Fediverse

It's depressing how many top level comments or replies are about how people like that there is a technical barrier gatekeeping lemmy. Are yall actually leftists or do you just pretend to be while worshipping your own version of social hierarchy in which us nerds are on top?

Why is “drama” on Lemmy always highly exaggerated by people?

“Endless wars of who federates with who”. What is that person even talking about and who the fuck would even care as a normal user?

it feels like old reddit

Wait, when did that become a bad thing? I exclusively browsed old.reddit.com because the new layout is a fucking abomination.

Greenleaf is pretty massively exaggerating about the extent of defederation, as only a handful ever get defederated regularly, certainly not enough to call it 'wars'.

As for UX, there's definitely room for lots of improvements, especially in making it easier to explore another instances local communities from within your own insinstance without explicitly subbing to them all or using lemmyverse.net.

But I don't think the very concept of different instances is truly a barrier or bad UX, that other user is just giving lazy excuses for not switching away from Reddit.

If that was a legitimate issue, MMO's (which also often have servers the player needs to choose) wouldn't have the userbase they do. Nor would Email have taken off.

Even if Lemmy was one big simple centralized server, that user would just come up with another reason they couldn't switch.

"Oh, it's too small, my niche communities aren't there"

"The UI isn't as nice"

"The mod tools aren't as good"

Etc.

This is why email never caught on. Who wants to choose between Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Proton, and Comcast? A successful email service would be one where you can only communicate with users of the same email service. /s

"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.

Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?

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...

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...

For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.

The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.

It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.

Wait wait wait... This implies people like new reddit... That shit makes my eyes bleed wtf

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

1. Stop making blanket claims about instances you like or dislike, no matter how fair you feel they may be, and don't fall for the bait of others doing it. This is just drama and is exhausting to read about.
2. Instead of suggesting people "join Lemmy", say things like "Join Lemmy at programming.dev" (or whatever instance you yourself are using). Sure, "but picking a server is hard" will always probably be a complaint, but leading with the one you personally use is the best way around it. If you're on a hobby focused instance (like I am) then maybe suggest a generic instance to people outside of your hobby. Don't be afraid to suggest lemmy.world. It's better to suggest the biggest instance than endlessly debate about which one is the best to suggest.

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

Aren't you guys sick of forced infinite growth in every aspect of our collective existence? The Fediverse is not shareholder owned, we don't have to be slaves to The Red Line That Must Go Up. Reddit went to shit when it was aggresively mainstreamed, I don't want it to happen to lemmy as well.

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.

because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

No, it isn't.

The UX is fine. It's clean, fast, and functional. Anyone who is too fancy for "old Reddit" can stay on new Reddit with the bots and Xers. They'd just come over and be nothing but insufferable anyway.
o.o

Multiple front ends and themes are available. In the end, we're here for the conversation, not fancy graphics, sounds, or CSS trash.

If someone can't get past picking a server or simple graphics, the likelyhood of them being any benefit here is minimal. The more is not always the merrier.

There was a lot of debate about this when the reddit exodus happened in 2023. I initially joined then and have stuck around since. Something that was said a lot back then that I agree with is that Lemmy doesn't have to compete with reddit. It's alright for this corner of the internet to exist and not be the single dominant one.

If someone makes a reddit clone somewhere else with more liberal admins, good for them. I wouldn't be going there. The fact that Lemmy is sectioned into servers is part of the appeal. I'm glad that I can be part of a server with very progressive administration. I would never get this level of moderation and support from any other social media. I'm fine with that meaning that uninformed people who just want to doom-scroll are less likely to come here.

We have seen growth periods time and again when problems arise with private social media companies. Each time, a little more people from the initial wave join for good. I think that's fine. Most lemmy servers are run for free by people who just believe in what we're doing here. We can always add more servers, but we can't handle the kind of traffic that reddit handles. We're entirely dependent on dedicated people investing large amounts of their time to create and maintain these spaces for us.

Has software usage really gotten to the point where the average person can't handle being given a choice about anything? Where it's just too much effort to do anything more than mindlessly click on whatever is presented to them? 🤦

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

If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn't be a good community member anyway.

Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.

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.

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.