I saw someone complaining this site was full of tankies.

I found out about it when r/genzedong got quarantined on reddit and there was a mass exodus of users.

I am a former reddit user. Well okay, lurker. I liked the concept of reddit, but hated the issues that their team left unresolved: power tripping mods, censorship and later the whole Ellen Pao debacle and it just got worse from there. So I started looking for similar sites. I tried Aether, Tildes, I think I was also on Raddle at some point. Then I found Lemmy and here I am.

My memory is a bit hazy on this. After listening to Snowden's "Permanent Record" audiobook , my interest in encryption and online privacy grew. I became much more aware about how unhealthy it is to have a society that relies on large centralized platforms to broker people's social interactions.

At some point along the process of looking into solutions to the centralization problem I remember running into Dessalines' essay on "Favorite apps and services". I think I found it via a google search for decentralized social media alternatives or de-googling, or on a post on Reddit alternatives, I don't remember the details. In this list lemmy is listed as a reddit alternative, and I was shopping for one 😄

I am glad I found lemmy as it encouraged me to learn about self-hosting, and that has snowballed in a positive way.

Have a feeling it was either when I was just searching FOSS alternatives or I saw a post on Mastodon about it. Either way, I enjoyed Lemmy

GenZDong got banned on reddit.

I think I read about it on Mastodon.

least repeated question on asklemmy 🤭

There was a poster on reddit promoting fediverse alternatives to mainstream social platforms. It caught my attention and so I signed up on lemmy whilst not yet fully grasping what was meant by "federation" and "decentralization".

On a side note, there's this nostalgic sentiment to my early days on this platform. It was a novel experience, and this is where I fell into the rabbit hole of privacy and libre culture. Lemmy's content was a huge rupture from what I used to consume on reddit.

I had vaguely known about it for some time, but it wasn't until I saw it in action when a podcast I listen to started it's own instance and group (!acrossthefediverse@links.artemai.art) that I "got" it and started using it. And then started my own instance too :)

Searching for federated forum software, and found lemmyBB.

I hold no ideals toward decentralization, ideologically I'm more aligned with a democratically-run centralized platform. That said, federation is still a great feature even on a big platform! Also I like the people more.

I think I searched for "open source reddit" and Lemmy was one of the search results. Joined lemmy.ml, and then a year or so later started my own instance.

i forgot 😔 it was a long time ago

I got banned on reddit, so I searched for reddit alternative in google.

I googled "activity pub Reddit alternative". I like it here

Don't remember exactly but it must have been a few years ago. I think I came across it when searching for FOSS reddit-like forum alternatives. I remember the main instance was on dev.lemmy.ml and federation wasn't a thing yet.

I never had a reddit account but I was checking r/privacy, r/degoogle, etc through Slide app. Then I found out about Lemmy

I was looking at Fediverse groups and how they work, and then I stumbled across Lemmy. Initially joined lemmy.ml, but really loved it, and now co admin a dedicated instance :)

Feditips on Mastodon made a post about not using Lemmy and using Kbin instead. I went to Kbin first, but it was having major Federation problems at the time and I ended up swapping.