Former redditors, how do you feel the conversations on lemmy differ than the ones you've observed on reddit?

The views expressed are more to the left and much more anti big-tech, which makes sense. Discussions are a bit more civil on average and there seems to be much less blatant karma-farming. At least that's the case on my instance, which blocks some of the more... controversial ones. Speaking of which though, the differences between various instances do shape discussions on Lemmy quite a bit, which Reddit of course doesn't have. You can often have a pretty good guess on a user's attitudes, political views and demeanor just by looking at their instance.

You might need to be more specific, since there is a new wave of former redditors joining.

As a former redditor, who joined ~2 years ago, it was very friendly and wholesome when I joined, but has been getting more toxic in recent times.

I never really commented on Reddit.

Here on Lemmy though, I feel like I should.

Also, it feels like that on Reddit, people were commenting and posting mostly to get karma, on Lemmy it's more like people comment to actually say something or to express their opinions.

People are usually a lot less toxic here, conversations are more civil.

Less repetitive, less "inside" jokes that get spammed, people reply. I got used to arguing so much that I get defensive here, everyone wants to argue over everything on reddit, while here ppl are more likely to show interest.

It’s like Reddit from 18 years ago, if everyone then had kept expecting it to work like Reddit from 18 months ago.

Early Reddit had no subreddits, and then it just had a handful of major ones—it wasn’t until it got a much larger user base that all the thousands of niche subreddits became viable. (There were still plenty of conversations about niche topics—they just took place within larger subreddits instead of dedicated subreddits with their own associated infrastructure.) But ex-redditors on lemmy expect those fine-grained niche communities to work right from the start, before there are enough users to keep them all active.

(I wonder if one solution might be for every community to have a designated “parent” community, where if activity falls below a certain threshold, posts and subscriptions get temporarily redirected to the parent community until activity picks up again.)

Most people are more polite here

Most of them are left leaning to various degrees so despite the infighting we're all still on the same team.

They are pretty much the same people, with the communities being split a bit differently. People on Lemmy tend to think "they are different".

I haven't been on reddit since rif stopped working , so I'm comparing to those years and before. There's just as much bigotry, ad hominems and unnecessary fighting/arguing.

Edit: aside from all the lemmy porn, i never blocked subs or filtered words on either platform. People will do that heavily and have their own little view of lemmy/reddit

There are less women here and that's really saying something

People are more genuinely interested in actually contributing to a conversation here and likely to read through your stuff/reply. I feel more seen.

Reddit is a generic corporate algoritm flavored slop with LLMs with an agenda talking to human morons somehow dumber and less aware than the LLMs. Lemmy is at least mostly human but has a personality archetype bias that takes getting used to. Even on niche communities here theres a high likelyhood you're talking to someone whos either a left leaning political activist, is really into alternative gender identity politics, knows a lot about information technology/STEM, has some serious kinky fetishes, is neurodivergent, or a mix of the above.

So you have the conversational pitfalls that come from talking to tech nerds, liberal arts students, the loud and proud members of lgbqt+, tankies, and all the in between relatively outcast groups that didn't fit well on reddit in the first place. Every 1/10 post on all is going to be about how fucked the climate change is, lgbqt rights, femboys, trump/elon/conservative republicans doing something stupid or evil or facist, a really unfunny 'meme' thats really about spreading some message or showcasing how victimized X minority group is, why linux is good and windows/microsoft bad, some half baked plan by young political activist who think they can overthrow a global corporatocracy with some clever cordinated consumer protesting. At least the content is overall consistent.

As someone who doesn't really identify with most of these im left feeling lemmy isn't for me sometimes but its a decent enough social outlet that I can tune out the stuff I don't care for while being involved with the niche communities im actually here to be part of.

Y'all are way nicer.

Lemmy is WAY more left-leaning and instance/community mods are often more trigger-happy when removing comments/banning people.

Lemmy is far more left than reddit which is impressive because I already felt reddit had a hefty left wing bias. I didn't know how much more left you could get until I got here lol.

The userbase is a much less varied. Being more skewed towards the extremely progressive and tech savvy "nerd" types. Which makes sense.

The quality of conversations here seems better. More actual responses and less "meme dunking" karma type comments.

Depends massively on what subreddit on Reddit, and to a lesser degree, what community on the Threadiverse. /r/AskHistorians, /r/seventhworldproblems, /r/Europe, and /r/NFL don't have a whole lot in common.

I think that in terms of content, the Threadiverse today is much closer to very early Reddit than to Reddit over the past ten years or so. Reddit used to have a much heavier tech focus, lot of Linux too, though it tended to be more Lisp, academia, and startups. A lot of the people who came over early on the Threadiverse are far-left; the proportions definitely differ a lot there. I'm pretty sure that there's a higher furry and trans content ratio, but that's harder to judge; it may also just be people using avatars and home instances providing a hint.

A significant chunk of people on here seem extremely depressed. That was definitely not my take on especially early Reddit, which was fairly upbeat (though I do remember one Italian guy on /r/Europe who kept talking about how terrible Italy is today and how much better the 1980s were).

I think that there are more people who are kinda...I'm not sure how to put this politely. A little unglued from reality. I mean, I remember back during Bush's time in office, there being a lot of 9/11 conspiracy stuff on Reddit, but I feel like the proportion of people whose general take on everything feels extremely paranoid is a lot higher.

It definitely feels more international, less US-oriented, to me, and I frequented /r/Europe.

I feel like there are more older people. I have seen some website analytics of Reddit, and as I recall, it averaged something like early twenties. That may have changed over time, but I'd still bet that the median age here is higher.

Most of the subreddits that I used had far more users than even the most-active communities on the Threadiverse. This meant that there was a lot more content. On the other hand, it also meant that it was increasingly-common to spend a lot of time writing something, only for it to be buried under a flood of other content; if one didn't get a comment in pretty early in a post, users just skimming top comments might never see it. That was even more-true for posts -- one's chance of a post attracting attention in a community where a new post arrives every few minutes and many people just view top posts was not good, whereas here, I'm pretty sure that almost everyone on a community sees it. I think that Reddit had a better variety and amount of content to consume, whereas I feel that it's more-rewarding to contribute content here.

For the same smaller-size reason, it's a lot more common here for me to recognize usernames. Especially late Reddit, the chance of recognizing anyone off a subreddit, other than a few extremely-prolific posters, was not high. I'm talking to pseudonyms, sure, but it's "Kolanki, that furry dude that I remember", or "Flying Squid, that guy who mods a bunch of communities", not another user name that I'll probably never see or remember. I think that that affects the environment somewhat, that people act differently in a crowd of people that they "know" than in a crowd of strangers.

The Threadiverse in 2025 isn't a full replacement for me in the sense that Reddit has a subreddit with some level of non-zero activity on virtually any topic remotely of interest that I can think of. There are a few subreddits that I used to read regularly, like /r/cataclysmdda, for the video game Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. !catadda@sh.itjust.works has very little activity, and for most video games, software packages, products, etc there isn't a community. Some subreddits dealt with content creation or all sorts of things, and the userbase just isn't here now to support that. So what I talk about differs somewhat.

I feel like users on the Threadiverse are less aggressive. Maybe it's moderation or the userbase or who-knows-what, but I remember a considerably higher proportion of flamewars on Reddit. I felt that there was a much-higher tendency for people to want to get the last word in on Reddit.

I have seen far less trolling than I did on Reddit (or Slashdot).

It's hard for me to judge the impact of LLM-generated bot comments on Reddit. I didn't personally notice many, at least on the (mostly-not-largest-in-size, so maybe not heavily-targeted) subreddits that I followed, but I've seen plenty of people on both Reddit and on the Threadiverse complaining about LLM-generated comments on Reddit, so unless they were outright wrong, either I couldn't pick up on some or they were targeting larger subreddits. It wasn't to the point that my conversations felt degraded, at least not at the time that I left.

The Threadiverse is smaller, and I think that I've seen content on one community inspire related-topic conversations on another. I don't think I recall that on Reddit.

Far more positive and civil; people actually engage in their replies instead of the stream of recycled quips. Bad faith discussions usually get called out as such; less astroturfing.

Small-ish forums probably help with that too since users run in the same circles and there’s less overall “noise.” It’s also much more imperative to comment on posts since there may not be much engagement otherwise.

I never comment on posts >100 comments. They'll never get seen. Here? There's a good chance to reply.

A lot less conversations about whether ChatGPT was an asshole at his cousin’s wedding

I'm more likely to have conversations. I tended to lurk pretty deep in threads on Reddit, or on niche hobby communities, but that vibe is much more available here.

There seems to be more good faith discussions here. I see more people apologising, or responding well to being called out. I realise this is largely a function of size of the site, and thus this nice energy is likely fleeting, but I am heartened by it nonetheless; people like us will always exist, and there will always be a place for us (even if we need to make it ourselves).

To be honest, here's the difference: Lemmy has fewer voices. That's mostly it.

I think there's less trolling and fewer bots, but it's not by a lot and that's just for now. If Lemmy gains popularity, it will get just as much negative attention, the main difference will be in moderation.

It's been less "mechanistic" so far: fewer canned replies, fewer "oh this post again". It's partly because of there being very few bots and less astroturfing, but also I think it's just the mindset, people here may be less likely to be passive consumers. On reddit I kept having the issue of people misreading everything I posted, because they barely cared about what they had on their screen and wanted everything on it to cater to their taste. Big social networks encourage a form of algorithmic solipsism.

Much more politics, much more to the left, most people seem to actively look for reasons to get offended.

My mom is the target of a significantly smaller proportion of the community here. Maybe they're younger here.

Easier to actually have a conversation here. Even if you’re on /all.

Whereas on Reddit by the time it reached the main page any comment would be buried so deep you’ll never get a reply.

Is least compared to where I spent my time on Reddit before the api was removed, I've actually found Lemmy far more hostile. On Reddit, I found discussion fairly light-hearted with even more divisive discussions generally given the benifit of the doubt. On Lemmy, on the other hand, I can make a relatively uncontroversial statement like, "Steam provides useful tools." and be called a fanboy shill who supports fascists.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm not met with slurs or death threats every time I post to an android related community. I always hated posting to android related subreddits because of this, especially considering the fact that the mods would punish me instead of the ones being vulgar/aggressive towards me.

So far the only thing the only "bad" thing that I can recall happening to me in an android community here on Lemmy was that a post I made was removed for "not being specific enough to android". I personally think that Lemmy isn't popular enough yet to justify doing that but I do understand their decision.

A greater percentage of more mature users, many of whom don’t want to see Lemmy turn into the cesspool that reddit has become

Things are smaller and more intimate (in that I can recognize more usernames).

I've blocked more users here than on Reddit though. Mostly just users that are annoying/spamming/give me really weird vibes. Actually, I don't think I blocked any users when I was on Reddit.

You can tell that Lemmy houses Reddit refugees...and some of them are refugees because they were completely banned on Reddit, and likely deserving, lol

I'm lurking more, interacting less. But, seems to be a lot less recycled snark and bot activity here. But after reading some other comments, maybe my experience here is still a bit limited.

Not quite as many leading experts in their field.

The braintrust is starting to build, we can now have a whatisthisthing community, but you still don't get to say "exoornithological engineers of Lemmy, in your opinion..."

If you're used to the weird wackos being the gay hating bible thumping gun fucking Republicans, they're basically not present here. They're replaced with the "Mao did nothing wrong" crowd.

There is less bandwagon posting here. "this" chains and so forth.

Cross-posting or doing !example@whatever.lol doesn't happen as often as it did on Reddit.

Oh here's a big cultural difference: Lemmy mods tend not to be as anal about their community formats as Reddit mods are. I got a 14 day ban from r/whatisthisthing for telling an anecdote related to the thing in question, because it wasn't STRICTLY about identifying what the thing was. "Which community is this, what are the norms, what is the expected format etc" is not as much of a concern here. Lemmy communities aren't art projects.

No one here is important or official. There are no video game community managers or anything like that here. Lemmy is not used for interacting with anyone other than fellow idle nerds.

Really community dependent.

!casualconversation@lemm.ee is well, casual.

Of course politics and news communities are something else.

Before 2024 it felt like an old school forum.

After that and the election cycle, feels more like Reddit in 2018

Reddit... Reddit? That was a while ago... huh, I have trouble recalling a previous life...

Lemmy is a lot "bubblier" than Reddit, I suspect because the communities are smaller. It's a lot easier for a community to have a preferred view on things, even things you wouldn't suspect were part of the community's theme, and if you take the wrong position you'll get pummeled with downvotes more easily.

Not that it doesn't happen on Reddit too, but I see it far more here on Lemmy. I'm still active on both and while I haven't done any formal comparison you're asking how it "feels" and that's definitely how it feels. I speak my mind freely on both platforms but on this one I'm more likely to see a pile of downvotes.

The behavior doesn't feel much different, but the smaller community makes it more common for people to engage with you, and that makes it feel more like a community.

People here aren't immediatly hostile if you say positive things about Linux.

Fewer bots. Its feels like the early days of reddit

Well there's certainly a lot more tankies here, or at least more visible.

Other than that, I usually say Lemmy feels like Reddit of like 15 years ago, which isn't a bad thing

Most comments mention this, I feel less amount of information (even on 'nerd' topics) and more repetition of same idea/meme. I still use reddit (without account) to find useful info.

Back in reddit days I used it more than I use lemmy nowadays. In many communities, doom scrolling will soon lead you to posts months old here, which is I guess a good thing in some way?

Also this place isn't as congested as reddit so virtually no annoyance like bots and shilling and scams going on.

Disclaimer: I always viewed limited subreddits that fed my interests, and my Home feed. I never looked at All, because it never seemed to have things I'm interested in. That probably influences how I perceived Reddit.

Reddit:

• Way more niche topics. It was quite possible to find people who shared the same narrow interests as you. On Lemmy, having conversations about these things is hard.
• Towards the end, there was a much greater tendency for top comments to be a joke/quip/insider joke as opposed to actual thoughtful discussion.
• It felt like there was a much greater tolerance of nuance and complexity, though this was also showing cracks towards the end.

Lemmy:

• Politics definitely swing a bit more towards the left. In some cases this means "people just talk about corporations doing bad stuff more", and in some cases it can mean some pretty out-there positions, like people fanboying for China or terrorists.
• It's much, much harder for me to find activity on topics I'm interested in. If you're outside of Lemmy's handful of interests, not just finding but even building topical discussion feels like a struggle.
• Not everyone, but I do feel like I come across more people here who feel... allergic to nuance. Frankly, I think this might be less of a Reddit-vs-Lemmy thing and more of how just social media in general is shifting these days.

Everyone here isn't a smug dick who thinks they're a fucking comedian, trying to one-up you, or splitting hairs over pedantic bullshit like it proves something.

I don't remember the conversations I would ever have on r*ddit. Probably because I basically never got any form of interaction other than up and down votes on things that weren't niche communities like for Pokemon Reborn/Rejuvenation. I assume it's because I only ever started using that old account around end of summer 2020.

I never used reddit as much as I do the Threadyverse, but I get the feeling that here the mods are much quicker to dele my comments. But this might really be related with how little I used reddit.

When it comes to content, it seems more positive.

Mentioning Windows in a poaitive context vs Linux results in al.oat crucifixation. /s

There's not as many comments. That's pretty much the only difference between Lemmy and Reddit

I'll take a qed here...dogpiling on lemmy is an addiction, and there's a fair degree of 'stalking'.
Both are tiring.

If a post or comment gets to '-1', there is virtually no recovery. Stalking simplifies this endeavour.

It’s been over a year, we still doing this shit? Fuck off bot.