i never used Reddit, but came from 9gag here in the search for something where you can actually filter the content. being foss and decentralized (both of which I'm a huge fan) was an added bonus

The Reddit APIcolypse of 2023. I came crawling back to Reddit a few weeks ago though. Lemmy doesn't have the size to support the kind of niches that Reddit has, and Reddit has a much broader user base as well, so conversations are more interesting because I can't predict what 80% of the responses to any topic will be.

Because reddit cutoff API access to third-party apps.

I joined Lemmy when Reddit made the API pricing changes and effectively killed off third party apps. I was a "RIF is fun" user. Formerly "Reddit is fun" and formerly just "Reddit." I'd been using that app for so so long. It literally used to be called Reddit.

I gave the official app a try. It was shit. I've fiddled with it since and it's marginally better now (some specific bugs are gone).

The big reason for me, and why I don't* use Reddit now is because Spez (the CEO) lied about a conversation with the developer of (I think) Apollo, a different third party app. If you wanna look into it you can, others can share a link if they feel inclined. The dev recorded the conversation. Basically Spez misunderstood something that the dev said as a small joke to lighten the mood. The misunderstanding was quickly corrected. But Spez said it as if it was something real and a threat. Basically saying the dev was saying they could buy their app out if they wanted them to go away. Really twisted their words. Even in the recording you can tell it's a joke, it's said light heartedly and with different words that didn't make it sound like a threat.

So fuck 'em.

*: I have used it, but like less than 1‰ what I did before. It's a last resort, not a go-to. Plus, I avoid reddit.com links in search results now because so many subreddits you just can't view from the mobile site without logging in or they reject incognito/VPNs... It's insane.

Anybody on here with an account age of roughly 2yr 10m is probably here because of the API changes lol

Though this account is only a few months old, I’ve been on Lemmy for a few years under various accounts.

I joined because of the API changes. Fuck Reddit and fuck spez

Reddit api change and could not use a free app to access the place.

As for why .world specifically I don't remember. I picked one from the list and it was probably not sorted alphabetically at least.

I got the warning for supporting Luigi Mangione. I immediately looked for an alternative.

I used to use a 3rd party reddit app, and refused to use the awful 1st party app when they made it mandatory. So I deleted my account, and came here instead!

API change and third party app fiasco.

Never got banned from anything, I just left on principle. Really looking to move on from big tech altogether. It's gonna take years.

Got banned from reddit for telling someone to crawl back into their hole because they were defending circumcision while saying female genital mutilation was disgusting and abhorrent.

I was on my way out anyway but getting banned for thinking infants shouldn't have their genitals mutilated at all was the final nail that made me jump ship.

I still use it occasionally anonymously for porn but I've noticed a lot of the porn subs are shutting down so I'll eventually quit using it altogether.

I miss lemmynsfw. Fedinsfw isn't even remotely as good and as far as I'm aware there's no app for it so I'm forced to open it in my browser and it's not very optimized

Got banned for expressing compassion for Palestinians. I suspect they're using AI to moderate and it's making mistakes, as it is everywhere else. Also they only want bots over there now. Humans just cause problems. I'm pleasantly surprised to find the average IQ over here to be significantly higher. You guys are better company.

The Reddit website began stopping me from browsing on mobile

I joined Lemmy during the Reddit API controversy, which resulted in my favourite iOS Reddit app being removed from the market.

I'm enjoying it here. It reminds me of Reddit in the early 2000s. You can actually have meaningful conversations here, whereas on Reddit your contributions get lost in all the noise, and the karma system makes conversation less organic. I'm enjoying my time here.

Suggesting on reddit worldnews that Gazan deserved basic human rights.

Apollo for Reddit shut down, and Reddit's app sucks. Voyager looks identical to Apollo, so I moved to it.

Reddit exodus. Started on lemm.ee but it is not existing anymore, so here I am at /0.

When these threads come up, it's always interesting to see how many of the "I was banned for no reason at all, I only said puppies are cute" users have a post history here on Lemmy that makes me think "I don't agree with full-on bans, but in this case, I can kind of see why they might've done it."

Also, I always wonder with these how many people are saying "I was banned from Reddit" when actually they were only banned from a specific sub. It's super easy to get banned from the average sub on Reddit (at least it used to be). Much higher bar, generally speaking with caveats, to get banned from the site itself.

Having said all that, I did get a temporary site-wide suspension from Reddit, the REAL DEAL, for using the word "retard" in the accurate non-abusive way when discussing methods to slow the growth of mold. So, there's that.

As for what made me join this place? I was already ready to be done with Reddit. I was aware of Mastodon, checked it out, definitely not for me, but by looking into that I found out that there was a news aggregator style alternative of similar principle called Lemmy.

I was banned from Reddit for posting NSFW pics of my own body in the right adult subs, and appealed and they still did not unban me, so here I am! I miss the friends I made there but I don't miss the site... they are too ban happy over there and it was becoming buggy.

For me, it's mainly due to the global enshittification of the social networks I was using.

Lemmy is my first try with a fediverse network and I have to admit I love it. After only a few days of use my feed is so good that I already deleted Reddit :')

And also, the fact that Lemmy is not controlled by a single authority makes it even more satisfying to use.

Freedom to choose (servers). no corporate shilling.

I browsed as Anon some years ago, signed up to .world and have moved servers since, along with a backup on piefed.

i left Reddit long before i signed you on Lemmy. I came to Lemmy from Mastodon. I mostly don't use that anymore but do have a gotosocial account

Bots, and because Reddit admins don't do shit, and fuck Spez

too many people got banned , by thier AI moderation.

I joined during the API blackouts, wanted to show some solidarity by not using Reddit during that time.

Then stuck around because I liked it. Though I'm still on Reddit too.

I'm not on Lemmy though, but I know you mean the threadiverse in general. I'm on Mbin.

The apicalypse

disagreeing with Reddit policy change, a few years ago. Appreciating Lemmy/Piefed being algorithm-free, and allowing me to filter out whatever content I would consider noise.

I stopped laughing everywhere else. Sure there’s bad news but the internet (and Reddit) always found a way to make me laugh in the middle of it. Found my laughs here.

I left reddit out of principle but I decided I wasn't done causing brain damage to myself just yet.

I came because of the Reddit API closure. I stayed because of the huge anarchist and communist communities.

Back in 2021 I fell really deep into the whole Privacy Rabbit hole. Switched to Linux, degoogeld my Phone. All the classics. I never had much social media, no insta, no tiktok. I only had Reddit. Then I searched for alternatives of Reddit and found the back then freshly created german server feddit.de (sadly not arround anymore)

So yea. Was not really active in the first two years, because it was reeaaallly dead here. Felt like one new interessting post a month. Not much more. Then in 2023 suddenly there came a huge wave from more Reddit users because of the API Situation. Since then there is finally enough action here, then I fully deleted my Reddit and was finally able to call this my new home :)

Still thanks for all of you coming around in 2023. Was really boring here before you guys.

bots and toxic behaviour

This. I wouldn't be surprised if its 85% bots and paid posters now. Sucked all the fun out of it. You have to wade through the slop and propaganda to get to the real, quality shitposts.

I actually joined Lemmy three times:

The first time, I became a Linux user and quickly dove into FOSS and all that stuff. But using proprietary and centralized Reddit felt like a hypocrisy for me so I started looking for alternatives. That's how I found Lemmy, a year before it will be found by fleeing redditors.

Early Lemmy was very quiet. Many instances you are used to now didn't exist (no .world, shitjustworks, blahaj zone, dbzero, etc.) The three biggest instances were lemmy ml (the more generic, tech-focused), lemmygrad (you know that one) and wolfballs (some awful alt-right bully instance, will be later known as explodingheads). Beehaw literally just appeared when I was looking into Lemmy.

Overall, it wasn't really enough to make me want to stay. I had no confidence in my English and social anxiety wasn't helping too. So I quickly lost interest and moved on.

Despite all my searches, I couldn't find a fitting replacement for Reddit. Then, my friend came out as trans and I started lurking trans-related subreddits like r/traaaaaaans and r/egg_irl and thus got back to the platform. This time I was using libreddit (still maintained by the name of redlib) and Infinity for Reddit (a fork called Eternity for Lemmy adopts it for, well, Lemmy) because the FOSS world had spoiled me and I wanted actually usable UI.

And then, the APIcalypse. I was naive enough to think that people will actually resist greedy corporats and force them to change their mind or sink their platform. Of course not. Like it or not (personally, I don't), Reddit is still alive and well, and likely very, very profitable. But there was one beautiful consequence of the enshitifaction - this place!

Unlike my first visit to Fedi, the second time I entered not as a FOSS fangirl - posts about Linux and Firefox aren't gonna cut it. And thus, once again I found myself on a platform with not much content that I wanted to actually see. I was still very much a lurker although it was the time I tried to break through my lurking habits and to start contributing something.

Long story short, most of my time on Lemmy was spent reading and talking about Fediverse. When Meta announced its plans to connect its Xitter-alternative to Fedi, I started spending way too much time arguing with strangers about it. Until I realized just how useless all that was. I deleted my account and took a break from all social media for months.

I decided to return at some point. I was already more comfortable with posting and more aware of just how much I hate arguing with strangers. So I made a resolution: my Lemmy time should be spent on discussing stuff that actually matters to me. While it took me quite a while to figure out how to chase interesting interactions here it brought me the best online experience since my group chat broke up.

So, I hope y'all enjoy my presence as well!

Permanently banned from reddit lmao.

They didn't even tell me why. I appealed the initial ban, they accepted my appeal, then I was banned again with no stated reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Communists

As I'm interacting from a non-Lemmy (Catodon) instance, I'll interpret the question as a broader "What made you join the Fediverse?".

In a nutshell, the open-source nature, the possibility of having choices (I can choose between instances and platforms), decentralization, distance from capitalist interests and from enshittification, the shared resonance to some of my principles, among other reasons.

I used to have a Lemmy account (The Lemmy Club) but I'm fond of a platform where I can have both a personal microblogging feed alongside the interactions with the communities on the threadiverse (Lemmy, Piefed, mbin, etc), and Misskey/Sharkey/Catodon is this platform. I also have accounts on other platforms, namely Mastodon, PixelFed, Friendica and tootik (Fediverse platform for geminispace/geminiprotocol, which has nothing to do with Google despite the name), but Catodon is the platform I've been using the most.

Also, I didn't come from Reddit, I didn't even use to use Reddit despite having had an account there many years ago. I don't even how who exactly is this "spez" y'all talk about. I mostly used from Orkut (back when it existed in 2010s) all the way to TikTok (up to a few years ago) before I ditched it all and pivoted to decentralized platforms. Nowadays, the only mainstream social platform I still have (against my own values, I eager to ditch it) is the damn WhatsApp because Brazilians around me use it as their must-have instant messaging, otherwise I'd have exclusively decentralized platforms.

[email protected]

Got banned from Reddit eventually, they seem to have ramped up their detection abilities and banning.

Looked for similar alternatives and lemmy popped up.

I'm migrating from Reddit so this is my take from that.

Privacy concerns, ethicality of Reddit, and wanting to cocreate in a better community.

Mainly curiosity

Reddit went to shit. Maybe five years ago.

One of the biggest reasons i stick around, is just the slower pace and lack of algorithms. If i check in the morning, there's a good chance that the same content will be trending in the afternoon or evening so I'm less inclined to scroll.

I heard you were on here.

Got permabanned for making a sarcastic joke on reddit

I'm tired of the "hot take" toxic culture that has spread from other social media to reddit. It's just ragegagement now like everything else. Even my gaming subreddits are hostile in the comments now.

it's not American.

Because the light was on.

I was never really much of a Redditor, but the API changes what caused me to stop visiting it completely.

The reason I use Lemmy more than I did Reddit is because it has replaced basically all of my other social sites so I visit this one instead of all of the other sites I had in the past.

I really wanted aether to happen and it never happened but this is similar enough. The only big difference is no baked in 6 month deletion cycle but if I had my own server presumably I could just delete stuff that often and send out requests for content deletion at that interval and not all of them would get honored but probably most of them would.

I wholeheartedly agree with that developers sentiment that if any of my statements were really all that positively OR negatively profound that they would have been saved elsewhere by that time. It would reduce a lot of instances where people look up someone's posts from 5-10 years ago that became politically incorrect in that time and are representative of a mindset they've probably outgrown. Doesn't make it impossible, just unlikely, and to me that's good enough.

All other social media sucked and were bad. Reddit wasn't that bad and I had my subs that where fun. Then reddit blew up and so many people started flooding with their agenda. Specially once Elmo bought out twitter. So called "twitter refugees" came over and turned it into twitter wanna be. This got bot farms active and now every second post if not every big post you see is just a bot post with a very clear agenda. And now you can't even look at their profile histories anymore.

When I heard of Lemmy I was, hmm ok maybe it's good. And to be honest, it feels like old school reddit, which is awesome. Yes, you get less interactions, but they are more meaningfull than the ones on reddit.

It was there.

I didn't!

so. I signed up for reddit because of some mmos I was on. It kinda seemed like a nice slashdot alternative and was a bit more reminiscent of the old internet usenet in some ways. I stopped playing the mmos and it was just sorta a time waster at that point. I had been hearing about decentralized social media like mastadon but I never liked twitter even before it became xitter. when the api fiasco happened there was a lot of mention of decentralized alternatives and since these are setup in a way I more like I went to it. Started on kbin because earnest was way prolific and doing things then when he had life issues and kbin folded went to mbin but with piefed I saw that same gusto so switched to it. I feel I have more control here than I ever did on reddit.

Came here with the FuckSpez wave and boycott. never owned a reddit account, decided to make one here because smaller forum 0 less scary

Because Lemmy is FOSS

Steve Huffman

The money!

reddit

Just a heads’ up — the majority of accounts that will see this post aren’t from lemmy.world. For example, I’m from feddit.online. Your posts are federated, which means your instance, lemmy.world, passes your post to our instances, where we see them.

I am not on .world

But came during the great reddit blackout a while ago

Mega band me from Reddit for suggesting somebody should drill a hole in the Charlie Kirk statue. it was just a suggestion I didn't say I had a plan or pay someone to do it or I was going to it. was just a suggestion and now I'm in a better place