The key benefit is that it's public infrastructure that's not owned by a corporation. Public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that’s accountable to the public.

Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.

Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.

Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.

From that perspective I think that open and federated platforms. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.

One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.

Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. It’s also more difficult for third parties to collect data since it doesn’t all conveniently live on the same server that some company owns. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and tracker bloat.

Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.

On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network. More users joining Mastodon is a net positive for Lemmy because we get more content and more people to have discussions with.

Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.

In order to be truly free, we must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.

No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.

On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.

At the end of the day, it's about owning our tools and using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.

The main draw of the fediverse for me is not being a product for a company to sell to the highest bidder.

Specialized instances are the major draw for me. I almost never use /all sort because of that.

Top benefit is less bots and thus less artificial pressure on your opinion and world view, less propaganda and less emotional engagement. Reddit was 99% plastic and 1% good niche content from real human non-bot creators. Then reddit changed policies and it was not even usable anymore as an independent cross section.

The traffic and infinite content on reddit was mostly artificial, do you realize that? Fake shit show.

Reddit would have been more addicting which consume more of my time, would be a centralized platform, there would be more inhumane people there (people who support Zionism), and it's a Big Tech.

We don't have these in Lemmy, PieFed and these are benefits for me.

Agree with a lot, and want to add: it doesn't eat even a fraction of the time that doomscrolling reddit did. My feeds actually have an end and refreshing often does nothing, so I can put my phone away and try breaking the habit of picking it right back up again.

I don't get banned for saying billionaires should be murdered.

To me, it's the resistance against enshittification on the principle of interopability. Also, most servers are run by volunteers and donations, not corporations that will eventually squeeze profit from you.

So, what is the actual benefit of using Lemmy or PieFed over Reddit?

not making a few asshole owners rich from your content ? as one.

Granular control, down to setting up your own instance if you wish, as another

"Safe spaces" eg maga have their own instance as another.

It's a fairly clean slate. We're establishing a new place for people but interested in corporate social media.

When people settle new territory, there's nothing there. Everything you want, you either need to build it yourself or wait for someone else to get around to it when they have a chance. If you aren't going to be a producer, you're going to find slim pickings.

I came here expecting a little more than what is even here 3 years later. But I liked the tightness of the community and that when I posted something, it wasn't instantly drowned out by a hundred other comments.

Superbowl was dead after the first couple of months, and I had really enjoyed it on Reddit and didn't want it to die here. I started posting what photos I had from previous travels, and when I ran out, I looked for places in all 50 states where people could see owls in person. Then I started doing daily research. Eventually that wasn't enough, and now I volunteer working with wild animals, including my beloved raptors.

Every day I enjoy talking to my fellow lemmings. I get enough comments and do enough posts to keep me occupied. There are some users I really love and I can remember personal details about them, and I notice when they aren't around for a bit or I think about them if they're going through personal stuff. I enjoy working at the animal rehab where I get hands on with amazing animals and work with some of the best folks anywhere.

If I would have sat there and let everyone else do the work, I would have given up here long ago. But I looked for a niche to make my own, and now people look forward to my posts and I look forward to their reactions. And developing that relationship helped me find something in my office life that I love and enjoy more than anything I've ever done before.

You're barely a number at Reddit. Here you can be anything, it's not like there's much competition.

I like talking to real people. To me that’s a benefit.

Reddit also feels like it’s gotten less friendly to me as a woman. That’s just been my personal feeling.

The fact that it's not reddit is a huge benefit. Also, the smaller overall community is an advantage for moderation and seems to result in a nicer experience.

The quality of discourse here is much higher and more varied in breadth of opinion than on any corporate platform I've experienced in years, even with the occasional asshole popping up here and there. At least on Lemmy the assholes are easier to avoid and predict (e.g. certain instances attract certain types).

What we lose in missing out on niche gaming discussion is worth what is gained, to me. Also, here it's small enough that we can be the change we want to see, so if there's something missing you can always just make a community and start posting about whatever it is, and people will probably find your posts pretty quickly.

Less of a bot problem, more influence over the features added, no ads, no dealing with mergers or shareholders or ceos, anyone can build software to interact with it, code is open source and auditable, if you don’t want to deal with moderators you can self host. A lot of people left reddit because reddit was acting like a bully.

I hope more people join so that niche communities can form but I’m happy to make do with less people for the time being.

I'm new to Lemmy. Its way smaller than Reddit but I feel like there are more real people here. Reddit turned into another tightly controlled, bot influenced media platform. I got really tired of all the nonstop political echo chamber posts as well. Why would someone want to engage and compete with a bunch of bots all the time?

resisting enshitification through federation, and talking to humans instead of bots. not seeing covert ads on the front page. being able to talk about anti-hegemonic anti-billionaire topics openly without getting banned.

There was a time when there was no content here, but people came because of what it stands for. Decentralisation, freedom from monetisation and corporate censorship, etc. The fact that that the content is now comparable to reddit is a huge achievement. And you can still visit your niche communities on reddit. No one's going to ban you for using both.

Biggest for me is no promoted garbage. Second is that I can have more indepth conversations than on Reddit. Your replies can get seen if you post on "Hot" even if they're not cheesy one-liners. Quality of discussion is far better than my last few years of using Reddit full time (until 2023).

Once in a while I glance at the Reddit website and there's just so much short form video on the front page that it's so annoying to know what's going on.

Of course the more popular discussion topics (USA, tech, politics) are largely going to be the same as Reddit.

One advantage of this model is that moderation is more tailored to the instance topics of interest, without losing too much of the wider sphere. So .world can handle most of the popular general topics, but mander can handle moderation of topics from a more scientific lens, .dbzer0 can handle the intricacies around copyright law, .blahaj zone vehemently protects users right to call themselves whatever they wish, so on and so forth. With Reddit, if the site admins don't like something you do, you get shut down no matter whether the community there accepts it or not. Here, if that happens and is unpopular, people can leave and go to another domain without leaving the federated network. Another is that servers hosted in countries outside the USA (feddit.de, lemmy.ca etc.) don't necessarily have to follow USA law, while Reddit does.

For me it's being able to say we should have stronger sentences for child predators without getting banned. Can't do that on Reddit. And I can't keep my mouth shut about people who go out of their way to hurt kids. I think they should be locked up longer. That gets me banned on Reddit. Maybe an AI/bot did it, but a human upheld it. And that was all of Reddit, Reddit themselves, not a subreddit. Like I understand saying that on a jailbait sub, is probably gonna upset the moderators, but Reddit as a whole? Wild.

So the greater point is, I can't get banned from YOUR instance. You're on piefed.zip. If I piss you off, what you'll do is either block me, or report me... to dbzer0, the instance I'm on. And they can ban me. The neat thing is, I can just go make an account on Lemmy.world if I want to. Or some other instance. Some instances defederate each other, which means the entire instance blocks another one. Lemmy.ml got defederated by some (including mine) for being not left enough or too right politically. I didn't follow it that closely. People on Lemmy.ml can still post, they just can't see me and others on my instance. Piefed.zip may not have defederated them, so you would still see them. But I can still see some lemmy.ml users (and I bear them no ill will). I see four in the comments. They're fine by me.

Reddit algorithm feels like it's trying to brainwash me. The admins and mods are unaccountable and out of control. The owners are capitalists, I will never trust them.

Theres lots of content but it feels like dead Internet. The niche communities are nice but not amazing. I don't want reddit owners and shareholders privatizing niche communities anymore than I want Facebook doing it so I refuse to participate. Short term pain, id rather build the fediverse up and post here even if it takes a long time to manifest a bigger more fulfilling platform.

For the same reason I don't invest in stocks or the market I don't want to participate in niche communities on corporate owned social media platforms. I dont want to invest in a future where the capitalist class is empowered through control of my retirement or savings. I don't want to participate in a future where the capitalist class controls the platforms where I engage with my communities online.

Once the world settles down again there will be more specialized content. Currently we're all in an existential flux watching the norms of the last 70 years be blown to smithereens by a guy who brutally rapes young girls and the resulting horrors that he is using to avoid being held to account.

The uncensored Charlie Kirk memes were pretty choice

I was a daily Reddit user for over a decade. However, the platform got so ridiculously judgy and restrictive that it was impossible to use, not fun, and caused me a lot of anxiety. I literally could not post the most innocuous of comments without being banned. It was infuriating and ultimately completely unnecessary. I miss the neverending content but it's not worth the bad feelings that come with it. I still utilize it via Google search results when I'm trying to figure something out but for my own social media interactions I'm Lemmy 💯

You know what else I don't see here? Ads.

On the cool part of Lemmy, imperialists are first toyed with by the users like a cat batting around a bug, and are then promptly banned

It’s the same content but you retain ownership of your data (depending on your instance) and the ability to influence moderation policy by voting with your feet and moving your account if your instance doesn’t align with your preferences.

I don’t see much downside as I didn’t really engage with niche subs on Reddit. Or at least I don’t remember it anymore.

No maga, conservatives and republicans

As a woman on Reddit isn’t pleasant.

If you're federated with dotWorld, most of what you see in your All feed ends up being dotWorld.

Having the ability to not be under unaccountable admins, who can directly threaten your account based on activity or "patterns", is a huge plus. Fewer bots, and fewer conformists; the conversation always feels a lot more personal and human. Also on the Fediverse, people tend to value privacy and security and self-determination. That steers a lot of the culture in a different way from Reddit, but most of the social environment is how the cookie crumbles on each instance.

For me it’s three key items:

1. No corporation looking to maximize profits
2. No ads and no being show items I don’t truly Care for
3. no unnecessary data mining.

I’d say the people but over the last few weeks that’s changed. Ive seen a lot of unsavory comments. So that’s one thing that’s no better here.

Maybe just an issue with a Reddit like site ?

I’ll always push for Federated version of any platform. In the long haul it’s a better experience.

Have you been shadowbanned yet? Have you been suspended? Are you interacting with bots more than humans? Are there things you're not allowed to say on Reddit that there's more leeway to say on Lemmy? Are people generally nicer? Can you hold actual conversations without a powertripping mod deleting your comment? Are any issues you have assesed by a bot instead of a human?

Knowing there's a lower reason to get data mined.

When we aren't competing for top comments then there's no pressure to post witty stuff.

The more people draw from reddit is like playing an MMO with a bunch of bots with tons of empty servers. Here it feels like a private server that's more relaxed.

To be fair there's a lack of niche that sometimes I go to reddit for. but when it gets too loud (politics, controversy). It's best to look somewhere quiet. It's kinda like option calls, on reddit your comment can spike overnight and you'll get that reddit karma dopamine. But the lows can be harsh when people start getting combative.

Tldr lemmy is more slower paced and less addicting.

The benefit is when you will have to give your identity card for just watch a reddit's post....

I thought the main draw of the Fediverse was the idea of finding a community where you feel like you belong, that fits your interests, but the structure seems to work against that

The main draw is the federated core principles. The specialized community part is sort of a secondary effect.

If Reddit doesn't like your community, your comments, or your account in general, you're gone.

If Reddit wants to make more money off you by forcing ads into their pages and app, most users who don't know how to use an alternate frontend are screwed.

And if Reddit decides they get a legal right to use all your content for AI training, sell your data to advertisers, and add a subscription fee on top, you don't get a choice.

If a federated instance decides they want to cram ads in, the entire federated network of Lemmy/PieFed instances doesn't get affected, and the content from that instance can still be viewed without ads.

Reddit is a monopoly, and thus carries monopoly power over how the platform and its communities operate. The fediverse is distributed, and no instance carries monopoly power over the others. This resists enshittification.

Now, it's true there's less activity here, but that's not always a bad thing, nor is it unexpected. It makes moderation easier, karma farming isn't really a thing, and a smaller platform is just naturally going to have less people engaging with it. But you're here now, and there's now 4 posts and 1 comment that otherwise would not exist had you not joined.

Every new user makes the fediverse more valuable for others. If there's a community you want to exist, start it, and eventually other people will find it too if people who are interested in it join the fediverse.

I'm not here to tell you that this is perfect, or that it's always better to have less people. Having more people means more opinions, niche communities, etc. But you don't get there in a day, and the fediverse is only growing.

We have thematic instances, but as soon as you look at the “All” feed, it just flattens everything back into one generic Reddit clone. If you only look at your local instance to avoid that, you’re just isolating yourself, and at that point, you might as well just use a multireddit on Reddit without needing to make a new account.

Remember that you can follow communities outside your instance, and that is your algorithm. Reddit figures out what you like, and shows you more of it. Lemmy/PieFed asks you what you like, and you have to tell it what to show you more of. I particularly enjoy PieFed because it has "feeds" that combine multiple communities into a larger bundle so it's easy to follow many of them.

If you rely on the "All" feed, that's no different than going to the homepage of Reddit and saying "show me the top posts for today". If you follow communities you like, that's like going to Reddit and saying "show me my personalized feed." The only difference is that you are responsible for personalizing your feed, because there is no algorithm. It's not the most user-friendly, but it also resists algorithmically-optimized retention, which I think we all know isn't great for our attention spans.

The benefit you get from using the fediverse is not being reliant on a corporation's algorithm to determine what you should see, and being on a network that inherently resists enshittification and routes around censorship. The goal is that it becomes large enough for these more niche communities to find an audience larger than just the few who started them.

Reddit can be/is evil. Lemmy is decentralised and so can't really enshittify the same way. Users would just hop to a different instance.

but the structure seems to work against that.

No, having a few thousand actives users only works against that. The sub about weird faucets I liked could exist because there was millions of users and the 0.001% of them that were interested added up.

Im seeing unique things with different perspectives here.

Maybe try looking at different communities?

The actually good feed, on reddit OR on the fediverse, has always been the Subscribed feed. Not all or local. It's worth the effort to curate a nice big follow list that actually delivers the niche content you want, that's what I do