Honestly? Yeah, I probably would have stuck around. I think if they had given more notice then the protest would have been a lot more muted and you wouldn’t have seen as many people jump ship for the fediverse. Although, it’s not really anger or spite that’s been keeping me on the fediverse and away from Reddit. When I learned RIF was shutting down I was more annoyed than anything else. But every action Reddit has taken since then has convinced me that it’s just going to become a worse platform as time goes on. Yes, the fediverse is hard to navigate at first and a lot of sites are struggling under a user base that was never expected to grow so rapidly. Still, I appreciate the smaller communities here and I’ve been more active here in a week than I was during how many years I’ve been on Reddit. There’s a novelty to figuring things out that I never really had with Reddit.

I’m here because Reddit told me they view me as a wallet, not a participant, contributor, or anything else.

The fediverse isn’t and may never be strictly “better”, but neither will Reddit. Reddit has a singular vision of worse quality and worse management going forward. They may claw BACK some of what they’ve chucked out the window, but they’ve shown they’re not going to make the product better. Ever. Just different versions of bad.

Had they taken a boiled frog approach, I’d be there a lot longer. I wasn’t excited to pay, but it would become a decision of “pay for a better experience or get something worse for freeTM”. That’s a different choice than “use my worsening app or screw off.” They made the choice relatively easy where they could have made it a lot more nuanced.

Honestly? If Reddit had phased out third part apps gradually and tactfully I would have phased out my redditing gradually and tactfully.

I only browsed reddit on old or rif because otherwise it’s just too slow, not info-dense, and has a facebook feel.

Being part of a mass migration instead of having to gradually move accross has been a steeper learning curve, sure, but it was always going to happen to me once reddit ditched old.reddit, and this way at least I have fellow noobs.

Honestly, being one of the dozen or so people who still prefers to do his internetting with a computer rather than a smartphone, the whole app drama doesn’t really bother me one way or another. What DOES bother me is Reddit deciding that they need to force a miserable ad-ridden experience on the people viewing and contributing to their site, plus knowing that if and when this goes through, old.reddit is almost certain to be next on the chopping block. Everything that’s happened after that announcement has only reassured me that getting off of Reddit now is the right choice

For me it’s not about the immediate abilities to use Reddit/Lemmy, is about my projected ability.

Yeah the Reddit app sucks and it’s slightly better than the iOS apps for Lemmy… for now.

Reddit has had years to improve their app and has not made much, if any effort to do so.

Meanwhile I’ve had two updates today to my beta iOS app for Lemmy, fixing bugs before I’ve even had a chance to find them and enabling new features literally every day.

The future only looks promising for one of these platforms, and that’s why I’d rather weather Lemmy’s growing pains instead of endure Reddit’s stagnant state.

I’m sure if they had handled it with more honesty and been up front about the fact that they’re choosing to kill third party apps for business reasons some of the frogs who left would probably have stuck around to be boiled for a little longer, but I personally believe that it’s the ethos behind the decision that most people are responding to more than the decision itself or the way it was communicated.

The creep of enshittification just became too much to ignore at that point and the enshittified path forward became crystal clear. Reddit signaled to everyone paying attention that decisions will continue to be made based on what makes money rather than what’s in the interests of users.

Yes, my KBin experience is worse than my Reddit experience as it is today but I have confidence that my KBin (or other ActivityPub based platform I may choose to migrate to) experience will improve as time moves on while my Reddit experience would have continued to degrade. When that became undeniable to me I choose to pull the cord and start fresh now rather than wait until the rise of one met the fall of the other.

I wouldn’t have left. I use Apollo as my way to access reddit, I’ve tried the official app but it’s dreadful and when I heard Apollo was closing I was already set to protest. When I read the post from Apollo about everything that went down, well, I don’t think I want to go back.

I love learning and navigating the fediverse! Reddit had become unbearably stale for me.

The hostile response to the users and mods are what did it for me, since while I’m against reducing users choice I don’t use mobile apps to browse Reddit I’d probably stayed a bit longer. The need for companies to make money is also understandable, but when they fail to deliver good experience to users that’s when their monetary gain should be stripped away.

Kbin has been so much better than what I’ve seen of the official app. I see what I want to see, not recommendations, and, more importantly, I can see a lot more posts at once compared to new reddit and the reddit app. That’s why I don’t use Squabbles, and it’s why I used Baconreader and old reddit.

I much rather use a platform that tries to offer the best possible user experience but isn’t fully there yet than one that had a decent user experience in the past but decided to make it much worse because they can. Especially if platform A is based on free (as in freedom) software and doesn’t run on servers controlled by a single entitiy.

I would have switched earlier but there wasn’t much content on lemmy, so this was just a great opportunity to do it. Apart from that I have to say I don’t really miss much functionality after the switch (using jeroba).

I’m not sure I would have ultimately left even due to the current API drama. But the subsequent comments by their CEO caused me to not only leave but delete all my content from their site. What an arrogant self important stupid jackass.

I was a bit sad about the API changes, but I kept official app around for uploading video/image posts since those hosted on reddit started to get more views than imgur/other host website ones. So I wouldn’t have minded switching apps full time. What got me angry was Spez’s mistreatment of the Apollo dev. I am absolutely not a fan of the Apollo app, but no one should be treated that way. Plus the realization that many websites that use reddit API that I use frequently will go away as well (such as saving videos, pushshift reddit search, and spotlistr). That’s what got me initially away from reddit.

Well…

1. Are you going to ask me if I want to go from a platform with no ads (3rd party reddit) to a platform where every 3rd post is an unavoidable ad (reddit official) or a slightly more complex but similar community with no ads anywhere (fediverse)? I don’t want heinz ketchup telling me that their color is manufactured to be perfect a dozen times a day in my community. I paid a 3rd party app to remove that and I’m not going back.

2. Asking if it’s harder to learn the reddit official app than beta testing various fediverse apps is missing the point. Reddit’s app exists to extract money from you and has no reason to improve your experience by its nature. Beta fediverse apps exist to eventually polish the fediverse experience.

For me anyway, the first nail in the coffin was removing the downvote/upvote counter, second nail was old.reddit… They were on their way to being shit long ago.