Why is there such a large amount of communist and transgender related posts on the Fediverse compared to other platforms?

The Fediverse is home to a lot of young, tech-minded people distrustful of major corporations. The younger generations are more likely to come out as transgender due to greater awareness and acceptance of gender identity and dysphoria, and a decentralised, open platform is naturally going to appeal to communists, syndicalists and other left-wingers who don't want some billionaire buying the next website they get comfortable on. And funnily enough, there are a surprising number of trans people in the tech sector, to the point where trans-flag socks have become a meme among programmers.

Trans people and communists are nearly half of software dev. The other half are furries.

That'll be partly down to the communist and transgender coders who helped lay the foundations for this place.

it's amazing what you see when algorithms aren't deciding it for you.

The issue I have with this is that publicly expressing their love for others is an extremely natural and normal thing to do. Talking openly about your opposite-gender spouse, kissing or holding hands with your partner, going out for a nice date - whatever. These are all totally normal things which people won't blink at when a heterosexual couple is doing it, yet LGBT people can still be discriminated against for these behaviours. That's not even getting into trans or gender-non-conforming people, who can be discriminated against simply for existing and presenting the way they do.

I don't just want to ensure that LGBT people are free from explicit legislative discrimination. I want them to be free from social discrimination as well. Social consequences for being publicly gay are not acceptable, even if people aren't in favour of more open forms of discrimination.

Why is there such a large amount of Nazi, fascist, conservative, Republican, and bootlicking related posts on other platforms compared to the Fediverse?

There aren’t nearly as many right wingers and fascists as social media makes you believe. Speaking as a Mastodon instance admin, every single time we’ve had huge waves of bot and/or troll signups they’ve been very clearly right wing accounts (almost all had similar bios) that almost immediately started interacting with and boosting each other as well as harassing trans and queer people.

The thing about the fediverse is that it can’t be manipulated the way centralized social media can. So what happens is that it gets handled very quickly. They get banned and their instances get defederated so all they can do is shout into the void. They’re not, nor have they ever been, the majority by any stretch of the imagination, and most people have absolutely no desire to hear what they have to say at all.

On top of that, a huge number of them are grifters, and they won’t get any engagement here. They can’t get the kind of viral outrage they need because most people aren’t even seeing their posts.

I find myself to be a stereotypical Lemmy user. I'm trans, (anarcho-) communist, a programmer and Linux engineer.

I'm older, I transitioned (ugh I hate that word) about 2 decades ago. I got into computers consciously and very intentionally. I knew I'd need to support myself soon and spent a good amount of time thinking what industries or companies might be willing to hire someone like me (this was even before trans people had employment rights in California!). I chose computers because I felt like it was an industry where someone might hire me, I could make enough to survive and pay for surgery, and because it seemed one where my co-workers would be less likely to beat me up or kill me.

When it comes to communism, I have a hunch that being trans forces you to think about society and why you are not accepted, who is causing your troubles and why. It seems apparent why someone so low on the social acceptance ladder as a trans person would be repelled by exploitation based zero-sum systems and attracted to systems that would allow them to survive and thrive.

Linux seemed just fundamentally awesome to me. You mean people could just choose to get together, coordinate, and build one of the most complex things to exist on the planet and give it away for free? Sign me up! I think Lemmy and the Fediverse are attractive for similar reasons.

Because the people that flock to these platforms first are usually technically adept nerds and free thinkers.

Because the Lemmy software was developed by communist-leaning developers and they have, prior to the reddit exodus, had the biggest communities. As for the transgender related content, the transgender community was one of the largest to leave reddit for Lemmy.

People that are naturally drawn to fediverse tend to be:

• self-hosting enthusiasts excited to run their own social media platforms, which are tend to be big supporters of FOSS
• left-leaning idealists who want to get away from big corps platforms
• pirates (arrr)

So it's not that surprising to see plenty of anti-capitalism and transgender stuff here if you consider this demographics.

in a word, intersectionality. you're getting people who were already looking for an excuse to ditch reddit and twitter, and of that group, you're selecting the ones with the most tech literacy. That tends to overlap people with progressive politics.

We might be able to answer the question better if you named the "other platforms" you're referring to. It doesn't seem like an unusual amount compared to, for instance, how much communist/transgender content Reddit had back when Reddit wasn't as evil as it is now. (Who knows what Reddit's like now. I haven't been back since the two-day boycott over the API pricing.)

All that said, some of the communist content here is tankies. (That is, authoritarian communists who spout CCP or other authoritarian communist regimes' propaganda.) Some of the Lemmy instances (like latte.isnot.coffe and lemmy.ml) are run by tankies.

That said, a lot of the communist content here is grass-roots anarcho-communist advocacy by people like me who ideologically lean that way.

The more transgender related posts are mostly because 196 a very large queer and especially trans friendly subreddit closed permanently and migrated wholesale to a instance called blahajzone. If you look at r/place right now you can tell the absence of 196 by the fact there are very few queer symbols on r/place compared to last year where 196 and associated subs had coordinated artworks and defense campaigns for their flags. I'm pretty sure last time they managed to take over the American flag and force it to move to another spot on the canvas. Now there are two small flags and nothing else.

My assumption is that the bots, shills, astroturfers and other corporate interests haven’t arrived in sufficient quantities yet.

It’s not that there’s more here, just the volume of noise out there is far greater and most of the content generated is for parties who gain no advantage from posing as part of either of those communities.

because the fediverse is a place where the admins choose to federate with whoever they want and get to choose what are the policies in their own instances. so you got a chance to stop the hatred and harrasment trans people are victim of on other social plateform where the company don't want to dive into "political" stuff

it's kind of a safe space online for trans and lgbt for that reason

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I would expect it's due to suppression on mainstream platforms.

And unlike hate-based subcultures like you find in conservatism or disgust-based subcultures present in traditionalist circles which require some targets to criticize hosts to sink their mandibles into and suck the blood out of, the LGBTQIA+, Anti-capitalist, Furry, Weeb, etc subcultures are quite happy existing without the presence of bigots, corpo-simps, or chuds in general.

I don't know if it's just Reddit and Lemmy, but it feels like the internet in general just started trending heavily towards transgender-related stuff in the past few years. Just references to Femboys and trans flags all over the place, it's kind of weird how quickly it gained such traction. I don't have any problem with the trans community, if any of my kids came out as LGBTQ+, I would love them just as much. In high school I literally wore dresses and got beat up and made fun of for being different (more for the punk/goth aesthetic), so I've had some understanding of what they go through, even if I don't identify with any of it personally. I sympathize with what they're going through right now given that an entire political party has decided to turn them into scapegoats.

And I think it's great that they're building a community around themselves and are able to find other people that accept them for who they are, but I find their online communities tend to be incredibly hostile and militant to anybody that is less than completely loyal to the cause. Even just asking questions, giving opinions, or commenting any sort of criticism of their militant behavior gets you banned if you're not 150% supportive. Anything you say is twisted around to make it seem like you're a bigot who completely hates trans people and you're essentially a nazi. It tends to be incredibly negative, like they're looking to be outraged at the slightest provocation. Their tactics tend to be incredibly heavy-handed, just absolutely no tolerance for Cisgender people not understanding their lifestyle.

So I've just started blocking trans and furry content because I just don't care to see it. It's just not my bag, nothing against people that are in that community. The same way nobody else would really care to see if I made posts glorifying heterosexuality and being a boring vanilla binary white guy, I'm just not interested in celebrating lifestyle choices simply for the sake of celebrating it. I'll go to LGBTQ+ weddings and I'll defend anybody's right to love whomever they want or be whatever they want to be, but I just have other things I'm more interested in reading about. Board games, science, technology, politics, climate change, graphic design, art, music, movies, and whatever else other than someone else's sexual identity. Maybe that makes me closed-minded, I don't know, I thought the point was equality?

Not sure about transgender posts, but the communist posts are probably because other platforms are owned by huge corporations, and huge corporations generally don't like communism. Lemmy can never be bought by a huge corporation (at least not entirely).

Trans are bullied and socially ostrichized irl, so they tend to be terminally online. A lot of trans are also coders. They manage to find themselves in to pretty much every obscure techy social space online, they don't got anything else going on irl.

IDK, I see tons of left and trans content on YT and Twitter, for example. That is because that's the type of content I like, and the type of people I follow. I suspect what you're noticing isn't so much the presence of communism and trans people, but the absence of dumb shit.

Lemmy is a free open source software project. People into FOSS like the idea of something being built by a community to the benefit of everyone and not being controlled by any one person or company who could seek to benfit only themselves. It makes sense that their political ideology mirrors that.

FOSS and just programming and tech in general have an unusually large number of trans people. I'm going to be honest, I'm not exactly sure why. I can only assume because programmers are judged based on their code and not their appearance.

Gays are to Boomers as Trans is to Gen-X ers. I've been wondering what the marginalized group Millennials are going to have trouble with. My current guess is Poly, but that is just a guess at this point.

Idk but I mostly block all communities involving the former (but the latter doesn’t bother me at all). I don’t use lemmy to argue politics or first world problems, especially with people who are often incredibly hostile to dissent. I use it to post pictures of my beautiful home state and talk about gaming

I’m not entirely sure that is the case, but I’d believe that if one forms part of a group that has non-conformity to a general standard as part of the expected traits to belong, that same behavior will apply to other aspects of the life of the person.

There's a general selection bias in the fediverse, and the idea of decentralizing power is pretty communistic and also pretty beneficial to people who feel oppressed (transgenders).

Most new waves have a strong bias when you think about it. For example, crypto has a strong tilt towards Libertarianism and deregulation

The way I understand from what I've seen and read is that these are mostly people who were banned, shunned or chased away from other platforms. While Reddit can ban you, you can just spin up an instance of Lemmy, Mastodon or whatever yourself and play by your own rules.

Interestingly, on Reddit there were tons of trans related posts and comments, but what I see here (and other fedi platforms) is trans people posting whatever interests them, and not about being trans. It's like they can just be themselves without people constantly talking about or questioning their identity.

All the bootlickers are still chillin with spez

People congregate where they feel safe. Sometimes that looks like the nerdy introverted kid living life on the internet when their immediate community doesn't understand them, and the roles they're expected to play don't work for them. Turns out a lot of nerdy introverted kids who felt misunderstood by their families were trans, which isn't too surprising.

What's interesting to me is that most trans-people in tech are AMAB, and I think that reflects computers being seen as an ok "masculine" hobby (in lieu of sports or cars, etc.) . I often wonder where all the AFAB transpeeps end up instead, I know they're somewhere!

I have not seen any transgender related post. Where are you seeing it?

One could look at the concept of the fediverse and relate it to the ideals of segregating higher powers (big businesses) and giving power to the working class (pay for labor). IE: the concept of dividing up Lemmy as a service into multiple-owned servers instead of a single monolith like Reddit. This tends to align with the ideology of Leftism (to be clear, the progressive class of beliefs, for anyone non-American) tend to be more inviting and inclusive to people. This makes for a good platform for trans people to feel welcomed.

This is not a factual answer, and I do not believe anyone here holds the authority to state a fact. It is only my personal observation.

alongside the whole tech stuff one major thing is that when you report hate speech in the fediverse it (usually) goes to moderators and admins who give a shit about their community rather than some automated system which may or may not do anything, resulting in a community that's more hostile towards people spouting hate speech (but muh freeze peach!! echo chamber!! bleh im leaving), which indirectly makes people affected by that speech feel more comfortable to speak up.

of course particularly the microblog/Mastodon-y side of the fediverse still has some issues to solve regarding racism (i am not the best person to go into detail on that one though), but transphobia in particular tends to be taken out pretty quickly, according to my own observations anyway.

I can't speak for everyone or say my response is the definitive answer. But I would say it's because people actually feel safe discussing those topics. They don't necessarily have to worry about being silenced by a corporation or like they will be censored because of how the fediverse works.

Have you seen the twink Link pictures they are posting?

It would make Penis Prager himself gay.

I blocked the blahaj (nothing against trans people. "Communities" based on sex/gender-stuff is just cringe) and lemmygrad (plus other tankie) instances. Now I barely see any of it.

Yup

Because there’s no algorithm to curate what you see. You can find the same content in the mainstream platforms if you look hard enough, unless the platform explicitly blocks them (i.e. nsfw on Threads). On the fediverse, there’s no algorithm that pushes or deprioritizes content, so you see everything as it is, and it’s up to you to curate your own feed to your liking.

I think the answer has something to do with Programming Socks

The way Lemmy is structured is basically communist reddit. Most people who use it are aware of this, and enjoy it for that reason.

Hmm, that's an interesting observation. One possibility could be that those topics are particularly relevant and/or controversial within certain communities on the Fediverse. Communism has historically been associated with revolutionary movements and political ideologies that challenge traditional power structures, while transgender issues have been at the forefront of discussions around gender identity and expression. As a result, these topics may attract more attention and discussion on the Fediverse due to their inherent significance and potential for stirring up debate and conversation among users. Additionally, the decentralized nature of the Fediverse may make it a more appealing platform for those seeking alternative perspectives and approaches to social and political issues. Ultimately, it may simply come down to individual preferences and interests among Fediverse users, leading to a disproportionate amount of content on those specific topics. Regardless, it's fascinating to see how different conversations and themes take shape across various online networks and platforms.

I find it quite disturbing that a generation which studies have shown are having the least amount of sex for their age compared to other generations, sure loves to focus their entire identity on that topic a whole hell of a lot.

Its damn cringy when your entire identity is something that you don't even do. Some of y'all need new hobbies.

"communist". Define please, or I'll assume you're in high school.

CCP? Soviet state? RCP? Are they still around ? Gimme a break.

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Because they are here to take control of the narrative. I got severely downvote, name called and ultimately site banned from an instance because I politely constantly questioned them. The censorship is coming

Lemmy was developed by a bunch of diehard pinkos, and actively curate the general "home" instance of lemmy to only promote leftist content

Curious what other platforms aren’t? Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, etc are extremely Left so it’s always typical to see politically charged posts in relation to those things (among other topics). Curious to hear other people’s thoughts but I was hopeful the Fediverse would be a little more neutral.

Free platform = free ads. And since it's still no mainstream, propaganda accounts are more visible.

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Young people haven't experienced life yet and think communist is something good, despite 100 years of absolute failures and hundreds of millions of people starving, getting killed for things such as wearing glasses, and sent to work to death in prisons for having a different opinion.

Young people also over represent themselves on the transgender scale and don't realize they aren't actually special compared to the 7 billion people in the world, but like to feel special in their high school of 1,000 people.

Young people comprise the vast majority of people on the fediverse.

Young people will get a rude awakening once they find out they have to work for a living, provide to those they love and, once again, that their 'identity' doesn't matter to anyone else.