At least personally I don’t really see how the threadiverse is more toxic than reddit. Though it may be because my instance is simply good at blocking the toxicity away, and the instance their chose isn’t. Which could be something to work on I suppose, but moderation is always a big discussion in these situations, with some people not liking moderation but also, in reality, wanting it
As for niche content, that, unfortunately, is just a catch 22 situation. No simple solution other than to simply get more people to join
OpenStars@piefed.social 1 week ago
Yeah Ada is pretty amazing, ngl that is likely why for you - not many spaces have such a fantastic person looking out for them. There is occasional drama like the 196 situation in the last year but even that she handled with grace and class and a deft hand.
About Reddit, there’s a lot there: mainly it’s a network effect, and so people are just looking for any excuse to justify not having to move, and go somewhere with less content that is “different”.
Also a big part is that while the main subs are toxic AF, the niche ones there are mainly free of toxicity (people say? I haven’t been back to see personally since the Rexodus!), so it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison - but on the other hand, the niche subs here have barely any content, like after you spend 5-10 minutes reading every single comment even across every cross-post for the 1-5 daily posts (or worse, weekly, or worse still, monthly) posts, then there’s nothing left. So remaining in the niche subs here might leave you with zero to a couple upvotes mainly per comment, and almost no to possibly 0-3 mainly critical replies to a post.
So here, people - especially new users - really are going to be drawn mostly to the largest communities, which ofc are going to be those with the most toxicity. Especially since Lemmy does not federate moderator reports so there is such a small pool of mods who are on that exact instance where the community is and willing to absorb that burden - and even then we keep chasing them off, saying how “we” (in terms of the Threadiverse as a whole) are better off without such, but then a new user takes a look at a mostly unmoderated 4chan-style discussion and nopes right back to what they are most comfortable and familiar with: smaller, niche subs on Reddit that have good mods, even despite how Reddit admins control things from above.
I wish we had more like Ada here. But we don’t, so please just enjoy having her where you are at and don’t take her for granted:-).