Reddit

Welcome to Lemmy.

One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you'll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.

I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.

I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can't be found here, or just don't have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like "Stealth" to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I've been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.

You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.

Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn't display any downvotes.

You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.

As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won't get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.

Just note, if you pick one that's too small there's a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.

The echo-chamberiness of Lemmy is different from Reddit, but still a thing unfortunately. It'll really depend on the community you're in, but since the population of the Fediverse (and especially the Threadiverse) is very small compared to Reddit you tend to have the same people cropping up a lot. I haven't been banned from anywhere (that I know of - I don't actually know if I would get notified) but I find myself hammered with downvotes more frequently here than on Reddit when I say something unpopular.

I'd say, mess around a bit and see.

Yes, it is a good alternative IF you take part. Don't be a lurker, post stuff, cause friction, create interesting discussion even if you know you may get downvoted for bringing up things people don't want to talk about. Reddit is a censored pile of gatekept shit, don't ever waste your time commenting on there.

I’m also super new here because I keep getting banned there. I’ve been told I was a bigot because I was against the Palestinian genocide. Like what?! And I was harassing the mods because I asked them a question 2 times in 3 months. There’s no discussing with them. They come down at you with a hammer and it’s just mean. But if people attack you? If people are cruel? Totally fine. I’m a huge rule follower but I’m human and make mistakes. I hope here there is discussion allowed with the powers that be in case i mess up. I try to be respectful and kind. I just want to all get along.

Not really.

It's a good alternative to what I used to do with my free time, worm charming. It's not the same without a cobra.

Honestly? No

The good news is that we have a lot less of the dumbfuckery where people think the pinnacle of their life is a chain of meme posts.

But I think the decentralized and duplicated nature of lemmy prevents any meaningful conversations. People who just want an echo chamber stay in their version of a board and rely on moderators to scorched earth anything that doesn't fit a narrative. But it also means that people who DO want a conversation might never even see each other or not want to repeat themselves. Interesting point made in the world version of a thread but you tend to hang out in the zip? Yeah...

Which... is kind of message boards. Reddit was "successful" because it was effectively a single vbulletin site that EVERYONE was on so you basically only had one or two gaming forums and so forth. Whereas this is back to the days of usenet and everyone having a phpbb. You might recognize some folk from the Beyond Unreal forums at TTLG but those are different forums with different "cultures" and so forth.

That said: I can't help but gush over Mastodon. That is increasingly my favorite social media... ever? Because lemmy very much feels like a bunch of people who can't get over their ex and keep bringing them up in ever increasingly weird ways. Whereas Mastodon feels like everyone collectively said "Fuck twitter. I always hated it. Let's actually make a good town hall site" and... we kind of did. Yeah, you still have brigading dumbasses and a lot of the decentralization issues. But you also have people who actually respond to comments and have discussions. And while you still have the inherent flaws of trying to convey a point in a microblog, you also have a lot more "Wait, what are you trying to say?" kind of comments.

And... I am not sure what "lemmy" can really do. I think we have all collectively agreed to block certain instances (whether at the instance level or accounts blocking them ourselves) which helps with the... terrorist threats. But unless "lemmy" can decide to stop talking about reddit and stop trying to reinvent reddit... it is never going to be a place worth developing a community at. Shitposting and one off questions? Sure. But it won't be somewhere that you actually go to interact with other human beings.

I've been discussing this on Mastodon too, but more focused on features and limitations related to federation rather than people being dumber in one place or the other. But I also want more open conversations, which is one of the things I believe ActivityPub helps with.
So instead of voting for Lemmy I'll go ahead and say I prefer Kbin since I've found it easier here to interact with posts from other fediverse platforms.
Just read carefully the rules of each group/magazine/community as everyone is free to tidy up their spaces as they wish, reasonably or not.

Don't say you weren't warned.

I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned

From a subreddit or from reddit as a whole?

My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song

If from Reddit as a whole, unless the admins have changed a LOT in the last year, that sounds weird. They usually only banned accounts over calls to violence and promoting piracy blatantly.

I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom

wat. was a small personal sub? That's just a random suspension.

It's great - scratches the itch, overall. I sometimes pine for places where major debates on a specific topic constantly rage - ideally, I'd be able to discuss religion whenever I wanted, skipping threads I felt I didn't want to wade into....

But it is a good enough replacement overall and I feel like we are proceeding to having such a size. I am also open to the idea that I have not curated enough to find a place where this si consistently happening in the Fediverse yet...

I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks.

There have been some controversies that have led to banning and banning of entire instances. Usually, this involves Lemmy instances that were tolerating a lot of blatant transphobic memes that cut deep and were very mean...

I get why people isolated them.

I am still worried, though, that there are people who would still react this way to good faith discussion where there are disagreements. While there are some places where that is for sure OK, I think there are some instances that might react so negatively as to want to ban a specific user or their instance over it. I may be overreacting but IDK.

In your particular case: yes, lemmy is absolutely the answer.

It isnt for a lot of other folks. Lemmy has a lot less moderators/moderation and a lot more alternative communities and multiple instances.

This has a ton of implications. You can still get banned for petty reasons but usually not from the instance but just from a community. In that case you join or make another one which doesnt ban people for {particular_reason}.

It also means that you dont get the tons of posts and comments. Imo as a reddit refugee, people from reddit are going cold turkey on drinking from a firehose or more accurately, being showered in content. There is a million dollar business and many years of experience, social circles and code behind that. Lemmy is like reddit in the early days, just much later.

So if you ever feel there is a lack of content, consider hunting for it on lemmyverse.net for example. You can add non-banned instances to your instance by searching for a community‘s handle.

There will still be people here you dont agree with and the people here are a little different but all in all I‘d say its a pretty good thing. :)

Have fun.

Reddit felt like a massive echo chamber

Lemmy is a way bigger echo chamber, it's as "no matter who vote blue" as it gets tbh (with very few exceptions).

Where people aren’t pushed away for respectfully voicing their opinion. Is Lemmy the answer?

Nope, it's the opposite if anything.
I'm constantly getting attacked with ad hominem (my favourite one - getting called a fascist) here despite voicing opinions as respectfully as it gets, as well as providing sources for my claims whenever people ask.
Gotta have really thick skin if you are not left-leaning, but if you are - you will feel right at home :)