The API change, I still have RIF on my phone as a reminder of why I moved here.

I've never used 3rd party apps, but I was planning to participate in the blackout in solidarity of the protest of reddit's API changes. Then greedy pig boy made statements about how it wasn't a big deal and everyone would be back, and I immediately started looking for a replacement. I do miss the super niche subs that Lemmy doesn't have nearly the population to support, but the overall experience is much better here and reminds me of ye olden days of the internet before corporations took over everything. I deleted as much as I could from my 10 year old account, but didn't delete my account itself because all that does is remove any control you have over comments that get missed for deletion.

Death of third party apps

Multiple reasons. I first started on Slashdot as a news aggregator/discussion forum. Also SomethingAwful, then Digg. I've moved from platform to platform as the enshittification spreads, until I've landed here. I think the fediverse has the best chance to not go down the same holes the others have. The final straw though was the API change and elimination of 3rd party applications.

They ban you for bs reasons. That's it, even if you don't go against their rules, apparently saying the truth is enough to get banned.

It just got too busy and corporate for me. The pace of Lemmy is better and more manageable, and I believe its structure is more resistant to commercialization.

Got banned for joking that we could find out if old torture methods were real by trying them on child molesters. At the same time there was a thread about some shitty thing HP had done and 100s of the top comments were suggesting the same type of things for their executives. I appealed my ban and asked what the difference was between my comment and theirs and provided a link. All I got was a canned "fuck you". A week later all those comments were still there so I can only assume reddit admins care a whole lot about creating a safe space for child molestors. Not interested in participating on a site like that.

I left from Reddit after the AMA with u/spez and over the API. I knew at that point he wasn’t relenting on the third-party apps and the loss of access for me personally, but mostly for the deaf and blind community, showed me that the CEO had no intention of putting accessibility over profit. I was an Apollo user and I was looking for an alternative while continuing to browse Reddit - using them as a resource, as I always had - and I was seeing censorship abound. Reddit was blocking mentions of alternative sites and blocking discussion about Spez, which just solidified my decision.

I used those last few months of Apollo to help with the protests (John Oliver in /pics) while exploring other options (I started with Mastadon simply because they had an app). When that was over, I went full fediverse and never looked back (okay, I did participate in the r/Place that they ran soon after to contribute my pixels to “fuck spez” one last time).

The API changes were the starting point but it was when Spez said something along the lines of "Meh, all these annoyed users will come back"

A year later and I haven't been back and have no plans to.

Their IPO was my line in the sand.

Bots

Commercialization

Too much mainstream marketing honestly

Got banned because I approve of people killing Nazis before the Nazis try to kill them. Why was I contributing even shitposts to a site run by far-right lunatics? It was always a struggle to get blatantly racist subreddits banned, but if someone suggests killing Nazis is a good idea they are on it.

Blatant nazi stuff, mod infiltration, creepy mod rules for NSFW subs

I still mostly use reddit.

IMO the most toxic redditors migrated to this site. The mod drama is worse, the spin is worse, and the toxicity is somehow worse. Plus there are large groups of people attempting to make every single post a referendum on politics, and those groups are usually unhinged tankies.

It's not all bad though. There are a lot of niche subs that are much better here than on reddit. Usually those subs revolve around nerdy interests that haven't gotten caught up in the culture war. In those subs both the content and discourse are significantly more informative and respectful than reddit.

Reddit is a mainstream platform these days. There's some good in that, but also a lot of bad. Lemmy is more raw. A lot more objectively crap stuff to sift through, but also more gems.

I got a lifetime ban on all accounts for no reason. It made me want to use a platform that isn't corporate controlled. Lemmy fit the bill. No power tripping mod can ban you from all of Lemmy. At most you get kicked off their instance which is fine.

I also generally hate corporations and capitalism so using non-corporate alternatives is always nice.

I tried Lemmy during the API BS and found it was a lot like the internet chat rooms of old, with way less manufactured rage.

Shutting down API changes and the official app being garbage.

It’s full of trash comments. I spent too much time arguing over obvious facts. High ranked comments often have nothing to do with the content of the story. It’s become too popular.

Not sure how many knew about "Compact Mode", but when that quit so did I. Was once as simple as appending ".compact" to the end of a Reddit URL to switch to a nice, simplified interface without ads.

The day the API key for my 3rd party app expired. I still append most searches with Reddit though.

There were 2 things:

1. Over time it became obvious the site was promoting mass market fluff over the unique content that made reddit what it used to be. In particular having r/all as a default sub and no option to remove it seemed particularly egregious. Seemed like an attempt to impose a monoculture on the user base, and I didn't like that culture which was mostly images of tweets which is a trend I especially hate.
2. The API pricing and going public was the last straw. I looked at reddit as a wikipedia-like place where information was shared freely, for whomever and even whatever wanted to see it. I even bought gold in my younger and more naive years. But if the officers were so keen on making profits for themselves on my shitposting, why am I not getting paid? Injecting greed ruined the whole thing.

The death of the ".compact" version of the site was the final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to install an app, especially not the official reddit app to have a usable mobile experience. Once ".compact" was gone the only option was "old.reddit" which is a horrible mobile experience even though it is a fine desktop experience.

Lemmy mobile web user experience is VERY close to the ".compact" reddit user experience.

Definitely the API debacle.

Sync stopping development and switching to Lemmy brought me with it.

Content here is robust enough for me to mostly keep me off the other guy. Just been waiting for a few more niche communities to make their way over here to be perfect.

Funny I used their app but still left due to the API changes, that and there was talk then about them going public. I just assumed it'll probably get worse from there so I jumped ship. I just need to start posting more.

too many ads

Years and years of reddit getting more and more problematic and lower quality:

Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative.

Reddit likes to create some big periodical drama with its changes. Some of them already had me uneasy, and the way they gave their back to users with the API changes made end up doing what I had pending.