Reddit, but I won’t post or engage there on principle.
Reddit is still a lot more crowded, but I prefer Lemmy simply because of no ads and the actual conversations that you can have with people.
Reddit comment is just bot paradise, once i realise bot just do repost and copy/paste comment, the value and urge of adding my own comment just immensely decrease.
This is exactly how I feel. Reddit is so full of bots, spam, and ads that it’s really only good for checking a few niche subreddits. I can browse Lemmy at random and be pretty entertained.
Lemmy for good content and discussion. Reddit still has niche fan communities that will probably never migrate over here, but I can always hope.
I generally prefer Lemmy to Reddit, although I do miss being able to find niche communities that are both populated and active. Smaller communities tend to become ghost towns around here, unfortunately.
Focusing on the people and communities, since takes like “Lemmy has no ads” or “reddit has more content” are so obvious that there is zero point in sharing them, I would say Lemmy is better. I think the quality of discourse is a lot higher and people are more likely to type longer, thought out and educated (or well intentioned) comments. If I were to put it really simply, I’d say Lemmy’s community is more centred around discussion, whereas reddit is centred around reaction.
However, one issue with Lemmy is that fringe groups and views are overrepresented (particularly left-leaning ones), which can result in an echo-chamber effect in many discussions. I find pile-on attempts, or accusations of fascism, Nazism and right-wing trolling, are a lot more common here towards users who don’t immediately join in with a far left circlejerk or attempt to bring a little more nuance or critical thinking to a discussion. Dylan Marron, host of the podcast ‘Conversations With People Who Hate Me’, once said in an interview that social media pile-ons from people who are actually on your own side hurt a lot more than pile-ons from people who fundamentally disagree with you and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It frustrates me that some Lemmy users shutdown and try to “other” people the moment they have a minor or semantic disagreement with them, instead of taking the time to hash it out or just politely agreeing to disagree. It’s kind of ironic that federation allows communities to isolate themselves, yet instead these people remain federated with everyone and then get really offended and outraged when they’re confronted with world views that even slightly differ from their own.
But anyway, that type of person is still a minority and Lemmy is, for the most part, a significantly better environment than reddit for polite and intelligent discussion.
After almost a year of being Reddit free, I have been peeking back in there lately. It just doesn’t hit the same but I do lurk in some subs just because of the volume of content.
I do enjoy Lemmy though. I don’t feel as intimidated to make comments and like to feel we’re building something from the grass roots here.
Same for me. There are some interests I have (mostly niche games) that just don’t have the population to have any sort of traction here. I don’t comment or vote there anymore, and I’m only still logged in on my main PCs because I didn’t bother logging out. Deleted all my old comments and posts.
I prefer Lemmy but I find content and user base lacking
I prefer lemmy but miss the niche communities. The Swedish national community for instance, roleplaying communities, niche game communities etc.
Honestly I’m engaging more on lemmy in comments but if you manage to create a nice list of fun subs to follow on reddit a lot of complaints about bots and stuff are less problematic. Then again I also follow some Dutch subs and they seem to have less bots with the language barrier and all.
Lemmy does seem to be more negative though. A lot of doom and gloom here. I’m not really into Linux but I’ll admit that windows and Microsoft ain’t great. However the amount of complaining about how shit Microsoft is on stead of being enthusiastic about Linux baffles me. And you see these things in other communities too. The reddit helldivers community seems to be a bunch of memes and the lemmy oke a bunch of complaints.
Then again my comments seem to actually reach people on Lemmy so I am more active here.
Lemmy. Federation and the lack of a profit motive makes it much better.
I would also rather be surrounded by leftist vs liberal drama, rather than liberal vs fascist drama.
Lemmy seems a lot less toxic than Reddit. Every now and then I see comments here of people that are assholes, but its not the norm. Whenever I would check the comment feeds in Reddit, so many of them devolve into petty bickering. It seemed like a quarter of the user base set out that day to either be pissed off, or to piss someone else off.
Honestly that seems like most of social media at the moment and I know I’ve mentioned the algorithm in every comment I made in this thread, but it really makes it suck.
Because that particular algorithm and its use is very capitalist, its purpose is to drive engagement for money with morality not even being considered, and the best way to do that is to make everyone angry. CGP Grey on YouTube has a good video on it I can link in an edit in a bit, but the gyst of it is that the algorithm shows us what makes us angry, we make other people angry, thus, a neverending cycle of people being addicted to getting pissed off.
Edit: link
Lemmy seems a lot less toxic than Reddit.
Not sure I am seeing the same. I posted a message about a bash command yesterday and it was almost immediately downvoted. And I have no idea why since it should work for what the person asking wanted/needed. That was one of my big issues with reddit was the sheer negativity that came out of that site and I know I am talking about a single downvote here, but it makes me pause. It has happened more than this one time which is why I get that feeling. I think some people really need to revisit the use of the downvote.
I avoid reddit out of principle even though I would prefer it. It’s only going down hill from here on out and they’ve neglected their app so much it’s too painful to attempt to use it.
My main reasoning is content and sometimes the comments. Content here is a bit slow but a lot commenters are kind of a-holes and painfully obnoxious. Especially from lemmy.ml, always a little anxious when I comment.
Lemmy, and I’m never going back. I just wish we had the abundance of content that Reddit does. There’s a lot of communities I miss.
They IP banned me. So they can suck my 8 inches.
I haven’t posted on Reddit since they treated third party app devs like shit. I’m done with that site.
