I was pretty active for about 10-12 years. Then things gradually started changing. As the platform got bigger it also got more toxic. I found myself commenting less and less because when I did I'd often be met by trolls or contrarians who didn't want to have a discussion in good faith.

Outside a group of fellow mods who I got to know very well (and who I spoke to more outside of reddit anyway) I was disengaging from reddit, and I was getting disillusioned with it.

Lemmy feels a lot like reddit from around 2009/2010. In some ways it feels even better: it doesn't have that underlying unpleasant corporate odor, and you have more confidence you are talking to a real person who is what they say they are, instead of a bot or a troll.

Saying reddit crushed the protest is accurate in some ways. But the next question is: what did they lose in doing so? I think they lost a lot of their charm, their character, their very essence.

I was already sniffing around for a new reddit before the whole protest thing. Turns out Lemmy is what I had been looking for off and on for the last couple of years.

I'll take 1.5m or 150k or 20k or whatever the actual user count is over the shit show that has been reddit for the past few years.