I left Reddit because I gave them so many years of dedication (and $ via Reddit premium), not even considering the fact I bought coins on multiple accounts.

1. Reddit became way too focused on Karma. Karma is great in concept, but more than half of the users are only posting for internet points at this point. It takes away from the validity of posts imo. How many “I stopped drinking for 30 days!” posts did you see on there with like 70k upvotes and thousands of karma?

2. The amount of not genuine posts is alarming. People have become addicted to the upvote/downvote system moreso than boomers on Facebook have become attached to their pages.

3. The amount of hate speech, misinformation and blatant lies the site actively promotes is insane.

4. They literally made everyone NFT wallets…???

5. NFT wallets?? Why the fuck was this ever approved? Oh yeah, more $, and something else for Spez to add to his IPO rubbish. Hey look at us we have some NFTs too type beat.

6. The userbase is pretty shit and Spez has even admitted to not caring about the people who made his site what it is.

Why would anyone ever stay on a site where the literal CEO says he doesn’t need nor care about you?

The CEO is a total scumbag and Apollo closing down.

I actually left Reddit in early 2022, I’m not from the latest migration wave. I left for a combination of these reasons, the first of which is the main one:

• algorithmic feed designed to arise strong emotions, often negative
• snark and noise in the comments
• ads
• impenetrable moderation rules that often make it difficult to figure why a post is rejected, even after carefully reading all the sub’s guidelines and FAQs cover to cover, as well as reviewing past threads

Honestly? Reddit’s fuck up. I’ll always self host stuff if it makes sense, and all of a sudden Lemmy started making sense!

Sync stopped working :(

Apollo going away was the catalyst for me. I will never use Reddit’s garbage website or first-party app.

Plus Lemmy gave me an excuse to host another neat service and still waste the same time I did on Reddit.

I was on the fence about it until the Spez AMA. Then, I decided I’d be leaving on the 30th.

Then, I had a user call me “fucking stupid” for supporting a sub shutting down, and that was the final straw for me. I had seen how friendly people on Lemmy are and this showed me how toxic Reddit is by comparison. So I immediately nuked all my comments & posts and deleted my account. This was around two weeks ago and I’ve been much happier here.

Honestly, mostly solidarity.

Sure, the fact that my preferred Reddit app was going the way of the dodo and the fact that they weren’t even trying to negotiate in good faith were reasons, yeah, but at the end of the day, I was just gonna grit my teeth, patch the Reddit app with Revanced, and have that be my personal and insignificant F you.

Then I realized a bigger F you was to deprive them of content, future or present, (mine, specifically. As insignificant as it was) so I did.

And here I am

Because it became a hivemind of only one allowed thought process. If you disagreed with the vaccine being mandated and forced on people, or disagreed with masking inside of a car you were downvoted and ostracized. Reddit mods started going after communities just because they disagreed with them politically and it became unfun to use.

I think that media platforms and public spaces should be publicly owned. I actually wrote an article on the subject a while back https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/