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 nodded 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.
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I’ve only gotten to use a few custom apps, the API changes didn’t really make sense to me.
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Did you mean to resend that? 😆
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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. 🤣
Wow! So it is true, I often hear that people don’t like pushers.
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 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 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.
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 😆
There’s a lot of people I know and don’t want here.
I’ve been here for 5 years but the end of Apollo was the end of Reddit for me. Fuck that noise.
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.
I decided to leave reddit after I switched from lurking to trying to participate more. Most of the comments I made for about six month had little to no interaction, to the point I wondered if I was shadow banned (but wasn’t as far as I could tell). When I was able to interact with another redditor it was rarely pleasant and usually was just someone telling me I was wrong or misunderstanding my comment and arguing against the misunderstanding.
I didn’t have a community of people on reddit to being but I did ask a friend to try it a few months back. She didn’t stick around though because of the lack of content.
If reddit isn’t working for you Lemmy might, but I would encourage you to consider what it is you want from social media and see if there might be a better fit somewhere because Lemmy is just anarchist reddit.
Edit: It’s also worth pointing out the average Lemmy user is much smarter than the average redditor so if the idiots on reddit are your main problem you might find it fits your needs
Yeah, I definitely do a see a change in Lemmy’s environment. Most Redditors I’ve come across are very hostile. I’ve had someone argue with me on the vent sub for ‘bitching,’ when that’s literally what the community is for. xD
Most of that comes from how much smaller Lemmy is than Reddit and the demographic of Lemmy users. I don’t have hard information, but at least anecdotally the average Lemmy user is about ten years older, it seems more men use it even than reddit, and skews extremely left.
The low volume of users means a lot less content and fewer niche communities. The biggest between Lemmy and Reddit though is the lack of bots. There are bots on Lemmy for sure and probably the same kinds that are most of reddit, but there just isn’t as big of an incentive because the ROI is smaller.
I found the same about engagement - every post had 5000 comments but only the top 100 could generate actual conversation, everyone else might as well be talking to themselves
I found that was better when I would sort subs by new or rising and comment there. Once something makes it to the front page it’s pointless to comment on unless your goal was getting more internet points. Lemmy is much easier to get into conversations just because of how much smaller it is.
I never tried
A few friends wanted to give it a try, and a few of those are around, I think… I made it a point to avoid learning their usernames, but they send me links from Lemmy from time to time.
It was one of
- they’re very close friends
- I shared a relevant link and they asked about it