By definition, people with a conservative mindset are less open to change and new experience.

Federated social media is still in the new and formative stage. So it is not shocking it is still dominated by those more open to new experiences. But don't be surprised if that shifts if/when Lemmy/kbin reach critical mass.

The internet itself has followed a similar path.

Lemmy is more centrist than Reddit

(other than the usual issues) Reddit was hated by the general populace because it was too right wing and it was hated by right-wingers for not being right wing enough

Lemmy is still new and hasn’t gained a large population as of yet, but it’s already still far more representative than Reddit ever was

ITT: left = progressive and right = conservative

Lemmy started off as much more left-wing, to the extent that it had a hard-coded slur filter that only recently was made something configurable. The choice of .ml has been proposed as being chosen because it represents "Marxist Leninist" (and I don't know if that's true or not), but many of the original instances were highly censored.

That being said, I've been both left and right and presently I'm more right wing, and a lot of the time I write up some big screed in response to something dumb or evil and then just hit "close tab" because when I'm on someone else's instance I want to be a good houseguest and not cause trouble.

Such people have been surrounded by an echo chamber for years and years, they never hear any viewpoints other than what the establishment feeds them, and I don't really want to waste my time fighting against the propaganda power of multiple nation-state coalitions.

(I did make the mistake of accidentally saying what I thought a while back, and now I've got a bunch of smug idiots on my case)

I figure it's only a matter of time until the rest of the fediverse starts to arrive (I've heard through the grapevine some other instances considering starting up their own lemmy instances), and then things will be a lot more balanced.

I disagree. As a conservative I’ve only been banned from one sublemmy for my political alignment.

On reddit I got banned from space after space when my politics became known. Here I’m allowed to exist, which means this place is way less leftist than reddit.

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.