this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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Honestly, reddit drove me away. I got tired of being hounded by engagement bots asking inane questions, and in the wake of reddit going public, the comment police regularly were nitpicking my comments, reading into them intolerance that simply wasn't there. I was just sick of it all. Reddit has a much bigger userbase, but lemmy is more friendly. There are occasions where it would be nice to post something niche and have a robust discussion, which requires a site with more mass appeal, but I'm not interested in all the drawbacks of dealing with reddit.
That is what happened to me.. the bots banned me within a minute for a metaphorically based - though salty - post. 14 years.
Thing is, I noticed a change in the algorithm not too long after the IPO since my homepage started in with more rage-bait subs and many were ones I'd not visited or even heard of. It was subtle but also kinda disheartening. I decided to manually delete all of what I could and as I was going through the posts I noticed that the art subs I used to go to had all but disappeared on my home page.
I used to go to photoshopbattles all the time and as I was scrolling my home pages, it was nowhere to be seen. Nor was AppleHelp, VintageApple or MacPro..
It's a bummer because reddit used to be really cool. It's like when you discover a cool little cafe or something that you love going to. Eventually more and more people discover it, and it becomes a bit more crowded, but you still go. Then it gets written up in some magazine or something, and the crowd becomes nuclear. It becomes a tourist trap flogging merchandise, and they turn it into a chain, with the food semi-preprepared for mass consumption. The experience sucks and what was a special spot is ruined.
It will never be exactly the same, but I feel lucky to have found something that captures at least part of the feeling of what Reddit used to be like. Thereβs the potential for it to grow into something just as cool in its own way, or maybe even better. And for now, it scratches that culture and discussion itch well enough that I donβt feel the need to wade back in to Reddit at all except for searching for specific answers to niche questions.
This is it exactly.
And I kind of like that there are no total upvote/downvote stats tied to our accounts.
Prevents karma farming so it disinclines the behavior to rage-bait or post controversial items for attention.
(Remember u/unidan? Guy karma farmed hugely and eventually got rumbled creating some brouhaha over the difference between crows and jackdaws. Absolute stupidity that got the better of him..)
The content is more the focus here..
Reddit hasn't really been good since the alogorith change that made the front-page stagnate for a day. I got the most out of it when browsing the frontpage was completely different 6 hours later. Once they made it so that everyone who checked reddit that day would get the same experience, the spirit of the site died.
I've noticed that the lemmy front page has a much greater turnover than the reddit front page, which is nice.
The transparent and non user-tailored algorithms, may be Lemmy's strongest asset.
The weird thing is apparently, I wasn't allowed to delete my account last night. I thought I did, but I went back not too long ago and on a lark, signed in again. Account's empty of all my unarchived posts - since I deleted it all, but I still have access. Think I'm going to see if the PM's work and just start hoovering interesting articles and items from there. WTF, it's not like I didn't bring content to the site.. Gonna take the best of it back and bring it here. Fuck it.