Warning: This is a rant.
I don't really know how to describe it but the content isn't quite where reddit had been for me. Also the comments are kind of weird at times, like they type of person here doesn't quite seem as 'normal' as what I'm used to from reddit.
There's a lot more open source and privacy focused people and conversations. A lot of people seem to hate on big tech and big companies in a sort of toxic-ish feeling way to me (not to say the other relationship isn't toxic.. just saying). Random conversations go into: "omg your privacy is lost cause you used a Google service." Then we have the 'if we don't defederate with Meta the world ends' conversations. I personally would like to see what Meta does in the fediverse.. maybe it will make it more normalized..idk. Then the: "if your app isn't open source its awful and terrible for the world" people.
Like that stuff is all fine, but it just isn't quite my cup of tea.
These things remind me of that one person in my comp sci classes in college who I just couldn't stand talking to. He would try to make you feel like an idiot by trying to sound all self righteous and smart. (Honestly he would fail and would generally look like a dingus).
The bulk of the content that gets comments seem to be mostly meme atm. At least on all (7/10 of the current top for me are memes). I like my memes, but would like some more breadth/depth.
Like I hope Lemmy continues to grow and hope it gets better, but it leaves me missing reddit at the moment.
In a perfect world I wish reddit corp wasn't such assholes and this whole thing didn't happen the way it did.
I'm completely skipping the UI and stuff not being as familiar and the various outages/bugs/etc since that's to be expected with something at this stage.
Please don't hate me :) Just sharing my unpopular opinion. Though I genuinely wonder if others feel the same way.
/Rant
Reddit is somewhat known for being unwelcoming as well though?
For myself, honestly no I don't miss it at all. But mostly b/c I'll stay with Reddit, after a month's hiatus for protest, and probably only check it once a week for an hour rather than multiple times a day as before. There's a particular gaming community over there that doesn't post much content here yet, and even while I'm trying to help do my part there, I still want to be informed... which means at least reading Reddit (probably via Teddit to deprive them of traffic). I'm also on Squabbles too. Some people also are saying that kbin.social is more welcoming than most Lemmy servers, especially sh.itjust.works - I don't know about that b/c wouldn't you see mostly the same content b/c of federation? - but in any case it could be a thought to try different instances, maybe especially smaller ones.
It depends on what you wanted it for tbh. If you can stand to be on Reddit, then go for it? Maybe also stay here too, if you like certain parts of it, and get the best of both worlds. You can't force people to be welcoming, you can only find places where they hang out and then you hang out there too. Squabbles is fairly welcoming - it's being described right now as something like toxically non-toxic, as in activist-level hunting down of toxic personality traits, I can't really explain it but check it out if you are interested:-).
Good luck, and I hope that you find what you need. Also, please remember to use social media responsibly rather than let it use you: it is addictive regardless of what platform you find yourself on, and maybe you are awakening to that possibility b/c of the switch, i.e. if you moved back you would find that it was no longer "the same" as it was before, b/c of your new understanding of that fact? If so, hopefully these growing pains lead to something better:-).