No. Being politically active is of the upmost importance to me right now. I'm exhausted, but this election year is a matter of survival for queer people.
Look if somebody is spewing propaganda and nobody is there to report the person to the mods and/or provide an opposing comment then the propaganda is going to run wild
I think you overstate how significantly social media impacts your local community and livelihood. like, it does, but not nearly as much as what you could do out in the world
I avoid it as much as I can. I'm not a fan of the outrage addiction, and I'm highly suspicious of gaining any reliable information about events from an echo-chamber, even if it's on "my side" of the political spectrum.
That and even if I agree with a lot of the posts you’ll notice that they’re posted by the same people at a very alarming rate. I’ve ran through and blocked anyone who posts the same topic every 6 minutes. Since then my feed has been less monotonous and slightly more authentic.
I blocked one heavy news poster and am probably about to block another. How do people reasonably find time to do this, precluding unfathomable resources and hired help to do everything but eat, sleep and excrete? Even then, why would you want to? I am a month into classes (they are depressing when you realize how business - centric and human adverse they are, but necessary for reasons), and not doing daily short walks and I already miss them. Even if reading and parsing that much news and politics is humanly possible, why would one want to do that?
I wasn't intending rudeness, and did perceive rudeness in the form of bigotry, in yours. I can see how my comment could be perceived that way, and when I feel some weird way about others, I go outside, if only for a few moments (heavy schedule for a few months). Connecting with sunshine, fresh air, green space, watching squirrels, birds, hugging my favorite tree does wonders to preserve my sanity. I hope you'll give it a try. I'm sorry I came off as rude, I was just taking a quick break between assignments, and I tend to be naturally terse, anyway, with exceptions. Like now.
Fair enough, I appreciate the explanation. I wasn't being rude either, I'm warning people about how the Kremlin and CCP use shills on social media.
They're authoritarian governments that regularly oppress, kill, lie, suppress information, and worse. They're using the age old tactic of divide and conquer on social media because they can't compete militarily. They're here on Lemmy, especially on Hexbear, lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.ml.
Maybe, maybe not. Some people really do hold those opinions, for reasons not at all related to see see pee and Russia. Maybe they just noticed Big Business and billionaires get privatized profit and socialized loss while everyone else loses homes, then get criminalized for homelessness.
I'll say it again: we need to push hard to effectively address and correct conditions of despair, instead of criminalizing symptoms of despair.
No, not maybe. Definitely. But yes, they often highlight legitimate issues, including corporate influence on politics, obscene wealth inequality, and mistreatment of some classes of people.
I asked in a similar thread a while ago and the answer is no, you have to type them each out and as for importing you need to go into each user to block.
Specifically on lemmy, I tend to keep it to a minimum. Lemmy seems to have an issue with one-sided discussion and lack of nuance, even ourside of the blatant propaganda.
Outside of Lemmy, I follow it, but try to keep it to a low rumble seeing as I can't really have any effect on it in my country.
I try and inject nuance into what tends to be mono-culture leftist discussions and/or propaganda more often than not. However, it rarely results in anything but my own frustration.
Not necessarily, but I do engage less with it because there seems to be a lot of group think here (seems the majority are leftists and alternative viewpoints get downvoted).
If it was more distributed across the political spectrum, I might be more interested.
if a dozen people independently decide that your ideas are indefensible, to you that looks like a group, but really it's just a bunch of people reading something shitty. to dismiss that as "group think" sort of highlights something about you more than the platform, doesn't it?
You seem to be assuming the platform is a random, representative sample of the general population, which I don't think holds up. I think it's much more likely that there's a reason the platform skews left, and my guess is that it's a mix of:
the devs are pretty hardcore socialists, so the people who could put up with that in the early days were left-leaning - this is backed up by lemmy.ml generally being more leftist than most other instances
people too far right for other platforms probably already left for places like Truth Social, Voat (is that still a thing?), and similar platforms
people too far left for other platforms didn't have a clear place to go AFAICT
people annoyed by Reddit's corporatism probably lean more left on average; Reddit already leans left, so this would attract the more extreme of that population
That's my take. I honestly don't read too much into it, so I generally don't bother with the political posts because the discussion seems a bit too group think-y to really be constructive.
If you have statistics from a broad, random sample that demonstrate that lemmy opinions are well distributed, I'm happy to change my mind. But "eat the rich" as a meme here really isn't a thing I've experienced in real life, so I really don't think lemmy is all that politically diverse.
I don't avoid it, but also don't comment my thoughts and opinions on everything because of narrative rules. I don't want to be harassed for a difference of opinion.
Also, I used to filter out trump, but stopped because of the upcoming presidential election. I'll probably filter him out again after the election. I also filter out elon musk.
No, I just try to. My blocklist is like forty miles at this point
Edit: always entertaining to read rationalizations of "exposing myself to the constant depressing drudgery of political news coverage is like a moral imperative or some shit" btw
people 1) obsess over gathering intel as if they need to figure out what to do and then 2) stress over not doing enough and then 3) post shit online to feel like they're doing stuff and 4) continue the cycle so that they never have to look inward and work on themselves. focusing on systems is the ultimate distraction. but i guess folks caught in the cycle would say that focusing on the self is a distraction from systems... what a sad, miserable life it must be. i hope one day they see that systems are just made of people are try to help those around them first and foremost.... but it's always people with the most fucked up personal lives that dive deep into politics
In my eyes, there is no avoiding politics. Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power, and choosing ignorance means choosing to ignore something that directly affects you. I feel I need to know what's happening in politics, so I can know when and how I can be most effective with direct action. Part of understanding what I see in the news also requires an in-depth understanding of history and other seemingly innocuous news stories, so I have the appropriate historical knowledge to understand how and why it affects politics. Staying informed also protects me from being manipulated by politicians and the specific news I consume.
Possibly, but it not impossible they meant no politics. I just ended a long term relationship with someone that viewed any political engagement at all as not worth their time. Including a picket line that I had helped organize.
For me the problem is that virtually all political content and discussion online is very low information. Generally no one is conveying anything I haven't already heard many times, it's mostly remixing slogans and truisms and finding different ways of expressing the same simplified opinion. Questioning that stuff or asking for nuance to be addressed gets met with aggression. The more I'm exposed to it the more I feel like my brain is rotting, definitely does not feel like I'm learning things.
Generally no one is conveying anything I haven’t already heard many times, it’s mostly remixing slogans and truisms and finding different ways of expressing the same simplified opinion.
The problem with never fixing the problems we all face is that the solutions dont change. You're not going to hear any new answers if you keep asking the same questions.
How many different ways should we rearrange the chairs on this sinking boat before we abandon ship?
You are missing the point that very often politics requires nuanced discussion, and it is not often you can get it here - people like simple and binary answers. And, if you point to the fact like on Wikipedia which goes against the echo chamber state, you will be reported by some for spreading "dubious information". Do you really need that?
I don't know, but what does that even mean? Does it mean anything beyond a call for engagement, a vague imperative statement reworded as a rhetorical question? I am so sick of being asked for my attention when there's really very little to be paying attention to, or when my input is not needed or wanted.
oh 100% i avoid it completely. i advocate for things in my own space and my own community. I'm not wasting my time talking about this shit online with any of you. i already know what im doing in november and i know what i gotta do in my local community and i dont give a flying fuck what anyone on here has to say about any of it. aint trying to change a bunch of random stranger's minds (especially when i know we already pretty much agree on all the shit im already going to be doing)
and instead of policing my communities to attempt to help create a politically tasteful environment for myself, id rather just ... fucking avoid completely any political environment. problem solved, life easy
I try to (except from here I guess). I feel like a lot of political discussions here lack any nuance, and are often very US-centric. I'm moderately left wing myself, but I still often feel like I have little in common with the sometimes extremely left viewpoints here. They are usually also seem to be defended in a very black and white way. If you don't agree you're quickly deemed a fascist or nazi.
Honestly, I feel like online discussions often don't really achieve anything. Differing opinions are downvoted and often met with name-calling or accusations. I'd rather discuss in-person with friends and colleagues across the political spectrum, that tends to actually lead to a friendly sharing of thoughts rather than the unsatisfactory hate spewing you get online.
I only avoid discussions with the hardcore leftist anarchist/communist groups because there is a big overlap between those communities and absolutely brain dead moderation policies.
Comments that have been removed/gotten me temp banned from Lemmygrad and .Ml include:
“millions of people died under Stalins rule”(banned, “misinfo”)
Someone commented “nuke Texas”
I said something to the effect of “yes blow up the 49% of Democratic voters”
-comment removed, comment calling to nuke Texas left up
Having comments edited by bots and mods so you don’t hurt anyone’s fee fees
There are other examples if I go through the mod log. Lemmy.Ml in particular takes an absolutely wild amount of mod/admin actions compared to any instance.
Tl;Dr: yes but not because of politics, because Lemmy leftists are the fucking worst