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The biggest difference I've noticed is that while Reddit may have a lot of large active communities, I would rarely get a quality response if I posted a question or a discussion topic.
Here, I can post to a community that hasn't had a new post in a few days, and within an hour I have several people offering help or discussion.
Reddit is far more active, but Lemmy users are far more helpful.
I wonder if that's because there's a load of bored nerds waiting around to help people, lol
You say that like it's a bad thing
It's not
Creativity flows when people are bored
Maybe it’s a population bias thing. All the helpful people left Reddit for Lemmy. I.e., being helpful may be highly correlated to the set of ethics that drove those Redditors away in the first place
Nooo…
Would you like help with something?
I installed Ubuntu and have it all set up. It came with Gnome. But now I kind of wish I went with KDE. How hard is it to switch?
Years ago when I used it, it was just installing package kubuntu-desktop and selecting kde as the default environment for the user. Not sure if it still works like this.
If you have an issue with the Reddit admins, you either suck it up or stop using Reddit. If you have an issue with the Lemmy admins, you can migrate to another instance and forget about the old admins.
Communities being smaller is a double-edged sword. Yes, it's harder to find the content that you want, but it's easier to be heard here. And it's overall easier to have a meaningful conversation here, that doesn't get flooded with sea lions, irrationals, or 11yos. (Note: I'm saying that it is easier, I'm not saying that everyone here is sensible or acts sensibly all the time.)
If you're left-wing you'll have an easier time discussing politics here. And if you want/need a safe space there are some good instances for you, like Beehaw or Blåhaj, in Reddit they'd be simply flooded with entitled newbies until the mods give up.
So TL;DR: unless you're one of those "lol! lmao!" kids or a right-winger, Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.
I went for a federated option specifically so that it's resistant to one company going rogue like Reddit did with the API fiasco and the banning of every third party app that made Reddit great. That's really the killer feature, if you're tired of your admins you go to another instance. No need to protest and switch your subs to private, just move the whole community elsewhere.
Yup - the benefits of federation are usually abstract, until someone in power goes rogue, then those benefits become solid as a brick. And since people in power here know that we have an easier time migrating, they aren't too willing to go rogue as the ones in Reddit.
Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.
Unless what you needed was specific niche information - but yeah in terms of general overall quality, of discussions, in particular not as an encyclopedia of knowledge but as a social media platform, then definitely. Though with that caveat rather than universally.
Addictive algorithms are terrible. I often check Facebook or Instagram for one little thing and before I know it I’m spending 20 minutes in the app 😭
The community is the main selling point for me. Further left than reddit. Fewer bots and recycled bot posts. Generally less defensive and aggressive posters, though the US election has made things a bit more contentious, I'm sure it's still better than reddit on this.
I actually recognize usernames and people try to write thoughtful responses the vast majority of the time.
This feel could change, but for today, it is so.
Less bots, less adverts.
Seriously, half the posts/discussions/replies on Reddit aren't even real.
SubredditSimulator leaked out all over Reddit a long time ago.
Possibly they were real at some point... before they were endlessly copied and modified by chatbots:-).
To me, the toxic culture of Reddit is a dealbreaker. Over here, you've got some folks that came from Reddit and didn't quite get the memo that they don't need to enter into gladitorial combat anymore when they disagree with someone, but overall, it's a lot more relaxed.
Lemmy vaguely feels like Reddit when it wasn’t really popular. When you could comment and it wouldn’t be buried under 10,000 others. Participation almost feels pointless there.
Here, there’s little to no benefit in boosting posts or up/down vote manipulation
Vote manipulation definitely has a benefit, comments and posts are still voted, and public sentiment is still swayed by votes.
Yeah I like the lack of cumulative karma scores, which I think will disinterest a lot of people who see discussion forums as a competition.
The smaller community can be a selling point. On reddit, a single voice pretty much gets drowned out by the masses. Lemmy feels much more personal and like an actual community.
No ads/tracking. That’s really it. Any of the other complaints I had on Reddit are here and in most cases even worse.
The API issue was the biggest one for me and what made this all intriguing. Now apps are getting around that. Winston for Reddit is beautifully designed and even guides a user to creating their own API key to add to the app. This API key provides you with a limit of 100 requests a second. Which is more than enough. (You could also do this on modded Apollo’s).
The average user just downloads the Reddit app though.
Reddit:
Lemmy:
Free speach baby. Its an escape from corporate censorship.
In addition to what everyone else has said in the comments, I find that the posts on Lemmy are far more creative. It's akin to browsing people's blogs vs Medium articles.
So far it seems to me like the troll instance here is much lower. There are definitely reddit-esque people here who will reply to comments by demanding that you refute their ludicrous misinterpretation of whatever you said. But overall I think there's much less hostility.
Based on my experience (.ml, World, sh.itjust.works).
Differences
Same
For me, less spam, bots, recycled posts.
I actually think all the posts talking about the size of communities, amount of memes on the frontpage and so on are wrong, since those will naturally change over time and are not fixed.
Every platform will see changes in their user base to some degree. Reddit now is very different to Reddit 10 years ago. The same thing will happen to Lemmy: If growth continues we will see more engagement in niche communities, but also more low effort posts and reposts.
Considering it doesn't do anything fundamentally different to reddit in the way of being a content aggregator with comment section it will be a similar experience. It would be different if it e.g. had a function to make older posts resurface and stay relevant longer to foster longer conversations, or structure comments differently since right now the further down a chain you go, the less people will engage with it.
Even if the average user doesn't care about open source or federation, they'll still benefit (and suffer) from the consequences.
On a centralised platform like Reddit you are beholden to their will for better or worse, and incentives might change over time such in their case with taking investor money and going public. This can have consequences such as forcing out third party software (one of the events that brought a lot of people here), but also censoring specific content or taking away powers from moderators.
There are downsides to it, since smaller, less professionally run instances might disappear at some point or have less reliability. But The upside is the option to choose and the resilience that should things change at one instance/community, you can switch without having to leave the whole ecosystem. And for that you do not have to be a moderator or volunteer
The existence of different instances also to some degree helps identify users to some degree, the obvious choice being political instances like hexbear.
The average user is not looking for NSFW
That's an assumption i'll challenge. Looking at the amount of porn on the internet, the average person most definitely is looking for it. But that is probably a bit offtopic.
It would be different if it e.g. had a function to make older posts resurface and stay relevant longer to foster longer conversations
"New comments" filters help with that
Thanks, i wasn't aware of that option and will definitely try to use it occasionally. Although having an option like that and having a default mechanism that pushes posts back to the top still probably still have different effects.
I really like the UI a lot better than reddit. So far I'm finding the single-page app architecture works really smooth.
you can have what feels like real conversations here fairly regularly, which are exceedingly rare on reddit.
Every post isn't filled with the same exact joke repeated multiple times. That's what really killed reddit for me.
More competition in the UX due to the availability of third party apps.
The mods/admins cannot do moderating actions quietly.
Unique Instance culture.
Conversations feel like they matter.
Your first two bullet points are the same on both sites (both sites..hehe)
Different people to talk to, it's much smaller and generally has a different atmosphere. And what you said. NSFW is handled differently, it doesn't annoy you until you've signed up and downloaded their official app... And replaces all of that with different dynamics. I suppose as long as you're living the "normal" life, you oftentimes can't tell if you're inside of a golden cage or in a democratic place.
No ads on Lemmy. Where did you find this "average user"?
Same shit, new boss
