That's another client, sure. But I was answering the question. Sync is a client too.
Here is a question, how do you comment on a post from mastodon? I've seen some people do it but I'm not sure how.
When they killed third party apps.
Reddit killing the app I used.
Same. I’m really liking Voyager for Lemmy - scratches my Apollo itch
When I went to download Voyager to test it out, I realized that I still had Apollo installed. I hadn't had the heart to delete it ...until now.
Like the majority here, reddit refugee
As soon as Apollo stopped working that was it.
Where did you land? Voyager, Mlem?
Not the person you replied to, but Memmy and then Voyager once Memmy became unmaintained. I’m mostly happy with it, and it seems to generally improve with time.
Only complaint now is weirdness around sharing images with other apps: sometimes they show up as the image URL and sometimes as the actual image
That Memmy dev went unimaginable hard for a month or two, then really started to fall behind everyone else.
I wonder what happened. I wonder if they were unemployed then got a new job or something.
Yeah they had the first functional iOS app long before anyone else (Mlem had started earlier but stalled for a while). I recall some of the Memmy developer’s comments saying they had learned a lot about app development since the first beta and had big plans to overhaul the code base. I’m assuming this turned into too much for them to handle, especially as an unpaid gig.
It’s a shame Memmy’s been abandoned, but I’m still super appreciative of the developer for making a workable Lemmy app back then. It definitely helped ease the sting of the transition from Reddit.
Yeah, it was a much better experience than the Lemmy web app during the early days. Lemmy’s devs famously don’t care very much about their mobile client.
I went with Avelon until the devs went silent for awhile. Still installed, I assume they have irl problems. Right now I’m using arctic and it’s crisp as hell, very nice app
Infinity for me
Same.
I am yet another fledditor. I think I looked at nearly all the alternatives and I liked the Fediverse the best.
I do miss the sheer volume of participation on reddit, but I that has been steadily improving. And the quality and tone of the conversations is generally much better.
Any forums with large numbers of participants is going to have certain problems. The difference is that reddit turned most of those problems into institutions while Lemmy provides better ways to deal with them and easier ways to avoid them.
Having worked in high tech for almost four decades, I have come to appreciate the advantages of not having everything controlled by a central authority. Sooner or later the leadership, however benevolent, will change into something repressive and exploitive. Once that happens, it will remain that way forever, because there is no financial or political incentive to move in that direction. Replacement has been the only thing that works, at least so far. The Fediverse provides an alternative to that cycle that seems viable.
Reddit being stupid. Specifically, they killed 3rd party apps. RIP RiF
RiF was so good. It's how I interacted with reddit for a very long time. Now Jerboa but it's still not quite there. Although it's free and the devs are super awesome.
Bitches took away Apollo. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Same here. I floundered and ended up on Kbin. Then that had a massive outage and I discovered that lemmy had Voyager, and bam!
Killing my favorite 3rd party Reddit app and the way they treat their customers and subreddits
I didn't like the changes on Reddit with the API and suddenly charging for access. Turns out, I like it better here. Probably would have liked it before the Reddit refugee situation, too.
Came over (first to kbin) the day the blackout started. Never left.
Because I could no longer access Reddit is fun.
Boost got blocked on Reddit during the API shutdown, the creator then made the app for Lemmy. I came here with the rest of the Reddit Refugees.
Reddit api change but indirectly.
The 3rd party app closedown led to tons of weird niche subs showing up on popular, and their mods were quite silly, and several sub bans later, a complete ban for defending Palestine.
From what I've seen, that last bit might get you some negative responses here, too. Unless you picked your instance well, it might cause you trouble with your account, too.
It has yeah.
Doesn't matter, fediverse is so wide that if I end up on an instance like that, I'd like to be banned so as not to even accidentally go there again.
Hell, I could put up my own instance if I wanted to.
Reddit sent me to Lemmy with their actions. Thanks Reddit!
I came for the drugs and hookers. False advertisement much. Pretty disappointed.
I admit it should of been sooner, but I had to make two emails just to sign up for this. (I wanted to try Protonmail and for some reason you need a email to get email with them so you can email your emails.
Reddit banning third party apps was the last straw. Even though I didn't use them I supported the movement. I tried Tildes for a little while, but it didn't click for me. Lemmy works well and I don't feel it's as addictive as Reddit.
Still a little addictive though.
The appocalypse. I ain't using their bullshit first-party app and the site is garbage on mobile. I was looking for an alternative before that anyway, but because of it I heard about Lemmy (odd I didn't hear about it before though when I was searching specifically for a site like this).
Another arrival due to APIpocalypse and the enshittification process that Spez started with Reddit.
Reddit committed suicide then went full retard. So here I am.
I enjoyed posting on/reading Mastodon, so I decided to create an account. I think I'm unique in that I never had a Reddit account.
So far it's been an interesting diversion.
Reddit bullshit
Sync switching, aka the reddit APIcalypse
It's not trying to make money from me.
The apicalypse
Reddit API change. Reddit is unusable on mobile without 3rd party apps. I used Joey, which is one of the lesser known clients, so it kept working for quite a while. When it didn't anymore I deleted all of my posts and comments before I deleted my account.
Partly it was the API fiasco on Reddit, and partly it was Lemmy that drew me in, honestly.
I've left discussion/chat forums before over the years when technology moved on, or the quality of discourse declined, like FidoNet, Usenet, ISCA BBS, or Slashdot. I lived my life just fine without them. Reddit was a good COVID19 distraction for me, a way to stay connected to people using a low-data phone plan. I hadn't heard about 3rd party apps until the appocalypse. I knew that the Android app ran up the count in DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection, and the iPad app drained the hell out of my battery. (Seriously, I could watch a 2-hour movie on Netflix, and the battery would be at 96%. An hour of the Reddit app drained it to about 60%. Was it, like, live-streaming the view from my camera back to Reddit servers?) I tried Apollo less than two weeks before the shutdown, and it was marvelous. The quality of the discourse had become, just, bad, so I figured I'd just leave Reddit behind when it ceased to function.
But, I checked out Lemmy after reading about it. It was small and quaint. But, I checked it out again. And again. And again. Then, about a month after API Day, I signed up for an account and never looked back. (The big draw, I think, was users who view comments as a discussion, not as a form of verbal combat that you "win".)
Once upon a time there was a website called Digg……
There was a subreddit I used to be very active on that practically got nuked by the company during the protests. They kicked all of the mods off and replaced it with their own, leaving a huge mess behind.
A good number of them started over from scratch on Lemmy and I followed them here. Haven't really looked back since
APIpocalypse as others said brought me here. The smaller, more personal community feel kept me here.
Reddit banned me for reporting bots lol.
The death of RiF helped it along too
I liked my third-party app, so when it moved to Lemmy, I moved with it.
I also didn't like the reaction to losing it from many on the subs I used. Most had the opinion of "fuck them, I want to use my sub again", so I left Reddit and haven't gone back.
Yeah API shit was the final straw, but it was a long time coming. Honestly I'd switch way sooner had there been any alternative. I and a lot of other people tried, but nothing ever really took off even though the systems were there.
It's about adoption, but mainstream adoption is also what kills a site like this.
Reddit API bullshit. But mostly I wanted to support the dev for reddit sync.
Like many I was a dedicated redditer. I had noticed a decline before the API fiasco, only viewing smaller subs, but momentum kept me there. No way I was going to use the default app/website though. Turns out I was more committed to Sync than reddit itself. Now Lemmy is my home and I keep a patched Sync for Reddit installed for the rare time a search result leads me there.
Some guy named Spez fucking up his website
Same reason why I left Digg years ago...
During reddits API fiasco. Specifically the app I was using (boost) recommend everybody move to Lemmy and I obliged. Used jerboa but as soon as Boost for Lemmy was launched I immediately hopped on board. I hope the rest of reddit users comes to their senses. The protest was so utterly pathetic and cowardly.
This is exactly word for word how I got here. lol
A post on r/latestagecapitalism of a political cartoon mildly criticizing the spending for Ukraine war effort, it was the first time I really actually noticed a botted comment section. I noticed similar accounts clearly astroturfing the post and basically stopped using the platform that day.
The whole reason I found reddit to be useful was the discussion within the posts from real people with real opinions. If that's no longer the case then I can get the same aggregated content elsewhere. I can't use the site knowing the discussion is so influenced, at least on some level, in some subs. It's gross.
The apipocalypse same as everyone else. I do miss my niche communities, and my 4000+ internet points, but as an open source enthusiast (I use arch btw) I'm very much at home here 😁
I created my first account on sopuli.xyz on the 28th of April 2022, some days after leaving Twitter to join Mastodon, because I wanted to bring content to the fediverse (my ADHD brain wanted me to hyperfocus on the fediverse at that time).
I had almost exclusively used reddit through the Relay app since 2012 or something like that. Relay is still available actually, and I'd even be willing to pay for its subscription if most of the money went to the dev. I didn't like the idea of reddit making money off of a negative change they forced on me, it was bad enough that they trampled on the goodwill and efforts of the community.
Also I had used reddit since 2010, when it was much smaller. Most of reddit had grown too large, leaving only niche communities at a size where I felt it was worth interacting. I still miss some of the cooler small communities (and occasionally check on them through the API bypassing apps Geddit or Stealth), but Lemmy is generally at a size that I'm much happier to interact with.
I do not want my information filtered through an opaque algorithm. My worldview is much too important to surrender to some corporation. I want to understand and have some control over any feed I use. My media diet includes Lemmy, AP news, PubMed/science journals, and conversations with friends and coworkers.
I am very happy with Lemmy so far. Some have pointed out there is less content on Lemmy, but that is a bonus in my book. It is not healthy to spend hours scrolling.
Realistically, I just thought it would be slightly better, just because it was a little bit lesser known as a website, and I am consistently longing for older styles of internet engagement. The de-federated nature is nice, sure, but I really don't tend to care about that shit too much. Reddit had their whole api debacle, I'm sure old-reddit getting canned is on the table if not for apparently necessary moderation stuff that's still locked behind it. But I dunno, I still have browser extensions on mobile firefox that send me to a perfect libreddit redirect that works almost every time, so functionally it's sort of identical to what I was already doing, if not more convenient, because I don't have to deal with a reddit app substitute's search engine when I want to find stuff, I can just look it up, click on the link, blam, redirect. Not a big issue. The biggest problem for me with the API shit is that everyone decided to throw a bitch fit and completely delete their posts, so like a quarter of the things saved to this useful compilation of internet knowledge is kinda just gone. Except for unddit, but that shit's probably going to die at some point now that it doesn't serve a non-archival purpose.
With that said, I think I've found lemmy to be basically the exact same as reddit, give or take. It is just as relentlessly annoying as reddit is, and it has less diversity in terms of subject matter, as a whole. There's basically politics, i.e. inevitable "both-sides"-ism and vote shaming, technology stuff, i.e. stuff that is just linux, and like, assorted general posts, which are going to be comprised of either of the former two categories of thing, and gen-x pop culture references. Any other topic that comes up is a complete toss up, and will probably get commented on by a bunch of brainlets who think they know more than they do, but are actually just parroting the super standard talking points, or whatever they learned in high school.
You also get reddit posting habits, where people tend to mostly respond to the lowest effort meme posts, or horrible headlined news articles, rather than well-written posts or longer writeups. You also get that annoying thing where people just reply with sarcastic remarks that only serve their own self-satisfaction, instead of being critical of their own engagement for a half-second. I guess those are mostly just modern internet phenomenon in general, but it doesn't make it any less annoying, for sure.
The problem you will inevitably find with any forum organized around topics is that there's really just not that much to talk about, for most subject matters, so you either prevent communities from forming wholesale, or, more realistically, you just get insular garbage communities where people end up repeating almost the same exact conversations over and over. I think probably the unsung reasons that most old forums died isn't because of centralization, you know, digg and reddit, but it's because they all talked about everything already. Have a post? Oops, someone already asked that question in 2009, here's the thread, should've looked in the catalogue, you should go there, looks like it also never got answered and it's inactive, fuck you have a nice day. Reddit's only addition to that is the ability for people to post le relevant xkcd link, and we kinda already had/have somethingawful for that, for when you want to just talk, more than you wanna actually talk about something specific.
More seriously, I think my biggest problem is just that reddit, and by extension lemmy, kinda breaks the conventional format of the forum, in favor of something that kinda works less well but is more low-rent to engage with. Used to be that you would just browse a bunch of post titles, click on one, and get greeted with likely a huge customized post, maybe a compilation of all the past posts on a topic, maybe a couple links and natively hosted images thrown in there for good measure. Most reddit posts are just like, a single article, or a single video of something stupid happening. That's a major downgrade, imo.
Went to Mastodon when Musk took over at Twitter and so knew about Lemmy by the time Spez decided Musk had some great ideas about how to run a social media platform.
I was already on my way out of reddit before the API pricing changes, but not being able to use my choice of app was the final nail in the coffin. I had noticed just how much time I was spending looking at my phone doing nothing but scrolling through stuff, reading things I didn't care for. I spend so much time looking at screens as part of work, recreation, and socialising that I knew I needed to drop my usage. Return to monke.
Using federated services after going cold turkey for about 2 months, I now have a much healthier relationship with it. I like how its smaller and I don't get the feeling of missing out on something if I wasn't constantly checking. I started feeling calmer and generally happier.
Years ago I was looking for alternatives. I was pissed at Reddit not banning my moderator account, even if they went out of the way to ban all my other accounts. That delivered a clear "we don't want you here... unless you're working for us, for free, you sucker" message that I was not willing to accept.
RiF reaching senility.
Came to /kbin first, and still here sometimes but Voyager wins on my phone after Neurospicy Artemis disappeared.
Another API leaver here. I'm curious what their non-bot population was pre and post dumbassery.
The Reddit API nonsense. Truth be told though, I used to go back for a few very specific subs but the site had gotten so bad that I cannot bring myself to use it any more
Being banned from Reddit
Seeing the racists on Reddit cheer genocide.
Curiosity
Apps simulating reddit when it was good.
Using Thunder atm
I liked the fact that it was smaller and filled with like-minded individuals
I always like to jump ship to open source projects, I ditched Facebook back in like 2010 for Disaspora and Frendica. Once I found out about Lemmy it was just a matter of time before I jumped ship, because that's just how I roll.
Regreddit made me do it (the API bullshit).
My first account on lemmy.ml was 4 years ago. I like the idea of Lemmy and federated reddit alternatives and am not looking for a drop in replacement and am happy to try new things.
pro-nazi moderator bias on reddit - failure to remove hate speech, and retaliation against users who report it
Saw a working link aggregator with good comments on a lot of topics. Thought it'd be fun to follow. Seems to work pretty well.
Got banned from spezbook
I freely admit that I got banned because I replied to some cringe ruzzian moskal vatnik psyop on r/ABoringDystopia with actual facts.
Went looking for a news aggregator that wasn't trying to cater to propagandists.
Fuck spez
I’d rather not. He always looks a little clammy and moist.
Came for APIpocolypse. Stayed for Sync.
Ditto, but it was Apollo and the Voyager team that faithfully cloned it for Lemmy.
Voyager is great. I really like the client and aeharding's responsiveness.
Yeah, it’s one of the better projects. My only annoyance is that, on first launch, it defaults to the iOS skin on Android.
Same
Sync?
Client for Lemmy on Android
@dabaldeagul @ytsedude Voyager
That's another client, sure. But I was answering the question. Sync is a client too.
Here is a question, how do you comment on a post from mastodon? I've seen some people do it but I'm not sure how.
When they killed third party apps.
Reddit killing the app I used.
Same. I’m really liking Voyager for Lemmy - scratches my Apollo itch
When I went to download Voyager to test it out, I realized that I still had Apollo installed. I hadn't had the heart to delete it ...until now.
Like the majority here, reddit refugee
As soon as Apollo stopped working that was it.
Where did you land? Voyager, Mlem?
Not the person you replied to, but Memmy and then Voyager once Memmy became unmaintained. I’m mostly happy with it, and it seems to generally improve with time.
Only complaint now is weirdness around sharing images with other apps: sometimes they show up as the image URL and sometimes as the actual image
That Memmy dev went unimaginable hard for a month or two, then really started to fall behind everyone else.
I wonder what happened. I wonder if they were unemployed then got a new job or something.
Yeah they had the first functional iOS app long before anyone else (Mlem had started earlier but stalled for a while). I recall some of the Memmy developer’s comments saying they had learned a lot about app development since the first beta and had big plans to overhaul the code base. I’m assuming this turned into too much for them to handle, especially as an unpaid gig.
It’s a shame Memmy’s been abandoned, but I’m still super appreciative of the developer for making a workable Lemmy app back then. It definitely helped ease the sting of the transition from Reddit.
Yeah, it was a much better experience than the Lemmy web app during the early days. Lemmy’s devs famously don’t care very much about their mobile client.
I went with Avelon until the devs went silent for awhile. Still installed, I assume they have irl problems. Right now I’m using arctic and it’s crisp as hell, very nice app
Infinity for me
Same.
I am yet another fledditor. I think I looked at nearly all the alternatives and I liked the Fediverse the best.
I do miss the sheer volume of participation on reddit, but I that has been steadily improving. And the quality and tone of the conversations is generally much better.
Any forums with large numbers of participants is going to have certain problems. The difference is that reddit turned most of those problems into institutions while Lemmy provides better ways to deal with them and easier ways to avoid them.
Having worked in high tech for almost four decades, I have come to appreciate the advantages of not having everything controlled by a central authority. Sooner or later the leadership, however benevolent, will change into something repressive and exploitive. Once that happens, it will remain that way forever, because there is no financial or political incentive to move in that direction. Replacement has been the only thing that works, at least so far. The Fediverse provides an alternative to that cycle that seems viable.
Reddit being stupid. Specifically, they killed 3rd party apps. RIP RiF
RiF was so good. It's how I interacted with reddit for a very long time. Now Jerboa but it's still not quite there. Although it's free and the devs are super awesome.
Bitches took away Apollo. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Same here. I floundered and ended up on Kbin. Then that had a massive outage and I discovered that lemmy had Voyager, and bam!
Killing my favorite 3rd party Reddit app and the way they treat their customers and subreddits
I didn't like the changes on Reddit with the API and suddenly charging for access. Turns out, I like it better here. Probably would have liked it before the Reddit refugee situation, too.
Came over (first to kbin) the day the blackout started. Never left.
Because I could no longer access Reddit is fun.
Boost got blocked on Reddit during the API shutdown, the creator then made the app for Lemmy. I came here with the rest of the Reddit Refugees.
Reddit api change but indirectly.
The 3rd party app closedown led to tons of weird niche subs showing up on popular, and their mods were quite silly, and several sub bans later, a complete ban for defending Palestine.
From what I've seen, that last bit might get you some negative responses here, too. Unless you picked your instance well, it might cause you trouble with your account, too.
It has yeah.
Doesn't matter, fediverse is so wide that if I end up on an instance like that, I'd like to be banned so as not to even accidentally go there again.
Hell, I could put up my own instance if I wanted to.
Reddit sent me to Lemmy with their actions. Thanks Reddit!
I came for the drugs and hookers. False advertisement much. Pretty disappointed.
I've got drugs and holes I can sell for money.
How many holes?
The reddit IPO.
I admit it should of been sooner, but I had to make two emails just to sign up for this. (I wanted to try Protonmail and for some reason you need a email to get email with them so you can email your emails.
Reddit banning third party apps was the last straw. Even though I didn't use them I supported the movement. I tried Tildes for a little while, but it didn't click for me. Lemmy works well and I don't feel it's as addictive as Reddit.
Still a little addictive though.
The appocalypse. I ain't using their bullshit first-party app and the site is garbage on mobile. I was looking for an alternative before that anyway, but because of it I heard about Lemmy (odd I didn't hear about it before though when I was searching specifically for a site like this).
Another arrival due to APIpocalypse and the enshittification process that Spez started with Reddit.
Reddit committed suicide then went full retard. So here I am.
I enjoyed posting on/reading Mastodon, so I decided to create an account. I think I'm unique in that I never had a Reddit account.
So far it's been an interesting diversion.
Reddit bullshit
Sync switching, aka the reddit APIcalypse
It's not trying to make money from me.
The apicalypse
Reddit API change. Reddit is unusable on mobile without 3rd party apps. I used Joey, which is one of the lesser known clients, so it kept working for quite a while. When it didn't anymore I deleted all of my posts and comments before I deleted my account.
Partly it was the API fiasco on Reddit, and partly it was Lemmy that drew me in, honestly.
I've left discussion/chat forums before over the years when technology moved on, or the quality of discourse declined, like FidoNet, Usenet, ISCA BBS, or Slashdot. I lived my life just fine without them. Reddit was a good COVID19 distraction for me, a way to stay connected to people using a low-data phone plan. I hadn't heard about 3rd party apps until the appocalypse. I knew that the Android app ran up the count in DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection, and the iPad app drained the hell out of my battery. (Seriously, I could watch a 2-hour movie on Netflix, and the battery would be at 96%. An hour of the Reddit app drained it to about 60%. Was it, like, live-streaming the view from my camera back to Reddit servers?) I tried Apollo less than two weeks before the shutdown, and it was marvelous. The quality of the discourse had become, just, bad, so I figured I'd just leave Reddit behind when it ceased to function.
But, I checked out Lemmy after reading about it. It was small and quaint. But, I checked it out again. And again. And again. Then, about a month after API Day, I signed up for an account and never looked back. (The big draw, I think, was users who view comments as a discussion, not as a form of verbal combat that you "win".)
Once upon a time there was a website called Digg……
There was a subreddit I used to be very active on that practically got nuked by the company during the protests. They kicked all of the mods off and replaced it with their own, leaving a huge mess behind.
A good number of them started over from scratch on Lemmy and I followed them here. Haven't really looked back since
APIpocalypse as others said brought me here. The smaller, more personal community feel kept me here.
Reddit banned me for reporting bots lol.
The death of RiF helped it along too
I liked my third-party app, so when it moved to Lemmy, I moved with it.
I also didn't like the reaction to losing it from many on the subs I used. Most had the opinion of "fuck them, I want to use my sub again", so I left Reddit and haven't gone back.
Yeah API shit was the final straw, but it was a long time coming. Honestly I'd switch way sooner had there been any alternative. I and a lot of other people tried, but nothing ever really took off even though the systems were there.
It's about adoption, but mainstream adoption is also what kills a site like this.
Reddit API bullshit. But mostly I wanted to support the dev for reddit sync.
Like many I was a dedicated redditer. I had noticed a decline before the API fiasco, only viewing smaller subs, but momentum kept me there. No way I was going to use the default app/website though. Turns out I was more committed to Sync than reddit itself. Now Lemmy is my home and I keep a patched Sync for Reddit installed for the rare time a search result leads me there.
Some guy named Spez fucking up his website
Same reason why I left Digg years ago...
During reddits API fiasco. Specifically the app I was using (boost) recommend everybody move to Lemmy and I obliged. Used jerboa but as soon as Boost for Lemmy was launched I immediately hopped on board. I hope the rest of reddit users comes to their senses. The protest was so utterly pathetic and cowardly.
This is exactly word for word how I got here. lol
A post on r/latestagecapitalism of a political cartoon mildly criticizing the spending for Ukraine war effort, it was the first time I really actually noticed a botted comment section. I noticed similar accounts clearly astroturfing the post and basically stopped using the platform that day.
The whole reason I found reddit to be useful was the discussion within the posts from real people with real opinions. If that's no longer the case then I can get the same aggregated content elsewhere. I can't use the site knowing the discussion is so influenced, at least on some level, in some subs. It's gross.
The apipocalypse same as everyone else. I do miss my niche communities, and my 4000+ internet points, but as an open source enthusiast (I use arch btw) I'm very much at home here 😁
I created my first account on sopuli.xyz on the 28th of April 2022, some days after leaving Twitter to join Mastodon, because I wanted to bring content to the fediverse (my ADHD brain wanted me to hyperfocus on the fediverse at that time).
I had almost exclusively used reddit through the Relay app since 2012 or something like that. Relay is still available actually, and I'd even be willing to pay for its subscription if most of the money went to the dev. I didn't like the idea of reddit making money off of a negative change they forced on me, it was bad enough that they trampled on the goodwill and efforts of the community.
Also I had used reddit since 2010, when it was much smaller. Most of reddit had grown too large, leaving only niche communities at a size where I felt it was worth interacting. I still miss some of the cooler small communities (and occasionally check on them through the API bypassing apps Geddit or Stealth), but Lemmy is generally at a size that I'm much happier to interact with.
I do not want my information filtered through an opaque algorithm. My worldview is much too important to surrender to some corporation. I want to understand and have some control over any feed I use. My media diet includes Lemmy, AP news, PubMed/science journals, and conversations with friends and coworkers.
I am very happy with Lemmy so far. Some have pointed out there is less content on Lemmy, but that is a bonus in my book. It is not healthy to spend hours scrolling.
Realistically, I just thought it would be slightly better, just because it was a little bit lesser known as a website, and I am consistently longing for older styles of internet engagement. The de-federated nature is nice, sure, but I really don't tend to care about that shit too much. Reddit had their whole api debacle, I'm sure old-reddit getting canned is on the table if not for apparently necessary moderation stuff that's still locked behind it. But I dunno, I still have browser extensions on mobile firefox that send me to a perfect libreddit redirect that works almost every time, so functionally it's sort of identical to what I was already doing, if not more convenient, because I don't have to deal with a reddit app substitute's search engine when I want to find stuff, I can just look it up, click on the link, blam, redirect. Not a big issue. The biggest problem for me with the API shit is that everyone decided to throw a bitch fit and completely delete their posts, so like a quarter of the things saved to this useful compilation of internet knowledge is kinda just gone. Except for unddit, but that shit's probably going to die at some point now that it doesn't serve a non-archival purpose.
With that said, I think I've found lemmy to be basically the exact same as reddit, give or take. It is just as relentlessly annoying as reddit is, and it has less diversity in terms of subject matter, as a whole. There's basically politics, i.e. inevitable "both-sides"-ism and vote shaming, technology stuff, i.e. stuff that is just linux, and like, assorted general posts, which are going to be comprised of either of the former two categories of thing, and gen-x pop culture references. Any other topic that comes up is a complete toss up, and will probably get commented on by a bunch of brainlets who think they know more than they do, but are actually just parroting the super standard talking points, or whatever they learned in high school.
You also get reddit posting habits, where people tend to mostly respond to the lowest effort meme posts, or horrible headlined news articles, rather than well-written posts or longer writeups. You also get that annoying thing where people just reply with sarcastic remarks that only serve their own self-satisfaction, instead of being critical of their own engagement for a half-second. I guess those are mostly just modern internet phenomenon in general, but it doesn't make it any less annoying, for sure.
The problem you will inevitably find with any forum organized around topics is that there's really just not that much to talk about, for most subject matters, so you either prevent communities from forming wholesale, or, more realistically, you just get insular garbage communities where people end up repeating almost the same exact conversations over and over. I think probably the unsung reasons that most old forums died isn't because of centralization, you know, digg and reddit, but it's because they all talked about everything already. Have a post? Oops, someone already asked that question in 2009, here's the thread, should've looked in the catalogue, you should go there, looks like it also never got answered and it's inactive, fuck you have a nice day. Reddit's only addition to that is the ability for people to post le relevant xkcd link, and we kinda already had/have somethingawful for that, for when you want to just talk, more than you wanna actually talk about something specific.
More seriously, I think my biggest problem is just that reddit, and by extension lemmy, kinda breaks the conventional format of the forum, in favor of something that kinda works less well but is more low-rent to engage with. Used to be that you would just browse a bunch of post titles, click on one, and get greeted with likely a huge customized post, maybe a compilation of all the past posts on a topic, maybe a couple links and natively hosted images thrown in there for good measure. Most reddit posts are just like, a single article, or a single video of something stupid happening. That's a major downgrade, imo.
Went to Mastodon when Musk took over at Twitter and so knew about Lemmy by the time Spez decided Musk had some great ideas about how to run a social media platform.
I was already on my way out of reddit before the API pricing changes, but not being able to use my choice of app was the final nail in the coffin. I had noticed just how much time I was spending looking at my phone doing nothing but scrolling through stuff, reading things I didn't care for. I spend so much time looking at screens as part of work, recreation, and socialising that I knew I needed to drop my usage. Return to monke.
Using federated services after going cold turkey for about 2 months, I now have a much healthier relationship with it. I like how its smaller and I don't get the feeling of missing out on something if I wasn't constantly checking. I started feeling calmer and generally happier.
Years ago I was looking for alternatives. I was pissed at Reddit not banning my moderator account, even if they went out of the way to ban all my other accounts. That delivered a clear "we don't want you here... unless you're working for us, for free, you sucker" message that I was not willing to accept.
RiF reaching senility.
Came to /kbin first, and still here sometimes but Voyager wins on my phone after Neurospicy Artemis disappeared.
Another API leaver here. I'm curious what their non-bot population was pre and post dumbassery.
The Reddit API nonsense. Truth be told though, I used to go back for a few very specific subs but the site had gotten so bad that I cannot bring myself to use it any more
Being banned from Reddit
Seeing the racists on Reddit cheer genocide.
Curiosity
Apps simulating reddit when it was good. Using Thunder atm
I liked the fact that it was smaller and filled with like-minded individuals
I always like to jump ship to open source projects, I ditched Facebook back in like 2010 for Disaspora and Frendica. Once I found out about Lemmy it was just a matter of time before I jumped ship, because that's just how I roll.
Regreddit made me do it (the API bullshit).
My first account on lemmy.ml was 4 years ago. I like the idea of Lemmy and federated reddit alternatives and am not looking for a drop in replacement and am happy to try new things.
pro-nazi moderator bias on reddit - failure to remove hate speech, and retaliation against users who report it
Saw a working link aggregator with good comments on a lot of topics. Thought it'd be fun to follow. Seems to work pretty well.
Got banned from spezbook
I freely admit that I got banned because I replied to some cringe ruzzian moskal vatnik psyop on r/ABoringDystopia with actual facts.
Went looking for a news aggregator that wasn't trying to cater to propagandists.