I hadn't even heard of it!

Pretty similar to you: Had heard about Mastodon when Twitter started imploding and made an account over there. But didn’t really get it and I never really used Twitter anyways so I wasn’t too interested in figuring it out.

Then when the APIpocalylse kicked off I came and checked out Lemmy and learned more about the Fediverse. When I found the Memmy app and more people started coming here it really felt like this was taking off, and I’m excited to see that momentum continuing. I haven’t opened Reddit since Apollo died, and this is now filling that void in my online diet.

To be honest, I thought it was stupid. I misunderstood how it works and I thought it was overcomplicating the idea of decentralised instances

Doubleposted fyi.

Personally I was vaguely aware of Mastodon when it first started being talked about as a Twitter competitor. But I didn't really "get it", I thought it was Twitter with added email functionality or something.

Wasn't until spez shattered reddits remaining anti-troll defenses that I started actually doing some research, and finding out Mastodon actually does not have email functionality. Something completely different from that, actually.

I had gotten so 'meh' with Twitter that by the time Mastodon came around, I just wasn't interested and would rather just quit Twitter altogether.

Then, a couple weeks ago some buddies on a Discord were talking about Lemmy, so I decided to look into it. And so here I am.

Knew nothing, still don't know a lot and had a hell of a time signing up but it seems to be getting better and growing. I'm trying to be more active to help out with growth but I'm not that guy.

I joined Mastodon a couple of times in 2018 but could never make it stick. Coincidentally rejoined last year just before the Twitter implosion, and maybe it was all the new people I was able to start using it in a way that made sense to me and rather enjoyed it, despite not using Twitter.

As soon as the writing was on the wall about the API changes, I created an account on Lemmy and here. That was end of May and the big migration happened end of June.

So tl;dr, I've been aware of it since 2018, but didn't actually start using it until end of 2022.

I've used Mastodon for a moment before and it was plagued with porn. I also wasn't a fan of microblogging so I dropped it pretty fast. I prefer forum/board style media platforms.

I knew and used Mastodon on occasion but, definitely appreciate it more now

I've been a regular on mastodon for a couple years, having fully quit twitter for it.

i was vaguely aware of lemmy but wasn't interested enough to switch to it until basically now

I started from scratch

I joined the metaverse via mastodon four years ago and lemmy 2 years. Guess that makes me a fucking hipster, lol. Though i'll admit since the reddit fiasco i dumped reddit completely and made /kbin my home and been using the fediverse quite a lot more.

Heard about Diaspora around 2010s. Knew Mastodon probably before 2022 (when there were only two Polish instances, 101010.pl and a left-wing one, remade later into more mainstream pol.social), @Vivaldi brought me here as they integrated Mastodon with their web browser. However, @74 is actually my first fedi account. Learnt about /kbin and made an account there in 2023, when it consisted only of 2 Polish servers, karab.in (flagship) and another one. My account here, on kbin.social exists since 8 of May 2023.

Already used Mastodon before and understood the concept of decentralization. I used Lemmy years ago, but the front page was getting like 12 upvotes so not much was going on lol.

Same here except that I created a lemmy.ml account. I had an account on a mastodon server which doesnt exist anymore but I never really used it. But now I still dont use mastodon but Instead of being reddit addicted I am now Lemmy addicted.

Generally its impossible to be reddit addicted because I always use Open Source apps for Social Media which now will cost me 2 million dollars I heard.

Zero! Zero familiarity! When I heard about Lemmy during the Great Reddit Migration of 2023 I was like "What a stupid name. I should code my own Reddit and get rich. The time is now!". But then I realized I don't want to code Reddit after writing code for 6-10 hours a day at work, and I checked Lemmy out. Then I learned about the Fediverse. Then I was highly impressed and gave many oohs and aaahs. Now I'm off Reddit completely (except for CenturyClub from my desktop like twice a week for 10 minutes) and this is my home. Yay!

I had heard of mastadon but since I was never really big into twitter, I ignored it. Also, I think the first article I read about it was on how to set up your own instance and invite friends to it and that seemed way more than I would want to do.

Reddit, on the other hand, was a big deal for me, and learning about lemmy and kbin was an eye-opener. I was on digg before reddit and was afraid whatever the new thing was would eventually suffer the same fate, but I'm cautiously optimistic the fediverse model may be more resistant to the corrupting influences? We'll see I guess.

I was on Mastodon because Musk is an absolute shit head. Didn’t miss it one bit and it actually is a lot nicer. Same seems to be true here.

First thought it sounded like a scam because people were talking about it the same way people talked about crypto. Looked into it enough after the reddit api shenanigans that I wanted to make a lemmy account and I'm still learning new things about it.

Lurked Calckey for a bit , i was fan of Freeplay's userstyles

But decided to go for kbin bc it's not limited to redditlike functions , promising for interacting with rest of 'verse all under one account

I had used mastodon, akkoma and peertube before learning about Lenny when the Reddit stuff happened. I have never had an account on twitter and rarely used my Reddit account.

freedombox and some stuff I vaguel remember about an open source social media

For the last year or so I've been using a private PeerTube instance I run to host videos my kids like to make and share with their friends/family. It isn't federated for privacy reasons.

I started a Mastodon server and had been running that for about 5-6 months before joining a Lemmy server. I knew about other ActivityPub platforms, but hadn’t felt the need to join until then.

I knew of it because of the minor migration to mastodon, plus the website for EndeavourOS, which I use for my operating system has a mastodon account for posting news about it. But like many other I’m not a big fan of the microblogging concept. I didn’t know about lemmy until the migration was getting ready to happen from reddirt (spelling intentional).

I did know about the fediverse and how it works in principal before then.

I found Peertube and thought it's much better than YouTube but I just couldn't find any content.

I once created an account for Mastodon because I thought it was something else, I didn't expect a Twitter clone and I have no interest in Twitter.

i'd used mastodon.social briefly after the tumblr porn ban but then switched back when it turned out to be not that big a deal. not to mention i really didn't understand the concept of different servers or how federating/defederating worked. i floundered for a couple of days before i came across my current setup. calckey account which i look at rarely and an account on a small lemmy server for stability purposes.

I had a Mastodon account but didn't really understand how it all worked, I thought it was only for Twitter like applications. I really like the concepts of self hosting stuff so when the Reddit strike happened and I found out what Lemmy was, I decided to try it out and have been learning along the way.

I'd been using mastodon somewhat, and I'd heard of Lemmy before but never actually tried it until the initial announcement of the API changes months ago.

No experience at all, I heard about it first in a Reddit thread about alternatives.

Used Mastodon for a bit a few years ago, but it wasn't popular enough so I didn't get much out of it at the time. Now, I basically prefer Mastodon and Calckey to Twitter, unless I want to see what my Twitter mutuals are doing, most of which are artists.

I became aware of the Fediverse a few years ago...After not developing any traction initially...I left. However, I came back and am pouring more effort into decentralized social media. Kbin and Mastodon are amazing for me now, being able to connect to other instances due to federation, I run into so many interesting people!

I think I joined Mastodon around September or October 2022? But I hadn't heard of Kbin until a few weeks ago :p
Actually I wasn't familiar with the fediverse at all outside of Mastodon before then

I had no idea it existed before the API changes were announced.

Not at all familiar. It was Reddit or other social media but never knew anything about Lemmy until recently.

Had a Mastodon account years ago (whenever the radical.town instance was a thing). But I never used it because I never used Twitter. Made an account on an instance for music and that I'll actually use here recently with the Twitter stuff. Then joined kbin and Lemmy to check them out shortly after with everyone else during all the commotion.

I had a general idea of the Fediverse, how it worked, and some of the platforms on it (Friendica, etc), but never really got into it til earlier this year.

I setup a Mastodon instance at leftist.network back in 2020, when I was worried that the COVID/Trump situation was going to quickly transition into something more serious. Besides Jan 6th that didn't happen, but hey, it was a cool domain for people to join when Twitter started tanking!

But the thing is, I never really used Twitter. My social media was Facebook and reddit. Both of them for the discussion groups (Facebook isn't boring if all your friends are gay communists). Mastodon didn't quite scratch the itch, mostly because there's nothing like Facebook groups or subreddits. I had looked at Lemmy before, but there wasn't a big enough user base to really move over.

I looked up kbin and lemmy with the reddit diaspora, and they fit both social media fixes. Most communities are on Lemmy, but I like kbin's interface more. I just want kbin to add the feature to hide upvoted posts.

I'm a little dismayed that more and more stuff is moving to Discord though. I was an IRC regular back in the day, but I could never quite deal with Discord's 24/7 conversation to try to keep up with.

I've been active on the Fediverse for 5 years or so via mastodon, but more so in the indieweb movement. It's nice to see more people get acquainted with it. It's a good place.

Pretty familiar. I first learned about the fediverse when I joined Mastodon. I kept it at arms length as just a curiosity until Elon bought Twitter last year, when I switched to Mastodon full time. Since then I joined Pixelfed, Lemmy, Kbin, and checked out Calckey.

My experience matches op pretty much to a t. What I love about all of it is how light and free it feels. I don't feel hemmed in or funneled like I do on other apps.

I wrote a paper about the fediverse in Law School in 2014. That wasn't my introduction to the concept, just a good way to frame my answer.

I was aware of Mastodon and LibreTube, but didn't associate them with the "Fediverse", nor had any real grasp on what the Fediverse was.

My displeasure with Reddit led me to research the alternatives and do a deep dive down the rabbit hole.

I've had a mastodon account for a few years but I'm not super active on it, since I'm not a huge fan of microblogging. I learned about lemmy from the reddit alternatives sub, but never gave it much thought. I didn't realize it was part of the fediverse, and didn't really commit to making an account due to the lack of content at the time.

I learned about Kbin during all the recent reddit drama, and decided to give that a try. Now that I've been here for a while and understand federation, I'm really loving it. I'm really excited to see where this goes as the platforms and federation concept starts to mature and gain traction