1. I like that it’s FOSS, and that there are a lot more leftists here.

2. Some niche communities, that’s about it.

3. Yep, there’s a lot more Linux and FOSS content, as well as a lot of communists and anarchists (though Lemmy.world blocks the communist instances from you, so that should be harder to notice).

I’ve been here since the API drama, but many have been here for a lot longer.

Lemmy is what you make it. If you join the biggest and busiest communities, your experience won’t be as good as if you joined smaller more quality communities.

• Cozy
• Authentic
• Lately, it feels like everything on Reddit is treated like a joke, and you see an endless string of puns and snarky comments. I like that you can have a serious discussion about a topic on Lemmy without it unraveling unlike Reddit.

What do you like better here than on Reddit?

The interfaces are better, and being able to integrate with mastodon is interesting.

What do you miss from Reddit?

The size of the communities, really. On Reddit, a lot of the subs have grown big enough that they can maintain themselves, whereas here, they’re pretty much dead without input. A few of the more interesting counterpart communities that I would frequent a tonne on Reddit are dead now, and if you’re just one user, it does feel like spam to try and contribute to it constantly.

It’s really only a limit subset of communities that seem very active at all, and they are generally news or politics based.

Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?

Bit of both. The culture in the larger communities would drift the way of Reddit just by volume, but the smaller ones are a bit more unique, and not always in a good way. Because Lemmy is a bit more tech-focused, I find a lot of the main medium-sized communities tend to have similar abrasiveness you see a bit in tech, though it can depend on both community and server.

Good day! I’m here for around ~2 months.

• Something that I like better here, is the higher average level of thought put in the comments. Fewer dismissive one-liners, fever thoughts that seem to start and end within a single second. That does not go for all communities, but I’ve received some great help when I posted some questions, and posts where I shared info got valuable comments too. Reddit can also be good for this - but sometimes not exactly on par to the quality level.

• Another plus, and that’s obvious, Lemmy is a free platform where you know you won’t be cut away, or have to tolerate a bad UI with animations and opening treasure chests because the for-profit core of the business thinks it’ll sell well. (The legal goal of any Reddit emloyee is to maximize company’s profits. Not satisfy user’s needs. Only in the places where these two coincide you get something.)

• I miss certain specific communities.

• Also the feel of it sometimes: 9x% of all communities here are unofficial of course. And migrating your community here might be scary, of course, because the total number of Redditors is magnitudes higher (these redditors are not all in YOUR community, but the lizard brain is nevertheless afraid of such commitments).

• A bit of both, different and the same. I think the people and their motivations are a lil bit different, and you can feel it. But it’s still also people. Having their jobs, doing things for fun or out of boredom, etc etc. So also the same in a way.

Perhaps a wrapping thought. For my posts and comments personally, I’ve felt that communities here are larger than what I thought they would be based on numbers. You do get responses and help even in smaller communities. Maybe it’s a phenomena that for a smaller group, the noise levels are lower, so more people can survive the noise and continue reading besides “best of the month” filters. So they would go on and respond to something that would otherwise be filtered out as overwhelming.
Dunno.
Onboard and tell us how it feels later ;-)

It’s great I come here to argue with people until I am forced to assign myself homework. Reddit just bans you over and over unless you are 100% chungus at all times.

What do you like better here than on Reddit?

You won’t get banned for speaking your mind, even if that includes talking shit to bad actors who argue in bad faith. Reddit effectively protects and cultivates bad actors acting in bad faith. They can spread their misinformation. When you point out that they are dipshits and why, complete with sources, you get banned while they continue to spread their misinformation.

Threads also stay active longer on Lemmy. If you’re a few hours late to a Reddit post, too late. No one will see or interact with your comment. On Lemmy a thread can stay active for a few days.

What do you miss from Reddit?

The more nuanced subs. That’s literally it. Lemmy doesn’t have a lot of the subs I had on Reddit…yet. Mostly art subs dedicated to very specific forms of art. There’s nothing else to miss. Reddit is quickly becoming a cesspool that is losing what worth it once had.

Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different

Yes. There are notably less dipshit conservatives on here than on Reddit. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a partisan asshole. I am partisan when it comes to modern American conservatives. They are shitstain fascists and I don’t want them to be anywhere near me. I don’t view them as good people and I’ve never met one that argued in good faith. I respect and desire alternate viewpoints, but I don’t respect or desire conservative viewpoints, because they’re always in bad faith, if not outright racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or xenophobic. To give you an idea, Lemmy users ran the conservatives out of the actual conservative sub and it’s effectively used for mocking conservatives now. So yeah, Lemmy isn’t a big fan of shitstain conservatives. Which means on an average day, I’m reading a lot less filth than I was on Reddit.