Ex Redditors of Lemmy what made you come on over? What happened at Reddit that you made the switch?

The API changes. I use Sync, and not being able to use Sync made Reddit more or less unusable for me on my phone. I also fundamentally disagreed with the direction Reddit was going. So, Lemmy it was, and it's great. And now there's Sync for Lemmy, which is even better!
- All of this me too.
  Also, all of reddit felt like lemmy.ml, but here I can block .ml easy peasy
  
  Blocking .ml is super nice. The only thing that is a bit annoying is that they have a lot of active members that don't mind supporting fascist twats. Yet they participate in the fediverse and are otherwise informative. I don't get notifications when they answer one of my questions. Oh well.
- Same here. I exclusively browsed Reddit via app on my phone and tablet. After watching my wife struggle with the official Reddit app, I decided I would never use it. So when that became the only option, I decided it was time to move on to Lemmy.
  Besides, I'm very anti-advertisement and Reddit has turned very corporate lately, looking for every way to make a buck at our expense. So I'm done supporting that site. Information and community discussion should be freely accessible, not buried behind paywalls, awards, and advertisements.
- This. Screw Spez.
- Yep, BaconReader died and I came here.
  
  what app do you use now?
- I was on Infinity.
  When it was forked as Eternity, that was my go-to on Lemmy (unfortunately hasn't seen an update in a while).
  Sync is awesome too!
- Was using Boost for Reddit. API bits made them charge for Reddit. They offered lemmy. I'd been meaning to get started with Mastodon, having another fediverse portal offered made it easy.
- No more Slide for Reddit

They murdered Apollo.
- And then called Christian a liar. Spez can smoke a fat one
  
  Greedy pig boy
- Voyager is absolutely one of the S-Tier Lemmy apps
  
  Voyager da goat no cap
  
  Arctic > Voyager
  since it's not a web app, but an actual native iOS app written in Swift. Just like Apollo.
- Having also bailed because of Apollo, I kind of wish some of the iOS adjacent communities could get a decent toehold on Lemmy. 90% of the comments in those communities feel like they’re from people who are not subscribed, or never would.
  Traffic from All hits Lemmy communities a lot faster and harder than Reddit communities, and that can make it hard for certain communities to get rooted on this platform
  
  Yeah, that’s been my biggest complaint since coming over. People are way too hyper critical about what they think everyone should be doing/using/buying/consuming.
  
  Yeah because the lower amount of content i basically only browse all. And typically don’t visit any communities.

Shutting down 3rd-party apps
- RIP RIF
  
  Yep this is what made me move. Boost has been a great replacement on lemmy though.
  
  ☝️
- Same. I miss Apollo.
  
  Same. The closest thing I could find is !arctic@lemmy.world. On Android, I use !thunder_app@lemmy.world. (yes I always use 2 phones)

API changes killed the App I used.
- What app do you use on lemmy?
  
  I’m in the same boat, and I use Voyager. Formerly known as wefwef

API changes. I hate ads.
- Had Reddit wanted to charge a reasonable price for going ad-free I probably would’ve gone for it because I had no idea Lemmy existed at the time.
  Of course now I wouldn’t go back because I do know it exists. 🙃

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.
- RIF clan, represent!
  I haven't tried them all, but I've been using Boost. What app are you using to recreate that RIF feel?
  
  Jerboa hits that minimalist sweet spot for me.
  
  I started using Summit and it was good enough that I stuck with it.
  
  I've found Thunder to be a great replacement with some modern, gesture and UX friendly enhancements. Raccoon for Lemmy is pure magic and I highly recommend it as well, but the UX and UI are more modern and has less of that RIF, old-school forum thread scroller vibe.
  
  Connect for Lemmy on my Android phone has worked great! The interface is almost, but not quite, 1:1 with RIF.
  It was pretty buggy at launch, but here we are about a year out, and I'm not sure if I remember the what/when the last bug I encountered was. That is to say, the devs for connect are on top of stuff with regular updates which is nice.

The API-copalypse last year.

API changes / forcing 3rd party apps to shut down.

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.
- You were tired of the poop knife? How do you feel about that guy who was trying to hold it for 3 days?
  
  The one that I absolutely hated the most was in any politics related thread at all invariably people would bring up how Herbert Comacho Mt Dew or whatever his name is was such a great politician. Like, shut up, I'm trying to read about the power vacuum in Iraq; your nonsense has nothing to do with that.
- samesies
- Same for me. When I go to the big subs, like AITA, I am surprised by the style of conversation the people have and just the overall tone. I've asked questions here on Lemmy which go into an AITA direction, and the responses are so much more helpful and kind and respectful - you really notice the difference.
  Also, far less bots.

I really don't like Reddit's attitude as a corporation. The sense of entitlement from a user driven content aggregator is insane.

My app of choice stopped working.

They killed the apps.
- Yeah, killing off the apps was particularly annoying because they had the worst one and instead of improving it to get more people on it, they killed the other ones off.
  Other reasons for me:
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Spez saying that reddit owns all the content and no-one else can have it. No. It's our content. Spez loosing his shit over apps that made money because he should have all the money because he deserves it for being such a self absorbed narcissist.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Website pushing the app desperately annoyingly hard. Every third post would have a clickaway telling me it was best viewed on the app. Taking away the option that turned that off when you're logged in.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Making www.reddit.com different in a bad way on mobile, then killing mobile.reddit.com off when it had been OK on mobile.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Tankies taking over my local centre-left party's subreddit and banning people for suggesting that we should vote for that party. I kid you not.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Shutting down communities for protesting, replacing long-standing successful mods.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Shutting down communities for being "unmoderated" when the truth was that he didn't like the content and disagreed with some of the moderation policies.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Building a commercial empire on top of a lot of user generated content and then turning against the users.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  Nagging me all the time to use the official reddit app.
  
  This commwnt looks better in the Official Reddit App. Download now!
- Not just the apps, but the mobile website as well.
  They made it more burdensome to use every time to push people to their app.
  Switching to Lemmy on mobile was so refreshing. I didn't even need to switch my browser to display the desktop version.

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.
- Reddit's site sucks so bad nowadays. You're bombarded with the "use the app" shit, it only loads like five comments when you first open the page, and you can't see NSFW stuff without logging in (despite it totally loading then pretending it didn't).
  
  Look, I agree that the web interface sucks, but that’s kind of the point.
  They want you to be so annoyed that you install the app instead.
  No comment on whether the app also sucks. I’ve never installed it.
  
  Firefox + Old Reddit + Oldlander extension allows me to survive on that platform. I mostly cycle between Linux or computing related communities so I was unaffected by corrupt admins. My "engagement" is trying to answer questions and learning rather than discussing so I don't boycott reddit.
- Spez makesike USD 200m, reddit annual loss is like 180m
  Someone please correct me

Like a lot of others I left when spez decided to fuck everyone using the API and kneecapped Apollo.
- I was far more interested in Apollo than Reddit. I’m now using Voyager which is close enough to what Apollo was, but for Lemmy.
  
  Same!
- The lies about the content of the phone call were especially damning.

Because fuck Spez. Lying, greedy asshat.
- Oi!
  
  Oi oi!

When Reddit killed the use of its API for third party clients
- Yep, when RIF died I left. I only go there for Google searches now, and only if the info isn't somewhere else.
  
  Exactly the same situation for me. What I miss most perhaps is play-by-post roleplay communities. A lot of them have straight up died after many of us left reddit, and we never managed to move them elsewhere.
- Relay Pro was my app of choice. Whenever the 3rd party API usage was set to astronomical prices, i quit in solidarity. Now I am educated about the Fediverse :)

I left with the 3rd party app ban, Reddit's quality had been dropping steadily for a while at that point and now I couldn't even use an app that worked.
The official Reddit app stopped working for me altogether early last year, with comment sections taking upwards of a minute to load.
I still use Reddit for specific gaming communities that I check from time to time, since they don't exist here on Lemmy.
- Hey it's me, you.
  
  Hey it's me, you and you too
- That's when I left. App would have worked fine for me, but the writing was on the wall.
  Everything they did after that point made me feel good about my decision.

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.
- Mods must be professional SSB players.
  Dammit, I nearly forgot about all that.
- I don't see how's that related to a game
  
  Ah sorry. It’s kinda super specific. Back in the day there happened to be a couple of news about pro SSB players grooming minors. I tried to be funny and failed.
- 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.
  That's extremely frequent here too.

I'd been fed up with reddit for a while, but the API bullshit was the final straw for me: As soon as discovered the fediverse I was sold.
Connect is a great mobile app btw.
- same.
  I would have paid reddit a fee directly, say $2-$5 a month to keep API access, but the way they did it was unacceptable.
- Spez ama for 3rd party changes. Immediately deleted my account because it signaled that the era was over.
- Ha ha exactly the same here!
  Connect & Voyager are both nice IMO. I'm just a very ordinary user though

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.

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.
- Yeah, I think if they hadn't tried to break the boycott / subreddit blackout, I might have stayed. But, reddit had made it pretty clear they didn't really want me around, since I was holding on to the old interface and RES for dear life, even before they attacked the API.

The end of third party apps was the end of being able to tolerate the reddit experience.

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
- It's so easy to switch from one instance to another (in fact many people advocate having alternate accounts on multiple servers as a rule). Anyone can start a community and truly moderate it how they choose, or choose a server with the rules that they choose. It's not surprising that the Federverse has succeeded in creating spaces that are much more healthy, especially for vulnerable people. It is impressive how stark that difference is; harassment and abuse are accepted as given on just about every corporate media, with very little recourse.
- I'm probably going to explain it poorly, because I'm not a computer science person, but the fediverse is the umbrella term for the all the independent and interconnected servers using the same protocol to communicate and build federated social media. Meaning it's not centrally controlled, like we're a bunch of ships at sea tied together instead of all using the same port owned by one entity (like reddit).
  So, Lemmy and a few others for something reddit-style, Mastodon for something twitter style, and so on. All would fall under the umbrella of the "fediverse".
  As for getting involved, you could try to add content to attract people here and entertain those who already are (that's what I've been doing), or if you're tech-savvy, you could even create your own federated instance.
- It's ironically very "free-market capitalistic"
  Decentralization inherently means free market.
  Also, whatever we got or what people think we got well it ain't a free market.

Got sick of being sold to, when they got rid of third party apps I bailed.

The killing of Apollo (and all others) really rubbed me the wrong way, and I refuse to support companies moving in the direction of forcing ads in front of people.
- Same. I used Apollo almost exclusively for Reddit. I left the day it shut down and haven’t been back.

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 was ready to switch for a long time. When everyone else left, lemmy got large enough to sustain conversation.
- I’ve specifically put more effort into playing an active role and being part of conversations because I believe in the promise of Lemmy.
  
  Doing my part!

API changes
- Yep, the apicalypse made me switch.

They killed the standalone apps. The desktop version redesign was/is crap. And the official mobile experience is less pleasant than having the clap.

The amount of obvious bot posts and comments just essentially copy pasting the same basic shit all over the place got exhausting.

I didn’t feel like I was creating enough shareholder value to justify my existence there.

I switched over when I read an interview with the CEO — I think with The Verge — and figured it was over. It was obvious he was juicing numbers to go public and there was no point investing time on a platform that would only get worse for users.
- For the most part, it’s probably better for me. I never really got into the big subreddits that make the front page anyway. It was mostly a place for me to nerd out on small, more academic or hobby subreddits anyway. (I’m a Linux user and software developer so that all pretty much transferred over here fine.)
  I find the quality of posts/replies here to be better in terms of quality but, obviously, sometimes there’s fewer (or, worse, zero). I like Voyager as an app (or web interface if your instance supports it). And I’ll pretty much always accept the less and the more to support open standards/communities/software.
  
  Lemmy has quality over quantity.

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.

I came over because spez is a greedy little pig boy

The third party switch. Plus I have found lemmy to be quite refreshing. On Reddit all I did was lurk. But now I actually comment and participate. Because it feels like I'm talking to real people.
- Totally agree. Towards the end of my time on reddit I barely interacted at all. Here I feel much more motivated to participate too.

Reddit API + going public

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.

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.

Everyone else was doing it. I just wanted to be popular.

Losing RIF. But after more than a decade on the site, most posts felt like something I had read before.
- rip rif
- That was such a tidy little app :( Tried to wean myself off Reddit before 3rd party apps were disabled and a friend suggested lemme.

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 got permabanned for talking about piracy in /r/movie and then accidently commenting there later on a separate account. This was just months before they killed 3rd party apps so it was very easy to leave.

I find Lemmy much more ethical. It truly is by the community, for the community.
On reddit, a select few are getting rich by the content YOU create. Seems a bit weird to me. You create content, they get to buy a new house/yacht. No thank you.

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.

I like that Lemmy is independent and Im not providing free content for a giant corporation

Two years ago, I noticed the comment section was getting worse.
Someone would post a thoughtful post, and the top comments were jokes. Thats not my problem. But when I clicked on the commenter, I noticed a pattern. All their comments were a single sentence joke for like a year. I'd do it a hundred more times and would continue seeing it for the top comments.
Bots or not, it didn't feel like comments meant anything anymore. Redditors weren't sharing thoughts or talking to each other. It just felt like they wanted upvotes and validation. That sucks for conversation.

We all have essentially the same answer.
How did a non-ex-redditor get here?
- Dunno if I count but I read an article about Fediverse tech in like idk 2020, which lead me to mastodon and lemmy. I created an account on kbin but rarely used it except curiosity before API shit hit the fan.

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.

the june 2023 api protests

RIP Apollo
- It was a client that let you browse Reddit on your phone, in a much nicer and more organised way than anything provided by Reddit itself.
  All was fine until Reddit decided to monetise their API that Apollo - and many other apps - used. Now it would cost the app developer tens of thousands a month to maintain the connection, which is not something that they could sustain.
  So for me, the day that Boost for Reddit stopped working, I stopped using Reddit.
  
  IMAGINE 💀

The API changes were the last straw; but it had been heavily destroyed by astroturfing for years before the API restrictions finally just pushed me over the edge.
Technically, the fediverse would be even easier to astroturf. Luckily we’re early enough that astroturfing is foolish on Lemmy.
- Maybe. I feel that Reddit cares little about bots and astroturfing. It drives up the engagement numbers. Independent server operators care more, but have fewer resources. Time will tell.
  
  This seems to be the case so far. I hope it scales. Lemmy servers actually have an incentive to eliminate those things - they drive up server costs and could lead to defederation. Plus, they are usually running a server for the sake of enjoying giving people a place to socialize.
  Ever tried getting an obvious bot/spam account banned from Meta? Good luck! Those accounts are generating ad impressions, so who cares if they're fake? Meta could invest the profits generated in 2 minutes and fix the problem for good, but their incentive is to keep the problem just below the threshold that people leave the platform.

I wasn't enjoying myself there. The API fiasco made me aware of lemmy and I switched over.

The main cause for why I wanted to leave reddit was the "hustle" for getting as many upvotes as possible. It just felt like the content was not genuine, but merely manufactured for clicks, meaning that you wouldn't really get proper or meaningful conversations with other people. What triggered my switch to lemmy was reddit's api changes and the censorship moderators and spez did.
Here, I can have an actually meaningful conversation without the toxicity and childishness of redditors on reddit. One thing I miss though is leaving the huge bank of information that accumulated on that platform from decades of people sharing information.

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.