What's a good conservative instance?

Any "conservative space" that exists usually fills up with conservatives saying the type of shit that would get them banned anywhere else.

I don't think you'll ever find what you're looking for, but best of luck creating it and preventing it from devolving into what's around currently.

why look for a space with a political lean if you don't wanna see politics? plenty of spaces to talk about other topics

I'm not sure you'll get that from any instance that allows politics, to be perfectly honest, as politics will tend to swamp all other discussion because it generates more traffic and discussion. I've spent time on microskiff.com (a boating forum), which is intensely right-wing, and it got so toxic they had to ban political discussion altogether. They have an open feud with The Hull Truth (another boating forum) which leans more left and attracts more voices who challenge conservatives. /r/Hunting was kinda conservative and generally policed itself, but that's because the mod team nuked anything that went off the rails.

Conservative-friendly spaces usually stay functional one of two ways: either they create a conservatives-only safe space or they refuse to let conservatives be overtly conservative. As someone who was a Reddit moderator for over a decade, you're kinda driving at the major gripe conservatives have with the open internet. They tend not to get a warm welcome not because they're conservative, but because when they flock together they tend to get disruptive and toxic very quickly. So then the warnings, removals, and bans come out, and the toxic crowd crows about being "censored", and the toxicity/pushback ramps up in an endless loop. It's the same song and dance everywhere they go, unfortunately. The conservative-sphere is just too infested with toxic conservatives for non-toxic conservatives find breathing room.

Additionally, Lemmy the platform has a steep learning curve which limits it to a more tech-savvy audience, and these kinds of forums naturally attract more left-leaning users, so I don't think Lemmy is the place you're going to find much conservative traffic in the first place.

The problem with "conservatives" is that they don't really stand for anything. So they have to go into politics and culture war nonsense.

You're not really going to find anything that's conservative yet isn't political because modern conservatism is fundamentally hollow by design.

your fediverse experience is curated by your own subscriptions. unless youre doomscrollin' /new you shouldnt see what you wouldnt want to see.

Conservatives: “Don’t talk about politics, I’m an independent”

Also conservatives: Brandon is censoring me! Jan 6 was peaceful!

What are some topics that you feel are conservative that are not related to politics?

What do you consider "politics"? Trying to reject people's way of life and reduce their agency under the guise of "politics" is a common dogwhistle.

If you don't want to have a politically dominated feed don't subscribe to political communities.

The subscribed feed is there for a reason. To have your own curated feed of things you want to see and that is possible from any instance (given that the instance you are on isn't defederated from a bunch of other instances that have most of the content you want to see)

Good luck finding a “conservative” instance that’s not filled with violent rhetoric, hate and bad actors. If that’s what you’re looking for, just use X/Gab/Truth like all the other fascists.

To everyone downvoting: Stop downvoting well meaning questions because you think anyone using that word must be about taking a side in American politics.

There will always be people resistant to change. They should have a space to share their doubts in a healthy way without falling into the toxic sludge of "Conservativism" (which is often radically revolutionary btw)

And to answer the question: Your best bet is a mainstream instance, and not subscribing to anything related to politics. You won't escape it completely, and you can't avoid having your ideas challenged. But you can avoid name-calling and hostility related to election campaigns.

Kinda surprised nobody has said this: start your own instance. Seriously, thats the power of the fediverse.

If you're looking for something less overtly tankie, any instance other than hexbear or .ml to a lesser extent is probably okay. But I'd recommend just blocking the subs that have too much political stuff. I don't think there's a specifically conservative instance, since that isn't really Lemmy's demographic.

Good luck on your quest to find one (In earnest, because the rest of this response is going to sound rather mean).

When it comes to technology, conservatives suffer from a learning disability.

They'll keep cooking up half-baked networks behind cloudflare, AWS, Google reCaptcha and other brain rot.

And even if they did manage to erect a proper fediverse instance, it would likely get walled of from the rest of the liberal dominated network using blocklists for being too "toxic".

You should consider creating your own instance, and only letting in people who share your view after a careful vetting process, and then carefully curate your instance to make sure any users that get through the vetting process comply with your rules.

You’ll also probably want to populate it with content. You should really get started on this now if you want to get it to work.

“good”ness and “conservative” don’t coexist

Lemmy is part of the Fediverse. So by nature all (most) of the instances are interconnected, and you're always exposed to all of the users and topics. An exception would be an instance that blocks other instances and doesn't federate with the rest of the network. (Or just a select few other instances.)

I think Lemmy is quite full of politics. At least with news concerning politics. I also don't really like it to lean towards that. But in the end it's a link aggregator and lots of people use it to link some articles.

I'm not sure if you found the right spot here on/with Lemmy. I'd advise you to subscribe to topics you're interested in, skip the news and political debate communities and focus on whatever you like. It shouldn't really matter on which instance you do it. But if you find one that aligns with your idea of a nice place, you should support that and join them. I can't point to any specific instances fulfilling your specific requirements. I'm not conservative myself. And I'm not from the USA so my categories are a bit different from lots of people here.

But you have to curate and choose your subscriptions. This isn't any of the usual big tech social media networks that has lots of algorithms to sort posts for you and only display pleasing content to their users. Lemmy is a bit more free(?) and doesn't lock the users into their individual filter bubble. And that's part of it's core design.

Save money.

May not quite answer your question, but when I think conservative I think less government interference.

Keyword my perspective, views of actual conservatism vary. So my thoughts would be instances where not having as much of your info be public, censorship, and mandates. Mandates is touchy, so what I am thinking is there should not be a vaccine mandate because everyone should be educated enough to understand how beneficial vaccines are and there is no need to force people since they'll do it anyway.

Maybe an instance would be that Deep Space 9 episode where the federation tries to take over the entire Earth just because of a changeling threat?