I'm not banned but I haven't participated much there for a couple of years.

I've heard that Fediverse wasn't much better, but the fact that Lemmy, Piefed, Mastodon and pretty much any other Fediverse platform are open source, and completely ridden of ads, and data collection from giant corporations is already a HUGE difference.

Sure people are just people and you're gonna find toxic communities everywhere, but at least here you don't need to "fear" getting banned because you can choose an instance that has core principles you share, and through them you can access pretty much any community you want, and keep active.

On Reddit, you have no other place to go. You either shut the fuck up and accept their terms, or you, if you get banned, there's nothing you can do about it.

Also, a lot of communities here in Lemmy/Piefed are very active. I don't need to be drowned on an infinity number of posts when most of them are just silly repetitive memes or karma whoring, with zero meaningful discussion.