One day, I was about to install RedReader through F-droid. For some reason I searched for “Reddit” in the search bar instead of “RedReader” and saw Voyager, Jerboa and some other Lemmy clients there.
I got curious and installed “Eternity for Lemmy”. I browsed around, then decided to created my first account on lemmy.ml. Instantly fell in love with how nice most people were, how quickly I got answers and replies and the closely-knit feeling of a small community where it’s not surprising to see the same user in many different places.
I found Lemmy and decentralized social media by sheer luck.
I know most of you came here after the reddit API changes to spite the corporate site, but I wonder if there are other stories.
P.S. I find it sort of weird how lemmy.ml censors the word for “female dog”. Cmon, that’s such a tame and common insult! Can’t even quote Jesse Pinkman properly.
The Reddit exodus post API changes. I honestly have found it quite nice by and large, other than a couple of idiots in my inbox, including the person a couple of weeks ago who told me they reported me to the FBI because of some post I made re Luigi and the CEO shooting, although I don’t know which one. It’s funny because I actually have a relationship with the FBI for other reasons (yes really truly), and I just asked them if they wanted me to put them in touch with my agent, LOL.
I was on reddit when the api changes happened, after that (and the canvas) i deleted my account over there and went here.
im was banned in reddit because… i accidentally wrote lgor360 (first letter: L) instead of Igor360 (first letter: I) and reddit thought i was pretending to be a person with a nickname Igor360 and ban me…
When the chapotraphouse subreddit was banned I learned about lemmy and hexbear. I lost the password to lemmy.ml u/HamidPayaamAbbasi now I have my own instance.
It was part of my crusade to “Fediverse-sify” my internet experience. I started in Mastodon, then I added a Pixelfed account, then a Peertube one, then this Lemmy account (Which gave me a lot of good experiences) and now I’m trying Loops (a TikTok-like) and Wafrn (a Tumblr-like).
Overall, I’m in love with the Fediverse.
Someone sent a mod mail to a sub i moderated about it.
When the Reddit API thing was going down I was looking for a place to jump ship before Apollo went down and Lemmy was one of the options. I found Voyager and later I joined other parts of the Fediverse
It must have been somewhere around early 2020 when I was casually browsing Mastodon. I found about a federated Reddit alternative and got immediately interested. I registered to Lemmy.ml and in 2021 founded Sopuli when federation got implemented properly. And here I am!
Several years ago I stumbled upon ActivityPub and the Fediverse. I created a few accounts across services, I think Friendica was the first. I quickly got bored with it because no one else from my real life was on it and the overall userbase was tiny. Move forward a couple of years and I left reddit when they took away third-party apps and mod tools. Lemmy had enough users at that point I’ve stuck around.
I created a Mastadon account when Musk bought Twitter but that’s gone idle. I was never that into Twitter, it’s not a format I prefer.
Earlier this year, I decided to engage with social media, so I searched for lists of social media websites and signed up on the ones I could find. Lemmy was on one of the lists and also happens to be one of the websites I enjoy the most! 😃
My main reddit app was switching over to make a lemmy app. The app (boost) is my personal favorite, so I figured lemmy was the better of any of the reddit alternatives. It’s larger userbase was also a good sign of it life expectancy.
I tried it near to when it first launched, I had been hoping for a Fediverse replacement for Reddit ever since Mastodon (I liked the idea of Mastodon but I wasn’t a big Twitter user). It was pretty inactive back then and didn’t cover enough subjects I was interested in to hold me initially. Then I came over fully with the Reddit exodus.
+1 for Reddit API exodus.
Lemmy was sold to me as a Reddit replacement. And it is, superficially. I knew it wasn’t going to be drop-in going in. But the longer I use it the more I think it’s not really quite like Reddit, and never will be. And that’s fine. Lemmy is its own character and I like it for what it is.
I still use Reddit. Lemmy doesn’t scratch all the itches for me. But only old.reddit on the desktop and on mobile with a UI de-shittifying extension. I’m amazed they still offer it at all. Once that’s cut off, something I’ve been bracing myself for for years, I’ll consider the UX enshittification to have fully completed and I’ll truly bail. I simply refuse to use their gentrified UI. And I’m tired as it is having to slap on compatibility layers just to keep their less terrible alternative on life support; I’m not going to do the same thing to make their mainstream UI somewhat more palatable.
Which extension?
It’s only available for Firefox.
Thanks! It’s nice, just installed. The open old reddit button is super useful too, for search results landing on reddit.
In that case, you may get some mileage as well out of Old Reddit Redirect. It will automatically force all Reddit links to open in old Reddit for you.
I’m just as critical of Lemmy as I was of Reddit.
Lemmy is a very left leaning echo chamber and a lot of people dont want to hear counterpoints to their soap-box rantings.
I do love Lemmy, but theres a decent percentage of fucking whackadoodles on here too. Also I’m not installing Linux, stop asking.
The only thing we all have in common politically is that we don’t think social media should be controlled by a handful of gigantic manipulative corporations.
I discovered it years before the great reddit exodus of 2023 but then it didn’t have any discussions worth participating in so I didn’t even make an account.
Initially made an account on lemmy.ml in 2022. I was eyeing the fediverse, and when I found that there is a “reddit alternative”, I wanted to check it out, but there wasn’t much activity so I didn’t use it much other than checking on it occasionally.
Then in 2023 I made an account on tchncs…when majority of users also hopped on lemmy.
