When comparing Voat vs Lemmy, the Slant community recommends Lemmy for most people. In the question“What are the best Social Networking Platforms?” Lemmy is ranked 2nd while Voat is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Lemmy is:
Anyone can self-host the software on their own server. Users can join an instance they like. You can view and comment on other servers (instances) as long as the instance you are on hasn't blocked the other instance.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Will be instantly familiar to reddit users
Voat is essentially a Reddit clone. It uses Reddit's layout and basic functionality with only minor tweaks and as such will be instantly understandable to anyone who is familiar with reddit.
Pro Freedom of speech is a big focus of the website
Pro Federated
Anyone can self-host the software on their own server. Users can join an instance they like.
You can view and comment on other servers (instances) as long as the instance you are on hasn't blocked the other instance.
Pro Simple and fast interface
Pro Open-source
Pro Shows both number of upvotes and number of downvotes, not just total
If someone has some unpopular opinion you can still see some people upvoted it and therefore appreciated it (so you can decide to read it).
Pro Problematic instances can be blocked
If the moderation of a certain instance is not good, other instances can block it.
Pro A rich ecosystem of third party clients and software
See the awesome lemmy github repo.
Cons
Con Servers can't handle traffic spikes
Voat can't yet handle large groups of people visiting the site all at the same time. This results in the site often being down. Many argue that the main issue is choice of underlying architecture (ASP.NET + MSSQL) that is difficult to scale.
Con Toxic community
Be prepared to find blatant racism here.
Con discontinued
The site is no longer active
Con Pro-CCP, Chinese censorship and concentration camp deniers
Con Complicated to use
Some find it quite difficult to use. As each instance is seperate, it take a lot to get used to using it.
Con Slow and unreliable
Con A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers
Politically biased platform, that they seem to be proud of.