I joined because Reddit has become a cesspool of bots and toxic behaviour. Lemmy is still completely open-sourced, while Reddit isn’t at all now. Also, when you first sign up on Reddit currently, you get completely ignored now and can’t post or comment on regular subs.
Reddit alternatives seem to attract people who were banned from Reddit. I think that explains a lot about the general vibe on here. I was never on Voat but I’m aware of its reputation, and a lot of the time Lemmy feels like how I imagine Voat was, same personalities, different politics.