I switched from Reddit to Lemmy cold turkey, not willing to put up with that user hostile enshitification shiticane reddit was going through. There are a few communities that I really miss (/r/weightroom) but new Lemmy things (/c/tenforward) that give me joy. The Internet is getting pretty shitty but Lemmy is a great small corner of it that's resistant to much of that fuckery

On r/, i only really followed my interests - cats, cannabis, crochet, etc. Those topics getting less action here forced me to follow more communities. It surprised me how much i enjoy the general ask, news, eli5, til, art communities that i never would have followed when i had more niche content.

It feels like a more-manageable, more-personal, bite-sized version of Reddit. It scratches the itch, but I spend less time here overall than I used to on Reddit.

Similar, just smaller. It keeps me from going on Reddit but tbh, I would be back there in a second if I didn't have to use their app or use the browser.

Lemmy is fine, but less busy than reddit.

There's the complete absence of u/spez being a cunt, so you have to adjust to the idea of your experience not being constantly downgraded.

Good:

• I can use it for mobile without a first party app.

Bad

• There aren't as many communities here as there were on Reddit.
• There isn't that much content as on Reddit. Also, while the meme ratio of content feels the same to Reddit, the non-meme Lemmy content is rather small.
• Comment conversation seems lacking.
• Moderation tools are rather limited and heavily dependent on defederation to function.
• The idea of "start your own" mindset in the design makes community formation just as bad as Reddit. There doesn't seem to be any tools for a more collaborative approach to running subs or instances.

As others have said, as a "front page" with voting and real people in the comments, I like it. It's like hanging out at the one locals' coffee shop in a small hippie college town somewhere. You don't get to talk about everything you might like, and there's a definite vibe, but the people are generally polite, informed, and surprisingly cosmopolitan. That's where Lemmy really shines in relation to reddit, the quality and accessibility of conversation on general interest and shitpost threads. Even assuming they're not overrun with bots, and they likely are, the biggest subreddits are just noise and fake internet points, or at best a passing conversation with a stranger on a bus.

I still go to reddit for (American) football and mechanical keyboards, but for the former I don't even bother participating, because we've got a fun handful of folks here (to extend the coffee shop analogy, imagine a table in the back with a few professors who fondly remember going to a big football school 20 years ago). For the latter I can get the occasional fix here, and I seek that out, but I like seeing the pretty aluminum rectangles and sharing the little bit I've learned with newbies. To the extent there's still a baby splashing around in the bathwater, I'd prefer not to throw it out, but I'm clear-eyed about reddit's trajectory, and "home" is here.

It's working for me, but might not be for everyone.

I like that when I scroll through the comments, I recognize names. Commenting feels less like shouting into a random crowd, and more like having a conversation at a party where strangers may pop in and out.

There's definitely less content. If you're looking for something to doom scroll, you're going to burn through everything quickly, but for me, I open it up when I'm bored, see what's new, and in 5-10 minutes, I'm all caught up and back to the real world.

Not everybody is looking to ween themselves back from constant social media, but it's turned into a benefit for me.

Depends on what you are looking for. I think Lemmy works great and I only really go to reddit when a google search leads me there for something. Though I do miss the niche communities and the "there is a subreddit for everything".

Lemmy is also healthier, I used to just scroll through reddit for literal hours, it's possible to reach an end of sort for the time.

I'm here because I like the idea of defederated social media, but I hope there will be further attempts at making even better alternatives.

Sure it's the same thing without all the corporate interference. Reddit was small once.

Yep. Uninstalled rif is fun and installed Sync. The fediverse is not as active, but fills the same need.

The only real issue I have is that there aren’t that many active communities for more niche topics. I hope it’ll get there someday, but for now we have Linux or Star Trek, take your pick. :P

Not yet but its getting there.

Best I've found, but definitely suffers from lack of network effect

i like the fact that it is not karma driven. like vote on me how you want i don't look at my karma and care at all how people react

It's great. Not enough people, though.

For help on current topics, like how certain things work in a newly released game, I check https://old.reddit.com/ without an account to see what they have.

For doomscrolling/visiting niche themed subs?
Lemmy works equally fine, and with a clearer conscience to boot.

EDIT That said, I do sometimes miss certain hobby subs, such as a Tekken or Toki Pona community.
There aren't any active ones last time I checked.

Mostly agree with what others said, it's fine for me.

Perhaps just a subjective opinion that isn't bound to technology - I find moderators much more trigger happy when it comes to deletion and even banning.

It depends on your tastes. It's effective for me as I enjoy quite a bit of the popular content here (like Linux stuff), but we need far more activity for other topics.

It has a long way to go but it's a good start. The community is very homogenous right now (maybe excluding some of the mainly politically focused servers). It's predominantly male tech people right now and it shows in what is active and the general vibes of discussions. My hope is not only for more niche communities to grow, but also for a lot more diversity of interests and of people in general. We need more women's voices on here for sure. I miss that diversity from reddit. Things have been steadily, if slowly, growing so far from what I can tell, so hopefully over time all this will improve.

Lemmy is an improvement over Reddit in terms of its business structure. We don't yet know what the downsides will be of decentralized social media at scale, but we know that it beats a tech company that went from venture capital to publicly traded while already deep in enshittification.

Lemmy is not an improvement over Reddit in terms of design: it's designed the exact same way, so it has the same set of advantages and disadvantages.

The improvement in community is hard to guesstimate, and will change as the site grows. Aside from the company, it was often the users that made Reddit suck, and Lemmy is completely capabe of sucking in the exact same ways.

It's not bad, it doesn't have the massive amount of people to keep niche communities going, but for big broad general topics it's fairly solid. It could use some video and GIF support, but maybe it's just my instance that doesn't support it.