I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.

  • OptimusPhillip@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    108
    ·
    1 year ago

    This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people are using Lemmy either because they prefer federated web platforms to centralized, which makes it antithetical to corporate interests, or because they’re opposed to Reddit’s API policy, which was a blatant move to squeeze more money out of their users. Either way, Lemmy’s appeal is very anti-capitalist, and since opposition to capitalism is a generally left-wing philosophy, I can totally see why most Lemmy users would be left-wing.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This is my thought as well. Lemmy isn’t what everyone is looking for. It’s a free open source software project for creating a decentralized federated network of content aggregators. For most people that sentence doesn’t make any sense nor do they really care. They just want a site they can doom scroll for hours.

      The people who choose to use Lemmy are people who care about open source projects, care about decentralization of online platforms, or both. These types of people by their very nature support groups of people coming together collectively to do something big.

      A collection of people working together towards a common goal without a strict hierarchy. You could say these people are community focused. Maybe we could call that communityism or something. Where people make rules as a group, or a union you could say. So yeah, no idea where the left lean is coming from.

      • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        “communityism” was somewhat the goal of reddit by having subreddits but still site owners has all the control over you. Lemmy is a free software and many free software projects interact with the userbase with such a community. Before this reddit thing, Free software enthusiasts used lemmy. Same goes with mastodon users before twitter was bought by elon. Now i can see when whatsapp does something shit(maybe) and people porting over to federated and decentralised E2EE matrix for instant messaging.(or maybe they just switch to telegram)

    • Jeanschyso@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Honestly I came here just a few days ago, right after Reddit admins removed that r/place guillotine. I wouldn’t say that I am very far to the left, but I do enjoy living in something close to a social democracy. I wouldn’t be happy in a place like the United States for example.

    • too_much_too_soon@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Maybe Lemmy was like this at the very start and is what helped Lemmy kick off, but I think a lot of people are looking for an alternative to Reddit. I think you’re going to see a lot more people coming here for the content, not the politics of it all.

      • OptimusPhillip@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        To be sure, you don’t have to be anti-capitalist to want to use Lemmy. I’m just saying that it’s very appealing to anti-capitalists.