There are lots of us around. You just won't see a ton of the content they post or comment because the tankies and other extremists will downvote and report it to try and get it removed.

It sucks. I once was on a thread about trans issues months ago, that was so wonderfully empathetic and nuanced and graceful... I went back and forth and felt so much was shared and learned. But then it was brigaded by a LGBT instance's users, who reported everything as bigotry and hate speech, and then the mods removed all the posts and all that was left two days later was just a ton of short asinine posts that reduce everything into a binary stance of 'support lgbt always and forever or you are an evil person' nonsense.

Which is to say, moderate speech that considers a plurality of views on an issue, or the real world complexities of an issue, typically doesn't last very long on lemmy, due to the population of extremists who regard it as 'hate speech'. Because they want to reduce every discussion to name-calling and bumper sticker slogans and false binary choices of being 'for/against' things, and a bizarre paranoia about everything being nazi or facist.

It's a federated platform, it doesn't operate by the same rules as traditional social media. This is like getting angry that people you don't like use E-Mail.

I largely use Lemmy because it doesn't tolerate conservatives.

It's 2026. There is no such thing as a moderate conservative. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve yet another platform to argue in bad faith on. They've gone too far. Every platform they touch turns into a cesspool of bigotry and garbage opinions they think should be taken seriously or they play victim.

I don't want them on Lemmy.

I don’t want them on Lemmy.

Lemmy is open to anyone though. Excluding someone based on what they believe, slides into the very fascism that many on Lemmy proclaim to be against. Intolerance is never a good thing, regardless of what your political outlook is.

You are certainly to welcome block people you don't want to associate with, but trying to exclude a group of people because you don't believe them is nothing to brag about.

There is no such thing as a moderate conservative. They don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I can assure you that there plenty of moderate conservatives. Your refusal to admit this, is the exact sort of extremism that OP is trying to stay away from.

Again, you are free to believe that and act accordingly, but excluding someone from a platform, purely based on their beliefs, is what you are supposed to be fighting against.

Many on Lemmy think conservatives exclude people based on their beliefs, and are close-minded. Now look at your words and switch use the words "liberal" instead of "conservative."

If you read a conservative saying the exact same thing you said, but using "liberal" instead of "conservative," you'd be pretty angry. You are doing the exact thing that you accuse them of doing.

Refusing to even talk to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum just makes you another perpetuator of the massive political divide. Do you actually think anyone’s had their vote swayed by someone who refused to even talk to them. You’re not going to bring anyone to the left by demonising the right.

Lemmy’s pretty left leaning, extremely left sometimes. There was a conservative community for a while but it turned until a place to ridicule conservatives.

Maybe just start a new community, I think there are people here but a lot on here refuse to even tolerate the right.

Refusing to even talk to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum just makes you another perpetuator of the massive political divide.

Extremely bold of you to assume I haven't spent the majority of my life talking to them and trying to understand their extremist views.

I finally stopped because, as I said, they've lost the benefit of the doubt due to their own words and actions.

How long would you entertain the opinions and actions of Nazis in the name of getting along?

Also, if you think conservatives are going to start voting liberal if we play nice with them, well, you're either very young or really haven't been paying attention.

I know of no one who actually esposes conservative principles to me. pay as you go, rainy day funds, infrastructure investment, efficient social safety nets, rule of law (constitution and founding principles respected even seperation of church and state), middle of the road (balancing state power [regulations] and private power). This is a us centric view though were our conservative party has seem to have thrown out all conservative principles. I do see plenty of generally left of center moderate liberals (don't get me wrong a lot of ultra left too) although again often presented nowadays like ultra left views. Folks who don't want to see an end to all capitalism but want to limit wealth disparity and the effect of money on politics, have social safety nets like universal healthcare and equitable public education, sensible regulation, progressive taxes, efforts to limit global warming fallout, etc.

Lemmy is open to anyone though.

Sure is. Doesn't mean I want bigots/fascists here, fucking up yet another platform.

Excluding someone based on what they believe

How long would you be willing to entertain Nazis? Would you say the same thing about them? That we should just listen to them and give them a chance? That we should tolerate them? Now, American conservatives aren't Nazis, because Naziism was a specific fascist movement in Germany a century ago. But American conservatives are fascists because they match the definition.

Now, I'm not sure if you possess eyes or ears, but fascism is now here, in America, due to conservatives. I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. They do not deserve it. They do not care to argue in good faith.

but trying to exclude a group of people because you don’t believe them is nothing to brag about.

Words placed into my mouth. I'm not making some concerted effort to exclude conservatives from Lemmy. Never said I was. I said I don't want them here. That's my personal opinion. You seem to really care about people, even fascists, getting to have their opinions, so let me have mine.

Now look at your words and switch use the words “liberal” instead of “conservative.”

Ah. I see. You are a "bOtH sIdEz" advocate. One of those that believe everything is equal. Well, I'm here to promise you that is false. Both sides do no want the same thing and do not go about getting what they want in the same manner. Not even close. Your entire argument is based on all things being equal. That simply isn't true, so your argument is weak.

The right side of the aisle uses violence and intimidation to get what they want FAR, FAR more often than the left side does. And that is a fact supported by a shit ton of data. So why should we give a side that uses those tactics regularly the same benefit of the doubt that we'd give a side that doesn't? That's nonsense.

NOT. THE. SAME.

You'll still be singing Kumbaya while you're being gassed.

.world is the answer as long as you remove the reasonable part.

Could it be cause you say shit like this?

https://piefed.social/comment/10584215

hey, just so you know blahaj.zone is not a tankie instance, it's an instance aimed at protecting oppressed minorities (it hosts a women-only community, protects LGBT+ users from bigotry, etc.).

I think technically the instance doesn't take sides in terms of political ideology and is thus not a "political instance", but the top community on blahaj.zone is vehemently anti-tankie, so I would say they're the opposite of the people you're worried about

You can read more about blahaj.zone's intentions as a space here:

https://lemmyverse.link/lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/14736607

First and foremost, blahaj zone lemmy exists to give a space for queer folk to exist, with their needs explicitly protected as the highest priority, and with a particular focus on the needs of gender diverse folk. Most lemmy instances are not run by trans folk, and whilst many are still inclusive, they don’t always prioritise our needs. Others barely consider trans folk, and react only to the most blatant of bigotry.

We are not a political instance, however political communities have a space here, as does any community that is actively protective of the needs of queer and gender diverse folk. Given the impact of politics on gender diverse folk, that means lots of dialogue and strong opinions exist, and as long as those opinions are honestly held, and not bigoted or exclusive, people are welcome to have and express those opinions here.

For what it’s worth, I am a member of the Greens Party in Australia. I have no time for the middle ground politics of the Australian Labor party, let alone the right wing beliefs of the Australian Liberal party. Yet a community of queer Labor Party aligned folk would fit on blahaj lemmy, because the parties ideologies, are not explicitly anti queer. A community aligned with the Australian Liberal party likely would not have a place here, unless the goal of the community was to work at actively challenging the anti queer policies of the party.

basically you'll only have issues with blahaj.zone if you're transphobic, homophobic, etc.

You are a “bOtH sIdEz” advocate.

Yep. Both sides have their share of idiots and extremists.

You clarified and said that conservatives should in theory be allowed here, and that's exactly the point I was making. So we're good.

They should be allowed, even when we disagree with them. I don't buy the line that all conservatives are fascists, the way so many on Lemmy love to claim.

I'm really glad the real US isn't anything like the nightmare version most of Lemmy seems convinced it is. lol

Paradox of Tolerance my dude

I'm a big fan of the subscribed only home feed. I see so much less hateful things since I started doing that.

From what I can tell, Lemmy started as wildly left but if you avoid the .ml areas, you're going to get a much broader mix of views.

Reasonable Moderate Conservatives don't exist, idiot

Life and people aren't nearly as awful as Lemmy constantly paints them to be. Too many users here just doomscroll and get a kick out of pretending the world's already doomed and deserves it.

I refuse to live like that. My life is about finding joy, helping people, knowing my neighbors, and genuinely loving others. Because of that, the so-called "paradox of tolerance" doesn't apply to me. I'm not tolerating intolerance; I'm just choosing not to build my world around hate or fear or negativity.

There are a lot of "bipartisan" social media websites (at least they self-advertise as such)
There are also social media apps for mainly conservatives.
Surely there can be one form of social media for leftists to talk to each other.

I enjoy reading anarchists and socialists debate their case because I actually agree with points they make. I can see where each side is coming from and even have change my viewpoints at times.

Some edgy highschooler on the side screaming about how "God wants capitalism" would not contribute anything to the conversation. We already established their ideas don't work, let us actually come up with new ones now.

Good for you, must be nice living in a fantasy land like the pyro from TF2.

It's fucking delusional it's what it is, and you can't just choose to ignore the paradox of tolerance, unless you want to turn your favourite bar into a nazi bar

There are no moderste Nazis. Get fucked.

Funny in a way, not the first thing I'd say about it though. Makes complete sense, the whole idea of Lemmy and the fediverse aligns way more with leftist ideology. It was the first instance I blocked too, it's very nice to be able to have a nice space with varied opinions without the one big extreme that's objectively (IMO) bad.

Fuck all of that. Conservatism is a cancer. Every one of them can go to hell.

Cool. You are the exact extremism that OP is talking about trying to avoid. Congrats.

How is it a fantasy world?

Do you realize that the US isn't a war zone, and that most people just go along their daily lives of dropping kids off at school, hiking, mowing their lawns, going to work, going to the park, going on dates with their significant other, watching netflix, etc?

Most non-Lemmy people don't make their politics their identity, nor do they talk about politics every single day, nor do they call every single person that disagrees with them a Nazi or a Fascist daily.

Most just don't care about politics. As we saw in the election.

How is that a fantasy world? Normal society isn't even close to what the Lemmy-verse is...lol

Lemmy has the worst cases of doomscrolling and negativity that I have ever seen.

Political divide is things like budget, use of public lands, roads & infrastructure. We’re split on morality, ethics, bigotry, and child rape. A good number of us don’t even bother talking to family members anymore, why would I waste my time trying to converse with the dude who lives up the street from me that has a t-shirt of Donnie surrounded by bikini clad girls and “Chillin’ like a felon”?

Trump is the poster child of chauvinism, bigotry, bravado, greed, deceit, swindle, and zero self-control. His ability to get away with it has emboldened his supports to embrace their worst inclinations and treat their neighbors like Trump does. Granted, they are not Trump, so the average thief, wife beater, or kid diddler still gets arrested, but a lot have figured out they can be blatantly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or a plain old dick in public and love that there’s no consequences anymore.

I have no interest in winning over people who have no shame, no remorse, and no empathy. Some will come crawling over when the suffering trickles down and finally affects them, but without any self-reflection or moral awakening, they’ll go right back to their old ways as soon as the burden is lifted. Fuck ‘em.

got it, thanks for the explanation. I know nothing about the content and the general crowd over there, but some accounts registered there were definitely brigading political posts over .world, and not in a tasteful way. I don't have screenshots or names because I blocked them. I'm not saying this is the instance's fault.

I'm not interested. You don't compromise on this. You don't tolerate it. It's a cancer. If his preference is to help it metastasize, he is the one to be avoided.

I see your point, and I did spend some time searching for the topics I enjoy, but let's be honest, there's not so much traffic. A bunch of niche communities have posts every 1-2 months. So naturally, however you sort, some of the more mainstream content (ie political communities, or political content injected in popular non-political communities) will show up in the feed. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but I just can't keep reading if the majority of comments are toxic.

thanks, I found it now. fwiw, I asked Perplexity if I can block instances and was told it can only be done by the admin defederating with them. can't always trust that thing!

If someone planned to divide and conquer lemmy, they did a fine job. You can tell lemmy is left leaning by how fractured everything is. And it's mostly filled with leftist who hate anyone left from where they are.

Bro, we don’t want you guys to come over to the left anymore. We want you to stay over there and preferably go back to Russia where you seemed to enjoy the governance and social structure.

I don’t know I had a dude wake me up at 5 AM every morning for 18 months so he could parade his loud truck and his Maga flag down the street. For me, the paradox of tolerance was broken when the police wouldn’t stop him from breaking the law every day.

You guys let your extremist run wild and terrorize society for the last six years. You have no moderate views you have no moderate inclinations. You have no conservative values. It hits pure regressive politics and hate mongering. The only thing you conserve is hierarchy and perverse incentives.

The difference between a Lenny communist is: no one takes them seriously, they do not control the entire government, they are not using the government to shoot dissenters in the streets.

Some of those crazy bastards probably would if you gave them control of the government, but that’s beside the point because no one has done that yet. But when they do, I am going to support whatever they decide to do to the Nazis.

I mean, a lot of us ended up here because we got banned from our usual corner of the Internet due to a right wing takeover.

I can’t imagine why people would be hostile the right wing beliefs right now??

Yeah, people believe in human rights, brother. You must’ve missed like the last 30 years of public schooling or something. human rights really have no gray areas to discuss. Would you care to be more specific about the exact topic and how it was being portrayed??

I’m still gonna pick on you communist but that’s after we’re done with the Nazis.

Surely there can be one form of social media for leftists to talk to each other.

Substack.

i was confused at first when i saw moderate/ or reasonable conservatives. almost every conservative ive encountered just make uniformed rants or opinions about trump. my favorite is when they dont know about trumps actual policies and get defensive over being questioned about it,.

i would but they behave too much like conservatives for my taste especially how to they become defensive, and label everything "lib"

reddit tries to appear "left leaning" but they allow too much astroturfing from right wingers and thier bots.

Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.

This was Rosa Luxemburg in 1915. The regression into barbarism was brutal. Lets not lose sight of "the only compensation for the misery and all the shame"

WhY dO yOu SuPpOrT gEnOcIDe?

You want an online community that allows both the right and the far right? That would be ALL OTHER ONLINE COMMUNITIES!

We came here specifically to get our own forum, where the centre left, regular left and far left are all allowed. This is a forum for the working class, not for the capitalists. And you capitalists can't handle the fact that us workers for once get to have a forum of our own.

Did you notice when Trump took office there was a lot of unusual moderation changes on Reddit? They seemed like they did a clean sweep and brought in new blood. It WAS left leaning now it's just center to right. Some of my favorite subs suddenly became rightwing propaganda machines. Very sad. I don't consider myself a leftist but I do enjoy conversations with y'all. I like a left leaning space. I feel like the text only spaces are naturally left leaning because republicans have low reading comprehension skills and are unable to follow simple logic threads.

It appears our bourgeois have decided barbarism is the way. Good Quote.

No, you got the wrong message "Bourgeois society" is a society that has the "proletarian <-> bourgeois" contradiction, not "the society of the bourgeoisie".

The bourgeoisie don't have the option to decide. They have to go with barbarism or there won't be a bourgeoisie anymore. They cannot choose socialism ever, it's scientifically impossible. They'd have to become class traitors first. Commit class suicide. Only then, when they are no longer bourgeoisie can they choose. Here is great excerpt of "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels that talks about Robert Owen who experienced this first hand (and who eventually committed class suicide very much to his credit) https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/o/w.htm#owen

A: you assume I'm American. I'm not. That's an insult where I'm from.

B: it's not open to everyone, don't be stupid. It's a walled and managed garden like every social media, just the walls are guarded by volunteers instead of staff. And instead of single source of moderation, it's literally hundreds of teams working together (Federation)

C: Right, let's say that someone says something shitty and bigoted, you saying I should let them stay, in the interest of "balance"? Just answer that

screaming about how "God wants capitalism" would not contribute anything to the conversation

We have some of those here too

Thank you for the explanation. I hadn’t had my first coffee yet. I catch your drift now.