I like the small community vibe. I’ve read some arguments that the negative effects associated with social media might come from the fact that it caters to everyone.

The idea is that normally businesses wouldn’t try to sit a whole bunch of hunters next to a whole bunch of vegans, but social media companies do just that. In fact, the heated arguments between these groups drives engagement, which means their algorithms are incentivized to make opposing groups angry at each other.

There are no algorithms driving engagement on Lemmy. There is no incentive for instance owners to gain as many users as possible. Lemmy is more of a small forum that links to other small forums, which is actually what the internet looked like before search engines and social media existed.