I find the quality and variety of discussions on the fediverse to be lower than what I had on reddit. Lemmings have strong preconceived notions and little interest in changing viewpoints from new information. I think I'll be switching back.
Edit: you'll find that most of the comments deny any shortcomings of the culture and go directly to invalidating my opinions via character assassination. If lemmy was a community that actually stood for the ideals which it espouses it would take constructive criticism in the spirit in which it was intended. QED.
Lemmy just has an unusually large number of passionate young people on it. Not surprising when you consider the Fediverse as more of a rebellious option looking to upend the dominance of the giants.
Also makes it feisty though. It's kinda on you to make it good for yourself by controlling what communities you sub to though.
I don't think most Lemmy users would support the idea that all ideas and opinions deserve equal consideration, so, yeah, that's going to happen.
What makes the Fediverse unique is they could actually take steps to stop that if they wanted, by defederating from the higher population Instances. Most services would not give them that option. They have equal right to be here, but that does not amount to equal right to be liked and agreed with.
That said, I do agree that the downvoting gets a little out of control on here sometimes.
The thing is that the votes don’t matter on Lemmy, they are purely for organizing content in the home/all feed if you sort by Top. You shouldn’t worry about being downvoted. It doesn’t down rank you in the algorithm and restrict your ability to post like on Reddit.