What do you love about Lemmy, compared to Reddit?

We are Lemmy, we were on Reddit.

A distinct lack of Monetization/ads

Feels smaller and more cozy to me.

You can actually participate in discussions. On the popular Reddit subs, you click a thread and there are 9000+ replies already. No matter how insightful your post, no one's gone see it.

I was using my phone to access Reddit through an app called RIF. It stopped working.

I can access Lemmy on my phone through an app called Boost. When I revisit a thread, it displays the new comments in a different color. Very very very convenient for active threads.

I recognise usernames, so it feels like conversations between people are happening rather than just throwing stuff out there for it to be ignored.

honestly, I always feel so much more part of the conversation here. on Reddit, unless you time it just right and browse young posts, chances are your comment will never be seen. on here you'll be one of 50 top level comments at most. and that's only the biggest threads. it would be nice to see more activity on more threads, but often when i comment on something with no comments it's enough to start the conversation.

almost none of my comments here get ignored, and the conversations that come out of them feel better. unless it's about Linux. you people are insane and unapproachable when it comes to operating systems. not because you're wrong, you're just... a lot.

Lemmy allows 3rd party apps and is not run by a company that would disallow them

Commenting on a post doesn't feel like yelling into a void, comments are more than a number here. Also people are always trying to be helpful, which is so nice compared to reddit.

mods can suck, admins can suck, but you can go off and start your own instance, with blackjack and hookers.

I also like that I can see that someone is posting from hexbear, and I can disregard their comment. It saves time.

I love the whole premise, brought by the ActivityPub protocol, that no individual or group has full control of the whole.

It isn't like nobody wants to become Lemmy's Spez. Plenty people do; they simply can't.

By the users, for the users. Almost all they instance admins are just like everyone else. We just know some it infrastructure.

I know it's arguably part of why it's intimidating to your average newcomer but I adore that it's mostly nerdy techies lol. I'm so used to dropping something vaguely technical and being met with the online equivalent of blank stares so people being willing and able to engage with that sort of thing is super nice!

Not owned by corpos

It has a smaller community, which makes it easier to recognize people.

The percentage of linux users is also great.

One thing I love here is how I can disagree with someone and still have a civil discussion. It feels weirldy amazing to reach a consensus instead of just getting stuck in a cycle of unrelated personal insults. Sure, shitheads like that do still exist here, but I don't remember ever having a civil disagreement/argument on Reddit.

I also feel that I've embraced the practice of blocking & moving on a lot more after I moved here, and tried my best to be more constructive.

• It's not constantly being tweaked and reworked to look and perform worse for the sake of profit.

• Fewer fascists

• Fewer people who are completely illiterate and can't follow a conversation that's already laid out in an easy to read format.

• Community rules are not so bloated that only the mods and their friends can make top level posts in the biggest communities.

• 3rd party clients

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Nicer, more intelligent community.

Also I can comment on a thread even an entire day late and it'll still get seen and upvoted.

Less fake accounts, less political censorship, less trolls, and less bad faith argument clowns.

Lack of spez

I'm either much nicer here, or people are far less confrontational. I've said it a hundred times, but every time I receive a notification on Lemmy I brace myself for another senseless asshole. But it's almost always positive on here.

Feels like I'm talking to normal people again,

I went on a bit of a rant during a recent low point personally, but still hold the opinion.

Reddit is full of people who want to be right and don't understand when a discussion is over. Constant misreading of comments to fit their narrative or enable them to try to correct, even if it doesn't make any sense, but they have to have the last word.

People actually make comments rather than the same 10 jokes reused over and over.

I don't feel like I can hold a decent conversation where my mind can be broadened or changed like here or traditional forums, it's just an opportunity to hyperfocus on one thing for upvotes.

I post something and actually get quality engagement. Just did an asklemmy post a few days ago and got tons of good advice thanks to everybody here!

Along with everyone else's great points, I'm so glad I don't have to suffer through another "thanks for the gold, kind stranger!" Or yet another painful comment chain of "puns" that are more like weak rhyming/word association, often reusing the same tired phrases. That entire place is so boring and uncreative.

Long live Lemmy!

i still scroll through both but i engage with way more posts on Lemmy now almost everyday

so i actually find the content on Lemmy more interesting which is slightly unexpected. i thought it would end up the same

The intelligence level on reddit has hit rock bottom. That's not to say lemmy instances are the opposite. It's just that reddit has reached what must be some kind of end stage. Someone else posted already about being met with blank stares about technical topics. It applies to pretty much any topic.

Not being very informed about a certain topic is not a problem in itself. Reddit seems to have internalized some sort of personality. One where the social milieu is about petty squabbles. They don't care about the topic itself but coming away from the replies feeling like they're the bigger dog who barked louder. More often than not I find myself just letting them have their victory. There's no real discussion happening anyways.

In the first half of reddits existence it was ridiculed for being the site full of neckbeards who think too highly of themselves on account of nerds being smart-aleck nerds. What I've seen the past several years goes to show that it isn't a nerd thing. As reddit has become more a sample of any given part of the population, this trait of reddit has not changed. People go to reddit thinking they're engaged in some kind of high intellectual discourse simply because reddit is supposed to be that.

I can't tell if these things are a trait of reddit which bled over from the other social media like Facebook and Twitter. I never used those. Just about any other platform is better compared to reddit. Whether that be lemmy instances or small forums. Could be some kind of social media mind rot or something. I don't know but that's what I attribute it to.

No algorithm.

I like that it's slower moving and the moderation is open. I like that the different instances have different culture.

I like that the content and discussion generated is open and will remain open forever. I don't have to worry about the content being locked away behind a paywall or bad company direction.

I love that the platform is open to alternative technology and values open source and copy left philosophies.

Shitters often self segregate. The Donald or FatPeopleHate would get run out of existing instances, start their own, then go to defed hell. Contrast with reddit where they were allowed to fester in the name of "valuable conversation"

Less assholes for the most part.

Things just don’t get buried the way they do on Reddit. On Reddit I often didn’t comment on something if it was slightly older because nobody would see my comment anyway. Here it’s a completely different story. Sometimes I still get replies after like a week.

I pretty much gave up on Reddit when I saw someone get 200 upvotes for making an Among Us joke in response to a school shooting.

Haven't seen that kind of callousness on Lemmy, which is nice.

We got instances, modlogs, third party apps, more community, open source, transparency, self hosting, decentralization, less corporate influence.

The fact that it's not run by reddit and it has working 3rd party apps. And that's pretty much it TBH.

The mods are actual humans, not bots with no life who scroll reddit all day. It's free, doesn't track my data and can be used without an app on mobile...

Reddit is just karma-based ego battles with no room for actual discourse. Lemmy is small and highly community-oriented so no one cares about that stuff.

Subreddits could often be narrowly focused to a severe degree.

r/whatisthisthing would routinely remove comment chains that were tangent to the topic of identifying the thing posted. Say someone posted a picture of a Betamax tape and said "What is this thing?" Someone identifies it as a Betamax tape, links to the WIkipedia page, mentions that it was Sony's competitor to VHS, etc. Que a tangent where someone says "VHS won the format war and became basically the only standard available, so for a long time we didn't call the format by its name; commercials for movies would say "now available to own on video" and we called the machine a "VCR." And someone else says 'There was actually an early and unsuccessful format called VCR, it didn't do well and is pretty rare though." And all these comments get removed and the commenters get 7 day bans.

I've yet to see that brand of "the kind of anal retentive you only get from welding someone's ass crack shut from spine to scrotal seam" here.

I was in reddit for over a decade, ended up joining when many of the links I saw on Boing Boing were from reddit posts, so I figured I'd just cut out the middleman.

Lemmy feels like reddit back in the early days, just before the rise of the novelty accounts (I kinda miss those, actually...) when people were still recognized by their usernames, even outside the niche communities.

I like decentralized approach and modlog feature. Really nice to be able to monitor moderation and see reasons for certain actions. This helps a lot to understand what to expect from certain instances, make the best choices for yourself and avoid frustration in future.

Less privacy invasion, less corporate, less fash, less incoherent fury, less trolling, less need to doomscroll.

There are a lot of areas in which I do prefer Reddit, but there are two critical ones where the Threadiverse -- and it's not just Lemmy, got mbin and company -- win:

• Open source. I'd rather be contributing to a project. Well, in theory, someone could make closed software, but you can use an entirely open-source stack if you want.

• Third party client use is permitted. I don't want to be required to run someone's software on my computer. Too many privacy issues, kills room for improvement. This change is what sent me off Reddit.

There are some minor benefits as well:

• Currently small enough that it's not a big target for spammers and such.

• The federated structure has some substantial benefits.

  It tends to force more competition, I think, rather than just having the first person who sits on a community name owning it.

  It makes the system highly resistant to full failure -- I've seen instances go down, but not once since I've joined has the whole Threadiverse gone down. Early Reddit in particular had days where it was unavailable.

  There is no one Reddit company with total control over content -- individual instances may defederate or choose what content to permit directly on themselves, but there's no one person whose whim chooses what everyone can see. Ironically, a number of peole seem to have showed up here because they wanted heavier content moderation, but what they wanted it on was on their instance so that they didn't see stuff -- the Threadiverse as a whole is less moderated, which I prefer; I can choose an instance that doesn't defederate and make my own content calls.

• A selection of server software and Web interfaces to choose from. I disliked the new Reddit Web UI, but old.reddit.com, while usable, was simply dead, receiving no further work. I have about five Web UI options on my own home instance alone, none of which are dead.

• Dark mode out-of-box. I've always preferred light-on-dark interfaces. Dark-on-light was only popularized when Apple pointed out -- reasonably, for the time, early 1980s -- that most data people were working with reflected paper documents, which for reasons of ink use, were almost always dark-on-light, and it'd be nice to have onscreen stuff reflect the actual documents. But in a mostly-paperless world, nothing was keeping us on dark-on-light except inertia from an earlier period.

• It looks like the auto-renumbering feature for numbered lists in Markdown, which I always felt was a major misfeature, was disabled.

People are chill for the most part

Less endless scrolling tbh. Took me a bit to get used to and I still check Lemmy often, but there's a time when I've seen everything for the day

The default comment sorting shows newer and lower voted posts on Lemmy. On Reddit, if you're not early in a post, then don't bother, no one will read it.

Fewer of the obsessive stickler mods that delete posts and bans users and kills the community by reposting content to gain internet points.

Being able to block politics and there isn't as much content here so can't really doom scroll without tracking time

When I post something totally innocuous on Lemmy that I'd think nobody would ever take exception to, I generally only get 2 or fewer "AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY" type replies that I can see so long as I stay away from the crazy Lemmy instances and communities and block enough of the insane users who still manage to break through.

On Reddit, there's much more "AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY"s and no upper limit known thus far, sometimes with dozens of people repeating more or less the same "AAAAAAAKSCHUALLLLY" but perhaps worded slightly differently.

Fewer bots. That and fewer users are literally the only (social) differences, sorry if you're all trying to cope that lemmy is somehow superior in every way

Instances and the local discussions in them. Always feels like if the fediverse gets overwhelming, you can retreat to your local page and it feels more cosy.

The UI.

• Lemmy is have way less meaningless hate than reddit.

• In Lemmy you do actually have control (like changing instances if you want)

• Lemmy seems a more safe place for LGBT+ people

Less redditors

When you post a comment it shows up whether it is a new or old account instead of having to meet some karma requirement. Also third party apps are very nice over being pushed to use some bloated ad filled official app.

Posts not being taken down without an explanation. The pics place has more people taking pictures themselves.

It's easier to block while communities here. IIRC, you have to have RES to do that on web.

The power mods aren't as entrenched. The federated doesn't encourage power modding as much (still there, just not as much).

I find there to be a more honest discussion here. Also, I really like that it's not run by some giant VC fueled company that is driven to make as much money as possible. It's more like a public utility where the cost is distributed among multiple instance owners. However, I am concerned about their rise in costs over time and I hope there is a plan for revenue. I'd be willing to pay.

While I'm here, I hope you all still use reddit a bit and mention Lemmy on there occasionally. I think the community can still grow.

Lemmy’s feed is 1000% better. No constant reposts, no ads, and ability to filter out read posts so it’s actually unique every day. I like it way better for news than reddit.

Reddit is better for browsing individual communities.

It isn't reddit.

More app options. With Thunder I can filter by keyword.

There isn't as much traffic here but what is here is more interesting.

why reddit is better:

• reddit has polls (even if it's only up to 6 choices, and <8 days)

• reddit currently has more users, and thus more people to interact with

• I kinda like karma pints.

• my pro-Green Party/Jill Stein posts aren't visible to most redittors, and thus aren't as much downvoted, if at all

• I can embed YouTube videos, but not only YT but also Vimeo

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why Lemmy is better:

• no ads, not run by a corporation

• It's federated.

• as one respondent already said ITT: more cozy

• my Vimeo, niconico, Archive, Wikicommons, and the very rare PeerTube posts look no worse than my YouTube posts—though with most posts, one can't see as many thumbnails.

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why Miraheze is better:

• no ads, not run by a corporation

• I can embed YouTube videos, but not only YT but also Vimeo, Archive, niconico, Wikicommons, and Miraheze Commons (on a few of the wikis at least)

• Files in Wikicommons can be transcluded.

• I like the wiki format (at least their and WMF wiki formats) best.

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why WMF projects are better:

• no ads, not run by a corporation

• Wikipedia is one of the most visited website on the internet; I enjoy categorizing files on Wikicommons; I like the structures of Wikiversity's wikidebates.

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I'm also thinking of posting in RationalWiki next year.

You can block entire instances. I blocked hexbear and lemmy.ml, and my feed became MUCH more pleasant to read. The vast majority of trolls seem to be on those instances.

So what I love about Lemmy now is that comment threads rarely turn toxic like they do on Reddit.

Seeing the same-ish users about. Like Emperor and Kolanaki.

No one asking questions you can simply put into a search enging and get the correct answer

because there’s less conspiracy here compared to Reddit

Still new, but:

• No (or less) hissyfit powermods
• Less strict, hopefully no stupid bans
• More privacy respecting
• More tightly knit
• Better front page, Reddit is just stale as of now

I find it super chill and for all the talk I see of people being toxic I never see it.

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You can cut down on the content you don't like/democrat-posting/unwholesome content by blocking a few key users, really improves your mental health

No censorship