I am also curious. The main reason I haven't even tried figuring Lemmy out is because I figured it'd be exclusively full of "free speech" people, like other Reddit alternatives.
I also find that many people are way too quick to label, and will find myself tending towards that as well. In practice, I try to keep a conversation open and civil so long as personal insults aren't flying. I am human, however and will also close conversations if I reach a point where I, myself, am likely to slip. I feel it's a fair approach.
I do miss when online communities were mostly local BBSes where you will meet, see and interact with locals that will have differing views from you. That doesn't mean there aren't toxic personalities, but only that a little bit of understanding can at least go a long way in terms of community and society. I feel that, in terms of politics at least, negotiation from opposing views is supposed to be part of what makes it worth. The general ill feelings towards anything that is "other" is disappointing.
It's generally a really positive place, a lot of well read folks who can back up their views. Not pure shitposting a la genZedong.
Not a fun place to go if you want a debate off the bat.
It was originally a diaspora for /r/chapotraphouse after they were banned for "promoting violence" after basically saying "slave owners deserve to be killed", which like, yeah. It was banned at the same time as /r/the_donald which really felt like a "if we ban one extreme, gotta ban the other". If you ask me, the sins of the two weren't equal but we did a ton of brigading so we sorta deserved it anyway. Diaspora split between discord and hexbear. The latter has two daily megathreads that get more interaction than most lemmys see in a week.
It will be federating soon, lemmygrad to start with and most likely some hobby and special interest lemmys soon.
Not quite shitposters like genZedong but committed communists nonetheless.