Ask Lemmy

Got banned from spezbook

During reddits API fiasco. Specifically the app I was using (boost) recommend everybody move to Lemmy and I obliged. Used jerboa but as soon as Boost for Lemmy was launched I immediately hopped on board. I hope the rest of reddit users comes to their senses. The protest was so utterly pathetic and cowardly.

I always like to jump ship to open source projects, I ditched Facebook back in like 2010 for Disaspora and Frendica. Once I found out about Lemmy it was just a matter of time before I jumped ship, because that's just how I roll.

pro-nazi moderator bias on reddit - failure to remove hate speech, and retaliation against users who report it

Yeah API shit was the final straw, but it was a long time coming. Honestly I'd switch way sooner had there been any alternative. I and a lot of other people tried, but nothing ever really took off even though the systems were there.

It's about adoption, but mainstream adoption is also what kills a site like this.

The Reddit API nonsense. Truth be told though, I used to go back for a few very specific subs but the site had gotten so bad that I cannot bring myself to use it any more

The apipocalypse same as everyone else. I do miss my niche communities, and my 4000+ internet points, but as an open source enthusiast (I use arch btw) I'm very much at home here 😁

Realistically, I just thought it would be slightly better, just because it was a little bit lesser known as a website, and I am consistently longing for older styles of internet engagement. The de-federated nature is nice, sure, but I really don't tend to care about that shit too much. Reddit had their whole api debacle, I'm sure old-reddit getting canned is on the table if not for apparently necessary moderation stuff that's still locked behind it. But I dunno, I still have browser extensions on mobile firefox that send me to a perfect libreddit redirect that works almost every time, so functionally it's sort of identical to what I was already doing, if not more convenient, because I don't have to deal with a reddit app substitute's search engine when I want to find stuff, I can just look it up, click on the link, blam, redirect. Not a big issue. The biggest problem for me with the API shit is that everyone decided to throw a bitch fit and completely delete their posts, so like a quarter of the things saved to this useful compilation of internet knowledge is kinda just gone. Except for unddit, but that shit's probably going to die at some point now that it doesn't serve a non-archival purpose.

With that said, I think I've found lemmy to be basically the exact same as reddit, give or take. It is just as relentlessly annoying as reddit is, and it has less diversity in terms of subject matter, as a whole. There's basically politics, i.e. inevitable "both-sides"-ism and vote shaming, technology stuff, i.e. stuff that is just linux, and like, assorted general posts, which are going to be comprised of either of the former two categories of thing, and gen-x pop culture references. Any other topic that comes up is a complete toss up, and will probably get commented on by a bunch of brainlets who think they know more than they do, but are actually just parroting the super standard talking points, or whatever they learned in high school.

You also get reddit posting habits, where people tend to mostly respond to the lowest effort meme posts, or horrible headlined news articles, rather than well-written posts or longer writeups. You also get that annoying thing where people just reply with sarcastic remarks that only serve their own self-satisfaction, instead of being critical of their own engagement for a half-second. I guess those are mostly just modern internet phenomenon in general, but it doesn't make it any less annoying, for sure.

The problem you will inevitably find with any forum organized around topics is that there's really just not that much to talk about, for most subject matters, so you either prevent communities from forming wholesale, or, more realistically, you just get insular garbage communities where people end up repeating almost the same exact conversations over and over. I think probably the unsung reasons that most old forums died isn't because of centralization, you know, digg and reddit, but it's because they all talked about everything already. Have a post? Oops, someone already asked that question in 2009, here's the thread, should've looked in the catalogue, you should go there, looks like it also never got answered and it's inactive, fuck you have a nice day. Reddit's only addition to that is the ability for people to post le relevant xkcd link, and we kinda already had/have somethingawful for that, for when you want to just talk, more than you wanna actually talk about something specific.

More seriously, I think my biggest problem is just that reddit, and by extension lemmy, kinda breaks the conventional format of the forum, in favor of something that kinda works less well but is more low-rent to engage with. Used to be that you would just browse a bunch of post titles, click on one, and get greeted with likely a huge customized post, maybe a compilation of all the past posts on a topic, maybe a couple links and natively hosted images thrown in there for good measure. Most reddit posts are just like, a single article, or a single video of something stupid happening. That's a major downgrade, imo.

I freely admit that I got banned because I replied to some cringe ruzzian moskal vatnik psyop on r/ABoringDystopia with actual facts.

Went looking for a news aggregator that wasn't trying to cater to propagandists.

Reddit API bullshit. But mostly I wanted to support the dev for reddit sync.

Saw a working link aggregator with good comments on a lot of topics. Thought it'd be fun to follow. Seems to work pretty well.

Some guy named Spez fucking up his website

Seeing the racists on Reddit cheer genocide.

Went to Mastodon when Musk took over at Twitter and so knew about Lemmy by the time Spez decided Musk had some great ideas about how to run a social media platform.

Regreddit made me do it (the API bullshit).

A post on r/latestagecapitalism of a political cartoon mildly criticizing the spending for Ukraine war effort, it was the first time I really actually noticed a botted comment section. I noticed similar accounts clearly astroturfing the post and basically stopped using the platform that day.

The whole reason I found reddit to be useful was the discussion within the posts from real people with real opinions. If that's no longer the case then I can get the same aggregated content elsewhere. I can't use the site knowing the discussion is so influenced, at least on some level, in some subs. It's gross.

Killing my favorite 3rd party Reddit app and the way they treat their customers and subreddits

I liked my third-party app, so when it moved to Lemmy, I moved with it.

I also didn't like the reaction to losing it from many on the subs I used. Most had the opinion of "fuck them, I want to use my sub again", so I left Reddit and haven't gone back.

Reddit bullshit

I liked the fact that it was smaller and filled with like-minded individuals

Reddit sent me to Lemmy with their actions. Thanks Reddit!

Another arrival due to APIpocalypse and the enshittification process that Spez started with Reddit.

I do not want my information filtered through an opaque algorithm. My worldview is much too important to surrender to some corporation. I want to understand and have some control over any feed I use. My media diet includes Lemmy, AP news, PubMed/science journals, and conversations with friends and coworkers.

I am very happy with Lemmy so far. Some have pointed out there is less content on Lemmy, but that is a bonus in my book. It is not healthy to spend hours scrolling.

I just followed some of the other redditors to here, like an innocent little ducky.

Once upon a time there was a website called Digg……

Curiosity

Sync switching, aka the reddit APIcalypse

Cookies, I am still waiting

Reddit api change but indirectly.

The 3rd party app closedown led to tons of weird niche subs showing up on popular, and their mods were quite silly, and several sub bans later, a complete ban for defending Palestine.

Reddit API change. Reddit is unusable on mobile without 3rd party apps. I used Joey, which is one of the lesser known clients, so it kept working for quite a while. When it didn't anymore I deleted all of my posts and comments before I deleted my account.

RiF reaching senility.

Came to /kbin first, and still here sometimes but Voyager wins on my phone after Neurospicy Artemis disappeared.

Another API leaver here. I'm curious what their non-bot population was pre and post dumbassery.

Partly it was the API fiasco on Reddit, and partly it was Lemmy that drew me in, honestly.

I've left discussion/chat forums before over the years when technology moved on, or the quality of discourse declined, like FidoNet, Usenet, ISCA BBS, or Slashdot. I lived my life just fine without them. Reddit was a good COVID19 distraction for me, a way to stay connected to people using a low-data phone plan. I hadn't heard about 3rd party apps until the appocalypse. I knew that the Android app ran up the count in DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection, and the iPad app drained the hell out of my battery. (Seriously, I could watch a 2-hour movie on Netflix, and the battery would be at 96%. An hour of the Reddit app drained it to about 60%. Was it, like, live-streaming the view from my camera back to Reddit servers?) I tried Apollo less than two weeks before the shutdown, and it was marvelous. The quality of the discourse had become, just, bad, so I figured I'd just leave Reddit behind when it ceased to function.

But, I checked out Lemmy after reading about it. It was small and quaint. But, I checked it out again. And again. And again. Then, about a month after API Day, I signed up for an account and never looked back. (The big draw, I think, was users who view comments as a discussion, not as a form of verbal combat that you "win".)

There was a subreddit I used to be very active on that practically got nuked by the company during the protests. They kicked all of the mods off and replaced it with their own, leaving a huge mess behind.

A good number of them started over from scratch on Lemmy and I followed them here. Haven't really looked back since

Same reason why I left Digg years ago...

Reddit banning third party apps was the last straw. Even though I didn't use them I supported the movement. I tried Tildes for a little while, but it didn't click for me. Lemmy works well and I don't feel it's as addictive as Reddit.

Still a little addictive though.

When they killed third party apps.

Reddit committed suicide then went full retard. So here I am.

It's not trying to make money from me.

Reddit killing the app I used.

The apicalypse

Privacy, ethics and morals .