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 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.
Several years ago I stumbled upon ActivityPub and the Fediverse. I created a few accounts across services, I think Friendica was the first. I quickly got bored with it because no one else from my real life was on it and the overall userbase was tiny. Move forward a couple of years and I left reddit when they took away third-party apps and mod tools. Lemmy had enough users at that point I’ve stuck around.
I created a Mastadon account when Musk bought Twitter but that’s gone idle. I was never that into Twitter, it’s not a format I prefer.
+1 for Reddit API exodus.
Lemmy was sold to me as a Reddit replacement. And it is, superficially. I knew it wasn’t going to be drop-in going in. But the longer I use it the more I think it’s not really quite like Reddit, and never will be. And that’s fine. Lemmy is its own character and I like it for what it is.
I still use Reddit. Lemmy doesn’t scratch all the itches for me. But only old.reddit on the desktop and on mobile with a UI de-shittifying extension. I’m amazed they still offer it at all. Once that’s cut off, something I’ve been bracing myself for for years, I’ll consider the UX enshittification to have fully completed and I’ll truly bail. I simply refuse to use their gentrified UI. And I’m tired as it is having to slap on compatibility layers just to keep their less terrible alternative on life support; I’m not going to do the same thing to make their mainstream UI somewhat more palatable.
I’m just as critical of Lemmy as I was of Reddit.
Lemmy is a very left leaning echo chamber and a lot of people dont want to hear counterpoints to their soap-box rantings.
I do love Lemmy, but theres a decent percentage of fucking whackadoodles on here too. Also I’m not installing Linux, stop asking.
The only thing we all have in common politically is that we don’t think social media should be controlled by a handful of gigantic manipulative corporations.
Which extension?
It’s only available for Firefox.
Thanks! It’s nice, just installed. The open old reddit button is super useful too, for search results landing on reddit.
In that case, you may get some mileage as well out of Old Reddit Redirect. It will automatically force all Reddit links to open in old Reddit for you.
Oh, I didn’t know it is on firefox android. I use it on desktop firefox though.
I was on reddit when the api changes happened, after that (and the canvas) i deleted my account over there and went here.
Someone sent a mod mail to a sub i moderated about it.
Someone posted on one of the subreddits I used to read, and I tried it out. I stopped using reddit because of the API thing and a general dislike of private consolidation that you get with sites like it.
It’s been fine. Some rough edges but worth it.
The ChapoTrapHouse-Hexbear pipeline
I was banned from Reddit for the crime of using a different computer to login. Fun fact - there’s no appeal for that one. So I decided I had enough of that particular shit show, did some Googling for something similar to the older Reddit from years ago.
It was ether from one of the subreddit talking about alternative to Reddit which was around the time of Reddit did changes to API or from someone made post about Lemmy on Mastodon and wanted to try it out.
I found out about lemmy from the announcement for boost for lemmy(i had been using boost for reddit for about a week since then)
Hello from Boost
It must have been somewhere around early 2020 when I was casually browsing Mastodon. I found about a federated Reddit alternative and got immediately interested. I registered to Lemmy.ml and in 2021 founded Sopuli when federation got implemented properly. And here I am!
i used the android app “reddit is fun”. i had stopped using reddit well before the api and public offering drama so i had absolutely no idea it was going on. i needed to get an answer to a question and the google search led to a reddit link. typically i normally chose web links, but this time i said, what the hell, and opened the link with rif. then i read the changelog of the app. that pointed to a lemmy instance for rif (which does not have a lemmy version btw) and that’s where i caught up on all the bullshit i missed during the intervening 3 years.
ps i also have a .ml account. it was the easiest one to create an account with at the time. if i could transfer all the stats and comments i made with this account and transfer it to one that allowed swearing (for instance you can’t use the word that describes selling one’s self for money or other favors that sounds similar to a garden tool called a hoe) i’d do it.
EMPRESS moved here after getting banned from Reddit, so I moved. She got banned from ml shortly afterwards; but i stuck with here since i liked the concept.
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.
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
