Ask Lemmy

TBH, not much.

Which pleases me. I actually donate to my instance every month in order to help keep it ad and algo-free.

I left reddit the day the api shit went down and came here. Same Lemmy as its always been but noticeably more people now. My feed is more curated. It reminds me of my reddit experience in maybe 2011 or so. As with anything on the internet, the experience is only as good or as bad as you allow it to be. If you see a community or instance you dont like, just block them and move on. Do I like Lemmy as much as I did early reddit? Id say no, but not by much. Maybe its my rose colored nostalgia glasses for early Reddit that keeps me wishing for things to be the way they used to be but its totally possible that reddit was never as great as I thought it was. Idk. Im here now and I dig it. Its not the same but I like watching it grow and it keeps me entertained when I need it to. Overall, its better than the invasive nature of what reddit is now. Thats just my own opinion tho.

Lemmy used to be too "left wing" for me. I felt like my opinions were not a great match for the group here, so I tended to not comment much.

Then simultaneously Lemmy's opinions seemed to make more sense (eg, billionaires should not exist, which is proving true in the current political climate), and also, more "right wing" people have arrived. And they are aggressive and vocal (eg DEMOCRAT cities will be hell to live in and hurt you and arrest you if you fart in public or something).

So actually I think maybe just bots have started to arrive.

Not really. Same tiny echo chamber.

I don't see any changes. Neither in Reddit nor here at Lemmy. Actually the only difference was in the abundant amount of moderators at Reddit. Lemmy's moderators are scarcer and lazier and therefore less dangerous than Reddit's. But their essence is the same. No other differences.

kbin imploded and piefed came on the scene.

It's the same but I had to block a few users. Very Reddit-like in some ways. Glad karma isn't a thing though.

One thing I've noticed recently was a massive uptick of adolescent sex jokes. It's really annoying.

Initially, it was not stable. Lots of outages and issues with spammers, DDOSing, CSAM, etc. Those issues are mostly sorted.

Additionally, there was originally a lot of excitement and people trying to rebuild the niche communities they left on Reddit. Unfortunately, those efforts have mostly faded. There simply isn’t a large enough population here to support those niche communities at this stage. Mostly, people have sorted into the major topics that are common (news, politics, technology, etc.). Due to the demographics of Lemmy early adopters I’d say gaming and Linux are also well-supported here. The federated nature of Lemmy makes it difficult for niche communities to consolidate enough contributing subscribers to hit a self-sustaining rhythm.

Despite the initial wave of new signups and the subsequent dip, I think the population is leveling off and stable. This is good, but also not the right long term trend as ultimately it still really needs to grow a lot. Monthly active users is just below 50K. In my view this will have to 10x for the engagement in smaller communities to pick up. It may take years, or it may never happen. A lot of that will depend on attracting more mainstream users.

I just came here cause my preferred reddit mobile app wanted money to work with the api or whatever. I've enjoyed being at Lemmy ever since. Granted my feed does seem to have its off days with not much going on. But that's ok.

I haven't really looked at reddit to tell what it's current state is. Nor do I care that much because Lemmy "works for me".

Just use whatever you like.

What is reddit? It's just a fast paced forum with lots of people.

Lemmy is in essence the exact same thing. It just operates far more decentralised than reddit.

The difference over the last months/years is that lemmy as a whole is growing. More people, more engagement. That's it.

I don't know what you mean by "lost it's uniqueness" the only unique part of lemmy is it's decentralised system. And that's still the same.

Population seems to have increased and become more diverse. There's always communities being created. It's not recognised as a desirable platform for businesses or influencers yet so upvotes aren't treated anywhere near as divine, but you still see some users with remnants of Reddit; massive psychological damage if they're downvoted. I mean, makes sense, people generally use social media to feel validated about their opinions. When it comes to comparing with Reddit, Lemmy has no monetised awards or such, bots are mostly rudimentary and live on a couple communities, and there's little toxicity, harassment etc. because the user has complete control over blocking anything and instance admins have complete control over banning and defederating. I think being able to close some doors is preferable to being wide open to all, and I don't think it causes any "echo chambers".

Overall, definite improvement over the years.

It's not just circlejerking about ~~Linux~~ communism anymore.

I don't know when that time frame is, but, I have noticed an increase in poor modding in some places [which also lowered my interaction rate with the whole of Lemmy], and a drop in correspondence quality to nearer reddit level. But maybe that's just from me as I expand out to more places in Lemmy.

It hasn't changed too much. It was wild for a hot minute and then mellowed out. Some people feared it failed but it just stayed steady year after year.

Lemmy seems to have increased in userbase a bit and many communities are less dark with sometimes infrequent but not absent posts and engagement. It's looking good. Also we all hate Israel now. That wasn't a thing when Lemmy started.