Ask Lemmy

I don't like ads.

I was already sick of what reddit was turning into, then it went full Spez and ruined the place completely. Lemmy was the only thing close that I could find. So here I am.

They killed the app I used (Boost) with the API changes, then the developer of said app made one for Lemmy so I came here.

Settled originally on lemm.ee, now I'm here. RIP lemm.ee

To seek the holy grail. ...wait. That's not right.

Oh right! To seek a better place online that was like Reddit, but better. (There's less toxicity, more of a feeling of community connection here, and a lot less BS to deal with on Lemmy than what I recall from Reddit back in the early 2010s. And supposedly, that was around the time that "went to shit on Reddit.")

I quit Reddit when it killed 3rd party apps to force people onto their shitty app and shove ads down our throats. I intentionally took a break from scrolling but eventually joined Lemmy 6-months later when I didn't notice any profound differences in my relationship with my phone/the internet.

I left when they banned 3rd party apps, like many others. I never actually used 3rd party apps btw, however I could sense Reddit was about to go downhill, and I had been meaning to leave for a while - the straw that broke the camel's back. And I guess my suspicions were bang on correct.

API reasons

I jumped during the API fiasco, but in my case the story is a bit different I think.

One subreddit I used to spend a lot of time on was r/dndmemes. I was a relatively new DM at the time and loved hearing everyone’s stories and takes on things there. I even made a number of memes on the shenanigans that happened in my own campaign. Some of them took off way more than I could have ever imagined.

When the API fiasco started, that subreddit was one of the ones that participated in the blackout. When Reddit started sending threats to the mods to open it up, they asked what the community wanted. That’s when it went into what they called ‘goblin mode’. Basically everything had to be an NSFW meme since Reddit couldn’t advertise as much on those subreddits.

Reddit ended up removing just about all the mods and left the subreddit in a broken state. Practically nobody could post there. When they spun up attempt.network, I made the jump and haven’t looked back since

I just wanted to talk to people and less bots. I'm sort of becoming discouraged though. A lot of stuff here that interests me involves reading articles and it feels like most people just go off the headlines. Then there are certain subs that just feel so angry, like the gamer ones.

I'm always toying with the idea of joining some forums but I never know which are still alive. If anyone knows solid game, book, or film ones please lmk.

When they killed my boi Apollo

I was banned from Reddit but the tides had already been shifting and dialog wasn't as pleasant or productive so I took it as a sign and bounced over here. 👍

Signed up when the Apollo app stopped working due to Reddit’s API restrictions.

Humanity is shit in general, but there's a greater concentration of the few like minded people here so that's attractive.

l was browsing around on r/kde sometimes, and there was a banner-thing Saying that KDE Supported open platforms like Lemmy. I took a look at Lemmy's Wikipedia, and browsed around a few days later. I liked the stuff on c/programmerhumour, So I joined.

Also my Reddit account got banned (i think, might be deactivated, idk) due to inactivity (I wasn't on for 2-3 years), and I didn't care to do anything about it.

Also, as a bit of context for the above, it did take a while from hearing about Lemmy and browsing and joining.

API refugee. I went to Lemmy first, then jumped over to PieFed because of the awesome features and devs. I still use my Lemmy account for a particular community.

To share my erotic fiction because the reddit mods banned it !!

They are such fascists over there. Seriously.

It was open source, federated and written in Rust!

The Reddit API enshittification event was just what kept me here.

Reddit API changes.

Probably done here soon too.

If you got banned not from a sub of Reddit but all of Reddit then that’s on you.

Got permabanned on every account as well as IP and device banned, and this was literally only from commenting in the same community I was banned from on a different account which never touched the device I commented on, nor the email connected to the account I commented on.

because /c/196 moved here after the reddit blackout over the api crackdown and I thought it would like, stick, but

Cause they killed my favorite 3rd party app and then banned every account I had except one for "report abuse" (I reported too many ads disguised as posts as spam).

Even if I didn't join lemmy, I would've stopped using reddit. I still have an account so I can login and view posts when they would otherwise block me from viewing because of a VPN.

But why reddit is utter insidious and hostile garbage is another subject.

Lemmy and Mastodon are just in every way more how it's supposed to be. I can use a vpn. I can use whatever non-gmail email. I don't have to worry about one profit-oriented central authority becoming a target to shape discourse in favor of special interest groups, as I could just spin up my own instance, or go elsewhere. The communities are spread across different instances with different operators, owners and motivations. So it's much more organic.

This is by the way also a reason why it's quite important people don't all sign up to the same big instances.
This is a problem on mastodon, where even now joinmastodon.com, by default points to mastodon.social.

Mastodon.social hosts genocide-denying Zionists and is generally more pro-genocide than any of the decent larger instances. Regardless of their own motivations, being hosted in Germany and as THE entry to mastodon, they are a target for shaping public opinion.

Last wish before Christmas, I also wish people would alt-text more on lemmy. Maybe in the future there can be a bot that messages you when the image was posted without alt-text, like on Mastodon. It seemed to have helped people a lot who were new to this.

I should have moved when they killed 3rd party apps but i have finally decided to move now because reddit just feels garbage now. Posts and comments just feel more like facebook level content then it used to and people just seem to argue a lot just to argue.

Plus the ads have gotten really stealthy in their official app. I didnt even notice how bad its gotten until the a few days ago i saw a comment thread were mods had nuked every comment and all was left visible in the sea of [deleted] was 20 comment looking ads

Curiosity, mostly. I learned about the FOSS alternative, checked it out, and haven't been on Reddit for a couple months now.

I recently deleted all my us-based accounts (except SoundCloud and bandcamp) to migrate to European services. Soo reddit is gone and it feels like it's way better here

I like trying new platforms, i saw that they is less pro genonice and settler colonialisms and a yesr later was banned from reddit

I joined Reddit in 2005 and liked the format. I had been self-hosting Mastodon for a while before I joined Lemmy because it had long been evident that a centralized corporate internet is not exactly great for its users or the world at large. I had also experimented with Hubzilla and Akkoma.

I looked at Lemmy a couple times before the Reddit API fiasco and it was just a couple servers that were dominated by people who thought Stalin did nothing wrong and killing Uyghurs is just fine and/or not happening. I was not motivated to participate at that time. When lemmy.world launched, I joined it because I had the impression mastodon.world was well-run.