The philosophy behind FOSS is inherently left wing and anarchist; communities working together to provide and produce tools for the common good, without a profit motive. Coupled with the lack of advertising and promotion of the sites, people have to seek them out, leading to a self-selecting user population that skews left :)
I would say that FOSS typically draws a more educated crowd, and right wing rhetoric and propaganda typically target those of lesser education and lower cognitive ability, simply because those people are the most likely hosts for rightoid brain worms. Why do colleges skew heavily left, gee it must be brainwashing /s
Eh, there's plenty of educated right wingers. Not fascists as much, but the kind of fiscally conservative economists who preach austerity are often as not highly educated, just lacking in empathy.
There are definitely plenty of well educated, intelligent fascists as well. It's pretty dangerous to start thinking that what separates two ideological groups is intelligence.
I believe what they were separating was Fascist leaders versus fascist followers.
I was mainly responding to the previous comment which characterized right-wingers as having "lesser cognitive ability". Just saying that that kind of thinking sets up a "we're superior" mentality that can too easily lead to the same kinds of consequences as thinking you're superior based on race or social status. There are so many environmental and experiential factors that go into where a person lands politically and how effective certain forms of propaganda are on them. Blanket statements that characterize entire people groups as less intelligent are not in any way accurate or helpful.
You're speaking of pundits and politicians whose opinions are public and widespread. There is little reason to believe that those folks are sincere in their public statements. They are motivated by greed to lie in an effort to sway the opinions of uneducated people.
Among the general public, those that sincerely hold conservative political views are cognitively impaired. Source: they vote for things that are objectively against their own prosperity.
I think pretty much everyone views their political ideology as "the one that stands for freedom", and it just comes down to what it means to be "free", and the follow up of free from what.
I feel like libertarians would love the concept of FOSS and decentralization, and I don't think anyone would argue they skew left.
So, I disagree that FOSS is inherently left wing. I think it's attractive to the left wing for many good reasons. I think people project their own politics onto whatever they love, and things can be loved by very different groups for different reasons.
I feel like libertarians would love the concept of FOSS and decentralization, and I don't think anyone would argue they skew left.
Yup, there has always been a large libertarian contingent in the OSS community.
As a left winger myself...
.... I'm not sure Foss is inherently left wing. Inherently anti authoritarian for sure, but I can totally see a libertarian type making a pro-FOSS argument from a capitalistic-individualistic and it being rather sensible. (Aaaaas long as we ignore the ways it'd contradict other beliefs right wing liberals tend to hold, but yknow. Compartmentalisation is a human superpower)
I think I'd still argue the free open source part is inherently left wing. Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Something like bitcoin is the kind of tech project of that mould that i think attracts the right wing libertarian. Just my opinion though.
Why would I, a right wing libertarian, lend my time to developing a piece of software that I am unable to make a profit from? I have no motive.
Because you do stand to gain regardless. "I have my code on the source of " is like. Amazing portfolio material for any job interview. I had a friend get a job in the games industry (though they regret it to this day because the game industry sucks--) with nothing on his resumé except for a smattering of mods for popular games.
Any pro-capitalist person with a functioning brain will acknowledge the role of non-monetary "Profits" in every human relationship, yanno?
That's true, but it still doesn't change the fact that the FOSS ethos runs in direct conflict with the ideals of capitalism and private ownership, and libertarians are nothing if not fanboys of those things.
Yeah. It's long been said Libertarians are just Republicans that want to smoke weed and distance themselves from the outwardly racist rhetoric. They are inherently selfish just like Republicans. They don't want to help the poor, but they would balk at the notion of actively hurting the poor.
Bitcoin is open source too. And I guess there's a history of libertarians getting involved in projects like Linux as well (ESR comes to mind).
Still, I'd wager most are attracted to FOSS are left wing. A lot of capitalists can't comprehend giving something for free to the community.
FOSS isn't inherently left wing. It is often charitable work but that's far from unique to the left wing. That can also just stem from "I wanted this program to exist and it didn't, but I don't want to put even more effort in to monetize it." Plenty of FOSS projects start as someone wanting to learn something early on in their career as well (which is both a pro and a con because ... if you're learning you might be making some bigger mistakes).
Anarchism ... I just don't really agree with that at all. Lots of larger FOSS projects do very much have governing bodies that decide what to do and how it shall be done. In many cases FOSS authors are a one person governing body making all the big decisions.
Organized charitable work is far from anarchy even though anarchism dreams of everything being organized charitable work.
It has to do with profit motive. The Fediverse, and the Lemmy sub-protocol, arose when for-profit enterprises (TwitX and Reddit, respectively) began prioritizing their own bottom line over the enrichment of their users.
This has always been the Faustian bargain of social media: you are the product and you receive free content at the cost of advertisements and data mining.
Once the monopolists of the social sphere overstepped their bounds - got too invasive, or tried extracting value directly from the end user - free alternatives formed.
Naturally, the only people self-aware enough to be put off by the exploitation of these monopolists were left-leaning. There’re a lot of people out there who will pay to be cocooned in an echo chamber (viz Truth Social) but leftists like to pretend they’re too good for that shit.
So here we all are, enjoying a methodone drip of social media without all of the optimization and dopamine-tweaking hooks that for-profit socials live by.
It’s not a bad outcome, really, and if someone somehow wants to start a counter-culture right wing node on the fediverse, nothing is stopping him except a total lack of willing participants.
Say what you will about leftists; at least they try new things - and conservatives, as you would expect from the name, do not.
This almost feels like bait, your instance is Lemmy.ml. The ml stands for Marxist-Leninist, your home instance is literally the home for far-left ideology. You'll still see a leftist bant for the reasons commenters have mentioned, but the single biggest reason is that your instance is owned and operated by them.
It's the second largest instance, plus it's the original instance. I can see why one or both of those facts might draw someone. Maybe they thought it was hosted in Mali!
Wait that’s really what it stands for? I keep seeing some commotion over it every so often but I thought it was just an abbreviation of a country or something.
Its the top level domain of mali, but the devs picked it because it can also mean marxist-leninist.
Sort of like how twitch uses .tv, even though it isnt situated in tuvalu
One could argue that as alot of us are exredditors we would be the more progressive or left side of the crowd. Something happened we didn't like so we left it behind for something we hope will be better and put in the effort to make it so as opposed to staying with what we know and really waiting things out before choosing a new direction. It would have been easy to stay with reddit, hell I could go back in an instant and it would be like I never left, but I chose this new path and I'm sticking with it. That is what progress is all about
the right loves corporations it doesn't go out of its way to avoid them
It skews young, and young skews left.
Now if only young voted…
Lemmy users seem older than most social media to me. Why is Star Trek TNG so popular here if not?
My guess is the fat part of the bell curve is 25-40 here, probably similar to Twitter, younger than Facebook, older than tik tok and maybe Instagram.
Facebook is basically a dinosaur. The demographic that were the first users ran away right around the time when their parents got accounts.
There are sections of both the right and the left that have anti-authoritarian tendancies.
The libertarian right tends to view things purely in terms of government over reach, whilst the left tends to view things in terms of the power of capital.
Leftists saw Facebook pushing propaganda for the highest bidder, Reddit trying to be safe to sell to investors and twitter basically becoming a project to reflect Elon Musk's personal opinions.
Out of that came a bunch of attempts at creating new social networks. The right wing attempts were not cognisant that the aforementioned were the natural result of trying to get rich off it, while the left attempted to make it impossible to get into that position.
People seeking to be free from corporate overlords, and desiring a place to speak their minds and who also don't have an issue with spending a little time and effort tend to have a more liberal mindset. Regrettably as primates, we also have a tendency to form tribes and give short shrift to any viewpoints outside of those we ourselves believe in. I personally would prefer a dialogue of equals where we can debate our differences and agree to disagree or even find the places where we do agree and can come together. However, that enlightened state of being escapes most all of us. Instead, I will regress to thumping my chest and hooting at you.
Education.
No for real, a lot of right-wing thinking comes from just parroting disinformation and being in their own echo chamber circles.
Educated people are more likely to 'lean left':
Environment: Higher education institutions often emphasize critical thinking, questioning of traditional norms, and exposure to diverse perspectives. This can lead individuals to adopt more progressive or liberal views.
Diversity: College and university settings are typically more diverse, exposing students to different cultures, ideas, and lifestyles.
Rationalism: Educated individuals may place a higher value on scientific reasoning and empirical evidence, which can align more with policies and positions typically associated with the left, such as support for climate change action and public health initiatives.
Perspective: Higher education can lead to an understanding of economic inequality and systemic issues. Educated individuals might support policies aimed at reducing inequality and improving social welfare.
Career: Many educated individuals work in fields such as academia, healthcare, and social services, where left-leaning values like equity, public good, and social justice are prevalent.
Generational: Younger generations, who are more likely to be college-educated today than in the past, tend to have more progressive views on social issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial equality.
Education is also 'pushed' by a lot of adults when I was a kid. I thought it was kinda normal / lame because duh, of course it's important. I didn't get grasp deepl WHY until I was older and realized it's really a root causal issue of today's problems.
Educated people are more likely to ‘lean left’
I would qualify that as "Educated people with a conscience and a good ethical or moral base".
There are plenty of very smart, very evil right wingers out there.
I think all the right wingers who were dissatisfied with reddit migrated to voat?
Exploding heads, too, but everyone defederated from that.
Truth Social and whatever Jack Dorsey and Thiel are up to
Maybe because it was originally developed as a platform to discuss Marxism and Leninism?
I think people here tend to question and fact-check posts and comments a lot, which is a healthy thing. Now some say reality skews left, in which case could it be that the right have left because the left is right?
I think it's more that you don't get many right-wing extremists and the mods don't protect the ones that do exist from seeing things they don't like.
There are still a lot of neoliberal kind of conservatives on lemmy, and then also right-wing types in the form of tankies, but for the most part I think the light touch by most of the moderators means that facts (which favor the "left") tend to be allowed to persist in a way they don't on many social media that see profit in extremist content.
For the most part, the same ethos that powers the Fediverse is the same ethos that powers all open-source. So naturally the people that would be more keen to adopt it are the people who believe in the Open Source model in general.
I can't think of anything less right-wing than open source; it's essentially software communism ("from each according to their ability to each according to their need") Sharing isn't a right-wing value.
tankies created lemmy to share with all leftists and it started moving to the right in the last wave of reddit changes.
I don't like being labeled as a political side. I'm here because there is no ads and it's free and open source. If that is part of a political ideology, I am not attached to it. Lemmy is very left which is fine but sometimes it goes a little too left in some instances.
A non-zero percentage of the rightwing posters you will find online are very enthusiastic about warm water ports. Lemmy is small and new enough that the influence campaigns are not directed this way
If by "skew" you mean "bend over backwards", then "Yes".
Tech-savvy people tend to trend left. And with the reddit exodus, only those that cared about API access and privacy left.
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