Just by keeping at it. Lots of posts don't get a lot of comments, seems like a lot of lurkers. My front page only has one post with >10 comments and the rest are at 3 or fewer. But Reddit is still in the top ten more-visited web sites in the world. So can't expect the same number of comments compared to the bigger subs there.
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
Join a bunch of communities that you may be interested in to fill up your feed with a bunch of stuff to read. That way, if you want to take a break and read stuff, you can look here rather than on Reddit. You can look for communities here that are a close match to what you had on Reddit. Over time, you can dial them in and hopefully not feel the need to go back to Reddit.
I never go back and just to read Reddit. I only go there if a web search looking for something in particular takes me there.
Using summit
I used to feel dread when I logged into reddit and saw that someone had replied to something I wrote. I no longer have an account there, and I even went for the nuclear option of overwriting all my old messages,
then deleting them in case they chose to restore them, because:
fuck spez
For me personally it helps that I'm on a dedicated instance for Danes, so that's kind of like a safe haven, or like a kiddie pool where it was easier to get to know lemmy at first.
I no longer dread when someone replies because most of the people here on lemmy aren't assholes. I think it's because there's this barrier to entry which filters out a lot of people, or maybe it's that the assholes are looking for fights to begin with and is therefore attracted to the biggest platforms?
Lemmy just isn't that good, you need other stuff too. I highly recommend finding independent niche website forums (the old school ones) for your interests and joining them. These are WAY less likely to have bots (unless political based) than Lemmy, Reddit, etc etc. They have real people, sometimes parroting bot stuff they saw elsewhere, but they are at least real and you can talk to them. And you get to know them because normally there's only like 50 active users on those websites at a time anyway. But damn do those 50 people know a lot about vaccuums, or trains, or magnet fishing or whatever the dedicated topic is for that site. It's the most unfederated you can be
independent niche website forums
This is the way.
Reddit kept being shittier and shittier, the people got dumber and dumber, and I kept getting more and more worried about being about to say what I really wanted about magas being fucking terrorists. Then they killed third party apps, and while I tried to make it work for a little while, eventually they killed the workaround, and that was the last straw.
Fediverse/kbin/lemmy has been such a constant breath of fresh air, even if that breath continues to be bad news, that I have literally no reason to go back. The queer techie and neighbor tankies and based non-Americans just make this place so much healthier and positive in a time in history when we really need people who aren't giant assholes and who are awake at all and who make a conscious decision to at least try to do the right thing.
I deleted my account and the app
Getting permabanned on my main and any secondary accounts I had helped. The app on my phone I use for Lemmy makes it look pretty much exactly like the Reddit app so the only difference for me is less people which means some communities I'd like to talk to people in just has nobody in them.
Got permbanned last year for saying tthat NeoNazis like Stonetoss aka Hans Kristian Graebner should be named and shamed. Tbh fuck that place. Reddit admins are Nazi sympathizers.
Signed up for Lemmy, participated in things I was interested in.
If you're that addicted to Reddit just stay there. I hate this "please beg me to stay" crap that goes on pretty frequently.
They perm-banned me and I kept getting pissed off when I would want to reply to something.
I just made the account, subscribed to all the equvalent groups and nothing else
For the Reddit communities that are important to me I use their RSS feeds to keep an eye on new posts though I've logged out of my account and stopped participating. All actual browsing and participation was switched entirely to Lemmy.
I miss the finance communities on reddit. But everything else I looked into on reddit I can mostly find here. I also put the effort into posting when I can't find an existing topic. You have to have a pioneer mentality here to establish your community.
Build a community about something you love! It takes little effort. :) Then when you browse Reddit occasionally, you can steal memes. In fact, do that anyway if you end up browsing and post them here!
This is good advice. Whenever you find yourself thinking "I wish there was more ____ content" here I guarantee you're not the only one thinking that. It just takes one person to have the initiative to make the community and build it up. In my experience it's surprising how quickly others will follow.
My biggest advice is don't make a community and fill it with everything right away. If you have something you want to share maybe hold onto it. Make a list, post one every few days. These grow over time. One burst of posts fades away after a day or two, but regular, spread out posts keep it in people's feed for longer.
I went from full lurker to participant since I felt like I'm not completely drowned out by others. That made it more fun, since Lemmy all feed is pretty small relatively speaking and lurking gets boring if you're expecting an endless feed of random junk. Plus, since it's small, you can also feel like you're contributing to the Lemmy community, since without your comments and posts, it won't exist.
Although get to the bottom of the all feed and things get wild.
I went on a 10 day backpacking trip with no reception. I deleted my reddit apps and bookmarks before I went. So got over the withdrawals during the trip, and there was just enough friction to reinstall when I got back that I never bothered.
I was also very mad about them killing the API for 3rd party mod tools and the resulting slip into AI slop and misogynist claptrap on the sub I helped mod. It's an empty Internet wasteland now; just bots and MAGA incels yelling at each other.
For me, it's the fact that while I dont always see eye to eye with the people here the fact is every account is almost certainly an actual person and not a bot. I want to hear other's experiences and perspectives and Reddit will not provide that.
I also like the fact that there is an end to the content here. It's not endless scrolling.
The API charade was more than enough to push me over. At that point, I was banned multiple times because that platform had become a cesspool of its own toxicity. You just couldn't escape it for long, no matter where you posted. When you got people dogpiling you just for complaining about work in a subreddit where it is completely warranted and acceptable to do it in, then that's a problem.
Look at the quality of the posts.
When I open Reddit it's just the most vacuous drivel. It's not enjoyable or entertaining at all. There is no depth or substance.
Delete all your Reddit bookmarks and favorites and find a lemmy community to launch yourself into. I picked gaming and a few news ones and so far, it's fine.. Even moreso that I found the old.lemmy.zip page and it's comfortable to me as I was dedicated to old.reddit and RES.
Everybody kinda already said the obvious answers, but I'll pop in to reiterate that my main reason was killing the API (because fuuuuuuck their shitty trash app filled with ads- or any and every app that has ads at all). I got here (Lemmy and piefed and mastodon)as part of the mass exodus that switched when the ax dropped on that.
I had wanted to before that, but addictions are addictions. But killing the app I actually liked using (combined with the dev making a Lemmy version that was extremely similar), I just kinda rode the wave to the Fediverse.
So like others, I still poke in when a search result points there, but I avoid it in general. Getting rid of the app will definitely help because it gets rid of the 1-tap access to shit.
To be honest: I haven't done a complete switch. I still lurk on reddit from time to time.
What I have done however is switched to only actively engage with Lemmy, which imo is the more important part. I sadly don't have much original content to offer, but I try to engage in some comments (like just now)
The censorship on reddit sickened me. I felt like I was being brainwashed scrolling through the feed. One day I just couldn't tolerate it any longer and like that I was free
New accounts on reddit are heavily restricted making it impossible to share things so I left. Found Lemmy by accident. Instantly way better community and low barrier to contribute has me hereforawhile.
Itβs been 2 years on Lemmy for me. I was on Reddit for 12 years prior.
I never looked back. I didnβt have a hard time at all really. Comment sections are so nice here usually. I only spend maybe 30 mins on here daily and never run out of content. But Iβm a reader. I read articles and comments fully so I only get through a dozen posts or so.
What are you having a hard time with?
Subscribe to communities and/or utilize the 'random' search to find communities (be warned that nsfw stuff up though if your setting isnt filtered). Sort by new sometimes. Lemmy is more user-directed whereas reddit is company-directed. No more force-feeding you sponsored content - you can search out and eat what you like!
Got kicked off Reddit for reporting transphobic harassment, so the decision was easy.