The Reddit API-pocalypse. I'm boycotting them until they re-enable third-party app support. If that's never, so be it.

To clarify, if Reddit ever did allow third-party apps again, I would re-evaluate my stance. If I were to re-evaluate my stance today, however, I would choose to to return due to all of the moderators and most of the posts being bots.

Reddit went to shit, and Lemmy is a lot like reddit was back in 2010 or so.

Plenty of things that brought me from reddit to Lemmy.

:the algorithm deciding what subreddits you see instead of upvotes

:removal of r/all

:the kind of racist and misogynist shit that kept propping up

:Especially true in Indian subreddits, a kind of action, reaction whiplash. One subreddit says something, gets backlash on other, and this cycle.

:subreddit pollution, again an Indian subreddit problem, where you get 5 different subreddits for same topic, and all of them are getting astro turfed by politics

: and the fact all of these subreddits were being shoved down my throat. Look, there's few Indian subreddits I like to visit, but why does the algorithm keep shoving down the bad ones? And how bad you may ask? I was called out for spreading propaganda for pulling statistical figures from UNs official sources.

:also bots. Plenty of bots. Karma farmers who tell fake stories, which was easier to spot before reddit doubled down on making accounts private.

And that's it. Reddit has gotten so bad I don't even feel like scrolling r/popular or r/all anymore. And atleast for me, it's a quality problem.

Switched to Mastodon when Musk took over Twitter in 2022. Switched to Lemmy when Reddit banned 3rd party apps in 2023.

I was interested in decentralized platforms before. Technically Diaspora was my first "fediverse" social network, but it lacked content so I didn't use it much.

Like many others, I tried out the Fediverse when Reddit nuked third-party apps.

I hadn't used Reddit's third-party apps in some years, but the debacle just showed to everyone that Reddit is a for-profit company, and they'll always put profits ahead of users' interests.

Updooting a Luigi post apparently got me perma banned for "inciting violence" or something stupid.

The APIcalypse

A lot of youtubers I watch in tech spaces had their mastodon listed for social media, and after looking into it I found the concept of the fediverse neat, so I decided to try out a couple of platforms, and see if it's any better than the cesspit that is mainstream social networks

Reddit is turning into Facebook 2.0. More and more subs getting infiltrated with far-right pricks. After having to leave yet another Euro sub, i decided to try some other pages. The problem is, that the Euro fascists are quite decent in having a seemingly reasonable discussion, but once you know the dogwhistles and check their history, you'll quickly notice their agenda.

A few factors:

1. Reddit became insuferable with all the "twitter-refugees" and political bots during the last US-Elections.
2. The Buy European movement thought me what lemmy was in the first place.
3. Before dropping reddit for good, I was using it along side lemmy because lemmy is quite slow compared to reddit. Than reddit did one change that made me delete the app: they made it so that you could put your profile as private. So you could no longer see if it was a grnuine misguided peraon ot just some bot /shit stirrer.

Reddit ending third party client support.

I wasn't super-enthusiastic about old.reddit.com effectively being mothballed, and I always would have preferred something more like Usenet. And I didn't agree with the change to how blocking worked. But the "the only client is our client" thing was the breaking point for me.

I always expected Reddit to be less-desirable once it was monetized, but I hadn't anticipated them killing third party client support.

API gate started it for me. Logged out of my account, never logged back in (refused to contribute to reddit after that), stayed on reddit a few months longer using old.reddit.com, but once they rolled out the forced sign on just to use that it was a straw too far.

Came during the reddit blackout.

Got my 15 years Reddit account banned for sharing a UN documented proof of Israel committing genocide in gaza, in a pro Palestine sub.

This made me 100% sure that shithole of site is moderated by Israeli PR agents to control the narrative.

The reason they banned me was “supporting terrorism” lol.

Never been interested in being bubbled and having an algo rammed down my throat - I deliberately go places online that aren’t necessarily for me. I like to see how others live and think. Hate the omnipresence of advertising. Heard about Mastodon, did some reading, ended-up here…

I believe API gate was the last straw for me on Reddit, after 10 years.

I came here after leaving reddit, when they shut off third party app access. I had already been wanting to leave to another platform, and many people were mentioning Lemmy and the Fediverse as an alternative. The idea of independent federated instances really appealed to me, and losing RIF was my final straw.

I also left Twitter for Mastodon around the same time, although I'm much more active here than on Mastodon.

I'm so glad I did it, because I've had a much better experience here. Even though we have bots, spammers, and some bad mods, it's nothing compared to the shithole that is reddit.

I started to dislike meta and musk more and more.

People,and less bots

My trigger to try it was Reddit killing third party apps. What kept me here is the different instances interacting with one another, the people and the way it works in my third party app. It just fits my requirements. Content could be a bit better though, and I wish there'd be an option to hide duplicate posts of these actuality bots posting the same news story to five instances. RSS is capable of that.

I speak loudly against immorality because of my neurodivergence, interests and character and it was all okay until I started talking too much about Western imperialism and Israel in the wrong places at the wrong times... so I ended up being banned4lyfe. 🤷‍♂️😬

Im transfem on the internet, I can't trust mainstream platforms and i like the idea of federated platforms, so I ended up here

Persona age-verification bullshit on reddit

Because Reddit has become a cesspool of bots and corporate greed. Also, the mods are power-hungry chodes.

Reddit admin and mod corruption.

I'm very interested in the underlying protocol: ActivityPub. It seems like the future of the open web. I'm not so sure that lemmy or mastodon will be the breakaway hit some think it might, but I'm happy to explore what they have to offer.

I'm of the opinion that for ActivityPub to really take off it will need something novel, that isn't a clone of an existing social network. It's a tall order because there are only so many ways you can configure a purely text or even multimedia based platform, but I have faith we'll eventually get there. I've personally been tinkering with the idea of a friend-finding platform that would help people make meatspace or cyberspace friends.

The API. At that point, I deleted my account and created an account here. Unfortunately, at this point I'm debating going back, especially since you need a login to use old.reddit. As much as I want Lemmy to succeed, there just isn't enough here for me. I was on Reddit for the niche interests like Dota, CS, 3D Printing, military hardware, and Virtual Reality, and none of that is really present here. That said, no way am I downloading their official app. All their new UIs are unusable.

Because it seemed cool. reddit had been taking over by crazy people and normies who were happy to go along with the crazy.

Now it's getting worse day by day, as the crazies take over here as well. they are getting impossible to avoid.

i am looking for a place for reasonable thoughtful people to exist and collaborate and share ideas... that is rapidly becoming impossible in the current social environment.

i came for the ideological reason of being able to host one's own communication server.

i stayed for the great community

Got annoyed with Reddit and the social media megacorps in general. I can actually sometimes remember and recognize usernames here. Reminds me of old school forums.

Got banned from reddit for the 5th time

I joined mbin after reddit spezzed out with their API bullshit.

I'm in various FGC circles, and when Twitter had... I don't even remember which of its many controversies, it was a few years ago, but something or other resulted in fgc.network being launched and I immediately signed on to the idea of a federated alternative that no CEO can destroy.

At the time I also did peek around some of the other parts of Fedi, uploaded some of my Splatoon stuff to PeerTube but it was a complete ghost town. My first impression of Lemmy was that it wasn't there yet, not enough critical mass.

Then Reddit had its API debacle, and I decided to commit to trying Kbin for a while, for at least as long as the blackout lasts. My impression was still that it wasn't ready to replace Reddit, that it unfortunately can't replace the kinds of niche hobby and fandom communities I used Reddit for, but I thought Kbin's software felt like it had more potential, and I would stick with it. Then the Reddit admins turned sour, the sub I moderated that participated in the blackout had our mod team threatened by the admins, and I knew I was just never going back to Reddit.

Reddit is just AI garbage these days and the culture there has been shit for long.

It's not much better here, but still

I wanted to try and find a smaller community and move to something with less of an algorithm