What do you love about Lemmy, compared to Reddit?

We are Lemmy, we were on Reddit.

We are Lemmy, resistance is futile.
- You will be elemmynated
- If I can resist Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (of which I have never had an account, don't have, and probably won't have on any of those 3), I can resist Lemmy.
Took me a second to understand, but yeah that's a great way to put it
Eh, I'd rather say we are on the fediverse. Lemmy is just the app that some of us use to access the fediverse, but there are many others.

A distinct lack of Monetization/ads

Lemmy is also not tracking the sites you visit. Everytime you click on a link on reddit, you're redirected through out.reddit.com.
Worry not, ads still appear, tho we ban them relatively quickly.
- Can you tell us more about that, please?

Feels smaller and more cozy to me.

Thats the biggest issue I DON'T like about Lemmy. I want everyone in the world on the fediverse.

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.

The A.I will see it when it's trained on it
- What's keeping AI from training on Lemmy?
  Hint:
- All the more reason not to post it in the first place.
Also less circlejerking and "that's what she said"/"I also choose this guy's dead wife".
- This
You gotta know how to optimize visability. I'd regularly have comments that had thousands of upvotes.
- Timing is everything. I once had "most upvoted post of the day" and like 20K karma from a stupid joke that was a reply to the first top-level comment on a default sub. The only reason that happened was because it got into "rising" exactly as the US users started waking up and opening the site.
  I could've posted the exact same comment on any other post in that thread or even the same one but at a different time, and no one would've seen 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 used Boost for Reddit, and now Boost for Lemmy.
It's incredible how much the app is part of the experience. Same experience, completely different data source, it mostly just feels like early Reddit again, with niche subs of mere hundreds of people.
People are on average nicer here. Few loud nutjobs but overall I have mostly pleasant discussions.
Am the same, Boost fan. I still lurk too much, but really enjoy the conversations.
Okay, back to lurking for me, run out of things to say.

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

Other thing is there are small communities with 1-2 mods so you know them and they aren't usually "the superuser" that mods 10 different communities.
I don't say there are none of them, just that it is usually small and you recognize the mod that just steer his small community.
- When I joined reddit, it was at least a year—probably 3 years—before I was banned from a subreddit—r/AskReddit. I've been here little more than a year and I've not only been banned from a notable community here, but when I asked to be unbanned—once, then letting perhaps a few weeks pass, then twice—I got no reply.
  
  (and I'm not going to ask a 3rd time, but will simply create a [community-I-was-banned-from]2.)

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

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.

Yeah the instancing makes malicious users much harder to come by, and easy to hide for sure.
Same reason I joined here, plus most users on Reddit are just bots at least in here you can tell who's a bot and who's real and you can tell which comments to agree or disagree with and which to ignore based on the instance lol, it's way easier and friendlier here tbh I was banned for violent comments on Reddit mainly because the hive mind there are mostly removed but in here I can say Fuck Reddit, it was good once before the coronavirus now it's just a piece of shit.
- It would not surprise me to find out 50%+ of Reddit activity is bots at this point
- I was banned for violent comments on Reddit
  punches Chaos
  Yeah! Violence rules!

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.

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

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.

Not owned by corpos

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.

In general, people are more willing to call out misinformation and present nuanced takes. I much prefer that. Reddit has recently become a cesspit of ragebait and misinformation.

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!

I don't think it is only techy nerds, I am a granny and much prefer Lemmy. I no longer feel nervous when posting here at all as people are polite and are actually interested in discussion rather than simply arguing. And the premise that there can never be only one person in control is refreshing.
- Oh I don't think it's all techies, but they definitely make up a good chunk of the userbase. Hard agree on it feeling more chill too, I'd been kinda afraid to comment anything on reddit before I left.
- Also old and non-tech. Prefer it here.

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

The percentage of linux users is also great.

The percentage of linux users is also great.
Yes! I don't feel like a weirdo here for using Linux exclusively on my computers. It's nice to interact with a community that shares the values which lead each of us to use Linux. But even within that, the users here are not only respectful, but celebrate novice users that use distros like Mint. In my experience, some Linux users can be rude by presenting a sense of superiority for using distros that take lots of technical expertise. Not only does that not seem to be the case on Lemmy, but it's actually made fun of (I use Arch, btw 😉).

Nicer, more intelligent community.

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

i dont really care about intelligence,as that is a very vague thing to care about, even definition may vary, but the second point is important to me

Third party clients.

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

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

Of course this opinion is only accurate to the reality if you're spiritually from .ml or hexbear.
Folks can't seem to deal with outside perspectives very well and consequently love to swing that banhammer.

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.

You do find this sort of person in Lemmy too, but it's easy enough to block them out.
I once got a reply on reddit to a comment I had made ten years earlier. I looked at the person's comment history, and every single comment that I botheted to look at was a reply to things that were at least five years old. Reddit is not only full of weirdos, it's full or weirdos who will put in tremendous effort to be weirdos. I'm glad I purged my history on there.

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.

This so much. I feel like the founding values of Lemmy lead to creating a community in which users want this to be a respectful place. There's nearly no tolerance for hate. It's awesome.
- It truly is night and day. I still see a bit of clashing in the bowels of political posts. Usually a MAGA being downvoted to -48, or various subspecies of liberals having it out, but next to that it's certainly a lot more tame and respectful.
r/ seems so angry and attacky. I see it some here too, especially recently, but still much less than over there.
- Reddit was bad for my mental health. Especially from 2016 onward. If it wasn't toxic or aggressive people, it was an endless onslaught of all the shitty things happening in the world politically. I don't even live in the States anymore, and I was still angry every single day. I still see some of it on Lemmy and it's good to be informed, but Reddit's algorithm was tailored specifically for my anger. The platform is all ego.
Senseless asshole here. FUCK YOU!
nah jk
- Frig off, Berb!
- https://www.reddit.com/r/fightsub/

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 disagree, gently, i like chains, they are fun, and sometimes creative, even the ones i know (like rick roll), maybe this gives a kick to my slightly troll-y side, sense it is harmless and fun (at least for me, fun is subjective). I even liked the thanks for gold, it is not like the gold means anything, it just makes the community feel more live
- That's perfectly valid. With the gold thing, I was referring to the fact that people say it verbatim as I typed, (seemingly) every time. IMO it feels less genuine when someone doesn't thank another using their own words.
  By the way, your respectful disagreement is another reason why I like Lemmy. Courtesy seems to be more common over here :D

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"

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 reason you interact more here could be because people here are more nice and welcoming because it's definitely the reason I love to interact here :D

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.

Absolutely. You used to be able to reliably go to the reddit comments section for more information/context, clarifications/corrections/alternative takes, sources/citations, etc. on pretty much any post. "The real TIL/joke/story is in the comments" and all that.
Nowadays the reddit comments section is all jokes (not even good ones), reaction gifs (not even relevant ones), and non sequiturs. I'm unclear what percentage is bots and what is oblivious people with nothing useful to add but a compulsion to contribute anyway.
I keep visiting the reddit comments section anyway out of habit, and nearly every time I walk away feeling disappointed and a little dirty. Fortunately Lemmy's comments are more like the old days when you at least felt like you were conversing with a human (and a literate one at that). Unfortunately outside of a few niche topics, Lemmy is severely lacking in subject matter experts, so there isn't anywhere near the same level of additional context and fact-checking on most posts that used to exist on reddit. I don't know if this is a demographics problem or a "we're under the critical mass threshold" problem; I assume it's both.
Yeah this is pretty much spot on. People go to reddit to win, not to talk.

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'm sure someone is scraping the data...

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, that really bugs me when Iook at r/askreddit. The mods only seem to allow seem to allow generic personal questions or questions about sex.
Edit: it looks like three moderation is better now! Although it's still mostly about sex.
- Yeah the old "what's the sexiest sex you've ever sexed" channel.

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

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.

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.

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.

People are chill for the most part

Extremely chill. Agressively chill.
- Can you please fucking chill?

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.

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.

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

Lemmy seems a more safe place for LGBT+ people
In my opinion, Lemmy is a trans party 🥳🎉 There are so many memes about being trans almost daily. I can't tell if there is a large portion of Lemmy users that are trans, we just like celebrating the idea, or I happened to subscribe to trans-heavy communities like !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone. Either way, even though I'm cis-af, I love it. You go, girl/boy!

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

It's superior in a major way however. The ability to essentially pick the set of admins you're happy with is a game-changer (and yes, you can always selfhost).
I dunno man. How can you be sure the comments you're seeing on reddit are from bots? There are some bots, but there are also a lot of ignorant mfers on that site.
I would also say that Lemmy is much better moderated, partially because it's still small enough that the mods and admins can stay on top of everything. Reddit is so chaotic that absolutely horrific comments and threads tend to slip through the cracks quite regularly nowadays.

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

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).

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.

It isn't reddit.

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.

Less redditors

I'm still a redittor,
and on reddit, I sometimes link to Lemmy.
- How does that usually pan out?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

because there’s less conspiracy here compared to Reddit

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

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