My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.
Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.
After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren’t active on lemmy.
What about you?
I joined mastodon just before a big twitter exodus because I was getting into open source, via privacy, and quitting commodity social media. I got Lemmy and Pixelfed accounts not long afterwards because I was passionate about the fediverse. I’m only logged in to fediverse social media now. It’s not perfect (it’s still social media after all) but it has so much more integrity and feels more real, especially pixelfed which is an absolute peach and which I hope never changes! I mostly enjoy memes and shitposts here on Lemmy but it’s also getting pretty good for mutual help and advice in some communities, which I think is the most valuable thing about this format of social media.