Fediverse

It's depressing how many top level comments or replies are about how people like that there is a technical barrier gatekeeping lemmy. Are yall actually leftists or do you just pretend to be while worshipping your own version of social hierarchy in which us nerds are on top?

For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.

The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.

It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.

Add a bell button and a whistle button.

I think instead of promoting a page where people have to choose a server, just send people to lemmy.world directly. We should probably just get people to sign up there at first and have the ability to migrate their accounts to other servers if they want to do that later.

Having to choose from multiple servers is asking people to choose between a bunch of options they know nothing about. Get people straight to looking at content and posting stuff as soon as possible, once they're more invested, and understand more about the different instances they can change servers if that's what they want to do.

But yeah writhing the code needed to make account migration seamless might be a lot of work so not sure if that will happen.

Why is “drama” on Lemmy always highly exaggerated by people?

“Endless wars of who federates with who”. What is that person even talking about and who the fuck would even care as a normal user?

I've decided this is good and want a Lemmy that is restricted to just the nerdiest of nerds. These little spaces are cool without all those horrible reddit users.

If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn't be a good community member anyway.

Bad UX isn't keeping most people away from Lemmy. Not being able to give up their addiction to Reddit is what's keeping them from Lemmy. There's a lot of people who will complain about the shitty things billionaires and tech companies and politicians do to them, but aren't willing to lift a finger to change things.

You're never going to bring those people to Lemmy unless Reddit shuts down and you develop an algorithm to spoon feed them whatever they want to feed their doomscrolling habit. Lemmy is better off without them.

It should have an account creation process like those old RPGs where it asks a series of questions then says, “we recommend this server: . It is ” then has click next to proceed or click “I want to choose another server” to just get a list.

1-hate, 5-love Do you like capitalism? Do you like tech? Do you like sports? Would you prefer a large server? etc

It should also be possible to skip the quiz and go straight to server selection at any point.

The main reason why I still prefer Reddit, is content. Even though I am subscribed to similar subs/communities/magazines/whatever on Reddit/Lemmy, my Reddit home screen is filled with interesting content compared to Lemmy. And, I never had to ban/hide anything/anyone on Reddit.

"but it feels like old reddit". My god, imagine actively preferring the new reddit UI. Let them keep their shiny jangling keys instead of coming over here and pestering the devs for a snoovatar feature or whatever nonsense.

The 'maybe read for 2 minutes to figure it out' miniscule barrier to entry is a feature not a bug.

Aren't you guys sick of forced infinite growth in every aspect of our collective existence? The Fediverse is not shareholder owned, we don't have to be slaves to The Red Line That Must Go Up. Reddit went to shit when it was aggresively mainstreamed, I don't want it to happen to lemmy as well.

it feels like old reddit

Wait, when did that become a bad thing? I exclusively browsed old.reddit.com because the new layout is a fucking abomination.

Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.

We could stop bullying .ml users for being .ml users. That's the only "war" I have seen here.

Reading these comments I feel a sense of dread. You are all experiencing survivor bias. Initially when I ran into barriers I gave up for like a year before bothering to try Lemmy again.

If you don't want Lemmy to serve as an actual counter to corporate controlled social media if it means letting in "normies" then you are content with corporate controlled social media continuing to dominate our lives. Which sounds about right for humanity. The smugness is vile.

Just bring on the vacuum decay event already.

This is why email never caught on. Who wants to choose between Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Proton, and Comcast? A successful email service would be one where you can only communicate with users of the same email service. /s

Greenleaf is pretty massively exaggerating about the extent of defederation, as only a handful ever get defederated regularly, certainly not enough to call it 'wars'.

As for UX, there's definitely room for lots of improvements, especially in making it easier to explore another instances local communities from within your own insinstance without explicitly subbing to them all or using lemmyverse.net.

But I don't think the very concept of different instances is truly a barrier or bad UX, that other user is just giving lazy excuses for not switching away from Reddit.

If that was a legitimate issue, MMO's (which also often have servers the player needs to choose) wouldn't have the userbase they do. Nor would Email have taken off.

Even if Lemmy was one big simple centralized server, that user would just come up with another reason they couldn't switch.

"Oh, it's too small, my niche communities aren't there"

"The UI isn't as nice"

"The mod tools aren't as good"

Etc.

There was a lot of debate about this when the reddit exodus happened in 2023. I initially joined then and have stuck around since. Something that was said a lot back then that I agree with is that Lemmy doesn't have to compete with reddit. It's alright for this corner of the internet to exist and not be the single dominant one.

If someone makes a reddit clone somewhere else with more liberal admins, good for them. I wouldn't be going there. The fact that Lemmy is sectioned into servers is part of the appeal. I'm glad that I can be part of a server with very progressive administration. I would never get this level of moderation and support from any other social media. I'm fine with that meaning that uninformed people who just want to doom-scroll are less likely to come here.

We have seen growth periods time and again when problems arise with private social media companies. Each time, a little more people from the initial wave join for good. I think that's fine. Most lemmy servers are run for free by people who just believe in what we're doing here. We can always add more servers, but we can't handle the kind of traffic that reddit handles. We're entirely dependent on dedicated people investing large amounts of their time to create and maintain these spaces for us.

Has software usage really gotten to the point where the average person can't handle being given a choice about anything? Where it's just too much effort to do anything more than mindlessly click on whatever is presented to them? 🤦

1. Stop making blanket claims about instances you like or dislike, no matter how fair you feel they may be, and don't fall for the bait of others doing it. This is just drama and is exhausting to read about.
2. Instead of suggesting people "join Lemmy", say things like "Join Lemmy at programming.dev" (or whatever instance you yourself are using). Sure, "but picking a server is hard" will always probably be a complaint, but leading with the one you personally use is the best way around it. If you're on a hobby focused instance (like I am) then maybe suggest a generic instance to people outside of your hobby. Don't be afraid to suggest lemmy.world. It's better to suggest the biggest instance than endlessly debate about which one is the best to suggest.

I don't get how people get hung on choosing a server when people have been chosing a starter Pokémon since 1998 without any major issues. And you get just about the "same" amount of practical info.

Really, what tiktok does to a generation...

To the guy in here going "UX != UI!!!" Sure, but you can't design UX, especially for the unwashed masses. "Tried cutting toenails with lawnmower; severed foot. 0/10 bad user experience."

Lemmy has a "have our cake and eat it too" problem. It offers two mutually exclusive promises:

• Each instance is its own independent self-contained little Reddit with their own communities, culture, code of conduct etc. so that individuals can find a place that suits them or make one if none is available, and

• All the servers are part of one great big federated system where all users have access to content on all instances so it doesn't matter which instance you sign up for, you can access it all.

In practice, the former is more or less true, the latter really isn't.

First there's the obvious topic of defederation, which makes the "join one server, access all of them" an outright lie. On the one hand, I think everyone here will agree this platform requires defederation to function so that we can kick out instances like lolli.rape or whatever, which thank you admins and mods for dealing with. But what about Hexbear, or Truth Social (which as I understand it is running on Mastodon software). The only honest answer to "where do we draw that line?" is "somewhere in the middle of that slap fight over there."

It is intellectually dishonest to say that Lemmy has this problem and Reddit doesn't. Post in r/mensrights and an automod bans you from r/twoxchromosomes. Do basically anything anywhere on the platform and get banned from r/conservative. They managed to implement "It's a different platform depending on who you are" on a monolithic service.

All that crap aside, the average user has a more limited perspective on the rest of the fediverse than his home instance. Often, the UI defaults to viewing only local posts, you have to tell it to give you a global feed. You can browse a list of your local communities, you can browse a list of global communities, you can't browse a list of communities on a given foreign instance. 'Show me everything on lemmy.sports' or indeed 'show me a list of communities on lemmy.nsfw.' You cannot create (or moderate?) communities on instances you aren't a member of. It is, if only slightly, easier to participate on your home instance than elsewhere.

Either your choice of server does matter, or it doesn't.

If it does matter, we shouldn't have so many general purpose instances, it should be lemmy.music and lemmy.art and lemmy.uk. Then newcomers are presented a meaningful choice. Are you mostly interested in discussions pertaining to your country? Your hobby? Your career? Sign up here to mostly participate in that, and no matter which you pick you can visit the rest of the Lemmyverse, too."

If it doesn't matter, then design it such that instances are entirely transparent to users; eliminate the possibility of [email protected] and [email protected] coexisting, and make all instances lemmy1.world lemmy2.world, issue credentials centrally and then just spread the load in the background.

I don't think you can have both at the same time.

because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

No, it isn't.

The UX is fine. It's clean, fast, and functional. Anyone who is too fancy for "old Reddit" can stay on new Reddit with the bots and Xers. They'd just come over and be nothing but insufferable anyway.
o.o

Multiple front ends and themes are available. In the end, we're here for the conversation, not fancy graphics, sounds, or CSS trash.

If someone can't get past picking a server or simple graphics, the likelyhood of them being any benefit here is minimal. The more is not always the merrier.

Whether these are just lazy excuses or not, but let's be real for a moment.

Imagine someone, who's used to go to reddit.com, search for a reddit app in the app store, both of which have the same logo, design, etc... and use their username/password to login and browse the content.

almost every service, that people use for the last decades is based on this specific approach, except for emails. Even the TLD was always .com

Now imagine, how overwhelmed those people might feel, when you tell them "just come over to lemmy".

Lemmy, where? lemmy.com? Here's where you then start explaining the different instances, federation, etc..

the next question will be: where's the Lemmy app? Remember, the unified logo and design? well, good luck explaining that all lemmy apps are de facto third-party-apps.

Now, once they make it throug all of that, the next hurdle that will confuse the hell out of them are the communities scattered all across the instances.

The problem is content, there isn't any. Either I select all -> hot and see new content that almost feels like /r/subreddit_name/new or I select all -> active and while those have engagement, its all very old content, like a day old, two days old, etc. And then the other problem is that I only see two types of content usually: Either articles or screenshots from social media. Nothing else.

I just think that unless there's a sudden influx of users for whatever reason, lemmy will never pick up. We just need more and more people, but have no way of getting them, not to mention so many communities just choosing not to migrate off Reddit, especially huge sports communities.

Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?

endless wars of who's federeated with who

i've been here for months and months, i might have seen this mentioned as an aside once or twice. but "endless wars"?

Lemmy UX is identical to old Reddit. Come on.

Better UX than Reddit, they even point out that it’s like old.reddit instead of the trash UX they have now

It’s just dismissive to get people to agree without looking

People forget that user experience isn't just the stuff on the screen you interact with. There is a governance piece that is lacking in a lot of instances, and in the open source community as a whole. A lot of the successful projects out there are backed by some kind of foundation.

Take a look at the latest Hexbear drama. Some person out there owned the domain for their instance and let it expire. Now they are in a bidding war with a crypto site with a hexagon-related name. If they had formed some kind of organization or entity that registered the domain and owned the instance, this probably wouldn't have happened. Their users wouldn't get redirected to a domain auction site when trying to access the site. That's not an ideal user experience. It destroys trust.

SDF being a 501c(7) is one of the reasons that it's my home instance. For me, it provides a level of trust that an instance run by some random person on the internet doesn't. If there is a big federation/defederation debate, then it's really up to the membership to decide, and not a collection of admins or a single person getting the vibe of the users.

Another thing to remember is that Lemmy really shouldn't be competing against Reddit. The purpose of Reddit is to have the user generate content in order to keep the user's attention on the site so they can sell targeted advertisements. This is the basic business model for all of commercial social media. It has nothing to do with creating communities. That is secondary. If you want more people on Lemmy so that there is more content for you to consume, just stay on Reddit or TikTok. They need to sell ads in order to fund model training to keep your engagement up in order to sell more ads in order to provide quarterly growth to their shareholders. If you want more people on Lemmy because more brains mean better communities, then focus the communities.

The real opportunity for the fediverse is getting a lot of the existing non-profits, social organizations, and other types of communities to set up their own instances. This answers the “what instance do I join?” question by joining the instance associated with the community you're already involved in. Another reason I'm on SDF is retro computing. If you're really into your local makerspace, then you probably have a community ready to go for a Lemmy instance. If you're involved in your HOA and you all have a Facebook page or are all over Nextdoor, maybe set up a Lemmy instance. In all these cases, the organizational infrastructure is there for the administrative stuff like getting a domain and paying for hosting.

Also, I'm old enough to remember that Facebook took off when everyone's parents started joining. Imagine if the AARP rolled out a Lemmy instance. They are big enough put some serious money into development. You would probably get a lot of accessibility improvements.

P.S.

Check out how theATL.social is organized. The guy did as a LLC, but he seems to be community focused and transparent.

https://yall.theatl.social/post/201135

https://opencollective.com/theatlsocial

https://yall.theatl.social/communities

Reddit being popular is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy.

When you get right down to it: people don't care that Reddit is selling their information, that the site itself is a piece of garbage, that running the site requires a bunch of no-life weirdos whose numbers will only increase going forward and whose power will likewise, or that the design actively encourages bots to the point of disincentivizing actual human beings from using it.

They want their memes, they want their news, they want their niche little interest subs and they want their porn. The simple fact is that lemmy is a smaller version of Reddit with fewer options and to the majority of people who don't care about their data or the objectively dogshit running of the site, there is no reason to cross over to Lemmy.

Until Reddit takes a Musk-type turn into being totally unuseable, lemmy will only see a trickle of users who are burned by Reddit.

99% of users are going to check out when you ask which server they want to join

How did people figure out what email provider to use?

Wait wait wait... This implies people like new reddit... That shit makes my eyes bleed wtf

Joining is a bad experience. "Please commit now to a server on this service you know nothing about... Then you can try it out!" I understand the concept of decentralization, but it's ass-backwards...

I’m fine with the effort bar being selecting an instance. If someone can’t get beyond that, there’s probably not much they have to say I’d be interested in.

Fully agree with that, the bar is too to high usually unless you're being handheld through the process, realistically there should be an app like how blue sky is that doesn't give you any of the options because less options means easier setup. If they want to jump instances after that that would be considered an advanced function but they can choose to do so on their own accord.

Another issue I think is lack of actual awareness, like Bsky got media coverage, the everyday person still is like "the hells a lemmy"

The tough part for me is that the reason I use Reddit is for bullshitting with people about sports teams I like. Lets look at some of the communities here.

• Baltimore Orioles -- There's one on lemmy.world with 150 subscribers. The last post is from 4 months ago and it's a game thread posted by a bot with 0 comments. There's also one on fanaticus.social with the last post from 7 months ago.
• Carolina Panthers -- There's one on fanaticus.social with 3 subscribers.
• Miami Heat -- There's one on lemmy.world with 10 subscribers.
• Pittsburgh Penguins -- Again, lemmy.world with 11 subscribers.

I'd love to get off reddit but until there's actually people to talk with, this place is just never going to meet the needs of sports content that I use Reddit for. I had no interest in Bluesky until some people actually got on it as well. The Shutdown Fullcast for college football brought a bunch of people and fans there so it gave some utility to the site. Without utility, there's no reason to be here.

Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.

Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about

• too few members
• wtf is multiple servers?

While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet