I don’t have much of a problem either way as I don’t think I’ll be engaging in political discussion on this website past this post but it seems like any sort of non-left wing opinions or posts are immediately trashed on here. That’s fine. There’s clearly a more liberal audience here and that’s okay. I just don’t want Lemmy to become a echo chamber for any side and it seems to be that way when it comes to politics already.
Mostly making this post just to drum up discussion as I’m new here.
Edit: Thanks for the rational replies. I was expecting to get lit up for even mentioning this topic lol.
a political space leaning towards a certain side is, naturally, going to be an echo chamber. i mean, couldn’t i just call every right-leaning space a conservative echo chamber too? imo, we need to stop perpetuating the myth that “neutral” spaces are normal, & “echo chambers” are some new bad thing that the leftists keep doing to shield themselves from information. when people call a group an “echo chamber”, what they really mean is “a group that shows bias”, & because it’s natural for humans to show bias, most social hierarchies we form tend to naturally bias towards certain opinions too.
every group of humans, whether on the internet or in real life, is an echo chamber that reflects the beliefs & opinions of the most active users. there’s always a majority opinion, & from what i’ve experienced groups that try to avoid their biases just tend to turn into places that feel completely unnatural to talk in, where everyone dances around eggshells what they truly believe but end up letting it bleed through anyway. & from the introductory posts that describe the spirit of this site, that situation the exact opposite of what this instance was made for.
so while it’s not strictly against the rules to be conservative, & i don’t think it’s fair to say that conservative opinions are completely unwelcome on beehaw* (there are definitely conservative & center-right leaning instances out there so i don’t think it’s fair to ask about all of lemmy in the title), if you’re looking for other people here to agree with you, well bad news - a leftist bias here will be unavoidable. if you choose to participate here, you just have to accept the fact that this instance is made up primarily of leftist users, & thus threads here always be naturally biased primarily towards leftists opinions.
I don’t know if I agree with you regarding echo chambers. A community having a bias is indeed rather natural. An echo chamber would something different though - a place where I only ever hear/read my opinion. And I really don’t want that. I want to grow, I want to evolve my positions, I want to convince others or at least make them see my point. And I can’t do that if I suppress all dissenting voices (e.g. by defederating or even just downvoting them).
On the other hand, we need communities where we can have more “advanced” discussions and where not every thread gets derailed by people questioning the fundamentals. Furthermore, to have a meaningful discussion the participants need to debate in good faith, agree on (scientific) facts etc.
Unfortunately far too many people who describe themselves as “conservative” nowadays are more about derailing discussions, trolling and ignoring facts. E.g. a recurring discussion in Germany is about gendered language. If someone ignores the studies that show the positive impact of including all genders (or at least male and female) in your texts, then there is no point in having a discussion. If someone acknowledges those studies, why other factors should be more important, we could have a debate. Most “conservative” people in this “discussion” just to continue to choose ignorance. Which is a shame, because I really miss the days where I had long (IRL) discussions with conservatives.