I feel like Fediverse users are nicer to each other and more generous with upvotes than reddit.
i’m doing it because I want to make the fediverse more friendly place, in hopes of making it more welcoming for new users, and the nicer place in general. But I wonder how much is just less bots.
This is actually very similar to how reddit used to be. My theory is two fold.
First is that the people who adopted this as a new site are people who are more technologically inclined. Lemmy has some complexity and most will shy away from that until they're encouraged by either friends or mainstream adoption. People who are more inclined to try new things are also more inclined to just listen. To use critical thought and help others learn.
The second is that the community is smaller so it feels just like that. A community. Reddit used to. So much so there was a hyper cringe saying that was popular about narwhals. I remember it but refuse to type it out because I hated it then and hate it now. But point being people liked being associated with the site because it felt like friendship and community.
As reddit grew and grew, both of those points slid to the wayside. More people came on so it suppressed the community vibes due to too many voices who weren't willing to listen to others. Those vibes are contagious and the whole site started to slide down into obscurity.
But yeah, lemmy actually feels like a community. I haven't seen too much of a "thread consensus" effect, where any differing views get buried with downvotes for not agreeing. The only mass downvoted comments I've seen so far were blatant racism/sexism/homophobia/other noncivil comments, and LITERAL shitposts.
TLDR: Lemmy circlejerks way less, but allows uncensored gifs of people pooping in comments
I would not overly praise old reddit like this. I agree that people were more open minded and willing to engage in substantive discussions, but old reddit was also hosting the likes of /r/jailbait, /r/coontown, /r/n*ggers. There's good and bad aspects.
I think the whole thing is that your instance can defederate so even if there were things like that existing you wouldn’t see it. There are plenty of instances that’s not federated with lemmy.ml i believe.