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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 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...
This is how I ended up on a German server. I don’t speak German but really isn’t an issue. Just pick one.
Hey at least you'll never run out of ich_iel!
Picking a starter is easy. Everyone knows that pokémon is a game about collecting creatures, and everyone knows what fire/ water/ grass is, so no one's gonna be stumped. Not everyone is gonna immediately know what an instance is, or what it does, or what it's there for
Everyone has heard of fire, water and grass, sure. Do they have any idea what that means in the Pokemon universe? I certainly hadn't.
You know how you might use gmail and your friend might use outlook and you can just email no problem? Like that.
At least a blåhaj is kind of like a pokémon.
Im a french canadian plumber, nothing scream "have you tried unplugging and pluggin it again" more than that, yet here i am?
The people still on reddit will die with it, it's where they made their home and there will always be a reason to stay.
Nothing to do with TikTok or this generation. Most users find it complicated and insulting them won't change reality. I've learned that the hard way from my years trying to convert people to Linux.
What Lemmy and Mastodon need to do is to have one canonical instance that they manage well themselves. Everyone gets signed up to that initially and those who want to transfer to another instance afterwards can. That alone could have prevented BlueSky taking the lead the way it did.
That's the second big problem hidden in this model: account migration doesn't currently work (nor do I know of an ETA for feature release).
Not to mention the first problem: this heavily promotes centralization which is what caused this whole mess in the first place.
Absolute centralisation caused the mess. My suggestion is just initial centralisation. It lets people get active with the platform while they figure out the basics rather than paralysing them with options up front.
One central server is created. Users finally have an easy time joining lemmy and most are content with staying right where they are. A large amount of content is now centralized to one place. Suddenly, financial interests take notice of a large amount of untapped potential. Caving in to the opportunity to live an easier life under the warm blanket of money, the central server owner sells the server to the highest bidder.
The new central server owner defederates from smaller instances, eventually cutting themselves off from all other lemmy servers. Enshittification begins.
I'm sure there's reasons this couldn't happen but I think the biggest strength of lemmy is having users just randomly pick and then figure it out later. I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and defederation practices, so I moved.
Maybe you're right, but I think that the issue isn't that everyone was on one server, but there was nowhere for them to go without loosing touch with the people they connect with there. The fediverse can easily give people an out and they can still stay in touch with the people they want.
"I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and defederation practices, so I moved."
That works for me. But most of us here have been running linux boxes on ARM devices for so long that we have trouble relating to the average user. I met someone recently who makes great contributions to Reddit posts like fact checking and providing digestible research. They're not tech savvy and I doubt we'll ever have the value of their contribution here while things are as complicated as they are up front.
It would be nice if I could use (my name)@(mydomain) and just point (mydomain) at whichever public instance, without having to spool up my own instance.
Damn right, I'm only on Lemmy because there isnt a better alternative, not because its great.
The sad fact is that for social media to not suck you need moderation, for moderation not to suck they need to be paid mods, which means it has to make money somehow, which either means adds, subscriptions or mining user data...
You don't need paid mods. If you have a good community people will volunteer to moderate out of altruism, because they enjoy the community and want to make sure it stays good. Paid mods are actually worse than volunteer mods imo, because they don't actually care as much.
Volunteers are a double edged sword. At some volume of users and content it either needs to be a huge team of like minded volunteers which increases the likelihood of ye power tripping bastards or someone who is paid to do it and spend the time with rules to follow.
Maybe. But Lemmy isn't close to that volume of users yet
I would love info/data-sheets about all the instances, that would make the decision process easier:
You can find the defederation info quite easily just by asking, or going to the blocked instance tab on whatever server you're wondering about.
Your other questions are somewhat ambiguous, so there's no easy way to simplify it into a data sheet. Because of the fact that the vast majority of instances are federated with each other, it also doesn't matter that much.
I don't think that kind of numerical information would really make the decision any easier, it'd be more likely to confuse people even further.
Servers are either general purpose or with a specific focus. Ani.social, ttrpg.network, slrpnk.net, are servers that clearly advertise the specific content they host and focus on. And obviously the geographical/language based servers (feddit.uk, aussie.zone, lemmy.nz) do the same thing. That's pretty easy to figure out imho.
The distribution of joined communities just seems way more complicated than necessary. Number of users is already the most widely available stat, just go to fedidb or lemmyverse and you can easily see the list of instances ordered by monthly active users.
https://lemmyverse.net/?order=active_month
I do think a cheat sheet about defederations would be nice to have though, I might try to make one when I have a chance.
...what, are you looking for instances for bots?
I suggested it to a few ppl and even offered to show them how to use it but they said it's "too hard to understand" sad times we live in.
I don't really buy it tbh. People nowadays take pride in using stuff without understanding it. From Cookie Clicker, to even something as dangerous as car driving. In theory, they should be salivating at the Fediverse.
If they find Lemmy "too hard to understand", do we really want them here?
I do. Anything is better than the sites they are on currently. More different opinions can help a place grow.
Gatekeeping at its finest.
I for one would welcome anybody here who wants to come. Rather them than more people with your mindset.
Both can be true. We can welcome everybody who wants to come, and also realize that having 100 million complete noobs suddenly join wouldn't necessarily be the best outcome either.
Show people the way and if they indicate that it's too much effort to do a bit of research for 10-20 minutes, understand that it's not exactly a huge loss for them to not join.
Pre-emptive defederation