Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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

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.

People are chill for the most part

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

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

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

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.

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

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.