this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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Fediverse

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 23 minutes ago* (last edited 22 minutes ago)

A lot of disingenuous Lemmy users in that thread pretending that picking a server is more confusing than filing your taxes. I think join-lemmy should probably hot-list like 6 or 7 servers instead of making you choose via a primary interest, since you can migrate your account later anyway. But I am personally not tech oriented and managed to make an account and find an app without an issue.

The goal was never to convince people who don't know how email works to join, it's to convince an average reddit user to join.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

"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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 24 minutes ago* (last edited 23 minutes ago)

It's been a while since I've been on Lemmy, so correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Voyager, which I'm using right now, pretty good? You also don't have to install an app, just set it as a Browser app on Firefox and you're good to go, even though the apps on the Google Play store are pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 53 minutes ago

Two minutes (and you're being very optimistic here, for someone who isn't technically inclined it's almost certainly going to be more) of required reading on a subject that's just not even remotely interesting to 99% of people eliminates basically all non technical people. Because they just don't care enough to devote that time. If that's the user base you want, that works out, but I'd like people here who can hold a conversation about something other than Linux and Star Trek. It's honestly kinda boring here.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

"Here's Lemmy. It's like Reddit. There's a bunch of different websites for it, but they all have basically the same people and posts on them. Just join one near you, if you don't like it you can always use a different one later"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The one thing that I like about the fediverse is that it somehow unintentionally has a filter to keep the low effort people from poisoning the well.

I have been on the fediverse from 2019 and these types of arguments have been floated times and again at each exodus wave. they expect to be offered everything on a silver platter. they come into a new platform maintained by hobbyists and good will people and they expect it to offer the same features, experiences and user base or even better than the once on proprietary media that spend billions of dollars to acquire that user base. they get screwed by one company and hope that another for profit won't do the same. Lemmy is even easier than email, as you don't need to know the handle of people of communities you interact with you just search for them or explore the public feed. We don't need them here.

there are many aspects the fediverse can improve upon. decentralization or federation isn't one of them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 31 minutes ago

Agreed, to a certain extent. The internet was a much better place when it took at least a little effort and knowledge to join in and participate. Barriers can be a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 hours ago (6 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 37 minutes ago

This is how I ended up on a German server. I don’t speak German but really isn’t an issue. Just pick one.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

If they find Lemmy "too hard to understand", do we really want them here?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 37 minutes ago (1 children)

Gatekeeping at its finest.

I for one would welcome anybody here who wants to come. Rather them than more people with your mindset.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

Assumptions, exaggerations and over-assertions being said by yours and others' comments - and to be quite frank that toxic attitude turns me off of using Lemmy and the fediverse in the same way it turned me off of using reddit. Of all the communities I explore on Lemmy, this fediverse community is full of the kinds of posts and comments that would make the average person --or anyone, really-- assume this community is full of pompous jerks and isn't worth exploring. Fediverse is not user friendly to the average person, whether or not the community ever wants to admit it - and until it finally admits as such and attempts solutions the fediverse will probably fail. Modern technology can be as agile as possible, but if the user experience is still unfriendly it simply does not work to peak efficiency. The bogus superiority complex here needs to be squashed.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Everyone gets signed up to that initially and those who want to transfer to another instance afterwards can.

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I would love info/data-sheets about all the instances, that would make the decision process easier:

  • who de-federated who?
  • who hosts most content related to topic X?
  • number of users and their distribution of joined communities
  • posts/second average user activity …
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 minutes ago

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 tye 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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

When reddit was coming up, a big issue people had was it was too confusing with bad UI. People didn't know which subreddits to follow. Its very similar, theres just a whole other layer.

Just find a popular instance that is federated with similar instances. And making accounts are easy too, so just do it in two or three instances. Yeah it's a bit much compared to reddit, but it's very very easy.

[–] danhab99 1 points 1 hour ago

IMO if Lemmy had all the features that old.reddt had it would still be an objectivly worse UX experience. Federating reduces UX, that's just a rule.

We should focus on making the onboarding process as simple as possible like enabling social login (inb4 insecure and not private: let people make their choices), and making it easier to move between instances and understand what instance you're looking at.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

I use Stealth with the express intent of not contributing to Reddit (there are no ads on Stealth) while consuming their server's resources. It's a sort of protest in its own way. Especially since those niche interest subs are the only way I could quickly get information about the community without having to scroll through discord servers— hell, in Lemmy-Kbin most of them are run by bots reposting from Reddit, and there is no way I can manage or advertise my own magazine, what with my busy schedule in my university.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

Which server do you want to use is like asking "Do you want Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo for email?" it really isn't that big of a deal, but maybe people these days have a hard time doing that too...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

People always use the email comparison but it's really not the same, it's more complicated than that. We know it's not too much of a big deal but it is when you don't know what it means to be on a server.

I remember being presented with a choice of servers myself and wondering what on earth it meant, and just wanting to join the "default" one. Ultimately it doesn't matter too much but at the time it feels like a big hurdle.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Good keep those numb nuts away. Reddit sucks not only because of Spez and his greedy overlords, many of the users suck as well and I bet there is a big overlap on the Venn diagram between people who suck and people who think lemmy is confusing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 50 minutes ago

This is what we call "dipshit energy".

The fediverse is confusing and that's bad. It should be less confusing, and there should be less people making comments like that one. Quit it.

We'll get there sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Technical aptitude != emotional maturity

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