Reddit has a perverse incentive to keep the user base frothing for engagement

There is no such incentive on Lemmy. We are toxic because we choose to be. All natural, free range, grassroots haters

The Lemmy userbase is human, which is more than I can say of Reddit's.

I think you're missing the point.

People are people everywhere you go. Nowhere is free of people unless you want to be by yourself.

Lemmy and the Fediverse is not about only being around people that are exactly perfect for you to associate with.

It's about not giving your thoughts, your mental energy, and your time to build an empire for someone else to profit off of.

I accidentally posted a link to some right wing borderline racist article which sounded sensible on first skim reading it. Commentators noted this. I apologized for not reading it carefully or noticing the other associated articles and the other Lemmy users were understanding. Just my experience but I think a nicer atmosphere prevails.

the point is lemmy is ours, not some psycho billionaire's.

So far I'm having a lovely experience

It's much calmer

I'm doing my part!

PSA: you can block users. Don't be afraid to do it. There's nothing you can say that will convince flat earthers or similar stupid people.

I dont know. Not that Lemmy users are necessarily great all the time, but Reddit has decayed to the point that its barely better than a generic Facebook feed.

Not true for me.

I made a joke, and someone got upset. I explained that I didn’t mean it seriously and apologized. Then they told me they were in a bad mood and apologized for their reaction.

It's kinda like the founding of Australia - we get a ton of exiles who were wrongfully prosecuted by the Reddit government, but we also get a fair share of degenerates and murderers who also got banned and ended up here. There's even a native Lemmy group who was here before Reddit shed users and they really don't appreciate it to say the least.

I don't know why one would expect Lemmy to be different when it's entire userbase consists of ex-redditors.

I don't think there's much difference between platforms. Everyone is performing to either get pats on the back or to stirr up something. The moment everyone around you seems nice is when you've entered the echo chamber.

The userbase is largely overlapping as most Lemmy users are current or former Reddit users. The difference is largely in the communities and moderation, not users...

ffs, Lemmy's strength is in it's decentralised non corpo design, not that we users are a better quality of human. It went from Usenet, to the centralised shitiness of Reddit back to a decentralised system in Lemmy/Piefed more akin to Usenet

but, I'd also argue just by being here you're a better person.

Most every community has some assholes, or at least people that rub each other the wrong way. There's a lot to be said for clicking off shitty responses and not picking up the hate.

Hell is other people.

Haven’t been there meaningfully in years, but when I was there regularly if I logged in and saw I had a bunch of new comments I’d have a mini panic attack. Did I say something clever or something stupid and get eviscerated?

I rarely get the number of comments here that I got there, but when I do get them they’re almost never toxic like the ones I got at reddit were, even when they are critical or disagreeing.

…I do still get a mini panic attack when I see I have a bunch of unread comments though. It’s less intense though as Lemmy seems to be slowly curing me of that reaction.

Not just users. Mods/admins too. 

Excellent unpopular opinion that I disagree with! Good post for here :3

On Reddit, I was CONSTANTLY annoyed in every thread.

Award edits: annoying.

Talking about awards and upvotes: annoying.

Spamming subreddits as hashtags: annoying. Rehashing the same phrase/joke over and over again: annoying.

Fake stories in all top subreddits in /all/ used as creative writing before LLMs made even being CREATIVE obsolete yet the site was clogged with bullshit and hundreds (if not thousands) of people responding as if the stories are real: annoying.

(More recently, as of when I left Reddit when the API change was made) Majority of people bots or astroturfers/shills/etc: annoying.

I constantly was shitting in comments and people on Reddit because so many comments were just… so… horribly… stupid! Asinine! Coming from a history of communities of folks that, while being overtly overwhelmingly dumb/offensive, were at least original or creative (IRC/Usenet/LUE/SA/b/specific forums) in their commenting and posts, near the end of Reddit’s life I felt like I had to dig through more oceans of shit to find a tiny gold nugget than I did when I was heavy into /b/ in the early-to-mid 2000s.

I find that Lemmy threads have an expectantly smaller quantity of idiots, rehashed ‘clever’ one-liners in every thread, ‘creative’ writing that isn’t creative in the slightest, and overall garbage commenters. Better shitposters, more furries, better grammar, and more organic stuff overall.

That’s my opinion, anyway. Your post has a lot of downvotes for a “popular” “unpopular opinion” post here which tells me you’ve posted a good one hahaha. I do agree with some of what you’ve said—I’d like some places I can post and read some more crunchy-ass shit. Not stuff like being racist “as a joke”, but with the way the fediverse is, I’d like some NSFL stuff and places where people can be free to be more crude or whatnot. Lemmy is very “safe”, which is healthy for a lot of folks. Overall though, I’ll take “safe” over “enragingly annoying everywhere” hahaha

I'm sure it's already been said a few times, but with few exceptions Lemmy/mbin/etc. users ARE redditors, or recently former redditors who, for historical and practical reasons, are more likely to be interested in

• Open source software
• Alternative social web
• Privacy
• Left wing politics (especially early on)

While that applies to me to varying degrees, I must acknowledge that it means we're probably sometimes going to be difficult and slow to assume good faith. I try not to be that way, it's the only thing I can do. I think the left wing politics/parapolitics is better than the usual right wing variety that was common on other reddit alternatives, but that's my bias.

Lemmy is still social media that's full of anonymous posters with no consequences to their posts so of course discourse is going to be absolute shit with trolls and disingenuous people vying for imaginary points and wearing that negative points as a badge of honor.

That said, with a smaller user base, while there are still complete contrarian, disingenuous users, I do find that the discussion on average are at least better than reddit and the one key to better conversations and debates I found after moving from reddit is I'm much, much more judicious about using that block user button and block communities button.

The difference is that you can curate the people you associate with. Find an instance whose values represent your own, or run your own, and you can avoid the people who you find the worst. You can't do this in reddit as anyone can join and you have no chance to prevent yourself from interacting with chuds.