Lemmy is a bit of a darkweb corner. It’s growing fast from Reddit users, but redditors are not particularly known for being the best form of the online argument either.
Like anywhere else, I’d say pick your communities carefully. And accept that a platform that is in shift and growth has a lot of potential for weird encounters. Try not to take the bad experiences too personally.
I’m a mod at /truenews @reddit
It’s hard to keep a healthy news sub because of so much polarization, and so much subpar stuff that’s called “news”. I can point to 2 successful examples that handled it differently.
At truenews https://www.reddit.com/r/truenews/We simply ask for quality sources. You can read the sidebar for the rules. Basically we demand that all news posts are actually from reputable news sources. We provide an explanation of what that means and tons of valid examples. Then we mod to remove non-valid sources, and work with posters to help them understand the rules. If a user is having trouble getting used to the rules, we ask them to stick to the 2 dozen recommended sources we provided.
Another example is neutralnews https://www.reddit.com/r/neutralnews/This is a very clean sub because it went a very strict way. Not only are all posts expected to be from valid sources, but any comment is expected to contribute something useful (so no jokes or venting), and all claims in comments have to be substantiated. This sub is very hard to moderate and it can also be hard on participants because so many comments get deleted until users get the hang of the rules. But the benefit is that it enables real discussion from any angle of politics because people are blocked from repeating party lines and memes, and instead have to argue their point with sources. Some of the most useful political discussions I’ve seen have happened in this sub, due to the requirement for good faith arguments with sources.
This is what happened. We have vaccines now, and masks are readily available. We also learned that many jobs can be done remotely. They tried as hard as they could to educate the constituents. People already picked their sides and are as informed as they are going to get.
So if you want to keep yourself safe, great. If you want to be crippled by or die of a preventable disease, have at it. Freedom for all.