Basically what I mean is, did you also come here from reddit?
I came here after I got my Reddit account banned permanently. And the thing is, I don’t exactly know why I got banned. Nor what I did wrong. I always tried to follow the rules, post and comment appropriately and nicely, but on New Year’s Day last week, I got a message simply saying "Your account have been permanently banned for violating the rules.
But when I replied asking what rule or rules I unknowingly broke, they just messaged me back saying “you got banned because you violated the community guidelines”. So now I’m here.
What about you? Are you also a Reddit Refugee?
I voluntarily quit Reddit when the API fuckery happened. Deleted all of my posts, comments, etc. after 16 years, and millions of useless points. I don’t and never will give a fuck. Also a refugee from Digg before that, Fark, /. etc. I’m pretty happy with the fediverse so far, and will likely stand up my own server(s) in the next year or so.
Oh, you want a story? I’ll give you a story.
I was banned for using a MVNO while on holidays. A MVNO (mobile virtual network operator - aka a phone company) often has changing IP endpoints.
I was in Japan (using Rakuten) which has dynamic endpoints in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore. To the reddit bots, that seems like someone stealing or spoofing your account.
Reddit flagged my account and forced password change to confirm identity “for my safety”. I complied. They then silently shadow banned my account after I did so. Like, immediately.
I followed the appeals process (such as it is - basically howling at the moon). I provided logs, GPS co-ords and even details of my flights / boarding passes.
Auto mod basically replied “lol, get fucked”. (Its an auto mod, BTW. Their entire appeal process.Very easy tell).
OK then.
I then used their takeout service to at least grab my old posts, which have some niche technical know how that is worth preserving.
In the course of that, I notice reddit has set up their system in such a way that unknowingly (?) breeches GDPR rules and privacy laws.
Well, well, well…
At this point, I’m stunned at what a cluster fuck reddit really is. Like…wtf?
I then emailed them directly and basically said “listen.I know the laws that govern this. You have 48hrs to email me XYZ or I escalate”
A few days later, Reddit legal emails me saying “hi…we’re not sure what your complaint is. Please clarify”.
So I do - with forensic level detail. Politely. Professionally.
No response.
I send a follow up email a week later saying “look, one way or another this issue needs to be resolved and my complaint answered. I’ll give you 3 days. If its still radio silence, I escalate”.
I fly home yesterday (a full 7 days after the fact). Still radio silence.
Perfect! Today I launch GDPR and OIAC complaint, with full evidence trail, screenshots, logs - the whole works. Takes me 5 minutes.
Will that get me unbanned? Don’t know, don’t care.
Will it cost reddit time and money? Very likely yes.
For those not in the know, breech of GDPR and OIAC laws carry pretty significant penalties for the service provider (to the tune of several million pounds)…and reddit is registered in a EU country. Oops.
The moral of the story (if there is one) is this:
Reddit is rented land. Lemmy is too…but at least with Lemmy, if you really wanted to, you could set up your own instance, with n=1 users and turn off new sign ups, effectively creating a sovereign, unbannable island, where you actually own what you post.
I suppose I should thank Reddit, really. This is the second account in as many years they killed like this, for this very reason.
I was going to set up my own homelab anyway: this just pushed me to do it faster and create a telecoms stack to replace cloud based social media services.
What gals me the most is I spent a fair bit of effort rebuilding my fake internet points over the course of 3 months, to satisfy their “yo, is this a human?” algo…all the while watching bots and stolen accounts spam and flourish.
To add insult to injury: today I received a message from one of the (many many) bots on Reddit offering me a chance to purchase a particular SaaS (?). So apparently I’m still good to be spammed, but other wise I can FOAD?
Fuck you, Reddit.
You owe them nothing - not your knowledge, time or efforts. Let it enshittify.
I think the majority of Lemmy users are Reddit refugees, not because they got banned, but because of the Reddit API changes that forced 99% of the third party apps to shut down.
+1 RIP Apollo
Long live Voyager!
Practically a decade of Riddit is Fun…
What is API?
Like ELI5 please
It’s a way for apps to interact with reddit. Reddit shut down the API for third party clients so that you’re forced to use their crappy official app instead of much nicer alternatives.
I used a different app to access Reddit and hence couldn’t use it anymore. The official app was a huge downgrade to what I was using before and full of ads. So I - like many others - just left Reddit for good.
to be precise: not exactly shut down, but made it really expensive
That’s like saying you can hack SSH/HTTPS just by calculating out the prime number, it just takes really long time (billion years).
the official app is more data mining, and intrusive too. thats probably one of the reason why reddit doesnt want it, because they cant sell your info to GOOGLE, or OPENAI.
Interface third party software uses to connect
If I have valuable info and I want to share it in a controlled way, I can use an API. If i am an airline, I could spit out a feed that tells you a list of flights and how delayed they are. If im Reddit, I can share posts, comments, etc.
Anyone (in the case of a free API) can take the data the API spits out and make their own app with it. But if you charge for API access, then someone would have to pay to make an app with your information.
The API change wasn’t it, it’s when it became clear to me they were selling all my data to Google. I frequented mental health subs, and I started getting Google ads for scams TARGETING people with mental health issues. Just sick.
the recent surges of refugees are from the multi-wave purges last year.
Woah there boi, we prefer the name “Reddit Expats”, we no simple refugees or immigrants
Unless this is your job and you’re planning to go back to reddit, we’re not expats.
Or is this a dog whistle?
not because they got banned
Nah, that’s always been a sizable chunk. Fediverse will always have the worst of the worst, because it’s the easiest to evade bans. And yet there’s still multiple people who constantly get accounts banned for ban evasion.
Naw the worst go to bsky or threads, that’s where the evil shit is acceptable.
deleted by creator
Since the API exodus, yes.
I made a very conscious choice to leave reddit at that time, due to that particular bullshit, and I don’t regret it.
Doesn’t mean I don’t miss reddit though, because I do. Reddit has a lot more traffic which obviously means a lot more content in the sort of niche communities I really love.
But I made the right choice. I don’t want to be part of that any longer. And the more of us make this choice, the better things will be for us all.
Pretty much the exact same for me
there are niche subs i miss, like drama of ytuber i used to follow(obscure ytubers, not the current grifters).
I still follow my niche interests via the lurk-only app Stealth. It allows you to kinda follow subreddits you want like multireddits you could create with RES but you can’t login so you can’t post. Feels like an okay-ish third party reddit app.
Redreader does that too! It’s amazing.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
The maintainer of RR had to basically shame reddit into not killing RR access (because RR is one of the only apps that blind folks can use to access Reddit) and they still keep trying to cripple it.
Good to know that app is still being worked on. I used it in the past until around 2024 but stopped because it haven’t had any update.
Good to see there’s a couple from 2023 in 2025 :p
I left during the api bullshit, fuck spez
… Every single person on Lemmy is a Reddit refugee. You’re not going to find a single person here who has not used Reddit before.
Yeah, same here
Fuck spez.
I agree with you on this
Me too!
The vast majority of folk here are ex Reddit users. I predate the great Reddit exodus, but even so, I came to lemmy after leaving Reddit, because I wanted something to scratch that itch.
reddit forced alot of people off the site, after the election to change the narrative and introduce more astroturfing, plus the use of AI also drastically increased on reddit as well.
Yes, a lot of us left during the API exodus. Reddit was already going downhill anyway with all the bot spam and shills, that’s probably even worse there nowadays.
Once in a while I do bring up old.reddit to read through some communities that haven’t caught on here (yet), or maybe something that comes up in a google search, but that hasn’t been enough to make me want to log back in there let alone post/comment on anything.
its funny now its AI spamming ,botting now.
I left with the disabling of API.
Today, I went back in to my account to delete every single comment I have ever made, one by one, then deleted the entire account. Should have done it ages ago, but better now than never.
I was reading about bans and stuff and all sorts that I didn’t care to understand, so instead of using a third party apps to change/delete/etc my comments, I did it manually. It felt pretty satisfying.
My last “fuck you, r/jailbait Spez”. I’m not letting them use my comments or account for anything. Hopefully, I’ve done it right.
They see that happening and just restore all of the deleted comments anyway.
Damn… Thought I had it right. 😔
You’ve gotta replace the comments so that the new comment is what’s backed up. When it’s restored by Reddit it’ll be the Gibberish you left behind in your edit.
Take note, those who haven’t deleted their Reddit accounts yet. Don’t do what I did - do this instead!
I would probably even say: Who wasnt?
You either came from Twitter, Reddit or some other major social media as a primary user.
I don’t believe someone just was old enough to join the internet world and decided to just join lemmy/fediverse at first sight.They killed 3rd party apps, I didn’t wanna use their app, so I switched to something else and that something else happened to be Lemmy.
Exactly the same for me. As soon as RIF was done, I was done.
I am here from reddit but I wouldn’t call myself a refugee. More like an immigrant. I wasn’t banned. I just tried this, liked it better, and since I disagreed with the API changes I settled here. I still browse reddit when I can’t find specific stuff on Lemmy, and very, very occasionally (like once or twice a year) I post there in subs that aren’t as developed here.
This but I would die before posting on reddit, you can check my history there and confirm I speak the truth. Spez can tongue my anus.
Same here.
My first account was banned for (IMO bogus reasons)
My now second but primary account is still active sometimes but I only lurk 99% of the time and almost never vote
I only use Lemmy as of now primarily.
I think the better question is to ask who isn’t a Reddit refugee. As in, who here never had a Reddit account and just showed up on Lemmy one day?
They killed 3rd party apps. I left when my app stopped working and lemmy conveniently worked with some of the same clients that reddit was breaking.
