No Stupid Questions

Reddit feels like a corporate advertising driven hellscape where fear and rage is encouraged.

Lemmy feels like 2010 when the internet world was a lot more simpler and you could actually talk to people.

Steve Huffman isn't here, so that's a huge plus.

3rd party app support...

There are many other reasons, but let's be real. A lot of us ditched reddit because they dropped support for third party apps. Having an interface that isn't trying to constantly milk you for all sorts of monetization schemes matters a lot, as it so happens. Enough to say goodbye to a lot of familiar and large communities with otherwise good information.

Two things that come to mind:

• Lemmy's protocol is open, so anybody can make 3rd party apps to work with it. Third party Reddit apps used to be popular when Reddit had an open API, but Reddit destroyed that on purpose.

• Because Lemmy isn't run by a singular company, you don't get the same restrictions. Reddit admins had a whole host of rules on what a sub could or could not contain. Many of which were heavy focused on making Reddit more advertiser friendly.

You can see the number of up votes and down votes.

The API is much more open to third party apps.

The people are generally nicer.

Features are not paywalled.

Code is open source, so anyone and everyone can contribute.

It's kinda cool to go to pretty much any post and go "hey! I know almost everyone in the comment section!", but that's a bit of a double edged sword

Somewhere along the way, I learned that for a village to thrive, the creative people (the artisans, the musicians etc) must move in first, they form the roots, then the rest of the village follows them.

The creative people moved from Digg to Reddit. That's what made Reddit Reddit, not the brand, or the UI, or some genius exec.

The creative people have mass migrated to Lemmy, & hence Lemmy will thrive. How do you know - see where og memes originate. Genius is not the domain of AI, & hence Reddit is Deaddit. We're now just waiting for the rest to follow.

For starters, Lemmy -- which uses open source ActivityPub protocols -- is decentralized and comprised of thousands of independently-run servers, so it's theoretically impossible to take down Lemmy completely. If lemmy.world goes down today and never comes back, the "Lemmy" network will still be online because of the other servers like lemmy.zip and sh.itjust.works that use Lemmy server software (which is currently at version .19 or around there).

Worth nothing: Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, which is an umbrella term to describe all ActivityPub software types. Yes, other software packages also use ActivityPub protocols to communicate... for example, Kbin (the "main" site is kbin.social, it's sorta like their lemmy.world) is a news aggregator like Lemmy and interacts with Lemmy almost seamlessly. There's also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).

In short: it's kinda complex at the moment, and many parts of the Fediverse (which Lemmy belongs to) don't interact with each other directly because they provide different services, but it's important to note that it's really hard to take it down completely because the Fediverse is independently owned and run by different people in different parts of the world. Contrast with Reddit, a service that does have many servers but is owned and run by a single company in America.

Edit: I was wrong, Mastodon users can post on Lemmy instances, but Lemmy users can't post on Mastodon instances. Thanks [email protected] for the info!

I think it's mostly subjective or anecdotal, but what comes to mind:

• The community generally is more friendly. Absolutely, there are still jerks or trolls around, but the ratio of jerks or trolls feel way less than reddit.
• I feel more active here myself. This one I can't explain. The community is smaller, so maybe I'm not subconsciously worrying about being drowned out by other comments? On Reddit, I'd average about 1 comment a month at best. On here I usually leave a few comments a week.
• This point might not mean much if you didn't join reddit when it was younger: I joined reddit when it was still young. I think back in '08? Lemmy feels like a young reddit, back when I enjoyed it most. Again, I can't really explain this since it's just a feeling, but one example of what I mean by "young reddit" is community wide memes. Wayyyyyy back in the day, everyone on Reddit was ravaging about "The narwhal bacons at night" or something like that lol. There were also a bunch of dickbutt memes.. if you know, you know. Well, my first week on Lemmy everyone was posting beans for a good couple of days. No reason. Just beans. A few weeks ago there were a bunch of "Taylor Swift going to Australia," Taylor Swift taking a swim," "Taylor Swift spotted at the airport," titled posts, but all those posts were pictures of airplanes. The rotating meme right now I think is Jeans??? Idk. This is just a symptom of a younger community, and why I like it more, but there's more to enjoy about it than rotating memes. This place just feels more genuine as opposed to artificial if that makes any sense.
• I feel like I'm not missing out on anything on Reddit and I have a healthier relationship with social media on this site than with reddit. Every once and a while, I log back onto Reddit to see what's going on. Most of the "Big news" that's posted on there is also posted here, but the experience now feels more bloated compared to here so I don't stick around as long. As for this site... Yes there is less content. Yes there is less to scroll through. At the same time though, you can scroll for a very long time if you really want to. This eventually led to me being on my phone less and being somewhat a little more productive as opposed to doom scrolling.
• Lemmy absolutely has better third party support for well, anything. Sure, it doesn't have official apps, but go to the app store and count how many different Lemmy apps there are vs reddit. Nearly all of these apps are better than the reddit app IMO. Most of these apps are also FOSS; they're free with no ads. Yes, there are still few paid apps as well if that tickles your fancy. I know Sync for Reddit came over to Lemmy as Sync for Lemmy as an example. This shouldn't stop at apps though. I wouldn't be surprised if there are browser plugins.
• You have more say in your experience here. Again, with the smaller community, your voice is louder. On top of that, is your server's admin doing something you do not support? Your instance is doing something you don't like? Create an account on other instances! Lemmy is federated, so most of what you see should be the same as in other instances, but you aren't under the rule of one toxic CEO anymore. I myself have like 4 accounts on 4 different instances lol.
• Piggy-backing off of the previous point: if reddit is down, it is down. If your instance is down here? Sign into another instance!
• On the opposite end of the spectrum, does some instance have a bunch of members or just communities you don't want to see? Lemmy might not have native tools out of the box, but some Lemmy apps will let you block entire communities.
• One fun thing I like about Lemmy is you can post pictures in comments!

If anything, the only reason why I still use reddit is for smaller, niche, communities. To that end, yeah Lemmy is smaller, thus the smaller reddit communities are even smaller here. If I find myself wanting to make a post on a given niche topic, I typically post on Reddit AND here. Sometimes, my post on Lemmy will somehow get more comments than reddit still though. Reddit posts seem to fall off after a day or so, that's not typically the case for Lemmy if you do trend something.

At the end of the day though, this is just a social media platform, and the enjoyment you get out of it comes down to you. ☺️ One tip I do have though is to sort by "Top of 6h" or "12h". I don't like the "Hot" sorting on here that much.

I don't think this is definitively "better" than reddit. The functionality of the site is more bare bones. No big hidden features or anything like that. What you see is what you get as far as interfaces go. But I am enjoying it. It reminds me of a much younger Internet and much simpler times. I am loving that Lemmy servers are run by your average joe who just wanted to start up a Lemmy community. No single CEO who only cares about how profitable a site is.

By being federated and decentralized, Lemmy makes it impossible for one idiot billionaire to ruin an entire platform.

In order to "take over" Lemmy, they would have to take over more than 1,300 Instances, in many different countries, instead of one instance in one country.

Last night I made a post on c/asklemmy and that post now has 200 upvotes and a bunch of engagement.

On Reddit, that post would've been removed for some stupid reason or no engagement whatsoever.

Reddit also has a stupid algorithm thing and I could never find the posts from communities I subscribed to on my feed leaving many posts lost.

By default? A nicer UI. It still pales compared to classic Reddit, but having things like keyboard shortcuts built in is nice, and it doesn't bog down/fire up a bunch of pop-ups like neo-Reddit.

Its FOSS

Reddit, especially the bigger subs - feels really, really stupid lately. And I hate to say that because it sounds so insulting, but it really does feel like the average “IQ” on the site has gone from being this kind of tech/nerd culture of reasonably well educated people to like… old ladies complaining about their ‘entitled’ DoorDash drivers. It often feels like Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, Lemmy isn’t 100% geniuses or anything and there are some smart people on Reddit, but on Lemmy I’ll actually have back and forth conversations with people and it feels like more people are acting like human beings

Being normal? Reddit has become such a toxic dump lately, Lemmy feels like a walk in the park compared to it.

In terms of the more populous instances, I think Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit before the site went mainstream, minus the jailbait, incest-posting, rampant racism and other degenerate shit that Reddit used to be known for.

I really enjoy the variety and diversity of federation. There are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences each instance brings. It’s refreshing.

Way easier to block sub forums you don’t care about here!

The accuracy of the votes (lack or vote fuzzing) and the ability to view the split of upvotes and downvotes individually, as well as who voted for what

The latter point can be seen as a kind of disadvantage though. I don't like the fact that anyone who is an admin on any instance can go to another instance and see the identity of every voter on any post.

No ads

Nice interface that I don’t even mind using the browser

User Content isn’t being used to push lemmy as a stock value.

I've encountered far fewer Nazi shitheads here than on Reddit. That's a point in Lemmy's favor.

Allows me to actually use an interface which isn't awful

Link/comment karma isn't tracked so karma whoring is lessened. This doesn't stop the "meme of the week" stuff or the same basic (but big important) article from 30 sources getting posted to communities, but it helps a bit

As servers are federated, you can block them wholesale. Ones that become infested with shitters might see others defederate from them.

Superior layout, or at least notably better then new reddit... maybe on par with old.

up and downvotes visible and unfuzzed.

I think it's a huge plus that it's not run by big tech corporations. How many such things do we have today?

It allows anyone to host it themselves and still integrate with each other, which is radically more fair and empowering. It's a difference in quality.

You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.

For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don't find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.

disclaimer: i am not a web developer or a programmer, so if the language use is semantically incorrect, i apologize—I am merely trying to provide a layman’s explanation.

it’s just a bunch of little “reddits” (general discussion forum websites) that are independently hosted, but have the ability to cross post with one-another (so long as they are “federated”).

lemmy is the underlying technology that lets that happen, not the top level entity (like how reddit is the name of the website that is the forum host). so what you have is a bunch of different independent websites running lemmy that users individually create accounts on, and a lot of those individual websites communicate with each-other to create cohesive “fediverse.”

on the front end, whatever lemmy website someone signs up on, they are able to see all the content created and posted across all the separate websites that have federated together with the initial website the user signed up with.

so in short, you may have signed up with Lemmy Server 1 that has 800 individual forum topics (communities/ or subreddits) but you can also post in and interact with Lemmy Server 2, which is separately hosted and a very specific forum that only allows forum topics about bunny tossing so there are two topics: /BunnyTossing and /BunnyTossingMemes. So long as lemmy servers 1 and 2 are federated you’ll see content from Lemmy Server 1 (your home server) and Lemmy Server 2 (rad tips on bunny tossing).

if in the future your home server defederates with another server, you will no longer see content from that server or be able to interact with it as your user profile from that home server (in this instance Lemmy Server 1). in this situation however there is nothing stopping you from creating a user account on Lemmy Server 2 and continuing to see rad tips on bunny tossing by logging into lemmy server 2 directly.

Inline photos in posts. But that’s about it.

There's no "algorithm" per se, so you can actually discover new things in your feed, rather than just being fed what they think will keep you scrolling.

Also, you can use whatever app you like (I like Sync personally, but that's because it was my client of choice for Reddit) instead of using their RSS reader stapled to a Wish.com TikTok clone.