Fediverse

I disagree that this is a concern. If you are already exaggerating about federation wars, chances are you already tried lemmy and know a good bit about selecting instances. The average user will not care as much as you do.

The average user will go to join-lemmy site, will not care at all about the different instances and likely choose the biggest one or first one they see. None of them will think "oh no this one is involved in federation wars" because thats not something you find out before knowing some about the fediverse.

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...

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

I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, "iT's JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY." None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, "It's easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork."

Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.

Once you're into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you're coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, "EmAiL! iT's LiKe EmAiL!" then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.

Don't over think it, the people who want to be here will be.

Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.

That bar to entry is a good thing; it helps keep most of the stupid out. The same stupid that ruined the rest of the internet.

Unless we fix the UX problems in Lemmy, a Bluesky-like alternative of reddit is going to pop up, and overtake Lemmy, like what happened with Mastadon

imo this friction will erode as larger instances come into play; people will join a large, main instance without even knowing of the others, and-- if they have a problem with the instance they joined-- they'll find they can easily jump ship there.

LEMMY IS FUN PLEASE

Just tell new users just sign up on your instance. Make it less confusing by sending them to a specific website and not just telling them about the software.

I swear to God, there are so many tech people here that overthink it because they know details that the average user would not give a single fuck about.

I was on Sync for Reddit before going here, and checked out Lemmy as the devs switched platform. So the joke's on them, my UX is basically identical.

That said, sucks that people shy away because of complexity.

lol lol

1. Reddit sucks
2. I can’t be expected to make a decision
3. I’ll stick with reddit

IMHO, the UX is bad, but the user base is also repellant. It's further left than Reddit so most people who jump in bounce right off. That's going to be difficult to change organically. Especially because most users respond to this with "good." So there's definitely no appetite to appeal to a wider audience. I predict Lemmy will become increasingly ideologically partisan and isolated.

whatever, just make a lemmy app that defaults to lemmy.world i guess

Could have auto versus manual server choice. Can always maintain option for granular selection for those who want, but "normies" could walk into a quiz when migrating?

• Top three things you used Reddit for? (List of maybe 10+ things, servers can maintain their feature list to empower this)

• Do you like A) talking to everybody about days topics B) talking to a smaller group of like minded people

• Do you like A) a MORE moderated space B) a LESS moderated space, realizing you may see more spam and controversy

And then calculates a server that meets needs, if multiple, then random number generator to assign a server from the filtered options. On user side, all they see is a quiz followed by a typical registration screen. This would help with distribution of users across niche servers, but feel lighter for user. They also would assume a more curated experience, regardless of where they end up. Servers could have to opt in to be fed users from search of they were afraid of impact on cost to maintain server.

The above likely aren't the right questions, but this framework could be effective

Gonna don my tinfoil hat here for a second...

Was the monetization of the API a deliberate move to kick out the progressive and tech-literate long-time reddit users (myself included, with 16 year badge and centuryclub), to in turn make the site more of a Nazi, pro-Trump circle jerk?

Because I really think it succeeded. The whole atmosphere shifted that day, and I've barely been back except when I end up there out of muscle memory or a Google result...and those often have the best answers removed by someone who went through and scrubbed their account.

We all remember how Spez treated r/thedonald, right?

"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"

https://old.lemmy.world/ looks just like reddit. It's not the UI. It's network effect and there's not a lot to be done.