Pride Puppy. Apparently there’s even a children’s book about this doggo.

I think you can also see something fundamentally positive in the critical attitude of many Lemmy users: namely the fact that criticism of undesirable developments in politics, society, the economy and so on is practiced here at all. In my opinion, this is important and should not be taken for granted. If only because it is impossible for so many people in numerous countries around the world to express their opinions freely and criticize their governments or powerful people in their society.

In any case, I think that a certain fundamental skepticism towards the existing power structures in politics, media and business is something of a unifying element that motivates many people to participate in Fediverse, after all, this platform is an alternative to the centrally managed social media providers and their functional logics.

Nevertheless, I think your post is important because it shows that all the negativity that goes hand in hand with a critical examination of the numerous problems in the real world is extremely off-putting for many users. This is of course problematic both for the mass appeal of the Fediverse and to a certain degree probably also for the mental health of the user base.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with this in a meaningful way. However, I try to stay positive and hope for the best.

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The Internet’s own boy. RIP - he would have hated what they did to reddit.

Fun fact: Monopoly originated from “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by Elizabeth Magie, an anti-monopolist who designed it to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land ownership.

Yes, that’s probably true. For me, however, neutrality presupposes diversity - at least to a certain degree. As in the maxim of quality journalism: the assumption here is that a journalist can never be truly objective. This is why an attempt is made to allow opposing perspectives on a topic to have their say, so that the reader or viewer can form their own opinion.

Of course, this principle does not work in an environment in which differing opinions or perspectives are generally unwelcome. This is probably the case with Lemmy and other Fediverse applications for some topics. But I think that this doesn’t just apply to the Fediverse, but to social media in general. It seems to me just as you say: if you only encounter rejection on a platform, in a community or on an instance if you disagree with the majority, you will move elsewhere - which in turn will probably lead to you eventually finding yourself in an environment where the majority of others are of the same opinion.

Of course, it would be highly desirable if people were more open-minded, but I’m afraid that’s a utopia. In any case, I don’t have the impression that the advent of social media has fundamentally brought open exchange forward.

On the contrary, I have the impression that political discourse in many countries, for example, is now characterized by the very strategies that make social media posts successful: the abbreviated presentation of complex contexts, the invocation of enemy stereotypes, sometimes even straight-up trolling. But perhaps this is just a perception error on my part.

I’m not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.

What’s more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it’s often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.

I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be “special interest instances” that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.

If the Lemmy admins can’t make a living from it, that’s the Lemmy community’s fault.

Don’t worry, Mario, it’s a fine. You can just appeal until you’re president or get the coins from Bowser if you help him take over the Mushroom Kingdom. In the meantime, please stop claiming that you didn’t sexually assault Princess Daisy back in the 90s - you were convicted for that.

I posted an opinion that I thought was unpopular on lemmy to /c/unpopularopinion. I don’t really get what is wrong with that. I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings or offended someone.

Yes, sure. But there are exceptions like here in /c/unpopularopinion for example. The guideline for this community says:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it’s something that’s widely accepted, give it an arrow down

Since my post has 70 downvotes now this would mean that most people think that this is a popular opinion. But somehow I get the feeling that this is not what most people wanted to communicate.

I think so too, although according to the guidelines of this community the many downvotes that this post has racked up should actually indicate that it is a popular opinion. Maybe people haven’t read the guideline and downvoted because they don’t like the statement. I can only guess since only one person explained in the comments why he had downvoted the post (he was of the opinion that this is a popular opinion).

This doesn’t seem like an open question to me.

46 downvotes don’t seems very popoular. But tbh i don’t even know what to make of it in this community. Noone bothered to explain if the posts statement is right or wrong. Guess this is social media. No sence at all but some stats.

Why?

Downvote without explanation…that is what is mean. Is that any helpful? Probably not. What I mean is that an explanation is needed to make any argument. There is no point in just saying no. If it were so I could say that you are wrong about gravity. That is what Trump thives on.

I’m all about discussion. But there can’t be much of a discussion if the one you talking to just says no to any given argument. That would be like Karen telling me no when I try to explain to her that the earth is not flat. She could downvote that statement but I’d really like Karen to elaborate on why she thinks I’m wrong and she is right. Don’t you see that Karen takes your position on this one? What I’m getting at is that with your downvote you don’t explain anything. Pls have the decency to elaborate.

Thing is I don’t downvote without explaining why I did so.

No one reads any guidelines even if there were any. Do I up- or downvote in this community if I agree to a statement? I just think it would be helpful to know why a post meets so much rejection or consent. I of course get that Lemmy is a reddit clone. But do we really need to make it all the same? I don’t think that the most upvoted post on the frontpage is the best post or most usefull in that timeframe. It’s just the most upvoted post for a majority of people that do not contribute much but up- and downvotes. This is a Lurker-centric system. But I don’t think that there are enough contributors that they would put up with this (+ there are no benefits to do so whatsoever). I just think the merrits of a social media site is it’s content. I don’t feel that there is much appreciation on here for that.