I’d like to start a series seeking viewpoints from across the political spectrum in general discussions about modern society and where everyone stands on what is not working, what is working, and where we see things going in the future.
Please answer in good-faith and if you don’t consider yourself conservative or “to the right”, please reserve top-level discussion for those folks so it reaches the “right” folks haha.
Please don’t downvote respectful content that is merely contrary to your political sensibillities, lets have actual discourse and learn more about each other and our respective viewpoints.
Will be doing other sides soon but lets start with this and see where it takes us.
The biggest problem by far in my opinion is the “political correctness” and the one-sided discussions. Everyone just wants to circle jerk in their own bubble. Be it left or be it right. Both have the same problem and both keep banning the other and escaping to new social media bubbles in the process (e.g., truth-social).
Lemmy tends to be rather left-wing, at least most mods are. I tend to be a bit more right. I’m not racist, not against lgbtq and not insulting anyone personally. Yet, whenever it’s about politics, I have to be very careful how I voice my opinion because the moment I’m disagreeing with any of the mods on the slightest, most irrelevant neuance, I’m being banned or the comment deleted. Everyone is just immediately judgy if you don’t say it exactly as you mean it. This is really hard and annoying for me as a non-native speaker. This has not always been like this eventhough my views haven’t changed at all. It’s getting more extreme recently and I’m getting tired of it almost to the point of leaving Lemmy. We’re seing new social medias like truth-social form for that exact reason. And this kills the internet and it kills political discourse!
The solution: hear EVERYONE out. EVERYONE. Only remove obvious bots and propandists from certain countries from the equation. You can easily filter these two out by just looking at their profile history. You’re allowed to downvote (that’s what the button is for). You can reply. If you feel insulted, tell them or insult back. Don’t be a man-baby and bitch about everything you disagree and stand your ground! If you don’t want anyone to radicalize, this is the only solution. We need every spectrum here. Everyone except for the bots!
Lemmy in particular seems to have a high percentage of reasonable people. As in people who can be reasoned with, but might just be stuck in a ideological rabbit hole. I’ve found that by dropping hostility and acknowledging common ground I can quickly turn an argument into a productive discussion, where both sides learn something. This happens with people who are on the left or right of myself. So it’d be shame to overly ban one side and lose that.
It equally must suck for the mods, because I’ve seen some very very vitriolic comments here, again, on both sides. Removing these comments helps cool people’s heads, but unequal enforcement may be an issue. I’m also generally against censorship, I just absolutely hate the platform when some stupid toxic divisive topic/meme gets posted everywhere for like a month. I really don’t know where I stand on removing comments or banning people, seems like a fine line to walk
Yeah, the question “when to ban something” is indeed a tricky one.
I propose that all good-faith arguments must be allowed, no matter whether they advocate for sovjet communism (so called tankies) or ultra-liberal capitalism or what.ever.
The only reason to ban something is if it’s personally insulting (e.g. non-sarcastic name-calling) or having the direct intention to hurt someone.