this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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Buy European

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51
/r/buyfromEU "Europe keeps building social apps no one wants", "No "pick your fediverse server,” no confusion. It’s one big centralized thing, and that’s part of why posts can go viral" (old.reddit.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I tried to correct them there: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jtooq4/europe_keeps_building_social_apps_no_one_wants/mlvrugy/

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I agree with some of the points of the original thread:

  • having Twitter clone or Instagram clone but decentralized kinda sucks no matter how you put it and it’s probably not mass sustainable

On the other hand… Lemmy is just a forum that can connect to other forums. You don’t find cool subreddits searching for them, the good ones are the ones recommended by other people, usually not by search. The fediverse actually suffers from having a big user base that wants Reddit/twitter/insta but decentralized instead of having small forums/microblogs connected to each other. Also the reason why you see me often advocating for less “generalized instances” and wanting more vertical focused ones. This is easily possible with lemmy dividing by topic and with mastodon dividing by localization.

If you want the fedi to thrive, build lemmy instances focused on being a stand alone forum first and mastodon ones focused on being local first (same for mobilizon)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Also the reason why you see me often advocating for less “generalized instances” and wanting more vertical focused ones.

Definitely a good point. To be honest, with a lot of countries/languages instances we're already there, and we're improving on the theme-focused instances

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Monetarization and politics aside, he got some valid points surrounding usability, ease of use and content.

The majority of the fediverse project's fail at onboarding user with simplicity. Modern third party clients (mastodon, pixelfeld, lemmy aswell) do that better, even par excellence. But if we keep referring people to websites with server lists, we'll lose them at that point already.

Federation and lengthy explanations (wall of texts) and tutorials (sorry @[email protected]) are no selling-point for everybody. It caters the nerd in us, but average joe is not a nerd but a simple user with little interest for these details. You could better refer them to an App that works without account and say: hit the explore button to see communities/contents/hashtags (what ever drives the particular network). In my opinion the old principle KISS (keep it stupid simple) is what needs to be followed, so we cann pull people in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

YES, indeed @Senor Mono You are right. That's what's making a good app... good :-) A simple stupid Graphic User Interface. The fact that we are here on Lemmy means (most likely) that we are some kind of "nerds", because Average Joe will not come here, unless he/she can use an app without hassle and is able to discover the Lemmy communities with even 10 brain cells (or less). I know, I'm making a parody of it, but in fact that's exactely why apps like Insta, FB, etc are so popular. To end with a "free version" of Trump's words... even the uneducated must be able to use it without tariff barriers, LOL. Conclusion to be plain and simple: In my opinion (feel free to disagree)...We need to rethink the GUI of Lemmy and everything will be fine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Are you ever used Voyager (https://vger.app/ https://vger.app/settings/install) ? Seems quite easy to use, there is even a tool to discover similar communities to your Reddit subscriptions when you first start the app.

I regularly see people saying they just use Voyager, they don't even know what instance they are using.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yes, I have Voyager myself (little mouse icon) and I'm using it, but still I find it quite confusing for non-tech people. I try to explain. I'm a High School teacher in graphic design and crossmedia. I work mostly with teenagers between 14-18yo. They can work very well with the software, but don't try to explain the technology behind it. They don't wanna know or they don't care, as long as the software works and the program does what they want it to do. I also spend years educating adults to work with new technology. When I look at the Voyager interface, I see: Home, All, Local. I see lemmy.wtf; feddit.uk; feddit.org; lemmy.world, etc... Maybe people think that I'm just crazy and/or overreacting, but I can guarantee you that alot of people don't understand all the tech things behind it. Only 0.1% of the users of FB, Insta, TikTok, etc... have a clue (or are interested) in the tech behind the apps.

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

Home, All, Local. I see lemmy.wtf; feddit.uk; feddit.org; lemmy.world, etc…

What is confusing about Home? The description says "Posts from subscriptions"

I see lemmy.wtf; feddit.uk; feddit.org; lemmy.world, etc…

You mean thet community names have the @instance at the end? It is more confusing than an email address that is [email protected]?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yep. To be clear... for me that's OK, bc I understand it, but I showed it to my wife and daughter and they were thinking... "that looks complicated". So... if we would be able to mask the @xxxxx things, it would look more "simple" and clean.

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

But then it would look even more confusing. The picture above shows [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] . Those are three different communities, not showing it would make it more confusing.

Do people think that [email protected] and [email protected] are the same email addresses?

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

OK... whatever. I rest my case and I move on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I see where the confusion can come from, but there is really no way around it unfortunately.

I keep bringing the email example because that has been known by pretty much everyone for decades that the complete email address is name@emailprovider

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

My 9.5 brain cells found the way 🙂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Hahaha. That's great LOL. More than welcome. :-)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No worries, the actual consensus is actually to do it is in a one-liner, similar to what you're saying

What is Lemmy in one sentence?

Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit, you can visit https://phtn.app/ to have a look at the content, and install an app using https://vger.app/settings/install.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BoycottUnitedStates/comments/1jrcrh6/lemmy_as_an_nonus_alternative_to_red_dit_using/

The issue is that if you just give them the one-liner with a "trust me, it's better, but you won't know why" will raise a lot of questions. Hence all of the explanations after the one-liner. But I make sure to insist that most people shouldn't read those

If you are still reading, it means that you want to know more about how things are running.

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

Yea, if it takes more than three steps, and five minutes to get started, you are loosing people

Also you would have to have a sharepic with three major platforms (mastodon, pixelfed, lemmy) in parallel.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Trying to mention Maston, Pixelfed and Lemmy at once seems confusing and to go against the KISS principle. Usually, people are looking for an alternative to one of the three, so pointing them to the one makes more sense.

However, talking about pics, https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started is a cool guide with cute illustrations. I usually refer to it when people are already on Lemmy and ask questions on how federation works

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I mean a little sharepic with three columns, nothing fancy or bloated.

  • X → Mastodon (logos)
  • Insta → Pixelfeld (logos)
  • Reddit → Lemmy (logo)

In each of the columns not more than three small bullet points. Preferably the first one "Install xyz" and the second one "hit explore" followed by a graphically detached third one "Join the network" or "learn more". Don't even dare to mention servers or federation or instances and AcitivityPub.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Ah, I see. That could work. Maybe post this idea on [email protected] to see if someone can come up with a nice infographic

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

Exactly this, I only went to Lemmy because I got shadowbanned on reddit. Specifically because every time someone mentions it its always "hur dur choose server, federation, bla bla" made it 100x more complicated than it had to be and made me not even want to check it out. I tried convincing a friend of mine to switch from reddit to here and they didn't want to even after me explaining its just creating an account on feddit.nl, their reasoning was that they heard something about federation and decentralized stuff and because of that it was too complicated and he wasn't interested. You lost that user entirely because someone mentioned it instead of keeping it simple.

I will agree with the annoyance they share on the post of having multiple communities about the same subject having bad cross-posting (due to no comment sharing) to reach everyone and that we should have a solution for that. Although I do not see a direct solution, their idea is good but I don't really understand how moderation would work in that sense. Also blaze's argument "just post it on the largest server everybody is there anyways" is in my opinion exactly against what lemmy stands for and makes everybody depended on that 1 community/host/whatever we wanna call it.

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

Also blaze’s argument “just post it on the largest server everybody is there anyways” is in my opinion exactly against what lemmy stands for and makes everybody depended on that 1 community/host/whatever we wanna call it.

I said the most active community, not the largest server, otherwise I would just post to all the Lemmy.world communities, which is the opposite of what I stand for

What happens however is that you need a certain number of people to keep a community active. I was trying to keep [email protected] alive for a bit, but the most active community is by far [email protected].

makes everybody depended on that 1 community/host/whatever we wanna call it.

As it currently stands, for a conversation to happens in the comments, it needs to be on one post, on the same community. I know Piefed kind of proposes a workaround with the merged comments section, but still, if you see an interesting comment and reply to it, you are going to reply to it in the community the comment is hosted on, contributing to "consolidation", as that community is now more active by one comment that the others.

That's just inherent to the Reddit-like format.

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

I can only speak for my experience, but cross posting works best if OP does it. That way he gets notified about responses.

Second best is, if someone cross posts content to discuss it with people he shares a community with. In that case reposter should make clear where the original content comes from and that he is not OP. That way informed readers can choose to answer in the community of their liking.

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

In that case reposter should make clear where the original content comes from and that he is not OP.

Feel free to share with the mod of [email protected], they literally crossposted your post without any of the comments who make the post interesting: https://europe.pub/post/158763

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

Yea. I've seen that. In my opinion the person bringing content into the community has the responsibility to make something meaningful with it. E.g. start a conversation or get information and engage with the people.

If you're just adding links, thats fine, too. In the end, links are a way to bring attention to something worthy or funny.

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

Links are valuable, but there needs to be some comments with them to make it feel like it's worth sharing.

I've noticed a trend on the europe.pub community, it has literally only crossposts from other communities and 0 comments

Examples:

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

For now it is only one person trying to generate content to be attractive. I'm sure strategy will change in time.

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

Let's see. I'm not sure why anyone would choose to post there compared to established communities like [email protected] or [email protected], but everything is possible

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

The European domain and European breakway room has some appeal and might meet the zeitgeist. Actually I've proposed the same to some admins but didn't follow through.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

breakway room

What is that? I had a look at the sidebar, but didn't find anything

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

In a meeting you get break away rooms, where little teams can form and work. The instances has a place for any country, where people can exchange their ideas. They can then come together in a meta community like buyFromEU/buyEuropean . I like that idea very much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I see. Personally I prefer communities on dedicated instances like [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected]

Seems to reflect more the federated aspect than having all those communities on the same instance

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I spent so much time on that thread. Everyone was so wrong about a lot of stuff.

There was one person who understood the matrix protocol, but thought the fediverse was fragmented.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Yes, spent quite some time too trying to explain who things work rather than how people thought they worked.

Not sure how much we achieved, but we tried.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Every time someone suggests the EU should make their own social media platform, a little part of me dies. You know it would be slow, have weird Guidelines, have 100k downloads and a 3-star rating before disappearing in six months. It would scream “official and out of touch.” What we actually need is private investors, devs who’ve worked on real stuff before (bonus points if they’ve been at US companies as they'd already have experience), and a sane CEO. That’s it.

Democracies are dying because most people now get their information from social media companies that have every incentive to push misinformation. There's a reason the only profitable social media companies* (Meta, ByteDance, Google) are all evil and it's not because they're not European.

* Apparently Pinterest is profitable and I don't know enough about them to call them evil

We need a solid alternative to X or Reddit (first) — not another Instagram clone.
Pics are cute, but people wanna talk first. We need a clean, simple, centralized app that’s actually nice to use, has clear but not overbearing rules, and doesn’t try to shove privacy/eco stuff in your face as a personality trait. And keep the EU out of it. Let actual devs with experience run the show and let the platform evolve like a normal product.

Instagram has 2 billion MAUs, this is purely OP projecting their own preferences. Twitter and platforms like it are actually very niche, they just hold a disproportionate sway over online culture.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Pinterest is evil because it ruined image searching.

I'll search for something, the image result will be pinterest, I'll go to the pinterest page and suddenly the image never existed in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Cool, sounds like exactly the sort of person that would be unhappy on the Fediverse, complain all the time how it "lacks N feature" they want, expect the entire experience to be free and never donate to their instance admin, and just be a general wet blanket.

And so, I won't be sad that they likely never join the Fediverse, and the Fediverse will continue to gradually grow into the healthy, decentralized service it has been for the last several years without them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Just inject a gazillion Euros to the Fediverse in the right way. That's all we need.