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As an incoming Redditor who’s thrilled to see Fediverse alternatives getting some content and traction
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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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My concern is lemmy in general is too complicated a concept for the average user just wanting to browse. I've already encountered 2 users on reddit recently who might have stopped because of this complexity. One said he/she felt like lemmy makes its users answer queries before being able to join a sub, and one just couldn't get why there has to be different instances and was turned off because he/she couldn't quite understand how it all works.
I'm not sure I understand everything completely myself, but I'm willing to try. I don't think a lot of people do, tbh.
Edit: I'm aware why lenny is like this (generally) and I am definitely not criticizing it. Just mentioning some points as to why it may be hard for other people to follow us here.
I agree, this concept of decentralization is not really widespread. I consider myself informed in topics of open source and privacy, but I also needed to get used to how e.g. searching for communities work. It is definitely not as convenient as reddit, where you have a search bar and can seek out any community, here you need to browse several nodes to find the communities you are looking for. It would be nice if Lemmy caught the interest of many and things like this could be worked out.
Lemmy will have to learn to hide the sausage-maker if they want laymen to enjoy their sausage. That is to say they'll have to make a way for the everyman to interact without the barrier to entry.
Though, no one says Lemmy has to become a AAA social media site
Completely agree. I'll be ecstatic if Lemmy hits the point where it's self-sustaining. It doesn't need to attract millions, but it needs enough active engaged users to post and comment so that there's enough interesting shit here
It'd be great if there was a way to get involved without having to join a specific instance; that's hard to wrap one's head around for a lot of new users, I think (it certainly was for me). Even if it was a temporary thing and users of that method were prompted to migrate to an instance of their choice at some point, having an entry point that was simpler, even if limited in what it let you do, would be helpful.
I'm hoping that if the reddit 3rd app developer start to pivot toward Lemmy it might help
Yeah for sure, usually if it doesn't "just work" or if its not convenient or they just "don't want to" then it'll be hard to convince anyone, getting all my family to move from standard SMS to signal was hard, there was no real barriers yet it was still too inconvenient to switch, even with all the benefits it offers. The two biggest issues I've seen so far is the "sub-lemmys" or just communities that exist, multiple similar communities can co-exist and have separate users, which isn't good for growth. The second issue, and by far the most worrying currently, is performance and stability with the instances that currently exist. Already we're seeing the main lemmy.ml instance being brought down to its knees with all the new users. If reddit doesn't reverse their API decision by the 12th (which at this point seems unlikely considering all the backlash already with no response) then I can't imagine how bad it would be to see even a 10th of current active reddit users trying to join at once. Its an ticking time bomb with a very quick expiration date if its not addressed quickly. I do have hope however, although my programming experience is somewhat limited a threw a few bucks on the opencollective, which I suggest everyone do if you wanna contribute in some way and you believe in the idea of a more open free internet, circa the late 90s.