My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.
Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.
After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren’t active on lemmy.
What about you?
Found this during the Reddit diaspora. Tried it for weeks. Left. Came back once a month. Still not committed to this place but i still check in and post.
Too much FOSS/Linux evangelism here. Still too little activity in communities centered on my interests. The vibes are… not great here but I’m not giving up on it. I just don’t think “my” people are here yet
What communities do you wish existed here or were more active?
Chapo got banned, checked out chapo.chat, found the “under construction” page with what i think was “call me maybe” as a chiptune playing, and joined a little while after.
The thing that I dislike about lemmy is that we all share a boat (instance) with a lot of other people. If the boat owners drill holes into the boat (defederate with instances) we all sink.
I’d like to settle on a platform that scales better and gives more reliability (no dependence on instance admins).
But lemmy is fine for now.
It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be better.
How do you have reliability without servers? That is essentially the role of the instance admin—to manage the server.
Servers are fine, but your identity shouldn’t depend on a single one. On Nostr for example, servers are just there to relay the content to other peers. The servers are interchangeable and you don’t depend on any of them.
Sadly, Nostr doesn’t have good content and is kinda overrun by crypto bros.
Give it time. I know there was a lot of discussion about account backup and migration a while back. There is only one full time Lemmy dev, so who knows what the program will look like in a few more years and with a few more dollars for code.
Like many people with the reddit exodus.
But i also got quite annoyed with the main German communities shifting more and more to the right and the moderators of the largest german subreddit to tolerate and enable transphobic and racist discussions, e.g. when there was some tabloid “news” on either topic shared.
I dont know how much of it was because the communities were more and more targeted by organized far right propaganda and how much was the moderators of the /r/de subreddit sharing such viewpoints.
Those trends already happened for some years, getting particularly worse with covid.
When RIF stopped working and the Dev of RIF said he jumped to Lemmy I jumped too.
The only subreddits I visit on old are technical ones like Sysadmin, Cisco and the associated certification subs, and Fortinet.
The rest of the time I am scrolling new local or new all on Lemmy.
Four years ago on my original account when I discovered it. I participated once in a while in parallel to Reddit, then when Spez shat the bed I removed myself from modding any Reddit communities and logged off for good.
Came here when the Reddit 3rd party app threat started looming, loved it and never went back.
Sure, Lemmy doesn’t have the same variety and amount of content that’s on Reddit but that’s because it’s a smaller and newer platform along with the fact that not all instances federate with each other (which is great).
I still get my scrolling urge fulfilled and presented with random memes and news that I’m interested in without the data harvesting factor which is perfect for me.
r/chapo diaspora, spent a week on the Discord that popped up and it was just too much for my old eyes. Shifted to chapochat (now hexbear) and got all comfy.
When reddit did their API nonsense I was primed to try something else, and someone linked me to lemmy.
It’s been fine so far. It hasn’t reached the level where you can search
[specific problem] lemmylike you can with reddit, yet.I was aware of the fediverse but I’d never gotten round to engaging with it. Came here for something to do during the 3 day Reddit protest blackout and just… never went back to Reddit because it’s better here.
I already had a mastodon but I made accounts all over the fediverse (and other alternatives) ended up settling in my first pick - this account at kbin.social. I really love the features and I believe the dev has a lot of vision.
It’s exciting being part of something cool.
I left Reddit when they messed with the API stuff, then settled on kbin, using fedia and lemmy a bunch in addition
Definitely a different, nicer vibe in the fediverse - Actually can use the front page instead of hiding in what I’m subbed to, and there is a lot more thoughtful, varied content overall
Reddit exodus last year. I like it here, it’s like old Reddit.
I came over the same day that the Boost app for Reddit stopped working. I guess it’s been about a year or so now. I’ve loved using Lemmy so much more than Reddit and from what I keep reading Reddit is just getting worse every day so I don’t plan on ever going back! The only real worry I have with Lemmy now is this Threads crap. If Meta/Facebook sinks their greasy claws into the Fedeverse I may have to keep looking for another home. I really hope that doesn’t happen though. I’d like to think at least one area of the web is still safe from corporate bullshit
I showed up last year in the aftermath of reddit’s APIgate. I’m a longtime reddit user, for better or worse. Though this isn’t my first foray with reddit alternatives. I’ve tried Imzy, Voat (briefly; very briefly), and Tildes. The last of which is still doing quite well, though it’s a bit different from reddit and even Lemmy, in terms of overall culture and activity.
Admittedly, I am still on reddit, though my activity is reduced. I stopped using it almost entirely from like June through October, but then slowly made my way back. But instead of spending all my time on reddit as before, I spend my time between Lemmy, Tildes, Mastodon, and reddit. So I think that’s still a win in my book. I don’t mind using multiple sites for information and entertainment; it’s kinda like what people did in the earlier days of the Internet. Further, I’m not really anti-centralized platforms. I still have a FB account. I scroll Instagram daily. I use Discord. I use YouTube. I use what gives me value.
Anyway, I landed on Beehaw after briefly looking at other instances and looking at Beehaw’s “philosophy,” which seemed attractive. Overall, Lemmy is not the promised land; There are issues I see with the platform, the userbase, and even with the current state of federation. But no site or platform is perfect. Every platform has upsides and downsides. I get what I want out of it and try to “give back” what I can.
I’d been on the microblog side of Fedi for a while, when Reddit shat the bed I went to check out the link aggregator/forum. But it’s a long way from ever being able to replace what I used Reddit for: communities for niche microinterests. And I’m not optimistic it’ll ever get to that level. We have a slow moving frontpage for memes and world news but that’s about it.
I still keep the tab open and poke my head into it from time to time, but I don’t do much more than lurk because there’s not much for me to see here. I’m still not going back to Reddit either, but that just means I’m a hermit living in a cave now.
