I am myself a newcomer, did a full switch straight from reddit.
However, I did it just a few weeks before mods and admins started to crack down hard on certain opinions. Guess I had seen the sign on the wall.
I believe reddit’s clear change of direction has pushed many more people into the lemmyverse, many of them just like me, straight from reddit.
I sense that recently the tone around many subs has shifted towards more agressive and more divisive, and other patterns I recognize all too well from my years on reddit.
Do other people sense this too? Am I on the right track or completely off?
I’d say the same about reddit, comparing 8 years ago when I joined to 2/3 years later. Again, political divisiveness partially to blame, but also, early adopters of tech tend to be more intelligent. The more it filters into the mainstream, the dumber the general discourse gets. Eventually, that has the effect of putting off the smart folk who were there first, even further lowering the tone.