Before I met my boyfriend (seahorse) I hadn’t heard of Lemmy or the word Fediverse. I didn’t know there was this world of federated servers people could host independently that communicate with each other. I am by far not a techy. He told me he ran an instance. My response was exactly, “What is Lemmy instance? Idk about such things.” I gave this silly response because I felt a bit stupid due to my ignorance. Hosting. Servers. What? During my short time here I have seen a stark contrast between Lemmy, and FB and IG. I feel sort of a sense of leveling up (thanks to him). I still have my accounts on the latter two social media platforms, but dislike them for several reasons. I like that Lemmy isn’t a popularity contest. People don’t post pictures depicting a fake perfect life, there is no competition for followers/friends, and no one is trying to sell me something. I hope this sticks. I hope to expand my use of Lemmy and my knowledge.
I am not sure that what perceived improvement in quality of content on lemmy is due to the platform, and not due to it’s “newness” (Smarter people might tend to try new platforms), I like lemmy showing upvotes and downvotes and not just the sum, but otherwise it’s just basically reddit accept you don’t seem to encounter really knowledgeable users (even for open source, i didn’t see any devs here but you see plenty on reddit), and you can’t use RES .
I think the users here are plenty knowledgeable but that’s just my opinion. I feel that quality posts are easier to find on Lemmy because it doesn’t use karma system like reddit that buries everything that doesn’t immediately get tons of upvotes.
I agree, with the additional thought that “[rarely] encounter really knowledgeable users” is more about the small community rather than anything else (this platform is not gatekept for tech experts anyway).