It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
I’m not counting on it staying that way, but that’s ok. Upvote systems, dedicated channels, etc, will always promote a type of groupthink but you can always opt out of a community. Like if Lemmy gets it’s own r/conservative, or something, I would likely not comment there.
That said, there are definitely malicious actors at play on most mainstream platforms, stoking anger and divisiveness. Even proof that fake news is spread for that exact reason. You won’t see that here for a while but if it does come, I’m not sure if this system is setup to protect against it.
One big reason I don’t really want it to be too successful.
In my view, big tech was actually pretty ok until politicians and companies realized they were large influence markets and started messing with them. It doesn’t matter left or right, at that point the platform is broken because you’ve got all kinds of special interests spending money to push their thing.
If it can be big enough to be fun but small enough to fly under the radar, mission accomplished.
I think it should have one, though. That’s where I’m pretty much permissive, people can have shit opinions if they want. At the moment I’m getting spoonfed all kinds of crap in my feed just because there’s not enough activity to direct content I would actually be interested in. Maybe a touch of the echo chamber isn’t a bad thing, up to a point. I’m not sure.