Here is one such very relevant post: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/16hkxua/why_im_giving_up_on_lemmyfediverse/
A really interesting discussion in particular is below the reply saying:
The issues you brought up are very much on Reddit too. They are just more noticeable on Lemmy because there aren’t enough niche subs or fluff to drown them out.
Other replies included “I did end up shutting down my instance.”, which continued on with “But, for me, seeing people blindly bash the USA every chance they get, It’s a turn off.” - like, I get that the USA is unpopular (especially now), and also I am okay with the Threadiverse remaining small, but I did want to push back against this magical type of thinking that we can both have our cake and eat it to, in the form of both bashing people from it and also reaching out to invite people on Reddit (who are primarily from the USA) to join us here. Maybe Lemmy will have more success by marketing itself as more “European” (or at least “non-USA”, so maybe European + Global South)? Whatever goal we want to aim for, we should keep our eyes open as we aim directly at it, imho.
I do not think that all or even most Threadiverse instances should defederate from lemmy.ml, but on the other hand it would be extremely nice if just ONE instance would do so, which we could then share to people on Reddit as a nicer entry point for those more centrist-leaning users who are primarily people from the USA. Or else decide that that goal is (collectively) not what we all want. The latter being what ended up happening, whether intentionally or no.
Fwiw, Lemmy has gotten much better over the years in this respect, imho, with many more instances having banned lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net specifically.
Like, look at those contortionist comment replies trying to state that, e.g.:
(if anyone’s out of the loop - lemmygrad isn’t “lemmy”, they are usually defederated by regular instances and their content isn’t visible in “lemmy” as it is colloquially understood)
This topic is a MAJOR, oft-repeated reason why people on Reddit refuse to come here and check us out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jjl8g5/i_tried_lemmy_again_after_a_year_long_hiatus_and/ (the title there gets cut off but continues with “it’s still beyond terrible"), and here is that post’s concluding paragraph:
If you have a very narrow worldview, politics is your entire personality, and you enjoy dry, charged humor then I guess Lemmy is a good alternative for you, but if you’re anybody else it’s not worth it. Reddit is not good, everybody here agrees. However, despite it’s numerous flaws it’s still a product than Lemmy at it’s very best. It’s simply not a viable alternative imo. Even Instagram and Tiktok are better alternatives than Lemmy.
Note that I do not agree, just stating how these people said that they felt, if that is helpful for a diagnosis of the state of affairs and what we could potentially do to help mitigate those concerns. e.g. I successfully petitioned for discuss.online to defederate from hexbear.net, thinking that could help make Redditors feel more welcomed here. Although now I am placing my hope more in PieFed (which e.g. allows users to perform their own personalized defederations without needing admin approval to block all users from any specific instance), while giving up much hope for Lemmy to keep up with its wondrous pace of adding new features.
Bazell@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Lemmy is being too political. We don’t like it.
Meanwhile Reddit:
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OpenStars@piefed.social 1 day ago
The difference, one would assume, is that on the whole, Reddit’s political biases influence more what is not shown (much like lemmy.ml banning people for any criticism of Russia, China, or North Korea, or the echo chamber in hexbear), whereas Lemmy’s tankie issue also manifests as people actively sea-lioning (e.g. Cowbee) and (especially from hexbear) overt trolling, which shows up more in people’s faces. Both are issues, neither are good.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Always claims of sea-lioning, but never any evidence. You’ve had me blocked for over a year now, why continue this crusade?
comfy@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
I’ve come across some people who have no idea what “sealioning” even means. There used to be a hb user “Ulysses” or something, like three years ago, who accused me of doing it after I replied to their reply to my reply, and that’s the only conversation we’d ever had. I pulled up the definition of sealioning and the comic which the word originated from, and they just say “no that’s not true, stop sealioning”.
I feel like some people just think sealioning means “this person keeps replying to my posts”, as if conversations on a public forum are somehow uncalled for, or unusual.
alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Your Don Quixote RP is going really well, congrats!
Bazell@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
By my experience, Reddit has some influence from government that they unofficially confirmed. And Reddit admins(not even talking about moderators) are actively promoting some political ideas in their actions. Like, protecting ICE and mass murders in Israel. The most interesting thing that this mostly works in large comunities, because of in small ones you will not see such thing except for rare occasions.
OpenStars@piefed.social 18 hours ago
I could criticize China right now, here in this community on Lemmy.world, but if I did so in a community on Lemmy.ml I would get banned from not only the entire instance but from communities that I’ve never so much as heard of. We have censorship here too.
And we have toxicity here as well. As too does Reddit. It is a little odd to hear Redditors of all people complain about toxicity:-). Maybe they were used to smaller communities on Reddit, avoiding the big ones, but then here with far less content you pretty much have to subscribe to the large communities (like is there another one talking about the Fediverse besides this one that is more worthwhile?), where the toxicity is more visible?
I don’t know, I haven’t wanted to actually talk to people on Reddit for several years now:-).