Were you guys able to get people to move to Lemmy?
I'm ready to step away from Reddit. I know you can encounter toxic behavior on other platforms too, but I'm just exhausted by the level of negativity there. So, I have two questions for those who have fully transitioned โ What prompted your decision to leave? And were you able to get others to join you on Lemmy?
That's how I feel too. I'm mostly committed to Lemmy, to the point where I even deleted my Reddit account, but I also still lurk in a few, like /r/SWTOR, /r/JPEGXL, /r/trans, and /r/ChangeMyView.
There are communities for the latter three, but the JPEG-XL one is just a mirror community, the Trans one is not quite as active (still decent AFAICT), and the top CMV one I can find has a little over 100 subscribers so pretty dead.
Don't worry, I think a lot of people are like that!
View content on other sites, post there when you need to, whatever works for you. I try to only post here, unless there is an urgent reason for me to post there.
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.
On one custom app I used, I think they made it so you can hide a comment completely from view but I also think regular Reddit hasnโt gotten better at that as well.
I had been looking for an alternative to Reddit for a while, but heard about Lemmy during the API Exodus of โ23.
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.
For me it was/is exactly the same. I've not been using reddit a lot anyway but once I heard about Lemmy I was very quick to move around the API disaster. I also don't know anyone from reddit so I didn't have a desire to convince anyone.
I spread the news around in my other networks and I think 2 people joined lemmy, but they would have joined without me advocating for it anyway probably.
I knew of Lemmy before the API exodus, but I didnโt really have a reason to move as I didnโt really use the custom apps. Just with the nastiness of some Redditors, Redditโs been losing itโs appeal to me, but Iโm clinging onto the app for some friends I have there. Hmm.
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.
Post on the general communities and if it takes off, consider a separate community. It's sort of like being out in the world and finding people with common interests.
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.
My decision to leave was due to the prevalence of misinformation and / or entirely unrelated comments being upvoted to the top. Fuck that place. Itโs just an alternate to Facebook now.
Edit: I just think it's funny that people left because of the API policy. Not to diminish anyone's preferences but Reddit's policy change was actually to retain users, run more ads, and probably increase algorithmic engagement and sell content to LLMs. People left as a protest with the belief that it was run by, for, and of the people and that Reddit didn't understand its core user base. Reddit has only continued to increase its user base and revenue. I'd venture to guess that the core users leaving was actually a benefit to Reddit. Their departure just made it easier for Reddit to accomplish their goals.
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.
A few friends wanted to give it a try, and a few of those are around, I think... I made it a point to avoid learning their usernames, but they send me links from Lemmy from time to time.
just leave them. i thought I would miss some of my communities. but I don't at all... and the toxic right wing propaganda doesn't make the front page ever.
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
Yeah, I definitely do a see a change in Lemmyโs environment. Most Redditors Iโve come across are very hostile. Iโve had someone argue with me on the vent sub for โbitching,โ when thatโs literally what the community is for. xD
Most of that comes from how much smaller Lemmy is than Reddit and the demographic of Lemmy users. I don't have hard information, but at least anecdotally the average Lemmy user is about ten years older, it seems more men use it even than reddit, and skews extremely left.
The low volume of users means a lot less content and fewer niche communities. The biggest between Lemmy and Reddit though is the lack of bots. There are bots on Lemmy for sure and probably the same kinds that are most of reddit, but there just isn't as big of an incentive because the ROI is smaller.
I found the same about engagement - every post had 5000 comments but only the top 100 could generate actual conversation, everyone else might as well be talking to themselves
I found that was better when I would sort subs by new or rising and comment there. Once something makes it to the front page it's pointless to comment on unless your goal was getting more internet points. Lemmy is much easier to get into conversations just because of how much smaller it is.
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 Redditโs decision to screw over developers and its users. Never tried to bring someone over. The user base is smaller but itโs almost like going from a loud room of shouting assholes to a small gathering of people that tire of the noise. Havenโt looked back once.
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'm not going to try prying people I know from their comfort zone. If they want to be on Facebook, fine, be on Facebook. If they want to stay on Shitter, stay on Shitter. If they want to be on Reddit .etc .etc
The reason I left reddit, multiple times, was because of the inexcusable amount of toxicity. It got so bad, that I couldn't complain about my work anymore on a subreddit meant for people who complain about their work. Nothing is done about trolls, they'll happily stalk you, you block one bastard, another makes an alt in seconds to resume.
And spez continues sitting there with his stupid braindead grin on his face, doing fuck all to just do ONE simple thing to prevent it - retool the registration. See, Lemmy trolls can't get away with treating the registration as if it was a machine gun for alts, least not as readily as Reddit's. You have to wait to be approved, you have to make expendable e-mails and there's a bit of time at play here.
Back when this whole API thing happened, I didn't bother because I knew that almost nobody would listen to me as my account was fairly young and only had a small amount of that karma bullshit.
I left because I do a lot in my power to avoid seeing ads on sites/apps. Also, when I heard that it would cost a prohibitively expensive amount for a certain app (don't remember which) to use the API and heard that unofficial mod tools for things like helping people with sight disabilities mod were gonna disappear, I dipped because I cannot support that type of stuff.
Not really, and I'm over it. Couldnt really get people to move away from Meta products either. I just do what is best for me and my family's privacy without waiting for all my friends to join me. Plenty of cool people here.