[Zak]

It's probably as much to do with the people as anything about the software. I have the impression Gargron set out to create a less toxic version of twitter and the early users he attracted were people who wanted a less toxic version of twitter. Many of the later users were people who liked interacting with those early users.

It appears Lemmy may have been created by people who wanted a version of reddit for militant communists, which might tend to discourage anyone who doesn't want to talk to militant communists from adopting it.