Ex Redditors of Lemmy what made you come on over? What happened at Reddit that you made the switch?
Ex Redditors of Lemmy what made you come on over? What happened at Reddit that you made the switch?
The API thing. After so many user-hostile and manipulative UI changes I was done with the official app. I also loathe the algo feeds and blatant manipulation. That and the complete disregard for the disabled made me commit to not give them more content or traffic.
Also, not great that the CEO is a musk fanboy and wannabe slaver.
Unlike most, I survived the API garbage because I primarily used the desktop site.
But the subsequent response and then the removal of the "don't sell my personal info" option was clearly spez saying the quiet part out loud. Asshole doesn't deserve to get richer off of my effort.
Closing of r/ProgrammerHumour
When the API changes happened, I hadn't discovered third-party clients yet, but I knew what an API was, and the consequences of the pricing change.
Fuckers killed rif is fun and I was gone, once they took the api away you could see the entire project it was already well enshittified. Had an account of almost 20 years too.
Boost stopped working
Blatant nazi stuff, mod infiltration, creepy mod rules for NSFW subsl
I exclusively browse on mobile and their app sucks. The API changes were the last straw, but I was slowly on the way out the door anyway. The bigger an online community gets, the more it will resemble your average online community. The average online community is a toxic mess. Reddit is so big, even the niche little weirdo run subreddits weren't the same anymore. It looked like reddit but felt like Facebook.
The killing of the API, and the disgusting behavior of Reddit suspending users like me calling out the violence by Trump.
Apparently, Reddit admins LOVE violence and Trump.
API stuff and the general response to the community feedback and blackout. I used Apollo and wasn’t interested in switching to the ad-riddled official reddit app. Tried Kbin first and eventually found myself on lemmy. Liking it here.
- RIP Apollo
- I almost didn't join lemmy because the first time you sign up in the fediverse it feels like a big deal. What got me to actually follow through was to impulsively join a silly instance (RIP iusearchlinux.fyi)
I got permabanned for telling someone to crawl back in their hole and apparently that's a euphemism for telling someone to kill themselves?
Meanwhile the person I was replying to was talking about how she saw female genital mutilation as abhorrent but all her sons were circumcised for "visual reasons" (she thought uncut penises looked gross).
So yeah, I noped tf outta there and have been here ever since.
It's an upgrade in most ways but lemmy seems pretty 50/50 on how they treat poor people and technology.
I didn't care too much about API changes at first - I used on open source app on my phone but mostly browsed desktop. Would have been fine going back to desktop only. As long as they keep the old site design around, I'd be fine to stay.
What killed it for me was the absolutely un-caring, not-budging response from leadership. I don't feel good continuing to feed the site my attention at that point.
I like quirky Foss stuff anyway, so I was already curious about Mastodon and Lemmy. But I'd always figured they'd be ghost towns. Twitter and Reddit deliberately being proudly, blatantly awful was enough to push me out to here, along with enough other folks.
line
This, RIF dying, and the general apathy people had to Steve bald face lying to everyone and banking on people just forgetting the whole thing.Everyone cheered when the jannies got booted for "abusing their power" only to be replaced by someone less capable but more willing to toe the line for the company
API changes, I use to use Infinity for Reddit and it was good. Then they killed it effectively.
So I moved to Eternity for Lemmy until support dropped. Now I'm on Voyager.
Good apps design keeps me using a platform and I like the slower pace of Lemmy. I still use reddit for time to time especially for smaller communities. But do my part here.
I used the API to see what mods were censoring. The lack of mod transparency is gross.
Death of third party apps
My app of choice stopped working.
The new API rules in advance of the IPO rubbed me the wrong way. The multiple monetization schemes were already pretty creepy as it was.
And the Fediverse feels better all around.
I felt like Reddit had been in decline for a long time. Then there was the API change and the debacle with the third party apps and I realised it was run by someone with no respect for the users, whose first instinct when something doesn't go according to plan is to lie and blame someone else. I didn't like that much, so here I am.
The amount of obvious bot posts and comments just essentially copy pasting the same basic shit all over the place got exhausting.
It was a result of the 3rd party app collapse that triggered the migration of reasonable people out of reddit. I was the mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and saw my mod queue explode with the most hateful shit that went unchecked by other commenters.
Then my friend told me about where everyone went, glad to see all of you!
I'm now mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee so stop on by!
While the "recent troubles" put energy to my leaving, I have always been uncomfortable with Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Stack Overflow, Quora and Fandom, as corporate-owned repositories who work by, in one way or other, profiting off of freely contributed work.
It used to be that if someone wanted to help people with freely-given information, they'd offer it in a forum, on Usenet, or on a website they started and hosted themselves, or if it fit in there, put it on Wikipedia. Now, people add it to a freaking pile that corporations monetize. Don't just hand them value! Put it somewhere that won't beg you to install an app, or beg you to "upgrade" to "Nitro," or force you to watch intrusive ads, or force people to create an account to see it, or track you! Your volunteer labor should not be a profit center!
Got sick of being sold to, when they got rid of third party apps I bailed.
Reddit is (no longer) Fun.
Like others, the API change was the final straw. I used Reddit is Fun (RIF) for years, even paid for the full version, because both the official Reddit app and the mobile web interface were terrible. I was also using the old web interface with the Reddit Enhancement Suite, and that went on "maintenance mode". Overall, Reddit just reached a point that the enshitification was getting to be too much for me to stomach. So, here I am.They permanently banned my original account. Lol
They’ve been dicks with the API.
Also, Reddit is flooded with coomer level maniacs who are desperately looking for any kind of discussion. To the point they misread shit intentionally just to start some shit.
Aaaaaand I got banned from r/gaming for calling someone out when he tried to justify pedophilia. Mods must be professional SSB players.
I left due to the abusive, lying mods over at /r/steamdeck, I got permanantly banned (reported me for harassing over and over even though I wasn't) simply for criticizing them. Eleven years, gone. But.. I wasn't even upset. Reddit is a dead site full of karma bots and abusive mods. The admins didn't even check me out, they just killed my account.
The API-copalypse last year.
Killing third party apps. Fuck that. I didn’t even use a third party app, but that just showed me, clear as day, that they’re not concerned with their users, just money. They benefitted from third party apps, then just stuck a big middle finger to their developers and users.
API changes / forcing 3rd party apps to shut down.
I wasn't enjoying myself there. The API fiasco made me aware of lemmy and I switched over.
I'd been dissatisfied with Reddit for a while due to things like hive mind mentality and jokes repeated ad nauseum. I always enjoyed more when people were just posting their honest opinions or analysis of current events from a perspective that I don't have. There wasn't really anywhere else to go as an active "forum based" aggregator, so when the ground swell of people leaving due to the API fiasco came along and enough of a crowd started setting up shop on a different platform I jumped at the opportunity to ditch that place.
Glad to be done with it.
I really don't like Reddit's attitude as a corporation. The sense of entitlement from a user driven content aggregator is insane.
As everyone said, the API change was a big deal. But for me, the cover-up was worse than the crime. I was a 13 year user (came over on the Digg boat) with over 100K comment karma. Reddit's reaction, and Spez's "landed gentry" comments, were so insulting I just couldn't support the site.
I thought they may possibly change in response to the boycott. But when Reddit started replacing mods with unqualified scabs, that meant the site content itself was definitely going to go downhill. It also confirmed that it was no longer a site that valued its users (who, as many have said, were providing the very thing that made the site valuable for free, purely in exchange for not being treated poorly).
At that point, why remain? Niche communities are the only reason I ever check back in. And like others, I'm seeing Reddit devolve into karma-whoring discussions that are just a battle of one-line snarky jokes, a huge amount of bot content, and reposts as a rule, no longer exception.
Conversely, there are people on Lemmy who actually want to read, think and actually respond. Pretty cool. I'm good with this trade.
The reasoning behind the API changes, the CEO's entitlement, the ever-more-annoying interface changes (I hate the "More Posts You May Like", the algorithm is pathetically shitty).
I refuse to install apps to navigate websites. If your site is decent, it should work in a browser. If not, I'll just go elsewhere.
I got a lifetime ban on all accounts for no reason. It made me want to use a platform that isn't corporate controlled. Lemmy fit the bill. No power tripping mod can ban you from all of Lemmy. At most you get kicked off their instance which is fine.
I also generally hate corporations and capitalism so using non-corporate alternatives is always nice.
I might be one of the few that was already on their way out. I had been getting sick of Reddit It wasn't the same thing it was when I first joined in ~2011ish. Back then, content was more scrutinized and users were kinder. As Reddit became mainstream, the content slowly changed to reflect that. It started to be more like an anonymous Facebook. I remember it sticking out especially after the Game Stop incident on WallStreetBets.
A few months before the API fiasco, I was banned from a sub because they misunderstood a comment I made as violating their rules. Because I had been banned from another sub recently (I think I had joined a China one then commented in an anarchist one for the lulz), I was suspended from Reddit entirely for a week. I didn't realize that I was doing it, but I used several usernames depending on what content I wanted to focus on. I commented using another username and was permabanned from Reddit entirely for trying to bypass the temp suspension. The specifics might be slightly different since I'm going from memory.
From then on, I would lurk in my favorite subs sporadicall using Reddit is Fun. Once the API fiasco kicked off a few months later, there was a push for Reddit alternatives, which gave me the opportunity to find and join Lemmy. I've been here ever since.
Reddit is Fun no longer worked, that was my initial reason for leaving. Then I started to see that reddit was becoming more of a corporate thing that regulated what we could see and couldn't see. I know it was like that before but now it just seems to be more...sanitized in a way if that makes sense.
Shutting down API changes and the official app being garbage.
I can't be left. I can't be right. Mods power tripping and I don't like walking on egg shells when I'm talking.
I like the idea of decentralized social media. Having a single for-profit company moderating all content feels sleazy.
The beauty of the fediverse is that there's independent competition. If you don't like how a certain space is being run, you can choose another or create your own. It's ironically very "free-market capitalistic", in contrast to the political leanings of the user-base. Lol
I didn’t feel like I was creating enough shareholder value to justify my existence there.
When they killed Apollo. Fuck using that shitty official app.
I would have tolerated ads if it meant Apollo still existing. I know Christian wouldn’t have made them as interrupting as Reddit does and the overall experience was wonderful.
The API changes were the starting point but it was when Spez said something along the lines of "Meh, all these annoyed users will come back"
A year later and I haven't been back and have no plans to.
I was one of several mods of a niche hobby sub. All of us were modding mostly from mobile phone 3rd party apps. Killing the API seriously hurt our ability to moderate the sub.
The hobby is historically male-dominated but had a nice, inclusive vibe going where most people understood a penis was not required equipment for this hobby. The API changes also coincided with a wave of incel gun-nuts. We couldn't stay on top of it. Every time we logged on, another nut telling women inappropriate things and ruining constructive conversation on actual questions about the hobby.
At one point I enjoyed modding, I rarely had to ban anyone, it was mostly just chiming in to clarify something or helping a poster ask questions in a better way or pointing them to resources they may have overlooked or otherwise trying to encourage positive engagement. Logging on to a wave of racist, sexist asshats was not what I signed up for.
It no longer brought me joy, so I Marie Kondo'd it right out the window.
They virtually blocked me from posting because I deleted my main account. Not out of protest but only because karma is meant to make you 'feel' like you're important and keep you enagaged. I would just rather not let reddit have access to all my thoughts for years and years in a easy to access public account. So I purge accounts all the time, easy come, easy go.
It usually is fine but the next account I made would get a lot of harassment for being new and typical commentary I had no problem posting on my high Karma account would get me banned from certain communities. Which is fine but it wouldn't stop me from purging that account too. They eventually flagged me for "ban evasion" and my posts were blocked the second I'd make an account.
Not banning one of my accounts. "Incidentally", the one that I used for moderation. That screams "we don't want you here unless you're working for us, for free" from a distance.
As a secondary reason: the ban message about "multiple, repeated violations of the content policy". It was one violation dammit. (I told a Nazi to kill himself.)
That was years ago. In the meantime I hopped from alternative to alternative. While still using Reddit mostly for trolling. Eventually the APIcalypse happened and there was enough content in Lemmy to make me forget about Reddit, instead of lurking once a week (like I typically did years ago).
They took away my app. Hard to believe it's been over a year now.
I browse lemmy on mobile and reddit on desktop. Good mix of stuff.
I noticed that reddit stock has went up a lot and almost doubled. That shit company somehow managed to make everyone believe they have a future.
API change protests. I am not giving up in just 2 days.
I used to use the official Reddit app, but you know, the more people that join the better.
That greedy little pigboy Spez's API shenanigans.
The API changes, and that reddit now blocks VPN users which means that I can’t even browse the site to read.
Ultimately, the deciding factor was the API locking out 3rd party apps. I found the Reddit App to be unusable and poorly designed, but the final straw was the unblockable ads. By this I mean, unlike other social media, there is no way to opt out of a particular ad and be served another in its place. For some users this was not a big deal because all ads are equally annoying, but for other users it was actively harmful. Recovering alcoholics were served unskippable beer ads. Gambling addicts were served ads for sports betting websites and casinos. Being a religious minority, I was frequently in groups targeted with aggressive proselytizing. It's dehumanizing.
Without the ability to use the apps that were better designed more efficient and didn't serve offensive ads, the site was useless to me. I ended up deleting all of my posts and comments as a security measure. Years of posts made it likely that my account could make me personally identifiable. Initially I planned to keep some of my posts intact that were offering troubleshooting or expert content but without the use of api tools, the task of doing so was impossible.
The general toxicity of the site, indifference to bigotry, and the CEO/Corporate behavior were all contributions. It made it exhausting and unpleasant. so I was not too sad to leave.
I used to browse Reddit, and I was about to make an account there at one point, until one of my friends warned me that artists with certain art styles are getting banned and harassed due to mods accusing them of using AI, even in the face of proof otherwise.
If there's anything that "AI artists" cannot do, it's provide WIPs, timelapse drawings and Paint Tool SAI files. Which is why I always have them ready if I ever get accused.
Going to preface by saying I still use Reddit occasionally alongside Lemmy AND Tildes sometimes as well. I just like talking to people with similar interests.
Most of us came over to Lemmy (in my case, originally kbin) because of the 3rd party app shutdown and API apocalypse. I still use Reddit since it has a lot more communities I'm interested in so I wouldn't be an ex-redditor per say. I'm not nearly as active as I used to before 3rd party apps got shut down.
I was always indifferent towards Reddit as a platform since I mostly just felt connected to the communities there. I only use more niche subreddits related to my interests and was never active on any with over 400k besides from askreddit, so I avoided most of the stereotypical bad things about Reddit's community and the whole "Reddit is becoming like Facebook" stuff. If Lemmy gained these communities I love, I'd stop using Reddit completely.
The community and content matters to me a lot more with link aggregator type platforms, the software less so than it does with microblogging platforms like Twitter and such. Spez sucks for what he did but I really don't care enough to criticize the dude one year after the Reddit migration and the failure of the blackout. I like Reddit's sheer amount of content available and don't care for the software/anything paid on there, and I like the technology behind Lemmy but the community offerings less so.
TL;DR I halfway switched.
The API change, I still have RIF on my phone as a reminder of why I moved here.
They made things worse and invalidated everyone else's hard work before demanding to be paid for that while they live on the content we produce. Yeah get fucked. It don't work that way.
Reddit admins perma-banned me for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza after calling me "antisemitic Nazi trash."
Multiple reasons. I first started on Slashdot as a news aggregator/discussion forum. Also SomethingAwful, then Digg. I've moved from platform to platform as the enshittification spreads, until I've landed here. I think the fediverse has the best chance to not go down the same holes the others have. The final straw though was the API change and elimination of 3rd party applications.
The way the API changes were done showed a disconnect between public best interests as a public commons and corporate interests to monetize. It implied that I was being targeted individually for monetization. I feel that anyone collecting individual data about any human and selling that data is a new form of slavery through an ownership of a part of that person with the intent to manipulate. The manipulation of information through the nondeterministic targeting of search results is a coup of a pillar of democracy and all governments of the world. The free press must apply to all information on the internet. With the monopoly of only 2 relevant web crawlers providing results directly or indirectly, there is no freedom of information in digital form. This would be no different than every news paper stand being owned by two companies a hundred years ago. Targeting the individual directly is what the API move was designed to handle. So, to me, it was an attempt to enslave my digital autonomous person. When faced with such a subtle attempt to subterfuge one's autonomy, I feel like the choice was obvious.
Everything I say here is scraped, but only the server host knows my dwell time, sensors, and various fingerprinting mechanisms. Ideally I would self host, but lack the skill and resources. This place is still hosted in a datacenter, but I'm using the API through a 3rd party, so it is even more obscure. I used reddit through an app with a scraped interface before, when that quit working, I quit using the site. Reddit proved it can only get worse, not better.
I'd been flirting on and off with Lemmy for a year or so, not using it seriously (different username) but then u/spez deciding to sell user data to LLM's coupled with the general air of permanent aggro in just about every sub led me to finally ditch it. I've had to go back a couple of times and every time I did I regretted it. It's become Twitter level users intertwined with bot armies all flinging shit at each other.
Bots
Commercialization
Too much mainstream marketing honestly
They ban you for bs reasons. That's it, even if you don't go against their rules, apparently saying the truth is enough to get banned.
we all know why,.and we all know.why we hate .ml
I actually originally was in the process of switching to Aether but that didn't pan out and lemmy was the next best thing when it came along. I wish they'd implement that 6 month auto-delete though. I understand the concept of things not being able to be taken back on the internet, but I think being able to trace back every single word a person typed going back a decade or more is silly. Like the aether creator said, if it was that important, it would've been saved elsewhere in that six month period. Beyond that we really don't need to know that pixiedust23 said "first" in response to a meme 3 years ago.
It’s full of trash comments. I spent too much time arguing over obvious facts. High ranked comments often have nothing to do with the content of the story. It’s become too popular.
too many ads
I still use Reddit, but less after the API changes. I was already using Mastodon and aware of Lemmy when that happened, but the biggest server previously was lemmy.ml, and even that wasn't very active. I put it in the back of my mind to check on again in hopes it would gain relevance. Reddit pissed off a bunch of its users, so it did.
Lemmy.world launched around then, and I'd heard of its admins by way of their well-known Mastodon server so I signed up.
Reddit likes to create some big periodical drama with its changes. Some of them already had me uneasy, and the way they gave their back to users with the API changes made end up doing what I had pending.
API changes and spez being a cunt
The official app was obnoxious, so I used a better 3rd party one. Then, they borked it. And then when I tried to just use the website it was obnoxious too. And then when I tried to use the old.website, It sucked specifically for my phone.
I don't want to deal with that, so I hopped aboard the bandwagon that was going on at the time, and its all been... pretty okay, actually.
The API got me interested. Now I use both. Lemmy has no ads, better news, and better apps (currently on Arctic.) Reddit has a better desktop experience (well, new.reddit, I hate old.reddit and new new reddit) and better niche subs. I’d love it if Lemmy grew enough so that the niche experience reddit offers became viable.
The death of the ".compact" version of the site was the final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to install an app, especially not the official reddit app to have a usable mobile experience. Once ".compact" was gone the only option was "old.reddit" which is a horrible mobile experience even though it is a fine desktop experience.
Lemmy mobile web user experience is VERY close to the ".compact" reddit user experience.
Corporate douchebaggery
Funny I used their app but still left due to the API changes, that and there was talk then about them going public. I just assumed it'll probably get worse from there so I jumped ship. I just need to start posting more.
If anything it was the lack of anything happening that made me switch over.
Definitely the API debacle.
Sync stopping development and switching to Lemmy brought me with it.
Content here is robust enough for me to mostly keep me off the other guy. Just been waiting for a few more niche communities to make their way over here to be perfect.
I used reddit on a mobile browser. At some point they completely blocked that and made it app-only on mobile, and I started looking for an exit. When the API bullshit happened shortly after I found one and took it
I was bored, again
I never used Reddit directly, only Bacon Reader, when that stopped working, I gave up.