The Reddit API murder. Although I do still use Reddit for specifically Heroquest and NewPipe.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Killing 3rd-party apps drastically reduced my usage, but didn't convince me to leave.
However, when just upvoting Luigi posts was declared a bannable offense, that was when I decided it was time to pack up.
I use desktop, so the API stuff in 2023 didn't affect me. I planned to just avoid reddit for the blackout, but Spez's asshole comments about how it would blow over pissed me off. Seeing reddit become more and more enshittified in the years since, it turned out to be the right decision.
Api nonsense. The official reddit app is hot garbage. Mobile is barely usable, and only old reddit, which they are not supporting anymore.
Their API bullshit and then trying to use their official app... 🤮🤮🤮
Killing the API, ads, astroturfing, AI posts, reposts, generally selling out.
my third ban for supporting Palestine, by then it has become such a BS propaganda machine I decided it wasn't worth it to go back
API change killed Apollo, used Narwhal on and off for a year but ultimately did not want to pay a subscription for a social media platform, downloaded Voyager and here we are.
I backed up my Reddit subscriptions and multi-reddits and have them as shortcuts to my Redlib instance.
Two things:
I'm pretty sure more than half of the topics now are AI
Every topic on Reddit, no matter how serious, turned into a contest to see who could come up with the best one-liner in the comments.
The amount of AI slop on Reddit these days is insane. A decade ago I could spend hours a day browsing interesting discussions, now I spend 5-10 minutes and I'm done.
~~come up with~~ regurgitate the best one-liner
Reddit is currently actively supporting fascism. Before that, spez was just a customer unfriendly asshole.
I left a long time ago when he killed all 3rd party support on purpose. The writing was on the wall but now you're just insanely late.
They shut down third party apps. Now I like it better here :3
They shut did third party apps. Here's good enough I guess.
Getting banned or suspended and never being told why.
I didn't. Reddits been a shithole for as long as I can remember. I came to MBin after spending a while on other fedi platforms and stumbling into it. I had an account but stopped using it years before I found the fedi.
Being suspended for three days for saying Luigi. I'd been a daily redditor for 14 years. Haven used it in a year. I have no want to go back either.
When they shut down the Apollo app for Reddit is when I left
same with RIF
Reddit is no longer fun.
I mean, yeah the app was a way better experience than even desktop, but holy shit, the content!
It's overflowing with fascist, racist, misogynist and violent stuff much more than even a year or two ago.
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Yeah this was it for me. Best app ever...no bullshit ads or anything...and I was really upset that Reddit forcefully killed it for money. However, I did find that the app Red Reader is allowed to exist because of its accessibility features for the visually impaired. It's a good browsing experience...simple and no ads or BS.
I still do browse Reddit because a lot of the communities I visit on there either don't exist on Lemmy or are too underpopulated for much of any content. Please don't tell me to just "post more content" myself. The point is I often don't have much content for the communities I visit. Like it or not, a community with 10 active members just isn't enough to have much to participate with, even if I am the one posting most of the content. For example, there is a tattoo community I stumbled across on Lemmy. But I only have so many tattoos. So obviously I cannot fill the page with endless more content.
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Shutting down third-party apps through unreasonable API pricing with extremely little notice, then actively lying about their conversations with Apollo’s developer about it even though he had recordings of the calls.
I think there was even more BS at that time that made it against my personal values to stay, but those were the nails in the coffin for me.
It was hard. I spent over ten years on reddit, and I’d been active in some meetup groups over the years, so a lot of my real-life friends came from there. It felt like ending a part of my identity.
But hearing what kinds of nonsense they’ve continued to pull, I know I made the right decision and I’m glad I moved.
They forcibly replaced moderation teams on tons of major subreddits that went dark in protest too. No hesitation, tossed out the old teams entirely and replaced them with randoms, even on the former default subs. It was fucking chaos.
There was very obvious botting happening to push opinions in favor of the api-pocalypse in certain big subs, to the point where you could reply to the bots with some of the most basic ass prompt redirection/escape and get them to spit out cooking recipes.
People were getting banned for even mentioning lemmy. Reddit was reverting people editing their comments to try and scrub their history on the site, and banning the accounts, which is arguably a violation of GDPR's right to be forgotten.
It was an absolute shit show.
I had already made a lemmy account by that point. If it had just been the api lockdown, I probably would have went back in at least a limited capacity using one of the patched third party clients (use your own api key) or the patched official official one (removes the ads).
But all of that shit together broadcast loud and clear that Reddit's owners weren't just passively stupid about what actually made the site worthwhile, they were actively antagonistic towards it.
It was no secret that Reddit had no fucking clue why Reddit "worked" and couldn't be trusted to make good decisions. But all this shit demonstrated that the only thing they were interested in doing was intentionally killing it in a delusional attempt to maximize short term gains.
And every time I had even a smidgen of desire to go back, they pulled more bullshit.
Auto-generated language specific copies of popular subreddits, utilizing poor quality machine translation and literally stealing the top posts from the original subs with no attribution. Reddit disavowed that it was done by Reddit admins themselves, but there's no way it could have happened at the speed and scale it did otherwise.
Mods still don't have anything remotely equivalent to the old tools from before the api bullshit.
People getting permabanned over the most basic word filters imaginable (discussing the game Luigi's Mansion after the CEO-cide), then getting IP banned when they created a new account to try and get in touch with support.
I still browse some of the subs related to my work passively (sysadmin, powershell, azure, etc) but the drop in quality and amount of bots is unignorable. Half the sysadmin sub posts are the most thinly veiled product ad setups.
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And now I've imagined garfiield wearing a strap on.
Nah, barbed cat dick
You’re welcome? 🤔 lol
Reddit went past the level of shit that I was willing to tolerate. What I find amazing is how little I miss it.
The API stupidity a while back. Reddit is unusable without 3rd party clients, and inc3 Joey didn't work anymore I said goodbye to the few communities who's members might recognize my username, and proceeded to delete my account.
Ive only ever used reddit on pc
But only old.reddit.com
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I was permabanned from Reddit for correctly identifying Elon Musk's political affiliations. Fuck spez and his bullshit.
I got perma banned for "inciting violence" because I said the Trump admin is/will go after lgbt people.
That's what they say. Some bootlicking fashy mod just didn't like you insulting their bronze golem or their emerald mine Führer.
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A federated web is a better one than a monopolized web, so I switched on principle.
i like commies and Linux nerds. But jokes aside, the atmosphere here is much better — it feels like old internet, discussions more engaging and there's greater respect for different opinions. I feel this place is more welcoming and engaging
Lemmy is much more representative how Reddit use to be and has so much more potential.
I left Reddit as soon as I discovered this mostly
Because Reddits shit algorithms, ads, and political moderation. Total enshittification.
My reason is that Reddit has opened a representative office in Turkey.
Fuckers are opening up consulates...
My subreddit voted to participate in the Reddit API blackouts in June 2023. When Spez doubled down on enshittifying Reddit, we voted to go dark until the situation improves, but Reddit never got better. Moving to Lemmy was not a popular option at the time, but I didn't want to stop posting, so I went to Kbin. !floatingisfun@fedia.io has been viewable on Lemmy and PieFed ever since.
Third party app block
I didn't want their crappy client.
I used to have an iPhone and used Apollo on it. Once the Apollo dev announced that his app would no longer work because of the API changes, I came straight to Lemmy. I was not going to tolerate the official Reddit app.
Everything that has happened to Reddit since vindicates my decision. In fact, using Lemmy has really opened my eyes to enshitification and to FOSS software, so I've had a much better time on here.
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EMPRESS, a video game cracker sent me here. Too bad she left afterwards, I stayed after I discovered how it fits my needs exactly.
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I found convos were more human.
I hadn't found PieFed yet.
I still visit Reddit occasionally for old niche tech support, but that's about it. Tried Voat but it was dead on arrival.
Here's a list -
Lose of RiF was the last straw.
Inconsistent censorship.
Mods targeting users.
Promoted ads disguised content
Hive mind comment bombing and down voting
Lack of understanding or reason
Gatekeeping by mods and users
Spam bots
Achievements and robot challenges
Reposting/resharing the same memes over and over like it was new content.
Reporting posts didn't seem to do anything
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