In short: Came for the Reddit, stayed for the Fediverse.
Reddit was down for several hours a month or so ago, then the new site was back up much faster than old.reddit.com and apps. That clued me in to the fact they appear ready to shut down the API even before any announcement, so I made a Lemmy account then and there. So right now is the transition period for me between the announcement and when free Reddit JSON API access gets cut off.
Before I joined Lemmy I heard about Mastodon, looked through Peertube a bit in passing.
In short: Came for the Reddit, stayed for the Fediverse.
Reddit was down for several hours a month or so ago, then the new site was back up much faster than old.reddit.com and apps. That clued me in to the fact they appear ready to shut down the API even before any announcement, so I made a Lemmy account then and there. So right now is the transition period for me between the announcement and when free Reddit JSON API access gets cut off.
Before I joined Lemmy I heard about Mastodon, looked through Peertube a bit in passing.