My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.

Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.

After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren’t active on lemmy.

What about you?

  • Cadenza@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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during the great exodus and never came back (well of course apart from when a Google search leads me there for an [outdated] answer).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.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    /r/chapotraphouse was the best socialist subreddit and it got banned over saying “death to slave masters”. The intense censorship campaign, at one point consisting of being site banned if you upvoted a comment in the subreddit, was so disgusting that I wanted to take the Reddit out of reddit. Chapo.chat-turned-hexbear was its direct continuation.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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

  • Trent@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    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…)

  • Aarrodri@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • Lyre@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    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…

  • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    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 that made me want to participate rather than just scroll the front page.

  • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • Rottcodd@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • waterbogan@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I joined on here a bit over 9 months ago after I was permabanned from reddit for ??? reason after I posted a Google Streetview link of a layby. This happened to coincide with the third party API fuckup and several other irrational and counterproductive changes so I arrived here right in the middle of a period of huge growth. I havent left since then per se but have had periods of reduced activity. Have started another profile on reddit (which was stupidly easy) as there are still a number of niche communities there that have no activity on their equivalent communities here. Am settled, and will likely gradually spend more time here as reddit management continue to find more feet to shoot themselves in

  • Chinchillax@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    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 :/

    • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Find yourself an instance that doesn’t defederate lemmygrad and hexbear and you’ll find yourself some “diversity.”

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlOP
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      4 months ago

      What kinds of opinions do you think are lacking? And what niche topics you wish lemmy had communities for?

      • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        I’m not the original commenter, but I have a similar experience.

        I come to places like Reddit/Lemmy/Mastodon/Twitter to see other views and ideas. Lemmy doesn’t have that - at least for Canadian politics, commenters tend to voice opinions compatible with the current government. Lemmy has an extremely narrow Overton window.

        A great example is discussion on Canadian party leaders - when links are posted about the leader of the opposition, commenters generally agree he’s a jerk, totally regressive, and doesn’t have much policy to offer. When links are posted about the prime minister, the consensus is that, as lousy as he is, the leader of the opposition is worse. I agree, but it’s basically the same conversation each time.

        The conversation goes roughly the same way when policy issues come up. Posts about the housing crisis inevitably have a comment saying we just need more density or better transit; that Conservative premiers are terrible; etc. These things are true (enough), but there’s not much more than that. Posts about election interference are filled with comments saying US companies are at least as bad as state actors, etc. It’s just a lot of the same.

        Generally speaking, I agree with a lot of the points. But I’m not here for that. I’m not interested in reading a comment I disagree with that forces me to think.

        tl;dr: the Canadian Lemmy consensus has a tinsy Overton window, and that’s boring.

  • Naz@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    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.

      • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Thirded. Joined Kbin and Lemmy.world about the time the reddit Blackout started and settled in pretty quickly. Haven’t looked back, except only to backup then nuke all my content at the old place. No regrets.

        Want it, spez? Go get it from your own backups.