I’ve been on Beehaw and Lemmy.world for the past two weeks now and while people seem to be posting content that isn’t about Reddit or Twitter or how great federated platforms are, such content does not receive as many comments/discussion as topics about the Reddit API controversy, or the current Twitter controversy, etc.
I prefer to sort by “new” when on the main page of either Beehaw or Lemmy.world. Most posts scarcely get a few upvotes and almost no comments. Without comments, I feel far less inclined to leave a comment unless there’s a discussion already going on.
It feels like the gravity of discussion is still mostly centered on complaints and discussion about Reddit (or Big Tech in general), despite this platform being billed as a Reddit replacement. Hopefully that changes with time but there’s a reason I haven’t left Reddit yet.
I agree that the all section with default active sorting feels a little to Reddit/Twitter. Things get already much better with sorting by hot or top.
One thing I wonder is, if people actually know how to use Lemmy subscriptions. Reddit used a algorithm to customize your frontpage and Lemmy doesn’t have that. There is one single video on lemmy.world/c/videos with over 1k upvotes while the rest has only between 15 - 30. The difference? That one video ended up in the all section and enough people commented in it.
My local instance feed is pretty good and has almost no Reddit or Twitter stuff in it. Same goes for my subscription feed.