Your journey with Lemmy: When and why did you join? When did you leave and come back? Are you finally settled?

I was a long-time Reddit user but over time it felt more and more not right. June last year I decided to register here and remove my Reddit account. I do not miss anything and I actually started participating more instead of just silently reading comments and posts.

It just feels right using Lemmy instead of Reddit. Not only there’s no corporate bullshit and dumb algorithms I can’t avoid, it’s also a much nicer community overall.

I began using Lemmy abruptly after quitting Reddit after the API fiasco of last year. With the third party apps on Lemmy like Voyager (lol), picking up the slack.

People don't give a shit what service or server it's hosted on, as long as it's free and they can continue to interact with other users, because that's ultimately, what matters, the community.

If you were having a party with some friends watching the Superbowl and some random corporate ass clowns came in and said: "Pack it up, we're charging you for the privilege of talking to each other and also we're selling your conversations on the Internet", you'd give them a swift kick in the ass.

The content is yours, you made it, you spent the effort, the mental energy, the loss of actual lifetime to create it, post it, and share it with the world.

And then they want an IPO and pat themselves on the back for stealing. Get the fuck outta here, y'know?

Lemmy rules.

I've unfortunately found myself back on reddit here and there for some niche communities, and also to just not be so depressed by the news, politics, and Linux that permeates EVERY FUCKING COMMUNITY regardless of the focus of that community. We all seriously need to branch out here a bit.

I came over the same day that the Boost app for Reddit stopped working. I guess it's been about a year or so now. I've loved using Lemmy so much more than Reddit and from what I keep reading Reddit is just getting worse every day so I don't plan on ever going back! The only real worry I have with Lemmy now is this Threads crap. If Meta/Facebook sinks their greasy claws into the Fedeverse I may have to keep looking for another home. I really hope that doesn't happen though. I'd like to think at least one area of the web is still safe from corporate bullshit

I'd been grasping for literally any alternative to Reddit for months and heard about this place when they shut down third party apps. Haven't thought about going back even once...

I never really liked Reddit. I avoided it for a long time, but finally relented and grudgingly signed up in 2011.

I was always on the lookout for a new home, and would follow links to any place that looked promising, but none of them ever panned out - they were always too dead or too narrowly focused or too shitty or behind a paywall or something. And I'd go back to Reddit.

Immediately after Spez's petulant AMA, I happened on a link to join-lemmy.org. I was especially eager to find a different forum then, just because Reddit was set to get much worse much more quickly and the CEO is a twat, but I really didn't expect anything of lemmy. I assumed that, just as with all the others over the years, I'd browse around a bit, be unimpressed, and leave.

Instead, I looked around and liked what I saw. And the more I looked, the more I liked it. And I just never went back, and have been here ever since.

Came here when the Reddit 3rd party app threat started looming, loved it and never went back.

Sure, Lemmy doesn't have the same variety and amount of content that's on Reddit but that's because it's a smaller and newer platform along with the fact that not all instances federate with each other (which is great).

I still get my scrolling urge fulfilled and presented with random memes and news that I'm interested in without the data harvesting factor which is perfect for me.

16 years on reddit, they killed my client. Now I'm here, probably forever - I don't expect there will be any permanent issue with the protocol so from here on out it's just a matter of federation/moderation/blocking the right things

Quit using Reddit after the (initial) blackout over 3rd party apps didn't cause any change from Spez and he instead doubled down on it. Lived without any media for about a month or two until the 3rd party apps were shut down and they began switching over to Lemmy. Lurked for about 3 months using Sync (yeah I know, but a familiar and good interface while other stuff was changing) while deciding on where to sign up an account. I was eyeing a Kbin account as its web view resonated more with me, but seeing the problems it had, finally settled on Lemmy.world. Never had a better place to comment politically leftist to my heart's content and be free of moronic come-uppance style replies made for the sake of sounding witty/snarky on such topics.

Still considering Kbin and/or Lemmy.dbzer0 accounts for the sake of contributing to user diversity, tho.

Missing a lot of activity in indie game communities here, but never going back to Reddit for scrolling. Only following Reddit links if my search query doesn't yield any proper answer forums or blogs.

Fuck Steve Huffman should be all I need to say. Came from Apollo.

I’m not fully settled though. I’ll probably end up making an account on another instance or two, and check out Mastodon. I was never a Twitter person but hey why not try new (similar but different) things? But I also don’t feel rushed to do any of that.

I joined up when Reddit decided to end third party apps. I mostly browsed the front page of Reddit for interesting or funny things, but I noticed once I switched to Lemmy that the Reddit front page was just sponsored content and what the algorithm wanted you to see. I was actually interested in stuff on Lemmy and that made me want to participate rather than just scroll the front page.

Came with the reddit exodus and have not look back. I used to waste sonmuxh time in reddit. Lemmy feels mmuch more lean.

I have only gone back when web search takes me there for an obscure answer.

Reddit exodus last year. I like it here, it's like old Reddit.

Mid-2022. I'd heard about it and finally decided to give it a try, though I didn't post a lot. These days I mostly only go to reddit when searches for information lead me to a post there, and occasionally for stuff that doesn't exist/is dead here (emacs, hydrohomies...)

Joined last year when Apollo was forced to shut down like many of us. I’d been a huge fan of federated social media and decided this was the time to finally kick my Reddit addiction. So far Lemmy has completely scratched the itch and I rarely check Reddit anymore. That in itself has been a huge win and every month it’s just more and more upside as the communities get stronger.

I ended up starting a dedicated Magic: the Gathering instance at https://mtgzone.com for anyone interested. We’re small but growing!

Came here last year during the exodus from Reddit and never looked back.

I only use reddit to troubleshoot tech issues now or occasionally to look up info on some topic I'm researching.

I really enjoy Lemmy, it's the part of the fediverse I use the most. I think federation is the best model for decentralized networks and I like how it feels a little like the old internet, when things weren't totally corpo-controlled and hyper-monetized.

Reddit was slowly but surely becoming a terrible host for our @RimWorldPorn@rimworld.gallery community (direct link.) Then came the final straw, while we went black we held a vote and a majority voted for the community to move elsewhere. We chose for Mbin, which has turned out a to be a great platform, with the advantage of being part of the fediverse.

I'd personally only used mastodon up to that point, I now hardly ever browse reddit

Like many people here, long time Reddit user. Lived through RES, Alien Blue, and finally settled on Apollo. When they pulled the plug on third parties, looked at Lemmy and Kbin. Voyager (a pretty decent Apollo clone) is what pulled it over to Lemmy.

I'm liking how it feels like early Reddit. Hopefully it'll pick up a bit more.

TBH, 90% of Reddit usage was just wading through crap, just looking for distraction, or funny crap to send friends. The last 10% was as a realtime side-channel during MLB games. Was bummed to have the new baseball season start without that. But The Athletic has started doing live gameday threads so that might make up for the loss.

I didn't delete my Reddit account, hoping they would come to their senses with 3rd parties, but it looks unlikely. Happy to stick around here and even start contributing posts.

Came here about a month before reddit killed 3rd party apps and I've been here ever since. This is hardly a replacement but it sort of scratches the same itch and that's fine by me. YouTube is where I spend most of my time anyway.

I kind of like the slower pace and tighter community here but the content is generally quite uninteresting for someone like me who rather discusses ideas than events or people.

Like many people with the reddit exodus.

But i also got quite annoyed with the main German communities shifting more and more to the right and the moderators of the largest german subreddit to tolerate and enable transphobic and racist discussions, e.g. when there was some tabloid "news" on either topic shared.

I dont know how much of it was because the communities were more and more targeted by organized far right propaganda and how much was the moderators of the /r/de subreddit sharing such viewpoints.

Those trends already happened for some years, getting particularly worse with covid.

When reddit did their API nonsense I was primed to try something else, and someone linked me to lemmy.

It's been fine so far. It hasn't reached the level where you can search [specific problem] lemmy like you can with reddit, yet.

I joined mastodon just before a big twitter exodus because I was getting into open source, via privacy, and quitting commodity social media. I got Lemmy and Pixelfed accounts not long afterwards because I was passionate about the fediverse. I'm only logged in to fediverse social media now. It's not perfect (it's still social media after all) but it has so much more integrity and feels more real, especially pixelfed which is an absolute peach and which I hope never changes! I mostly enjoy memes and shitposts here on Lemmy but it's also getting pretty good for mutual help and advice in some communities, which I think is the most valuable thing about this format of social media.

When Apollo stopped working for Reddit I basically stopped going there.

If there is something that is time sensitive then I’ll go there for a quick answer, but where I used to go many times a day. Now I go once every few months.

I had a LOT of reddit use over 15 years, but moved over here right after the API use fiasco caused my browsing apk I used to stop working. Between that and the general degradation of reddit over the last 5 years, it was time to jump ship. Found an apk called Thunder that works very similar to what I used on reddit.

I was aware of the fediverse but I'd never gotten round to engaging with it. Came here for something to do during the 3 day Reddit protest blackout and just... never went back to Reddit because it's better here.

I already had a mastodon but I made accounts all over the fediverse (and other alternatives) ended up settling in my first pick - this account at kbin.social. I really love the features and I believe the dev has a lot of vision.

It's exciting being part of something cool.

The thing that I dislike about lemmy is that we all share a boat (instance) with a lot of other people. If the boat owners drill holes into the boat (defederate with instances) we all sink.

I'd like to settle on a platform that scales better and gives more reliability (no dependence on instance admins).

But lemmy is fine for now.

I showed up last year in the aftermath of reddit's APIgate. I'm a longtime reddit user, for better or worse. Though this isn't my first foray with reddit alternatives. I've tried Imzy, Voat (briefly; very briefly), and Tildes. The last of which is still doing quite well, though it's a bit different from reddit and even Lemmy, in terms of overall culture and activity.

Admittedly, I am still on reddit, though my activity is reduced. I stopped using it almost entirely from like June through October, but then slowly made my way back. But instead of spending all my time on reddit as before, I spend my time between Lemmy, Tildes, Mastodon, and reddit. So I think that's still a win in my book. I don't mind using multiple sites for information and entertainment; it's kinda like what people did in the earlier days of the Internet. Further, I'm not really anti-centralized platforms. I still have a FB account. I scroll Instagram daily. I use Discord. I use YouTube. I use what gives me value.

Anyway, I landed on Beehaw after briefly looking at other instances and looking at Beehaw's "philosophy," which seemed attractive. Overall, Lemmy is not the promised land; There are issues I see with the platform, the userbase, and even with the current state of federation. But no site or platform is perfect. Every platform has upsides and downsides. I get what I want out of it and try to "give back" what I can.

I started using Lemmy a few years ago because of the blackout that happened then (the one that started because they hired a known pedophile apologist as an admin). When Reddit fired her and made what they considered an apology, I continued to use both just simply because I didn't like the fact that their apology sounded like they were disappointed in the community for not supporting pedophilia.

When the second blackout happened (the one caused by the API changes) I didn't support the statements that Spez was spouting about the app developers. At first I waited to see what their response was to the blackout but they, more specifically Spez, made it obvious that they didn't care, so I deleted my Reddit account and started only using Lemmy.

I joined after EMPRESS got banned from reddit and reccomended here. She got banned from lemmy.ml instance later and didn't bother looking for another instance. I never thought I'd stick with Lemmy; until reddit pretty much removed all third party apps. I kinda dislike mainstream social media like Twitter and Instagram; so I decided to go with this.

i joined mastodon in 2017. at the time i was also cutting off whatsapp and facebook and was just generally getting deeper into foss and fedi.

at the same time i was a heavy reddit user and was looking for fedi-based alternatives. i was following prismo development for a while, but that never took off.

i eventually joined lemmy in 2020 but never really found the community, that reddit had (and tbf still has for most topics).

last year during the API fiasco i finally made this account and have been pretty happily reading (and sometimes posting) here.

Lemmy started for me in December 2022. By that point, I'd been on the fediverse for 6 months or so. The Twitter implosion had just happened the month before, and I finally realised how sick of centralised social media I was. Reddit was the only one I was using, though I barely touched it because of the moderation, and so I went looking for alternatives.

I found lemmy.ml, and saw the potential of the concept. A month later, in January 2023 my partner and I were running an instance (we already ran a regular fediverse instance). The lemmy instance was basically just a single person instance. Sign ups were open, but lemmy was quiet back then, so the few people that joined left again. My partner barely used lemmy, so it was basically a single person instance.

And then the reddit implosion happened, and suddenly we found ourselves running a fully fledged lemmy instance, with more users than our "main" instance. And that was really the moment that I got more serious about lemmy too. The increase in community size and engagement transformed the experience.

I've never been back to reddit since I left in December 2022, but I didn't delete my account until 2023 during the reddit exodus.

I tried lemmy a little over a year before reddit APIgate and bounced off of it. I ended up coming back just before the big blackout and started settleing down. Now i visit reddit very rarely.

Once RIF Is Fun stopped working, my mobile browsing went exclusively to Lemmy. I still go back to Reddit for niche communities (especially for sports and specific games) on PC, but that's probably not going to last much longer. Once they kill old.reddit, I'll be gone for good.

I do wish there was a way to filter for language; I like occasionally finding titties while browsing, but I occasionally run into 5-6 consecutive articles in German or Dutch or something.

I used Sync for Reddit since 2011 or so, that's how I accessed Reddit 99% of the time. Then they just announced sorry, no more app. For me leaving Sync was akin to leaving Reddit anyway, and someone posted about Lemmy, I learned about the Fediverse, and I came over.

Now when I need to google something and Reddit pops up it feels... overencumbered . Heavy, too much going on with it. Lemmy feels clean, simple, what Reddit used to be. I won't be leaving any time soon.

I still don’t feel comfortable here. Lemmy feels too much like an echochamber of the same opinions. The lack of diversity makes me feel more comfortable on tumblr than Lemmy at the moment.

It’s frustrating when I do need to check Reddit for any niche things. I love forums, but find chatrooms like Discord anxiety inducing. Sometimes the only forum for a niche topic is a subreddit :/

I moved over after the Reddit API with third party apps thing. Needed to voice my opinion with action

Lemmy is great, I spend way less time with it, it’s a nicer and generally more respectful community, and I’ve learnt a lot more about computers/OSS.

I realised that all my time with Reddit wasn’t actually teaching me anything valuable. I’m now more conscious of my internet usage

For me, it was APImageddon - when Christian of Apollo played out the whole story, the lies he had been told, and how he tried to negotiate and Reddit just wouldn’t budge; when he said that there was no way he could make it work, I said, “Well, looks like I’m done with Reddit.” I went to mastadon first, but I’m not a micro-blog person, so I went between Kbin and Lemmy.world. I went to Reddit a few times, spreading the word and looking for communities that made the migration but, for the most part, I didn’t look back. I tried to contribute, and when it was quiet, I touched grass and stuff. I’m now at Midwest.social now because of the piracy debacle and .world defederating with Hexbear. I still use my mastadon account from time to time. But I’m happy and only see Reddit when it shows up in searches.

Edit: I did go back Reddit to help make pixel placing canvas (what was that thing called again?) a very special send off though. Fuck spez 4ever!

Rolled in after the API fiasco and haven’t left since. I’m very involved with my instance, and feel a genuine sense of community instead of “all of us are screaming into the void”

Quitted reddit during the great exodus and never came back (well of course apart from when a Google search leads me there for an [outdated] answer). Came to Lemmy, never looked back and never left since then. I plan on being here as long as there's an instance standing.

I left Reddit when they messed with the API stuff, then settled on kbin, using fedia and lemmy a bunch in addition

Definitely a different, nicer vibe in the fediverse - Actually can use the front page instead of hiding in what I'm subbed to, and there is a lot more thoughtful, varied content overall

Generally because Sync for Reddit died (api bs and shit) and Sync for Lemmy was one of the first results that caught my eye looking for a working client. Haven't looked back since.

The June Reddit API exodus.

I've not browsed Reddit from my phone since, I use it significantly less on my laptop/desktop, basically a couple of niche interest communities which haven't moved over

Never post or vote now though, if I don't get to use the data I generate for free, you don't get it from me.

Four years ago on my original account when I discovered it. I participated once in a while in parallel to Reddit, then when Spez shat the bed I removed myself from modding any Reddit communities and logged off for good.

When RIF stopped working and the Dev of RIF said he jumped to Lemmy I jumped too.

The only subreddits I visit on old are technical ones like Sysadmin, Cisco and the associated certification subs, and Fortinet.

The rest of the time I am scrolling new local or new all on Lemmy.

third party Android apps

I'd been on the microblog side of Fedi for a while, when Reddit shat the bed I went to check out the link aggregator/forum. But it's a long way from ever being able to replace what I used Reddit for: communities for niche microinterests. And I'm not optimistic it'll ever get to that level. We have a slow moving frontpage for memes and world news but that's about it.

I still keep the tab open and poke my head into it from time to time, but I don't do much more than lurk because there's not much for me to see here. I'm still not going back to Reddit either, but that just means I'm a hermit living in a cave now.

My journey on Lemmy is a part of my journey to be on every site. I have the world record for the most sites having signed up for. Even had I not signed up for genuine interest, I probably wasn't going to not sign up for Lemmy. I gotta be the best like no one ever was.

I left reddit with the reddit fiasco. I heard of lemmy and created an account, but the only good Android tool back then Jerboa and I hated it so much.

The only tool I looked for reddit mobile was Reddit Sync. When Lemmy Sync was published, I started visiting Lemmy about half as much time as I used to spend on reddit. I'm good with this, I used to spend way too much time on reddit.

I created my first account in June of 2023, like many of us, I'm sure.

Now that I have RIF back via Vanced, I spend a lot of time in both places. The communities that I want to engage with just aren't here. But when I want Linux news, this is my place to go.

I had my own instance for about 10 months. I started it when I was frustrated at the downtime all the big instances had. But now they seem a lot more stable, so I shut down my instance.

Found this during the Reddit diaspora. Tried it for weeks. Left. Came back once a month. Still not committed to this place but i still check in and post.

Too much FOSS/Linux evangelism here. Still too little activity in communities centered on my interests. The vibes are... not great here but I'm not giving up on it. I just don't think "my" people are here yet

Vivaldi web browser opening their Mastodon instance brought me to the Fediverse. I started from Mastodon, but became curious of other fedi softwares - /kbin is one of them. I am on kbin.social as my Threadiverse instance in English since April '23, before Reddit API affair.