There was a scientific paper I read semi recently that showed that researchers who post on Mastodon get much higher quality interaction than on Twitter (and I think a few other social-media type places, but it was mainly Mastodon vs Twitter). There was overall less interaction on Mastodon (unsurprisingly), but also that this difference has been diminishing as Mastodon grows. My takeaway is that if you want engagement, go Mastodon.

Reddits quality main appeal also is its past threads whereas on Twitter is rarely about what was tweeted but rather what’s the latest thing that’s happening.

Lemmy will need time and it might never replace reddit. But I look forward to the quality interactions with everyone here!

Unpopular opinion? Mastodon is a better Twitter than Lemmy is a better Reddit.

That's not unpopular, that's just fact. I enjoy Lemmy but it's fairly new. Mastodon has been around for a while longer and is a much more mature platform with more QOL features because of that. Comparing them on that basis doesn't really prove or mean anything at this point. Of course the teenager is more developed than the toddler, that's how it works. Lemmy will get to the same place with time.

From a product perspective, I really disagree.

Twitter’s value is/was that it was ubiquitous. Everyone (important) was there and it was the only Twitter-like thing that there was. Even the Pope tweets. I guarantee you the Pope will never be on Mastodon. Not that any of us necessarily care about updates from the Pope or Lebron James or whoever, but your favorite journalist was, and the developers of all your favorite indie iOS apps were, and if you live in a city, your local public transit authority was likely there as well. Twitter was really the only place for microblogging type of content.

On the other hand, Reddit is, by nature, just a centralized collection of forums, which I think is far more easily recreated in a decentralized way. You already have posts organized into communities, now with Lemmy we’re just adding another layer of organization on top of that. As another commenter said, much of Reddit’s value is that it was the place where someone asked the same question you now have and so you can read those answers, but Twitter’s value really is for real time communications.

The issue I see with both frankly is search. It can be kinda hard with either to find the community/discussions that are interesting and relevant to you, but hopefully that will improve.

They are not duplicated (just the same name) and it's not impossible to subscribe to them all with a few clicks.

Use https://lemmyverse.net/communities and simply search for communities and subscribe to them.

I read somewhere this is an upcoming feature. Let's say you subscribe "memes" then you got shown all communities named "memes" from federated servers combined.

You need to follow hashtags and groups related to your interest. Groups will boost the toots and make them visible. When you follow a group, it's like following hundreds of people at once.

When tooting, you have to mention groups and not only hashtags. The groups will boost the toot for visibility.

It's a vit of practice with groups and hashtags.

It requires a bit of work, since there isn't an algorithm to do that for you.

I've been following hashtags for things I enjoy. #gaming, #videogames, #steamdeck, #android, etc.

You should try changing instance. I started on mastodon.social and had the same problem as you. Find an instance that meets your interests and sign in. Then you can transfer your followers (only your followers, that's not really good 🫤)

It's not the server on Mastodon but the hashtags. Put in an area of interest and you can follow that entire hash tag. For instance, put in #cars and see what comes up.

Use hashtags and search across all instances. Follow people who interest you.