Personaly, I found Silver much harder than Gold. It was crazy how I'd drop 30-40 bombs against actual Silvers, and then I'd struggle against "Silvers" who somehow destroyed me harder than the Plats I played against as a Gold. Seriously, the range of skill in Silver is simply astonishing, very few games feel fair. They're not all smurfs either; I've queued with someone who said he was hardstuck Silver but ran around entry fragging and carrying my ass.

I know someone in Diamond, and their gold smurf's account looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/oc1lYvQ

I know someone who was grinding really hard in Gold 3 to reach Plat... he finally reached plat and then proceeded to go all the way to plat 3 in a much shorter amount of time.

Overall the difference between plats and silvers seems to be the understanding of geometry, like if a silver and a plat took the headshot duel from hookah bind to ct, the results would be pretty 50/50 but the difference is that the silver will jump out of hookah and run to elbow and try to swing elbow and become an easy headshot for anyone holding. Majority of my kills in Silver has been from cheesing these advantageous angles rather than contesting CT to hookah because even Silvers can hit that headshot half the time