Imo, downvotes is just a disagreement. Being offended by it sounds like a “you” problem, we all have to deal with it.
Upvotes normally give me answers I need for at that moment. Downvotes makes me reassess myself.
I dont think you must read to much into the downvotes. Understand the situation why people might have downvoted you, understand why other people get upvoted, assess the situation. And most of all, understand that not everybody will always agree with you
Thunder works for my as a android user. Early days though
I don’t think it is necessary, as @navordar mentioned, just pick a smaller server, maybe have two or three accounts on different servers for now might work, unless you are willing to host an instance that will help grow the federated network.
Hosting your instance, might require some commitment, good admin skills and transparency. I am inspired how the arch Linux community handles their admin for projects, I believe whoever hosts a instance that follow the same philosophy, that instance might stay active for a very long time.
Even lemmy.word, at least for me, was difficult to join. I have a hard time to log into the account I have created there. I think we must understand this is not redit, the platform is fundamentally different how you approach it. The fuller the server gets, the more difficult it gets to get into your account.
Lemons;)
I use keepassxc, works well for me.