The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.

Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.

Like:

• Decentralized system that limits abuse

• Great customizaion

• It works (unlike much of the competition)

Dislike:

• Lack of even remotely niche content (aside from Linux and infosec content)

• Generally very pessimistic userbase

• Lacks polish and features in many areas

• Currently trends towards extremist echo chambers - the fact that .ml (an instance known for banning criticism of violent, racist, authoritarian governments) is one of the biggest instances, is a good example of this.

• tends extremely hostile to any sort of monitization, regardless of the quality or cost to produce content

Like:

• It has that small-community feel still. I don’t see (perhaps because I stay out of a lot of the more tech-ey communities?) the kind of farming, low-effort, generally mediocre content I saw on Reddit.
• Lack of the sense of a hyper-corporatized, “You’re only allowed to do things that make us money” sense that’s enshittified much of the internet lately. I’m not even sure if Lemmy can be monetized.

Dislike:

• Not yet large enough either. I don’t want millions of users, but I still miss a lot of the more niche hobby/discussion communities I used to be able to participate in. Even communities for fairly large hobbies or interests can be dead on Lemmy.
• The awful political takes. Everything from typical dumbness up to advocating violence (but it’s okay because it’s my point). And it’s everywhere.

The 14 year olds with “big brain” takes.

I genuinely cannot express how much it annoys me that I cannot have a blocklist for keywords.

Most of the things I read are from my subscribed communities, which i’m very happy about generally, however given the overall state of life today, half of the posts in completely unrelated communities end up being one of the following:

• Twitter CEO
• Hate speech in US politics
• AI propaganda for some pump and dump quick money

I really just don’t want to see any of those things

I like the way Lemmy functions, with things like an open moderator log and the way that instances can be created to prevent too much control from one singular instance from pushing people completely off the platform if they have bad moderation, for example.

I don’t like the users. For every one user that is nice and wants to have a legitimate conversation, there are like 300 that just want to fight/argue or spew politics into a non-political conversation. The number of users I have blocked on Lemmy is far longer than the amount of users I ever blocked on Reddit, and my Reddit account existed for about 10 years. This Lemmy account has only been around for about 1/10th of that.

One of the biggest strengths of Lemmy is also one of its biggest curses. Due to its federated nature, anyone can create a new instance. The problem with this is that particularly nasty users can keep creating accounts on instances they keep creating in order to harass people they don’t like. So even if you block them, they just switch to a new account, etc. They can also do this for vote manipulation, not like that really matters on Lemmy but Lemmy users seem to have fallen victim to the same problem Redditors had: seeing a comment with 0 or -1 score and then completely disregarding whatever it said, not reading it and downvoting it automatically.

The thing I dislike the most is that my bot got banned. I made a bot to post carefully categorized articles into their proper communities, but it was banned without warning or explanation. All the communities I was modding dried up shortly thereafter because I didn’t manually post in them instead.

The people. For both.

Like: pretty much everything

Dislike: wish there was more activity in the D&D comms

All the trolls.

The interface. I actually have a lemmy alt and I just hate utilizing it due to the web interface. Its the main reason I did kbin and non mbin to begin with. I did quick accounts on each and liked the bins better naviagation and config wise.

I like that it’s moderated fairly lightly but reasonably. Often I can have an actual discussion with someone who doesn’t agree with me without either of us getting banned by a mod who likes one side or the other. From what I see generally a user needs to be very obviously abusive/racist/violent before a mod steps in, even if the content is controversial.

I dislike that I’ve needed to heavily restrict my use for my mental health until after the election. A lot of people (not all by any means) believe it’s ok to bully and abuse other users because their cause is righteous - it’s already shown up in this thread. E.g. the daily posts/comments, with a lot of upvotes/support, that label anyone who disagrees with or criticizes Kamala (used to be Biden)/Democrats a bot, idiot, worse than useless, foreign agent and so on. I’m not talking about downvoting which is just expressing disagreement - I’m talking about outright insults and upvoting those. The attitude of “vote with/support me or else” has no place in a democracy founded on free voting without persecution, even if the bully is sure they’re right. If I didn’t mention it, perhaps even though I have, we might see a version of “but it is actually ok this time” and reasons why. It’s happened before.

Guess what? Very few “policy bullies” think they are evil - they’re positive it’s justified. Christians demand abortion bans, Muslim deportation, religion in schools/government and so on because they truly believe they are saving eternal souls. I was raised in that environment. That a sizable amount of Lemmy users believe it’s correct/admirable to insult others into “proper” behavior makes them very similar in character to those religious extremists IMO. Apparently when the issue is really important abuse is ok.

I’ll end by saying Gaza/Palestine is incredibly important to me - I am legitimately very upset frequently by the stories and media. However, Bernie Sanders convinced me to support Biden and then Kamala. Bernie laid out his argument with logic and facts and did not once insult my position. I also doubt the aggressive posts/comment are winning over undecideds. “I wasn’t sure if I should vote Democrat until I was called a harmful idiot and had my concerns dismissed as being in bad faith”.

I think it’s the best at what it does. That problem space doesn’t have a lot of good options.

I’ve been impressed with the number of people who understand this pretty esoteric and fundamentally game-changing bit of technical voting system knowledge:

Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

About first past the post and third parties for those who aren’t going to watch. But do watch! Required viewing for everybody!

The assholes who pretend to argue in good faith but just spout stupid bullshit.

Oh, and the idiots who block everyone they don’t like.