Is lemmy really any different from reddit?

The one difference that's significant is the fediverse can't die the way reddit died.

Maybe it can die a different way, but it won't be that way.

The main difference to me is the lack of a profit motive, which is the primary driver of enshittification. The federation helps harden it against things like abusive admins, since it's dead simple to jump ship to another instance in that case, but honestly that's pretty secondary to me.

The two communities are vastly different, in size, mentality and number of bots.

Not really. More politically far-left than Reddit is (and more political just in general, actually), but other than that Lemmy is more or less the same when it comes to how its users act and treat each other.

Mods are worse here and often will delete posts and ban users, who don’t violate the rules. There are tons of unwritten rules, especially in news and politics related topics.

If a user is banned, all their posts and the communities they created are deleted. That means lots of valuable content can get deleted at the whim of a mod.

Tankies are far more present and tolerated here than on Reddit.

Misogyny is also more ripe. There’s a reason twoxchromosomes never got off the ground here.

A similar post was created 2 weeks ago, that could provide you some answers: https://ani.social/post/6631963

I don't find myself making spontaneous buying decisions for frivolous nonsense in my life in general when I stick around here. All of my purchases are due to my needs and research only.

Physical disability with social isolation gives one a potential ability to more deterministically decipher where and how interactions influence them. I have less inputs and influences and tend to remember what was suggested or peripheral to my intentions. I got into a lot of stuff over the last 10 years that, when I look back, I really don't know why I did them. I know my surface reasoning, but like, why was I following those people and spaces in the first place–that kind of meta logic perplexed me. When I quit YouTube and switched to newpipe/reddit, those random tangents were drastically reduced. When I quit reddit they went away entirely. It is entirely speculation, and probably borderline paranoia, but I probably only bought stuff on AliEx because it seemed like everyone on YT was buying from there. I can't say it was all bad or unwanted or anything like that. I can say I got stuff I didn't need or use.

I still explore new interests and projects I feel like trying when I see them here, but I have yet to feel influenced in a way that hints at manipulative intentions.

I've seen people try with disingenuous arguments that have 5-10 upvotes instantaneously. I've seen posts that have supporting corpo replies seconds after posting or where a typical type of comment for Lemmy gets a large scale negative response quickly that is obviously not genuine or typical behavior. Unlike reddit, these seem so blatantly obvious here that I block the posters and commenter immediately. Blocking here is rather effective and blocking a lot of users makes for a pretty pleasant experience unlike anything I ever had on reddit. This is my only outlets to contact other humans and I feel rather balanced with it and self care. That is more than I can say about reddit.

yes and no

Yes and no. Depending on what kind of differences you care about. Want to clarify a bit?

In both, you have communities and voting sorts the posts. However, the number of communities and voters is much lower in Lemmy. Reddit has ads, so I guess that counts as a pretty clear difference too.

Barely... many of the same fucking morons and trolls of Reddit have setup shop here, too. It's not the cesspool that Reddit was, yet, but it's getting there.