Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it's going to, but... Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.

Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It's a different group here.

Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others' needs.

There's been tons of right-leaning Reddit alternatives before, but they always quickly devolved into Nazi spaces.

Lemmy was the first one that I'm aware of, which told Nazis to fuck off right from the beginning.

Reality has a well known left leaning bias.

Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, "both sides" is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.

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.

progression tends not to be conservative

Hot take: you shouldn't subscribe to an ism.

You know what my political affiliation is? I'm an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.

Abortion? Sure.

What's the problem? Women are pregnant and they don't wanna be.

Well how'd they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.

That takes care of the input side of the equation. What's next? Oh yeah, they don't wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let's fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she's not in immediate danger. You can't force somebody to risk their life.

Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I'm sure of very little when it comes to God, but I'm sure it doesn't want preventable suffering.

What else? Families can't afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that's a different topic).

What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let's fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.

How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.

These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it's going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.

Does that make me a leftist?

The developers of Lemmy are the type who have jumped the shark when it comes to leftism.

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs

I think there's a wide range of people on Lemmy too but the extreme right and extreme left have ended up on instances that have been defederated from the main group. So what you're seeing are the sensible, rational people, and in America such people are considered left wing I guess 😉

reddit had given into the "work the refs" strategy of the American right wing. That artificially elevated the voices of the right and suppressed the voices of the left. It's actually the case when you look at surveys and voting behaviors that right wing ideas are abysmally unpopular.

So when we're on an actually free platform that doesn't have an "engagement" based algorithm driving anger and division, with no one putting their thumb on the scale (or people who try getting defederated), "leftist" ideas come up.

The confusion reflected in the OP is the obvious outcome of the post Fairness Doctrine "both sides" media landscape. There really aren't as many right wing people as left wing. We are legion.

Yup it is. There are a lot of communist techie people I guess. I still generally state my political opinions here though. Let them be downvoted.

You're absolutely clowning if you think you have the breadth of data available to confidently make such an assessment. This is, ironically, an incredibly Reddit moment.

I posted some memes about communism, you should see the comments in there

Left wingers: "The right is full of neo-fascists who want to exploit natural resources, subjugate minorities, project their own pedophilia habits onto us, roll back the clock on women's rights, and are willing to lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal to get it all done!"

Right wingers: "The left is ANNOYING!"