I felt that at first but I've found the engagement to be more meaningful here when it does happen, even though it's sometimes sparse or not at all. I came in the previous influx after spez started forcing subs open. I don't really miss it that much now.

I've found myself actually reading articles since I can't go in and just read someone else's synopsis of the content, which frankly is a good thing. I can get my own information and form my own opinions, Reddit just let me be lazy but it's a nice change.

As for engagement, just be the change your wish to see, and engagement will follow. I think there is still some fine tuning to be done in terms of the sorting algorithms as well, which would ideally get day old content out and active but fresh content in. A lot of dust left to settle with the great migration underway.

Remember to be commenting on stuff that don’t have comments to drive engagement! It’s important for all of us to do our part

I sort by new mostly and if I find something interesting I write a comment trying to startup some conversations. The more people do this, the faster the community will grow.

I was a somewhat massive lurker on reddit, I didn't bother engaging much because I knew 60% of the time the reply would be snippy, even if my post wouldn't be remotely combative. So over the years I just stopped bothering mostly.

My inbox has kicked off more here in the last week than probably the last 365 days on reddit. It's really wholesome, for lack of a better term.

All it takes if you commenting, to fire off more comments just like now. It's good shit!

There is definitely a lower quantity of posts and many of those posts don't get tons of comments, but the posts and the comments they do get are of a much higher quality.

Even i was a lurker on reddit. But here, I'm contributing more actively.

"Be the change you want see in the world" applies quite well here.

Also for app, I've been using memmy and it's pretty good.

The bigger communities are reaching a kind of critical mass but getting there for the niche ones, particularly for those with no overarching direction to move to Lemmy, will be slow.

I feel like over time Lemmy as a platform will manage to make it easier to link decentralized communities together (fingers crossed). Until then it's slow and steady.

It reminds me of Reddit a decade ago when most posts in the specialized subs didn't have much interaction either. But the interaction was deeper and more meaningful and did not consist of everybody trying to crank out witty one-liners to whatever topic.

The other thing I try to consider: What was okay maybe a couple of years ago now feels weirdly "empty" because our brains have been Pavloved into having a deluge of dopamine-inducing content washing over us all the time....

Try to remember that a lot of engagement on reddit nowadays is bots. Even if they seem like humans. How Lemmy is now is how reddit felt back in 2008.

Comments are emptier, but I feel like they're more relevant. To comment is an actual response and discussion, not just the same joke with the expected replies on every thread.