I find the quality and variety of discussions on the fediverse to be lower than what I had on reddit. Lemmings have strong preconceived notions and little interest in changing viewpoints from new information. I think I’ll be switching back.
Edit: you’ll find that most of the comments deny any shortcomings of the culture and go directly to invalidating my opinions via character assassination. If lemmy was a community that actually stood for the ideals which it espouses it would take constructive criticism in the spirit in which it was intended. QED.
There definitely is a critical mass needed for social media. Reddit hit critical mass around 2012 when digg imploded. When I joined reddit in like 2010, it felt very much like Lemmy currently does.
I think that’s a major problem with Lemmy, because it’s so disjointed it’s hard to hit the critical mass needed to keep conversations interesting and fresh.
I think what Lemmy has going for it, that reddit lost long ago, is the lack of bots and automation (e.g., automod) that brought the quality of content down; not to mention, the lack of reposts – I’m sure that’ll change over time. If that’s the “major problem with Lemmy”, then personally I don’t want to fix it. Bots are cutesy, and being able to do what they do is a technical fascination, but they degrade an experience that is meant for people [to interact with each other]. THough, I do admit that I am a simple casual and not a power user, so I am open to the idea that my experience is going to be more tame than some others.