Is Lemmy a biased platform? - eviltoast

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?

  • jeffw@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Again, the Chinese bribery stuff is a conspiracy. Why would a conspiracy get upvotes from rational people?

    • whyisitalways@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • jeffw@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • whyisitalways@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • jeffw@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Not at all. Any site that is widely respected is fine. You can google news reliability websites if you’re not sure.