Great answer. I would also say that lemmy users tend to be more politically engaged in both directions, so there is less of a homogenisation of view points into the “reddit-consensus” when it comes to upvotes.

I remember using reddit in 2012, being at the end of my teen years, and only having discovered it a few years before: everyone on there seemed to clever compared to other social media at the time and I let the “reddit-consensus” genuinely affect my opinions. There was this post in 2012 where the OP was fearmongering about a free trade agreement Obama was trying to negotiate, saying it would harm small businesses in the US, with protectionism very much being the consensus. I had this moment of incongruity where I wanted to offload my critical thinking to the consensus but at the same time I thought, “This isn’t right; I usually support free trade deals…” Bit of a formative experience in terms of using more critical thinking when browsing the internet.