For help on current topics, like how certain things work in a newly released game, I check https://old.reddit.com/ without an account to see what they have.

For doomscrolling/visiting niche themed subs?
Lemmy works equally fine, and with a clearer conscience to boot.

EDIT That said, I do sometimes miss certain hobby subs, such as a Tekken or Toki Pona community.
There aren't any active ones last time I checked.

It's not bad, it doesn't have the massive amount of people to keep niche communities going, but for big broad general topics it's fairly solid. It could use some video and GIF support, but maybe it's just my instance that doesn't support it.

Lemmy is an improvement over Reddit in terms of its business structure. We don't yet know what the downsides will be of decentralized social media at scale, but we know that it beats a tech company that went from venture capital to publicly traded while already deep in enshittification.

Lemmy is not an improvement over Reddit in terms of design: it's designed the exact same way, so it has the same set of advantages and disadvantages.

The improvement in community is hard to guesstimate, and will change as the site grows. Aside from the company, it was often the users that made Reddit suck, and Lemmy is completely capabe of sucking in the exact same ways.

It's the only site with a similar post/comment structure and a large enough user base to be viable, so in that regard, it's the only alternative. Culturally, it's much different. It's far more left-leaning and hasn't fallen victim to the same salf-importance and group-think that Reddit users have. It also doesn't have the same wealth of knowledge Reddit built up over 20 years, though, and it's prone to petty infighting between communities and instances (and even admins).

Ultimately, I prefer it to Reddit, and never feel the urge to go back. I'm not convinced that Federation is a silver bullet for all of social media's ills, but I think Lemmy is an interesting project, and I'm interested in seeing how it develops.

No. Lemmy posts are always left leaning. There is no right and no center. Thats disheartening. Next to that most communities are too small so no viable discussions follow. Most communities die in months.

Then again, reddit.com doesnt exist anymore because some schmucks have taken over, resulting in obtrusive ads, profiling and tracking.

I dont post on reddit anymore. Still follow some subs though because they just dont have an alternative.

I went from 1 source (reddit) to several(lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 9gag). And still it feels empty. Mostly because while some memes are nice, 4chan is filled with morons and 9gag... That's a "racist app" according to its own users. But it doesn't stop there. A lot of posts there are just vile. Not just right wing nut job, no, they are worse. And masto is mostly the same as lemmy.

If you mean "is it full of bougie shitlibs having a circle jerk" then yes, in that vein, it's just like reddit.