I’m done, I’ve been banned for expressing a different opinion (without insulting or personally attacking anyone), I’ve been accused of evading a ban with multiple accounts (this is my only account I’ve ever had on any lemmy instance), I’ve had people selectively ignore my comments and accuse me of things which I never said, and I’ve had people ignore valid criticisms and keep attacking me.
Reddit has many issues with trolls, one-sided discussion, and just general bullshit, but many Lemmy instances are way worse. The newfound freedom of Lemmy has attracted many extremists, from both sides, and many of them are moderators, who are more than happy to remove any contrarian opinions. This results in discussions being echo chambers
Because the community on Lemmy is so much smaller it’s a lot easier for small groups of dedicated posters to dominate discussions on certain topics.
I’ve noticed a lot of the same behaviour as you have on certain topics. Unfortunately it’s difficult because like you say engaging on those topics is frustrating because the people with an agenda have more time and energy than you to dedicate to pushing their narrative, and aren’t open to more nuanced discussion.
There’s an interesting blog I think about regularly about online communities that I think you might find interesting: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
Now that article calls for banning of assholes. I don’t think that’ll work on lemmy, so instead I propose this: If you just accept that those people are going to continue to do their thing and instead engage in the more positive parts of Lemmy then overall we might be able to build a bigger community of people who add positively to Lemmy. If you or others who are being pushed away leave then the asshole : positive people ratio will only get worse.
Such a call to action only works if the people in question have some sort of a fixed interest specifically in the Lemmy community. Those on the fence about leaving (myself included, not that it matters) have no such interest.
I’m considering leaving because the community sucks. Why would I stick around based on the threat that if I go it might get worse?
That’s like a manager telling an employee at a shitty job that they shouldn’t quit because then the place will be short staffed.