The key benefit is that it’s public infrastructure that’s not owned by a corporation. Public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that’s accountable to the public.

Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.

Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.

Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.

From that perspective I think that open and federated platforms. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.

One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.

Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. It’s also more difficult for third parties to collect data since it doesn’t all conveniently live on the same server that some company owns. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and tracker bloat.

Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.

On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network. More users joining Mastodon is a net positive for Lemmy because we get more content and more people to have discussions with.

Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.

In order to be truly free, we must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.

No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.

On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.

At the end of the day, it’s about owning our tools and using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.

Top benefit is less bots and thus less artificial pressure on your opinion and world view, less propaganda and less emotional engagement. Reddit was 99% plastic and 1% good niche content from real human non-bot creators. Then reddit changed policies and it was not even usable anymore as an independent cross section.

The traffic and infinite content on reddit was mostly artificial, do you realize that? Fake shit show.

The main draw of the fediverse for me is not being a product for a company to sell to the highest bidder.

Reddit would have been more addicting which consume more of my time, would be a centralized platform, there would be more inhumane people there (people who support Zionism), and it’s a Big Tech.

We don’t have these in Lemmy, PieFed and these are benefits for me.

Once the world settles down again there will be more specialized content. Currently we’re all in an existential flux watching the norms of the last 70 years be blown to smithereens by a guy who brutally rapes young girls and the resulting horrors that he is using to avoid being held to account.

Specialized instances are the major draw for me. I almost never use /all sort because of that.

Agree with a lot, and want to add: it doesn’t eat even a fraction of the time that doomscrolling reddit did. My feeds actually have an end and refreshing often does nothing, so I can put my phone away and try breaking the habit of picking it right back up again.

I don’t get banned for saying billionaires should be murdered.

So, what is the actual benefit of using Lemmy or PieFed over Reddit?

not making a few asshole owners rich from your content ? as one.

Granular control, down to setting up your own instance if you wish, as another

“Safe spaces” eg maga have their own instance as another.

To me, it’s the resistance against enshittification on the principle of interopability. Also, most servers are run by volunteers and donations, not corporations that will eventually squeeze profit from you.

It’s a fairly clean slate. We’re establishing a new place for people but interested in corporate social media.

When people settle new territory, there’s nothing there. Everything you want, you either need to build it yourself or wait for someone else to get around to it when they have a chance. If you aren’t going to be a producer, you’re going to find slim pickings.

I came here expecting a little more than what is even here 3 years later. But I liked the tightness of the community and that when I posted something, it wasn’t instantly drowned out by a hundred other comments.

Superbowl was dead after the first couple of months, and I had really enjoyed it on Reddit and didn’t want it to die here. I started posting what photos I had from previous travels, and when I ran out, I looked for places in all 50 states where people could see owls in person. Then I started doing daily research. Eventually that wasn’t enough, and now I volunteer working with wild animals, including my beloved raptors.

Every day I enjoy talking to my fellow lemmings. I get enough comments and do enough posts to keep me occupied. There are some users I really love and I can remember personal details about them, and I notice when they aren’t around for a bit or I think about them if they’re going through personal stuff. I enjoy working at the animal rehab where I get hands on with amazing animals and work with some of the best folks anywhere.

If I would have sat there and let everyone else do the work, I would have given up here long ago. But I looked for a niche to make my own, and now people look forward to my posts and I look forward to their reactions. And developing that relationship helped me find something in my office life that I love and enjoy more than anything I’ve ever done before.

You’re barely a number at Reddit. Here you can be anything, it’s not like there’s much competition.

I’m new to Lemmy. Its way smaller than Reddit but I feel like there are more real people here. Reddit turned into another tightly controlled, bot influenced media platform. I got really tired of all the nonstop political echo chamber posts as well. Why would someone want to engage and compete with a bunch of bots all the time?

I like talking to real people. To me that’s a benefit.

Reddit also feels like it’s gotten less friendly to me as a woman. That’s just been my personal feeling.

The fact that it’s not reddit is a huge benefit. Also, the smaller overall community is an advantage for moderation and seems to result in a nicer experience.

The quality of discourse here is much higher and more varied in breadth of opinion than on any corporate platform I’ve experienced in years, even with the occasional asshole popping up here and there. At least on Lemmy the assholes are easier to avoid and predict (e.g. certain instances attract certain types).

What we lose in missing out on niche gaming discussion is worth what is gained, to me. Also, here it’s small enough that we can be the change we want to see, so if there’s something missing you can always just make a community and start posting about whatever it is, and people will probably find your posts pretty quickly.

resisting enshitification through federation, and talking to humans instead of bots. not seeing covert ads on the front page. being able to talk about anti-hegemonic anti-billionaire topics openly without getting banned.