Referring to the underlying software, not to moderation. Which is sort of a corollary to federation, but not entirely when you look at something like Bluesky where you can federate but don’t truly run your own “Bluesky”. Sure there’s implicit trust in what the instance is running since you aren’t auditing it, but I’m willing to see shades of grey and that this is better in that regard than corporate social media.

That's fair.

Not really (although a number of people on Lemmy put in the effort to make clever, homebrewed shitposts, which is beside the point). Sometimes Lemmy Shitpost just has funny stuff that makes for a more well-rounded social media experience. I never said I’m only looking for thought-provoking interactions; intelligent company doesn’t have to be self-serious. The whole reason I even made my original comment is that I’m persistently disappointed that I can’t walk into a thread about an obvious fiction made as a joke and think that Lemmy collectively understands the difference. Something that is funny turns into a source of frustration when I consider user behavior I’ve seen on Lemmy before.

Perhaps people's definition of funny differs from yours, not everyone is looking for intellectual gold in a community made specifically for shitposts.

Though i will concede that there are a lot of cases of mistaken intention, i would know, i'm like 50% mistaken intention.