This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.
Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.
What can we do?
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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I think the irony here is that the user-friendliness experience of Bluesky stems from it being a centralized service (in practice). I seriously doubt most people who signed up for Bluesky even understand what "decentralized social media" means.
I'm not saying Lemmy (and the greater Fediverse) can't improve, but it's clear that the biggest barrier for most people is the decentralized aspect itself -- the core of the Fediverse -- which is something one shouldn't really "hide".
As long as the state of social media usership demands centralized practices, then the Fediverse will forever be at a disadvantage in gaining mass adoption in my opinion.
We have a slight disadvantage in that regard yes, but I know we can get to a UX comparable to Bluesky and Reddit.
There just doesn't seem to be much focus on it, I feel setting good defaults will solve most of these issues.
Lemmy is nice for me now, but it took a lot of effort finding the settings and UI that I like, people will give up long before that.
See, I just use Thunder client and the defaults are x1000 times better than the official reddit app.
What I don’t get is why not pretend it’s centralized and just recommend a server when you introduce someone to lemmy instead of trying to teach them?
Oh you want an alternative to Reddit, here, go to lemmy.ca since your Canadian.
This is my thought... Don't hide it, really, more like toss a blanket over that part while people get settled. Most will stick with the defaults (whether a single default like lemmy.world or regional defaults like lemmy.ca), but they'll get the option if that's something they want to change later (I do wish there was a way to move instances rather than having to make a new account, that might also help improve adoption... "Just go with this one while you settle in and move when you know where you want to go")