They both have pros and cons. Both deal with spam, AI slop, and other BS. It seems like a “pick your poison” kinda thing.

can’t be compared. They don’t play in the same league number-wise. I got a lot less interactions here on Lemmy/piefed than I used to have on Reddit, but since I don’t want to use Reddit it doesn’t matter much: I’m here, not over there anymore ;)

After using reddit for years and Lemmy for months I’ve made some observations, YMMV though. I interact most heavily with ask type subs on both platforms. I’ve noticed a significantly further left lean here. I figured it’d be less moderated but I haven’t really found that to be the case. I’ve also noticed in some cases very crazy people have been banned/shadow banned off redit and end up here spewing wild shit. Opinions tend to be stronger here. Very long answers are more common here. Post creation in communities like this are generally better in my experience because replies are people who care to answer meaningfully or not at all. If I ask a question here I’ll get responses from the leftist/liberal/communist/anarchist/antirealist side of things exclusively. On reddit I’ll get leftist/liberal/left/right/alt right answers.

I haven’t used Reddit for quite some time, but I can tell you anecdotally that I miss a lot fewer major news stories, and am completely unaware of a lot more broad trends in memes, than my friends who still use Reddit primarily.

I have a possibly unpopular take on this….

Whatever you can say, good or bad, about either platform, the one thing that neither of them have control over is the quality of the people who use them. And my observation is that neither platform is more or less attractive to higher quality people.

On both platforms, I see about the same ratio of friendly, affable, helpful people to toxic, angry, terminally online people. And each has its share of communities where terrible people seem to congregate. I come here to joke, shitpost, and sometimes share my perspective and the experiences that have shaped it, and enjoy the company of people here for the same goals. I’ve had as much success (and failure) here as I have anywhere else.

This isn’t an indictment of either platform so much as an indictment of humanity and the condition it’s currently in. That all being said, Reddit’s slow degradation in quality and the reasons for it are well-known and not something Lemmy has a problem with, and hopefully is inoculating itself against.

Reddit has more of everything, good and bad.

The community will determine if the good out ways the bad.

I would say a trusted community for discussion and knowledge on Reddit would be r/woodworking. That community is very helpful and stays on topic. Many hobby communities are like this so long as the mods do a good job.

Then you have all the major political and cultural communities that I consider places to stay away from.

While a lot of the discussion may be accurate the methods people use to convey them can be dogmatic.

Reddit has orders of magnitude more content. There is no debate on that.

If you stay away from the popular subs on Reddit you can avoid the spam.