this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026

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Should we revisit the instance picker to have an easier default choice? (media.piefed.zip)

submitted 3 days ago by Blaze@piefed.zip to c/piefed_meta@piefed.social

120 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1quso40/european_reddit_alternative_piefed_users_surge/o3cfxy9/

Also found in a !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com post by @biltong@piefed.co.za : https://piefed.co.za/c/fedibridge/p/22233/post-on-r-buyfromeu-on-the-recent-surge-of-users-to-piefed

I like the way Voyager does it:

https://vger.app/profile

DeltaChat also has a very easy onboarding process: you just put your name, and that's it. The app creates the password in the background and allows you to switch servers easily. That really helps with onboarding new joiners.

Piefed.zip could be a nice default choice. If there are others you see, feel free to suggest.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This person is bordering on willfully obstinate. Any time you sign up for a service there are choices to be made. Social media will ask you to pick people or subjects to follow, sites will want you to pick communications preferences, etc.

Pick one server. Make the account. Don’t like it? Pick another. It doesn’t matter, there’s no karma here to hoard. Abandon that account you don’t like. Pick three. It’s like people can’t handle the freedom of choice.

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

Modern Web has spoiled the average user. You never have to choose a server.

Need an account? Link your gmail/meta/whatever.

If there is a little bit of friction, the average user won't use it because corpos made sure that everything is a one click setup. And Lemmy is different in that regard, a bit old school.

[–] ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

Making choices is inherently stressful. Particularly if you don't know how much the choice matters. If your goal is to onboard as many people as possible (which it may well not be) then reducing the number of choices is always preferred.

[–] laranis@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

Gonna say it again, but I like there being a minor barrier to entry on Lemmy. Like, if you can't even be bothered to pick a server then we don't want you here. If you want your social media to be spoon fed to you, fuck right off. If you want a reddit or Facebook clone, you're part of the problem.

Having a basic understanding of the Fediverse should be a prerequisite. Having to choose a server is a feature, a bare minimum. And as much as I want to see more content and more engagement here, I don't want to see it dumbed down either.

[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 28 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I'm afraid that icankillpenguins might be right. That most people don't really know what a server is, so when asked to pick one they freeze

My thoughts, numbered only for potential referencing

I guess for now it could be managed by hand which server they get routed to. But that's not an ideal solution IMO
I think that idea of checking response speeds is a good idea
keeping option to read the instance's description and choose another one is a good idea
theoretically, joining a general instance vs an opinionated one might not work for those that are not opinionated or are opinionated the other way. So I think it should be discussed if instances should be able to mark themselves as general or opinionated and the initial choice be from among the general ones
it would be a good idea to somehow rotate between proposed instances based on MAU or some other metric

[–] weingeist@piefed.social 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I signed up a minute ago, and I was so confused (still am, tbh). But luckily there was the button "I dont know, help" me, which scrolled down a centimeter, which was actually not that helpful :D

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well you made a good decision! If you still need help, look here:

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Also !newcomers@piefed.zip

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was gonna say: if you still have questions after that, then just @Blaze@piefed.zip

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 6 points 3 days ago

And if you have a language issue, !languagesettings@lemmy.zip

[–] fizzle@quokk.au 5 points 3 days ago

I think point 4 is critically important. It's great that the fediverse has kooky instances but lets not throw new users to the wolves by referring them to "random" instances.

IMO, pre-select a half dozen good choices, discard the third with the slowest response times, make a random selection from the remainder.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

maybe like p2p/torrent? prioritise based on some mathematical equation involving bandwidth, users and server stability

if this means a few big pro run servers end up taking the dominant share is this really a bad thing so long as other servers are available?

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[–] socsa@piefed.social 15 points 3 days ago

Honestly if this extremely low barrier keeps out the Facebook crowd then it's doing God's work.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

We should add a button that says "I don't care, choose for me" that chooses a random server. Some of them will end up on Chinese Piefed, but most will be happy with their choice, and hopefully we can give the other two buttons good names that help people choose.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 28 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Judging by the discussion OP links to the text should probably read something like "I don't understand the question, just sign me up".

And those users need to be signed up to the site they are currently on, because that's where they will return to to sign in later on. If you forward them somewhere else they'll have no idea what's going on.

It's incredible how terrifying the prospect of a choice can apparently be to people who have grown up without any.

[–] cile.sb@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The problem isn’t the choice itself – it’s that we don’t understand what we’re gaining or losing when picking a server. There’s no explanation of what a server is on the selection page. Does it really not matter which server I choose? Are the communities the same across all servers? If someone posts something on one server, will it be synced to all servers? My wife doesn’t know what the word “server” means, and I think most people are the same. Or are we expecting only IT folks to use the platform?

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

In case you are interested in the full story:

It does not matter much to the user, but it does matter a little. Which is also why it gets hard to find a good solution.

The communities are the same, and posts are synchronized. However, each server (also known as instance, to make it more complicated) is responsible for its own moderation.

Say for example that it turns out quokk.au is run by the absolute worst people, and that they start encouraging vile content and hate speech on their platform. Or simply that they don't moderate, and a lot of bad actors start signing up there and posting spam. Other servers might say in response that they don't want to keep seeing content from quokk.au, as bad content keeps coming from there. Of course that would affect the users of that instance.

To a degree, these problems can result from size. Lemmy.world is the biggest instance of Lemmy, and while it's generally decently moderated they have of course had greater challenges making sure their user base behaves decently as a result. So we want users to spread out so that each instance can have human moderators overseeing a manageable amount of human users.

This means that your instance can matter: if it is particularly poorly managed, you might be cut off from parts of the network as a result. And on the flip side, if you join an instance with stricter moderation, you might see less questionable content from elsewhere. Typical divides is whether Russia propaganda networks like lemmygrad.ml are blocked form joining the network, and whether porn is allowed.

The other big reason we want people to go to different instances is to keep the network healthy. If (almost) all of us are on the same site, that gets expensive to run, and leaves too much responsibility and power in the hands of the people running that site. If something happens to it it's a huge problem, if moderation fails it's a huge problem, and it's just generally a weakness. We want people to spread out to a bunch of different sites so that the network itself is robust.

Over on Mastodon, an anarchist instance hosted in America had the police raid their physical location and steal all the data off their server. Obviously we're also less vulnerable to these types of attacks if we spread out, though more often the problems are more boring and ordinary.

So in effect, when people ask to sign up at piefed.social, the good people at piefed.social wants people to join the network, but preferably the load should be put on some other server in that network in order to distribute the risk and workload, and strengthening the network as such. This is not primarily for the immediate benefit of the individual users—though it will materialize as such though more human moderation and admins that have the capacity to actually care about them—but for the benefit of the network.

So that's why we struggle to find a good way to ask people to pick a server. The choice is not super important for the user—the recommended instances are all decent, and the little information provided should be enough to make an informed enough decision—but it's important to the network that some users make a choice.

If you have any recommendations how to make this easier while distributing users around the different servers, feedback and ideas are super welcome.

[–] wjs018@piefed.wjs018.xyz 20 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Something like that could be a good place to utilize "trusted instances." So, instead of just choosing a random instance of all of the piefediverse, it chooses a random trusted instance.

The feedback in this thread overall has been helpful.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Asking "what topics are you interested in" / "what communities do you like" and "what's important to you" would also help.

Also, "I'm a returning user who did not like the first choice X because of Y" should be an option.

You didn't like the moderation? Too many defederations? Wrong kind of weird? Bad server performance?

Then try to pick something for them that fixes those problems

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The fediseer can help here both with the trusted instances and with finding servers based on tags

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[–] Skavau@piefed.social 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry, but some of the people in that thread arguing about federation (something they still don't understand) are not interested in finding out how it works.

You could literally make them an account on piefed.social, and they would still be confused on account of all of the communities and usernames from different servers.

I truly think it's best to not put too much stock in one obstinate user arguing about it when 10 others quietly sign up and try it out with no hand-holding needed.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 11 points 3 days ago (17 children)

There is definitely some bad faith among a few of those commenters.

However, we should probably try to still improve the signup process. As I said in the OP, Voyager's works already better, and that's a Fediverse app.

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[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Keep it as-is specifically as a barrier to entry for reddit user "icankillpenguins"

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 points 2 days ago

They can try

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 days ago

Is there a way to make it easier for literally everyone else but conversely making it significantly more complicated specifically for reddit user "icankillpenguins"?

[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Mastodon is working on addressing this on their side, by trying to recommend instances geographically close to the user. Perhaps a similar process could be used here?

[–] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago

It would have been great if Mastodon had that sorted out before Elon bought Twitter. In my assessment, the confusion of picking a server is what made Bluesky win out over Mastodon as the Twitter replacement of choice

[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago

Yes, that's what PieFed does now.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

I don't like the idea of a default server, because someday it will be the wrong one.

Much like recommending Linux I'm sure to specify "Linux Mint" and when I recommend XMPP I'm sure to specify jabber.org.

But it sounds like we could just be pointing newbies to Voyager or Piefed for awhile? I like various apps having a default, because we can always start recommending different app, if there's issues.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 19 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I think the "it doesn't matter which server you pick" default reply should also be done away with, because it does matter. However, like e-mail, it allows you to communicate with every other server (unless you're in a server that's been widely banned for reasons) and can be online while other servers aren't.

[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 3 points 2 days ago

The better message instead of "it doesn't matter what instance you pick" should be "your choice of instance is not permanent." With any product choice, the rule of thumb is that most consumers will switch products only when they perceive a 10x improvement. It is clear from many similar threads that the sign-up process is a barrier to such perception, because of the cognitive load of having to choose. To me, there's two ways to address this: offering fewer choices, or reducing the perceived cost of a choice. In particular, streamlining account out settings migration (eg via export/import tools) may make arbitrary server choices more appealing, as it then becomes easier to pack up and switch.

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[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It should just default to the last instance cm0002 commented from.

[–] nocturne@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Unsure which I have more of on my block list, *moe communities, or cmbots.

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[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 points 2 days ago

As for a specific instance, maybe point to medium-sized servers, so bigger ones don't get more stressed than they already are, and the user isn't greeted by a barren default feed were they to join a smaller one?

[–] illi@piefed.social 12 points 3 days ago

I'm an European so I shouldn't agree I guess but I do. There should be a basic explanation on why a server has to be picked and having a "recommended" choice to pick could ease people in.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The default choice is whatever instance you're currently on.

From https://piefed.social/auth/instance_chooser:

"I don't know, help me" scrolls you down to look at the instances (about 1cm, lol). I'm sure THAT could be more helpful!

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Maybe the default join should be bigger, and leave the other options for people who really want to have a look.

Actually, now that I think about it, and based on the Voyager screenshot above, maybe it should be something like

Big visible button "Join CurrentServer"
Less visible button "Pick another server"

And then only if people pick the second option, then then list appears.

That would make it less confusing for new joiners (they would just go the default path), and still gives people the option to look around.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago

Yes, I agree

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (16 children)

The problem with your suggestion is that it creates centralization. See Mastodon.social, matrix.org, etc.

The solution, I have posted before, is to ask instances to be opted into a directory, and then present the user with a random suggestion from that list. There should be some basic criteria like uptime and a proper set of rules laid out of course.

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