What do you think Lemmy is most biased about? Which opinions do you think differ most from the general internet?
(Excluding US politics, due to community rules)
Commonly mentioned biases:
| Subject | Mentions |
|---|---|
| Pro-Privacy | 2 |
| Left-Wing | 9 |
| Anti-Capitalism | 5 |
| American | 5 |
| Older | 2 |
| Pro-Linux | 3 |
| Tech people | 5 |
| Anti-Ai | 4 |
| Pro-LBTQ+ | 3 |
| Anti religion | 3 |
| Pro-Communism | 3 |
Bonus: Gaming Biases
| Subject | Mentions |
|---|---|
| Nintendo hate | 3 |
| Pro-SteamDeck | 1 |
| Anti-GOG | 1 |
| PC over console | 1 |
I’ll go first.
- I think there is a strong pro-Linux bias. It wouldn’t surprise me if 40+% use it on here.
- People from the US seem over-represented, but less so compared to Reddit
- There is a far stronger anti-capitalist sentiment on here than other social media
- The average age seems to be much higher. I joined when I was 16 and feel quite young unlike on other social media.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
I think you’re right on all these points, though it depends a bit on what part of the Fediverse you’re exposed to.
On the point of anti-capitalism, I agree, but (again, depending on the part of the Fediverse) there’s also an incredibly high amount of open-minded people here, compared to other more mainstream social media (like Reddit). I speak much from my perspective of being from lemmy.zip, which I’m impressed by the healthiness of the community since I joined. But there are also less “healthy” instances like lemmy.ml which is considered by many to be infested with tankies (anti-capitalism?).
And yes, the average age seems to be around mid-30s to me, based solely on how people speak and what they reminisce about.
I think what muddles the water on the “Leftwing” character of Lemmy is that there are two kinds here: those whose personal Principles (mainly around the importance reducing the suffering and increasing the happiness of others, rather than just themselves) which lead them to support leftwing policies and those support Political forces or ideologies which are deemed Leftwing, and hence see themselves as Leftwing.
IMHO it’s last group that explains in Lemmy things like authoritarian leftwingers (i.e. tankies) and people who think they’re leftwingers because they tribalistically support certain mainstream political parties who claim to be Left but are at best moral liberal and even that second to their very rightwing broader stand on general Equality and quality of life for the many (such as the US Democrats, UK Labour, German SPD and so on).
My impression is that Lemmy has a much higher proportion of Principled Left-wingers than the wider society.
This is probably why if you’re not in an instance that blocks the tankie instances, in between the tankies, the principled types and the mainstream “leftwing” party tribalists it almost feels like there are 3 kinds of “Left” in Lemmy.
- The average age seems to be much higher. I joined when I was 16 and feel quite young unlike on other social media.
Enjoy. Less echo bubbles. This goes in both directions, but mainly I value that younger people are able to be part of “mature conversations”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to underestimate your worldview or anything. It’s just that I’m remembering when I was around your age, the Internet was in a raw form, and it felt much like this. I was amazed to be able to talk with other adults and learn about their tastes on say books or movies when I joined some theme specific chat channel (via protocol IRC). At some point this changed drastically (e.g. Facebook connecting people from real life/ schools)… and I think nowadays TikTok, Insta, and for the most part, even YouTube are just centered around being young, pretty… very much like mainstream TV.
Yeah, I enjoyed that about reddit at that ave too. As an isolated teen it’s all I had
I agree that the average age is higher. You’re the only other confirmed teenager that I have encountered while on Lemmy. I joined Lemmy when I was 17 during the Reddit emmigration.
16 atm.
I’ll add:
- AI bad
- Piracy ok
- Political posts are more frequent (Bias towards political expression)
- More tech enthusiasts
- Piracy ok
I’m not sure how true that is for the largest instance (lemmy.world) but apart from that it seems quite on point
“AI bad” overrides “Piracy ok”, though. I’ve seen threads in the main piracy community where the general consensus seemed to be that copyright should be used as a weapon against AI.
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Because piracy advocacy here on the Fediverse is about that, yeah. You’re saying the same thing I am, that the Fediverse’s pro-piracy bias is “overridden” by its anti-AI bias.
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Yes, exactly what I’m saying. People on the Fediverse hate AI more than they support piracy, because when there’s a situation that involves both enabling piracy and helping AI they will side with the anti-piracy side in order to hurt the AI side. The Fediverse has more of an anti-AI bias than it has a pro-piracy bias.
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Copyright good unless it’s major companies/brands whatever (basically if not indie = bad)
This probably sounds like a dodge of an answer, but…
It depends on the Lemmy instance. Some are anarchistic, some are very left wing anti-establishment, some are hardcore tankies, and I’ve heard somewhere there’s a right-wing instance? Some hate certain technologies, some love those technologies, etc.
I don’t think it’s realistic to lump all Lemmy instances (and users) together under a single ideological umbrella. That’s like lumping everyone from America or any other county together for their opinions.
.world is the right wing instance
I’ve been on .world for over a year now and haven’t really seen anything I’d call blatantly right-wing. But if this is right wing and the rest of lemmy is even more leftist, I’ll gladly join the rest of yas elsewhere.
This brings up another facet: when it comes to ideological biases it’s all subjective.
I consider lemmy.world slightly left of center overall, but again with important caveats that some communities within it are pretty left wing and some are pretty right wing. But maybe to someone pretty far on the left of the political spectrum the instance seems very right wing, while to someone pretty far to the right it seems like almost everyone are ‘rabid pinko commies’.
Basically, things are more complicated than they may look.
Wrong, because of what words mean and the context implied by the .world domain itself
What implication is that?
That it shouldn’t be US or any other nation defaultism, putting the left/right argument squarely in the realm of the relatively objective socialist/capitalist economic scale.
I think youre reading way too much into what tried to be an inclusive name.
Or I’ve read the instance info and framing references beyond my personal status don’t scare me.
Not particularly surprised that Americans are defensive about .world not being their personal property that must conform to their worldview though.
Usually the right wing instances are almost always blocked?
I just joined Lemmy and then I discoverd what .ml is. Now I don’t care about instances anymore
I wouldn’t put it that far, they are closer to reddit
I mean, liberalism is on the right-wing.
We certainly do have our fair share of Zionist scumbags.
I’m on .world, and I’d happily throw all the billionaires into an industrial shredder.
Samesies!
You and me Scott! We’ll take on the .world!
Let the record note that Scott_of_the_Artic is an outlier and a comrade yet remains statistically a minority
Clearly a severe leftist bias. Not just in the context of US politics.
It’s not a bias if you’re right
correct, but I hope you(or anyone else) deeply reflected on limitations of your ideology
No, we’re left, please pay attention 🙃
You know what? Fuck it. The fascists are leftists and we’re far right, because we’re the ones who are actually right about things like reality.
Plus it would be completely hilarious to watch happen as we flip the script on them and call them leftys.
Since the rules preclude it, we can’t discuss what Lemmy is most biased about. The remaining biases tend to be in the tech/nerdcore genre, which makes sense, since many average Joe users have problems navigating the registration/instance selection process, keeping their numbers down on the platform.
The rules specifically target US politics and I feel a lot of political bias on here goes beyond the US IMO.
Im still pretty unclear on the whole instance selection thing. I just tried a few until one worked.
If in doubt, just try it until it works. If it still doesnt work either learn why or give up.
Already mentioned was the pro Linux and everything else sucks. Also, the Nintendo hate.
What I haven’t seen is the high acceptance/love of furry content. I didn’t know people could draw animals that hot. Not that it awakened anything in me.
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You made me realise all the shit I’ve filtered. Def a furry bias and a anime girl bias here lol
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Isn’t the dbzero Lemmy instance pro AI?
Which seems uninformed and ridiculous as Deep Learning for classification and regression problems is an absolute valid tool that cannot be replaced anymore in many domains. I don’t care about LLM bullshit, but being “against Deep Learning in general” is stupid.
Biases are indeed usually uninformed and ridiculous.
Anti ai nowadays almost exclusively means the over insertion of llms into ordinary life and/or the over trust of a blackbox computer program. People aren’t throwing hands because of alphafold as much as they are a prime minister using a language model to make policy decisions
I think the biggest issues Lemmy has with it, which are valid, boil down to environmental impact, AI being used to replace working class people instead of making their lives better, and the way it’s being used to erase art as a part of human culture. If those three things weren’t an issue I’d be less wary of AI.
It’s hard for me to feel that the environmental impact is the big reason, there are MUCH bigger fish to fry when it comes to the environment.
Bitcoin ~65 Mt CO₂/year LLMs <10 Mt CO₂/year (est.) Holiday Flights ~900 Mt CO₂/year
If the people crying about AI being bad for the environment isn’t also very upset about people taking flights to go on holiday or crypto, then that’s not really what they’re upset about.
Look, to be honest I wish LLMs were never invented, because I think it will just strip more money away from the poor and feed the rich, but yea, cat is out of the bag. and AI is VERY useful, we can’t deny that.
This isn’t even taking into consideration eating red meat which has a far great impact than any AI query ever will, but most anti-AI peeps aren’t ready for that conversation.
If I stop eating beef am I morally allowed to use AI? /s
Exactly, If caring about the environment is why you hate AI, but you still eat red meat and take flights on holiday you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Oh are those the ones being shoved into all our orifices?
Nobody* is talking about machine learning when they say “AI” these days. They mean LLMs and generative AI and especially the way it is being forced into everything and destroying the environment to do so.
* not literally; there is certainly at least one person out there who objects to machine learning, deep learning, or whatever you want to call it. However this is not the general sentiment.
Yes, a lot more compared to other social media. Especially LLM’s and other generative AI ran by big corporations. There are some AI communities on here, but they’re all mostly focused on hosting/running it yourself.
Are people anti non-generative AI? Or is broader AI just getting dragged in to the justified anti genAI sentiment?
I think it’s both. Some people dislike all AI because of generative AI like LLM’s, but many people seem to care about making the distinction between generative AI and traditional ML.
I suspect a lot of the former group is don’t that out of ignorance or forgetfulness - I do it all the time, because I often assume people are talking about GenAI. Which is probably a reasonable assumption about 90% of the time these days, but it is better to be clear about it.
Also, a friend who has a background in AI draws a distinction between ML and non-generative AI: ML is basically tools for overpowered statistical analysis and pattern finding, AI is attempts to partially recreate aspects of intelligence, and can include evolutionary algorithms and stuff. Still not sure I see the distinction (and there is overlap), but they’re way more informed than me…
Are people anti non-generative AI? Or is broader AI just getting dragged in to the justified anti genAI sentiment?
I formed this question to myself and was about to post it, but then I remembered Lemmy also hates self-driving cars which are likely Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) or Recurrent Nerual Networks (RNN) which are not part of Generative AI at all.
I think the hatred there is completely disconnected from the fact that it’s AI.
Both of them have in common that the technology is being forced upon us at the cost of lives, livelihoods, and the environment upon which we all rely to survive.
I’m not sure I follow your logic. Those reasons you give are still hatred of AI because of those results (job loss, etc). How is that not hatred of AI?
The self-driving cars are not hatred of AI. Nobody* cares that they use machine-learning to enable the cars to drive themselves.
It’s not hatred of AI there.
It’s not hatred of AI there.
I still disagree, but let me create another hypothetical example that may highlight where we might disagreement further:
What if Deep Learning (not Gen AI) was used in missile guidance systems specifically to aim toward “people shaped targets”? Would the hate be for AI or just for missiles? If missiles is your answer, where is the distinction in your mind between that and the self-driving cars example?
GenAI being used in missile guidance makes zero sense - the technology is not applicable there, because you need precision and reliability. Normal AI, sure.
There is no relevant distinction.
I hate missiles for the damage they do regardless of the technology used to point them at the target.
I hate cars for the damage they do regardless of the technology used to point them at the target.
There’s a difference of intent (missiles get aimed at people while self driving cars hopefully get aimed away from people).
There’s a difference of failure modes (when a self-driving car fails it will often hit a person while a failing missile will miss a person).
But theres no reason to hate machine-learning for that, any more there is a reason to hate gyroscopes or lidar or other tools which are also used in guidance systems.
If someone had decided that a simple accelerometer were “good enough” to unleash self-driving cars on the general public without consideration for the damage caused, people would be upset and rightly so, but not because of the specific technology itself.
Edit: changed AI to “machine-learning”
I agree with Hawke, I think people are against the use of technology in such a way that it exploits workers and customers, not fundamentally against the technology itself.
Basically like the Luddites - they smashed weaving looms, not because the technology was fundamentally bad, but because it was being used by capitalists to worsen working conditions and destroy livelihoods.
I agree with Hawke, I think people are against the use of technology in such a way that it exploits workers and customers, not fundamentally against the technology itself.
I agree with that statement too. Where Hawke and I are disagreeing is I believe Self Driving cars can be used to exploit workers and customers. We already have Waymo robot taxi cabs that are displacing human drivers.
That’s not how I ready their statement… I think Hawke is saying that AI itself is not inherently bad, just that it’s being used for bad things. The bad things they identified are different from yours, but I think you’re basically saying the same thing over-all?
Too much negative experience with reddit using AI to moderate
Lemmy prefers Star Trek over Star Wars.
I’m a both-sides-kind-of-guy on this issue
As an avid fan of both since I was a kid, I don’t think these two are really at odds with each other.
You’re paraphrasing “Only Sith deals in absolutes” and you’re showing your bias. 😀
I like both, the new series they’re doing in wars have been great
Unfortunately it’s just harder to be a Star Wars fan since Disney bought it.
Disney ruined it.
As opposed to the easy time to be a fan, like during the “Meesa propose…” speech.
Or when George Lucas couldn’t keep his grubby mitts off the movies and kept shoving stupid crap into them. Yeah. It’s always been hard.
Unfortunately it’s just harder to be a Star Wars fan since Disney bought it.
Paramount is trying very hard to create the same difficulty to love Star Trek with their Section 31 movie.
Paramount ruined nutrek to be honest, at first they had STD to drive up subscription numbers. Having kurtzman was probably the worst thing for nutrek, he said it himself he dint care about the series
In a rare defense of the movie… It was originally intended to be a miniseries but it got cut down to a movie when Michelle Yeoh won her Oscar and quickly became the most in demand actress for everyone.
While I hated the movie and most aspects, it was very much a compromise on the original vision and was in no way what Paramount was intending to make. It’s hard to tell if it being a show would’ve fixed all the issues with the acting and characters being cringe af but at the very least it probably wouldn’t have had the same pacing issues and extremely rushed writing.
I didn’t make it past 15 minutes of watching it. I bailed when it became immediately obvious this was an attempt at a Star Trek version of Suicide Squad of quirky misfits. That whole concept is not what Section 31 had been sold to us in the various Star Trek series’. What we were expecting were the best minds recruited across Starfleet performing morally questionable actions in service of their (possibly twisted notion) of the “greater good”.
Julian Bashir working for Section 31 had no place in that movie version of the agency of the same name. Nor did Malcolm Reed. The movie version of Section 31 made a joke of 30 years of espionage and political intrigue.
Sec 31 worked better as a subplot in the trek series, never should’ve been a show of its own
I think Sec 31 (version from show, not movie) could absolutely have worked as a standalone show. It would essentially be “CIA in space”. As Sec 31 was a clandestine organization, they would not only have adversaries working against their chosen goals, but also other competing clandestine organizations (like the Romulan Tal Shiar or the Cardassian Obsidian Order) working to thwart them. There would be all kinds of wonderful stories of team ups and betrayals as their various goals overlapped.
When I think about that possible version, it makes what they actually delivered even worse.
But what about Star Gate?
Probably not big enough fan base as it’s quite niche, only ever was on Syfy and usually on cable. Trek and wars had more lore and cinema.
Touché! I would argue 'Gate has better representation on Lemmy than 'Wars. “Would you not agree, Daniel Jackson?” /Teal’c
I’m more a The Expanse type of person
I’m more a The Expanse type of person
So say we all! Oh wait, that’s a different one too…
Depends where you look. I also have no idea whats that ‘general Internet’ you mention. I mean, what are its biases?
I see a lot of disestablishmentarism
Not a whole lot of antidisestablishmentarianism though.
How much time do you have?
You can keep it to the top 3 subjects you feel differ most or haven’t been mentioned in this thread
All of them
Baked beans are Nature’s magic vegetable
Depends which beans you’re baking
Thinking we’re better than everyone who’s still on Reddit
It’s not bias if you’re right
Reddit is mostly bots, so yes it’s better. Like 50% bots, and not the good kind, the one that steer the narrative to pro-right and pro Israeli . Plus reddit has done massive amounts of purges.
Reddit is full of Russian fuck bots arguing over which chump to pull one over. I don’t think it’s a high bar.
R/ conservative is the most obvious one, where they completely suppressed the Epstein files discussion
When there are human there is going to be biases
American bias, millennial bias, left wing bias
I’ve got 2 out of 3!
