Why I joined Lemmy
I left Reddit and Twitter in early 2022 when I joined Mastodon.
It was a few months prior to the rumors Elon Musk might acquire Twitter and my decision had different motivations: I was invisible on the platform. As an average user, the algorithms made it impossible for me to be seen or have interactions.
As for Reddit I left for a combination of these reasons:
- algorithmic feeds designed to arise strong, often negative emotions
- snark and noise in the comments
- ads
- impenetrable moderation rules that make it difficult to figure why posts are rejected, even after reading the guidelines and FAQs cover to cover and reviewing past threads
The Reddit API restrictions of June of 2023, and the migration of many to the Fediverse, made me curious about federated and independent Reddit alternatives, particularly Lemmy. I joined the Lemmy.ml instance because it focuses on topics I'm interested in and values I share, plus it has a critical mass.
I've been on Lemmy for the past couple of weeks. In the first days my instance was slow and broken, then performance and stability improved substantially.
Although not polished as corporate platforms, which is a feature, Lemmy's design is functional and intuitive. Some features make Lemmy better than Reddit, such as the ability to expand and collapse posts in the feed to quickly browse them.
While there's a lot of activity around mainstream or popular topics, some Lemmy communities are pretty quiet.
I don't mind new or lesser known platforms as content quality and valuable interactions are what I'm after, which doesn't necessarily correlate with size. I'm making it a point to seed with content and discussions the communities I subscribe to, as well as comment on and interact with posts by others.
All I need now is to stick around and keep contributing.
Discuss... Email | Reply @amoroso@fosstodon.org