The API changes. I use Sync, and not being able to use Sync made Reddit more or less unusable for me on my phone. I also fundamentally disagreed with the direction Reddit was going. So, Lemmy it was, and it's great. And now there's Sync for Lemmy, which is even better!
Blocking .ml is super nice. The only thing that is a bit annoying is that they have a lot of active members that don't mind supporting fascist twats. Yet they participate in the fediverse and are otherwise informative. I don't get notifications when they answer one of my questions. Oh well.
Just want to note that a user-blocked instance still influences your feed via voting. The only way to truly and entirely block another instance is to get your admin to defederate the instance.
But on the fediverse you can choose your admin or become your own admin, so that's still a lot better than reddit.
Same here. I exclusively browsed Reddit via app on my phone and tablet. After watching my wife struggle with the official Reddit app, I decided I would never use it. So when that became the only option, I decided it was time to move on to Lemmy.
Besides, I'm very anti-advertisement and Reddit has turned very corporate lately, looking for every way to make a buck at our expense. So I'm done supporting that site. Information and community discussion should be freely accessible, not buried behind paywalls, awards, and advertisements.
Was using Boost for Reddit. API bits made them charge for Reddit. They offered lemmy. I'd been meaning to get started with Mastodon, having another fediverse portal offered made it easy.
Having also bailed because of Apollo, I kind of wish some of the iOS adjacent communities could get a decent toehold on Lemmy. 90% of the comments in those communities feel like they’re from people who are not subscribed, or never would.
Traffic from All hits Lemmy communities a lot faster and harder than Reddit communities, and that can make it hard for certain communities to get rooted on this platform
I almost didn't join lemmy because the first time you sign up in the fediverse it feels like a big deal. What got me to actually follow through was to impulsively join a silly instance (RIP iusearchlinux.fyi)
The third party switch. Plus I have found lemmy to be quite refreshing. On Reddit all I did was lurk. But now I actually comment and participate. Because it feels like I'm talking to real people.
API stuff and the general response to the community feedback and blackout. I used Apollo and wasn’t interested in switching to the ad-riddled official reddit app. Tried Kbin first and eventually found myself on lemmy. Liking it here.
I exclusively browse on mobile and their app sucks. The API changes were the last straw, but I was slowly on the way out the door anyway. The bigger an online community gets, the more it will resemble your average online community. The average online community is a toxic mess. Reddit is so big, even the niche little weirdo run subreddits weren't the same anymore. It looked like reddit but felt like Facebook.
Everyone cheered when the jannies got booted for "abusing their power" only to be replaced by someone less capable but more willing to toe the line for the company
I actually originally was in the process of switching to Aether but that didn't pan out and lemmy was the next best thing when it came along. I wish they'd implement that 6 month auto-delete though. I understand the concept of things not being able to be taken back on the internet, but I think being able to trace back every single word a person typed going back a decade or more is silly. Like the aether creator said, if it was that important, it would've been saved elsewhere in that six month period. Beyond that we really don't need to know that pixiedust23 said "first" in response to a meme 3 years ago.
That would be a nice feature. Most users here are semi-anonymous, so it will eventually be important to be "forgotten." A long enough posting history is a threat vector.
I didn't care too much about API changes at first - I used on open source app on my phone but mostly browsed desktop. Would have been fine going back to desktop only. As long as they keep the old site design around, I'd be fine to stay.
What killed it for me was the absolutely un-caring, not-budging response from leadership. I don't feel good continuing to feed the site my attention at that point.
I like quirky Foss stuff anyway, so I was already curious about Mastodon and Lemmy. But I'd always figured they'd be ghost towns. Twitter and Reddit deliberately being proudly, blatantly awful was enough to push me out to here, along with enough other folks.
It was a result of the 3rd party app collapse that triggered the migration of reasonable people out of reddit. I was the mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and saw my mod queue explode with the most hateful shit that went unchecked by other commenters.
Then my friend told me about where everyone went, glad to see all of you!