll immediately ban you. Happens on lemmy.world with being anti-zionist, happens on lemmy.ml under the guise of 'rule 1' for literally just criticizing a mod such as dessalines.

But i also think it's a pro due to the lack of far-right content on lemmy. I remember on reddit casually seeing disgusting content, such as blatant racism (Such as arabs being called sand n-rs, Or racism against asians/immigrants in general on r/canada + r/europe) and most of that is obscure on lemmy.

I'm not denying that the Lemmy community doesn't have problems, Lord no. But it's much better than most other platforms.

I find the limited political knowledge a far bigger concern. The US has taken perfectly acceptable words and butchered them: liberal, libertarian, conservative, left, fascist, socialist etc mean different things inside the US to what they mean everywhere else. I reckon US political language hasn’t butchered itself - there’s a plan in there somewhere.

Weakness, If you're here for anything other than the narrow view.

Even if you're here for the the narrow view take a moment and consider if an echo chamber is good for you.

It's a weakness in the sense that there are times this place turns into a straight-up echo chamber...

But when there is actual debate going on, it tends to be a lot more civil than on other sites (most of the time)

I think it helps to place labels onto things... and then respect those labels.

Like porn: it can get someone literally fired if they chanced upon such at work - some corpos are just looking for any excuse to cut costs, especially a repeating salary one. But so long as it is labeled, and does not appear outside of bounds... then what is the harm? (more even, studies show that places that ban porn tend to have higher rates of sexualized crime i.e. rape, so the presence of porn literally seems to help society?)

And politics: so many of us here LOVE to discuss it! But what if someone had anxiety, and could not? Could they use something like hashtags, keywords, trigger warnings I dunno, and block out most of it, for the sake of their sanity? If not, then their only recourse would be to opt-out of the Fediverse entirely, thereby taking all of the content that they would have contributed with them...

Full disclosure of my own biases: this is why I am against places such as ChapoTrapHouse from being federated with most Lemmy instances (even as I support e.g. lemm.ee's desire to keep it) - it's not that I want it to "not exist" (I've enjoyed many of my own interactions there... though it is also simultaneously true that many users from hexbear [or their alts] act as toxic bullies, ignoring people's consent outside of those spaces, despite being told explicitly not to by their admins), so much as that I want it to be properly labeled & constrained, so that someone does not walk into it unawares, not realize what it is, and then leave the Fediverse entirely having been turned away from us due to their interactions with them.

Likewise much of the content on lemmy.ml is very much not only anti-capitalist, but anti-Western - the former I sympathize with, though the vehemence with which it is delivered and especially the latter will turn people away, as it definitely has me (especially when it abuses blatantly false tropes).

And that is the identical reason why we cannot federate with conservative spaces either, if we want to survive: it is not that we want them to not exist so much as we cannot host their content here, without making THAT action a part of our own identity. And to be clear, I don't mean content such as "God loves us, each & every one of us" (that's kinda an awesome thought, is it not, regardless of what we each personally believe?), but rather "I know I speak for [my specific version of a god] when I say that he (she? it? them? other?) hates some people, especially YOUR type in particular!"

But even if we took it as a given, purely for the sake of a hypothetical argument mind you, that we actually did want some type of space to not exist, what are we going to do about it - sabotage their servers? And after they spin up new ones, with better protections - then what? No, the real recourse (imho) is to simply leave them be, yet not choose to federate their content here. We all were young & naive once too - they may grow given time, or not, but that's their business, and all we can and should (and actually MUST) control is ours.

In all of the above cases - including the pornography example - it is not what the content is (or sometimes not just that), so much as the unfriendliness of it appearing outside of bounds, causing legitimate pain and harm when it is exposed to people.

I think the way to maximize utility is to increase diversity by increasing welcomingness. Sorta like how Linux does not push people into any one distro, or window manager, or anything at all - we each are free to pursue our own paths. That's fucking awesome!:-P

Lest anything think that I've refused to answer the question: it is both. Our (future) political diversity can both be a wedge driven between us - if we allow that to happen naturally - or else a source of strength, e.g. to allow a centrist person to post content unrelated to their political beliefs (woodworking? a game community?), so long as they are respectful of other people's beliefs in the process. We don't all have to like one another, just get along. In diversity we find strength... or we could, if we did it right, i.e. if only the ones offered in good faith were allowed to stay while all others given the boot, and even then they need to remain within their allotted lanes.

Preemptively to the people who will scroll to the bottom of this, see me saying that diversity is a strength, and comment or just downvote and move on without bothering to read the rest: fuck you. But to anyone willing to offer a good-faith critique: I am listening.

I don't see it as either. I don't come to social media to engage in political discussions, so for me, the bigger issue is the lack of thriving communities around topics outside of national/world politics and technology. I'd love to see more places like startrek.online.

I just wish the top posts on the meme pages were more than just an anti-capitalist caption and a vaguely related image.

I think it's a strength because I don't want to chat with fascists, thanks

For attracting new users, the extreme views of the majority of users on this platform are detrimental. I personally very much dislike how one-sided all platforms are now. They lean heavily to one side or the other, which isn't an accurate representation of the world. Most people are somewhere in the middle, yet online they're expected to behave according to the platform's presiding mindset or be shouted down.