It’s a lot of reasons.

1. Reddit always felt like “The Inquirer” magazine to me. It was mostly trashy gossip, but I had a few forums that had good discussions.

2 I’m not really involved in any of the commercialized social media platforms because I don’t like feeling like I’m the product. I don’t like feeling like I’m being manipulated by an algorithm. I don’t use YouTube or Facebook or any if the others either. I liked Reddit in that I could just browse without an account.

3. My phone and computer is my most personal storage. It’s my diary, bank account, addressbook, calendar, personal correspondence and more. I can change my life and become a digital hermit, but I shouldn’t have to. For this reason and #2, I only install applications on my phone and computer that I can trust will behave alongside all that juicy data about my life. I trust my spouse, doctor and lawyer with this information and no one else. This means that your spy app (Reddit app, too) doesn’t get to be on my phone or computer. I only run apps that I can view the source code for (with a few exceptions, like banking). Same for the operating system (sorry, Apple. Sorry, Google). I know it’s not bulletproof, but it’s better than most.

4. Finally, I didn’t know that there was an alternative. When this API stuff started, I first learned about Lemmy and Mastodon.

There’s a lot more, but Lemmy’s what I’ve been looking for for some time now, I just needed a nudge.

Upvote for OsmAnd for street navigation and offline use while out in the wilderness. The search is awful, though. Addresses can’t be found and businesses are hit or miss, so I grab the coordinates beforehand and bookmark them.