Now that you have settled here on Lemmy. What is your impression of it?

Less content to go through, so you end up going through posts and comments a bit more thoroughly. This translates to higher engagement from users overall compared to Reddit.

The con of course is less content to go through.

Agree. For about half of what I’m interested in, there’s some activity on Lemmy and the conversations aren’t just “no u.”

I wish I didn’t have to, but I still lurk on Reddit for some very specific hobby and occupation hubs. I think there’s a lot more “blue collar” activity over there than there is over here.
- A lot more entertainment, too.
  
  I'm still astonished there isn't an active movies or television presence over here. Feels like the topics over here are primarily news, technology, politics, but pop culture, movies, music, television, even gaming have somewhat low activity. Really bizarre those haven't gotten firm footing.
  
  I'm wondering how much of that is the sorting algorithm. Waiting patiently for lemmy.world to implement 19.0 so we can get the scaled sort working properly, but that seems to have been...stalled or something.
So make some content. Almost all of these posts seem to be about not having content to consume, but someone has to make it too. Reddit used to have the same problem, the Internet was just smaller back then.

I think matured reddit is literally correct. People here at least seem older.

However people here definitely are also of a certain group. Which is not too surprising - it's a certain demographic taken from Reddit, not a random subsample. This is not really a good thing.

People here also seem more extreme in their political opinions (as in, not very "usual" or "casual" political views). This makes discussions a bit one-sided and polarized... But then again political discussions on reddit have always been so nice and proper and productive in comparison right /s

However I also see a lot of reasonable people and a lot of hope. I see more politeness (mostly outside of any political stuff).

I also like that people have choices - choice of instance and choice of client for example.

There's some good and bad but for me it's basically reddit with a bit less activity and slightly different experience but not significantly so. I'm confident that more people will come over time and that will solve most issues. And the benefits will still be there by then.

I like how on Lemmy we can actually talk about things such as Climate Change. If the question is 1 + 1 = ? then we can discuss whatever the actual solution might be - whether it be 3, -1, 1.9, 2.1, whatever - as opposed to "it's not even happening and you are stupid for thinking that it is".

That's not even Right vs. Left, it should just be Polite, and it is Engaging and Fun or at least more so than getting yelled at by bots and toddlers on Reddit.

Friendlier than reddit, but a lot more really stupid hot takes than reddit. Not as many shitheads; but the shit heads that are here are even shittier than anywhere else I've been on the Internet. Mostly the super paranoid security and super hardcore "free speech" folks that are like the main character of Conspiracy Theory. This platform seems to attract a lot of those.

Makes sense. There are two types of people here: those that left reddit by choice, and those that got ran off because they were assholes.
- To be fair, I didn't exactly come here by choice; I was ran off of reddit because Spez is an asshole and killed off the only good way to use the site on a mobile device. Though had I known about Lemmy before the appocalypse I would have come by choice. I didn't know about it until all that kerfuffle and was already looking for alternatives.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. There are some hilariously poor takes on here, and some that were never an issue on Digg or early-days Reddit. I've had arguments on here that I've never had anywhere else, from Americans telling me that I am incorrect about my own country, people telling me that I am wrong about software I've literally worked on with my employer, and frankly some of the worst political views you'd find on a left-leaning board.

I can tolerate the Linux and security nutjobs, because they're just rehashing the same tired arguments from a decade ago, and will be making up the same nonsense about switching their parents from Windows to Linux and them just saying "oh, that's nice, it's really good" all while they're just happy that their son is interacting with humans for a change.
- I think that's kinda just become an issue everywhere. People are a lot more brazen with their stupidity now than ever before.
- I can tolerate the Linux and security nutjobs, because they’re just rehashing the same tired arguments from a decade ago, and will be making up the same nonsense about switching their parents from Windows to Linux and them just saying “oh, that’s nice, it’s really good” all while they’re just happy that their son is interacting with humans for a change.
  
  Ouch, man
There's also that weird "we're better than people on Reddit" smugness.

It's rare, but it is a unique brand of fuckery you don't have to deal with over there.
- Back in the day I used to see tons of posts claiming that Reddit was "the elite", in comparison to the likes of Facebook, or Twitter, or Tumblr, or Instagram, and so on. So, while your statement is technically true (the best kind!), that anti-Reddit people don't tend to say so...on Reddit, so much as here anyway (though if you look in the likes of r/ModCoord, occasionally there is a comment that makes it past the new mods and is allowed to criticize Reddit in some way) I think it's common to all social media. We (in-group) are The Best! :-P
- There’s also that weird “we’re better than people on Reddit” smugness.
  
  It’s rare, but it is a unique brand of fuckery you don’t have to deal with over there.
  
  Isn't the Reddit equivalent something along the lines of, "We're better than people on [social media]" smugness? Social media being a catchall for say, Facebook, Twitter, or in the past few years, TikTok.
  
  It reminds me of the classic silliness of competing forums for the same subject/topic back in the day. "We on TechFans95 are so much better than people on TechFans94" and vice versa.
- The smugness can be a bit annoying but I interpret it as mostly jokes and healthy for the growth of the platform. I am enjoying myself more here than on Reddit, and when I see that others share that sentiment (smugly or not), it does embolden me to encourage my friends to give Lemmy a try.
Sadly so many of the tech people here are the kind of slashdot dredge that think gluing USB ports shut is good for security and installing a Plex server is the solution to any media-related problem expressed.
- Self host everything or die kind of people.
Ever seen 4Chan? There are shittier shit heads out there.

As an open platform that's similar to reddit, I'm in favor of it.

The reality though is not that great. And a lot of it comes down to at least some of the people who are here.

There doesn't really seem to be enough content to allow for browsing a curated list of communities yet, so I mainly browse by all. And what I have seen are a handful of seemingly extreme viewpoints with little to no room for nuance and discussion and an attitude from those people that they are absolutely correct in their beliefs and ideas. I'm talking tankies, hatred for Israel, hatred for cars, hatred for landlords/renting, and evangelism for Linux.

I know that having extreme attitudes is certainly not unique to lemmy as it exists all over the Internet and elsewhere. But it does seem to be fairly concentrated here. And again, without enough engagement in the smaller or more niche communities there isn't really enough content on its own.

So instead of actively browsing communities I want which would likely end up with very little content, I have started blocking instances and communities instead so I can still get a mix, but filter out things that I don't like. And that doesn't make for a great experience.

I have also seen some really stupid/ridiculous admin/mod drama that people also seemed to think wouldnt carry over from reddit, but of course it has.

All that to say, I still enjoy it enough to continue to browse. But I don't really participate often. And it has to a degree eliminated at least some of the bullshit from reddit.

I'm talking tankies, hatred for Israel, hatred for cars, hatred for landlords/renting, and evangelism for Linux.

That's a good summation

Personally, I find the people here very elitist and unwelcoming, and I have found myself spending less and less time here because of it.

And argumentative and pointlessly contrarian. Reddit had that problem too, but it seems more ubiquitous here.
- It's a human problem. Only way to avoid it is to not use social media. I'm about to hop off everything it is making me lose hope in my fellow humans seeing some of the comments I see. It's also baffling how genuinely stupid some people come across, or sometimes it's clear they just don't understand what the words they are reading are even conveying.
Interesting, really? Maybe I just don’t engage with people that much, but it seems pretty chill or at least definitely no worse than Reddit in that regard
- It definitely depends on the community. I'm mostly noticing it in the meme communities. A high percentage of jokes in the memes that I see are at the expense of a group that I am a part of, and I guess I just don't really relate to the people here. So I just don't come back very often.
- Have you not seen the Linux fanboys on Lemmy? I see a post every day at least about how Windows is terrible or how x browser is inferior to Firefox.
Yeah, it's really horrible. Never experienced this level of hostile, argumentative know-it-alls anywhere else.
- I have to assume half of Lemmy is people banned from reddit for being like this. Im worried they're slowly scaring away everyone else and its distilling the ecosystem into a toxic pit

If Reddit was a water park, Lemmy is the small adult jacuzzi room in the back.

If Reddit was a water park, Lemmy is the small adult jacuzzi room in the back.

The soak and poke?

Apparently i should install Linux.

This gave me a good chuckle. Every community promoting Linux.
- It's a little bothersome when you have no interest in Linux and are completely fine with Windows.
Nah, it's also fine if you use something like FreeBSD or TempleOS.

As someone who spent around half my life in IT and half in humanities, there's a lot less humanities content here than in Reddit or old Twitter. You might not notice it because you might have gravitated towards the IT side of those sites but it's noticeable here

Yeah, I love Linux, but man, I get it, you use Arch...

More depressing news and Linux enthusiasts.

Feels like an echo chamber filled with angry political activists that seem more interested in hating and breaking things rather than discussing solutions. Can't say I like it here but for some reason I keep coming back. I probably block on average 3 to 7 people a day but doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Makes me further lose my hope in humanity if I'm completely honest.

yeah we have so many useless instance that already exist and thriving in reddit so why bring it here? their subreddit already as sound proof as hell in reddit as echo chamber and they still come here to spread their annoying voice again, sigh( im tired of the post of hating rich people over and over) like come on man I know you hate rich people already
- Or landlords or cars or windows or...
Well that's some thorny insight.
- It's true tho. Calling for violence or people's death is normal here, no nuance in the discussion, it feels like very few people are there to discuss, rather than validate their own, cemented opinions.

Compared to Reddit

too small. Most communities I’m interested in have too little activity
more wholesome. More than once I’ve been shocked at answers that were nice instead of snarky
too many UI bugs and unstable, yet somehow much less buggy and more stable than Reddit ever was
if you don’t feed the trolls, they go away quickly

Agreed. My interests get way too little activity. Otherwise I love the platform.
- Yeah, it's a little weird that even broader topics tend to struggle here (e.g. music/tv & movies/books). Not as surprising with the niche stuff, as that can be pretty quiet even on other more popular platforms.
Hey in the spirit of the third point, I recently learned that if you put four spaces at the end of a line, you can then do a line break and it'll treat it as a real new line, instead of just moving your second line to the end of your first.
See?
Like this.
Pretty cool stuff.
- Only 2 spaces
  are required for this to work
- Cool. It does seem like there’s functionality in whatever form of markup there is here, but I barely learned Reddit’s and here I know very little yet
Agreed on point 1 the answer is we all need to create more posts. We can't expect others to do it for us.

I feel like half of the people on here are 45yo Linux sysadmins, and the other half are Germans

The sheer quantity of German memes never ceases to amaze me.
- Yeah, my level of German has increased just reading them all 🇩🇪
  
  And I like their pasta thing
I'm a 45yo truck driver tyvm!

I use arch btw.

I was enjoying it, but two things are getting tiring: the lack of social sciences and humanities, and especially the misogynistic 'tone' of some users.

As a sociology major who is also a fan of the humanities, I totally agree with you. While I've always been much more of a lurker than a regular poster--even while I was on Reddit--it still seems like there isn't a lot of content here that I feel I can really contribute to or engage with. The most prevalent posts all seem to be tech related or are just doom and gloom stories. It makes this place feel cold and bleak.

And yeah, the casual and even blatant misogyny from some of the users is appalling (I still remember that post about the career fair for women months back that got overrun with angry men).
I really wish there was a bigger psych community here.
It really feels like Reddit circa-2023, particularly the bad ways. Lemmy.world is the worst for that.

For the first few months on the platform, I noticed these trends that I would end up agreeing with later on:

Liking, or straight up adoring Linux
Disliking, or straight up despising cars
Everyone is left-wing and liberal
Israel stinks
Rainbows galore
Big companies are cringe
Independent media is based
Products made by big companies are known to be spyware
The Chromium "open-source" browser, as well as the engine that it uses, is basically the reason why Firefox is dying out
Right-wing politicians are bad
Piracy is basically fighting for freedom of information on the internet, especially when big companies tend to be so overprotective of their intellectual property in situations where they don't really need to
Free, open source software is basically the future
The European Union is basically where everyone on Lemmy lives in real life, and if not, it's where everyone wants to live (which is my case given that I'm from Morocco)

Other very notable points that I have when comparing Reddit with Lemmy are the following:

The community is very passionate yet very small, it kinda feels like Animal Crossing
Goddammit, having multiple instances federating with each other is such an amazing thing that literally nobody can wholly own the thing and make crappy decisions that end up ruining the whole thing at once (cough cough Twitter)
API is free, API is free, API is free
Being such an obscure platform, it has helped me tremendously with cutting down on social media usage due to how insanely addicting it can be at times, sometimes in the worst possible scenarios, like when you have an exam tomorrow

I'm pretty grateful that I made the decision to ditch Reddit for good. I really like this place, and I mean a lot. I wouldn't be called "Resol van Lemmy" if it weren't for Spez being such an ass.

A lot of this is very similar to how I remember Reddit in 2010 or so.
- I wasn't active in Reddit back then, but I remember hopping in logged off a couple times per month just to see what they were doing, and that's pretty much I how remember Reddit from those days.
Can you explain your user name?
- Well, here's what it means.
  
  "Resol" can mean a number of different things. Some might interpret it as the word "loser" spelled backwards. Others might see it as the first 5 letters of the word "resolution". To me, it's just a bunch of jumbled letters that are basically meaningless.
  
  "van" is simply Dutch for "from" or "of", no further explanation required. Please make sure not to capitalize the V. It looks hideous this way.
  
  And of course, you already know what "Lemmy" is. Duh, we're both on it. In my username, it can also refer to the fediverse in general. Think of the latter as a continent, with Lemmy being a country in that continent.
  
  So, I'm basically a guy from the fediverse. That's all you need to know.

I came over during the Reddit migration but I'm so tired of every post either being about Israel/Palestine, late-stage capitalism, or femboys...

or worse - when the post is about something completely different but the comments are about Israel/Palestine, late-stage capitalism, or femboys...

I had somehow curated my Reddit to be mostly about the topics I wanted to read about, but I can't seem to get that to happen here. I've been blocking communities and instances but my feed is still mostly stuff I don't really want to read about...

I'm currently waiting to see what happens when Reddit IPOs but I doubt I'll go back there and will probably just stop coming to lemmy too.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

but I'm so tired of every post either being about Israel/Palestine, late-stage capitalism, or femboys...

I'm not sure why that's been your experience. I avoid politics and news quite successfully around here.
Where are you seeing all these femboy comments? Is there a part of Lemmy I’m missing out on? All I see are the Linux/FOSS comments.
- probably blahaj zone

My overall analysis is positive. Not a full perfect score, but better than Reddit. (Note: ++/+/=/-/-- indicated in comparison with Reddit, not in absolute terms.)

[++] Migrating to avoid bad admins works great in practice. And it imposes a limit on how shitty any admin team can be, as nobody wants to see mass exodus from their instances.
[=] Your typical Lemmy moderator is as clueless as the Reddit one on things like transparency and nurturing a good relationship with the other users.
[--] Mod tools? Which mod tools?
[-] Overall less content, even if you're in an instance that doesn't defed other instances willy-nilly. It's still enough to keep you entertained across the day, as casually glancing across threads.
[++] The userbase used to be better, but it's still leagues above the one in Reddit. Your typical Lemmy user seems way more eager to understand what others say, abler to follow a simple reasoning without "I dun unrurrstand" tier idiocy, and less eager to boss you around with uncalled advice.
[=] Same fucking love for genetic fallacies here as in Reddit.
[-] Witch hunting is actually worse here than it is in Reddit.
[-] As well as intrusive political discussion in non-political posts and communities.

genetic fallacies?
- A genetic fallacy is a claim that something is true/false based on its origin. It's a catch-all term for ad hominem, appeal to authority, appeal to novelty/tradition, etymological fallacy, so goes on.
  
  Users in both Reddit and Lemmy really, really love to engage in this fallacy. I don't know why, but if I had to take a guess, it's because taking into account the origin of a claim in a non-fallacious way prevents them from voicing certainty on a matter, and plenty here/there have an irrational hatred against doubt.
I generally agree, but there is absolutely no way that witch hunting is worse here than on reddit. There was a shitton of doxxing and people being very aggressive over minor things, like YouTube drama. Also the Boston Bombing incident? It's not even close.
Most everything here seems spot-on, as to be expected from you who are careful with your words so that they can be relied upon:-).

But there is one aspect that doesn't mesh with my own experiences. I am not doubting that you are seeing it, but personally I have not seen much serious witch-hunting since leaving Reddit, or rather, since I blocked hexbear and lemmygrad.ml. Can you elaborate more on that? Is it limited more to certain communities, or certain instances? I wonder if I am merely leading a charmed existence here that differs from the norm, but even if so, that would mean that curation is possible to avoid that.

I did see a LOT of that in Reddit subs though, so it could be that my standard of comparison was perturbed from that side of the matter.

And Reddit did change me: I used to be proud of never blocking anyone at all, always ready for conversation with pretty much anyone who was even halfway trying, but now I do it and don't think twice when I realize that someone is not trying at all. So... perhaps I've blocked away this entire aspect of Lemmy, which if so, I will consider a success rather than its opposite:-).
- I'll ping @[email protected], so I can address both comments together, OK?
  
  I'm aware that this depends a lot on the sampling, and it's influenced by sampling biases*, but I do think that witch hunting has become a bigger problem here than it is in Reddit. Specially when it comes to two things:
  
  Right wingers. That Lemmy often conflates with alt right (taking the whole by its part). If you don't go out of your way to show overt signs of being left-wing, someone here will eventually assume that you're right-wing, and start screeching.
  
  CSAM and paedophilia. Probably fuelled by recent events, where some fuckhead was actually posting CSAM to Lemmy World.
  
  I don't think that this is coming specially from Lemmygrad and Hexbear users; it seems to me like a more general problem.
  
  Then there's the case of a certain admin team of a large instance, weaponising witch hunting to silence criticism against two governments (Russian Federation and The People's Republic of China) as if it was xenophobia (i.e. hostility geared towards people, not abstract structures of power), without explicitly saying "we won't tolerate criticism against certain governments here". That admin team is however a special case.
  
  *in Reddit I was mostly hanging around small subreddits, where the problem doesn't seem as bad. In the meantime it's possible that I notice this more in Lemmy because, in other aspects, the userbase is better behaved. So yeah, I'm aware that this might not be accurate for other posters.

I'm really starting to hate it, but really don't want to go back to Reddit. Every post about Israel and capitalism makes me want to quit. I wish there was a better alternative.

Me too, it feels like every post is about getting you to hate more.
- Yeah, common sense really triggers the fantasy land Marxists.
i've been feeling the same way the last couple weeks. i like lemmy but there's nothing to see here if you don't want to talk about politics or linux, and it exhibits many of the same things i dislike about other social media platforms as well.

its also making me realize that maybe i don't want "reddit when it didn't suck so bad" but rather what would really bring me the happiness i'm seeking in reddit replacements is likely something entirely unrelated to social media.

Maybe it’s because there’s less comments, but it’s felt needlessly hostile. Even a small disagreement leads to this weird ‘well you’re obviously a fucking idiot that has nothing worthwhile to say’. I didn’t have that impression when I joined post API BS, but now that I’ve noticed it it’s hard to ignore. A lot of people just reading what they want to read, and drawing conclusions that don’t relate to the immediate action.

The self-righteous rage and indignation is completely off the charts here, I totally agree.
- Whenever a genuinely obnoxious post is upvoted multiple times, I always wonder how many of those upvotes are from the pathetic author’s alts, and how many are from people who are just fellow assholes.
That’s unfortunate, because it’s the opposite of my experience. Maybe I just don’t care, and/or I’ve gotten better at spotting the warning signs of trivial bullshit and then ignoring it.

The trolls feel like insecure outsiders who haven’t matured enough to “get” Lemmy. It’s like they know they aren’t taken seriously, and want the imaginary clout they had on Reddit.
- I get that, and I do my best not to feed the trolls, but it feels like they’ve been growing since I first joined. But just because I ignore it doesn’t mean I don’t notice it.

I'm only here because of an unjust reddit ban, and I'm very sad to say that I still would prefer reddit to this. The shear scale of reddit means there was always something interesting me through the far more varied and active communities available there. Lemmy is great and all, but I feel way less engaged with anything going on

I was active, and even a recognized name on some subs where I was particularly active, but here, those same communities are either woefully underpopulated and inactive, or just straight up don't exist. When I need to ask questions or get a wide variety of opinions, or even share a story, I knew reddit had enough activity for me to get at least some traffic. Here, I haven't even made a post

Sorry, Lemmy, but we're only together because reddit left. You're my rebound

You should make a post, even if you don't think it's an amazing post. If you want to see more activity than get involved.

I imagine reddit was this small and niche at one point in time and it only grew because people posted whatever they liked instead of waiting for someone else to do it.
yeah reddit is just simply too big to failed and with how confusing using lemmy for non tech savy, it makes people feel reluctant to switch
Also here cause of an unjust ban (and because of the 3rd party app fiasco). I reported too many blatant advertisements as spam and got kicked out due to "report abuse". But anyway, this is why I split my time between Lemmy and Imgur now. Imgur is no better than reddit (at least when it comes to 3rd party apps), but at least it helps fill a void.
same, but got a new account on reddit that didn't get banned (after first rediculous ban I couldn't make new accounts without being autobanned) again so I spend more time there now. we shat on reddit a lot at the start but at least we can have actual discussions there that aren't just calling each other fascists and tankies
- How long did you wait until getting a new account? After my ban, I was getting my new accounts autobanned within minutes
Same here.

I'll bite, I miss the sysadmin and msp communities. I didn't post much ever and won't ever, but I learned a lot there over years. I'm not getting that here, and it's pretty much why I was on reddit.

As a sysadmin, I handle windows, cloud, Linux, networks, BSD, and more daily. But the "Linux desktop is best" crew are more cult than community & my personal desktop is Linux, which I like, but it's not the answer for my parents, my partner or most of my friends or clients.

I gloss over American politics since I'm not American.

I don't hate cars. But I'm an advocate for walkable cities. I love cars in fact. I would quit my job if I could earn enough just restoring cars slowly all day.

But I'm still here. So that's also a statement.

I think "FuckCars" is meant to be "FuckCarDependence" but that's not as catchy. People in those communities are usually pretty open about the fact that cars have their purposes and aren't evil on their own.
- Basically the same issue as r/FuckCars
- Yeah, I am on team "Fuck Car Dependance" because I hate everything about em - driving, the ecological impact of cars and the society wide inequalities created and reinforces by designing space around them.
  
  But I would be virtually unhirable in my field if I didn't drive... And there is zero way to fix that even if we managed to dismantle the system of strodes, massive parking lots, low density suburbs, inadequate public transit etc...
I know, it's really starting to get to be abit much. I get weird looks for liking Ubuntu, for example.
Also used to work for a MSP as well.
- I've been in MSP for 15 years now and honestly it's so love hate. The variety and change is awesome but the cowboyism keeps me up at night in sweats.
  
  I'd never be able to learn so much anywhere else, but because it's msp I've got no proof I know it (no training or non expired certs).
I also wish there was more enterprise focused IT community.

The self host is not a replacement for homelab or sysadm.

I can't even get good information security discussions @infosec.pub. I was hoping there'd be some security ninjas running around. Just a news bot.

I even think about mentioning enterprise Microsoft products, get evil capitalism lectured. I can't personally change the business world's IT paradigm. Business world...more lecture coming
Its like floating on an inner tube down a slow meandering creek instead of holding on for dear life to a shitty wooden raft going down Niagara Falls forever.

Its a lot easier to get off and stretch my legs when I need to
I can never read

walkable cities

And not lose it
- Not sure where you're from, but I'm from Australia and so my experience in the 8 times I've been in Japan and 6 times in Taiwan, you don't need a car. A car can be pleasure. You can use a car, but to move millions of people a day, really good public transport is needed. Being able to walk to a interconnected grid of transport, that can link buses, trains and underground rail allows for better night life, better work balance with being able to study or watch entertainment in transit, and everything is open and accessible. Getting back to Australia with hundreds of in-build multi storey mixed commercial residential complexes but primarily cars to travel makes no sense. We have a housing crisis but no infrastructure to support the density needed where the people work and live. But a culture who remembers 30 years ago when the population density was lower, labour was more common at warehouses not as much knowledge work and were more disperse over space, everyone had backyards with hills hoists, and two car garage and a shed. Those days are gone but nobody wants the infrastructure noise or density, but it's too late. We have all that but without transport options.
  
  Our trains are so bad that they need to be on 15 minute at rush hour intervals because schedules are hard and they'd crash otherwise. Japan has them coming every 2-3 minutes. Imagine going to the station not knowing the time table because at most it's 3 minutes to wait after work for the next one, if it's too packed, wait 2 more.
  
  Your mileage my vary where you are, but in 10 years I can't see this population growth and density growth being solved with cars.

I'm less settled on Lemmy, but fully settled in the Threadiverse. Basically I see Lemmy like my current Linux distro: It's good and getting the job done, but I'm always watching the next iteration in the ecosystem.

That said, I feel like I've landed on a good host and alternate frontend that I like. And I LOVE that I can choose my host and frontend.

Basically I see Lemmy like my current Linux distro

This is also a really good thing. The only problem I see is that it's a little more complicated if sites would change their backend.

Like, imagine in 10 years Lemmy isn't the hottest threadiverse backend any more and now it's something else. But what about the existing sites? It's infeasible for all users to manually migrate their accounts to other, newer instances and they might not want to either (they might like their current instance).

So given that situation, instances need a migration path to a newer backend. But that seems more complicated than switching a Linux distro for as a single individual.
- Indeed. Data longevity is a concern for me in general. There have been enough Lemmy instances that have disappeared (including once I used to be on) that our ability to become a massive first-hand knowledge center (like Reddit) is endangered.
  
  I know user portability is getting active attention. I'm hoping at some point there's a cohesive solution where all our data is in our own hands and we can plop it on to any instance of any service with a few simple steps.
- It's already happening with discuss.online, they're building their own backend. It shouldn't be too hard to migrate but I agree that multiple backend would increase complexity
but I’m always watching the next iteration in the ecosystem.

As you should be:-). Plus don't forget that you can host your own instance too - be it Lemmy, Kbin, Mbin, discuss.online's newer thing, or whatever.

And it's only 0.19.3 alpha software - there's so much room to contribute to it, or at least watch it grow:-).

Likewise as people get deeper into Linux, "distros" become far less relevant bc you no longer depend on others to make those decisions for you, and can make anything happen that you want, at any time.

(I'm making this post so that people who love Lemmy can help me understand, not to hate. I want to love Lemmy)

I've been on Lemmy since the reddit migration and every day I dislike it more.

I never understand what people are talking about when they say they like Lemmy for the "closer community", most posts I see barely have any comments, and the ones that are there mostly look no different to what I used to see on Reddit.

the smaller community results in less posts about less topics, so it's difficult for me to find anything I'm interested in. on Reddit I could join dozens of videogame-specific or niche hobby subs and they'd all be at least a little active, here it seems the only posts I can get to show in my feed are environmental and big tech doomerism and occasionally some Linux discussion, with very few memes or otherwise just funny/easy posts. I like talking about Linux, sure, but I don't want a sinking feeling in my gut every time I wanna scroll idly.

there just seems to be a lot of toxicity here on top of everything. I'm constantly seeing people arguing or being rude about Linux opinions, big tech/privacy topics, etc. I worry it's a bit more of an echo chamber than reddit ever was for me as well. I feel there are just a lot of perspectives I'm not getting here.

I left reddit because I hate the business decisions they're making, but every day I get closer to going back. I don't want to support such a shitty company that treats users more like cattle than customers, but I'm struggling to adjust to Lemmy even all these months later.

very few memes or otherwise just funny/easy posts.

Really? That's most of what I see when browsing /all.
If you wanna go back to reddit and can use the app, then go and i am seriously, i browse and post on lemmy mostly but i still browse reddit on the web browser for the nicher staff, without an account

You shouldn't feel pressure to use something that is suppose to be for fun and downtime.

My grips with lemmy are mainly On the UI side, user a lot of client, like eternity(formerly infinity for reddit) had a lot of bugs and can't find a satisfactory client) but other than that i like lemmy

On reddit i felt too overwhelming with the amount of users, to post or comment or someone already said what i wanted to say

You could also take a break from lemmy weeks or even months and comeback with a fresh mind to see if your feelings on it changed
Smaller population makes it feel like more of an echo chamber. Or maybe it is a bigger one because of smaller population. Still trying to figure that one out myself.

I’m starting to see the propaganda bots and spam creep in. I guess that means it’s reaching a certain popularity level.

I get attacked by hyperfixated debatelords here just like reddit, 10/10 would recommend as reddit replacement.

Its also interesting that you can recreate an accurate miniature reddit with a fraction of the users, in that regard I guess its a more efficient reddit?

Its also interesting that you can recreate an accurate miniature reddit with a fraction of the users

Yeah I'm honestly surprised how well it works. Yeah you don't have the niche communities but you could absolutely move a whole niche community over from reddit and it would be fine.

Lemmy definitely needs more work though.

I like it. Just wish niche communities were more active.

Reddit but with less content (which is fine), I browse by top past 6 or 12 hours, and just check in once or twice a day.

Also I don't know about more mature... There's a lot more people here arguing and gatekeeping and generally being weird about Linux for some reason.

I mean, I like Linux, I use it a lot, but these people make it their identity, like it's an obsession, and they violently hate people who dare to use Windows.

...I get the impression these are actual grown adult men and women, acting like big babies :-P

There's a lot of people here engaging with Linux discussion in a normal healthy manner too of course, just the weird ones are the loudest, you know? It's off putting.

I'm digging it. It reminds of reddit when it was good, which was like digg when it was good, which was like /b/ when... wait, /b/ was never good.

I can handle the Linux fanboys because it's been my daily driver OS since 2003.

I do miss the driversity of topics. Yeah, I'm mostly about my computers and cars, but I like maintaining a surface knowledge of pretty much everything.

I've been hearing that a lot. I think it will happen as the Fedi gets larger over time and TBH less nerdy.

On Reddit I would feel like I was speaking to one individual all the time. All of the top comments were like they were written by the same person. Here I think everyone is unique

Huh, interesting that that's your experience. One of the things I've found myself disliking here is that the power users seem to drive even more of the conversation. I have never seen so much Star Trek content in my life because by chance two particularly active users happen to be big on Star Trek. I've got nothing against the Star Trek stuff but it catches my attention, you know?

I suppose it's possible that the reddit experience I'm comparing it to was quite different from the usual one. It's also possible there's just something else making me notice specific names more here than there. It's not the end of the world, and I'm much more likely to post comments than threads so I'm not doing a lot to help the situation anyway
- You are not wrong - the entire experience in the Fediverse is foundationally different than Reddit. In the latter, you mostly would visit niche subs, and then supplement with the popular subs when you ran out of content there. Although in those, I mostly would avoid talking, bc it was so toxic (did you notice how defensive you became on Reddit? Yeah, we all were that way), and eventually got to where I could barely stand to read most content either bc it was just so freaking juvenile.
  
  ^This. And my Ax. I also choose this guy's wife. And so on.
  
  It would even be fun if it were like 1-5 comments and you just scroll on down to read the real stuff... but damn, soon enough it became pretty much all there was, period. HUNDREDS of them IN A ROW. Or at least 90%, with anyone deviating from that norm getting pounced upon, and thereby their subsequent obvious defensiveness and eventual demise painful to see (as every conversation simply wound down to the side not participating in group-think simply giving up and walking away).
  
  When Reddit collapsed, I came here, but I was leaving Reddit either way. It just became un-fun.:-(
  
  Anyway, whereas here, niche communities barely exist, getting a post a week perhaps rather than one per hour, just to throw out some numbers but ofc ymmv. So you do see more the finer grain details of individual posters, simply because of how much smaller the entire Fediverse community itself is. Which sort of gives it more character?:-D
  
  And spending more time on All rather than the niche communities becomes more mandatory, plus spending less time here overall. Though I do not think of that as a bad thing at all - we should be doing things other than merely gabbing at one another, even if only in order to have more to talk about:-).

It's about the only place where you could post a photo of a houseplant or something equally random, and people will reply asking why it's not running fucking Linux.

More nerdy than Reddit, more of an emphasis on Star Trek (less Star Wars) and programming/linux memes than anything (at least when browsing Top/New posts). It's a bit higher brow I guess than Reddit, though not nearly as much content. In Reddit, I would very rarely see everything there was to see in a single day if I was looking at the Front Page. It's not too bad though. I'm not going back to Reddit, so I guess I have to smirk at all the Trek jokes now.

Otherwise, still seeing some of the same issues that affected Reddit and some that I never saw there, out-of-control mods, abandoned communities, seemingly intentional misunderstanding of blatant sarcasm, some rudeness (not as much though), and an overly Leftist worldview (I consider myself left-leaning, but it gets kind of ridiculous at times). It's just part of the whole social media thing I guess.

For non political content, not bad, of course a lot smaller than reddit, but it's a good start.

But the left wing populism echochamber is a bit annoying. It's ok to have an opinion, but all the silly so easy to refute things that get repeated here over & over again because it sounds nice & fits the agenda is just annoying... "Why do billionaires need more money?" because they're addicted to ego & power, it's not about the money. "The right wing are so violent, we are the good guys", every other thread: eat the rich, prepare the guillotines. -insert a not so common incident that supports an agenda- 'see, this happens all the time, we should do -insert short sighted measure that will just cause different problems-. etc...

I'd love all those topics to be actually seriously discussed here, but so far it feels like it's just edgy teens shouting whatever fits the popular narratatives...

There are a lot of angry 14 year olds here for sure
Couldn’t have said it better.

Like a lot of people, I came here around the API protests at Reddit. Back then Lemmy was filled with "fuck reddit" circlejerking which was made worse by the relative lack of other content. But I have watched this place grow and mature into something I would consider a suitable replacement for the most part. That said, the amount of content here still pales in comparison to Reddit back when I was actually there. As for all the complaints about the culture here, you get what you dont filter and I filter the trash out of my feed.

Definitely needs more content, more active communities but on the whole it’s OK. It’s unrealistic to expect it to be as large as other platforms at this time. I’m doing my part by participating in threads that I usually wouldn’t jump into.

Thanks for your participation. I think every user's contribution counts.

I wish that a lot of communities would consolidate. It seems like there was such a rush, and all these people trying to stake out their homesteading claim, that the community with a capital C wasn't able to develop. With reddit, subs would get big and shitty, then you'd see something like,"Hey, join us over at . It's like this sub, but with(out) ". And that spinoff had enough momentum from the start to keep going.

I'm not a sports guy, but it's like there are 30 NBA teams (I don't know the number, don't care, and irrelevant to what I'm attempting to stay). The first community should have been NBA@... until there are enough people visiting so that the fans of TEAMA can go create their own TEAMA@.... As things stand, instead of starting with 30 basketball fans having a common community to bullshit, we ended up with 30 communities with 1 person in each and often zero traffic.

The one thing I'd object to with the sports example is that I don't wanna see game day threads for teams I don't care about, but I'm totally open to general discussion of the league, including about teams I don't follow. If literally JUST the GDT were split off to the individual team communities I'd be cool with it.

But I totally agree with the over-fracturing of interests. Every now and then I'll see someone make a "spinoff" of a mostly dead community, just to post 2 or 3 things and stop. It'd be better if they just posted that in the existing community even though it only aligned 90% as well as they'd hoped.
Weren't a lot of the sports team communities started by one person just like a lot of the "Only X pornstar" communities?
The approach you describe is what Beehaw, where users cannot create new communities, is/was doing
With reddit, subs would get big and shitty, then you'd see something like,"Hey, join us over at . It's like this sub, but with(out) ". And that spinoff had enough momentum from the start to keep going.

Except that's not what happened. What you're describing was very rare. The vast majority of the time, terrible subs with terrible mods or user bases stayed entrenched, alternatives never took off. The main sub would always get recommended, it was the one Google would show, it was the one that hit the front page, the small subs just never got that exposure and most dwindled.

It was a big issue people didn't talk about much, and I like that Lemmy isn't worrying about consolidating.

Unpopular opinion: it’s very much like Reddit.

It has ridiculous memes that overwhelm the ‘verse.

It has niche subjects that overwhelm the ‘verse.

It has a hive mind that doesn’t like unpopular opinions even if they’re correct.

It’s like Reddit before it started clamping down on things that were distasteful when viewed by advertisers or the general public, which I like.

There’s lots of drama sometimes.

It has mod problems. Sometimes it’s the absence of mods.

It’s attracting bots and karma whores, even though it’s meaningless here. For now.

Sometimes people show up with an agenda and talk at you instead of with you.

Thank goodness asklemmy isn’t overrun with the same damn stupid sexy sex and other same old shit yet.

Overall I’d say it’s better. People realize it’s new and the growing pains that the newness means. People are happier to have a discussion and enjoy the growing variety of the fediverse. People are people, though, and some of the same old stuff is showing up.

Unpopular opinion: very popular opinion

It really is like I never left.
- I voice plenty of unpopular opinions that get downvoted, and do not submit onlyfans type "gee, by boyfriend doesn't like my tits, what do you think?" unpopular opinion type posts. There are plenty of people here who don't want the 'verse associated with reddit.

I’m with my people—Linux nerds and fringe liberals. If the horde finally comes for us, I’ll be proud to stand with my Lemmings.

Plus, this place finally got me proficient with Docker, so that was nice.

Technically speaking Lemmy's improved a fair amount since before it blew up in popularity (compared to pre-Reddit API shenanigans), but it's still lacking in a variety of other areas, e.g. moderation tools & lack of any sort of modmail to avoid having to coordinate off-site, user tools/settings related to privacy and federation such as hiding profile elements or the opposite like enabling a microblog-esque mode for federating with Mastodon/Misskey/etc., and some other odds and ends (like not being able to mute/disable notifications for posts/comments, sorry OP!).

Culturally speaking Lemmy has similar problems as other federated platforms in that to this day no one seems to have worked out a way to better communicate them so that they're more widely adopted and grow significantly beyond the early adopter Linux/techie crowds (Mastodon's very gradually been getting there though). Some people also much prefer that, which is part of why and how these platforms have remained that way, but they seem to forget that small communities can exist within larger communities, and with well-developed federated platforms, ideally one could better curate their spaces more than they ever could in more popular corporate platforms.

Also regarding content, it's in a weird spot. There's a decent amount of it, but part of the problem is that it's neither all that varied nor original. There's a glut of news, political/technology mainly, memes/shitposts, many of which being older and thus reposted, and some mix of technology posts in general, then there's kind of everything else. If we were to throw together BS percentages, I'd maybe guess at like 32/32/32 of news/memes/tech, with the remaining 4% being everything else.

The issue then is, much of that content you can easily find on more popular platforms with greater variety and also originality, with potentially timelier posting, so outside of principles, what's the draw of any of the Lemmy instances? I think there's greater potential with more topic-focused instances (e.g. programming.dev/ani.social/etc.) and original content. That is, compared to the corporate models of attempting to be everything for everyone but really no one, and in turn also opaquely barring/removing/demonetizing creative content due to some ambiguous advertiser/copyright compliance measures.

Unfortunately you hit a causal conundrum where there aren't enough people yet for others to justify contributing original material, and there's not enough original material to draw enough people here to justify creating it and on and on. Classic network effect situation, in other words, which in turn also affects variety and timeliness of posts, and leaves everything in an awkward limbo state until several somethings start to change.

It's about the same, but the lower pop moves the page at a glacial pace. One other major difference: less suspicious content. I left Reddit for two reasons. One, negative content experience crowding out the positive. Two, I loved rif. Since the APIcalypse I've bounced around a little bit looking to make a home somewhere. My experience is that tech is great but techies don't always share all the same interests as me. So it feels like there's just not enough diversity in interesting content.

I miss the tiny fan sub I used to run, but it would never take off here, on any instance. I could never go back- Reddit is broken. I just wish more of us left. I don't know that this place has matured, but where it's at right now is good enough to keep scratching my itch for sharing content and ideas online.

There's a lot of IT/software engineer here. I'm fine with it, especially since I'm a software engineer myself, but it would be better if there's more variants of people here.

Even more US centric. This means that all the political posts are too US-centric, I'm fine with political discussion, but damn, I don't care about that country too much.

I got the opposite idea. I think this place is much less US-centric than Reddit. And actually, if you look at the servers' location, there's way more in Europe than in America. So it would be fair to assume that many users would pick a server near their location and thus be from Europe rather than America.
- I just looked at All, and at least half of the post I see are specifically about US politics/news. It's strange, because (like you said) I don't think any of the big servers are from the US.

I find it more neckbeard than Reddit, and I mean that in the most offensive way. Reddit was big enough that there were lots of places they either didn’t participate or were so rare as to not be annoying. They’re everywhere here on the big, fully federated servers.

By the same token, the semi-federated, more restrictive instances (yes, I mean beehaw) are actually quite nice places and really does feel like a mature place to casually discuss things.

In general, though, lemmy is a desert or ghost town of vibrant niche, non-IT focused communities with regular participation.

How are we defining "neckbeard" here? Actual assholes, bigots, angry hateful people? Or we just using that as a catch all for tech enthusiasts? I see a lot of conflating between the two.

The tech crowd is always there first. They're the early adopters, so yeah, place is gonna have a lot of those. That was true on Reddit in its early days too. That goes hand in hand with a move to a decentralized platform like this. I'm continually puzzled by people that seem to think this is unusual. We came here to escape a centralized, increasingly walled and corporate controlled space...so yeah, lots of tech enthusiasts, FOSS-heads, and Linux users will be here. Where else would they be?

It's super political and tech based. Feels like if you don't use Linux or Firefox you're an outcast. I still use it often just not as often as I did with reddit.

It really is fantastic here. Lot’s of cool people with interesting nuanced perspectives. What I miss are the niche subs with solid activity and conversation.

To be honest, it's not particularly great. But it sucks less than Reddit, so....

I'm enjoying it somewhat. It's much more populated by people with similar interests to mine, e.g. Linux and D&D, but it's also more populated by aggressive and ignorant commenters who are all too eager to be contrary and smug.

it’s also more populated by aggressive and ignorant commenters who are all too eager to be contrary and smug.

More than reddit is? That certainly hasn't been my experience.
- Yeah, unfortunately. I think the reason is the relative lack of moderators and the lack of a paid admin team.

Compared to Reddit, it's pretty empty still. On Reddit I literally never saw a post twice on my subscribed feed.

Now I'm subscribed to roughly the same number of communities and it takes 2-3 days for my feed to completely renew... Many of the subreddits I used to frequent still don't even exist on Lemmy, despite them being pretty popular over on Reddit.

There are pros and consc to having either large or small communities. Having many traffics is good to generate discussions. But then on the other hand, you encounter more idiots as a result.
- Believe it or not but I didn't really encounter that many idiots in my time on Reddit. I wasn't part of any political subs, though.

I actually appreciate the slower content on Lemmy. Keeps me from continually scrolling for that dopamine hit.

WAY too far-left biased. It’s basically _TheDonald but for socialists.

Right? And just like reddit,politics seeps in to every other page. We get it,you lean left(sometimes way far),but there's a page for that. Keep it there. No one likes politics in their memes,at least I don't, and I'm positive I'm not the only one.
- Exactly. I’ve seen them whining about how bOtH siDeS are ruining America on articles that have nothing to do with politics at all. Like… even remotely.
- It's become the habit of leftist spaces since the first sign of the poisoning of a space by the right is usually in the humor. The cycle of "Oh I was just saying this racist thing to be edgy, I didn't mean to be serious!" to "Oh you're too sensitive you're ruining everyone's fun" to driving vulnerable minorities out of spaces because it's just bloody toxic to explain when something is sucky and courting vicious attacks for being "political" when trying to stick up for themselves thus making what remains hotbeds of ever deepening unironic racism/sexism/queerphobia etc... Yeah. It does mean that any spaces with leftists left in them tend to be very corrective in the way they engage with memes and jokes.
  
  I suppose it's a little of a "this is how you get ants" situation in moderation.

General meme and news posts feel basically the same as Reddit. A lot more Linux circle jerking, probably a bit more left leaning. I do miss the days before I knew what ml's were though.

I like the smaller, early internet feeling, but miss the niche communities. Although Reddit is so damn huge that even the niche communities have so many comments that unless you catch something right when it's posted, anything you say gets lost in the flood.

It needs to grow because right now its like 50% people who were banned from reddit because they dont socialize well

At least Truth Social is eating up the ones banned for no-no words
If wanting child molesters to be woodchippered is considered not socializing well then fuck em.

I miss the content and niche communities of Reddit. Remember you can still be in both as long as you'd like. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Edit: I also am sad that big news events like the Superbowl don't have nice vibrant live threads. Hopefully we have more good content for non Linux peeps.

I just got tired of finding new Microsoft products appear on my taskbar and the looming threat of having to sign into a Microsoft account.

Its aight. It reminds me of old web forums and BBS style conversation. There's a lot of passion and intelligence but also incredibly one-sided takes and an unwillingness to empathize or see another person's perspective. I mostly stay for the Picard Maneuver memes.

I have noticed that many users are highly technical. I am not technical at all yet I am here because my technical friend showed me how to sign up and which app to use. I think people from marketing background should create guides / poster on how to use Lemmy for people like me who dont have a technical friends.

I'm really happy with it. People here are mostly thoughtful, smart, and post interesting content. Less fighting, less toxicity, no shills in political discussions because it's not big enough, no corporate astroturfing (the closest we come to that is adderall spam ha ha).

It feels healthier to me than reddit, which I think I had probably been addicted to. Being on Kbin I never have to run out of content because of the "microblogs" section which has Mastodon, and my multireddit style "collections" (like this news one). But I also find it easier to put my phone down.

Also I find it hilarious that although I do still see occasional screeching about US liberals, over here it's because the poster wants "the libs" to be more left wing not more right wing.

Very few women

I’m not convinced of that. I know more female users of Lemmy in real life than I know male users, and I’ve seen other women on here plenty.

I think some people are assuming that all the Linux nerds are men, when there are a fair number of women in there who just aren’t identifying their gender in a post about ProxMox.
- I just miss some of the niche female-centric subs from Reddit. Like the Lemmy communities for beauty-related topic only have 1-2 posts in them. I don't think we have a critical mass of women to sustain such communities, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
  
  (I use Arch btw - but I also wear makeup and get my nails done.)
Idk i might be a women. All these other dudes could be women as well. Why does it matter anyways.
I don't really care about the gender of commenters on here as they are literally just walls of text and nothing more to me anyway.
- Very few women => discussions relevant to women are sparse => I have to go to other non-lemmy communities for such discussions

It's all right. But it's a ghost town compared to reddit.

I don't want what comes with loads of people. It's nice
- Loads of people are bad for stuff that's very popular. But they also allow niche communities to build up. The later is what I miss about the Fediverse.

I like it but tbh I miss the NSFW Gifs/Videos. I also have learned some topics not to talk about. Like Windows/Linux, bashing furries, or anything that is not far left (gender stereotypes, guns, etc.).

I don't browse enough maybe to find active niche communities. Typically spend most of my time browsing all on top 6 hrs. Else I see the same posts for like 2-3 days.

It's a change but feels more like... I'm talking to real people instead of guessing who's a bot.

HELLO REAL PERSON. I AM ANOTHER REAL PERSON. LET US EXCHANGE SALUTATIONS AND MEMES. I LOLED SO HARD I SQUIRT LUBRICATION FLUID THROUGH BY PROBOSCIS PORT.

To me, it feels like old Reddit, so it's very comfortable despite all the differences and initial growing pains picking an instance. Like finding an old friend and meeting up with them for lunch after many years.

I'm really hoping that the smaller communities dedicated to a topic start getting more traction, although I'm not doing much myself to make them grow

well here goes nothing: [email protected]
- Neato!
The thing I love about Lemmy is how easy it is to start communities. All you need are people interested in whatever is there.

Watch I'll start one today (well I'll just seed the idea, the community does the hard work ;) )

https://lemmy.world/post/12196744
- Yeah it's just I'm more of a lurker and also haven't found anything to post about in the woodworking community.
  
  But also I should make a drag race community

Honestly, not that great

It was really good at the start of the exodus, when I felt like I could write and be read, instead of missing the post by like an hour and being the 10,000th comment

And the community was good, too But now it seriously feels stagnant in an active way

I don't really know if it's because of Lemmy itself, or because "Eternity for Lemmy" was named after it's update schedule, but every day on this app feels completely identical to every other day Just politics, Linux, and bad memes That is basically the reddit experience, I will admit, but on here there are basically zero active niche communities, and basically deserts of fandoms

I think Lemmy did get a sort method to try and accommodate more niche communities, but like I said "Eternity" is the update schedule, so whatever that may be I don't have access to it

And I think that's a really big thing, actually My app of choice is abandonware compared to other clients, I've reported a bug that gets under my skin 6 months ago and there hasn't been a single update, so i have to live with accidentally opening posts all the time and I hate it

I really really like this client otherwise, but I might just move to a better client or a fork of the same project, I don't know

I also don't have instance blocking, either, so that's fun

I like it. It's a bit smaller, but that means I can actually read through most of the comments. It's very slightly left of me, which creates good food for thought as well.

It does run of the issue of having a heavier tankie and "both sides bad" presence, but that's preferable to the alternative. I also like that I recognize some users.

Most importantly? I feel like I'm contributing to a conversation here. On Reddit it was just like shouting my opinion into the void.

It's good, but I really don't want to see as much circlejerking as much as I do.

Unless you want to reduce your feed to the bare minimum, you need to see the the trinity of political posts, Linux conversations and memes.

I'm trying to like it more but it's just way more depressing than reddit, and the depressing news makes its way into most communities. Maybe I just need to cater my subs a bit more but I wanted like a little bit of news and politics to stay informed otherwise I went on reddit to have fun and destress. Can't really say I can do that here the way it is.

I miss the hyper niche communities and fandoms but other than that I enjoy it just as much if not more

I really enjoy that in small communities I can come across usernames I recognize and develope an idea of what kind of people they may be or be able to continue a bit that I'd started in another thread.

It’s like Reddit from 2007, if everyone were expecting it to be like Reddit from 2017. (E.g., creating fragmented, fine-grained sub-communities before the coarser-grained communities are saturated.)

It sucks up too much of my time. So it's working. 👍

Matured? Really? I guess you haven't had a taste of the defederation drama. Users are great, but discussion between admins feel like the constant bickering of small children. And I say this as an admin myself, who at times does take part in those discussions. I think we still have a long way to go, when it comes to being matured.

Comfortable, but a little meh.

There's a handful of users I see posting and commenting. I read the Everything feed, but most of the posts are US politics, technology (with a FOSS/greybeard bent), or centre-left political takes.

There was a burst of activity during the Reddit exodus, but everything seems to be slowing down. I feel like I see fewer Canadian posts than the summer/early fall.

I appreciate

the handful of conservatives who are trying to build a community here. We aren't very forgiving to folks outside our Overton window, but it's nice to see other perspectives.
the Star Trek communities. I don't know if they're posting OC, but it's new to me.
PugJesus, the Picard Maneuver, and girlfreddy for their posts. Lemmy would be a quiet place without their content.

I read the Everything feed, but most of the posts are US politics, technology (with a FOSS/greybeard bent), or centre-left political takes.

I actually just ended up blocking all the US-centered comms and most of the meme comms and I now see mostly news that is not just about the US and also some discussions and stuff from other comms. But it's just my preference.
- That's a good preference. I enjoy the memes, and I don't have a problem reading US politics, so it works for me.
  
  I spend too much time scrolling, so I appreciate the volume. I would like more content tho.

Under populated, but I come here often!

Same. A bit more mature user base (but not too mature. Poop!, teehee....). Plus I like that it's generally smaller, and therefore avoids a lot of the negative effects of huge communities.

It certainly has its own distinct culture at this point, sometimes annoyingly so. Probably a consequence of the very skewed demographic still making up most of the people here. It also has less content, which is good for the comment quality but bad for scrolling.

Overall I like it here, though I often wish the memes were a bit better. Now I’m not a teenager myself but especially the more generic communities often have a distinct boomer and/or low effort flavor.

What is kind of putting me off Lemmy is the amount of tankies. I understand they are actually far left from Reddit who migrated, but they're just damn idiots and are simping for Putin (yes, I'm aware that some of them could be St Petersburg-based Russian trolls larping as tankies).

not a huge fan to be honest. the discourse has become very toxic, the reddit hivemind was silly but here don't you pretty much have to be an extremist or suffer all manner of rediculous replies. apparently taking a balanced view to literally any topic gives one the label of "fascist" around here, cheapening the word and killing legit discussion.

I liked it when it was mainly that picard dude posting memes

its not the site that's the problem. it's the "community"

It's a great place to wildly spout crazy nonsense and general gibberish with an underlying theme of overthrowing the system.

I found my people.

It’s mostly Linux and Politics, and most of my niche hobbies (and even most of the non-niche ones) are barely represented here, if at all.

It’s really disappointing. I have always been one to consume content, not create it, and it feels like if you’re not creating content there’s very little of interest. I want to like the app, but I find myself spending more time browsing Reddit in a web browser on my phone rather than using Lemmy.

It's less engaging, same stories hanging around active for days with minimal engagement.

It's just quieter here

Less content but the quality/shit ratio is higher here.

I spent some time reading a significant number of the replies, so I'll offer this as a suggestion for some of the repeated themes regarding overbearing political stance, decisive topics, etc:

encourage and support people discussing matters from an open perspective, trying to take a less decisive stance, or being open to different sides
encourage people and participate in conversation with people who show compassion or agree to disagree rather than write people off
ask questions instead of assuming
sometimes, opinions don't have to be right/wrong
opinions aren't facts

I have ended up in a "view all and block" mode rather than a "subscribe to a curated list" mode because of the smaller community. That means I need to block a lot more communities I am not interested in and users that are just... Outside my window of civility or politics that I can handle. Raging tankies, for example.

Sort of like reddit. There's less content, but also less comments just replying "lol, so true" to a political meme. That said, there's also, for some reason, more rape apologism than on reddit. Maybe it's because lemmy is even more male dominated than reddit was or is.

Gods... I thought the reverse and that I hadn't encountered as much rape apologism on here as compared to reddit. Maybe I've somehow managed to buck a trend with my subscriptions or something? Anyway you alice it I hope that things just generally get better.

Rape apologists are just... Bleaaahg...

Most of the time is great, but there's hive mind here too. If you're against running closed captions on your TV for example. That was the most recent I got bombed for, but there have been other times.

Most of the time it's more adult, but sometimes it's just like Reddit.

Try being supportive of Israel if you want a Really Good Time. jesus.
At least a bad votes/karma count doesn't mean that you loose rights/access to stuff, though you can still get banned.

I held back some opinions on Reddit, as the hive mind would have disagreed and thereby hurting my ability to post on other, unrelated, subreddits.

But yes, the hive ind is alive here too.
If you're against running closed captions on your TV for example. That was the most recent I got bombed for

Now I'm curious, can I see this example? I'm having a hard time believing people were "bombing" you for not liking closed captions if you're talking about watching things on your own.

Edit: nevermind I found it.

You basically said you won't turn captions on when you have guests over that need them because it ruins your enjoyment.

That's not a hive mind, bud. That's just normal people reacting normally. Denying an accessibility feature to people who need it because it annoys you is just being a jerk.
- That is not at all what I said. I only spoke about my one relative who is pro-caption (the entire time). When they come over (not disabled in any way whatsoever), they feel the need to turn on the CC themselves or ask for it so we can somehow be enlightened after the 20th time of them attempting to convert us.
  
  If I had/have anyone remotely disabled come over, I make every effort to ensure they have a comfortable stay.
  
  Perhaps I could have worded it differently. I edited it for clarity, not that it really matters.
I love my closed captions but I'm also making everyone else deaf without them so I would never hate in not using them that's just silly lol.

It feels like 20 year olds.

That's funny, I'm 20 and to me it feels like mostly 45 year olds lol
- I'm 45, and I agree with both of you. There seems to be a bimodal thing with lots of folks who are still young enough to think that screaming THE TRUTH(tm) to everyone they encounter will be what fixes the world, but a very large chunk of active posters who actually want to communicate seem to be a bit older. My personal theory is that the API exodus left year gathered in a lot of people who had seen previous social media sites (e.g. Digg) blow themselves up, and that by definition will skew older.

The best thing for me: I cut me sm consumption to a fifth of what it used to be. A few minutes Lemmy, a few minutes mastodon and I'm done. There is just enough stuff on here to scratch my itch for some content.

I've started when lemmy.ml was the only instance, and stopped when !all was populated mostly by posts from lemmygrad.ml. I rejoined once Reddit cut off their API, and it certainly feels like the usual crowd has joined. So far, it has been a pretty effective Reddit replacement for the largest subreddits that migrated ([email protected], [email protected]), but it's still missing a lot of active smaller communities.

My main complaint is that the default sort type (Active) needs to be tweaked.

If I could just make a dumbass joke comment without someone trying to debate me on it (poorly) I would be sooooo happy.

I feel like you're trying to tell me something.
Hoo boy, that's problematic fam.

Pros: Smaller, older, more reasonable userbase means participation is (for me at least) less intimidating and more meaningful. The atmosphere is very different and more pleasant. People are generally polite here. Comment fields have more interesting replies and less one-word comments and shit posts and memes and whatnot.

Cons: less content, not really feasible to endlessly scroll as an infinite distraction faucet. The userbase has clearly defined interests and certain fields such as sports don't have particularly good representation here, compared to tech fields for example. Comment fields are emptier.

Overall it's ok. The quality of the comments on articles is way better.

The worst part for me as I've detailed in similar threads is that the goldrush to claim all the popular subreddit names makes all those places feel hollow. Most have very little in common with their namesakes and are "anything goes!" communities which leads to homogeny. This is made worse by the internet's apparent need to copy every post from reddit

The other "issue" I have is that with federation comes cross posts and that means seeing the same thing 5 times in a row while browsing All. I don't blame the posters here but it feels like a missed opportunity to properly implement crossposting (like....one post, multiple comment sections)

I enjoy it a lot. It feels very non toxic, and it has its own sense of humour.

I'm still put off by the sheer lack of comments on some communities like the main videos community on lemmy.world, where videos that'll have tens of thousands of comments on Reddit will have 100 votes, but 1-2 comments.

I miss a lot of niche subreddits like /r/HajimeNoIppo, /r/BJJ, and /r/IBS, but I can live without. What would be great is if the big communities had more engagement.

There also seems to be a lot of duplication of communities across instances. While I get the whole decentralised thing, it's pretty pointless to not have a mechanism to merge/join communities across instances that have the same topic. Why should lemmy.world and kbin have two competing pro-wrestling communities when neither gets a lot of posts/comments?

Why should lemmy.world and kbin have two competing pro-wrestling communities when neither gets a lot of posts/comments?

This wouldn't be an issue with more users overall, but more importantly, it's not "competition". I agree there should be something to help meld together similar communities, but what we don't want is there to be only one community. That was a huge problem with reddit: there was typically one sub, and that sub was as only as good as it's moderation, while none of the alternative subs would ever seriously grow. So terrible mods were entrenched in the big subs, while no one would ever get directed to the alternatives.

Hell, you want to talk about /r/videos, the moderation over there was absolutely terrible. They removed videos for any reason they felt like and curated a toxic community. But no alternative videos sub could ever take off, because /r/videos was always there, taking the traffic.

We don't want that here.

Communities need cross posting but they absolutely don't need consolidating.
- The moderation is a separate concern, but I fully agree on cross-posting over consolidation, with moderation limited to wherever the initial posts were created. As someone that was a mod on a popular sub (/r/soccer) I can say that when you deal with those levels of traffic you absolutely need hard rules to ensure that only high-quality posts make their way through - and should Lemmy ever go through the same spike the same things will happen. You cannot just let people upvote/downvote as a quality filter because that's how to end up with bots winning, vote brigades, and content that focuses on the same shit. Some mods are useless, but I can happily say that /r/soccer was modded very well, despite insane challenges like users (literally) stalking mods, regular death threats, and some unhinged attempts to spam posts.
  
  I have no idea how you avoid those kinds of issues. I don't think there is a solution, because no social network has solved this at scale. In terms of Lemmy, though, consolidation is absolutely required because many communities are dead.

It’s a bit like you read a news story about something that happened in Australia, and all the comments are about second amendment rights and the Supreme Court. So pretty much normal Internet.

It'll be interesting to see what happens on as the election season heats up in the US. Are smaller communities subject to astroturfing?

What stood out the most to me was when everybody left Reddit and came to Lemmy that everyone helped each other to get settled into Lemmy and the Fediverse - at least where I settled. Knowledge was passed down. More tech savy users answered the questions of new users patiently. Everybody was (and still is) polite in general and it is a pleasure to participate in such an enviroment.

I experienced (and I still do) much more "adult" behaviour within Lemmy, compared to Reddit. I barely have to downvote comments due to bad/ malicious behavior. I think I have had to downvote 3 times within the last 8 months - and one downvote was dedicated to a bot which summarized some news content wrong. Here you can have nice discussions and most comments actually contribute. Less "This"-comments.

I like that Lemmy in general is more left leaning, and also more tech savy. Also, I experienced less gatekeeping than on Reddit - at least, within my home instance. Your experience, however, may differ.

I really like how when I post a comment on a thread it doesn’t get immediately buried.

I like it better than Reddit. I don't feel as over-monitored and as censored if I say something in support of progressive ideals. That's what got me kicked off Reddit in the first place - having the audacity to say that I feel like the younger generation is more liberal and open minded. After posting that i got a permanent ban from Reddit. (And yes that literally is all that I posted, word for word).

I still encounter a lot of people on Lemmy calling me an idiot for daring to have an opinion that's new to them or different from their own. I think that's just base human behavior at its worst. When I disagree with someone, I try to simply say, "I disagree and here's why." But inevitably they come back with name calling.

So I just try to remember that often times I'm dealing with immature people on here. And they don't have a lot of worldly experience in some cases. But for the most part it's been a nice change and a much better platform that Reddit in almost every way.

I wish there was a hide comment function. Other than that, it's fine.

Fucking A. A hide post function would be great too!
- Hell yes. I see posts I want to block,but if I do,I lose a page I enjoy. So I deal with the annoyance just to keep that page. We need hide post badly.

The best thing is that there are much less repost bots (both for posts and comments)

I like it.

I'm also glad you like it.

My impression is it's got promise but there are a lot of issues that aren't being acknowledged.

The way the federation works on Lemmy has some serious flaws that, until they're addressed, Lemmy will never work nearly as well as reddit did at aggregating content and cultivating a shared community.

That said, it's working fairly well for what it is, it just needs to grow.

Bear in mind lemmy.world is still on lemmy version 18.5, which is lacking some nice new features.

One of the features in 19.x is an option called 'scaled' view, which gives more weight to content from smaller communities and instances, which lets you see a much broader variety of content.

(I just realized you meant aggregating as in multiple communities under one mega communitie, I assume. Personally I see the lack of that as a feature, not a bug).

I came here after the API falldown and I like how quiet and normal it feels. I like coming across people in different threads and topics and while sometimes I'd like to see/read more content, this also helps me put the phone down.

feels like early reddit but leftist.

which means that sadly, we are vulnerable to an eternal september type situation

As open as discussion seems, it feels like there are still certain opinions that can't be shared because they're simply not the majority, and not even talking about hateful or discriminating points of view.

It's quieter which I love and hate. I don't feel addicted to engaging here which is awesome for my mental health but it can also make it difficult to find instances. I'm still struggling there.

However, when I do comment I find the people to be much more open to discussion. There are actual engaging conversations to be had which has been a great change. It feels less like shouting into the vast nothingness of the internet here, more intimate like a club of people with similar interests. I don't feel scared I'm going to get dogged on, flammed, harassed, othered, or ostracized. There have been times I've shared my Native background when it was important to the convo and everyone's be so fucking cool just treating me like a human being or listening to what I have to contribute from my perspective. Doing that on Reddit was a mixed bag where I would have to worry about the possibility of a sleu of people PMing me or replying with just awful hateful small pp energy racist shit.

Honestly, the bar was in the deepest pits of hell so if Lemmy couldn't shuffle over it I would have lost all hope for humanity lol

Small, fun community. Excellent shitposting experience. 7/10

I like a few of these communities, and I've had some nice conversations on some things I'm passionate about. But it seems like the population outside my small communities is dominated by violent wanna-be political activists competing for who can express the most outrageous sentiment.

Advocating against violence against one's parents in a hypothetical situation where a parent developed the wrong US politics not only got me downvoted, but also replied to by some asshole from Australia who wanted to rub it in that I was clearly in the out-group.

I don't normally reply when I see things like that, but after seeing so much vitriol I felt the need to leave a comment. I won't be doing it again.

I love it here but have one gripe… I can’t play videos in-app. (Maybe it’s just my app’s problem, but it’s a bummer for me.)

Lemmy is entertainment / social media for me, and I’d like to have something like Reddit’s TiktokCringe sub here. I don’t like Reddit and I don’t like Tiktok, but I do like funny videos that are presented to me because people think they are funny rather than because Youtube’s algo thinks it’ll boost an advertiser’s clout. Playing video without having to open another app would be nice.

Beyond that, I love it here. Conversations can actually happen here and I’ve even met people on Lemmy and continued to chat with them outside of the platform on other apps — I’ve never had that happen on any other social media. So cool.

I first felt like I was missing on news for my niche hobbies but just started going sites directly for news (testing an rss reader this week for the first time in over a decade so that might change). Besides that just looking at the default hot or rising threads hit a lot of what I'm looking for with good discussions.

The Memmy app is reminiscent of Apollo for Reddit (Fuck you Spez) and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. As far as the Fediverse, it’s slowly becoming more and more alive. There is an increasing number of people who really keep it interesting with new content, and I am extremely grateful for them.

Seeing quite a few comparisons to reddit.

As someone who went to reddit when digg shit the bed all those years ago and in turn came here after the api debacle, this is how it always goes no?

-> Social site has cool features for awhile but is unheard of

-> social site gets adopted by more tech literate people (we are here)

-> social site gets noticed by corps, receives investment and becomes able to handle more people (threads is an attempt at this and what is next)

-> social site gets adopted by millions of average joes

-> enshitification begins as social site/corporations begin to extract money

-> other social sites form from people tired of the diluted content

-> tech literate people leave for smaller social site with cool features

-> cycle continues

I'm settling in just fine here. The people can be a little more on the tankie side in some places, but it's better overall.

Reddit where I can block people and without /as much/ absurd delusional nonsense.

I've already started to see posts like "People of Lemmy, blah blah" and posts about username meanings, so it's becoming Reddit. Get off my lawn.

I like it. Lots of memes, I'm learning a lot. Less people to help, tho.

I found a lot of people who are willing to put effort in posting and commenting.

I like it. I'm not much into the memes but the communities are much smaller so you get more personal discussions.

It's very much like reddit circa 2008 or so. It feels like the claws of marketing people have no presence here. I dare say the word, it feels like there is freedom of expression. To be free, at least partially, from corporate control.

Well, so far I haven’t had anyone crawl through my history for personally identifiable info to email me with threats to my family. So, aces as far as I’m concerned.

That really did happen, not exactly a Reddit thing specifically though. Still, community so far feels far nicer and mature here than the old place had devolved into. IMHO this feels very much like Reddit did after the digg exodus years ago. I am hopefully optimistic about this place and the fediverse in general but I do fear what may happen if the big players are threatened enough and get some legislation passed in their favor.

Windows hate and politics. It's nothing like reddit imo but it's all I've got as I've abandoned reddit.

Actually, reading these comments, this place is starting to feel like reddit.

There's absolutely nothing more Reddit than people on Reddit complaining about Reddit and how everyone else on Reddit is shitty and unreasonable (without supplying any context).

So yeah, it seems Lemmy is right on track.

lots of people viewing and few posting so posts get more attention but there's less stuff

also less complaining

That is a benefit and a drawback for me. The benefit is that I am less addicted to my phone because the content is finite. The drawback is that I need my fix damnit.

When browsing the home page (this is just my subjective experience) I have to be more active in blocking political based communities (just not my thing, I like being happy) but if there happens to be a community for some niche topic that I'm interested in (it was pretty much guaranteed that there was one for everything on Reddit) the posts and comments are generally higher quality. Less reposts, less bots, etc.

Overall, a more enjoyable experience if I tailor it, but still too small for it to satisfy all of my niche fandom based needs. I'm choosing to stick with it and share it in the hope that it grows enough to do that.

I never had a reddit account so I used it's implosion as a push off to set me free from 4chan but also not going to that overly policed place.

I think Lemmy is a nice middle ground.

I do like it here, but would like to see more activity in specific communities like automechanic help or RV repair.

I like the folk here

I like how many of the users don't resort to memes or namecalling (not that there aren't a few here and there) and the replies are straightforward

I love the fediverse and especially the threadiverse. I'm okay with Lemmy specifically, but I prefer Kbin, and am looking forward to some entirely different option.

It's not as notable as it was in May or June, before the main Reddit exodus, but it still feels sort of like the early days of the internet here. People have to kind of go out of their way to be here, and the system's a bit wonky and obtuse, so there's a pleasant lack of lazy idiots. And I can actually interact with people who actually have things to say, rather than just wading through regurgitated memes and botspam.

TL;DR; Three points:

my selected communities seem to provide adequate interesting topics - there's always one or two rabbit holes to go down
I have a voice - commenting here is transparent and not censored as much as Reddit
I think the average age of contributors here is greater than the sex and shit joke fixated twelve year olds on Reddit which is a good thing

It's much worse than reddit. Mods are total dictators. They ban without any reason, only based on their political views. You criticize Hamas? Banned from worldnews. You're free to spread antisemitic propaganda because it's fine for them. It's the opposite of how it should be in many ways

Just go back to Reddit. People being anti-Zionist and anti-genocide is not “antisemitic”, and it’s antisemitic of you to lump all Jewish people in with your fascist ideology.

Go to Reddit’s worldnews. You can get all the genocidal content you desire because it’s totally overrun with Zionist propaganda and IDF sockpuppets agreeing with each other.
- This is what most of these people are talking about when they say viewpoints are critical and hateful.
  
  People can have different viewpoints without being an ism/ist.
  
  I don't understand why people can't differentiate or stop conflating opinions or perspectives with hate, violence, or something-ism.
  
  Also, I am not advocating for hate, something-ism, killing, etc. Not everyone who doesn't agree with you is a fascist, hater, genocide supporter, etc. Not ever opinion on a matter is propaganda.
- It's this shit that makes lemmy terrible
- What genocide exactly? According to whom? Al Jazeera?
  
  FYI zionism is a made up term by the people who hate Jews and cover up their racism.
Legit curious: how is your account 9 months with so little activity?
- I forgot my password lol
  
  Today it just came to me randomly