The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that while Reddit may have a lot of large active communities, I would rarely get a quality response if I posted a question or a discussion topic.

Here, I can post to a community that hasn’t had a new post in a few days, and within an hour I have several people offering help or discussion.

Reddit is far more active, but Lemmy users are far more helpful.

If you have an issue with the Reddit admins, you either suck it up or stop using Reddit. If you have an issue with the Lemmy admins, you can migrate to another instance and forget about the old admins.

Communities being smaller is a double-edged sword. Yes, it’s harder to find the content that you want, but it’s easier to be heard here. And it’s overall easier to have a meaningful conversation here, that doesn’t get flooded with sea lions, irrationals, or 11yos. (Note: I’m saying that it is easier, I’m not saying that everyone here is sensible or acts sensibly all the time.)

If you’re left-wing you’ll have an easier time discussing politics here. And if you want/need a safe space there are some good instances for you, like Beehaw or Blåhaj, in Reddit they’d be simply flooded with entitled newbies until the mods give up.

So TL;DR: unless you’re one of those “lol! lmao!” kids or a right-winger, Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.

• no ads
• no addictive algorithm
• free speech
• cleaner ui

The community is the main selling point for me. Further left than reddit. Fewer bots and recycled bot posts. Generally less defensive and aggressive posters, though the US election has made things a bit more contentious, I’m sure it’s still better than reddit on this.

Less bots, less adverts.

Seriously, half the posts/discussions/replies on Reddit aren’t even real.

SubredditSimulator leaked out all over Reddit a long time ago.

To me, the toxic culture of Reddit is a dealbreaker. Over here, you’ve got some folks that came from Reddit and didn’t quite get the memo that they don’t need to enter into gladitorial combat anymore when they disagree with someone, but overall, it’s a lot more relaxed.

I actually recognize usernames and people try to write thoughtful responses the vast majority of the time.

This feel could change, but for today, it is so.

Lemmy vaguely feels like Reddit when it wasn’t really popular. When you could comment and it wouldn’t be buried under 10,000 others. Participation almost feels pointless there.

Here, there’s little to no benefit in boosting posts or up/down vote manipulation

The smaller community can be a selling point. On reddit, a single voice pretty much gets drowned out by the masses. Lemmy feels much more personal and like an actual community.

No ads/tracking. That’s really it. Any of the other complaints I had on Reddit are here and in most cases even worse.

The API issue was the biggest one for me and what made this all intriguing. Now apps are getting around that. Winston for Reddit is beautifully designed and even guides a user to creating their own API key to add to the app. This API key provides you with a limit of 100 requests a second. Which is more than enough. (You could also do this on modded Apollo’s).

The average user just downloads the Reddit app though.

Free speach baby. Its an escape from corporate censorship.

Reddit:

• It has a much larger user base and many heavily specialized boards that nevertheless stay reasonably active.
• It’s a collection of echo chambers. Dissent is usually stomped out by mass downvoting and heavy moderation/bans. It’s rare to find a board that allows arguments for a long period of time. Agree with the board’s users/mods or get silenced. Posted rules do not matter, and you can definitely be hateful in ways that violate posted rules so long as that type of hate is acceptable on that board.
• So many users mean that getting content to succeed is a crapshoot. Often posts become lost in the noise, especially on busy boards.
• I left about a year ago, but apparently there’s a lot of bot/AI slop on boards now.

Lemmy:

• Much smaller user base. Heavily specialized boards move slowly if they exist at all. It’s not unusual to see boards where it’s just one/a few people posting with days in between new content.
• More ability to have disagreements. Whether it’s because moderating a smaller # of users is easier, the mods are less authoritarian, or whatever you are more likely to be able to disagree. Don’t be blatantly racist, celebrating violence, clearly trolling, etc. and you’ll probably remain able to participate. I’m sure this isn’t universal on all boards, but it’s my experience on many boards.
• For all that I believe the above point, there are still “echo chamber” moments on Lemmy. Sometimes it seems people may be downvoted simply because they are already downvoted. It’s still way less egregious than on Reddit, and such is human nature I suppose.
• Fewer users means you are more likely to get some engagement on your post, at least in my experience. I never sorted my feed by new posts on Reddit because it was an avalanche of posts of questionable quality, so I only saw whatever content had already succeeded. On Lemmy I can look for new posts and see most if not all content on the boards I enjoy.

So far it seems to me like the troll instance here is much lower. There are definitely reddit-esque people here who will reply to comments by demanding that you refute their ludicrous misinterpretation of whatever you said. But overall I think there’s much less hostility.

In addition to what everyone else has said in the comments, I find that the posts on Lemmy are far more creative. It’s akin to browsing people’s blogs vs Medium articles.