It's not terribly surprising to find a lack of diversity in opinions here. The Fediverse, in general, is a fringe alternative to the big social media platforms. Using it is, in and of itself, an opinionated decision that we all more or less share.

When people use Reddit, TikTok, or similar platforms, they go there to find their subset of culture. That's the benefit of their scale. When you use Lemmy, the platform itself is your subset of culture.

It's very fair, and smart, to be skeptical of a one-sided consensus of opinions without adequate research. You will often see strawmen and a lack of understanding toward groups that disagree with the prevailing thoughts here. Never use only one source, and never trust a social media platform to give you the full picture.

However, you also want to beware of the False Balance and Golden Mean fallacies. Diversity of opinions has no direct correlation with truth. If a topic is worth forming an opinion on, it's worth doing real research on. Reading internet arguments will only reinforce bias.

you should probably feel some amount of discomfort with your own views and be willing to adjust them as your exposure to better reasoning and evidence supports a different view

but I also don't think we should have obligatory "both-sides" on everything either, sometimes it's OK to have a consensus, like the Holocaust was wrong - I'm OK that most people on Lemmy agree with that view

I live in south currently and it feels like IRL is the echo chamber.

I genuinely did not know there are americans actually opposed to Israel until I came to lemmy. And I especially did not know it was a big group.

There's plenty of diversity here. Loads and loads. I see it in every single thread.

But it's different than the diversity on other platforms. The diversity on other platforms is like "should we feed the homeless or should we bomb another country?". And the diversity here is more like. "Obviously we need to feed the homeless, that's not a question, but we differ on how we accomplish that goal".

If you're looking for that other sort of diversity, you need to find a site with more sociopaths.

I don't know what your talking about. I'm very active on Lemmy, precisely because there is a lot of actual debate.

What I don't get, that Reddit had a LOT of, is trolls, bots, novelty accounts, puns, and especially Russian Propaganda Farmers who are just showing up to argue for the sake of arguing.

I also don't get a lot of MAGA trolls. Debate is one thing, but anybody who is still sticking by MAGA at this point is a truly sick person, and I'd rather not have to engage with psychopaths, thank you. I don't have anything good or polite to say to them, and they can't be moved by logic or morality, so what's the point? They just want to cause problems, because they think that's entertaining.

I do see plenty of disagreements, especially in the political sphere. While people seem to generally lean left, there is a decent amount of variation in opinions within that space. Although since they all still generally align with the same goals, the disagreements only get so heated.

For things like media (games, movies, etc) I see less, but for me I just don't really feel the need to rain on anyone's parade. If they like something I don't like, whatever. I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of people felt the same way.

For tech stuff... we're on a decentralized open source platform and a lot of the users came over from corporate social media. Of course most of us are skeptical of big tech developments. Occasionally some nuance gets lost, but I even see some of that show up. There are plenty of threads where the OP posts something based on a misunderstanding and the top comment is someone who (probably) knows more about the topic and can clarify things.

Also like some others have said, a non-trivial amount of the arguing that happens on other sites is likely egged on by astroturfing and prioritized by algorithms designed to keep attention rather than promote healthy discussion.

Also, there are some topics where the disagreements I have at least just don't feel relevant enough to post. For example, with the AI thing. I generally agree with the sentiment of opposing the current AI implementations being pushed by big tech. The environmental impact makes it a non-starter even if the rest of it was good, but then there are issues with privacy, companies using AIs that aren't good enough to accomplish the task to replace workers just to save some money regardless of the consequences, and the involvement these companies have with the MIC, etc.

However, I do have some optimism for uses of AI in the future. I think it's cool tech that has potential to do good things, it's just that a) It's not actually ready yet and b) Some of those things would only work if we lived in a fairer society. But... honestly what's the point of interjecting this into a discussion about what's CURRENTLY going on with AI? What does my hypothetical sci-fi automated luxury gay space communism have have to do with a thread about companies spying on us or switching workers for AI and hurting both the workers and the consumers? Nothing really. It's only really relevant for a discussion about academic research on AI. So I don't bring it up. Not because I feel I need to silence my dissent, but because I recognize that it doesn't really serve any purpose in this context beyond potentially derailing the discussion.

So overall, I'm not worried. While it would be nice to have some more people on the fediverse, I'm fine with the disagreements we do see and I don't need to argue both sides with a Nazi or a bot. As long as mods don't get too heavy handed about unreasonable stuff, it's fine.

No. I'm perfectly secure in my absolute hatred and rejection of bigotry and violence.

This makes me worried that I'm in some sort of echo chamber

You are. Just consider how small the amount of people knowing about lemmy is, now take the ones who are interested in it (over using something like reddit) and now pick the ones who are technically capable to register an account. Those are us, those who have gone through this selection process.

Not really. I see diversity in the areas I think are healthy to have variety on. And the things that are missing are the things that made me leave other places where it seemed like I was the unwelcome one so...

Nah. Still plenty of stuff here that challenges me and makes me go learn stuff. That is a low bar however ¯\(ツ)/¯

One reason you're noticing a homogeneity of opinions on here is the fact that Lemmy isn't botted like larger social networks. Larger networks have bots farms pushing all sorts of narratives for various reasons, and the one thing they accel at is finding people to argue with.

You are also certainly in a bubble on Lemmy. You have to know it exists and care enough to use it over other platforms. Most people choose the path of least resistance.

Lol, no. Where else am I going to hear from the proudly atheist, anarchist, socialist, not-mainstream-and-not-interested folks? Even folks on the outer edges from my own position, like hexbear and lemmygrad, educate in their own way: not so much about what they think but about why they believe what they do. That doesn't mean I want to go roll my brain around in that full time, but I am absolutely better for having encountered them.

I love these comments and opinions when I see them in the wild, and while I may completely disagree, when they are presented courteously they are fascinating and informative.

This next bit is long, but relevant: it's about getting yourself to a point where you are able to see and enjoy the diversity that is already here. Just my opinion, skip it if you want.

You don't have to agree with something to be able to read it. And you don't have to possess, or even form, an opinion of your own just because others express theirs strongly. That need comes from innate human evolution, a deep quiet fear that if you stray too far from the pack or disagree too strongly you will be ostracized and not survive, but in the here and now in online spaces it's just a fear. You can, within your own tolerances, choose to set that aside and just read whatever you want.

Or to see it from the opposite direction, ALL people, including you, including me, derive comfort and security from being in agreement with the herd. But these days, in online spaces, and in every open space where public discourse occurs, that is no longer natural discourse, but a mindfuck: something manipulated beyond recognition by hooking into our primal human fears and using that subtly activated fear as a leash to drag people into thinking, and then doing, what they would otherwise not be inclined to think or do on their own.

That's what fucks it up for the rest of us. Propaganda, bad actors, and endless marketing. Remember how it was when the internet was young? That's the difference between then and now: those three things weren't there then, and the internet was a space as great as we could all make it. But they sure are there now. And if you're human, you too are susceptible to it. I know I am.

So you carefully choose your spaces, you make the effort to know and respect your own tolerances, you take the time to look up sources on your own, and you curate your own feed like your sanity depends on it, because it does.

Some young person told me off many moons ago about how "all people [his] age are overwhelmed" and how he could not be held accountable for his own shitty behavior online because of his resultant "anxiety," while at the same time absolutely refusing to curate his own intake. To me, he was drowning in a flood of negative, low-value content he refused to turn off or even slow.

I feel bad for him because while it is absolutely true that everything, coming at all of us all the time, is a tsunami of mental and emotional overwhelm that never stops, he CAN easily take control of what he chooses to see, and choose to cut it off when it's too much. No one's going to do that for him. But I can choose to do that for myself, and I do.

And that's how I can easily read differing opinions without being threatened by them: they are just that. Opinions. Not even necessarily factual. When you get to that place, the world is your oyster, but it takes constant vigilance. Get lazy and you're back to just doomscrolling the propagandized mainstream mental and emotional manipulations again.

But hit that sweet spot in your own feed and viewing tolerances, and that's when you can see and appreciate the diversity that is already thriving here. Instead of a glance and a discard in a world of one-line comments -- what doomscrolling and social media are made of and count on -- you can actually read, really read and not just skim, and recognize when something is worth more than five seconds or not. The more you actually read and don't just skim, the better and faster you'll become while still enjoying the pleasures that deep reads will bestow.

People are still making ten course meals of real content, but most readers are still hanging out at the food trucks. Only you can find what you're really looking for, but chances are excellent it's already here and you've either trained yourself to look past it, or actively cut it off by blocking it because it was too much trouble to deal with (high noise to signal, bad actors or behaviors, poor moderation, spam, etc). Look again.

I especially tip my hat to dbzer0 forcing new users to write a brief essay on anarchism just to sign up. I don't know if they still do that, but their requirement made me think about something I already knew from the distant past that I had not thought about in years -- Sacco and Vanzetti came to mind, though they are perhaps not the best example of real anarchism, lol -- and given recent world events it has been a VAST personal relief to know that there is a huge, thriving set of alternative philosophies that are NOT just designed to move masses of people through orphan-crushing and value-extraction machines until we all die. (And that's before you get to the scam that is politics in the US.)

So yeah, I've learned more about grassroots populist movements and beliefs just browsing Lemmy in three years than I ever learned in the space of many decades prior, and I can honestly say that while my values have remained the same, my entire worldview has been transformed by quietly hearing and listening to others talk about their own, even when I did not agree.

TL;DR: If you're not seeing diversity, that's a sign to carefully broaden your own scope and tweak your own viewing boundaries.

What levels of diversity are you expecting? I am here exactly to avoid the extreme polar opposite diversity many mainstream platforms offer. I see people agreeing and disagreeing but they are still having some common ground which enables the disagreement to look civil. Considering the mainstream social media this can look like a lack of diversity, but it's actually how it is supposed to be in a civilized world...

I expect this will be a controversial take but hear me out. I think it's futile, to an extent, to fight against so-called echo chambers since it's so ingrained in human tribal nature that the alternative ends up being worse for us. Having some key points of consensus is not necessarily all bad, it mirrors how socialising works in the real world, where people tend to connect with like-minded people, groups of people may not agree on everything but usually have some core values in common that tie them together (note, I still think that Lemmy has less of these types of values in common than most real world friendship groups, but it's closer to it).

On the other hand, throwing everyone together on the same corporate social media platform is something recent and unnatural. People don't have respectful debates and listen to each other there, they argue, get angry, and dig deeper into their beliefs. For example I would never have made a comment on Reddit, like this one, that I think might be slightly against the grain of the thread since you just get shouted down by defensive people who have already made up their minds. Here on Lemmy I don't expect everyone to agree with me all the time but I believe they might at least listen, so I feel freer to express myself, then again I do have some core values in common with most people here which is what enables that.

hatred is minimal here

Diversity of opinions isn't automatically good for its own sake. I'm sure with a little imagination, you can come up with all sorts of objectively stupid opinions. Are those what you want to sift through? If you have a space where you allow all opinions no matter what, you'll end up overwhelmed by the stupidest ones. If you moderate at all, you will always be accused of bias by someone. If you doubt any of this, just start hosting your own server!

tl;dr: different places have different vibes. That's OK. Not everywhere has to contain all opinions.

I see plenty of diversity without adversity. But there are also just some opinions that are indefensible and the majority agrees that the people with those indefensible opinions shouldn't be allowed at the table.

You're just used to seeing troll factory inflamed opinions on other platforms. On ad-supported social media moderators don't ban the trolls because "user number go up!". On the fediverse each user is a cost so when we find bad actors we simply eject them promptly.

There are facts and there are opinions. There are plenty of different opinions here in a lot of topics. But people largely agree on some basic facts, like, you know, vaccines work, the earth is a globe and the Trump administration is incompetent and corrupt. Pretty much all of "conservative" thought these days consists of denying basic, easily verifiable facts and replacing them with phantasms. We get some of that here too but luckily it's not very prevalent.

Yes, this is an echo chamber. Yes, most things are very samey. You don't see alternative opinions because this is a TINY community. Like crazy tiny. Lemmy has what, 60,000 active users? You know a ton of those are bots too. Even after a reddit exodus that site gets what, 2 million daily users*? So you've got a crazy small group but it's also very similar in type of person who is here. It's overwhelmingly educated middle aged men with a tech background or focus. So you've got a limited pool of opinions to draw on, and then EVEN if you do occasionally get a different opinion, even within that narrow band of experience it can get voted down or swarmed.

Look, I only lurk here occasionally, and I see stuff I disagree with constantly. I see stuff in this thread I disagree with. But I don't post about it because it's not worth it. I also don't have time to argue a minority opinion on the internet, and my life is better since I stopped doing that. And I guarantee I'm not alone. But I ASSURE you this is a bubble.

...but if it makes you feel better though, most people live in bubbles. I have been lucky to grow up in a very different place than I live, and I've found that politically, most Americans absolutely talk past one another because they are incapable of understanding "the other side" because they've never truly talked to people on the other side or listened to them, much less lived with them and understood them. This isn't enlightened centrist BS, I have a side I agree with, but I also don't misrepresent the views of people I disagree with based on no actual knowledge. And with non politics it's very similar - small groups beget small opinion spaces based on a small pool of experiences. Whether that's cars or AI or Linux.

We used to get exposed to people with different life experiences and opinions in so-called "third places", and we don't have them anymore. Way fewer people go to chuch and the middle of the road protestant mainline has been subsumed. Social clubs like the elks and masons are far less popular. 12% of the population doesn't serve in the military with a socioeconomic cross-cut. Kids don't even have malls, sports start specializations early, and the Internet, almost worst of all, has made it easier than ever to get a social fix consuming only content from those most like you or what is algorithmically fed to you.

Anyway, things are bad, I do not have a solution, but I have a little bit of time and feel compelled to post when you are practically begging for unpopular opinions. So my unpopular opinion is holy shit is this place an echo chamber, and if you don't feel that deep in your bones you need to immediately drive 2 hours outside of whatever city you live in and go to a pancake breakfast hosted by some local scout troop, go to some small town festival and talk to people, or hell go visit a church of a religion you don't belong to. And don't talk to people your own age, or same familial structure. Talk to someone who thinks voting is dumb. Talk to someone who doesn't care which Linux distro you're on because they don't even HAVE a computer, they just have an iPad.

...and yes, realistically you're probably not gonna make a connection that way without moving somewhere, and I'm obviously being mostly flippant, but at least don't turn on conservative tiktok or watch Fox News and expect that to be "the other side". Experiencing a different bubble is "growth" I guess, but people aren't the bubbles they live in, and actually talking to them is a way better way to understand WHY we disagree, not just how. Again, like I said, I don't have real solutions on how to do that. I just have the answer to your question and yes this place is a bubble.

*Note I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass, but I bet I'm close on orders of magnitude. And yes I know reddit is half bots too.

I've read and even participated in many debates here, there is definitely plurality of opinion going on here. So it seems to me that you may be missing some particular opinions - which ones are those?

Still think hiding the score would go a long way.
Even if it is just a slight bias you get, it does skew your opinion to the "correct side" i think.
I like that the fediverse does not have any sort of karma system, that does already help.

Maybe Photon can have that as a feature? Love your client so much btw. big fan.

Actually, I sometimes get lots of downvotes in things I think I see pretty clearly. So I understand what you mean but still I see some controversy.