Joined about a year or two before the reddit API fiasco.
- I really don't like ads+tracking and didn't want my posts supporting a company like reddit
- I'm an advocate of FOSS
- reddit has inherent pressures to censor content based on mass media pressure and profit, and to permit anti-social far right trolls
- reddit punishes proxy users, where many instances here allow me to protect myself while posting here
- didn't like the new reddit layout - even before I came here, I was lurking for a year or two on alternate frontends
- I believed federation was a good strategy at building a better reddit alternative
But also, it actually had some communities at the time. If it were more dead, or unfederated, I'm not sure if I would have put as much effort in building communities.