There are plenty of people on the fediverse that are clearly free and independent thinkers - as in not operating from inside a bubble where they get fed opinions and views from others and them regurgitating those views ad nauseam. On Lemmy, I see a lot of curiosity and a lot of people who were probably censored or effectively buried by downvotes on other platforms, despite their good faith and interesting (and sometimes radical) perspectives.

Discussion flows well, there’s less focus on upvotes/downvotes and there is no karma. There doesn’t seem to be a tradition of dog-piling people who wrong-think according to the group consensus (or whatever neoliberal narrative is prevailing) as there is on Reddit. Moderation is much less heavy-handed and there are no shadowbans/comments that don’t show up for others (but only for yourself). There are significantly less bots and almost zero astroturfed content, as well.

Worry less about the labels, I say. If you want mainstream or conservative opinions, it’s very easy to seek them out - the internet is full of those perspectives. If you’re curious, you could play devil’s advocate and discuss current events or other hot topics from a mainstream perspective and ask others why they think differently to better understand the userbase on the fediverse and how things generally go down here. I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to weigh the pros and cons of different viewpoints and perspectives and entertain a discussion about certain issues in good faith.

Not everybody is filtering everything out from a polarized lens and is focused on being an absolutist or purist with their preferred ideology.