I feel this is just a natural step in a new, growing platform/community.

Initially there is a smaller userbase tending to be more like minded/interested, and people will mostly behave.

As some get more comfortable and as more users join there will be a point where conflicting views and interests congregate while there may still be lacking people and tools to moderate the discussion, in addition to there being just the amount of content that it is difficult for bad faith content to be buried.

I think a lot of the fediverse is here now, where users are exposed to other users and content with either differing views or straight up intentional bad faith, whereas they previously were in heavily moderated communities or was only exposed to their section of content. Sometimes this might lead to good discussions, while other times it will devolve into rudeness or spite (especially with bad faith parties)

Eventually the amount of content may grow so that these incidents will be harder to notice, and/or more users will also bring more people and tools to aid in moderating said users and content

This is where the system of Favorite and Reduce comes in. Same concept on Reddit with upvotes and downvotes. Hopefully the community will help to filter out the noise, but again, history tends to repeat itself.

I've noticed some transphobia and homophobia recently too (usually from lemmy.world accounts 👀)