I had been active on Reddit for close to 15 years, and left due to the API decisions. That move feels more justified every time I bump into Reddit, from being unable to view programming questions from a work VPN, to the emails begging me to invest in their IPO, to their exec pay fiasco.

Reddit is a shell of what it was, but I think this is largely due to stepping away from it. I know several people that use it religiously, and they don’t notice it as much as I do.

In a similar vein, Lemmy can have some absolutely batshit views too, and can also be incredibly toxic at times. We just don’t notice it as much because we’re used to it, but I bet some people new to Lemmy would see some posts/comments and think “eh, no thanks”. I won’t say that Lemmy is as toxic as Reddit, but the community size makes it more obvious on Reddit.

For me, it was not being able to use a 3rd party app. Accessing reddit through their garbage app is a painful experience. And unless I find the answer to a question via web search that’s a reddit thread, I avoid it entirely.

I was active - and I mean ACTIVE - on reddit for well over a decade. When the API fiasco happened, I deleted my mobile apps, and stuck to desktop. When ‘opt out of selling your data’ became impossible, I logged out for good.

Lemmy is both better and worse than reddit ever was. It will likely never reach the same activity level, but will also not reach the same toxicity.

i stuck it out past the protest up until the day the company went public, and I can testify without any doubt that the downward spiral increased dramatically post protest. It got so bad that even though I go back to check my local sub, I haven’t once felt tempted to create a new account. I began to dread any actual interaction with other accounts

I’ve felt that the popular subreddits were on a decline ever since Reddit was featured in so many YouTube slop videos, but with time the effect of identity loss is becoming increasingly obvious. The crowd on there is not what it used to be. Gone is the desire for accurate information, meaningful comments, sources, and giving credit. Reddit is no longer a niche product but a mainstream one that my parents and “normie” friends know and it reflects in the lower quality content and user participation.

I haven’t gone to reddit.com and browsed around since I left.

But one thing that HASN’T changed is I’ll search ddg for an answer to a random problem and the most helpful link is a reddit post, either from long ago or recently.

I also abandoned ship and signed up for Lemmy on June 12. we’re twinses.

I still use Reddit for queer nsfw content (for now) and r/all is getting worse by the day, and it was already pretty bad for years

I switched to this instance so that I’d have access to lemmit, now that I have lemmit, I don’t miss anything from reddit except the comments

there’s still some great subreddits, but many of the mainstream ones have devolved into right wing cesspools

The only places there that haven’t changed are the tiny game subs, to my limited willingness to use the site. I have checked the niche subs I used to moderate, and all but one is swamped with bullshit. Even that one has changed some. The only ones of those unchanged are the ones I had set to private ages before spez threw his little hissy-fit. The ones that were public are either dead, botted, or just unchecked insanity with bad moderation. Spam everywhere.

08 reddit was vastly different than 12 reddit which was vastly different than 16 reddit which was vastly different than 20 reddit which was vastly different than 24 reddit.

For what it’s worth, they’re all terrible in their own unique ways. Aside from a brief window some time after 16 but before 20, during which bots and hate speech were both heavily moderated. Except in conservative spaces, but there’s no polishing those turds.

Yea anything big and mainstream just seems super shallow.

I’m not on top of things to compare accurately, but it was always kinda like that (and is like that here sometimes too). But whenever I’ve gone back, I’ve definitely felt like it has gotten somewhat worse. Some of that could easily be a shifting standard from spending more time on other less “mainstream” platforms though.

Honestly this is probably how I subconciously felt on reddit for maybe a few years before I left. In all the slightly larger subreddits you could mostly predict how the comment section would look like. Mostly the same jokes and the same answers. The best posts also felt like they were made by people who put in a lot of time to figure out how to get to the frontpage and once you yourself made a post it would mostly be removed for some reason or buried. On Lemmy it is also much easier to see other opinions that are not directly downvoted into oblivion but rather discussed and as long as the person does not behave like an idiot the discussion is interesting.

I go back to Reddit now from time to time. Mostly to ask specific questions in communities that are niche and don’t exist on here. They are the only good interactions I see that are just as good as here. Elsewhere it’s just different. I’ve not been able to put my finger on why, myself like. But it’s definitely not the same.