One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
I don't know if I'd agree at all with the idea that Lemmy is any better, in my experience, people still use the downvote button as an "I Disagree" button 99% of the time. There's less people here, so it's less pronounced (you'll get -9 instead of -300 for expressing an against-the-grain opinion), but the pattern is still just as present
I've only found people who say really stupid shit get completely downvoted to the floor on Lemmy and there are almost always extensive responses. Anecdotes aren't the best evidence, I guess my experience was very different.
However, at least you can actually see if people upvoted or downvoted and not just the total, so people are less inclined to just hop the train straight away. Depends largely on the instance though. I'm pretty sure Hexbears can't even downvote.