There appears to be a lack of “centrist”

“Progressive” liberals in fact the centrists—they’re center-left at best—and there are plenty of them here.

right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions)

These people are liberals as well, but because they usually break Lemmy’s code of conduct regarding various bigotries, they get usually quickly the boot.

non-political

Everything social is political, and the fediverse is social media.

We already have people praising Liz Cheney.

You could say “I am noticing a distinct lack of Neo Nazis on Lemmy”.

To which I say why change that.

Liberals are not leftists.

Hearing from “both sides” and coming to some compromise/middle ground only works if the following is true:

1. Both parties are acting in good faith.
2. The viewpoints expressed are close enough that they don’t require a total departure from one’s current viewpoint.
3. The disputed topic doesn’t have a obvious or clear correct answer.

The problem is, at least in the US, none of these are true for right wingers and even many “centrists.”

You cannot talk to somebody and try to find common ground if they don’t believe in statistical studies by government agencies, they don’t believe in scientific studies by major universities and research institutions, and don’t care about the rights and protections for minority groups.

The older members of my family are almost all conservatives, MAGA supporters, and fundamentalist Christians.

They genuinely believe that Evolution is a myth and the Earth was created 6000 years ago. They believe that illegal immigrants are invading this country and that Democrats are secretly allowing them to. They don’t believe humans have any effect on climate change. They don’t think Covid was anything more than a common cold that the government used as an excuse to try to control people. They don’t believe in vaccines.

I find Lemmy to be very refreshing. I get news from a diverse collection of Leftists sources. Anarchists, statists, weak socialists like the AOC/Bernie types, government studies, independent guerrilla journalists, Communists, Mutualists, Marxists, etc.

But I have no interest in further “diversifying” by adding right wing “sources.”

Cookies can taste good with many different ingredients, but no cookie tastes good with horse poop.

Lemmy has always had the Communists and Anarchists, from what I understand. Liberals largely came during the Reddit fiascos. Overall, I’d say instances are becoming more homogenous, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. I’d rather have more leftists and fewer liberals seeing liberals convert to leftists, IMO.

Seems like lemmy.world already provides plenty of right wing perspectives, we really don’t need me.

Everywhere else in my life is centrist or rightwing. I enjoy having somewhere to escape it.

2. There appears to be a lack of “centrist”, non-political, or right-wing voices (and I don’t mean extreme MAGA-type views, but rather more moderate conservative positions).

I see plenty of them. They’re just mostly on other instances to me (like your home instance).

Furthermore, while it’s tempting to see the so-called ‘left’ and ‘right’ as equivalent mirrors needing to be balanced for diversity, the reality is far from it. After seeing Wolfballs in action (that instance died before the reddit API fiasco), I can tell you we don’t need to be balanced out by ‘white genocide’ discussions and more open anti-semitism. I know that’s not what you proposed, but it’s to illustrate that sometimes there isn’t value in arbitrary balancing the ‘left’ and ‘right’ on these websites.

is it a natural result of Lemmy’s community-driven nature?

It’s also a result of Lemmy’s history and appeal. When reddit went on sprees of deleting subreddits, the right-wing hate groups made their own reddit clones, anarchists typically went to Raddle, and when GenZedong and ChapoTrapHouse went down, they went to Lemmygrad.ml (as a result, it became the largest instance) and created Hexbear respectively. So there is a long history of larger communist communities from day one which was the status quo until the reddit API fiasco.

The Fediverse also tends to attract anarchists and other socialists by the appeal of its decentralized nature, along with a few right-libertarians who see it as an anti-censorship tool. So one could say there’s a bias there.

How might we encourage more diverse political perspectives while still maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment?

That’s tough, because you inherently limit which political perspectives you can encourage.

Not counting lemmygrad and hexbear most of lemmy instances is completely liberal, at best radical liberal. I seriously doubt your statement about being communist if you call for more centrism and think we need more rightwing info.

You want more rightwing? Go anywhere else in the internet, there’s full of it everywhere. What is lacking everywhere else, is communist point of view.

I think the problem is in the opposite direction. Society is too ideologically homogeneous in being against socialism. The major narratives are controlled by nation-states and corporations, social media are infested with political advertisement and propaganda.

So, as others say, I believe it is sorta uninformed and middle-of-the-road fallacy to find a corner of the internet where you can speak your mind without being harassed by white supremacist trolls, and say we need more diverse views.

Right wingers have (had) Parlel, Gap, TruthSocial, now they have X, and Facebook, where they were also dominating and harassing in the past. No leftists and/or genderqueer person would survive a day at these platforms.

But Lemmy being primarily/explicitly leftist is the problem, and you suddenly are alarmed for echo chambers. This is not quite fair, now is it.

As for Lemmy per se, I don’t think it is too homogeneous. I debate centrists and liberals every other day. And recent discussions showed that the amount of latent transphobia in the site is shocking, with people knowing next to nothing apart from 4chan/MAGA talking points.

How can this happen after all these years of activism and outreach. It is because of the ecosystem of echo chambers in the broader communications and media landscape. This discourse never reached those people.

Considering it was the position of major medical and professional organizations, it shows that the pathology lies with the existing social media and broader media enterprizes, with a prominently selective messaging.

Do I need to say that this led to widespread science-denialism for which mainstream platforms are clearly to blame?

If your inquiry is honest, then the only explanation is that the propaganda apparatus works so well, that the (relative) absence of the dominating narratives makes you anxious that you entered an echo chamber, when in fact you probably have been in an echo chamber so far.

As a leftist myself (communist)

Very, how do you do fellow kids energy from this comment.

I don’t think I’ve ever interacted with a communist who would be upset about a lack of reactionaries in their spaces, they’d be relieved to have a place free of them and their ignorance and hate.

And the fact you think that “centrists” and “right-wing” are somehow not extremists (but this made up special category of MAGA which by the way is most conservatives in the US and in a lot of the world somehow is) tells me you are politely not really politically literate.

Liberals are reactionary enough in their excuse for genocide, you think for some reason we need space for not only them but the people who want to take away rights from trans people, who want to kill trans kids, who want to make women second class citizens, who are incredibly racist, war-mongering, anti-science, etc?

As much as I align with many of the views expressed here, I wonder if we’re missing out on valuable dialogue and perspective by not having a more diverse range of political opinions represented.

You can get that literally anywhere else offline or online, especially your home instance. You’re not from a leftist instance but from the most reddit-brained, centrist neo-lib instance.

This is false equivalence, the idea that the left is too extreme and needs balancing with the right. Please just accurately identify your politics or don’t bother mentioning them as we can easily guess them from a post like this.

Personally, I don’t buy this echo chamber shit. Before social media, you choose your spaces and your company and did not have to put up with random jackasses butting into your conversations to tell you how much they hate gay people or whatever.

The abnormal thing is this expectation that we’re all supposed to meet in the middle with any asshole at all times. I’m happy with a townhall meeting once in a while but I don’t want to or need to put up with bigots and people who are otherwise socio-politically the opposite of me on a daily basis.

I want to be in the company of people that don’t make me feel like shit and who I can see eye to eye with. That’s not being closed minded or wanting an echo chamber, that’s normal.

I don’t think having Nazis and Zionists here would make anything better, make anyone sympathize with them, or find common ground. This is a place where we can be safe, why add people who are purposefully being dishonest and spreading disinformation? They aren’t misinformed people, they are real pieces of shit who hold a genuinely wrong position/s; they want to piss you off to ruin your day. I already have enough discourse with these people everywhere else, why here?

Given that in the US leftist perspectives on anything are few and hard to come by, I welcome Lemmy’s primarily leftist slant on things. Should one want to get a fascist or center/center right perspective, pretty much everything in the mass media in the US will provide that.

There is no such thing as a “moderate conservative” any more. IMO the difference has always been mainly, how mask off they were prepared to go. Trump has shown them that you can go fully mask off without any negative consequences.