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.

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.

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.

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

Thanks, all really good feedback. I’ve managed to find a few ‘somewhat’ active communities to join like for my local city which has about 1000~ subscribers. Not as bad as I was expecting to be honest… that’s enough user base for me to give Lemmy a shot I think.

I guess every social media platform has its politics

First welcome a lot of the users here are ex reddit

Lemmy is young it doesn’t quite have the traffic reddit does BUT it also has less of the crap.

Welcome. Its been great for me so far. Whatever instance you are currently on the amount of politics and echo chamber does matter. So feel free to comment and enjoy. If you have a complaint try another instance (or even Kbin) to see if this helps. Also to note that there is much more control about what communities and people you can interact with

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.

I found I had to block a large number of communities from my feed that were very narrow minded. Once I did some diligent editing, however, Lemmy has become my daily browse and I’m happy with the change. I still use reddit for some of the niche communities that don’t have a counterpart here, but the larger topics (news, memes, technology) are well covered and open to discourse.

I’m also super new here because I keep getting banned there. I’ve been told I was a bigot because I was against the Palestinian genocide. Like what?! And I was harassing the mods because I asked them a question 2 times in 3 months. There’s no discussing with them. They come down at you with a hammer and it’s just mean. But if people attack you? If people are cruel? Totally fine. I’m a huge rule follower but I’m human and make mistakes. I hope here there is discussion allowed with the powers that be in case i mess up. I try to be respectful and kind. I just want to all get along.

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.

Feels like early internet here, enjoy it while it lasts. Good chance this place will blow up and the normies will come in.

Welcome to Lemmy.

One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you’ll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.

I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.

I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can’t be found here, or just don’t have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like “Stealth” to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I’ve been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.

You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.

Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn’t display any downvotes.

You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.

As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won’t get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.

Just note, if you pick one that’s too small there’s a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.

It’s great - scratches the itch, overall. I sometimes pine for places where major debates on a specific topic constantly rage - ideally, I’d be able to discuss religion whenever I wanted, skipping threads I felt I didn’t want to wade into…

But it is a good enough replacement overall and I feel like we are proceeding to having such a size. I am also open to the idea that I have not curated enough to find a place where this si consistently happening in the Fediverse yet…

I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks.

There have been some controversies that have led to banning and banning of entire instances. Usually, this involves Lemmy instances that were tolerating a lot of blatant transphobic memes that cut deep and were very mean…

I get why people isolated them.

I am still worried, though, that there are people who would still react this way to good faith discussion where there are disagreements. While there are some places where that is for sure OK, I think there are some instances that might react so negatively as to want to ban a specific user or their instance over it. I may be overreacting but IDK.

Idea: Try exclusively using Lemmy for a week.

If you love it, switch. If you hate it, don’t. If you miss Reddit, use both.