I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks. … Is Lemmy the answer?

That’s really going to depend on you. What sort of “controversial” comment?

If you engage in ableist, racist, or LGBTQ-phobic commenting, you’re going to have a bad time. Other than that sort of thing, you’ll probably be fine, with some exceptions:

• There are two Marxist-Leninist instances that can be problematic (mainly a minority of their users, tbf).
• Some mods and instance admins can be ban-happy.
• There’s a larger than average population of neurodivergent people here so, that is sometimes a cause of the second item and miscommunication (we’re trying!).
• You may run into unexpected rules depending on where you’re posting. Individual instances (kinda like “reddits”) have server-wide policies. Communities (aka comms, the equivalent of a subreddit) usually also have their own policies. This means being aware of where you are posting and commenting (ie. don’t expect shitting on communist ideals to go well on an M-L instance, even if the community is related to something else).
• It’s important to be aware that Unix Surrealism is the best comic in the Fediverse.
• There are a lot of Linux users and tech nerds here. Don’t be frightened if you find yourself getting a bit FLOSS-curious. We’re generally happy to try to lend a hand to people who hit bumps at the beginning of their open-source journey.

If you’re good with that stuff and can find out start a comm for Beetles discussions, there’s a good chance that you’ll have a good time.

Lemmy needs to figure out a way to “group” similar communities from different instances. That is the biggest flaw by far.

Lemmy is significantly smaller. Because of this:

+Trolls are easier to spot

+Interactions tend to be friendlier and more wholesome/respectful

+Far more originality shining through

-less engaged communities

-fewer niche communities

-no rich history to comb through

For general browsing, news, technology, mainstream topics etc… it’s much better than reddit, less toxic, better vibe.

It’s very small though, so I’ve found two areas where it is just not a replacement:

• Specific, smaller niche interests, they might have a community here but it is often empty and quiet or just non existent.

• Sports, specifically a place to chat during live events. There’s not enough people to support that.

So it depends what you are looking for and how niche your interests are.

I’ve mostly stopped using reddit and am in here now. But I still end up there occasionally. Not much these days though.

I think it’s the same echo chamber here, but it’s smaller. People block instances they don’t like, and are in favor of moderators removing controversial things, specially around communism and tankies.

I just like that it’s not run by big tech. Just discussions, no companies or ads. I think most users are tech people.

I moved over to it after the initial Reddit exodus and haven’t really looked elsewhere. It’s not quite a full replacement in terms of content and engagement obviously. It’s good for broader stuff like memes, politics/games/movies/etc in general, but not so much for the specific. There are quite a few games I used to spend a lot of time discussing on their subreddits, but they’re basically ghost towns here for a lot of them.

There are also some more specific community leanings. You’re gonna see a LOT of Star Trek and Linux related stuff.

But overall, I’m happy enough with it knowing it’s a non-privatized space to talk.

First of all, welcome.

Depends what you’re after, really. I find that lemmy has less of an echo chamber, but the average political stance is a lot more left-ish than reddit.

If your opinion is considered garbage, you’ll probably be downvoted for it, but banned is another thing; You can find an instance more to your liking, for example if you post tankie stuff on lemmygrad, you’ll probably only get praise from there.

It mostly comes down to how a platform with many people tend to naturally operate - garbage people get treated at such by the rest. So whatever your leanings might be, I suggest you find an instance that is somewhat reasonably close to share your values.

Other than that, one of the main differences from reddit is the content quantity - Smaller user base means less content. And I’m perfectly fine with that, as I can keep up with the feed without scrolling for hours.

Also, here I can say that I don’t give two shits about neither Zelda nor Link, without fear of backlash. At least yhe contemporary games - Everything since Link II for NES has been kinda meh in my book.

And if you want to filter out politics, blocking lemmygrad takes away most of the tankie-spam.

It’s the best I’ve found, but I wouldn’t call it a “good” alternative myself no.

Many others have commented on the small communities/lack of niche communities so I’ll simply say I agree with the takes in this thread there.

Personally though, I generally find Lemmy to be far less tolerant of any dissenting opinions across most communities. And man do I mean any. There’s a plethora of topics that aren’t even worth trying to discuss here because if you introduce the slightest bit of nuance to a hardline take you’ll be downvoted, insulted, and ignored.

A quick example that comes to mind are services such as Spotify/Youtube. To make a long story short, I find that I use Youtube often enough that I don’t mind paying for Youtube premium. They need to make money somehow to continue providing that service and I can’t fucking stand ads so hey sure it’s worth the monthly payment to me. I’m a pretty satisfied customer all things considered.

Try offering that perspective in any related thread and you’ll be called bootlicker and made to feel like you’re propping up Satan himself for daring to pay for Youtube and be happy to do so.

There’s other, similar topics. Some are easier to avoid, like the FuckCars community. I was a pretty big fan of that community on reddit but on Lemmy most threads seem to truly believe we need to go 100% no cars at all and there is no middleground damnit. Other topics manage to work their way into damn near any thread. Biden could literally pull a child and puppy from a burning building and there will always be comments about how he’s still a genocidal maniac and basically evil. That entire war is basically just not worth talking about here imo.

And then there’s little stuff. For example, don’t ever say you use Windows here lest a whole horde of people jump in to call you an idiot for not having switched to Linux I mean really what’s wrong with you using the most popular OS in the world by a large margin. Stuff like that.

So I guess to summarize my feelings here, I personally believe the echo-chamber is far worse on Lemmy than reddit and that’s primarily due to the smaller community. A lot of likeminded people came to Lemmy and we’re missing a lot of middleground opinions that come naturally with a larger, more diverse population. Too many people view everything as black and white and if you sit in grey both extremes are against you.

There are absolutely exceptions; I have seen respectful discourse on the site. But the general trend I perceive here is that the echo-chamber is far worse.