People who still use both Reddit and Lemmy and are slowly leaving Reddit. How do you do it?

Lemmy definately has less content, but it feels like the old internet. People are just friendlier here. My biggest recommendation is to post/comment a lot; I think things like that really help the platform grow. I can honestly say I've never received any negative feedback here, so its a pretty safe space.

I just.... left.

I came here during the API change drama. Started to get acquainted with the platform before Apollo stopped working. And when it did, I never came back. Didn't even bother deleting my few hundred comments or give them the chance to ban me for not being a nazi propagandist cunt.

I don't still use Reddit. I bailed back when they took ownership of all of my content. I did go through some withdrawals. Would constantly open my phone to open Reddit and remember that I had uninstalled and closed my account. Now a few years later I don't have anything like parity in Lemmy compared to my Reddit experience. Ultimately, I decided to not try and chase that. Lemmy is not Reddit, And the Reddit that I loved back in the day, is completely gone anyway, replaced by some corporate bullshit, bolstered by bad actors and robots.

What I love about Lemmy, in contrast, is smaller communities and more genuine engagement. There are still bots and bad actors. Regardless of its flaws though, I'm about as likely to go back to Reddit as I am to creating a Facebook account. I'm on my phone less and more engaged with the actual people in my life now. Maybe we all need less social media, not better social media.

I kept using Reddit to browse for a while years back, and decided I'd just stop using it when the API no longer let me read stories. Evenrually.. It stopped working. The end.

Lemmy is much smaller but it also has more engaged community discussions imo (but yea, it is another echo chamber - its hard to avoid that with such a niche tech/privacy/anti-corporate network).

It reminds me of old school forums where you'd know most of the regulars, and I don't mind that.

All I did was delete my Reddit app.

I don't use reddit anymore, I still have an account but I stay logged out unless I need to see info in a thread that is some fix that I need because they won't let you see that now without being logged in.

Lemmy does have way less content and way less people but you can find them if you look. I suggest changing your default sort to either "active" or "new comments". I use "New comments" this sort will show all threads that have any new comments on them so I can find the active conversations right away. I have been very chatty on Lemmy this way.

Lemmy has its own set of trolls and extremists, they aren't conservative trolls like you see on reddit, they are extreme left all the way around back to Fascism, but I see you are on db0 so, you won't see the more troublesome instances.

EDIT to add: My main in on Db0, and I still use that on mobile, but I ended up making an account on lemmy.world just to use this Lemmy skin https://old.lemmy.world/ Old Lemmy was what got me out of reddit forever, there is something very comfortable about this skin and it made my transition very smooth.

After getting banned for saying it's ok to punch nazis in the face. 12 year account I just stopped cold turkey. I refuse to even click reddit links.

Actually it's been quite good for me. I realize I had an addiction to the site. My social media time has went down dramatically

I still look at reddit sometimes on my computer. But I just never installed their app on my phone.

Reddit... really sucks now. Idk if it has gotten way more reactionary or if I'm just more aware of it. Tons of chuds, recycled posts, tons of astroturfing, bad comment sections. I don't miss it in its current state.

I started when the API thing went down.. exploring other sites with Lemmy among them. After continued enshitification I slowly started manually deleting 13 years of posts. Some here, some there. When I ran out of posts to delete I killed my account and just would occasionally browse old reddit. Now after they killed old reddit without logging in. (Which I will not do again). That was it. You get way better conversations here with mostly real people ... Honestly feels like the old days of reddit. I've had to find other places for niche forums and stuff for my hobbies but I'd rather do that then to go back to that shit pile.

Now that old.reddit is account-walled, its become reeeeaal easy to not go there at all

There are still niche communities there that don't exist here.

Try mentioning the genocide in Gaza and they'll force your hand into leaving.

I recently discovered I've been shadowbanned, with zero idea why. Appeals vanish into the void without an answer... So I can read, but not participate. Feels pretty hostile towards users. Maybe they're doing me a favor?

Put your Lemmy app in the spot of wherever your Reddit app is. Make the Reddit app take much more effort to get to. I used to have mine on my home screen so it is one click to get to it after unlocking. Now that's where my Lemmy app is and RedReader is in a folder off to the side. (I suppose I could go one step further and just remove the Reddit app from the home screen folder.) I end up checking Lemmy first now.

The nice part is that Lemmy is getting big enough that I end up seeing a lot of the same news when I run out of content on Lemmy (start getting into more obscure posts) as when I switch to Reddit. So I find myself thinking "I've already seen that" so it makes the Reddit app feel more "stale" and easier to leave.

By replacing reddit shortcut with Lemmy shortcut on my front page/screen. Muscle memory is helluva drug

Uninstall any apps for Reddit and decide that you are not ok with the data harvesting those apps do in you phone. Then set your browser to auto delete Reddit cookies. You will soon find yourself so annoyed using their webpage, that you will stop. Allow yourself to be subjected to their incessant cookie whining and dark patterns and hostile design, intended to push you to install their app.

or skip to account delete and never go there again.

My experience with reddit is similar to other folks here. I got permbanned in 2024 and then again in 2025, started going on Lemmy but lurked on reddit via third party app Infinity until earlier this year when reddit killed my API key. Since I refuse to use reddits hot garbage ad-riddled app, I uninstalled infinity and never went back.

So I used to used both Reddit and Lemmy and now I have completely switched over to Lemmy, which has turned out to be a much better experience anyway. (Less trolls, less intentionally divisive content, etc)

Here's what I did:

1. Got a permanent ban from Reddit (easy to do, plenty of guides online)
2. Started a lemmy community (!westchesterny@lemmy.ml)
3. Engage with others on lemmy
4. Post content to c/westchesterny and other communities I am interested in (typically NYC metro area communities)

What it was for me is Lemmy has a lot of tech and political discussions, but I don't really care about that so I started a community and contribute to communities that are regional to me because engaged hyper local and regional communities are a huge gap in the lemmy federation right now.

Outside of one community I use to track sales for a niche hobby, my main use of reddit is looking up old threads. There's nothing new on there that's helpful anymore. I like looking up old episode discussion threads for TV shows that I'm watching for the first time, for instance.

I wish Lemmy was a good alternative. But without enough people using it, it can't really come close to a replacement. All my interests are more niche too, and I hate Discord, so it leaves me out here touching grass.

Reddit's always been toxic, it's just worse the more MAGA and AI came to prominence (also a lot of what appears to be Russian astrotufing, but that might just be the subs I used).

Unfortunately, Lemmy's not always better. I've been trying to figure out which instances to avoid, because I am really tired of certain people harping on about certain things.

Step one is to never log in to Reddit again. Just lurk. You still get access, but your community is here.

I just use a redlib instance to lurk on reddit.

https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib-instances/blob/main/instances.md

Can subscribe and filter users and subreddits, and is an accountless experience.

I don't find reddit anymore aggravating than lemmy, since I stick to subreddits I'm interested in which tends to be more mellow stuff like games and tech compared to if I was looking at news type subs.

I just do more actual commenting here due to having easy access to third party apps which reddit no longer provides. And I don't feel like going through effort of getting stuff like reddit is fun working. I'm fine lurking reddit now and not bothering logging in.

No content is better than crap content, and I can spend that time doing something else and not just wasting the same amount of time on lemmy.

I still have a throwaway account for one off comments/posts for some really niche stuff where I'm looking for info, otherwise the major subs I used to hang around in were either lobotomized or cracked apart with new mods or spam bots.

I keep my feeds on the app very curated which helps a lot. There are some niche subs that I like to visit still that don't have a presence on here.

Block everything except for the niche content you can't get here: stuff for your town, your make of car, plants for your specific area, etc. You should be able to get most of the mainstream stuff here. Yes there's less posts, but you can help with that. And besides, you probably want to be scrolling less anyway, right?

It was easy for me to switch when my app stopped working.

I will say I personally see having less content on lemmy as a feature. I sort by top - 12 hours, and once I’ve browsed deep enough to hit what I call “the porn layer”, I consider lemmy exhausted and find something else to do for a while. It’s lowered how much time I spend scrolling.

getting a permanent account suspension certainly helps.

Lemmy is not a replacement for Reddit imo.

I still also browse Reddit some but I've been using it a lot less since they banned me and cut off old.reddit

Reddit is full of bots who's mission is to keep you outraged and angry, there by keeping you engaged and locked on. Of course you're going to feel agitated. I left cold turkey and replaced my addiction with Lemmy, people here are nicer and fewer bots.

I use Reddit to browse since there is more content specific to the topics I want. But I do all my interaction here. All the posts and replies are here.

Reddit is just for browsing now.

I only use Reddit on rare occasions and I add friction to remind myself not to use it. I have a Lemmy app on my phone. I do not have a reddit app on my phone. The mobile site is pretty unusable, so I end up using old Reddit on desktop. I have leechblock installed so it asks me "Do you want to compromise your principles and ethics?" every time I navigate to something in the reddit domain.

I have been opening Lemmy for about two months now, browsing the communities and reading users’ comments, and yesterday I decided to create an account.

Honestly, as someone who has only been on Reddit since 2018, I am curious to know what Reddit looked like in its early years, and Lemmy is a really good opportunity for that.

The content is limited? One day Reddit’s content was limited too and then it grew! + Platforms and communities don’t grow on their own. they grow because of the people in them.

The subs I know on reddit are politically operated and the rest are leecher people who just want to get things out of you

reddit makes me log in so i left

I'm still looking at some subs in my own language and very specific niches, that don't exist on Lemmy yet.

Just walk away from reddit it’s easy.

Lemmy/Piefed is for when I want a more slower and easier processed experience.

Reddit is for when I want a more broadened approach because of how much is there.

I just joined "thelemmy.club" today! I am trying out lemmy because at Reddit, for no reason given to me, I am shadow banned (if it is the proper term for it). Whenever I post a new topic, even on issues that may help other users in the future, my post is immediately removed/deleted by the "Reddit filters...". And, I get "Rate limit exceeded..." when I reply to comments within a few minute after my successful reply. I don't know! I hope I will find the communities here in thelemmy.club those subs that I joined in on Reddit - that would be nice.

The key is that there can be no "slowly leaving." I went absolute cold turkey. I maintain that there is no other way. Not only do most people not have the self control to be able to moderate themselves, but reddit's structure and algorithm are specifically designed to try to suck you back in, keep you enraged, and keep you scrolling. Because Enragement is Engagement™.

But reddit and its various decision makers went out of their way to piss me off multiple times, as well as tons of other people, so I left. I consider myself a pretty rational and level headed bird, and I made plenty of contributions. But the message there was clear: They don't want people like us there. They want vacant eyeballs they can market at with bots. That's what the new shareholders demand.

I have not found that my life has been significantly less enriched without reddit being present in it. Rather, much the opposite. All the inevitable bickering, the arguing with idiots, the whole thing about having to walk on eggshells or appear to espouse a particular approved dumbass point of view or else you'll be brigaded with downvotes or randomly banned; it turns out none of that is productive. It's not even, if we're honest, really engagement.

I find I have more hours in my day to do something else instead. I'd rather do something tangible, and here I can share it without having to be concerned about whether or not my contribution will be approved by the hivemind.

Yeah, I get you. When I first came here exclusively I was looking for the same dopamine as I was getting from reddit. After, I'm not looking this up, the whistleblower from Facebook talked about anxiety being a better algorithm driver to keep people engaged longer, (?) I don't wonder how many other platforms like reddit, use algorithms to cause addiction. Maybe the answer is breaking the addiction and then coming back at it, on your own terms. I feel like I've broken the addiction. I am able to put Lemmy down. I don't feel like I'm stuck. I did struggle at first because my brain was in the habit of drawing that dopamine in that way, I redirected it to a specialised interest. And leaned into some psychology tricks for manual reset hacking the body, to reduce my anxiety. I like this side where I don't feel that addiction any more. I feel more present in my life now. I read lemmy for half an hour a day with my coffee in the morning or in a doctors office if I'm waiting for a while and such. That dopamine is out there in different ways.

I put a Lemmy widget on my phone's homescreen (using Boost, but probably many apps can do it), my widget is for Subscribed + New Comments sort

on reddit in a browser on pc or mobile. (old reddit actually still shows up normally on my phone.) But I'm only looking at a few very niche subs anymore. (I'm also noticing a drop in posts on what used to be very active local subs; I don't know if it's ppl being banned or the bots deleting posts.)

using lemmy the same way as reddit. I signed up on reddthat which is an instance that doesn't allow downvoting; every now and then I think, "Ya know, I wish I could downvote on here," sometimes some post or comment is just that stupid.

I wouldn’t look to piracy subs for “community” or interesting discussion. Regardless of platform. Just steal the shit and get out.

same, i recently used reddit for niche content on it, and i definitely stayed off using it, an djust browse it most of the time. only of matter of time before they get rid of old reddit completely, they just are biding thier time in trying to bypass the extensions that allows you to view old reddit, and on mobile. on mobile i use sink it , so old reddit works properly on a phone(no need to zoom, it automatically resizes the texts/pics). reddit started to force automatic refreshing to the top of the pages even in old reddit. i dont participate in the large subs, because of previous of banning activities on those subs. i save lemmy content, however little there is, for later in the day.

It is jivwr here somehow. To be fair, the only thing that keeps my account alive on reddit is troubleshooting issues. There is a treasure trove of information on reddit about some technical issues or ideas that I usually seek solutions to.

Here, much less. I did try to make posts and seek for help or hints but it seems quite dead so far. Discourse is little to none.

But as a social media replacement to reddit, lemmy is pretty good. Plenty of posts off different instances make up my feed with random news, ideas, funny posts and discussions.

Reddit has started removing the "hide post" button on certain posts, so I'm switching back to bluesky

i just don't go there if i don't need it. go a few times a month to see any news on niche subs i'm in.

after subscribing to many comms on lemmy, i don't feel like there's less posts than reddit

Say something anti nazi. Have the AI ban bots freak out and think you're pro nazi. Get permabanned

I go to Lemmy first.

Lemmy takes priority. Some days there's enough action on Lemmy I never get around to Reddit. The more days you don't go to Reddit, the closer you get to not caring about it at all anymore. Reddit also helps by being awful and doing things like banning me enough times that I stopped carrying my subs from account to account and without my subs Reddit is almost entirely useless except for when I'm completely full of Lemmy for the day. And that's becoming less frequent as I've seen more Lemmy activity in the last 2 years I've been here.

I mostly used both on mobile. I refuse to use the official app, my Sync app stopped working (can't use Apollo). I have RedReader but it isn't as comfortable, no NSFW, and the UI is awkward.

When my custom API token stopped working in Sync, I just didn't care enough about reddit to jump through new hoops to fix it. It annoyed me each time I loaded the app out of habit, but not enough to fix it.

I think lemmy having less content is a good thing for me. Everything in moderation: I'm sleeping better, reading more, etc since reddit became unpleasant to use on mobile. I'm okay with that.

I don't know how much I actually enjoyed reddit vs how much my brain was just addicted to the IV drip of pseudo-information.

Biggest advice: post before you leave :p

I basically only use it for modding a few communities I created. I have limited my scrolling and I'm scaling back my comments.

Also, I moved the Reddit icon over on my phone and put the Voyager icon there. Helps with the muscle memory.