Why are you on Lemmy?

I like the ability to actually see everything from an API standpoint. Reddit is also overwhelmingly negative, and im looking for a place to discuss with people willing to actually do something other than complain.

Saw the whole fiasco of Reddit unraveling and then went to Lemmy. Seriously fuck Spez and how he treated the developer of Apollo.

Came because of the reddit API. Stayed, because I couldn't stand reddit users anymore.

To spread the word about the ultimate beverage: WATER

Because reddit shut down my favorite app.

Found out about it from Reddit, and it seemed better in several ways, so I tried it out.

Reddit made me constantly angry, then the API thing forced me on their app which made me angrier.

Lemmy makes me feel good and the app I use fits my needs near perfectly.

This is a pretty decent group of weirdos we got here.

I'm a bit less extreme about it than many here. But, in short, back when Reddit made sweeping API changes it immediately gave me 'the ick' and so I sought less centralised platforms. Lemmy is the closest thing I've found to people just hosting their own message boards like back in the early internet.

I'm a big fan of decentralized platforms and I love the concept of ActivityPub.

That said, I still use Reddit and have recently started to really enjoy BlueSky, so I'm not militantly against the corporate platforms or anything.

Finally, I just like the natural selection things like Lemmy and Mastodon have for those who are naturally more techy and nerdy.

Reddit's API fuckery. That's it, that's the whole reason. Fuck spez.

Allows Tor and VPNs

UI is so clean and mobile browser friendly

No "Download Our App" annoying BS

No ads

Federation make it censorship resistant when it comes to discussions, no one person can ban all dissent, while consensus of the instances can ban all the hate speech, and there's the tool of defederation to stop instances that allows hate speech to go uncontrolled.

Lemmy and fediverse platforms are probably the best examples of "Free Speech" platforms there are that, unlike those other "Free Speech" platforms, this isn't just filled with hate speech all the time, although it isn't perfect, and there are still jerks sometimes.

Edit: As to why a "Reddit" type platform with communities and upvote/downvotes, its because I don't like the "Twitter" style of following people. People become bad all the time. I like to discuss topics, not focus discussions on a person.

Reddit was reddit. I left when I was forced into using their stupid app and watch ads.

I've generally enjoyed Lemmy.

Edit: or to and

Because Reddit is a shit hole from which no intelligent life will ever escape.

Came in support of Apollo; I just couldn’t in good conscience continue to support Reddit (even after 19 years) with how they treated external clients.

Found it similar to Reddit so it scratched the same itch.

Was ready to jump ship from Reddit before the API changes were to come in full effect.

Joined Lemmy after I heard about it and saw Jeroba worked well on my phone.

Completely switched over once 'Reddit is Fun' stopped working.

Because fuck Spez, that's why.

Left Reddit because of the API stuff. Still on Lemmy because it's not as addictive and has a much higher concentration of leftists.

It became large enough to sustain conversation. I hope it becomes large enough to sustain niche communities.

EDIT: also "civility" doesn't mean "don't sass the nazis" like it does on reddit.

Came here because of reddit API drama.

Stayed for the memes

Left reddit for the #FuckSpez incident. Stayed because mostly everyone here is a lot nicer than reddit and there is almost no transphobic shit on here(at least on my instance) which is really awesome!

It's an alternative to reddit.

Just like everyone else: APIcalypse and enshittification of Reddit.

I think the real question is: Why a social news aggregation content rating forum instead of any other type of social media?

If I cared about people, I would be spending my time on Mastodon. Since I care more about specific topics, I’m here on Lemmy instead. IMO, the structure of conversations is also much nicer and more readable here on Lemmy.

Reddit bad.

I got on Reddit because it's pseudonymous, and the nesting of threads is good. I didn't appreciate it for a while, but upvote/downvote also provides a useful proxy for what body language does in real life.

because I can't use my favourite reddit app anymore

The UX barrier of entry is a good idiot filter, not perfect but better than reddit.

I'm a rifugee.

Because fuck u/spez

Got bored of Reddit's capitalism

Because I believe in the idea of the Fediverse and I want it to succeed.

You're right, I should go to bed.

Mostly for memes about beans.

Uh but for real because reddit quite literally sold out and went full corpo.

Because fuck Spez, that’s why.

I was here before the Reddit API kerfuffle, because I care about an open and decentralized internet.

I discovered the Fediverse through Mental Outlaw and then started using Lemmy after the Reddit API thing.

Once RiF announced it would shut down due to the API changes I made my account here. I only used Reddit on mobile so just staying on old.reddit wasn't an option. Tried a few different apps for Lemmy and landed on Sync since I can set it up as close to RiF as I could, but with improvements like sliding to up vote.

It's a much better place here, and I actually comment more here than I ever did on Reddit due to the toxicity and just getting buried by bot accounts. My account was 12 years old when I left, now I've been here over a year and don't plan on leaving any time soon. You're stuck with me now

1. The r/conservative mods got my main account global banned for using the “report misinformation” button too much. That sub used to have good quality textposts but when the trump cult took over, it changed to nonstop ragebait/lies/propaganda news articles. And on slow news days you’d see articles like “Throwback: Dont forget that Obama did X six years ago” to keep the people furious 7 days a week
2. Enshittification

I've been posting on internet forums for almost 30 years now. It's just a thing I like doing.

I'm here now because it's the best place I know of at the moment.

I like having ownership of my internet experience so I run a lemmy instance and my friend administrates it. It is more fun than using a botted network.

Fortune and glory.

Just want to support Fediverse 🙂

Reddit got redundant. I like arbitrary All and Popular feeds and boy did those suck after the nth made up feel good repost.

As for staying, I'm more inclined to comment here. I'm shy even by online standards but Lemmy feels like it needs more commenters.

Non-ideologically: the culture is measurably better. Here's why.

• The Lemmy Algorithm. This is a big flaw with Reddit -- people have the attention span for the first ten comments, and then subcomment upvotes halve (with decent std. dev -- we aren't Zipf's Law devotees there) until invisibility. I don't think my Reddit comments are even seen, let alone replied to. But here, new comments have a chance.
• The sense of "mineness". A lot of people see this place as "their own", so there's responsibility to raise your communities right, and another to interact (hence, variably lower hostility). I don't post much but I respond a lot to the people who comment in them, because I feel that it'd be nice to contribute to do my part and keep this place up.
• At risk of sounding self-absorbed/elitist, the entry level helps culture too. People are here because they were dissatisfied with the state of other sites, then made a jump; this is a sieve that to an extent increases the standard of sorting by new. (This has limitations of course -- we still have extremists for example -- and it isn't necessarily advocating for Lemmy to never be mainstream.)

e.g. that Draw a Duck post a while back is probably far beyond a lot of platforms' capabilities/proclivities.

(I admit: this is a paraphrased comment I made a few months ago)

Reddit banned me. They hate anti capitalists and anti fascists

i came here like most lemmy did; because reddit; and i hope to be here for a long time since all substantially financed social media platforms enshitify eventually like reddit or facebook did or enshitify immediately like bluesky did when they banned gazans.

Came because I liked open source software and hate corporations. Stayed because communism

Cause need to take the web back.

Better engagement than Reddit at this point I'm starting to believe it's all bots for real.

Because spez was being a dip shit. Other than that, yeah, idklol

i dont have anywhere else to go

It started with a distaste for how Reddit was treating developers and moderators, but now I genuinely believe in the future of the fediverse.

Because I love sync

As in, why here and not reddit? I drifted away from posting on reddit about 5 - 8 years ago. I was icky over their ads and tracking and it was just a time sink I didn't need back then, but I would still use alternate frontends (the current equivalent would be libreddit) to lurk while on the train trip to work and back.

I forget whether I found lemmy from /r/piracy exploring bunker options (raddle and lemmy) or if it was through FOSS, but I liked its potential and have been here posting here since 2022.

I ain't gots nowhere else to go.

For the snacks

Honestly don't remember why I signed up. I like it though. Kind of similar vibe to when I used Reddit except much better. It's got some nice small-ish (but not too small) communities for FOSS stuff.

API changes killing Apollo.

I was meant to be doing something but I got distracted

I have no idea what I was meant to be doing because I smoked the mystery joint

I think most of it was probably blue cheese

I just enjoy it here.

sync for Android

Lemmy tell you how...

Corporate greed puts me off.

Well I was IP banned on reddit. Anybody on reddit that uses my ip address gets an automatic ban forever. I don't know exactly what I said or do. I tried appealing no response till date. Got tired of trying different vpn just for reddit and had to move.

Spite

apology for poor english

when were you when Reddit dies?

i was sat at home eating smegma butter when pjotr ring

"Reddit is kill"

"no"

I want to talk to people online but reddit is too yucky. Lemmy has a better community than reddit and it's not for proffit open source decentralized and all the other things that I love.

Because Kbin isn’t around anymore

Reddit's app is a pile of shit and I did not want to be forced to use it. I have donated to Boost a couple of times.

I left Twitter and Reddit and I found Lemmy and Mastadon. Lemmy is going much better than Mastadon.

I found it in the reddit kerfuffle and stayed because it reminded me of a combination of Usenet text forums and early Reddit. The pace here is manageable and it's mostly nice.

So I am here for whatever I was on Usenet then Reddit for, just to have a space to read people's opinions and maintain a niche community.

Reddit went ban happy and nuked my 13 year old account over attempting to appeal a mod power tripping over an innocent comment they didn't like.

Which was after the api think killed RiF

Reddit killed third party apps and their mobile site barely functions, so I wasn’t able to use reddit on mobile without installing spyware/adware.
Lemmy was the best alternative.

Much better community. I've posted on Reddit and gotten posts removed, downvoted, and no interaction. Communities are smaller here but if you post something, you will get interaction.

Edit: also, after you scroll through reddit for a sufficient amount of time. You realize everything on your algorithm is karma farm bots reposting stuff. Every now and then you will get decent posts and then you look through the comments and there are karma farming bots. Essentially, you have to sift through a pile of shit to find good content.

The lack of accountability of mods on reddit. Reddit doesn't want to lose their free labor.

I first knew fediverse through Mastodon, so my answer has more to do with the whole concept of fediverse than with Lemmy alone.

My main reasons initially were the following:

1. I don't really like crowded networks (it's actually a personal trait of mine, derived from the physical fact that I don't really like crowded places at all).
2. I hate when algorithms try to lead me, ruling over what I write and/or ruling over what I read.
3. I like alternative options and the unknown. Between a latin/roman A and B, I often tend to choose a greek Gamma (trying to always think outside boxes).

And I kinda of liked it. Well, Mastodon has been a cemetery, so most of my fediverse interactions happen through Lemmy.

Just out of curiosity: among several Lemmy instances, I specifically chose The Lemmy Club as an instance for having a Lemmy account for a symbolic reason. Back when I was signing up on Lemmy and trying to find a good instance, the initial "thelem" from "thelemmyclub" got to my attention, because at that time I was delving into Aleister Crowley's Thelema (Liber Al Vel Legis, The book of the Law). So "the lemmy club" kinda of resembled "Thelema club" to me. I'm not a Thelemite, at least not entirely, because I'm more inclined towards a syncretic Luciferianism, but I liked the hidden symbolism that I got to see within the instance's name (also it's actually another personal trait of mine, trying to find patterns everywhere at every time, even though it's just a pattern to myself).

For an actual community. I was tired of Discord and Reddit.

Cuz there are 3rd party apps on both Desktop & Android

Grew up on enthusiast BBS, Lemmy is like a bunch of them are linked up.

Dislike for profit internet as it must inevitably lead to enshitification, just never had a term for that in the past :)

I don't have an issue with "toxicity" as i just ignore it, like a dog shit on the side walk. I prefer the "BBS/Usenet format" to Twitter like Mastodon though I am over on Masto and had been there for many years. I don't participate much though.

I can't be on Reddit, but I like the branching comment format and thematic post grouping ideas I learned there.

I don't think all social media should be based in one country because that creates a risk of political censorship.

I'm here because Reddit got shitty. And I really wanted a decentralized platform, where one person couldn't screw things up for everybody else. It's a lot harder to "take over" a social media platform when it's spread out over 600 Instances in many different countries.

In the past, I always felt good about never being on Twitter, considering how much people complained about it on Mastodon.

And then I realized I instead visited Reddit daily. To maintain my perceived superiority, I had to quit that and ended up here.

To monetise it and extract wealth from lemmings.

just one more fedi account bro just one more

Quora's enshittification ~2018-2024 went too far, and I'm still looking for something good enough. Checking out Lemmy, Trust Café, and Kialo.

To give me something to do on my phone during work hours since there's no way I'm touching the official reddit client

I tried Reddit but I had enough with all the rules and corporate cleanliness of it. I used this site called 'Saidit' for a bit but but no one ever posted there so I looked into Reddit alternatives and stumbled across Lemmy. The rest is history

I'm new here, but the straw that broke the camel's back was reddit getting rid of r/random. Also more reposts than new content. Also feels like there are more bots than people. Plenty of other anti-user stuff over the years.

I have created different emails and using different ip address form different networks. The moment I use the account on my current ip, I get banned

API issue made me leave, AI scraping posts and forcing ads made me stay away.

Reddit mobile app support was the last straw.

Got banned from Reddit. Enjoying Lenny so far but there’s some subreddits that don’t have enough traffic so I still go back to peruse. Anyone got advice to get around the reddit ban?

For BSD and Unix community

just lemmy or the federation? im on mbin and I left with the big reddit migration and was pleasantly surprised to find something a bit closer to the old internet I knew. Im one of the few who don't see the need for it to get popular but its fine to me if it does.

waiting for a bus

Got banned on Lemmygrad for being hitler. Most of my family considers me Stalin.

Initially because reddit permabanned me. Then I got comfy here

Reddit banned me for saying I should be allowed to punch Nazis, appeal silently declined within the hour. Didn't consider it worth pursuing further, had reddit-shaped hole.

Where Boost goes, I go.

It's the spot!

The people inside the walls told me to. I no longer dare to defy them.

less bootlicker trans community here than on reddit

Got banned from reddit too many times. It's just like reddit here, but also worse in every possible way.

Peak liberal echo chamber in here...

I came because I was sick of Reddit.

I didn't realize how horrible a lot of users on Lemmy are.