Before the whole Reddit migration I was passively aware of the Fediverse, I thought I somewhat grasped the concept, and had created a Mastodon account, but never really used it.
But once the migration started, I decided to try out Kbin, and really liked it, and even started to use Mastodon more often.
I hadn’t even heard of it!
This was me. I knew PeerTube as some kind of YouTube clone with BitTorrent protocol. That’s all💀
Same. Googled “Reddit alternatives” on the first day of the blackout and just signed up to 4 or 5 to try. Lemmy and Kbin were two.
Pretty similar to you: Had heard about Mastodon when Twitter started imploding and made an account over there. But didn’t really get it and I never really used Twitter anyways so I wasn’t too interested in figuring it out.
Then when the APIpocalylse kicked off I came and checked out Lemmy and learned more about the Fediverse. When I found the Memmy app and more people started coming here it really felt like this was taking off, and I’m excited to see that momentum continuing. I haven’t opened Reddit since Apollo died, and this is now filling that void in my online diet.
Same here for me, when Apollo declared it would stop support I completely dropped reddit and started on Lemmy. Initially the web app for Lemmy was a bit rough for me to use but then I found Memmy and have been here since!
This is my trajectory too only I was using RIF and I ended up on kbin.social.
To be honest, I thought it was stupid. I misunderstood how it works and I thought it was overcomplicating the idea of decentralised instances
Ah, that’s fair. Do you think you’ve changed your mind on it, or do you believe that it’s sort of a con of these platforms?
I’ve changed my mind, but I do think that the concept is somewhat difficult to grasp
People seem to understand when you think about it like email.
I had gotten so ‘meh’ with Twitter that by the time Mastodon came around, I just wasn’t interested and would rather just quit Twitter altogether.
Then, a couple weeks ago some buddies on a Discord were talking about Lemmy, so I decided to look into it. And so here I am.
Knew nothing, still don’t know a lot and had a hell of a time signing up but it seems to be getting better and growing. I’m trying to be more active to help out with growth but I’m not that guy.
I joined Mastodon a couple of times in 2018 but could never make it stick. Coincidentally rejoined last year just before the Twitter implosion, and maybe it was all the new people I was able to start using it in a way that made sense to me and rather enjoyed it, despite not using Twitter.
As soon as the writing was on the wall about the API changes, I created an account on Lemmy and here. That was end of May and the big migration happened end of June.
So tl;dr, I’ve been aware of it since 2018, but didn’t actually start using it until end of 2022.
Doubleposted fyi.
Personally I was vaguely aware of Mastodon when it first started being talked about as a Twitter competitor. But I didn’t really “get it”, I thought it was Twitter with added email functionality or something.
Wasn’t until spez shattered reddits remaining anti-troll defenses that I started actually doing some research, and finding out Mastodon actually does not have email functionality. Something completely different from that, actually.
I knew and used Mastodon on occasion but, definitely appreciate it more now
Heard about Diaspora around 2010s. Knew Mastodon probably before 2022 (when there were only two Polish instances, 101010.pl and a left-wing one, remade later into more mainstream pol.social), @Vivaldi brought me here as they integrated Mastodon with their web browser. However, @74 is actually my first fedi account. Learnt about /kbin and made an account there in 2023, when it consisted only of 2 Polish servers, karab.in (flagship) and another one. My account here, on kbin.social exists since 8 of May 2023.
I was on Mastodon because Musk is an absolute shit head. Didn’t miss it one bit and it actually is a lot nicer. Same seems to be true here.
First thought it sounded like a scam because people were talking about it the same way people talked about crypto. Looked into it enough after the reddit api shenanigans that I wanted to make a lemmy account and I’m still learning new things about it.
It’s like reddit, but on the blockchain! /s
I had used mastodon, akkoma and peertube before learning about Lenny when the Reddit stuff happened. I have never had an account on twitter and rarely used my Reddit account.
I had a Mastodon account but didn’t really understand how it all worked, I thought it was only for Twitter like applications. I really like the concepts of self hosting stuff so when the Reddit strike happened and I found out what Lemmy was, I decided to try it out and have been learning along the way.
For the last year or so I’ve been using a private PeerTube instance I run to host videos my kids like to make and share with their friends/family. It isn’t federated for privacy reasons.
Zero! Zero familiarity! When I heard about Lemmy during the Great Reddit Migration of 2023 I was like “What a stupid name. I should code my own Reddit and get rich. The time is now!”. But then I realized I don’t want to code Reddit after writing code for 6-10 hours a day at work, and I checked Lemmy out. Then I learned about the Fediverse. Then I was highly impressed and gave many oohs and aaahs. Now I’m off Reddit completely (except for CenturyClub from my desktop like twice a week for 10 minutes) and this is my home. Yay!
