How many of you started using this site after being banned or shadowbanned from reddit
4d 19h ago by lemmy.zip/u/Jangofango in asklemmy@lemmy.ml
Genuinely curious
When they closed down the API for third party apps I packed my things, I thought reddit would be different, but to me, at that moment they proved they were not different.
Lemmy is not perfect and the whole dev team has some pretty insane views. But you know, it's FOSS, so it's not about the devs as much. Perfect is the enemy of great, and Lemmy is a healthier choice then Reddit imo.
Yup, the death of 3rd Party Aps did it for me too. It made me sad because I had to leave behind a lot of the niche subreddits I enjoyed, but I could see the writing on the wall.
Neither, but I'm fed up with Reddit regardless. Open Source and self hosted is something I prefer.
And if everybody praises the alternatives, but nobody is using it, we'll never get shit done.
I was never banned; I deleted my account as I was frustrated with the increasing surveillance. Someone had mentioned Lemmy in one of the degoogling or privacy subs and I decided to check it out. It reminded me a lot of how the internet used to be before it was filled with bots, so I stuck around.
This was it for me too
I left Reddit when they threatened to remove 3rd party apps and started closing down sub-reddits that weren't advertiser friendly.
I came here because I didn’t like the censorship (of others, not me) on Reddit. I stayed because I love the lack of advertising.
Everyone on here seems chill and people on reddit often bait you to try to get you banned or poison the well in discussions , it's just a shit site that's tonedeaf man
I'll jump back over to Reddit on occasion if I need to look something up. The adverts are super jarring.
You can use an extension like Libredirect to redirect you to a redlib instance. Minimal format frontend for reddit, no ads. Here is a list of instances.
On Android mobile, you can install the Libredirect extension on certain Firefox versions like IronFox. There's also apps like Stealth.
The only reason Lemmy was started in the first place is because Reddit banned communists and their communities. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Lemmy
Why are new lemmy users thinking this is a refuge for the reddit banned? To my knowledge my account is still usable, but I just don't want to log in since the API cash grab. What bullshit is reddit doing these days?
- banning people just for upvoting comments they don't like, you don't even have to post to be censored and banned now
- half the site is bots or spam networks farming karma (every post on askreddit is a karma farm)
- toxicity has grown. Everyone is frothing at the mouth for an argument
yeah it's pretty wild how quickly everything has devolved there.
I left because they got rid of 3rd party apps, was never banned.
For anyone who still wants to access Reddit just to browse favorite (niche) subs which won't ever get traction here, some third-party apps still work.
My favorite is cygnusx's Slide for Reddit fork (they picked it up after it was abandoned). You can use it logger in or anonymously - without an account logged in:
https://github.com/cygnusx-1-org/Slide
^ you can see my Slide app with the frontpage showing regular subs, and it doesn't use the dumb new reddit algorithm which shows you posts from like a week ago.
The other option is Morphe who patch the official Reddit app. It will require an account but you can change a heap of things, block everything you dislike too. The patching app does YouTube and YouTube Music or whatever they call it, but it also patches Reddit:
^ here's an example of some of the things you can change in a Morphe patched Reddit's settings
Also sorry for the pictures, I wrote and uploaded this while steaming milk for my coffee!
I had 4 accounts and they banned all of them for inciting violence. I said Donald Trump is a pedophile and deserves to be in prison.
They don't like anti trump people.
Same here. Calling out the pedophile in chief is evidentially a big no no on Reddit.
I've never been banned from reddit (that I know of).
I left reddit three years ago next month duringsthe API drama. Since then the only time I've been to reddit (not logged in) is when it comes up in a search result.
I used Reddit for years as a reader without ever posting or commenting. When alternative front ends were ditched, I switched to Lemmy which I really like. Was never banned.
The ones with their cake day around may and a bit later in 2023 are most likely here because of the API changes. After that its mostly alt accounts on a new instance, privacy reasons and bans
That's me!
banned from reddit for "threatening to kill reddit staff". the post: pedophiles should be executed.
it's very telling.
Based post
I use this site because the community is genuinely better and reminds of me reddit from the early days. Reddit bans are easy to get around
Yes reddit bans are easy to get around but ugh the karma maxxing just to enter old communities you where in
not if you want to access it from the same device, I have heard resetting a phone and requesting a new ip works, not sure if you can restore from backup, i did restore a new phone from backup and evaded a ban for months before appealing a comment removal got me caught for evasion and banned
A decent sized portion. This has been discussed many times and often mentioned in the political communities in the comments about reddit censorship.
Based , how do you deal with finding all the niches communities that are on reddit you used to use or asking questions on communities that only exist on reddit for your hobbies. I'm kinda freaking out about that
Yeah so I've also seen a lot of people talk about this.
Many of us miss our niche communities. Most of the subs I subscribed to were niche or medium level.
there just aren't enough people on Lemmy for a ton of niche communities to stay active.
But I'm also okay with rarely-active niche communities.
One of my favorite reddit subs was "I'll be your guide". Only a handful of posts a year but good stuff. Basically videos or guides that were funny or absurd. I recall posting a video that was a legitimate guide on how to poop in the woods.
Yeah advice and help hobby/general communities are incredibly useful and so I have some thoughts about those.
When I first started using reddit I went to r/photography and asked some questions about an old film camera I had just got and was told I couldn't ask thoe questions there and had to go to the film camera sub. Which I found a little annoying. R/photography (over the 13 years I subscribed to it) mostly became places for only fans photographers to post naked women. Call it art. To the point that was a large portion of photographs posted.
But I couldn't ask about film. And novice and amateur photographs would just get downvoted with little to no comments.
I recall when I posted on r/sewing about a problem I was having with sewing vinyl, I Was told I needed to use the fabric/textiles sub. (Or something like that). You could only share things you made. Not ask for help. I thought that was so weird. (Also the textile sub was basically inactive so I got no help)
I think it's a situation that further division of communities into designated "advice/help" oriented subs/communities is only needed when there are a lot of people asking questions all the time and other content isn't getting seen. If that isn't happening, we don't need to separate people posting their projects and people asking for help.
I recently posted on a PC community here about needing some help with using streaming software but wasn't sure where to ask. People on that community helped me. I didn't need a dedicated community for that question. There is no such community on Lemmy. Probably because it's not needed.
That wouldn't have been acceptable on reddit and I certainly would have gotten told "don't post questions here, you need to use the sub for specific streaming services".
There is an Enshitification that happens when platforms become too big. Too popular. They will always then be used to market and manipulate . And it just spirals down. No solution.
There are tradeoffs with using smaller platforms. We get less spam here. Less bots. Less sock puppets (but these do exist here too). When you comment and get replies it's much more likely it's a real person and not a bot like reddit.
The conversations go slower. By that I mean if I see a post that's a day old and make a comment. Other people see it. I get replies. Unlike reddit. 1 day is old news. No one is looking at 1 day old posts on reddit.
I quite like this slower pace and feel like I'm having more genuine interactions instead of just lurking or making a comment no one is ever going to read. Which encourages me to be more active. And I'm sure other people feel similar.
This is getting long so I'll let you reply before I keep rambling forever.
Can you suggest some alternatives to reddit for writing or tech questions, like hobby places to go too
Facebook groups.
They got 10 groups for every topic. I use a lot for hobbies and games.
Some better than others.
Are they better than reddit ?
About the same for a lot of things though I think the game ones have been better. But I only use FB groups for two games. Both diverse players and non competitive games. No man's sky and animal crossing.
But generally people are friendly. And the communities are pretty active. Unless it's an old game or something not relevant anymore.
I use FB groups for stained glass hobby and 3d printing and had pretty good luck with both. Except I joined a women's 3d printing group and had some b.s drama and I left. But other 3d groups have been fine. Usually people asking for help.
*The women's group seemed like a rare occurrence. Basically they said my posts looked like I was promoting myself because they looked polished. I said. Yeah I have photography as a hobby. And a long lifetime of art hobbies so yeah my stuff is going to present well. But I'm not selling anything. I don't have a patreon. Etsy. All of my models I make free and accessible to anyone. I Just like my stuff to look nice because I know how to make it look nice. Not going to downgrade it because you think it's flashy or makes newbies feel bad. I am happy to give pointers on photographing models or the software I use or anything else. I'm not here to brag but just share with other people who I think will appreciate what I have.
I really tried to work with them. So they changed the rules banning posting completed projects or models. And told me it was cause of me. And said in their post about the change that an "unamed community member" was the cause.
I didn't even see the post. But the mod sent it to me. Just to make sure I knew I was the trouble maker.*
Idk who those awful women mods were. I got nothing nice to say. I answered troubleshooting questions all the time and helped people. Even made short videos showing people how to fix things.
I just instead help people in other 3d groups now. A lot of people join more than one anyway.
That's the tea on them. Don't join the women's and girls 3d printing FB group.
Anyway.
It's gonna be like reddit subs where it depends a lot on the mods. And your personal experience with said mods.
But unlike reddit, if you don't like a 3d printing sub you are out of luck. There was only a general one and the ones for specific brands. , but on fb there are 50 others. So you can find alternatives.
Nah, i left when they killed whatever mobile app i was using to not have to deal with their shitty website
Based the volume of people asking this question over and over... I guess way more than anyone thinks.
I feel like the way the question is phrased is going to select for people who were banned. Personally I wasn't but saw the upcoming IPO and wanted to dip before the platform was totally enshittified.
I got permabanned for wishing death on billionaires too many times.
I left 3 years ago, when they killed RiF
I created an account here after the API nonsense. Stayed on reddit for a couple years, but the bot problem there got worse, and worse. I was very vocal about why reddit chose to turn a blind eye to the bot problem. My account of 12 years kept catching bans for the mildest of takes. Feels like they were trying to get rid of me. Finally caught a perm ban for ridiculous reasons in 2024, made an alt account that got caught for ban evasion a year later. Gave up because they're very hawkish about keeping humans off the platform, but they welcome bots and alt right shitheads with open arms.
My 20 year account got banned for using Apollo sideloaded. I still go there but let’s be honest, lemmy has far better memes
I was never banned. I left recently because the app got updated to keep sound on ads always on, even if you turned them off, the next time you used the app, the sound was back on.
This happened a few times to me and I deleted the app
Shadow banned, never knew why, not even moderators, and never got an answer, so I figured it was better to just leave the place to somewhere with more humans at the helm
Me, and this place is dead man. It's only about news and left vs rightwing politics for some reason. No niche sites active. I followed a lot of linux distros and sports pages on reddit that were really active. In here. Just bot posts..
It's suffering the same problem that all social media sites suffer. Less than 1% of people create the content. I kept the entire Jazz community afloat until I just gave up in exasperation, people want to be spoon-fed content, nobody wants to contribute for others.
I agree about the niche posts I was heavily active in a bunch of art subreddits but here nothing
There are far, far fewer bots on here than there are on reddit, proportionally.
Let's not blame it on bots only. Reddit is just a vast community. Biggest social media platformon the internet in terms of active users.
And how many of those "active users" are bots? There's been articles coming out that between 20-40% of reddits userbase are inorganic accounts.
Another large portion of them are Nazis and Zionists. I'd rather not be involved with any of that.
I have heard ablut these articles which is based on absolutely nothing. All estimates and theises. No evidence. However, I think there is ofc some truth to it. I just haven't met any one, being clear botish in their behavior.
Most of the people I interacted with, was sport heads and tech/software nerds on niche forums. So, must of the users was weekly active users responding sporadicly with a human way of communicating. I really doubt some of those guys were ai to be honest. And if they were, I actually enjoyed it so much, that I rather fill out a niche forum in here with types like that, rather than 0 people.
We do our best in the /c/games community! It isn't niche by any means, but we have regular posters (including myself) and we have fair engagement on new posts and members also.
Unfortunately as is the nature of most social media, it can only be as active as the users. So for very niche subjects I can't see Lemmy ever being super viable (sadly)
I mean the general groups works in here, but since I only care about 1% of those general themed groups, I really miss the niche forums, where I care about 99% of the posts.
Yeah, it's mostly reposts of 2-year-old screenshots of other social media
I hadn't been. I just wanted an open-source alternative; as with all aspects of my life.
Buddy I'm shadowbanned from LEMMY
Not banned yet, but they recently removed my API key I was using to work with sideloaded Apollo. I'm now using an alternative method again, but I wonder when they'll just end up banning all users trying to keep Apollo alive?
I have been a Reddit user for 15yrs and got banned 48hrs ago for for suggesting that some dog owners should die because of their deliberate inbreeding to create dogs with traits that are ultimately bad for their health.
For context I am in the UK and we have a deeply ingrained love for dogs over here so seeing a picture of some Americans that are gushing over their inbred dogs made me angry and emotional.
I've been to the UK and there's British people that also breed dogs... It's not an American thing. I also don't think the love of dogs is something specific to the UK, people love dogs all over the west 😭
If it is happening over here we don't see it as much. I am not saying that it is not through. It's just when we do see it is is mostly US images or stories.
I used it before, but got banned by Reddit a couple of months ago for a genuinely ridiculous post. My account was 14byears old. I couldn't care less about being banned. The place has been a burning dumpster fire for the last few years. If they want to implode that's their business.
Ii was banned for saying old people call people who go to therapy "f_____", i am not homophobic, matter of fact it wasn't even in english, i used a word with much lighter connotation in my own language.
Some weeks before the fact i said that certain presidents of a certain country would end like Saddam Hussein if UN was serious and wasn't able to use Reddit for 3 or 2 days
Based
Me. I didn't even do anything really wrong, accidently posted to a subreddit on one account after getting banned with another account. I didn't even realize I had posted on it 1xs before from another account. Then on the space of about 2 hours ago in accounts were IP banned. Even my business account. I was very pissed because I didn't even post anything that controversial to get banned, but that healthcare industries should not be able to denied coverage. But that was "political" and they banned me from that subreddit. I had like 8 accounts and forgot all about the ban. Made some simple comment accidentally and BAM IP banned.
Im not currently banned, but they banned me for a bit for using the word revolution when referencing what America needs.
They also gave away user data to DHS cause they asked.
So. Yeah.
I deleted my reddit account during the API debacle and didn't participate since, but kept lurking there. Then, a couple days ago they started requiring an account to access the site, and now I'm here, oh well.
Not today, spez
I was never banned but a few things led up to it
- I received a warning from their AI moderation because I wrote I wanted to shoot annoying children (who were playing reddead redemption online). I was in the red dead subreddit too when I wrote this. Any level of context literacy would not have let that go through. This also happened after I made a very contentious post about being sexually harassed in a video game which made the nerds very mad and I guess mass reported my history
- the punishment of mods protesting the API shit. I've moderated a community for 12 years, for those years it was implied it's my community and I make the rules so I'm invested in it, but then suddenly you can have it taken from you if you set it to private? I now just sit on my subreddits and ignore them. I will remake them here.
- a beloved subreddit of mine (I didn't own it just visited it daily) was attacked by a spam network for 2 weeks. Mod was inactive. I spent hours mass reporting every account but reddit did absolutely nothing and just shut the subreddit down instead of blocking suspicious accounts trying to post the same keywords there, like 3 seconds in automod would have saved it. I could have taken it over, but I'm done doing free labor for Spez after the API fiasco showed we have no control over our own subreddits
- people getting banned just for upvoting comments reddit doesn't like
- everyone on reddit has become a lot more hostile and toxic, only wanting to shoot 'hot takes' and insults instead of having a discussion. It feels a lot more like Facebook now than Reddit
- final straw was the hiding of post history. There is no point in interacting with anyone on reddit if I don't know they're a real person or not
Pre 2021 I had none if these issues and it was a great place that I learned a lot from, but corporate enshittification is going to enshittify everything it touches so I'm only going to donate my passion to open source things now.
Did you delete your account?
No, I need to get my 1 subreddit I care about sorted out , demod myself, delete all my comments, then I think I'm going to sell my account.
I got banned twice and decided to just give up.
Yeah, got perma banned and couldn't circumvent the detection algorithms that kept shadowbanning new users or at least the effort required to keep testing wasn't worth it anymore.
Me too. And my comment wasn’t even horrid. I told a woman that she looked “drop dead gorgeous “ in the Dress sub.
"drop dead" R1 violation. Yeah they have really gone overboard with regulating.
Ill never forget I got banned from some sub that hit the front page for saying "the housing market is insane right now". I was being ableist guys, apparently..
I got banned for saying health insurance should not be able to deny any procedure. But I guess that's too political for the gen x sub . Then got perma banned because I didn't pay attention to where I was posting from other accounts. Fuckers
I did.
Never heard of this sub , what was it
It was mostly talking about AI, software to run AI and updates on LLM models. It offers HugstonOne as an opensource software to run very powerful llm models locally (mostly in windows) for free. Like having chatgpt in your laptop, but unrestricted and many more options than proprietary services.
I came after the API fiasco. At first I was going to delete my account but I only deleted my comments and now I only go there to my country's sub. It was hard to stay away since Lemmy was still barebones. I'd go through all my homepage in a few minutes. Nowadays there's so much content I barely go on reddit.
My account of like 20 years got banned and I never received any reason why.. still to this day have no idea. no messages or anything. I tried making a few more accounts but was using alias emails and VPNs and such and they all got banned. After that I figured why do I try to hard if they don't want me so I jumped ship...
never looked back
Same
I got shadow banned (seemingly site-wide) after pointing out that the Biden and the Democrats’ messaging shifted from “Trump is a fascist” to “we have to think about unity!” after Trump got shot in the ear, which proved to me Biden et al. were either allied with fascists by protecting them from harm or never believed Trump was a fascist to begin with, which pointed to Biden (and his team and the whole democratic news media) being more closely aligned with Trump than they wanted people to know.
The tipping point for me was probably the line “if Biden actually thought Trump was a fascist and had an actual problem with that, he would’ve shot him on stage”
I don't use it as much but most of the engagement posts are run by bots. I stick to discord a little more. Feels more transparent and you need an invite.
You gonna still use it after they require face recognition
You mean discord? Probably move to telegram then.
I've been through so many reddit handles. Some are banned in /r/politics, some in other subs. There's no reason to it.
I actually made my first account here before I was site banned by reddit.
I've had so many handles banned from reddit that I lost count after 30 or so.
fuck 'em.
👆
Banned on a monthly basis for both.
Don't think for a second Lemmy is less ban happy.
Have you tried becoming a better person instead?
Oh I'm a fantastic person. Social media is garbage and only useful for shit posting.
Keep telling yourself, maybe some day you'll notice.
No. You have no idea.
You've gone and created a persona in your head about who I am, what I look like, and a whole bunch of other based on almost zero information. I've come on, said a single thing you stage with, and you've invented the rest and created some imaginary villain to hate on the Internet.
You know nothing about me, my family, my politics, who I volunteer when, what I do for a living. Nope. You've taken a single comment, where I disagree on something and extrapolated from there.
The Internet and digital interaction is a wasteland for interaction, and trust me, you're no better than the other anonymous monkey tossing shit.
So again, I'm fantastic, and you have no fucking clue except whatever you've made up about me in your imagination.
Interesting, I was right once again. Try to be nice once in a while, you might have better experiences then 😊
👌👍
Ya know, some people actually only get on social media for curated news, to have actual conversations with other humans, or to share or seek advice about specific topics.
I spend most my time in tech, old home remodel, and local/hometown forums.
I know. Dozens of you.