An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
There is absolutely alt-right content on lemmy. That said, it is mostly drowned out. I saw several alt-right communities when I joined lemmy 3 weeks ago with only 1 member. These people were trying to build echo chambers by themselves. Other lemmy users would come in and start posting articles from regular media which pretty much shut down. I think it’s great that users here don’t want to allow it to be a safe haven for that kind of stuff, unlike the numerous other “free speech” websites that actively encourage it.