It seems anytime I try to check out Mastodon it is always some negative political view or affiliation of why X, Y & Z is bad. Is this just what most people like boosting or is it a sign of botting to push negativity over the more positive headlines?
I do understand I can switch to any Mastodon instance I want and stick to a small community, however I like keeping up with trending topics in the world. Maybe the most popular accounts in the Mastodon community likes to rise up pitchforks every minute.
This is why I can never get into microblogging/Twitter-type platforms. Character limits and one-click reposting mean that what little discourse you get is shallow, and ragebait is consistently pushed to the top.
I'm not going to say that Lemmy or (especially) Reddit completely avoid this, but you generally get much more insightful conversation and can opt-in to political communities.
There was a thread on !asklemmy@lemmy.ml recently asking people for their unpopular political opinions, and it actually wasn't a total shitshow!
By "not a total shitshow" do you mean that it actually contained unpopular opinions or do you mean it was not filled with extremists.
Actual unpopular (but not extremist) opinions.