@BeAware @lonelyowl A bit more on the conspiratorial side: there's also likely at least some paid/automated Fedi hate-spreading users created by competitors intended to harm Fedi.
This is especially true of larger scale operations, since no rando that hates Fedi is going to spend huge amounts of time hating on it. At some point they'd just move on unless they're getting paid (or left a bot to do their dirty work).
This isn't to say it's all astroturfers/bots, just that they'll add to it.