I have been interested for a very long time in decentralized software as an alternative to Google, Facebook etc. For my bachelor thesis I created a decentralized instant messenger using bluetooth connections. However it didnt go anywhere because its impossible to find enough nerds irl who want to test such a project. Thats when I realized that its much more effective to develop something that can be used by everyone across the internet, as its much easier to find some initial users.

Luckily I found Mastodon and used that for some years because I loved the federated architecture. However I realized that the twitter-like format isnt for me, its too focused on individuals and makes it very hard to follow specific topics. Plus it leads to pointless and annoying drama all the time. Thats when I found out about Dessalines starting Lemmy, and was immediately excited to start contributing.

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html