Ask Lemmy

1. My favourite 3rd party app stopped working
2. Reddit is filled with bots nowadays
3. Many of my favourite places on Reddit have been flooded by right-wing reactionaries

I had reddit but was never a big user of it, hopping on only for events or to look stuff up. But once I got into federated services and learned about Lemmy I gave it a go. Pretty sure I've used lemmy more then reddit at this point

The day the API key for my 3rd party app expired. I still append most searches with Reddit though.

Not completely stopped using Reddit, but making the switch to the Fediverse + forums with a new name. I’ll still be checking in daily incase anyone i talk to wants to message me, tho.

For me, the biggest issue is that Reddit just feels dead. If you look at pretty much any sub, there is a huge discrepancy between the member count, and the activity (posts + comments and upvotes on posts) of said sub. You can have a sub with like 2-3 million members, but the top posts get like 20k upvotes and less than 1000 comments. 5 years ago it could easy be close to 100k upvotes and 30k-40k comments. That to me is an extremely strong sign that the site is dying. Another piece of evidence is looking at old subs (will use r/futurology as an example, since that’s the kinda space i’m most familiar with) such as r/futurology , and seeing how drastically the activity has dropped. That sub is a classic reddit forum and has over 20 Million members, and yet the top posts get like 6k-7k upvotes and 200-300 comments. Other subs have suffered similar drops in activity. Compare it to Lemmy, which has 50k active users as of me writing this, but gets a similar level of engagements in the top communities as reddit does in smallish to medium sized subs.

Another big issue is the API changes. Reddit got way too greedy and ruined a lot of what made the site fun. All they had to do was just not be extremely greedy, and none of this would’ve happened.

EDIT: forgot to add that another issue is the power hungry mods. Reddit is notorious for having power tripping mods that will ban you for literally the slightest reasons, or no reason at all.

Reddit is Fun stopped working.

I left from Reddit after the AMA with u/spez and over the API. I knew at that point he wasn’t relenting on the third-party apps and the loss of access for me personally, but mostly for the deaf and blind community, showed me that the CEO had no intention of putting accessibility over profit. I was an Apollo user and I was looking for an alternative while continuing to browse Reddit - using them as a resource, as I always had - and I was seeing censorship abound. Reddit was blocking mentions of alternative sites and blocking discussion about Spez, which just solidified my decision.

I used those last few months of Apollo to help with the protests (John Oliver in /pics) while exploring other options (I started with Mastadon simply because they had an app). When that was over, I went full fediverse and never looked back (okay, I did participate in the r/Place that they ran soon after to contribute my pixels to “fuck spez” one last time).

I actually stayed after the API (I used Relay and paid), but Reddit just seems... Mean, I guess. People say awful things to each other on there, and the shift in the community has been distressing. It also feels like the dead internet theory in practice. Repost after repost, bots commenting, commenting to themselves/each other. Ads, and not regular ads but "omg, I just happened to go to McDonald's and got this ccrrraaazzzyyy drink." And, God, so many communities about just women? Big tits, small, tits, red head, goth, this celebrity, that instamodel. It's like a menagerie of porn over there. And not even anything good.

I also realized I was blocking way more than I was looking at. I didn't feel good after being on reddit. I either had my feelings hurt, was outraged, or disappointed because I was comparing myself to everyone. I don't think that it's reddit fault for all of that, but I like this better. I know this may sound backhanded, but there's less here. I remember feeling kind of bored when I first switched. Like, where's my endless stream of garbage??? But I find myself looking at my phone less, and I feel like the information I do see makes me want to engage more. I've posted more on this account than I have in my entire time on reddit, and I was on that site for almost 7 years. It's not that everyone agrees with me, but I'm not afraid I'm going to get my head chewed off if I get something wrong. It feels like moving from table to table at a bar ~~I guess. I've never been to a bar~~, instead of trying to hear a voice through a mosh pit.

the june 2023 api protests

Banned for expressing my more than esoteric dislike of a certain fat orange child rapist that reddit deeply loves

Losing Apollo and what reddit did to the dev Also when Spez publicly said he admired Elon Musk

I loved the Apollo app which Reddit destroy by changing the terms of their agreement with.

But more than that, the day after the apocalypse— I forget what they called it, but basically every smart person from Reddit left and the site became dog shite.

There were 2 things:

1. Over time it became obvious the site was promoting mass market fluff over the unique content that made reddit what it used to be. In particular having r/all as a default sub and no option to remove it seemed particularly egregious. Seemed like an attempt to impose a monoculture on the user base, and I didn't like that culture which was mostly images of tweets which is a trend I especially hate.
2. The API pricing and going public was the last straw. I looked at reddit as a wikipedia-like place where information was shared freely, for whomever and even whatever wanted to see it. I even bought gold in my younger and more naive years. But if the officers were so keen on making profits for themselves on my shitposting, why am I not getting paid? Injecting greed ruined the whole thing.

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.

I think my profile pic says it all

I prefer to support free, open, and decentralized solutions to things and I want to help the Fediverse grow.

1. They killed 3rd party apps, and I'm not going to use their shit app or the shitty layout on the web version.

2. Their admin staff is full of Nazis.

I got caught up in Rexxit - a large population of moderators and super-posters leaving took away the heart of that other service

Two words: Fuck spez

API changes

Once I heard that the people who made mastodon had also made a federated version of reddit, I started hanging out here. I lurked for months, then posted a few times through, i think, 5 accounts. Now I am only really on Lemmy.

Is it great? no, a lot of the problem with social media is the people. Is it a better design than places like reddit and twitter? Definitely. So I am here.

I'm an open source freak heard of Lemmy sounded cool switxhed

Group effect. I have heard of the Fediverse before. It seemed to be an interesting concept but I did not see how it could fit into my life. Also were to find a website to registered, communities I'm interested in.
It wasn't so long after I join Reddit that the API protest happened. Community I have already join started to discuss moving to Lemmy, instance name were mentioned, guides were written. I found no reason not to finally join a social media that was much closer to my free-culture value.
Now, I feel more in my place here than on Reddit. I'm much more active. I haven't found everything there was on Reddit but I find plenty I could not find there that I like much more: Group culture to build from scratch, interoperability both btw instances and software, less corporate and marketing interference, human scale places of interaction.

I've never used 3rd party apps, but I was planning to participate in the blackout in solidarity of the protest of reddit's API changes. Then greedy pig boy made statements about how it wasn't a big deal and everyone would be back, and I immediately started looking for a replacement. I do miss the super niche subs that Lemmy doesn't have nearly the population to support, but the overall experience is much better here and reminds me of ye olden days of the internet before corporations took over everything. I deleted as much as I could from my 10 year old account, but didn't delete my account itself because all that does is remove any control you have over comments that get missed for deletion.

The end of third party apps was the end of being able to tolerate the reddit experience.

It took years for me to really disconnect.

• They introduced, with much fanfare, a mysterious new way of counting votes, and back-propagated it. Suddenly, all upvotes of past and present posts and comments got boosted by a factor of 8-9 or so. Felt hollow, manufactured, disingenuous.
• The founders admitted that in the early days, they made up lots of sock puppet accounts which talked to each other. That eerie, self-congratulatory sentiment never really left the site.
• Proven to tamper with comments.
• That derailed AMA with Julian Assange. It felt 99.9% inorganic.

And so much more.

My Discord registration was denied several times without explanation, so as soon as I discovered Lemmy, I came over and never looked back.

API changes I learned about them in a really good infographic.

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.

When Reddit killed the use of its API for third party clients

Mods are trash that need babysitters. There is no recourse to a mod being a retard. Their ban evasion detection is weak, so it isn't a huge issue, but the sooner Musk buys it and dumpsters it, the better. (The ol Musk n Flush) Let these better communities flourish.

When israel started their Genocide the entire frontpage was filled with Zionist bots and any criticism of israel would lead to a ban.

All while IDF propaganda of beheadedbabies was spammed all over the place.

Since the blackout and realizing that someone on Spez's team had read and understood The Prince by Machiavelli.

The entire thing from start to finish was planned and executed, there was no fall out, they didn't lose mods, the entire bullshit from last year was a masterfully executed engagement that fulfilled its objectives and netted everyone involved pockets full of money. And yes, we all got played.

Please read The Prince before you start carving me up.

Got banned. I got my 3rd strike for wishing Trump was dead, but my second strike was for a BS reason. I called out something bigoted someone else said, and that got me suspended for hate speech.

I like that Lemmy is independent and Im not providing free content for a giant corporation