I’ve been on reddit for a long, long time and i’ve seen all the changes that have happened in the past decade. I spent a lot of time on Reddit, and have seen the slow infestation of bots, karma whores, and guerilla marketing disguised as posts.
I’m genuinely excited for the fediverse - it seems like an actual improvement over reddit, and not just a clone. There’s a learning curve, but there was one when joining reddit too.
I participated in the migration to Voat, and saw how/why it failed. I’m more optimistic about the fediverse for various reasons, and I’m dedicating my time to helping this thrive.
I was a lurker on Voat, but I’m trying to be active here. I don’t like modding, but I’ve even created my own community here, which is saying a lot given how lazy I am. Hope to interact with y’all more!
And if you’re still reading this, i hope you don’t mind a shoutout to my new community, maliciouscompliance - recreated this as it was one of my favorite places to lurk on reddit!
https://lemmy.world/c/maliciouscompliance
EDIT: since a few people asked - I posted in this comment below why I think lemmy has a much better chance than voat did
Also an 11 year Redditor here haha.
I got my start browsing rage comics on iFunny and 9GAG, then began browsing Reddit around 2010/11. I finally made my account in 2012. I too watched as Reddit became overrun with bots. I watched as summer Reddit stopped ending and became the norm, people responding in comments with corrections and more information lessened, the obvious astroturfing increased, obvious propaganda took over almost all the defaults, and most importantly, they started shutting down subs that might possibly maybe make them look bad for an IPO.
They desecrated the grave of Aaron Swartz on spit on his name by removing him as a co-creator of Reddit. The cartoonishly evil decisions came one after another and I’ve had enough as well.
Voat didn’t stand a chance because the people who were migrating over were lurkers.
I genuinely believe in Lemmy because this time, it’s the mods. The people that actually keep the site running.
Fuck Reddit, fuck u/Spez, go Lemmy
I mean, didn’t help that the ones who weren’t lurkers on Voat were among the worst the internet has to offer
Welcome aboard and thank you for your service, SenatorBumCuckets 🫡