So when people say “better” in this context, most likely they mean the general feel tha objective reasons inpacting day to day user experience.

The objectively better features are open source nature and the decentralization - but this may actually make user experience worse (meaning more complicated to understandandget into).

As for the “better feeling” aspect, it just feels more like Reddit used to be once upon a time. Everything is more natural. Reddit is a very mainstream and corporate place and you can feel it for at least few years now.