Upvote, as this is indeed an unpopular opinion

Yeah I feel you, but also, that's just people. Specifically, people on the internet. There is no perfect place where none of that happens, it'll happen everywhere. No matter how you start or how small you are, if you grow eventually you will get assholes, and people disobeying the rules, and trolls, and every shitty thing.

I see it too here, and it's bittersweet. We've grown which is good, but also with growing means more assholes. Even if assholes are ~2% of the users, when the userbase doubles it means we have double the assholes too.

it's what you make of it where. I think we've done as good as a job as we can here, always room for improvement, but personally compared to the random reddit thread I stumble into when researching stuff, I still feel better here.

Thank you! The in-fighting is such a turn off! Why are people so hostile? Like I don’t think I’m the only one who comes on here and does NOT want to read crap about so and so should be murdered, wtf?? This is not how normal people behave or talk! Get a grip, seriously!

People on Reddit migrated to Lemmy. They are literally the same people. It is made worse by the fact that malicious individuals can now host instances instead of just Reddit (who tried to keep the bare minimum of public image).

Hey that was the promise. Like reddit but no big money

Centralized profit seeking service: We platform the trolls because "user number go up!"

Decentralized community-run services: We throw out the bad actors since users cost money to host.

I like one of them better than the other.

People are people, manage your expectations accordingly.

These kinds of federated services were never meant to be better than reddit in a content sense, all they do is provide a system in which the possibility of a subjectively better platform was possible.

More simply, federated services are about federation/decentralisation.

The idiomatic solution to the problem you're describing is either to:

start your own federated instance, with the prerequisite amount of hookers and blackjack, but also sufficient rules and moderational enforcement to adhere to your expectations of what a better reddit looks like.

or

find an instance that already does this and join it.

This is a thing that is possible in a federated service, which is the actual difference between reddit and lemmy/piefed etc

My issue is also the echo chamber. You can't hold an alternative opinion to the hive

Can be argued but I would say the lack of corporate oversight and moderation makes it better by default.

People abusing rules that go unenforced

Can say that at least some of that is due to a lot of communities getting created during the initial 2023 Rexodous, abandoned shortly after, and picked up later by new mods. They often don't change the community sidebar info. Suggestion there is to reach out to the mods (polite DM or even a meta post in the community) asking that the specific rule be enforced or removed.

To a lesser but still important degree, there's nuances to the interpretation of every rule. As an example, I've removed many posts in this community that have the exact same title as this post. The difference is those were not-at-all thinly veiled rants about getting modded or banned from another community/instance (rule 5) where this one is describing specific aspects of the platform.

mods removing posts/banning users only when they take offense

Mods are people, people are fallible. Beats an overaggressive modbot, though. Also keep in mind mods put up with a lot of shit you don't see (abusive DMs, persistent trolls, absurd conspiracy theories and rumor mongering over in YPTB, rules lawyers who come within one Planck unit of the spirit of every rule just because they can, etc). We also don't get paid, and it's a neverending job where you're severely outnumbered and outgunned. Often, if you sincerely apologize and express regret they'll reconsider. You'd be surprised how far a genuine apology will get you. And I don't mean some phony-baloney "sorry I said the quiet part out loud" apology but actually realizing you fucked up and owning it.

users (and even mods) fighting each other over instances like rival gangs

I'm going to assume this is related to the recent LW defed announcement, and I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole other than say "about time".

communities propped up by single users

That's something you can help with. Unless it's a mods only community, which I don't think is what you're referring to, then you can absolutely tag in and contribute. I'm guilty of lurking, especially lately as I've been super busy with work, but used to try to post content to random communities to help grow them.

There are some good faith users of course, but it seems the vast majority just want to be in a safe space echo chamber and talk shit about each other.

Honestly, just try to notice which users those are and block them. Seriously, don't be afraid. Blocks are free and cut out so much of the immature bullshit around here. The comment sections on news/politics articles here (from my perspective) has gone from a raging dumpster fire of echo chamber circle jerking to a ghost town because I've just blocked so many people who do nothing but comment low effort knee-jerk reactionary garbage. The plus side is the actual insightful comments really stand out that way.

The point is, to a large degree, the experience here is what you make of it. Don't be afraid to curate your experience, and don't give into FOMO just because you've blocked a lot of communities, users, and instances

In other news, people exist and some of them are dicks. Some of them just disagree with you. Some are/do both.

Also, maybe consider the possibility that there is no such thing as a 'hive mind' anywhere and its just a lot of people in a particular space don't agree with you about some things.

What are you talking about echo chamber, you mean to tell me everyone else isn't a communist cat girl?

Seems to be an increasingly popular opinion, but hey ho. For me Lemmy is better by an order of magnitude - at least for now.

I've yet to have to deal with any overzealous mods, or been site-banned for some minor rule infraction by some bot. Nobody's been particularly shitty to me. Plus my comments, although never accruing stellar amounts of up-votes, are usually acknowledged and added to rather than being ignored because I posted an hour later and people can't be arsed to scroll that far down the thread.

Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it. Sure, there's certain vocal, marginalized groups who are always massively over-represented on platforms like this, but I filter out certain keywords using the Boost app and, basically, it's all good.

Hard downvote (I agree).

Was on Reddit since it started, left about 4 years ago during the reddexoxodus— it’s nowhere close. not even in the same galaxy. Sure, there are some pretty nasty corners of Lemmy, but on the whole, it’s much more like Reddit was around 2007 to 2010. It’s still pretty virgin territory. Although it is “maturing” much faster than Reddit did, but that’s to be expected.

And Reddit has become much more foul in the last few years.

People are starting to get snarly and insulting on here as well. Not surprising though, it's an manufactured unfair world and people are angry about it. I'm guilty of it myself from time to time...but I try to do better.

The only actual differences I've found are that there's no ads, and some instances have a more gated sign-up process to deter bots/spammers. That's it.

That's why I came here plus stopping generating profit for an American corporation

there's no ads, and some instances have a more gated sign-up process to deter bots/spammers.

IMO, that alone already makes it much better than reddit. As for the users, sure. At the end of the day, it’s all still humans, just a different demographic and bubble. So all the same human behavior on reddit manifests here too.

Its just a less active version of reddit.

As we get more and more people who were banned from Reddit and think they can come here to contonue being assholes, yeah. I'm here because I hate the Reddit UI and official app, so when they killed off 3rd party apps I refused to play along. The people who jumped ship by choice are usually fine, but yeah overall you're not wrong.

The lack of content a couple of years ago and behaviour of a lot of the userbase now has consistently helped cut down on the doomscrolling though, can't complain there.

Upvote for unpopular opinion.

I joined years ago and as more people with more variety in perspectives from all around the world are joining in, things are better and better.

I started on reddit when it opened, and quit after they started selling out more and more. I think lemmy feels a bit what reddit was starting off, and thats a good thing.

Thing with ads < thing without ads.

It's honestly way worse in a lot of ways. The amount of overconfident edgy teenage hot takes on every fucking issue is exhausting. And the lead dev is legitimately one of the most cringe people on the Internet.

Not sure whether to upvote or downvote, so I'll just reply.

The content is not much better for all the reasons OP mentioned. I'd like to add one more thing, that has been mentioned earlier in similar discussions: niche communities do not exist yet or at best hardly have any activity. For those I still occasionally use Reddit.

One thing that is actually better, apart from the ads that OP mentioned, is no corporate filters (which may or definitely do reflect the current political climate, dependent on the social medium in question).

I totally agree. except now instead of communities beefing with each other it's entire instances defederated over owner disagreements.

I have more control here. that is all I really care about.

These issues are somewhat unavoidable to some extent when it comes to community-moderated forums, be it Reddit or Lemmy.

And what's wrong with communities propped up by single users? (I may be biased as one such user.)

It's Reddit Lite

i feel like a lot of you people are absolutely terrible at moderating your own content, you know you can block people and communities, right?

The moderation certainly isn't better. Looking at you .world mods.

Do you think Lemmy Blueit? 🤭

Idk I got multiple 3 day bans on Reddit for simply upvoting content. That won’t happen here, that’s a big plus to me.

Also Lemmy is SMALL! If you want to make a ~~sub~~ community different then it is it’s not that hard I’ve been lighting up comicstrips with non-topical content and it’s already started moving the other posters that way. The culture here isn’t set it’s not the freight train reddit culture is.

As far as the other complaints I think that’s still an issue of Lemmy being small