I’m ready to step away from Reddit. I know you can encounter toxic behavior on other platforms too, but I’m just exhausted by the level of negativity there. So, I have two questions for those who have fully transitioned — What prompted your decision to leave? And were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?
The API debacle got me to leave, I had become fond of Infinity for reddit, and saw there was a fork for Lemmy called eternity.
I implored a sub I modded to join me, likely a handful did.
I like it here much better, I can never go back now.
There are communities I enjoy on Reddit so fully committing to Lemmy is a bit hard for me right now. It sucks. 😭
That’s how I feel too. I’m mostly committed to Lemmy, to the point where I even deleted my Reddit account, but I also still lurk in a few, like /r/SWTOR, /r/JPEGXL, /r/trans, and /r/ChangeMyView.
There are communities for the latter three, but the JPEG-XL one is just a mirror community, the Trans one is not quite as active (still decent AFAICT), and the top CMV one I can find has a little over 100 subscribers so pretty dead.
I’m only familiar with the Change My View sub!
Yeah, JPEGXL is a pretty awesome (tho still very new) image format and I like to keep compatibility advances for it in mind, /r/trans is, well, a community for trans people, and /r/swtor is for the community surrounding the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.
Don’t worry, I think a lot of people are like that!
View content on other sites, post there when you need to, whatever works for you. I try to only post here, unless there is an urgent reason for me to post there.
Apollo ended so bye bye Reddit. Never looked back.
I’ve only gotten to use a few custom apps, the API changes didn’t really make sense to me.
Try Voyager app on Lemmy. 👌🏼
Did you mean to resend that? 😆
No, my mistake. Try Voyager again. I love it. The servers are going through upgrades right now on Lemmy so you may experience some delays.
I’ll give it a try then!
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I think I have, right now I’m using Artic though. I’m not getting notifications outside of the clients I use so I don’t know if it’s the app or my phone, I’m on iOS. 😆
What prompted your decision to leave?
The API thing last year was my last straw. Finally killing off the last of the “we totally love our users” bit and changing it to a very profit-focused platform was the indication it was time. It wasn’t until after I left did I realize what a toll it was taking on my mental health.
were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?
Tried, but it didn’t stick. Learned that people will move over naturally. I talk about it if people ask me why I’m not on Reddit, but I never push or actively encourage. I learned that only makes people less likely to try it. Don’t know why, probably some psychological reasoning, but if I show I’m too excited about something they’ll actively avoid it.
Don’t know why, probably some psychological reasoning, but if I show I’m _too_ excited about something they’ll actively avoid it.
I have this feeling too. I think that is because I’m not cool, people don’t want to do the things that the not cool guy is doing.
People who think like this suck honestly.
Realized I replied to the same comment. 🤣
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10+ years on Reddit and I could not stand what the API changes were going to do, on top of totally hating the experience without an app.
None of my friends were even on Reddit so no problem with them not being on Lemmy ಠ_ಠ
Lemmy feels alot like Reddit in 2012 so I’m hopeful.
On one custom app I used, I think they made it so you can hide a comment completely from view but I also think regular Reddit hasn’t gotten better at that as well.
API debacle. Relay went paid.
Added some features I was missing in lemmy mobile to Thunder, and been happy since.
One friend, my sister, and dad, also got lemmy accounts when I told them about it.
Glad to hear that you haven’t made the switch alone!
What prompted your decision to leave?
I had been looking for an alternative to Reddit for a while, but heard about Lemmy during the API Exodus of ‘23.
were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?
I did not try. I know no one on Reddit personally except one of my customers. I have told him in person about Lemmy, but I do not think he would join. I co-modded a sub and the other mod supposedly went to beehaw. But again not someone I knew personally.
API exodus-ers unite!
Lemmings from a sinking ship 💪
For me it was/is exactly the same. I’ve not been using reddit a lot anyway but once I heard about Lemmy I was very quick to move around the API disaster. I also don’t know anyone from reddit so I didn’t have a desire to convince anyone.
I spread the news around in my other networks and I think 2 people joined lemmy, but they would have joined without me advocating for it anyway probably.
I knew of Lemmy before the API exodus, but I didn’t really have a reason to move as I didn’t really use the custom apps. Just with the nastiness of some Redditors, Reddit’s been losing it’s appeal to me, but I’m clinging onto the app for some friends I have there. Hmm.
I just go where Sync goes.
Sync basically was Reddit to me, for over a decade. And now Sync goes to Lemmy. So here I am.
I left during the blackout. I occasionally mention it if I’m taking about a post or article, but haven’t tried to get anyone to join. I’m pretty ok that there are just a few million of us.
That’s a great way to put it. I can probably find a community here if I tried hard enough.
Post on the general communities and if it takes off, consider a separate community. It’s sort of like being out in the world and finding people with common interests.
I never tried
Reddit blocks tor
Lemmy allows tor
I prefer to minimize the possibility of crazy internet stalkers (and government agents)
Lemmy is better
Thanks for that 😆
I came in 2023 when they shut down the API. I did this because RIF is how I see Reddit and Reddit’s app sucks. There is a lot of ideological stuff associated with my decision but ultimately that’s not what drove me.
No, I haven’t been able to get people to join me, but I haven’t really tried. The friends that I know used RIF just switched to the official Reddit app. (One even likes it better.) I don’t mind because we never interacted on Reddit. I only know they had accounts, not their names. We chat on other apps.
There’s a lot of people I know and don’t want here.
My decision to leave was due to the prevalence of misinformation and / or entirely unrelated comments being upvoted to the top. Fuck that place. It’s just an alternate to Facebook now.
Edit: I just think it’s funny that people left because of the API policy. Not to diminish anyone’s preferences but Reddit’s policy change was actually to retain users, run more ads, and probably increase algorithmic engagement and sell content to LLMs. People left as a protest with the belief that it was run by, for, and of the people and that Reddit didn’t understand its core user base. Reddit has only continued to increase its user base and revenue. I’d venture to guess that the core users leaving was actually a benefit to Reddit. Their departure just made it easier for Reddit to accomplish their goals.
… toxic behavior on other platforms …
… others to join you …
Uhh, no? Lemmy is better because of the community that is already here.
100% my reasoning too. Secretly hope it never gets popular.
Yes and no. I left during the API drama and the blackout. First, moving communities wholesale just never works. Community archives don’t migrate, the affordances are different from site to site, etc. That’s why we (speaking for all the folks who run the ourblind.com set of communities) run a Reddit, a Discord, and of course the rblind.com Lemmy. The members and culture are wildly different between the three. And that’s fine. Though because of moderation issues, these days all posts to /r/blind need approval, and sometimes approval can take a day or more. However, Reddit’s decision to exempt the accessibility focused clients (Luna and Dystopia) that most blind folks use meant that a lot of blind people preferred to stay on Reddit, especially those who just consume content from other communities.
Second, creating a home for a new community, and doing it properly, takes a lot of time and effort! It’s taken us over a year to get the server infrastructure for rblind.com to a place I’m happy with. We had almost a week of downtime a while back, and until recently email delivery was extremely dodgy. While those things are fixed now, we’re still in process of creating a custom (more accessible) theme for our Lemmy. So even over a year later, I would still consider the rblind.com Lemmy to be in an alpha state. Signups are more than welcome, but we’re not actively working to push people over from elsewhere. Despite that, we’ve got a couple active daily users (mostly in off-site communities), folks make regular posts to our main community from Mastodon, and we’ve got a couple hundred registered users. It took the Reddit about five years to really take off, and even the Discord took a couple years before it started popping. So I’m happy for Lemmy to slowly build at its own pace, into whatever it decides to become, without trying to make it a clone of Reddit or something else, or forcing the existing communities to move over.
As well, of course, if Reddit does decide to cut off the accessible clients, or do something else that makes it completely screen reader inaccessible, our Lemmy means that no single service can hold our community hostage. Unlike when the API stuff happened, now we wouldn’t be in the position of racing to find a new home. We’ve got somewhere that’s mostly built and ready for people to move in when they need it.
