20K took a year and a half to build. The 1400 we're at now, that took about 4 months.

We stated SaidIt was our backup for maybe about a year? No one really read or paid attention to our announcements though, there were questions about it constantly. We only started using AutoMod to comment in the final few weeks, when we realized we were good and truly fucked.

There was a core group of people who were well-known on the sub, yourself included. You became Approved Users during our lockdown times because you were either regular posters or regular commenters, and understood our purpose and promoted it well. You were vital in our daily interactions, and helped draw in others who were new and just beginning to understand.

The rest were readers and lurkers who supported us but did not interact beyond upvotes/downvotes, were randoms who found us and shared here and there but weren't regulars, or were haters scouring us for any infractions and reporting us to Admins or other subs who would do so.

Reddit as a platform has become more and more hostile to differing opinions and discussions. I've been there for nearly 10 years (among various accounts) and I've watched it become a political/media entity instead of user forums about random subject matters.

Reddit suppresses opinions that its financers and advertisers do not agree with. It's a US-based company, so capitalistic, with foreign investors (so spin-the-wheel and see what it lands on).

Are there far-right-wingers on SaidIt? Sure, of course. Because they exist and they also got deplatformed. What Reddit and their far-left extremists fail to realize is that deplatforming doesn't actually eradicate the opposition, it just moves them somewhere else.

I've been watching this site ever since s/WatchPeopleDie got the axe and migrated. This site allows freedom for (nearly) all expression, so they're allowed to actually exist. Everyone who got cancelled moved here (or perhaps to Ruqqus). Of course there's a majority of controversial people here right now. The rest of the people on Reddit are just waiting to be banned before fleeing. Reddit users are just holding on and preparing to exit, while everyone who was already forced out is already here.

If anyone thinks this site's users are shitty, well, they can take it up with the specific subs and those people. But users don't get to hate-report every single comment or shitpost without consequence anymore, or depend on the site Admins to massage their girldicks because "someone hurt my feelz".

That applies to the far-right, as well as our movement. So peeps need to keep that in mind. A free platform for LGBDTT means a free platform for others too.