I was one of several mods of a niche hobby sub. All of us were modding mostly from mobile phone 3rd party apps. Killing the API seriously hurt our ability to moderate the sub.
The hobby is historically male-dominated but had a nice, inclusive vibe going where most people understood a penis was not required equipment for this hobby. The API changes also coincided with a wave of incel gun-nuts. We couldn't stay on top of it. Every time we logged on, another nut telling women inappropriate things and ruining constructive conversation on actual questions about the hobby.
At one point I enjoyed modding, I rarely had to ban anyone, it was mostly just chiming in to clarify something or helping a poster ask questions in a better way or pointing them to resources they may have overlooked or otherwise trying to encourage positive engagement. Logging on to a wave of racist, sexist asshats was not what I signed up for.
It no longer brought me joy, so I Marie Kondo'd it right out the window.
I still use Reddit, but less after the API changes. I was already using Mastodon and aware of Lemmy when that happened, but the biggest server previously was lemmy.ml, and even that wasn't very active. I put it in the back of my mind to check on again in hopes it would gain relevance. Reddit pissed off a bunch of its users, so it did.
Lemmy.world launched around then, and I'd heard of its admins by way of their well-known Mastodon server so I signed up.
The API changes were the last straw; but it had been heavily destroyed by astroturfing for years before the API restrictions finally just pushed me over the edge.
Technically, the fediverse would be even easier to astroturf. Luckily we’re early enough that astroturfing is foolish on Lemmy.
Maybe. I feel that Reddit cares little about bots and astroturfing. It drives up the engagement numbers. Independent server operators care more, but have fewer resources. Time will tell.
This seems to be the case so far. I hope it scales. Lemmy servers actually have an incentive to eliminate those things - they drive up server costs and could lead to defederation. Plus, they are usually running a server for the sake of enjoying giving people a place to socialize.
Ever tried getting an obvious bot/spam account banned from Meta? Good luck! Those accounts are generating ad impressions, so who cares if they're fake? Meta could invest the profits generated in 2 minutes and fix the problem for good, but their incentive is to keep the problem just below the threshold that people leave the platform.
Reddit likes to create some big periodical drama with its changes. Some of them already had me uneasy, and the way they gave their back to users with the API changes made end up doing what I had pending.
Sync stopping development and switching to Lemmy brought me with it.
Content here is robust enough for me to mostly keep me off the other guy. Just been waiting for a few more niche communities to make their way over here to be perfect.
I used reddit on a mobile browser. At some point they completely blocked that and made it app-only on mobile, and I started looking for an exit. When the API bullshit happened shortly after I found one and took it
It underlines fundamental leadership problems within their communities. Good moderators don’t tend to align with corporate interests — preferring a sterile and saccharine approach to discourse breeds shitty mods and shitty users.
Independent and authentic is everything Reddit is not.
The death of the ".compact" version of the site was the final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to install an app, especially not the official reddit app to have a usable mobile experience. Once ".compact" was gone the only option was "old.reddit" which is a horrible mobile experience even though it is a fine desktop experience.
Lemmy mobile web user experience is VERY close to the ".compact" reddit user experience.
Not sure how many knew about "Compact Mode", but when that quit so did I. Was once as simple as appending ".compact" to the end of a Reddit URL to switch to a nice, simplified interface without ads.
@partial_accumen had the same idea. i.reddit.com was too good of an experience for Reddit to keep around, despite hardly being maintained for almost a decade.
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.
It’s full of trash comments. I spent too much time arguing over obvious facts. High ranked comments often have nothing to do with the content of the story. It’s become too popular.