I jumped on the Mastodon train last April when the population started to grow more quickly. I’ve always been more of a forum/message board user than a microblogger, though, and was hoping this space would take off in a similar way (if not for similar reasons, or for them, as the case may be).

I’m very bullish on decentralization for the forum/aggregator space, since that’s fundamentally where these types of communities have their roots anyway, so I’m excited to see people showing up.

Hopefully we’re nearing a population size where significant quirks can get ironed out, but with an audience that is technical or avant-garde enough to put up with them for a bit.

The same reason that I left Digg.

I wanted reddit, but with the ability to archive my data for later usage. Ie, I wanted to be able to have all my content readable at least even if where it was posted went down (whether briefly or permenantly)

Lemmy lets me run my own instance, so it works great for this. Gives me some sort of control of my destiny, while still being able to participate in essentially message boards.

I’m pretty sure I heard about lemmy before, and I was interested, but there just wasn’t enough activity to sustain my interest for more then a minute. Now I’ve come here from reddit, there’s a lot more activity, and I feel like contributing is worth more than on reddit, like maybe we can build something good.

Also reddit is just an obnoxious rage machine. I’ve kept deleting my 3rd party app and then reinstalling, unable to finally quit. But swithing to this seems easier than fully quitting social media altogether. I hope, anyways.

The less epidermic censor reaction, especially on these stupid boo-boo words: M$ for microsoft in Linux subreddit might get you in trouble or using inoffensive slur. It does not mean I’d shit everywhere on Lemmy but I just don’t like language policing “à la” Demolition Man. :)

As many have said and will say, the recent Reddit changes (at least to an extent). In my case, the announcement really just accelerated my plans. I’ve been interested in the “Fediverse” for a while now, and I’ve been largely convinced it may be one solution to what I see as the malfunction of our modern internet. When I was younger, I was convinced the access to information and the ability to connect with others from across the globe would reap great rewards for all involved. In more recent years, I’ve come to wonder if social media was a mistake and whether the internet as it is will do more harm than good. But the “Fediverse” - decentralization - gives me some hope.

So, I’ve been keeping an eye on ActivityPub projects. I’ve been messing with PeerTube for a while, but not much else. I could never really get into Twitter, so I couldn’t really get into Mastodon (I tried a few times). “Reddit alternatives” were on my to-do list. I kept putting it off, but like I said, the recent announcements finally inspired me to start looking more closely. I was actually surprised to find an alternative as good as Lemmy, even if it isn’t perfect. Kind of kicking myself for failing to find the motivation sooner.

I came here 3 years ago when I started looking for reddit alternatives, for a while i lurked here then i eventually visisted it less and less until now

Tbh i feel a few weeks ago the site was basically dead with most posts on front page having less than 10 upvotes and low engagement on all the posts so the new people joining gave the site a revival in a way or something

I’ve been waiting for another aggregator / tree comment community to form with enough popularity to sink time into. Once I started getting awkward combative messages on a regular basis in even niche subs I recognized Reddit had reached the end of its use for me. Online pop culture is toxic as hell and being on reddit since the near beginning it was pretty obvious how that was seeping in

Not that reddit was ever a great place, but it was at least silly, and informative

Just installed an instance due to the reddit fiasco. Took a bit of work, but got ansible working.

Curious to see how things go from here.

I found out about Lemmy a few years ago when I started looking more at the Fediverse, but I never really felt a need to create an account here as I could just browse around. It wasn’t until recently due to Reddit’s announced changes that I wanted to start interacting here more.

Apart from the inevitable performance issues at times and some weird UI issues I’ve found (lack of error messages when things silently fail, unable to navigate away from a page when something hasn’t been saved, no dedicated community settings page) I’m enjoying my time here.

I think I found out about it from stuff like open-source news in 2022, and made an account but never really used it. Now, with the Reddit API changes, I gave it another try and I love it!

I made my account about two years ago, same with mastodon etc., because I switched to Linux back then and was looking for more Open Source and Privacy Friendly projects. But back then Lemmy had pretty much no users, so it was so boring that I quickly was on Reddit again. Now I saw how many people started to switch to Lemmy, and I remembered that I already have an account here, sooooo yea I try to be more active here than on Reddit now again.

it looked neat, works pretty well at current scale

The API changes were what pushed me over the edge. I had been sick of Reddit for years, but every other service I tried to move to was basically just getting its links and news from Reddit a few days later, so I just dealt with it so I could be informed.

I needed a critical mass of people to pick a service, and it looks like Lemmy is the place!

The new Reddit design and API fees. It’s ironic because the entire reason I joined Reddit was because of the Digg redesign. Digg almost sold for $200 million before the redesign, but eventually sold for $500k a few years later. Reddit is just speed-running the same story, and hoping the sale happens before the fallout.