Lemmy is a bunch of federated instances (servers / websites) so mod overreach and bias are less dangerous than on Reddit. There was one guy who created a lemmy UI (called tesseract) that would secretly block stuff / people he didn’t like, but he got kicked out pretty fast.

There is nothing inherent about Lemmy which prevents mod abuse similar to Reddit. The moderation structure was copied over almost exactly. The only real difference is that, since karma isn’t public on Lemmy, communities can’t use it as a filter for users; federation/defederation takes on that role instead.

One thing to keep in mind is that each instance has a highly varied user base which don’t always mesh well together. You can have similarly named communities on different instances with highly different social norms and moderation styles. Since those communities have different admins, they can have wildly different standards on what is acceptable moderation policy.

The biggest difference for me is engagement. On reddit, once a post is popular and more than 2 hours old, there’s no point in commenting because no one will see your comment. Here you can have meaningful interactions even if a post is several hours old. This encourages me to comment and engage in conversations more.

Reddit is a corporate shithole where the users are the product being sold to AI corponazis.

Lemmy is freedom. Don’t like how an instance is run? Pick any other.

As others have said this is a much smaller place and I guess everyone had it’s own experience, but in the end users (including moderators) are humans, and you will find here the same issues you found on reddit except one:

• if you think the rules are wrong you can change instance, while for reddit, well you have to leave reddit as a whole.

the reddit filters for the whole site overreach, because they use AI moderation now. also thier AI detection of botting is next level. the mass bannings were all done by thier AI, thats why they never lift bans, because theres too many false positives they arnt going to deal with.

I got banned for comparing israel to the Nazis.

I feel like People are more willing to engage meaningfully here.

My main complaint is that there isn’t that much of a history of answered questions. Where reddit night actually have solved or answered your problem or question andes ago…

But that’s all the more reason to contribute to lemmy.

1. Lower traffic. Sort of a given, but reddit has more users. I like elements of this, Lemmy being small makes the vibe more conversational, people also seem more helpful in technical communities on Lemmy than Reddit. But while there’s a quality over quantity, there’s a severe lacking in quantity. Lemmy communities are taking awhile to flesh out and communities I would expect to be somewhat active can go months without a post.

2. Userbase cultural differences. Reddit is a bit of a catch-all now. Some of the old redditor stereotypes are actually breaking down a little, people aren’t really pseudo-intellectual turbo nerds ready to ackshully your post anymore, they’re just kind of angry and stupid like the rest of the internet. Lemmy users in my experience are either very friendly, pseudo-intellectual turbo nerds, or you quickly find out the real reason they were banned from reddit and came here (racism, from what I can tell). It’s sort of a cross-section of people who would be dissatisfied with reddit in its current state, but hasn’t developed a voice of its own yet.

3. Moderation seems pretty active so far. I’ve seen a couple of people get banned from communities but it does seem like they were knowingly breaking rules and generally being jerks. I do wonder how well the lower traffic communities are moderated though. I’ve not seen a lot of mod drama or anything here but perhaps I’ve just missed it when it happens.

4. Toxic wastelands. From what I can see there are big swaths of Lemmy your average user finds to not be worth going to, instances seem to block them by default. It may sound funny, but I actually consider this to be a healthy thing. The fouler the fertilizer the sweeter the flower, I think having concentrated places for weirdos to congregate keeps them from spilling into the rest of the site, and the existence of these places means there’s a substrate of users who will likely stick around, making it so the traffic never dips Lemmy into true obscurity. The trick is keeping them from festering into something truly awful, which I couldn’t begin to guess how to prevent.

I highly recommend starting your subscriptions from scratch. I was following all the drama subs on Reddit, and more times than not, I walked away stressed and raged.

On Lemmy, I joined interest and conversation communities, and of course you’ll run into trolls and assholes occasionally, they are everywhere and can’t be avoided entirely, but overall, I think people are much more accepting and willing to have a discussion rather than yell at each other all the time.

Unless of course you support AI or Fascism. You probably won’t have a great time here.

Welcome! Lemmy is so much better that it’s not even the same league. The lack of algorithm by itself is amazing.

3 1/2 years here, and I feel like I have pretty honest takes but of course ymmv.

Moderation can be hit or miss depending on the community. Some have a heavy hand, others are light. Some have rules like no discussing AI and can lead to a ban, gaming has a rule I keep forgetting of it’s really a “gaming news” community and you’ll have posts removed that are just about gaming, etc. Long story short, always read the sidebar rules before posting, and don’t take it personally if a post is removed. Check to see if there’s another community that your post may fit better in. There are some jerk mods, but we make fun of them at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

As for topics, I mean you’re with a bunch of star trek/linux nerds here, just like reddit early platform adopters are tinkerers and nerds so you’ll notice a lot of conversations will eventually point towards those topics. There is more virtue signalling here, no matter what you’re going to have someone tell you you shouldn’t even mention X or Y and you’re horrible for it. Just tune them out, or argue, whatever you want. Have confidence in what you post.

The cool thing is we’re small enough where you can get to know people here, you’ll see similar usernames every once in a while and it feels like an actual community. It’s also small enough where you can have an impact if you choose to. A lot of people come and say “We don’t have X community”. That’s where you get to make that community if you want, and grow it to something cool. I’ve found that there are people here interested in the niche things, but most are too afraid to build a community around it. We have !fedigrow@lemmy.zip if that’s something you would like help with.

Lower traffic, you see a lot of the same users every day, the social experience is more intimate, in a way.

There are bots that try to blend in here but they are orders of magnitude fewer than on reddit.

There is still the problem of biased mods favoring power users over normal users, and bending or modifying their own communities rules to accommodate them.

Lemmy: violent revolution

Reddit: aita for family stuff

Lemmy:

• Perfect for users who want to be able to post on a modest pace.
• Lacks the thousands of micro-communities reddit has
• Doesn’t tie karma voting to be able to post at all
• Doesn’t have a bunch of “QoL” nuisances that Reddit has
• Doesn’t have Spez and shitty corporations invested into the platform

Reddit:

• Perfect for users who want to post constantly (once they’re over the prissy karma and time to wait to be able to post elsewhere)
• Has thousands of micro-communities that Lemmy doesn’t
• Does tie karma voting to be able to post at all
• Has unnecessary features nobody asked for
• Has Spez and shitty corporations invested in the platform

Mutually Shared:

• Both have shitty moderators at any given time.