For general browsing, news, technology, mainstream topics etc… it’s much better than reddit, less toxic, better vibe.

It’s very small though, so I’ve found two areas where it is just not a replacement:

• Specific, smaller niche interests, they might have a community here but it is often empty and quiet or just non existent.

• Sports, specifically a place to chat during live events. There’s not enough people to support that.

So it depends what you are looking for and how niche your interests are.

I’ve mostly stopped using reddit and am in here now. But I still end up there occasionally. Not much these days though.

Lemmy needs to figure out a way to “group” similar communities from different instances. That is the biggest flaw by far.

I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. … Is Lemmy the answer?

That’s really going to depend on you. What sort of “controversial” comment?

If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you’re going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you’ll probably be fine, with some exceptions:

• There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
• Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
• There’s a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we’re trying!).
• You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you’re posting. Individual instances (kinda like “reddits”) have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don’t expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
• It’s important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
• There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don’t be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We’re generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.

If you’re good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there’s a good chance that you’ll have a good time.

First of all, welcome.

Depends what you’re after, really. I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.

If your opinion is considered garbage, you’ll probably be downvoted for it, but banned is another thing; You can find an instance more to your liking, for example if you post tankie stuff on lemmygrad, you’ll probably only get praise from there.

It mostly comes down to how a platform with many people tend to naturally operate - garbage people get treated at such by the rest. So whatever your leanings might be, I suggest you find an instance that is somewhat reasonably close to share your values.

Other than that, one of the main differences from reddit is the content quantity - Smaller user base means less content. And I’m perfectly fine with that, as I can keep up with the feed without scrolling for hours.

Also, here I can say that I don’t give two shits about neither Zelda nor Link, without fear of backlash. At least yhe contemporary games - Everything since Link II for NES has been kinda meh in my book.

And if you want to filter out politics, blocking lemmygrad takes away most of the tankie-spam.

ngl the only problem of using a alternative social media is that there are fewer official communities and people and a lower userbase

Lemmy is significantly smaller. Because of this:

+Trolls are easier to spot

+Interactions tend to be friendlier and more wholesome/respectful

+Far more originality shining through

-less engaged communities

-fewer niche communities

-no rich history to comb through

I think it’s the same echo chamber here, but it’s smaller. People block instances they don’t like, and are in favor of moderators removing controversial things, specially around communism and tankies.

I just like that it’s not run by big tech. Just discussions, no companies or ads. I think most users are tech people.

I moved over to it after the initial Reddit exodus and haven’t really looked elsewhere. It’s not quite a full replacement in terms of content and engagement obviously. It’s good for broader stuff like memes, politics/games/movies/etc in general, but not so much for the specific. There are quite a few games I used to spend a lot of time discussing on their subreddits, but they’re basically ghost towns here for a lot of them.

There are also some more specific community leanings. You’re gonna see a LOT of Star Trek and Linux related stuff.

But overall, I’m happy enough with it knowing it’s a non-privatized space to talk.

The echo-chamberiness of Lemmy is different from Reddit, but still a thing unfortunately. It’ll really depend on the community you’re in, but since the population of the Fediverse (and especially the Threadiverse) is very small compared to Reddit you tend to have the same people cropping up a lot. I haven’t been banned from anywhere (that I know of - I don’t actually know if I would get notified) but I find myself hammered with downvotes more frequently here than on Reddit when I say something unpopular.

I’d say, mess around a bit and see.

There are instances or subs here that will delete your comment or ban you simply for posting something that disagrees with the predetermined consensus they are going for. And no, I’m not talking about racist or abusive comments, just generic shit that may not perfectly align with their narrow personal Overton window. I’m not going back to Reddit, but I wouldn’t say there is a robust and diverse discussion here either. A lot of groupthink, or perceived groupthink…because dissenting opinions get straight up deleted.

In strict technical terms, yeah it’s okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.

There’s still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they’re in an odd spot.

The first of these you’ll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.

PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.

The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.

All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.

Lemmy isn’t a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.

Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it’s arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.

Nevertheless, it’s possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn’t suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.

Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:

• Kbin, flagship site: Kbin Social
• Mbin. No flagship, check list of instances.
• PieFed, flagship site: PieFed Social
• Sublinks. No flagship, still in-development as drop-in replacement for Lemmy.
• Discuit. Not federated, but open source.
• Lobste.rs. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.
• Raddle. Not federated, built on open source Postmill.
• Tildes. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.

One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I’d recommend visiting:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Honestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.

I too have recently been perma-banned from reddit for nonsense. I still browse it with my banned account, I just don’t comment. They’re going to chase away heaps of people. I made a new account under a vpn to help someone and the account got shadowbanned. I think reddit is trying to become some corporate-safe-space where business can fake market directly to reddit users.

Lemmy is good but very, very small in comparison to Reddit.

For example, /r/mildyinteresting has 286k subscribers. Lemmy has around 51k active users across the entire platform and all of it’s communities. And /r/mildyinteresting is a misspelling of the even more popular /r/mildlyinteresting (23.4 million subscribers).

Even some of the niche gaming communities are larger on Reddit (/r/Kenshi, 145k; /r/factorio, 370k).

However, the small community feel is much more pronounced here on the federated Lemmy servers. You’ll see the same names pop up so everyone isn’t a complete stranger. Third party app support is miles ahead of Reddit’s crappy app. And if you don’t like your instance for any reason you can hop to another one easily.

You’ll see certain trends on trending communities here. There’s a lot more posts on Linux, Star Trek, and Tech news that isn’t as pronounced on Reddit unless you subscribe specifically to them. The meme community is top notch though and doesn’t have the incel and misogyny issues that plague Reddit.

Sadly, it’s a worse echo chamber. In my experience mods are far more likely to wield power like little dictators and ban for good faith dissent, as there’s no governing body above them to prevent this. I’ve been banned for being pro-Israel by several such petty tyrants.

Upvotes and downvotes are generally per-server though. It’s interesting to see how posts and submissions are regarded on other instances.

I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned

From a subreddit or from reddit as a whole?

My perma-ban happened in a discussion within the r/EveryoneKnowsThat search for a lost wave song

If from Reddit as a whole, unless the admins have changed a LOT in the last year, that sounds weird. They usually only banned accounts over calls to violence and promoting piracy blatantly.

I once got temporary ban for saying I preferred Zelda Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom

wat. was a small personal sub? That’s just a random suspension.