In order to avoid this, what would you think of having a "new joiners" instance, where
hexbear, lemmygrad and ml would be defederated
politics and news communities would be blocked at the instance level
That could help to onboard people, so that the first time they look around, they see more gardening, cute comics and casual conversation rather than another set of depressing memes.
Disclaimer: politics and societal issues are important and should be discussed extensively (they are quite popular on Lemmy, let's be honest). I'm not advocating to hide them all, just to not show them as the first content people potentially interested in Lemmy would see.
Just join a catmeme instance and browse local, not all.
Slrpnk.net doesn’t have any politics on it. You can read about mushroom and collecting rainwater and recycling and never encounter anything polarising.
Edit :
The other thing, is that most of what passes for politics on Lemmy, is really just news and rage bait. Very few of the hundreds of submission about what Trump said or What China did, or what Pelosi think are political, they just amplify inflammatory messages
In that case the other commenter is right - remove that and you have next to nothing.
But You either shield people , or you don’t . If people wants to explore annd find communities , surely they understand there will be some they like and some they don’t.