So far, I've encountered far more negativity on Lemmy than I did on reddit. Ymmv, but I feel like our smaller user base has concentrated the negativity.
Having bounced back to reddit a couple of times, I haven’t had that experience. Talking here seems to lead to more thoughtful responses. Also some small minority on reddit love the unexplained downvotes of disapproval for perfectly well intentioned, polite posts, and there’s less of that on Lemmy.
As an example, I started c/52weeksofbaking (copied over from reddit). Its a place for amateur bakers to challenge themselves, try new things, and share their successes and failures. There's zero reason to downvote posts there. I stickied a request for people to not downvote in that community. It's currently sitting at 20 upvotes and 18 downvotes.
We can make fun of people for caring about fake internet points, but if we want to get more people to use lemmy and create content, we need to create communities that feel welcoming.
Kind of like people insulting OP in this thread, if you specifically ask people to not downvote something, they will downvote it. I don't think it's a serious sign of ill will.
I like how kbin works in this regard - while downvotes are available, kbin doesn't federate downvotes from other instances. So sometimes I'll have a post that looks like it has a mild positive score and someone will say "not sure why you're getting downvote" and I'm "huh?" Blissfully unaware. I think that while up/down voting can play an important role in moderation, voting and karma it didn't quite work out the way reddit intended originally. Downs are so often used as a way to lash out at someone, and very highly rated posts are often just some silly joke vs. something truly constructive. It's annoying and makes me roll me eyes to have one of those conversations where the other person downvotes each reply as soon as you post it.
I always find it funny. When I respond to someone and point out the flaws in their argument and they don't respond but I get their one immediate downvote, I consider it a victory. They can't respond with any kind of logical argument but also they're upset about their inability to defend their point. It's like two victories in one.
It was real flowery here for a couple weeks during the celebratory fuck Spez exodus when everyones third party reddit browsers died. But yeah, now it's a cesspool of negativity.
It may depend on your politics or maybe just where you hang out. I know that Beehaw gets a lot of shit for their pre-emptive defederation but it may be the nicest general online community I’ve encountered in a long time.