I came in 2023 when they shut down the API. I did this because RIF is how I see Reddit and Reddit’s app sucks. There is a lot of ideological stuff associated with my decision but ultimately that’s not what drove me.

No, I haven’t been able to get people to join me, but I haven’t really tried. The friends that I know used RIF just switched to the official Reddit app. (One even likes it better.) I don’t mind because we never interacted on Reddit. I only know they had accounts, not their names. We chat on other apps.

What prompted your decision to leave?

The API thing last year was my last straw. Finally killing off the last of the “we totally love our users” bit and changing it to a very profit-focused platform was the indication it was time. It wasn’t until after I left did I realize what a toll it was taking on my mental health.

were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?

Tried, but it didn’t stick. Learned that people will move over naturally. I talk about it if people ask me why I’m not on Reddit, but I never push or actively encourage. I learned that only makes people less likely to try it. Don’t know why, probably some psychological reasoning, but if I show I’m too excited about something they’ll actively avoid it.

There’s a lot of people I know and don’t want here.

What prompted your decision to leave?

I had been looking for an alternative to Reddit for a while, but heard about Lemmy during the API Exodus of ‘23.

were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?

I did not try. I know no one on Reddit personally except one of my customers. I have told him in person about Lemmy, but I do not think he would join. I co-modded a sub and the other mod supposedly went to beehaw. But again not someone I knew personally.

I mentioned it to my friends a couple of times, but I couldn’t offer a reason to move when they are happy with Reddit.

At the moment, there isn’t enough content unique to Lemmy, except for unix_surrealism. I post my favourite Surrealism posts to work channels and hope people are interested enough that they stick around.

I decided to leave reddit after I switched from lurking to trying to participate more. Most of the comments I made for about six month had little to no interaction, to the point I wondered if I was shadow banned (but wasn’t as far as I could tell). When I was able to interact with another redditor it was rarely pleasant and usually was just someone telling me I was wrong or misunderstanding my comment and arguing against the misunderstanding.

I didn’t have a community of people on reddit to being but I did ask a friend to try it a few months back. She didn’t stick around though because of the lack of content.

If reddit isn’t working for you Lemmy might, but I would encourage you to consider what it is you want from social media and see if there might be a better fit somewhere because Lemmy is just anarchist reddit.

Edit: It’s also worth pointing out the average Lemmy user is much smarter than the average redditor so if the idiots on reddit are your main problem you might find it fits your needs

Reddit blocks tor

Lemmy allows tor

I prefer to minimize the possibility of crazy internet stalkers (and government agents)

Lemmy is better

api changes breaking my ad free client (reddit is fun) got me to leave. never going back

My decision to leave was due to the prevalence of misinformation and / or entirely unrelated comments being upvoted to the top. Fuck that place. It’s just an alternate to Facebook now.

It would be relatively easy for me to convince some people to come to Lemmy if the Spanish-speaking community were a little bigger. For the moment I will have to be patient and wait for more people to come naturally.

My reasons were as you said, toxicity and Reddit’s decision to screw over developers and its users. Never tried to bring someone over. The user base is smaller but it’s almost like going from a loud room of shouting assholes to a small gathering of people that tire of the noise. Haven’t looked back once.

The API debacle got me to leave, I had become fond of Infinity for reddit, and saw there was a fork for Lemmy called eternity.

I implored a sub I modded to join me, likely a handful did.

I like it here much better, I can never go back now.

Yes and no. I left during the API drama and the blackout. First, moving communities wholesale just never works. Community archives don’t migrate, the affordances are different from site to site, etc. That’s why we (speaking for all the folks who run the ourblind.com set of communities) run a Reddit, a Discord, and of course the rblind.com Lemmy. The members and culture are wildly different between the three. And that’s fine. Though because of moderation issues, these days all posts to /r/blind need approval, and sometimes approval can take a day or more. However, Reddit’s decision to exempt the accessibility focused clients (Luna and Dystopia) that most blind folks use meant that a lot of blind people preferred to stay on Reddit, especially those who just consume content from other communities.

Second, creating a home for a new community, and doing it properly, takes a lot of time and effort! It’s taken us over a year to get the server infrastructure for rblind.com to a place I’m happy with. We had almost a week of downtime a while back, and until recently email delivery was extremely dodgy. While those things are fixed now, we’re still in process of creating a custom (more accessible) theme for our Lemmy. So even over a year later, I would still consider the rblind.com Lemmy to be in an alpha state. Signups are more than welcome, but we’re not actively working to push people over from elsewhere. Despite that, we’ve got a couple active daily users (mostly in off-site communities), folks make regular posts to our main community from Mastodon, and we’ve got a couple hundred registered users. It took the Reddit about five years to really take off, and even the Discord took a couple years before it started popping. So I’m happy for Lemmy to slowly build at its own pace, into whatever it decides to become, without trying to make it a clone of Reddit or something else, or forcing the existing communities to move over.

As well, of course, if Reddit does decide to cut off the accessible clients, or do something else that makes it completely screen reader inaccessible, our Lemmy means that no single service can hold our community hostage. Unlike when the API stuff happened, now we wouldn’t be in the position of racing to find a new home. We’ve got somewhere that’s mostly built and ready for people to move in when they need it.

10+ years on Reddit and I could not stand what the API changes were going to do, on top of totally hating the experience without an app.

None of my friends were even on Reddit so no problem with them not being on Lemmy ಠ_ಠ

Lemmy feels alot like Reddit in 2012 so I’m hopeful.

I left during the blackout. I occasionally mention it if I’m taking about a post or article, but haven’t tried to get anyone to join. I’m pretty ok that there are just a few million of us.