Personally, it was a lot of reasons as time went on and at the very start it wasn’t just about the API pricing. I have only tried 3rd party apps recently (relative to the total time I have spent on reddit), and as crazy as it may sound, I was used to the official reddit interface. What pushed me to make an account on Kbin (and Lemmy) was when I heard that u/spez lied about Christian Selig blackmailing him and also accused him of “leaking conversations” for refuting the blackmail accusation with proof. I did out of spite, essentially. What made me stay here and significantly reduce my reddit activity is that the wider reddit community migrated here, and not just a bunch of assholes who came here for “free speech”. It felt right at home, why would I even need to return to reddit to scroll when there’s Lemmy? Other than for being able to search for specific information, which reddit still has the advantage of. Then when I started hearing and personally witnessing more and more of u/spez’s dick moves (as well as attempting an experiment to block mobile users from accessing the website), that’s when I started deleting my comments en-masse.