It starts with something silly like an avatar or profile pic next to every comment. If you’ld have had a flag or a dogpic or so next to your name/comment, I wouldn’t have read your comment in the same relatively neutral way. I dislike the persona stuff, it’s why I prefer forums. Lemmy is a collection of forums to me. I profoundly distrust persona cult stuff, like influencers etc. Sure, I’ll encounter same people here I’m sure, but frankly: I’m mostly unaware, usernames barely register in my mind.
The part about social media I dislike is the real connection between Irl and online, and the “profile”-focus, for now both is no issue for me on lemmy.