Fairly different hivemind here, I think. Still annoying at times but for different reasons. Individuals seem more likely to engage on a topic though. Maybe without instantly thinking you're their enemy.

It feels the same as when I originally got on Reddit 15 years ago. Not so much the culture of Reddit 10 years later, and definitely not at all like Reddit is now.

Similar but distinct. Much further left for one thing.

Also, the average level of tech knowledge here is off the charts. Like I feel like a caveman and in my office I'm the one people to go through for help. Never felt like that on Reddit.

Lemmy tends to not take every sentence like an insult.

for example: On a r/PCMR post asking about GPU shopping I said "ive run pretty graphics intensive games and some LLM/Image generators too. Mine has been perfect, I don't think OP should be super concerned [about only 10gb vram]"
I got -20 votes and a reply "Wow you should tell to AI companies that they don't need 30gb in their graphics cards!"

like OP was literally just a gamer 😭

although,
Lemmy HATES memes with censors in it. And leftist infighting is insufferable.

Lemmy is how Reddit was in 2010. Size is what degrades the experience, the larger Reddit got the more shit it became. I am hopeful that federation will be the secret sauce that saves Lemmy from the same enshittification as it grows.

No ads, no tracking, that's exclusive to Lemmy and I would like it for that alone.

People (aka, in Reddit language, 'content' or 'the stuff we write but they earn money with') are the same everywhere, I mean assholes and nice guys are not exclusive to any platform. There are just a lot less of us here than on Reddit. So, there is a lot less noise.

Plus we have decent filtering tools, so we can even have less noise ;)

Lemmy is tiny compared to Reddit and the niche communities I'm interested in are not very active but I don't care. I will keep posting here and not on Reddit as long as they won't change what I disagree with (which won't happen).

It's a child of Reddit.

It grew up learning some good habits and some bad, it continues traditions it didn't start, but it runs it's own household with it's own traditions, and is building upon the values it's learned.

So far, it's definitely less toxic

Fewer conservative dickheads, less crypto-bro bullshit, fewer incels and the like

Someone made a joke that didn't land well. I called them out for it, because it looked like they were being a misogynistic prick. We had a back and forth, they edited their comment to make it clear that it was a joke, not a bigoted belief, we had a good conversation and even a few others joined in with a swell of positivity

On reddit it would have probably escalated into something unpleasant, but here everyone actually had a laugh about it and we all noted the difference in positivity

There are still creepy children posting stuff in places like asklemmynsfw and annoying porn bots, but it's still better overall by a lot

It's going to be interesting to see what Digg becomes

I didn't use Reddit towards the end so I might be a bit wrong but overall it feels a lot more likely that you will bump into the same people on here. Its nice that you don't really get your karma farming GallowBoob types.

The misogyny on here seems more intense though even if the mods and admins are more on top of it.

Generally the same culture, but skewed towards more tech savvy types and online-centric culture groups. It's a lot smaller than reddit, which helps a lot with the quality of interactions, but I think if it grew enough it would end up very close to reddit culture.

Lemmy's far less toxic than Reddit and actually does something about bigots/hateful people too

also you don't get banned just for saying Luigi lol

We have mods that use the banhammer as a disagree button, just like reddit. But we are also openly hostile to nazis unlike reddit.

Yes, we have way higher percentage of neurodivergent people here and I love it.

Absolutely the same material, just less density so instead of the instant "fuck you" here we can see an additional "what do you mean by that?!" stage. And less people with ban ability.

Eventually, when our numbers will grow significantly, you won't be able to distinguish this place from Reddit.

I've seen less whining about downvotes, "you can't say x on y subreddit" meta comments, and general persecution fetish stuff. Probably just due to less people, but it's still a relief not to have to see it constantly.

From what I’ve experienced, it feels toxic in a bizarre liberal, Linux-nerd white knight kindof way. Which I think almost wraps back around to not being toxic at all and just feeling friendly in a passive aggressive way? Like going to a computer convention held on a hot, sunny beach. Sure, every here mostly agrees and likes the same geeky stuff but we can easily be too cranky about it, one way or another. Lemmy seems way more likely to engage in real conversation in comments and not just one-line jokes than Reddit. People seem more passionate about their hobbies or viewpoints. More likely to help if asked directly and detailed in response. It’s a cool place!

People seem nicer here in general.

significant less astroturfing from right wingers, and bots+ less pressure of the constant threat of reddit and subreddit moderations.

your battling against people brigading, baiting you into argueing so you get reported.

Significantly different in most communities. Much more collab work for one. Plus faster changes in general. Hard to game an algorithm when everyone has a different one and in different places. The people are just nicer here. I feel like I can actually have a conversation without being drowned.

I dunno, I mean, I never saw such an obsession with beans on reddit.

Whether that's a better, different kind of shitposting or exactly the same kind of shitposting is up to you.

The Westerners are slightly/somewhat less imperialistic, which is great. Also, people are visibly not as intellectually challenged.

I don't think I've ever seen an owl on reddit

100% has different cultures, however:

1. Not necessarily better, due to lack of enforceable centralized moderation policy a lot of morally grey or dark communities and instances exist, and it is more susceptible to bots.

2. Reddit was so absolutely massive compared to current Lemmy that it naturally did have more niches.

It is people, so basically the same.

Lemmy has the 3 day no poop challenge and reddit definitely doesn't, for one thing

We have beans, beef stroganoff, and moths. And people are nicer. I believe that all of this is related.

Much less "trying to be the funniest person in the room" energy

Definitely different

I actually think it's way more like 4chan than reddit.

Niche threads are small handful of people every time, people feel pretty safe to get nasty really quick, and wild mix of people thinking it's their safe space full of people that agree with them entirely from anarchists to fascists.
Also likely to see a random porn or furry post.