I feel like federated-not-Reddit-thingle has gotten to a point where it's really nasty sometimes :-\ People look for the worst possible interpretation (even in ND spaces like this??) and get by with just generally crappy "sit down and shut up" type behaviour, among other things. Idunno if the caring types just got bored and left, or maybe the novelty wore off and they're just less active than the ones who wanna be hateful and cruel, or maybe they've all skittered off to beehaw or someplace that doesn't even federate with instances I'm seeing some of this behaviour on (or maybe most/all? I haven't really been paying attention to that)
Am really thinking I should join them; the content (and ability to downvote the awful, which makes me feel a little better even when I don't have the time or energy to fully call out the problem) probably isn't worth the awful.