I notice this especially with my Norwegian learning. People are rude, call me names, or make fun of me on Reddit for using the wrong word or “en” vs “et” or using a direct translation because I don’t know how they say it in Norwegian, like saying somethng like «Ingen av bedriften din!» instead of «Dette er ikke din sak» (according to the casual version of Bing Translate) whereas a Norwegian-speaking Fediverse member would just say something like “You’re doing good, but it’s actually _____.”
We have the same problems reddit does. It’s just that it’s a smaller userbase and downvoted comments don’t disappear here like they get pushed down on reddit. So you don’t get downvoted as much, but your controversial or unpopular take remains visible for opposing opinions to attack. And yeah, there are mini-brigades here too. Make a comment about a subject that has importance to a particular instance and you get insta-downvoted multiple times, but your post will probably recover as the rest of the groups view the conversation.