It has changed a bunch, but I don’t mind it. It has gotten larger, and with that comes a greater number of trolls and spammers. I don’t see as much tankie discourse nowadays. There seems to be more political content, but that’s likely a reflection of the world.

Communities have become more concentrated — after the Reddit APi debacle, it was common to find the same community across many instances, and these were often inactive or sparsely used. Now many of these have been consolidated into fewer, more active communities.

Some communities are niche enough that you can easily read over a week’s worth of posts in one small burst, but remain active due to the dedication of moderators who do things like weekly threads.

There are frequently recurring big names who post frequently. These people aren’t necessarily the same as at the beginning, because there are still a few individuals who make up a majority of posts. I worry for these people sometimes, because it must be a lot of pressure to know that if you stopped posting, the community may wither away. Some of these communities are just silly little meme comms, but I imagine people still feel a sense of ethical duty towards these things.

The rules pages for communities are much better now. It’s easier to know where you stand in different communities, especially in areas where there may be overlap between the communities’ scopes — there has been gradual iteration that has helped people to understand how things relate to each other

When I first got here, I was struck by how much it reminded me of my early time with Reddit. It was much easier to have productive conversations with people. I felt sad because it highlighted how bad Reddit had become. It has always been a bit of a toxic cesspit of a site, in some ways (when people ask me what pseudonymous social media site I used most as a teenager, I am often embarrassed to admit that it was Reddit), it had a lot of good going for it — people engaging in genuine conversation despite everything. I can get that a lot more reliably here.

Things have changed, but Lemmy is still capable of fulfilling my desire for genuine conversations with random internet people. I often write long comments, and I often feel that my time was well spent. Sometimes I non-judgmentally call out people for being unpleasant in their comments, and it leads to productive conversations. I honestly live for that shit, and Lemmy reliably helps me to scratch it. I am better able to navigate the site to find what I am craving.

I wish there were more posts and comments sometimes, but I recognise that this is a bit of a monkeys paw wish, in that a greater userbase will degrade the experience further. Nothing lasts forever though. When Lemmy dies, whenever that ends up being, I will have been glad for my time here

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

Fewer people marveling about Lemmy itself, which is fine.

There are a couple of people who are now a constant presence. For better or worse. Some of y’all need help that Lemmy can’t provide. I won’t name a name but if you have to ask…

Personal opinion: Came over when the API changes went live, simply because being forced to their official “app”, which was a pile of garbage in all aspects for me, was too much. And since that started the exodus, I couldn’t be arsed to mess around with 3rd party apps to make them work again, because I was too lazy and it simply didn’t feel like it’s worth it anymore. Made a lemmy account, lurked mostly as I did on reddit, content for doom scrolling was lacking quantity mostly. For me there’s now enough content for the daily scrolling session, where quality posts end about as I start to get bored or need to get my ass up, so it’s a win win here.

It really just feels that more people are here. What I’m missing are a few more different users, because it kinda feels that most people here are very similar in their views, but that also would probably pave the way for more defederation drama.

Since I’m mostly lurking and liberally use the block instance/community feature to simply hide the content I’m not interested in, for me personally it only got better, so I jump in, get my daily fix of memes, news and other random interesting things, comment occasionally and get back to whatever. I’m honestly lacking an alternative, so it’s as good as it gets for now, and I’m happy with that.

My main gripe with mainstream Reddit now is the engagement baiting that people are falling for all the time. “What are you thoughts on [Controversial Topic]?” If there is a new exodus from Reddit coming, I really really really wish all the baiting to be left behind and moderators to remove it on the Fediverse.

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.

Been here since exactly the API debacle, and it’s still kinda the same, just less attempts to make niche communities become a thing and more clustering on the big communities.

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 gotten a bit busier as far as new posts showing up go (been here since reddit api debacle) but we need like 4,000,000 more users, and then if we just held right there, we’d all be able to live happy little lives. There’s still just not enough people to support smaller, more niche instances.

On a side note: Doubly fuck reddit again. I don’t get on there to use it, but occasionally I’ll hop into an old sub looking for info. Got a notification that /humor deleted my post of a funny poem thing from 15 friggin years ago. One of only 2 posting I ever made that still occasionally got comments on.

there are increasingly a greater number of nutjobs, spammers, and hostile/miserable/angry people. my block list is like 300+ now. 6-9 month ago it was like 12 people.

2 years ago it was mostly super nerds just nerding about.

Its gotten significantly less optimistic and more cynical. Its in my opinion more of a reflection of the state of the world than a Lemmy specific issue but it affects Lemmy users more because this isnt a space that allows people to live in ignorant bliss.

However I felt it lost its uniqueness within a few months of mass migration and started turning a bit like reddit again

This has gotten worse but it’s still smaller and not algorithming your experience so it’s still not as bad.

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.

It feels more like reddit now, but still is populated by a certain type of person that would seek out Lemmy. Mostly techy, left of center+, over age 30+, etc. I enjoy it.