Is Mastodon mainly for far left? | Hacker News Reader

Is Mastodon mainly for far left?

9 pointsoldnet33 comments

Hi, I have a different view on climate change than people from left. I'm trying to use arguments with links on wikipedia, some science articles etc.

However I end up with bans (2 servers so far) and reason is something like science denial.

So I would like to ask - is mastodon only for people from far left?

Btw I'm programmer with stock market hobby. So I'm analysing things.

Thanks

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By the way, this is a terribly asked question. You embed a wide range of assumptions and made some noob mistakes as well.

You actually have a collection of different questions: 1) Where can I have a reasonable fact-based argument about climate change? 2) I've noticed I got banned, possibly due to ideology, can I avoid doing that? 3) Are opinions on climate change entirely associated with the ideological bent of people running the servers

Here's what you got wrong: 1) Climage change isn't a far left opinion. It's actually fairly centrist, for example I am a democrat but not very progressive, much closer to Republicans than most democrats. So I'm as right of the far left folks as you can get. My ilk don't question climate change, because a wide range of intelligent people have put together a good collection of resources to make a convincing argument. Even republicans are gradually coming around to the idea that climate change is real, it's human caused, and we need to start making some hard policy decisions to deal with it.

2) you said you're a programmer with a stock market hobby, so you're analyzing things. So what? Analysis is fine, but you're analyzing things far outside your normal expertise zone, and these are complicated problems with huge amounts of prior knowledge, being communicated mainly to experts in the field.

3) there are lots of people making weak, psuedoscientific arguments about climate change that are just believeable enough that quantitative people fall for them. THey sound right, they seem to add enough question to the issue, but they don't really. It's just far easier to make weak pseudoscientific arguments than it is to make strong scientific ones.

Sorry but it isn't a terribly asked question.

It's an question based on reality.

I have no idea why they gave me bans when I started to "talk" about my point of view on global warming (or how they call it nowdays).

Where is freedom of speech, heh?

> Where is freedom of speech, heh?

_You_ are free, generally, to say whatever old nonsense you like. The rest of us, however, are free not to listen to it. You are not generally entitled to a platform.

There are Mastodon instances which will tolerate climate denial; you may want to stick to those.

It's always funny when people has full mouth of free speech and they're banning everyone with different opinion then.

Because of US left/right politics global warming has become a political topic rather than a scientific one. Most if not all science points to global warming being man made and getting worse. If you deny it then I understand why you are getting bans. Though from what I understand Mastodon was service that got traction from the US right not the US left so you getting banned from it mean you probably don't understand the science at all.

Mastodon was developed in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network)

> Though from what I understand Mastodon was service that got traction from the US right not the US left

Definitely the US left.

When the US right tried to use Mastodon, their instances got cut off and in many cases, Mastodon apps would block connecting to them entirely.

Or, indeed, they self-isolate (gab doesn't federate anymore, ol' minihands' Mastodon instance never did).

Gab did initially federate, but all the big instances blocked them and many app clients blocked connecting to Gab's instance.

> Because of US left/right politics global warming has become a political topic rather than a scientific one.

Any issue for which a policy response is advocated is, ipso facto, a political one.

But the reason climate change is a globally controversial political issue is that it fits the game theoretical conditions of tragedy of the commons as well as having large up-front costs for delayed benefits (the latter not being a huge deal, but it compounds the former.) This manifests in, but is not caused by, US right (“capitalism is good, but taking coordinated action to avoid environemntal catastrophe damaging human society is good for capital”)/farther-right (“capitalism is good, and if there is a need to take action for the long term, it will be rewarded by the market without government intervention so as to make it the natural choice”) politics.

Um, it's not a "different view," it's denial of settled science and actual physical events occurring right now.

Do you claim not to believe what the overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe? Do you believe climate science is a hoax? Do you believe that current extreme weather events are just happening by chance?

It's not worth arguing with people without experience in the field to evaluate this for themselves. At this point, the best we can do is minimize their impact on the decision-makers who need to make hard choices.

Do you know that earth is 4.5 billion years old and it has own cycles, right?

Yes, we know that. What's your point- that climate change today can be explained by earth's climate cycles?

Yes, something like that.

Um, don't argue with the church or else you're going to hell. The priests say so.

Regardless of their point of view, I don’t think you should ban someone for disagreeing with you, banning should have clear “why’s”, like distributing illegal content, spamming, etc., if you think that person is wrong, maybe it’s your chance to educate them, or maybe it’s ok that we have different views about things..

I agree citing scientific sources fortifies an argument, but I would advise you to take anything on Wikipedia as an unreliable source. Wikipedia is not a reputable source unfortunately.

Here are a few reliable sources you can look into for information about climate science and climate change:

Websites:

    NASA's Climate Change and Global Warming website (https://climate.nasa.gov/) offers an extensive collection of data, interactive features, and explanatory articles.
    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (https://www.ipcc.ch/) produces comprehensive reports about climate change.
    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov/) provides climate news, data, maps, and more.

Books:

    "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming" by David Wallace-Wells: This book offers an uncompromising look at the potential impacts of climate change if left unchecked.
    "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate" by Naomi Klein: Klein makes a case for how addressing climate change requires major changes to our economic system.
    "Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Joseph Romm: This is a clear, concise primer on the key aspects of climate change.
    "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" by Elizabeth Kolbert:This Pulitzer-winning, discussing the ongoing mass extinction driven by human activity, including climate change.
    "Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming" edited by Paul Hawken: This book compiles and evaluates solutions to climate change.

It's worth mentioning that understanding climate science also involves learning about related disciplines like chemistry, physics, and earth sciences, so exploring resources in those areas may be beneficial as well. Good luck!

You can run your own server, but if you use someone else's server you have to follow their rules, whatever they are.

I thing that I will run my own instance.

I got ban on official mastodon social site lol

Instances admins can still ban your instance too, just so you know before the hassle of setting it up to get your whole server banned after.

You can have views about art. Climate change, whichever side you come from, is science. You can support one theory over another, but to do so you need to have done some research. A view about science is as hand wavy as having a theory about art. It serves no purpose.

You can have views about anything. No permission needed.

Sorry that you didn't understand.

So strange that those who fled Twitter in fear of free speech & in protest of the political right being allowed back on Twitter, joined a platform which is (largely) resistant to deplatforming and censorship.

I find it funny that there are "block lists" distributed to Mastodon admins listing reasons for why certain nodes should be blocked; my favorite is the "free speech" category of nodes to block. It would be one thing if nodes were blocked for hate speech, science denial, or spreading misinfo, but free speech? The epidemic of people blocking so many Mastodon instances/enclaves is hurting the migration away from Twitter: why go to Mastodon if it's more balkanized than federated? Just let individual users block others on the Fediverse -- like Twitter supports.

I ran away from Twitter because of Musk but I will (maybe) go back because of your point.

> Just let individual users block others on the Fediverse

As a user, this sounds like a lot of work. There are instances that don't defederate at all, and you can use those if you want, but... it wouldn't be for most people, I don't think.

It’s federated, some instances will be run by far left, some will be by far right, some by libertarians, some by anime fans and so on. My only hope is these kind of dynamics to actually encourage debates and conflicts as obviously we should not all agree about the same thing, instead of the “if you don’t agree with X then you’re Y and should be banned!!” mindset.

No.

There are plenty of right-wing mastodon instances full of climate deniers. Trump’s TruthSocial is one, gab.com is another.

yes

No, it's mainly tech guys and people with sexual fetishes. So Libertarians, other liberals, and political narcissists.

edit: this is an old view, though. I have to assume the proportion of fetishists rose sharply after the twitter media panic, because not all fetishists were aware of Mastodon before.

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