Keep in mind that this is probably very instance dependend. I use Beehaw which generally does not tolerate this sort of thing and this expectation is stated very clearly. For us down voting is not even possible. We also do not federate with nodes that cause the biggest issues. So there are things that can be done but it is not perfect and has consequences.

Just mentioning.

Edit: Even with that, there has been discussion of Beehaw leaving the threadiverse due to these issues and lack of mature moderation tools. Not sure where that stands.

Back when I used Reddit, one of my favorite subs was TrollX. If we had a sub with that spirit, it would be a good start.

Are there secret communities on Lemmy? Not that secret communities should be a default, but I was invited to a secret sub on Reddit years ago that was all women. It was a true safe space from harrassment, where we could talk about feminine things that we knew wouldn’t gain traction in main subs. I have no idea how it started, but I knew that users who were invited to join had previously been vetted by the sub’s mods - they saw that I’d made feminist posts and multiple comments about being a woman, and didn’t go around picking fights. It was like a background check.

I don’t believe there is any one solution, but starting with dedicated communities (in the spirit of TrollX), with mods that smack down misogyny and (actual) trolls, sounds like the best way to start.

Is there anything others can do to help? Feddit.uk wouldn't tolerate this but I'm not sure what a regular user can do apart from look out for harassment, call it out and report promptly

It seems to be one of the problems where Lemmy feeling a bit like old Reddit is really, really bad. Remembering from back then, it took many years of concerted effort and dedicated subreddits attacking sexism (that were in turn harassed and hated on by the "mainstream" Reddit audience, like SRS for example) to slowly change the culture. And it's not like Reddit is some sort of safe haven even now.

In Mastodon, this is typically solved with defederation, block lists, and admins enforcing mod policies. How come this approach doesn't work for Lemmy? Is it not decentralized enough?

I would moderate it :(

Tbf, i wouldn't recommend Lemmy to anyone i know either for more reasons including this

I think it's much better then literally anywhere else on the internet. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but unfortunately everywhere else is worse. As such, I'm not sure whaz the solution is for Lemmy in particular.

Everywhere where it seems "better" is just moderation making it seem like that.

And this I why I don't either