I can’t say I’ve been using Lemmy for long, but from the get-go it seems that the communities, memes, opinions that get upvoted seem to reflect left-wing ideas.

I’m certainly not complaining, it honestly feels like a breathe of fresh air compared to other social media sites that seem to shift further and further to the far right, though I am curious to hear why this might be the case? Does FOSS tend to attract more left-wing minded people, or does this just happen to be a broadly left-wing microcosm/bubble?

Hope you all have a great day.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    311·
    5 months ago

    Depends on the server you’re on. Lemmy found popularity when a group of communists had their subreddit(s)banned. Lemmygrad is worse than Lemmy.ml but both are managed by the same people and both have a clear communist bias because of the way the project came to be. The .ml in the domain name may technically be the country code of Mali, but the project is hosted under that domain because the letters reference two famous communist names.

    Other lemmy servers are less obviously left wing. They’re still relatively left wing, but less anarcho-communist. Some are right-wing, but unfortunately the ring wing servers seem to attracts disfranchised right wingers who are often banned for good reason.

    I’d say FOSS advocacy has a left wing bias, though a lot of people who use open source because of personal freedom aren’t necessarily left wing. Plus, the biggest open source projects are all backed by huge capitalist companies, so I don’t think the connection between open source software itself and the left is that strong; I think it’s mostly the advocacy groups and activist communities that tend to go that route.