I understand that lemmy is a great place to be in for discussing our experiences with Android phones, but l find the forums/communities great for discussion purposes. The signup is very simple, just with an email id. Whereas in lemmy, an instance can have several communities, a community based on discourse would be exclusive for that purpose.
I think what you’re saying is, that many people have a problem with algorithms where the developers have their “thumb on the scale” to manipulate what content gets promoted or is considered popular.
But it’s not hard to find people who are also critical of the purer type of algorithm, where upvotes are used to sort content, and things get popular for being popular in a “hivemind” fashion, which Lemmy does just like Reddit before it.
Do people sort based on votes on Lemmy? With some instances not even using the voting system I suppose it could work the other way, where the client does that. I guess my instance does have top and controversial. I just never noticed, lol.