Came from reddit like many others. I had been unhappy with the artificial and corporate-sterile feel of reddit for a while. And second to that, the way subreddits were set up made it rife with powermod agendas and no good alternatives to escape them.
I much prefer the “interconnected islands” of lemmy that reduces the ability of anyone to advertise, astroturf, or have ownership of the whole system. It feels looser and puts more control back in the hands of users, which is refreshing.
Same here. A lot of people (including myself until a week ago) are either oblivious or fooling themselves about what is happening to Reddit. Changes are being made with the sole purpose of boosting revenue ahead of their IPO. Reddit is no longer focused on improving the user experience, but has switched to full monetization mode. That will only get worse now. It is a slow-moving train wreck.
And, yeah, some Reddit subs are over-moderated and arbitrary. Looking at you /r/boardgames.
It was not easy to figure out Lemmy at first, and the sign up process a few months ago was difficult (for me). But now that I’m on board with a good app, Lemmy is just great. It feels like early-days Reddit before enshittification set in.