Technology

Personally I would filter and only look at platforms that are open source and Fediverse/ActivityPub compatible. Otherwise it will suffer from similar issues as the other alternatives (centralization, lack of community/momentum, takeovers).

As long as the platform federates nicely then it really comes down to personal preference. The content and communities can grow independently :)

The platforms that come to mind for that are Lemmy, Kbin, Mbin, and Sublinks. I'm probably missing some other good ones

There are several closed group options or other closed source ones that aim to be just like Reddit in practice but not exactly it in theory. Ironically the Reddit alternatives sub on Reddit is probably the best place to get such a list 😜.

I enjoyed Squabbles for a bit - it was described at the time as toxically non-toxic as in very much anti-hate speech, though I don't know how it's fared recently. At the end of the day though it's just one guy's project, and while he's no Huffman, still the entire thing turns around him, very unlike the Fediverse that can become anything we want it to be.

If you do remain on Lemmy, learn which things to block bc that will improve your experience substantially. Just blocking lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net improved mine 95%, and ironically some people (not me) also block Lemmy.ml. You will come to find what works for you, I am just saying that the experience varies enormously depending on that one factor!

Never heard of phuks. Went there and immediately the first thing I came across was hate speech. Assuming its not open source?

https://tildes.net/ , it's not super active but it's my second option.

im enjoying an mbin instance