The largest difference is not that it's federated (but that's a huge plus for avoiding bad moderators or owners) - it's that big tech is not running it. They are running almost every other social media network and abusing, exploiting and analyzing users to profit from users activity. Lemmy is free from all of that, which means it's the sane persons choice of social media.

Many people have mentioned that Lemmy doesn't feel as addictive as reddit, which is because it doesn't have an algorithm, no ridiculous points or flairs, and no ads and corporations. Discussions cannot be censored here as well, as long as they don't break the law. So Lemmy means people actually get back to doing things that benefit them instead of doom scrolling.

This is also the closest we come to a social media where people will tell you what they think, since it's semi-anonynous and downvotes doesn't matter. I appreciate that myself.