I think the problem with Lemmy is that there’s no consequence for being full of shit.
Mastodon goes with your real name, so there’s at least a social consequence. But there’s not ever any kind of a moment, like there would be in sports or engineering or similar, where your grand ideas meet with reality and you realize you were full of shit and need to go back to the drawing board. It’s just based on what everyone feels is a good way to look at things.
Of course, that’s not exclusive to Lemmy. Lots of American society is in a weird reality-free zone right now.
Yeah, and not just in America but the whole world it seems, if to a lesser degree. The Alt-Right on X, the Alt-Left here, and centrists on Reddit in-between the extremes who believe that everything will magically sort itself out, including things like climate change that very well might not. This was very much done to us though, even as we simultaneously did it to ourselves:-(. Just like Brexit, and so many other scenarios like that, e.g. in the global south.
Although years ago when I had a Facebook account - tied to my real name - I acted the same way that I do now (iirc?). I may not be all that representative of the average social media consumer:-P.
I like PieFed’s idea of making a user have a “reputation” score. Depending on how well it is implemented, that could be really helpful.:-) Or abusive if not.:-(
Either way, all we can control is ourselves.