It'll largely be an echo chamber regardless of size. The fediverse tends to lean into tech, and is very left wing. If you don't fit the bill, you are either driven off, de-federated with, or realize the content posted here isn't what you're looking for, and you leave.
I don't mind the small knit community, as I agree with most stuff, but this simply isn't a place you can host competing ideas, or at least not feasibly. This isn't a place for open discussion. You get down voted for your opinion, even if it is a shitty one. This isn't the fediverse I want to see. I want to see people upvoted for their opinion, and enticed to engage with whatever discourse is present, regardless of views. Downvotes should be reserved for trolls, bots, and fascists. Everyone else should be welcome.
Is there somewhere online where you can have an "open discussion"? I've been struck a few times by how some ideas (even presented in a balanced way) just get downvoted hard.
Well the simple reason is you can get stuck in certain world views or ideas which are wrong and hurt others.
In most cases you're fine, like talking about your favourite TV shows or whatever. But it's also easy to get stuck in a view like visiting your country's instance and it turns out it's a bit radicalised against immigrants, or certain places where you end up blaming everything on women and the "woke movement".
In a lesser way it can get you stuck in toxic ideas (e.g., PC/Playstation/Windows/Xbox/Linux is better than the other one and you are dumb if you disagree!).
Just depends on the community at end of day, but the more echoey chamber it is, the more likely you'll end up with those sorts of us VS them world views that are a bit blind and horribly biased.
But it’s also easy to get stuck in a view like visiting your country’s instance and it turns out it’s a bit radicalised against immigrants, or certain places where you end up blaming everything on women and the “woke movement”.
Hopefully there would be another community for the same country with other perspectives, and visiting both would allow to avoid the echo chamber effect
It would be nice if lemmy.world mods followed that. I got my posted deleted for "supporting Imperialism" for arguing that focused attacks on Houthi terrorists is ok.