Warning: This is a rant.
I don't really know how to describe it but the content isn't quite where reddit had been for me. Also the comments are kind of weird at times, like they type of person here doesn't quite seem as 'normal' as what I'm used to from reddit.
There's a lot more open source and privacy focused people and conversations. A lot of people seem to hate on big tech and big companies in a sort of toxic-ish feeling way to me (not to say the other relationship isn't toxic.. just saying). Random conversations go into: "omg your privacy is lost cause you used a Google service." Then we have the 'if we don't defederate with Meta the world ends' conversations. I personally would like to see what Meta does in the fediverse.. maybe it will make it more normalized..idk. Then the: "if your app isn't open source its awful and terrible for the world" people.
Like that stuff is all fine, but it just isn't quite my cup of tea.
These things remind me of that one person in my comp sci classes in college who I just couldn't stand talking to. He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail and would generally look like a dingus).
The bulk of the content that gets comments seem to be mostly meme atm. At least on all (7/10 of the current top for me are memes). I like my memes, but would like some more breadth/depth.
Like I hope Lemmy continues to grow and hope it gets better, but it leaves me missing reddit at the moment.
In a perfect world I wish reddit corp wasn't such assholes and this whole thing didn't happen the way it did.
I'm completely skipping the UI and stuff not being as familiar and the various outages/bugs/etc since that's to be expected with something at this stage.
Please don't hate me :) Just sharing my unpopular opinion. Though I genuinely wonder if others feel the same way.
/Rant
A lot of us here, are here and have the opinions you don't like (FOSS, privacy is important, big tech is bad) because we too wish Reddit wasn't such assholes.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. Lemmy users are jaded. We have come to accept that big tech companies will continue to act the way they do because it is in their nature.
The free ride is over bub. The walls are closing in as venture capitalists squeeze users for profits (especially in this economy). With big tech, you are the product. You don't get a say in how you use the product. Instead you are cattle, to be hearded. If you want to be a sheep and mingle along with all the other sheep and just keep your head down and accept whatever the big tech companies tell you to do (and that's fine if it's what you want), then maybe Lemmy ain't for you. But one thing is clear Lemmy must shed the ills of big tech and investor interests and privacy harvesting business models if we are to not return exactly where we ended up using Reddit.
Sorry, I don't have better news for you.
Also a lot of us users are older and this isn't our first social media company failing us.
Raise your hand if you came from digg, myspace or somethingaweful