I am myself a newcomer, did a full switch straight from reddit.
However, I did it just a few weeks before mods and admins started to crack down hard on certain opinions. Guess I had seen the sign on the wall.
I believe reddit’s clear change of direction has pushed many more people into the lemmyverse, many of them just like me, straight from reddit.
I sense that recently the tone around many subs has shifted towards more agressive and more divisive, and other patterns I recognize all too well from my years on reddit.
Do other people sense this too? Am I on the right track or completely off?
I do not sense this. Your experience is your own. Just keep in mind you’re looking at a sliver of the whole thing at the best of times. You’re too tiny a dataset, especially considering you just made the sensible swap.