Actual Discussion

First and foremost is that it is decentralized. I don't mean that in any technical sense where the workload is distributed and the network is resilient against the loss of nodes. I mean that it's easy to go "instance shopping", because the decentralization has created another level of categorization.

Most people standing up and moderating a server seem to have a vision comparable to, but larger than that held by someone creating and moderating a community. That allows for larger collectives of like-minded people. As a result, I almost never filter by subscription, but by "local". As a result, I often find myself participating in communities that I would never subscribe to.

Perhaps related to that, one of the things I see on lemmy is that people are generally polite. If I'm getting downvoted for something, I usually know why. I can either infer the reason by rereading and thinking about it a bit or someone tells me in a comment. It's not that there are no drive-by downvotes, but they're much less common than on Reddit.

Also, I see people getting thanked for sharing more often than on Reddit, and those thank-you notes get upvoted by more than just the direct participants. And when the beneficiary responds in kind ("thanks for reading") that also garners upvotes from more than just the direct participants.

Discussions don't seem to devolve to fighting as often. When they do, they seem to be less abusive and peter out quicker.

That's the positive. On the negative side, I find that it's more common to see upvotes without continued discussion. I learn so much by bouncing ideas around and having people ask for clarification, provide counterpoints, provide examples or counterexamples, etc. I occasionally get frustrated that an opinion in its infancy just seems to disappear into the ether, trailing a voting history behind it.