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59, been on Mastodon for years, saw the occasional mention of Lemmy and came over for a look some time ago to lemmy.world, then to the instance I'm on now. Also have a piefed alter and the original .world alter.
Spend more time here than on Mastodon these days, I find the shitposting here is if a higher equality.
Had used reddit in the way distant past but it annoyed me the usenet structure was being centralised and replicated for $ off the back of "slaves" and left way back.
Early 30s. API debacle.
Like 2-3 years old (as of 2026)
I was unhappy with Reddit's userbase(before i cared about company track records), and i randomly stumbled across lemmy.(ion remember how)
The small size makes finding communities hard but its workable.
In my 70s. In response to the U.S. aggression, I switched to Lemmy.ca, a Canadian owned media. Not many other Canadian owned social media sites out there.
This is one of the questions we asked on our census this year. We are still working on cleaning the data, and we may exclude additional responses if we identify more duplicates / errors, but here is a preview of those results:
A lot of people are way older than I thought. Interesting. Thank you!
Impressive
Mid 30s. Got here the same way as everyone else - evacuated from reddit.
Late 20's
I used reddit app so the api fiasco, while it bothered me on a fundamental level, did not directly affect me.
Then I read some article about the potential for reddit to create paid subreddits or something?
I don't remember exactly why paywalled subreddits bothered me so much, but it was enough for me to decide to leave.
Late 60s. Came here on the heels of the death of Apollo and the Reddit API fiasco.
I am 41. I found out about Lemmy because of Reddit's API bullshit, and ended up staying here ever since the actual API shutdown that killed all the 3rd party apps which were the only usable way to browse the site on mobile. Was already getting sick of the place, since it was becoming more and more obvious that the admin staff had a nazi problem, and probably would have come sooner if I was aware of it 4 or 5 years ago. Or maybe I would have only seen Lemmy.ML and got turned off by the tankies. IDK...
I'm 65 and I hate the generation labels. I genuinely think they were originally pushed as another propaganda mechanism to create further artificial divisions between people. There is no doubt that people of significantly different ages are often different in various ways, but the over simplicity of the named generations just provides another convenient way to stereotype people instead of understanding them as individuals.
I think I joined reddit in 2008. I've been involved in social media since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems in the late 70's. (And I ran one of my own in the mid-80's.) I had an email address on Bitnet in 1983 and was on Usenet in its early days. reddit was an interesting and open place for a while there and I enjoyed the variety, but most of it was becoming too cynical and tribal for me by the early 20's. I discovered Lemmy a couple years before reddit's API debacle, but that is what convinced me to drop reddit and focus on the Fediverse.
I like the decentralized model of the Fediverse. I think the idea that different servers can have different rules is healthy. I stay away from parts of it, but I have found plenty of communities that are friendly and interesting to me. After hanging out on several different servers, I joined Fedican and have been happy here. It's a nice place to call my home online.
Gen X but I came to use (and host) lemmy as an act of rebellion against corporate controlled internet
same
24 (approximately)
Doesn't take much knowledge to find Lemmy, I like a topic-based forum, not some influencer-follower twitter like shit... I don't like "following" "people"... I want to talk about stuff not people... was on Reddit... and just have a burning hatered for authoritiarians and bullshit like: "AUTOMODERATOR: OPPSIES YOUR KARMA ISN'T ENOUGH.." or "YOUR POST HAVE BEEN AUTOMATICALLY REMOVED"... and a desire for freedom.
Techical Knowledge? Idek how to do coding lmao...
Never knew what internet was like in the "Good Ol' Days" or whatever y'all are talking about, my first glance at the internet was in 2010
Early 50's. Came here to step out of the tentacles of billionaire-led corporations and avoid an enshitified online world of bots and data harvesting. Small learning curve to gain access but will worth it.
Late 20s, moved to lemmy during the Reddit API scandal like a lot of others, so it's a deliberate anti-corporate choice. I've always been techy (I worked as a software developer at the time I made the switch) and I've always hated the corporate social media platforms. Reddit was the only social media that I ever used extensively and the API fiasco was the straw that broke the camel's back. This may or may not be true for others who switched around the same time but it coincided with my political views becoming more radical; I used to consider myself a social democrat but by the time I fled Reddit I fully considered myself socialist and was on my way to becoming an anarchist.
Late 40s, reason was I don’t like when social media agrees to work with fascists, so I looked for an alternative and was happy to find this place where it feels a lot more like earlier days internet.
Not yet 30, and I got banned from reddit after 13 years for saying nazis deserve to be dead. Hit too close to home for the admins with that one, evidently. I have alts that they can't find, but I mainly hang here now.
Ayo fuck nazis
Fuck pedos
Fuck fanatics of any kind
Fuck the zios
Fuck the billionares
And fuck my girlfriend, lovingly (if I had one)
FREEDOM, BITCHES 🦅🦅🦅🦅
40s. Saw Lemmy mentioned on Reddit around the time of the API debacle. It became clear to me that reddit would not be usable in the long run, as it is unusable without 3rd party clients.
Upon checking Lemmy out, it reminded me of the kind of internet I hadn't seen in ages, so I stayed.
I'm 22 and I came to Lemmy after my Reddit account got permanently banned/suspended for no reason
how old are you
Nearing my 60s.
and how did you come to be on Lemmy?
Left Reddit because of their bullshit policy changes. Knew what the Fediverse was, tried Lemmy (then moved to Piefed) and decided I may as well stay for a little while ;)
less than 20, reddit pissed me off by killing the API so i could no longer use Infinity for Reddit.
41, came to Lemmy during the API thing.
I think I’m pretty rare on Lemmy: I use Windows on my PC (although I’ve dabbled in Linux) and I don’t work in a tech field at all.
I'm 30. Came here after Reddit perma-banned me and this was recommended as an alternative. Found an app that basically makes it look like Reddit so it was easy to transfer over.
Interesting that it seems like most people here are around 30 or are 50+.
I'm in my 40's. Reddit being an increasingly bigger piece of shit led me here. Mostly the api changes but also they literally banned me for something that isn't even against rules, I think a bot banned me actually. I appealed it and they unbanned me but I was already pissed, as they were forcing everyone into a worse experience and also idly watching Nazis slither around, increasing in number every day. But if you said mean words as a leftist you would get banned-- I also got temp bans for things like that.
I think I saw reddit posts about Lemmy, I forget, but I was actively thinking of leaving already, however I found it.
Mid 30s, 3rd party Reddit app migration ~3y ago
Stuck around because it reminded me of a lot of the good parts of Reddit that increasingly seem to be gone from the actual site. Though not that I'd really know because I probably only go to Reddit once every few months now via a search for something, and every time I do, it seems even worse than the last time.
I'm just hoping the growth continues such that the less busy communities start to pick up a bit, we're getting close to the point where there's a community to cover most interests I've thought looked for, but many of them are ghost towns. But we're making progress, month on month it does feel like there are more people knocking around
Turned 20 last week. I found lemmy through reddit about 2 years ago.
Backstory :
My parents had flat refused home internet until 2020 when online classes made it a requirement.
Since I am 14, at home, and just got introduced to the wide world of web, I looked up tutorials on becoming a hacker like in the movies and got into linux.
General social media was still too overwhelming for me but I did like reddit for the linux content. I later saw the "about" page of r/unixsocks explaining they are on c/unixsocks now.
I checked lemmy and community was better here, also reddit had and alt-right problem so I decided to migrate.
Lemmy is the spirit of the UBB board continued, many of us are the remnants of the old web, just following the endless chain to whatever the next big exodus will be, seeing how many come with us, and the names that fade with each hop.
I have treated Lemmy differently. I was pseudo anonymous on Reddit. I treat Lemmy the same way I treat a darkweb overlay network. (no this isn't my first account)
This has more to do with the times than community trust, but I've been an anon for a while before too, it's nothing new.
39, left reddit like most here because of the API bullshit.
Now its looking like I'm going to have to leave everything because of the crap my state is trying to pull with device level age verification... Yeah... No. I'll just draw memes for myself at that point lol
Which instance and time of day you ask this is going to give different results I suspect. I'm a 500 year old antarctican. I came here after stopping on mastodon for a bit after leaving reddit.
40-plus, I wanted a non-American alternative to reddit.
Early 40s.
The API thing almost did it for me. The only reason it didn't is because Reddit kept working through RedReader (still does). It was the bot banning that finally did it for me. Repeated bans and new accounts because some bot autobanned me for things I really don't think I should have been banned for. Started noticing the bot banning was targeting comments that mentioned the 2nd amendment. That's when I noped out. I had already been subbed to /r/RedditAlternatives for a while and Lemmy seemed to be what most people were posting about, so that's what I went with.
Also found out that subs could autoban you for posting in other subs they don't like. So you'd comment in a sub and immediately get an automated message from another sub saying you're permanently banned from their sub for posting in that sub.
I don't need that shit. I don't need that shit even if I was getting paid for it. And I wasn't. Bye, Felicia!!!
Mid 30s. Noticed that a lot of posts reaching my country's front page started spreading right wing talking points. This was a concerning development, because previously my impression of Reddit was that it leaned left. Made me wonder, whether it was hijacked for Propaganda reasons.
"We don't have enough personal data points from fediverse users to track consumer data points"
"...I know. I'll just ask them to give me their personal info. Trust me, this always works."
"No way. They care about their anonymity, it's the reason a lot of them are there."
40s. Pretty much the same as a lot of folks, grew tired of the Reddit bot-verse as well as kept getting banned for encouraging Shermination and posting pictures of Mussolini’s hanging corpse. Not incredibly tech savvy, but yeah, closing in on 30yrs of being on the internet. I still remember the first time I ever logged on. It was at a friend’s house, he went into a chatroom, someone sent us incest themed porn and asked if we want to roleplay a dirty Peter Pan and Wendy chat. Welcome to the internet!
In my 40's. Got permabanned for stating pedophiles should be killed.
