It's reddit-like BUT it doesn't have the same mass adoption and that's why I go to reddit. I don't have time to be a saint and help their numbers, so I just go to reddit and read what I want. Really HN is the only SM platform that I actually participate both ways with. I just read thing on other SM sites to catch up with friends or topics (like reddit). Comments there are mostly a trash heap but on something you want to know about you can find a gold nugget every now and then.
It's like Reddit but not owned by a public corp.
Reddit still has more users but Lemmy is more like old school distributed web, not just an ad product pushed by coked out MBA accountants.