The only thing I’ve seen is via this video:

https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg

However, this focuses on particular features with a cognitive impact such as infinite scrolling rather than specific communities

Thry are still niche so there is no studies to prove or deny it

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You can still make an open source cancer-causing machine. It’ll just be built correctly.

Currently, no.

The research on social media in general is already spotty and uneven. Most publicly available studys exclusively look at students, often use very small population samples, use exclusively self-reported data, and introduce other methodological issues. Thats not to say that the data is useless (esspecially given the near-unanimous results in the studies that are done) but its very incomplete. We have no idea which features, models, or topics are most problematic nor do we know how they affect different demographics. Given that we lack even that data, there is no way something as niche as the Fediverse or other forms of open-source social media will be covered.

Given that there is actual evidence that the for-profit platforms intentionally are machiavellian in order to produce more-polarized, more-ideological, more-reactionary, more-violent, more-prejudiced, more-stampeding, more-reacting/nonthinking populations which can be more easily manipulated …

… I’d say that the evidence is right there.

In what the fediverse-platforms are not doing.

That there are griefers, machiavellians, sociopaths, etc, is the same in both categories.

But the software’s more trustworthy in the fediverse, in terms of its intent, see?

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Probably aren’t any actual studies, but the fediverse still apes mainstream social media so it likely has the same problems.

Nope, there is none.

The difficulty of this little scientific endeavour would be that you would need to have enough people that only use open source social media over a sufficient period of time that you could monitor and record responses/behaviour.

But people can’t be trusted and they would inevitably look at other socials which would then dilute your results.

If you did manage to get a study completed you would then need to submit it for peer review (as with all studies) to the scientific community as a whole and they would need to perfrom their own tests to compare results.

So, you can see the difficulties.

Sir, we don’t do mental health here.

There has to be some positive mental boost from getting to virtue signal how you don’t use corporate stuff. I don’t know if that helps long term mental health, though.

What makes you think it is. Does anyone say that?

All the harmful elements are still there, the only difference is that there’s no one boosting them for profit but people are already great at hurting themselves that way without any help.

Being open source has no impact on how bad it is for you. It’s entirely based on the algorithm.

Users’ testimonies i guess. Me and anyone else on lemmy will tell you that they prefer it to reddit, twitter, and instagram.

The rate at which people get banned for hate speech or bullying could also be used as an indicator, in my opinion.