what's your favorite thing about Lemmy?

It's non-profit.

I don't feel lost in a crowd of shitposters. I post something on c/poetry, ten people upvote and I'm like hey ten people read this, that's cool. It feels real where Reddit does not often.
- I am sometimes one of the ten. Thanks for sharing content.
  
  I'm glad you like! I've discovered that if I check out several poetry ebooks on my phone at a time I'll always stumble across something amazing. Someone asked me last week who my favourite poets are, and it's really a five way tie.
- Exactly this. Everyone has enough space to have their voice heard here. There aren't too many threads I read where i get bored before I read everyone's comments.
  I post every day since I know people will see it and it won't immediately get buried. I get to know the names of people that regularly comment on my posts. Just seems more personal.
  
  Exactly. I feel like the smaller crowd and lack of stupid running joke comments makes it very positive.
- Afaik upvote count on Reddit isn't even real anymore. It is still somehow rooted on the real count but their algorithm tampers with the count in undisclosed ways.
  
  That's right, the votes are fuzzed. I left Reddit after I made a post about a Nazi, and Reddit banned me for harassing Nazis. Reddit is evidently ok with Nazis.

I think one of the major benefits Lemmy has over Reddit is the intentional lack of user karma. I think, on balance, that entire dynamic was more harmful than helpful in the long run. Allowing voting on posts - but not aggregating votes across all comments and posts - still allows community sentiment to be expressed towards comments and conversations, but at the same time prevents the sort of popularity contest bullshit that became so prevalent on Reddit after its nascent years.
- Agreed. Karma was fun when Reddit began because it was truly useless internet points, but quickly fell off as soon as people got too serious about it. Buying/selling accounts with high karma, rules about only posting when you have a karma threshold, and of course the endgame now of buying stock if you have high enough karma. It's just easier to throw away the whole concept here.
  
  I never understood that.. Why did people want karma points? Was it anything more than having 'liked' posts? There's no real value. It's like when my BIL used to give all the kids brownie points for getting salsa or reading a book.
- Would it be possible to have consistent karma on Lemmy? With instances being able to defederate from one another I thought that would be impossible unless there was some centralized karma counter.
  
  You would see the karma count according to your own instance. Different instances might then disagree about the exact karma count but your own instance should have the right number.
  
  I get a total vote count for my comments and posts up and down its not made into one big scoreboard but its definatly something i can see.

Federation. I will never use centralised social media again...

Spez isn’t on here
- noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
- He's waiting for one of the admins to commit suicide before he shows up and claims credit
  
  God that's so fucking funny.
- @spez@sh.itjust.works

That people can make Android apps for it without caring about absurd API prices.

I don't need a crappy first party app to use it on my phone.

It's not owned by a corporation and no single entity has full control over it.
- Until some megacorp decides to start flooding it with AI shit like reddit, then we're fucked.
  
  Just defederate! That's one of the main benefits! :D

It's a small community, which is rare on the internet these days.
Its noncommercial, which is almost completely unheard of on the internet these days.

Engagement.
Users tend to like or dislike your comments and posts more, and post comments and reply back more often.
Compared to the millions of users on Reddit, I get more interaction on lemmy.
- It's the small world effect. Federation works better for our tribal human brains. We aren't designed to be in a room with a million people all talking at once.
  At first, the redundancy of having multiple communities on different instances covering the same topics bugged me, but it's actually a good thing because it means you're grouped into smaller groups of humans and your voice will get heard. Rather than a few comments dominating the conversation, there are simply more conversations.
  
  At first, the redundancy of having multiple communities on different instances covering the same topics bugged me, but it's actually a good thing because it means you're grouped into smaller groups of humans and your voice will get heard. Rather than a few comments dominating the conversation, there are simply more conversations.
  I like that take.
  Except when i am subscribed to multiple similar communities so i can hear those voices. Then something happens, and i see multiple reposts of the same thing by multiple users over multiple communities.
  I dont know what the middleground is.
  But maybe reframing towards the "smaller voices get heard" and learning to accept "the occasional shouts as an unfortunate downside to an overall better scenario" will help me.
- Absolutely, I get replies on almost all of my comments and usually multiple. The engagement is really great.

I can be on here a LOT less than other apps and not feel like I'm addicted. I jump on to post a couple of things and scroll for a few minutes and I feel like I'm good for the day.
- yeah that's probably because there's not very much content here. which I admit is good because lack of content equals reduced addiction.
  
  I think it's also the fact that there's not any algorithm that's literally built to keep you doom scrolling.
- Being able to check stuff once or twice a day without feeling like im missing out is nice. There are enough algorithms that i can get a slice of lemmy-life.
  And there are enough algorithms to almost support my doomscrolling on a bad day

I host my own and practically nobody can take it away from me. If I want to switch to Sublinks I can. I can swap the UI if I hate the default one. And it will never have ads or data collection.
It's a completely open platform. I can make my own algorithm. I can fork it. I can make a compatible server from scratch if I want to. It's ours, it's everyone's.
- It being a completely open platform means there will definitively be data collection. Some entity will scrape the fediverse for data. It's free, open and unprotected.
  
  Yeah but at least it is data that I explicitly decided to share publicly (including votes and subscriptions, because well, that's how ActivityPub works).
  I meant more like, track your IP to give you local ads, analyze your browser cursor behaviour, visit frequency, how long I stay in a thread, etc. All things the official Reddit site and apps do (and probably a big factor as to why they shut down third party apps).
  To be fair self hosting Lemmy is doing the opposite of protecting my privacy since my real identity has to be tied to my domain and server providers and my credit card. But at least I'm somewhat in control of the exact information my server distributes on my behalf.
  And it's that hidden metadata that's super valuable because it's much more detailed.

Feels like the earlier days of interesting reddit.
I have no doubts bots/hostile actors will find some way to fuck things up. Hopefully the devs can finish up tools to keep those problem actors at bay.
- I feel instance admins/owners are in tune with the community to deal with the bad actors.
  Instead of reddits "line goes up" mentality

I feel like there is more variety in the content here than there was on reddit. There's less content, but it's a lot more interesting than the stuff on reddit's front page.
It's also easier to find helpful people here than it was on reddit. Reddit was super arrogant and hostile compared to Lemmy.
- oh man you don't even notice the moderators here. it's so nice, they don't feel the need to butt into every fucking conversation
  
  I do wish it was possible to comment in communities you moderate without having it marked as a moderator comment. Rarely do I want to make an "official" statement but if I'm a mod Lemmy defaults to making any mundane comment appear that way.

I've just had a ton of really friendly and amusing interactions with people here, that's my favorite thing. Not sure what feature Lemmy has that makes that happen though.
- Not sure what feature Lemmy has that makes that happen though.
  It's open and small. It takes a certain type of person for that to be appealing so despite our differences there is some quality we share.

Nicer, kinder and less judgemental people.
I've had some controversial opinions here but the conversation is always civilized. It's like people are aware that not everyone is from one culture and are willing to give people the benefit of thr doubt and not judge the language of the text. Noone is judging tone.
But even more importantly I love seeing the same people around on different communities. Kolanak, cheese greater, call me lenni, picard maneuver, blaze are all names off the top of my mind that I see everywhere. It's like a small community.
- I have to say that is mostly the case. Yes, there will always be that one individual that gets offended at your different opinion, but that's just the way of the world.
- I was scrolling down to see if anyone said this, since it's been the case for me so far. I have to say lately I've seen a raise in unfriendliness (not referring towards me, but in general), but I suppose it's inevitable.
  I'm still really happy with how people interact with me and with each other, and I haven't felt that on Reddit for a while (am referring to both pre APIcalypse and after, though I now visit Reddit rarely)
  
  Ive seen a little too but reddit and all other social media is just soooo much worse that a few situations weren't enough to sway my opinion on the matter.
  Reddit was honestly not the worst interaction wise for me pre APIcalypse, font have any account on there anymore. Also was never an active user on reddit tbf.

I guess the best way that I'd word it is, Lemmy (and the Fediverse at whole) is run by people - not a for-profit company.
Also, having decent mobile apps again is very nice.

No ads and small communies where i can run ibto people multiple times
- Hey I've seen your avatar before!

Greater degree of healthy dialogue. People disagree on here, but they'll more often talk it out and try to come to an understanding of some sort. Generally more curious and/or interested people and less vague shitposting.
- that's what I liked about reddit originally, and I feel like its much stronger here. especially since this is such a small community, basically every one of my comments (aside from ones on shitposts and the like) gets at least one solid response
- Totally agree. One of the really cool things I've seen on here is people acknowledge being wrong instead of being cranky shites about it.
  Not only is it OK to be wrong but it's absolutely brilliant to acknowledge it.
  Love the quality of discussion here.

Its federation. Even to that point, than I can reply to you when not using Lemmy at all. I am writing this from /kbin.
- Yea the real question should be "what's your favourite thing about the Fediverse?". Lemmy is just what some people use to access the Fediverse. Kinda like asking "what's your favourite thing about Firefox" when really you mean the Internet.

Duplicate communities with 3 users

No ads
- I'm curious, do you use this on mobile or are you talking about a desktop experience?
  Personally I find more ads on something like Sync on mobile than I did on Reddit which I can block, but I am now forced to use the Reddit desktop site.
  
  Yeu, sync has ads because the developers of sync put ads into it.
  Vanilla lemmy and jerboa certainly dont.
  I can imagine some instance admins considering forking lemmy and putting in ads. At the moment, most instances are run as a hobby (for free) or by contributions (ie donations from members).
  The development of lemmy was funded by a VC-type thing for a while, not sure if its still active. Otherwise, its also developed thanksnto contributions
  
  Voyager is where it's at
  
  Mobile - Memmy for iPhone
  
  The apps have ads? Bruh

More authentic posts, and much nicer interaction between people
- Fuck you!
  /s
  
  Nooo! Fuck you!

I grew up on the internet of the 90's and 00's. Lemmy is a far cry from that, but it's more like the original internet than reddit or facebook. So here I am. I miss the small, interest driven internet holes you and they're here more than on any other platform.

It's everything I would read on reddit without the bullshit.
- "this!"
  
  please do not bring over reddit memes. Eventually someone will not understand the irony and keep doing it for real. thanks

- Such as?

I'm still surprised by how genuine people seem to be. Sometimes someone comments or messages me and my expectation is sarcasm, judgement, or general shittiness; so I'm unsure how to reply. I think I've responded negatively sometimes just because i was reflexively defensive.

Works on my phone

People are fairly responsive on posts and comments.
- They’ll also upvote anything. Even a can of beans.

It's mildly reminiscent of the social internet I grew up on.
- I couldn't agree more. While the platform is vastly different, the people and the various niche communities are more similar to how I used IRC 25 years ago.

It's both a cool concept and an actual functioning community. For now, it also feels a bit like the rubes haven't found it.
- Well sorry to break it to you but I'm here now
  
  I always knew you could do it, you just had to try.

It's free, no ads, and cool communities.
I think the only thing missing is creepy pastas

It's NOT FUCKING reddit.

Unlike what seems like many, I kind of like not having so many people here. It means there’s a good chance comments and posts will be seen by others. Reddit was/is so populated that posting anything there was like speaking into a gaping void (of hatred, many bad -isms, and occasionally friendly helpful folks).
- It's kinda like the ham radio of the internet. I think. I've never used a ham radio, but it's what I imagine it would be like. Lol
  
  Over
  Edit:
  Or is "lol" lemmys equivalent of "over"?
  Lol

It’s not Reddit.
- come on down to lemmy town everyone.
  at least we're not reddit.
  
  So we got that going for ourselves which is nice.
- Yet

Due to having less content on Lemmy, your questions have a better chance of getting a reply even if the person can't answer the question, they usually show support in your efforts of finding the answer.
- exactly, on reddit a lot of stuff just got buried

That it’s not Reddit.

Best for me is the ability to post images directly from the app / site rather than all that imgur rigmarole.
No gaming of the stats, and no arcane rejection of you comment because it didn't meet some arbitrary rules are also positives.
- oh, you can do that? I tried posting a photo earlier but couldn't get it to work
  
  This may be wrong but I believe there's a fairly low file size limit so that may be it. PNG files tend to be larger for example.
  
  Just upload it from your device, and done. This is one of my favorite features.

I love being finished doomscrolling after 15 or 20 minutes not because I hate myself, but because I ran out of fresh content for the day.

It has an API so you can use it with an Android client

Moderators responding to flagged posts in hours

The clock hands move faster when I use Lemmy.

Yea, as some people have said, the fediverse and the threadiverse feel much more organic.
Also, no tracking by shady companies is a big selling point

You can get the original size of the image inside lemmy by clicking on the preview, no need to see the full post

I get to keep using Boost.

It's not controlled by a single company.

The idiots have not yet found the platform, so I can enjoy more interesting discussions.

We're well established enough that we have stereotypes about different communities... it's amusing.

🪰
- The bugs?
  
  fly on the wall

The super dumb memes. I love that I can post a something that's stupid even for a shitpost here and get cheered for it.

- Dude I have looked through your "Overview" you are not a socialist, a social democrat at best.
  Also there is no real and practical difrence between Socialist and Communist, there are some very fun nit-picky definitions, but generally they are interchangeable.
  Also few quick tests. Thoughts on Isn'treal Thoughts on the USSR Thoughts on the GDR Thoughts on the PRC Thoughts on Cuba Thoughts on Biden