Why does Lemmy feel so fresh compared to Reddit?

As a long time Reddit user, there's something about Lemmy and the fediverse that feels really refreshing and new. I think it has to do with a few things...

  1. People are more respectful of each other and interested in discussion and being social.
  2. Less trolls (users are probably older?)
  3. Due to it not being absolutely huge, I feel like people will actually see my posts and comments instead of being lost in a sea of content. I suppose once Lemmy grows this will change, however the cool thing about the fediverse are the new servers. So you can stick to the server when you want smaller community discussion and go to "all" when you want more populated threads.
  4. The clean UI feels refreshing and clean, almost like the early internet.

What have you noticed? Do you find it refreshing too?

Shaggy0291,

Because the people are all lovely

DaedalousIlios,
@DaedalousIlios@pawb.social avatar

I think there's many contributing factors. I actually was thinking about the same thing before I found your post, and the answer that came to mind outside of some of the ones people posted here was:

It feels like a breath of fresh air because we're outside the Walled Garden. We're not trapped on a platform who's soul has been crushed and wrung for every penny's worth like Reddit or Twitter. And we can see that there is a world on the Internet besides the Walled Garden and that fact is very liberating. It makes you feel like you don't have to go back.

geqo,

I’m a recent reddit semi-convert (haven’t left Reddit entirely just yet) and I’m loving it so far

solrize,

It is still full of geekery: the sociopaths are not yet here. See:

http://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Chathan,
@Chathan@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Great read. I am fanatic then. 🫣

Gorillan,

I think it all boils down to an older and more geeky user base.

floofloof,

Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. This feels comfortable like the internet until the late 1990s. I didn’t realize I missed that. And when it starts to be exploited for profit, trolled for whatever reason people troll things, and swamped by bots, let’s sneak off somewhere else they don’t know about and do it again.

nicerdicer,

I noticed two things, along with all the good answers in this thread:

  1. There is no such thing as Karma, and I hope it will never be implemented into the fediverse. The reason is that on Reddit Karma was handled like a currency, an in order to obtain Karma, the general quality of the content declined, as a result of Karma-farming. Also it was used as a threshold for posting comments in certain communities. Imagine you could join an instance only when you have a certain ammount of a Karma equivalent. That is something I don't want to see.
  2. At this moment there are mostly tech savvy users (former heavy Reddit users) here, who are interested in creating content and participation. Also these folks are helping each other. It feels like a little community. I think, the threshold to join the fediverse is still too high for the average mainstream user. Maybe it will be easier to get started when there are mobile apps.
whiny9130,

Karma is useful on things like discourse or mattermost as a spam prevention feature, you gradually expose features to people who aren’t being spammy. The same thing is true of a user joining a new community on the same site.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

I was on Mastodon and Lemmy roughly a year before the Twitter and Reddit fiascos. I never was active on Twitter, never even had an account, but I’ll admit Reddit was my jam. I didn’t even use any of the 3rd party apps, I actually did use their main app and had no issues with it (except for the occasional annoying ad on my mobile device…). But when the needless greed of Spez started to show at the seams and the communities there started to divide, I took an afternoon to delete everything from nearly 4 years of posts/comments.

Both Mastodon and Lemmy were FAR less active prior to these migrations, and so I honestly checked in once every couple months. But then Mastodon started showing up in my main news feeds due to Musk’s idiocy, and I knew it was time…

Similarly, when Spez started to make the same decisions, I already knew where the party was likely to move.

I only started using Lemmy again yesterday when Memmy came out as I dislike using social media from my desktop (though I do occasionally).

It’s nice to see so much more activity here now. It’ll probably never get to the levels of Reddit, but hey that can be a good thing in its own right.

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