I prefer Lemmy over Mastodon for the same reason I preferred Reddit (pre-APIpocalypse) over Twitter (pre-Musk) - the ability to subscribe to specific communities with similar interests. Try as I might in Mastodon with selective subscriptions to certain posters I still find myself scrolling through stuff I have no interest in hoping for a nugget of interest.
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I need to follow specific users on Mastodon to tailor my experience. On Lemmy, I follow entire communities where people can engage, all grouped by posts. It feels way less chaotic.
I know I could follow tags on Mastodon, but IMO their discoverability is even worse than communities, and if someone decides to spam a tag with irrelevant content there's not much I can do but to block the account.
With communities, there's at least some moderation happening.
But then maybe it's my own bias, I always preferred interacting on Reddit vs Twitter.
I honestly think the tiny fraction of MAU might be the reason. Something like once you exceed a Dunbar Number of contacts in a community it starts to go downhill.
I think it's the gamification. Mastodon degamifies Twitter in a way Lemmy can't really do with the classic Reddit system.
Votes go up, votes go down, you can see people winning and losing here. It's fun, even if it's in a bad way.
Try following George Takei, Star Trek Minus Context, and/or the various cat accounts, e.g Cats of Yore.
@bruhbeans RNG. Also "fun" is subjective. Some of it is just cultural too. Mastodon has a certain โvibe" that has persisted since its early days while Lemmy's vibe is more imported from the more fun/wild days of Reddit.
Mastodon users hates ice cream, that's all you need to know.
Plenty of reasons already shared, I just want to add that I felt (still feel) the same about Reddit vs Twitter.
Maybe it is the...
It also has shitposting!
because you touch yourself
Why is a smaller community more fun than a bigger community?
Because the difficulty of not offending people increases as the number and cultural range of people changes.
A small group is easier to get comfortable with than a larger group.