What stood out the most to me was when everybody left Reddit and came to Lemmy that everyone helped each other to get settled into Lemmy and the Fediverse - at least where I settled. Knowledge was passed down. More tech savy users answered the questions of new users patiently. Everybody was (and still is) polite in general and it is a pleasure to participate in such an enviroment.

I experienced (and I still do) much more "adult" behaviour within Lemmy, compared to Reddit. I barely have to downvote comments due to bad/ malicious behavior. I think I have had to downvote 3 times within the last 8 months - and one downvote was dedicated to a bot which summarized some news content wrong. Here you can have nice discussions and most comments actually contribute. Less "This"-comments.

I like that Lemmy in general is more left leaning, and also more tech savy. Also, I experienced less gatekeeping than on Reddit - at least, within my home instance. Your experience, however, may differ.

Small, fun community. Excellent shitposting experience. 7/10

My impression is it's got promise but there are a lot of issues that aren't being acknowledged.

The way the federation works on Lemmy has some serious flaws that, until they're addressed, Lemmy will never work nearly as well as reddit did at aggregating content and cultivating a shared community.

That said, it's working fairly well for what it is, it just needs to grow.

I came here after the API falldown and I like how quiet and normal it feels. I like coming across people in different threads and topics and while sometimes I'd like to see/read more content, this also helps me put the phone down.

It's quieter which I love and hate. I don't feel addicted to engaging here which is awesome for my mental health but it can also make it difficult to find instances. I'm still struggling there.

However, when I do comment I find the people to be much more open to discussion. There are actual engaging conversations to be had which has been a great change. It feels less like shouting into the vast nothingness of the internet here, more intimate like a club of people with similar interests. I don't feel scared I'm going to get dogged on, flammed, harassed, othered, or ostracized. There have been times I've shared my Native background when it was important to the convo and everyone's be so fucking cool just treating me like a human being or listening to what I have to contribute from my perspective. Doing that on Reddit was a mixed bag where I would have to worry about the possibility of a sleu of people PMing me or replying with just awful hateful small pp energy racist shit.

Honestly, the bar was in the deepest pits of hell so if Lemmy couldn't shuffle over it I would have lost all hope for humanity lol

The best thing is that there are much less repost bots (both for posts and comments)

I like it.

As open as discussion seems, it feels like there are still certain opinions that can't be shared because they're simply not the majority, and not even talking about hateful or discriminating points of view.

feels like early reddit but leftist.

which means that sadly, we are vulnerable to an eternal september type situation

I first felt like I was missing on news for my niche hobbies but just started going sites directly for news (testing an rss reader this week for the first time in over a decade so that might change). Besides that just looking at the default hot or rising threads hit a lot of what I'm looking for with good discussions.

I found a lot of people who are willing to put effort in posting and commenting.

Seeing quite a few comparisons to reddit.

As someone who went to reddit when digg shit the bed all those years ago and in turn came here after the api debacle, this is how it always goes no?

-> Social site has cool features for awhile but is unheard of

-> social site gets adopted by more tech literate people (we are here)

-> social site gets noticed by corps, receives investment and becomes able to handle more people (threads is an attempt at this and what is next)

-> social site gets adopted by millions of average joes

-> enshitification begins as social site/corporations begin to extract money

-> other social sites form from people tired of the diluted content

-> tech literate people leave for smaller social site with cool features

-> cycle continues

I'm settling in just fine here. The people can be a little more on the tankie side in some places, but it's better overall.

I've already started to see posts like "People of Lemmy, blah blah" and posts about username meanings, so it's becoming Reddit. Get off my lawn.

I love it here but have one gripe… I can’t play videos in-app. (Maybe it’s just my app’s problem, but it’s a bummer for me.)

Lemmy is entertainment / social media for me, and I’d like to have something like Reddit’s TiktokCringe sub here. I don’t like Reddit and I don’t like Tiktok, but I do like funny videos that are presented to me because people think they are funny rather than because Youtube’s algo thinks it’ll boost an advertiser’s clout. Playing video without having to open another app would be nice.

Beyond that, I love it here. Conversations can actually happen here and I’ve even met people on Lemmy and continued to chat with them outside of the platform on other apps — I’ve never had that happen on any other social media. So cool.

Well, so far I haven’t had anyone crawl through my history for personally identifiable info to email me with threats to my family. So, aces as far as I’m concerned.

That really did happen, not exactly a Reddit thing specifically though. Still, community so far feels far nicer and mature here than the old place had devolved into. IMHO this feels very much like Reddit did after the digg exodus years ago. I am hopefully optimistic about this place and the fediverse in general but I do fear what may happen if the big players are threatened enough and get some legislation passed in their favor.