Having tried all three, its a stark difference in how much more social Lemmy is comparatively. Its not even close. Almost all posts I've encountered on lemmy have interaction; whereas, more often than not, posts on the other two platforms have no interaction. Wonder what the driving factor is behind this difference?
I still use Mastodon โ as a place to dump intrusive thoughts more than anything โ but there is this huge tension between people who want to chat with randoms, people who only want to chat with friends, and people who want to use it purely as a broadcast medium. The protocol/convention doesn't really allow for managing this issue, which is a shame, but I have come to the conclusion that microblogging is just kind of cursed as a medium. It's fundamentally all about building a personal brand, and if you have no social capital you are shit out of luck. And if you have too much, well, enter the reply guys.
Lemmy/the Reddit model on the other hand strikes a good balance between anonymity and being able to vet odd characters. Different people want different things ofc, and that's fine, but I find I have more fruitful conversations here than on Mastodon.
Name three people on Mastodon you follow and why do you admire them
@cstross@wandering.shop
Author. Three time Hugo Award winner.
@gruber@mastodon.social
Invented Markdown
@adamconover@mastodon.social
You already know who this guy is. As far as I can tell he's either a leftist or pretty damn close to being one, and I would bet money on him not being a horrible person.