Conversation, mostly. By the time I quit reddit around two years ago, every top comment was a repost of a previous joke, or some predictable mutation of one.

Anything that went against the common preconceptions was shutdown immediately. I’m an expert/professional in a few niche subjects, and the final nail in the coffin for me was any comment I made turning into a fruitless debate with armchair experts too dumb to even understand why they were wrong, while correct info was downvoted to invisibilty.

None of this helps you crosspost, I’m aware.

I don’t know about content, but the Linux and self-hosting communities on Lemmy are infinitely more helpful than the ones on Reddit.

Communism and open source software. Queer spaces are also much nicer

I think one of the few things Lemmy is better at is that I can go into 8hr old thread with 120 replies and write a comment and then have people actually read that comment too and react to it.

With 99% of AskReddit threads for example, posting a reply was complete waste of time unless you were among the first ones in. Almost all of the top comments were always also among the first comments.

Unpopular opinions get super-duper downvoted here but don’t “disappear” as often as on Reddit (not including rule-breaking submissions).

I enjoy talking with the local and Lemmyverse regulars and also with most users. Reddit is so big you get lost in the 10000 comments, however many bots are copying top comments from a past repost you wouldn’t know. Lemmy is a good size now, if anything it should grow out instead of up (revitalizing more niche communities).

Topic niches served well by Lemmy: Linux, being upset at capitalism, Startrek, LBGTQ-friendly crowds on blahaj and beehaw, pcgaming, buying local and quality products (there are fewer suggestions but your average reply is better in quality than Reddit), Woodworking, DIY offgrid living (solarpunk), and a bunch more.

I like that on Lemmy there are more human-like posts and no advertisements. Hated scrolling through Reddit ads then getting sneaky ad-like posts from ‘people.’

Piracy, Linux, Self-Hosting, Anarchism

Oh, hell yeah.

The big three would be, first, technology, with a focus on Linux and home networking/self hosting being way better.

The second is the depth and breadth of the LGBTQ community. You get way better info, better discussions, with less dross or interference.

Third, I gotta say that the meme presence is vastly superior across the board. Less stale bullshit, less reposting, more funny. However, there’s also a good degree of niche memeing that won’t make sense to outsiders of the community, and a lot political memeing that’s just rants in picture format, with no real wit or creativity. Still miles better than reddit.

Those are the ones where, even when I switched fully in 2023, I was like , damn, this is great here.

I’d also say that lemmy is better at being open minded inside niche communities. We don’t have the numbers of reddit, which is part of it; more people, more assholes. But when it comes to hobby/interest based communities, there’s less parroting of whatever the established answer is, and more real, friendly discussion. Like, the flashlight, knife, and general edc communities on reddit were insular as hell. You couldn’t offer up an alternative opinion on a frequent subject without getting screeched at. Here, you may get disagreement, but it’ll be nice way more often than not.

That last one is why I spend so much time on lemmy. You still get assholes (and I’ve been known to put my asshole hat on sometimes), but they’re somewhat nicer assholes, if that makes sense? But the majority of the time, people outside of political topics are mostly just nice. They’ll express support and compassion easier, you’ll see more thanking each other for discussions. Even when it isn’t like that, the good stuff makes it seem less important. So what I ran into a jerk? I’ll be having a pleasant exchange in twenty minutes, so it just doesn’t matter.

One that is nothing but positive: you can edit post titles and use limited markdown in them.

One that’s done as much good as it’s done harm: polycentric moderation. One instance can’t enforce its own community rules on others. It protects lemmy.blahaj.zone from bigots, but it’s also why Lemmygrad exists.

For me, it’s not about having good content that is not on reddit, but avoiding all kinds of bad content that is on reddit. I can scroll through the “top of the day” list of my subscriptions in a relatively short time and find many posts that I enjoy or that interest me. When I used reddit, there was always so much noise, ragebait, clickbait, sometimes interesting questions with only bland answers, etc.

More peace of mind.

When I log into Lemmy and see a bunch of messages in my inbox I don’t have a moment of panic wondering if the replies are gonna be because the hive mind found my comment/post to be the best or the worst.

Replies here are reasonable if not too earnest…

While reddit has much more activity and posts due to the amount of users it has amassed over the years, I’ve found most of the stuff on the frontpage is just bots reposting the same memes over and over again to farm karma. On Lemmy, I see a lot more new OC and memes I wouldn’t see on Reddit.

The news posts seem to be about the same, but I find the comment section on Lemmy to be better for conversation. Reddit comment section on popular posts is basically just the top few comment chains, a lot of bots, and a plethora of single comments getting lost in the swarm.

Edit: to add to the second point, Lemmy feels a lot more engaging to me. If I reply to something on Reddit it most likely will not be seen by anybody unless it’s in a niche community.

Trek memes

If you really like socialism this is the place to be

There’s a much higher ratio of real humans to bots in most Lemmy communities.

For technology, sexuality, and socio-politico-economic discussion it’s as if Lemmy “stole” the users with the most developed perspectives.

However, all the problems are still present. Users still perpetually struggle to discern their right from left. And, there’s certainly at least a few mainstream mods that’ve their self-worth entirely contingent upon others agreeing with them.