Like you I left in June 2023. Haven't been back though.

They drove away a ton of active users with the whole API thing. Makes sense conversation isn't the same there anymore. The people posting and commenting left with the apps that make it convenient to... post and comment. Such an own goal by reddit.

Yea anything big and mainstream just seems super shallow.

I'm not on top of things to compare accurately, but it was always kinda like that (and is like that here sometimes too). But whenever I've gone back, I've definitely felt like it has gotten somewhat worse. Some of that could easily be a shifting standard from spending more time on other less "mainstream" platforms though.

At best it is a technical forum for me. I have an account I've used since the days of the great digg migration. A lot of communities grew and became fun but most are now either dead or crap.

I only use Reddit for one small niche hobby. And given that a bunch of those people still use Facebook, I'm not that surprised they haven't relocated to Lemmy.

as if it lost its* spark.

I only use it for /r/nfl now, that community is great at creating memes and posting highlights as soon as it happens and I still visit a few niche subreddits but they too got even smaller, probably a lot of us switched to just lurking instead of actively participating

My country's sub got taken by a pro-government group, I used it to see the news and know what was happening there but now you can't find any news that criticize the government or that show the country in a bad manner. We had a meme sub and that was taken over too so it became trash