It’s really upsetting because I was in my mid teens when I first got into Reddit, and I definitely joined at one of it’s peaks - the second lockdown. Fuck me that was so much fun, that was the time I actually reached out and got mental health support for my ADHD, and connected to some really great online communities. One of them was the reddit adhd subreddit, but besides that I loved how interconnected the subreddit humour was, and how everyone seemed like they could just tune into the same vibe as you. I quickly lost track of the amount of incredibly balanced, well informed discussions, debates, casual conversations and joking I ended up getting into. I was going to a really shitty private school where I really just didn’t gel well with anyone, so I seriously loved all that online connection, it definitely did me a lot of good.

Ever since u/spez removed the community extensions and old awards, Reddit has seriously fallen off. I honestly think most of the OG users left when the blackout protests were forced to an end due to spez and other admins straight up booting mods that were collaborating in the lockdowns. Then the end of the yearly pixel art purely because people wrote “Fuck u/spez” was honestly the last straw that killed any chance of me ever potentially forgiving how badly he betrayed everyone and everything he built, all for corporate profits.

Fuck u/spez for destroying everything he built, fuck Reddit, fuck social media subscriptions, and fuck all of this corporate bullshit. Companies need to realise that there will always be alternatives that users will migrate to on the internet, and we should absolutely punish them loudly when they violate our fucking respect the way they’ve been doing so shamelessly lately. Lemmy is exactly the kind of experience that was purged from Reddit that I needed, and I’m glad that I’m now starting to spend more time here.