Ask Lemmy

Really community dependent.

[email protected] is well, casual.

Of course politics and news communities are something else.

Before 2024 it felt like an old school forum.

After that and the election cycle, feels more like Reddit in 2018

Reddit... Reddit? That was a while ago... huh, I have trouble recalling a previous life...

Fewer bots. Its feels like the early days of reddit

Lemmy is a lot "bubblier" than Reddit, I suspect because the communities are smaller. It's a lot easier for a community to have a preferred view on things, even things you wouldn't suspect were part of the community's theme, and if you take the wrong position you'll get pummeled with downvotes more easily.

Not that it doesn't happen on Reddit too, but I see it far more here on Lemmy. I'm still active on both and while I haven't done any formal comparison you're asking how it "feels" and that's definitely how it feels. I speak my mind freely on both platforms but on this one I'm more likely to see a pile of downvotes.

Most comments mention this, I feel less amount of information (even on 'nerd' topics) and more repetition of same idea/meme. I still use reddit (without account) to find useful info.

Back in reddit days I used it more than I use lemmy nowadays. In many communities, doom scrolling will soon lead you to posts months old here, which is I guess a good thing in some way?

Also this place isn't as congested as reddit so virtually no annoyance like bots and shilling and scams going on.

Well there's certainly a lot more tankies here, or at least more visible.

Other than that, I usually say Lemmy feels like Reddit of like 15 years ago, which isn't a bad thing

I don't remember the conversations I would ever have on r*ddit. Probably because I basically never got any form of interaction other than up and down votes on things that weren't niche communities like for Pokemon Reborn/Rejuvenation. I assume it's because I only ever started using that old account around end of summer 2020.

I never used reddit as much as I do the Threadyverse, but I get the feeling that here the mods are much quicker to dele my comments. But this might really be related with how little I used reddit.

When it comes to content, it seems more positive.

Disclaimer: I always viewed limited subreddits that fed my interests, and my Home feed. I never looked at All, because it never seemed to have things I'm interested in. That probably influences how I perceived Reddit.

Reddit:

• Way more niche topics. It was quite possible to find people who shared the same narrow interests as you. On Lemmy, having conversations about these things is hard.
• Towards the end, there was a much greater tendency for top comments to be a joke/quip/insider joke as opposed to actual thoughtful discussion.
• It felt like there was a much greater tolerance of nuance and complexity, though this was also showing cracks towards the end.

Lemmy:

• Politics definitely swing a bit more towards the left. In some cases this means "people just talk about corporations doing bad stuff more", and in some cases it can mean some pretty out-there positions, like people fanboying for China or terrorists.
• It's much, much harder for me to find activity on topics I'm interested in. If you're outside of Lemmy's handful of interests, not just finding but even building topical discussion feels like a struggle.
• Not everyone, but I do feel like I come across more people here who feel... allergic to nuance. Frankly, I think this might be less of a Reddit-vs-Lemmy thing and more of how just social media in general is shifting these days.