One day, I was about to install RedReader through F-droid. For some reason I searched for “Reddit” in the search bar instead of “RedReader” and saw Voyager, Jerboa and some other Lemmy clients there.
I got curious and installed “Eternity for Lemmy”. I browsed around, then decided to created my first account on lemmy.ml. Instantly fell in love with how nice most people were, how quickly I got answers and replies and the closely-knit feeling of a small community where it’s not surprising to see the same user in many different places.
I found Lemmy and decentralized social media by sheer luck.
I know most of you came here after the reddit API changes to spite the corporate site, but I wonder if there are other stories.
P.S. I find it sort of weird how lemmy.ml censors the word for “female dog”. Cmon, that’s such a tame and common insult! Can’t even quote Jesse Pinkman properly.
I was a r/196 user during the API change
I was on reddit when the api changes happened, after that (and the canvas) i deleted my account over there and went here.
Reddit API drama >> kbin.social >> lemmy.world
They took away apps that worked and apps that had accessibility features built in in favour of monetizing everything which sits very badly with me as a concept so I stopped being a part of how that company makes money and I joined here.
Now my stupid comments make nobody money. Win win.
Yep. This was me. I followed the android Sync app here. User-created content should not be monetized. Im not going to subscribe to something that’s mostly memes, attention-seeking behavior, and bullshit.
I had hated reddit for ages. Many trigger-happy omniscient mods who couldn’t admit to a mistake if it swam up their arse and blew a trumpet. I was eventually perma-banned for glorifying violence by making a Star Wars reference about Trump. I can only assume the mod wasn’t old enough to remember Star Wars movies.
I had been there from the bright and cheerful early days and watched it become 99.8% trash.
Lemmy has hit the rewind button for me. It kinda sucks that so many people are trying to emulate what modern reddit had become, but it still feels refreshing. With a bit of luck, Lemmy will go in a direction I prefer. It’s not that I don’t want people to do whatever they want, but i feel like some instances will cater to certain demographics.
I remember seeing lemmy maybe 4+ years ago on some open-source subreddit. It had practically non-existent user base, so I’ve ignored it. After that, I remember a first wave of people making mastodon accounts (even before elon). There I’ve first heard of concept of “fediverse”. I liked the idea but I honestly thought it had zero chances to compete with mainstream social media.
And then everything turned to shit, making a gap between something like lemmy and reddit a lot smaller. So I’ve jumped the ship with everyone after the API shitstorm.
Yet another reddit exodus user here, started with Jerboa and settled on Eternity. Trying to learn rust so I can help out.
The ChapoTrapHouse-Hexbear pipeline
Earlier this year, I decided to engage with social media, so I searched for lists of social media websites and signed up on the ones I could find. Lemmy was on one of the lists and also happens to be one of the websites I enjoy the most! 😃
The great Reddit migration when 3rd party devs realized how much Reddit would charge them to use Reddit’s API in order to serve information to their apps. RiF was my shit.
I love Lemmy now though. Its federated nature, while abnormal and at times not the easiest to explain, has me hopeful for the cyberspace future that isn’t fully dictated by corporations. Using Fdroid, getting over the hump from Chrome to Firefox, and now the prospects of switching entire OSs from Windows to Linux are within my visibility now, when before I was comfortable in my corporate bubble.
Think the next thing I need to start taking strides on after Linux is privacy. I still keep my passwords locked under OneDrive Vault and a password protected OneNote. Should probably dump that and move over to keypass or some other password manager. I just don’t want to have to pay for a service right now on a recurring basis unless I choose to to support the devs.
re: password managers, I can recommend BitWarden. Open source and free for personal use. Can donate for a couple enhanced features. Also have the option of self-hosting.
How’s Proton Pass? Seems like I can’t download BitWarden from Fdroid, although I imagine there’s an .apk somewhere online
When the Reddit API thing was going down I was looking for a place to jump ship before Apollo went down and Lemmy was one of the options. I found Voyager and later I joined other parts of the Fediverse
My main reddit app was switching over to make a lemmy app. The app (boost) is my personal favorite, so I figured lemmy was the better of any of the reddit alternatives. It’s larger userbase was also a good sign of it life expectancy.
I was 2 r 3 months into my sanity break from Reddit when my friends (who knew i was a redditor) started sending me msgs like “lol what are you gonna do now?”
Viewed the API drama from afar, then read some article mentioning lemmy. Tried a few instances but a lot had limits on new accts. Beehaw told me to pound sand. sh.itjust.works was the one that had the fewest roadblocks to join. Now i got a few accts spread out over grad, bear, and here.
People seem to pine for reddit (or at least more content/users) but i like the small community. You can actually be heard here, and so too can you hear speech that isn’t the same fucking meme ad-nauseam
I discovered it years before the great reddit exodus of 2023 but then it didn’t have any discussions worth participating in so I didn’t even make an account.
I tried it near to when it first launched, I had been hoping for a Fediverse replacement for Reddit ever since Mastodon (I liked the idea of Mastodon but I wasn’t a big Twitter user). It was pretty inactive back then and didn’t cover enough subjects I was interested in to hold me initially. Then I came over fully with the Reddit exodus.
Initially made an account on lemmy.ml in 2022. I was eyeing the fediverse, and when I found that there is a “reddit alternative”, I wanted to check it out, but there wasn’t much activity so I didn’t use it much other than checking on it occasionally.
Then in 2023 I made an account on tchncs…when majority of users also hopped on lemmy.
