I’m 65 and I hate the generation labels. I genuinely think they were originally pushed as another propaganda mechanism to create further artificial divisions between people. There is no doubt that people of significantly different ages are often different in various ways, but the over simplicity of the named generations just provides another convenient way to stereotype people instead of understanding them as individuals.

I think I joined reddit in 2008. I’ve been involved in social media since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems in the late 70’s. (And I ran one of my own in the mid-80’s.) I had an email address on Bitnet in 1983 and was on Usenet in its early days. reddit was an interesting and open place for a while there and I enjoyed the variety, but most of it was becoming too cynical and tribal for me by the early 20’s. I discovered Lemmy a couple years before reddit’s API debacle, but that is what convinced me to drop reddit and focus on the Fediverse.

I like the decentralized model of the Fediverse. I think the idea that different servers can have different rules is healthy. I stay away from parts of it, but I have found plenty of communities that are friendly and interesting to me. After hanging out on several different servers, I joined Fedican and have been happy here. It’s a nice place to call my home online.

Not yet 30, and I got banned from reddit after 13 years for saying nazis deserve to be dead. Hit too close to home for the admins with that one, evidently. I have alts that they can’t find, but I mainly hang here now.

40s. Saw Lemmy mentioned on Reddit around the time of the API debacle. It became clear to me that reddit would not be usable in the long run, as it is unusable without 3rd party clients.

Upon checking Lemmy out, it reminded me of the kind of internet I hadn’t seen in ages, so I stayed.

Late 20’s

I used reddit app so the api fiasco, while it bothered me on a fundamental level, did not directly affect me.

Then I read some article about the potential for reddit to create paid subreddits or something?

I don’t remember exactly why paywalled subreddits bothered me so much, but it was enough for me to decide to leave.

59, been on Mastodon for years, saw the occasional mention of Lemmy and came over for a look some time ago to lemmy.world, then to the instance I’m on now. Also have a piefed alter and the original .world alter.

Spend more time here than on Mastodon these days, I find the shitposting here is if a higher equality.

Had used reddit in the way distant past but it annoyed me the usenet structure was being centralised and replicated for $ off the back of “slaves” and left way back.

Early 30s. API debacle.

Late 20s, moved to lemmy during the Reddit API scandal like a lot of others, so it’s a deliberate anti-corporate choice. I’ve always been techy (I worked as a software developer at the time I made the switch) and I’ve always hated the corporate social media platforms. Reddit was the only social media that I ever used extensively and the API fiasco was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This may or may not be true for others who switched around the same time but it coincided with my political views becoming more radical; I used to consider myself a social democrat but by the time I fled Reddit I fully considered myself socialist and was on my way to becoming an anarchist.

Turned 20 last week. I found lemmy through reddit about 2 years ago.

Backstory :

My parents had flat refused home internet until 2020 when online classes made it a requirement.

Since I am 14, at home, and just got introduced to the wide world of web, I looked up tutorials on becoming a hacker like in the movies and got into linux.

General social media was still too overwhelming for me but I did like reddit for the linux content. I later saw the “about” page of r/unixsocks explaining they are on c/unixsocks now.

I checked lemmy and community was better here, also reddit had and alt-right problem so I decided to migrate.

Like 2-3 years old (as of 2026)
I was unhappy with Reddit’s userbase(before i cared about company track records), and i randomly stumbled across lemmy.(ion remember how)
The small size makes finding communities hard but its workable.

Which instance and time of day you ask this is going to give different results I suspect. I’m a 500 year old antarctican. I came here after stopping on mastodon for a bit after leaving reddit.

72. Yeah, really.

Mid 30s. Noticed that a lot of posts reaching my country’s front page started spreading right wing talking points. This was a concerning development, because previously my impression of Reddit was that it leaned left. Made me wonder, whether it was hijacked for Propaganda reasons.

Early 50’s. Came here to step out of the tentacles of billionaire-led corporations and avoid an enshitified online world of bots and data harvesting. Small learning curve to gain access but will worth it.

I’m 22 and I came to Lemmy after my Reddit account got permanently banned/suspended for no reason