Ask Lemmy

I still mostly use reddit.

IMO the most toxic redditors migrated to this site. The mod drama is worse, the spin is worse, and the toxicity is somehow worse. Plus there are large groups of people attempting to make every single post a referendum on politics, and those groups are usually unhinged tankies.

It's not all bad though. There are a lot of niche subs that are much better here than on reddit. Usually those subs revolve around nerdy interests that haven't gotten caught up in the culture war. In those subs both the content and discourse are significantly more informative and respectful than reddit.

Reddit is a mainstream platform these days. There's some good in that, but also a lot of bad. Lemmy is more raw. A lot more objectively crap stuff to sift through, but also more gems.

The API got me interested. Now I use both. Lemmy has no ads, better news, and better apps (currently on Arctic.) Reddit has a better desktop experience (well, new.reddit, I hate old.reddit and new new reddit) and better niche subs. I’d love it if Lemmy grew enough so that the niche experience reddit offers became viable.

A couple of things which accumulated over time:

1. The changes to API pricing which essentially killed 3rd party apps and made moderation more difficult for mods. I used a 3rd party app as a solution for the following problem:
2. Rounded corner design of images and videos with no option to turn it off. (You can not fathom the infernal hate which I feel for such designs.)
3. Mods high on power who arbitrarily banned me and/or insulted me and Reddit admins didn't give a fuck about the latter.
   Context

   I supposedly made a repost which was against the rules. I checked the rules and the posts in the defined no-repost-time-period of the sub (6 months worth of posts) and couldn't find my post. When asking the mods politely about this, I got insulted as a karma-whore and there was no more communication beyond that. The other time I got banned because I compared design choices in the magic system of Hogwarts Legacy and Skyrim and asked people how many spells they would like to have. Inquiries about this ban weren't answered.
4. The more recent AI content deal: feed the AI-mighty machine! And punishing users who altered their previously posted content due to that. And not asking them for consent to feed the machine at all.
5. Disregard and low to no effort communication of Reddit towards the users regarding some of the above concerns. Including spez. Ignoring a plethora of arguments and really showing that they didn't care.
6. Reddit silently kicking out mods of subreddits which protested against those API changes by going private, going NSFW or other forms of protest and Red it replacing these mods with compliant boot-lickers if with anyone at all.

Yeah... I guess these were my main issues.

I've been a happy Lemming since last year when those API changes were pushed (started on a different instance) and never looked back.

Going to preface by saying I still use Reddit occasionally alongside Lemmy AND Tildes sometimes as well. I just like talking to people with similar interests.

Most of us came over to Lemmy (in my case, originally kbin) because of the 3rd party app shutdown and API apocalypse. I still use Reddit since it has a lot more communities I'm interested in so I wouldn't be an ex-redditor per say. I'm not nearly as active as I used to before 3rd party apps got shut down.

I was always indifferent towards Reddit as a platform since I mostly just felt connected to the communities there. I only use more niche subreddits related to my interests and was never active on any with over 400k besides from askreddit, so I avoided most of the stereotypical bad things about Reddit's community and the whole "Reddit is becoming like Facebook" stuff. If Lemmy gained these communities I love, I'd stop using Reddit completely.

The community and content matters to me a lot more with link aggregator type platforms, the software less so than it does with microblogging platforms like Twitter and such. Spez sucks for what he did but I really don't care enough to criticize the dude one year after the Reddit migration and the failure of the blackout. I like Reddit's sheer amount of content available and don't care for the software/anything paid on there, and I like the technology behind Lemmy but the community offerings less so.

TL;DR I halfway switched.

While the "recent troubles" put energy to my leaving, I have always been uncomfortable with Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Stack Overflow, Quora and Fandom, as corporate-owned repositories who work by, in one way or other, profiting off of freely contributed work.

It used to be that if someone wanted to help people with freely-given information, they'd offer it in a forum, on Usenet, or on a website they started and hosted themselves, or if it fit in there, put it on Wikipedia. Now, people add it to a freaking pile that corporations monetize. Don't just hand them value! Put it somewhere that won't beg you to install an app, or beg you to "upgrade" to "Nitro," or force you to watch intrusive ads, or force people to create an account to see it, or track you! Your volunteer labor should not be a profit center!

Not banning one of my accounts. "Incidentally", the one that I used for moderation. That screams "we don't want you here unless you're working for us, for free" from a distance.

As a secondary reason: the ban message about "multiple, repeated violations of the content policy". It was one violation dammit. (I told a Nazi to kill himself.)

That was years ago. In the meantime I hopped from alternative to alternative. While still using Reddit mostly for trolling. Eventually the APIcalypse happened and there was enough content in Lemmy to make me forget about Reddit, instead of lurking once a week (like I typically did years ago).

Boost stopped working

It was a result of the 3rd party app collapse that triggered the migration of reasonable people out of reddit. I was the mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and saw my mod queue explode with the most hateful shit that went unchecked by other commenters.

Then my friend told me about where everyone went, glad to see all of you!

I'm now mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee so stop on by!

I was bored, again

They virtually blocked me from posting because I deleted my main account. Not out of protest but only because karma is meant to make you 'feel' like you're important and keep you enagaged. I would just rather not let reddit have access to all my thoughts for years and years in a easy to access public account. So I purge accounts all the time, easy come, easy go.

It usually is fine but the next account I made would get a lot of harassment for being new and typical commentary I had no problem posting on my high Karma account would get me banned from certain communities. Which is fine but it wouldn't stop me from purging that account too. They eventually flagged me for "ban evasion" and my posts were blocked the second I'd make an account.

I browse lemmy on mobile and reddit on desktop. Good mix of stuff.

I never used Reddit directly, only Bacon Reader, when that stopped working, I gave up.

If anything it was the lack of anything happening that made me switch over.