Hi! I'm in the same boat. Part of me is sad to leave (15 year account) but the more bigger part of me is looking forward to seeing how lemmy grows with this migration.
I’ve actually been using the Reddit app for quite some time now and I don’t get the hate. Regardless of that, the way Reddit handled all of this was enough for me to leave anyway. Hi Lemmy!
I used sync on Android for about 10 years, and reddit is fun ("rif") for maybe a year before that. I used the official app yesterday to look for any top posts about the lost traffic on reddit and the app was stuttery and was impossible to find even the easiest of things. They've had their requirements and priorities change over the years as middle management comes and goes and so the app doesn't have a unified and streamlined experience, which many of us on 3rd party apps have gotten used to. Which is sad since most 3rd party apps are the efforts of a single individual vs a 100s of employee, first party company.
Goes to show how difficult it can be for teams to build good products when there's a million stakeholders involved vs one stakeholder (plus users). It can be done of course, but only if managed well. Which Reddit obviously didn't.
I tried the official app 5 or 6 years ago but it really sucked, was way too bright and killed my phone's battery life. Settled for RedReader and never looked back.
RedReader only got better, the Reddit app had some features slowly trickle in years too late, and got worse and had bugs that took ages to fix.
I was using it enough that I would have considered paying for premium or gold if Reddit was to co-operate to add-in API features like poll voting. But with their such antagonistic approach, I started winding down my Reddit usage in late April and ramping up with Lemmy. Despite RedReader being given an exception, I'm leaving it permanently. I'm not posting or commenting anymore.