I’ve been trying to find a place where people actually talk about things properly, not just drop random comments or try to go viral. Everywhere I look it’s either full of spam, trolls, or people arguing just for the sake of it. I just want a space where you can share an opinion, hear different sides, and have a real back-and-forth without it getting messy.

I’m not looking for drama or an echo chamber. Just normal people having solid discussions and being respectful, even if they disagree. If you know a platform like that, tell me what it’s like and why you’d recommend it.

I would be shocked if a place like that existed that didn't charge a monthly membership fee, but I'm prepared to be proven wrong. I hope you find it!

Hackernews
It you are not a developer more than half of the posts might not interest you. But the rest will.
Politics are only allowed if it is world news or something.

Trolls? No trolls here.

https://piefed.social/c/casualconversation

That's extremely rare, and doesn't really exist on a single platform. I think you mostly find it on smaller sites that fill a specific niche.

For example, there is so much talk about the "bio hacking community" and I've never found one.

That probably depends entirely on what you want to talk about

Tildes. The discussions are indepth and not surface level like on other social media sites.

https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/content

https://docs.tildes.net/

No. Lemmy > Tildes.

Tildes should be avoided as much as reddit: https://maximiliankohler.blogspot.com/2023/06/reddit-is-dangerous-humanity-needs-an-alternative.html

Tildes: I'm not a fan of the UI/whitespace, but the invite-only nature of it keeps it high-quality. It's another nice & unique option, but has the same "single owner" issue, as Saidit, Reddit, etc., so it would be risky to dedicate time and effort to building a community there. In the blink of an eye your years of work could be terminated by one person. I've also read multiple concerns/complaints about heavy-handed moderation, similar to what occurs on Reddit.

Tildes update:

I made a Tildes account many years ago when it first started up. I knew the founder was a Reddit admin, and I'd heard that it was a haven for Reddit admins & power-mods, but I hadn't spent much time there.

I recently made a post about the problems with Reddit, and while there were intelligent people and comments on there, the majority of votes went to people who were being extremely dishonest, and even outright lying; attacking me in every way possible while urging the admin to ban me. Neutral people don't behave like that. So they couldn't have made it more obvious that Tildes is merely an extension of authority-figures-of-Reddit with a different UI. All the same problematic people & behaviors exist there.

Based on the accusations one of them was making, and my history they were pulling up, one of them was either a Reddit admin or someone in cahoots with one of the Reddit admins that banned me. Tildes is invite-only, and the main accounts attacking me were brand new.

The Tildes admin removed my comments debunking the lies they were telling, and deleted my account.

My experience with Reddit has made me extremely hesitant to put in any amount of effort or commitment into any platform I don't own/control myself, and this recent experience with Tildes greatly confirms that concern.

If health is a topic you're interested in, I created a forum that matches your description: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/

Hopefully, it won't be too long before Xenforo forums can federate with Lemmy.

I've tried going to back to forums after leaving Reddit, but many of them are filled with the same type of unintelligent people you find on Reddit and other social media.

That said, I'd still stick with forums & lemmy over Reddit.

I think Lemmy was being astroturfed during the recent reddit API controversy and exodus of some redditors to lemmy. Lemmy seems much more normal now, whereas reddit is still manipulated, astroturfed, and botted to hell.

Gatekeepers are maligned but often necessary. Minimum hurdles help greatly, even. Any space in which you must pay to participate, especially for no guaranteed service or product, is likely to be better than the open public space.