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?
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.
When I first read it I thought they were mentioning that as a selling point! But yeah it seems like they’re saying it like it’s a bad thing.
That’s the feature! Not a bug.
The new reddit design sucks and always has, other than dark mode.
I feel like most the old school redditors have long migrated, I’ve only ever heard good things about the new UI from relatively new users.
Lemmy is old reddit, if not OG internet ethos.
I’m an OG user and other than technical issues (most of which have been figured it by now) I prefered both the original redesign and the newest one (though I did like the previous one more, I think).
If you get used to the fact that it’s just a bit different it’s perfectly fine and actually looks better. Especially since it has dark mode.
I tried, but I like information density and the new UI is a horrible waste of space. I get why people like it and it’s way more modern, I’m saying loads of people who used reddit from the start will probably never get used to the new UI, mostly because of the customizability and open API.
Reddit didn’t have apps in the beginning, so we made them over the years perfecting the UI. I settled on baconreader with a compact view, but it and so many others died when the API was purged. I patched my app and can still use it to this day, but I don’t because fuck them.
i came here to say the same thing! if people actually genuinely like the new reddit ui, those people might just want and need different things out of a website than we do, and trying to onboard them might be a fool’s errand. not to be a gatekeeper, i’d love if everyone quit the corporate web, but a lot of the things people complain about here like the ui and the decentrilization are why i’m here (in my case mbin) and not there to begin with
same thing with mastodon, people still rail against it’s ui but the ui was a big reason i even made a mastodon long before twitter was bought out, back when they first tried to phase out the chronological timeline
Yeah like. I want a large community and stuff but. The idea of a new Reddit preferring community is weirdly repellent.
I really don’t want to hate on their preferences but also holy shit.
How old are you?
Yeah, it seems most people still on reddit prefer the newer mobile UI. I never used one of the ‘fancy’ modern reddit apps, and I’m lowkey scared for the inevitable switch I’ll have to make when Eternity finally dies. All the other FOSS apps left have a very ‘iOS’ feel to them that I can’t stand
Boost feels a lot like rif which I was using and which shutdown made me switch to lemmy.
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.
The only real federation dramas I can think of were relating to Hexbear and Beehaw. If Greenleaf was on one of those instances then maybe it could explain their skewed perspective. Otherwise yeah, I don’t get it.
That’s fair I guess. I remember that. That was around the same time as well, so someone registered to say Beehaw or Hexbear during the Threads fediverse announcement period would probably get the idea that federation wars is all that’s going, at least if they stopped visiting Lemmy shortly thereafter.
Those went on and on and on and on for years though - it was only 3 months ago that Discuss.Online finally defederated from Lemmy.ml, making it the first top ranked instance that would be suitable to recommend to Redditors. And even then lemmy.ml still remains to bully and abuse the potential users with tankie BS (bOtH sIdEs SaMe don’t ya’know).
Also before those two started there was Lemmygrad and Exploding Heads, and others I cannot recall off the top of my head but they really do go back a ways - defederation fights is kinda Lemmy’s whole main entire deal. Sadly, I am not kidding: it’s a Nazi bar effect where you can’t convince people to join a bar that welcomes Alt-Right Nazis (although in this case it’s Alt-Left tankies), bc they are turned off by such.
It’s fine if we ignore what those users want btw, it’s just less so if we don’t acknowledge who we really are, and then wonder why nobody likes us - that kind of incel culture is not okay, at least not with me, and I will stand by that.
I specifically remember looking up tables of who defederates from who and what instances allow NSFW or downvoting because this was an issue among some of the top instances back then.
I ended up making 4 different accounts over 2 months until I landed on a server I’m happy with. That will never be acceptable to any normal user.
Every time someone brings up these issues, people here downplay them like you are doing it right now and nothing is ever done about it.
Honestly, joining a community just for the type of content they have or what they filter is useless. Best approach for me is to have access to everything and then filter what you don’t like by yourself.
This, the survivor bias is absurdly high around lemmy.
This is my fourth instance because, for some reason, it’s extremely hard to find an instance that defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn’t too pissy about downvotes.Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda… And I don’t feel comfortable creating a community for the same reason and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else from my country so… Nobody who cared about it (or who could help me mod).
I like how you put that. We really are the ones who survived😂
defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn’t too pissy about downvotes.
You indeed made the good choice, Lemmy.cafe is the one
Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda…
Why not use both Lemmy and another platform?
You indeed made the good choice, Lemmy.cafe is the one
Yeah, it only took me 4 tries and I still am ready to jump ship if needed.
Why not use both Lemmy and another platform?
Already am, but at least on Reddit the mods can pretend to ban/control the propaganda accounts, but over here they are the only ones posting content (for my country) and that’s tiring… the rest of the content is the same here and Reddit, so I feel more inclined to stay on Reddit since I don’t really post anything anyway (I don’t even comment over there anymore) and Lemmy feels like something I rather delete more and more… been thinking about PieFed, but the same problem as everything Fediverse, I have to pick a goddamn instance and I don’t have energy for that for now.
If it helps, the issue is much less prominent for PieFed. Pick https://piefed.social/ bc it is the flagship and new features will just magically appear every week or so (not joking! the pace of development really is that fast!) Also it’s easier to not have to start the community joining process for every community - that one being (by far) the largest for PieFed means that more often than any other instance, that work will have been done for you.
Also, when you join, you will become energized about the Fediverse again - the startup wizard helping you pick communities to subscribe to based off of your interests will make you happy:-). Whether it’s worth the pain of learning a whole new system after that or not… is up to you, but seriously if you need that jolt of positivity, sign up TODAY! (you can always abandon it tomorrow, though I hope you won’t, and am betting that actively seeing it in front of you may help… although tbf there is a bit of a learning curve as you adjust, and yet only bc there’s so much MORE you can do with PieFed, like Lemmy has just Subscribed vs. All, whereas PieFed has a whole slew of new options to add to that, in the Topics, in choosing to receive Notifications for content rather than have to navigate to it, and new stuff is coming like personalized multi-communitied as well - it kinda really is awesome and exciting!? 😊)
I really really doubt the part about the content based on my interests part, I’ve tried Lemmy, Mastodon and Pixelfed, none of the has any content that I care about enough to join a community but they have way too much US politics (WAY TOO MUCH), so it really doesn’t encourages me to try anything new on the fediverse (like Loops, picking an instance, creating user just to find no content for me?).
I’d like to know how good or bad the instance block works on PieFed, because here on lemmy I still see hexbear posts that other users crosspost, even when my instance already defederated that instance.US politics (WAY TOO MUCH)
Piefed has built in keywords filters, that can help
In addition to keyword filters that Blaze mentioned, PieFed is basically the only way I know of, other than an app (Sync or Connect) that offers a true instance filter that blocks all users from the specified instance, without requiring admin support. I’ve blocked all those batshit insane comments from lemmy.ml and now if I go to the same identical posts, those comments from those users from those instances that you specify are flat gone. Regardless of the community. More in this post but that’s basically it that I’ve said already.
Likewise, Categories of Communities allows you to have your cake and (when you want it) eat it too. e.g. check out https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft and note absence of it, in that category. Likewise https://piefed.social/topic/fediverse, and https://piefed.social/topic/food, and https://piefed.social/topic/gaming, and so on. But, in the very rare event that you ARE wanting it (hey, it happens!) it’s still accessible at https://piefed.social/topic/news (& politics).
I would be remiss if I did not tell you that PieFed isn’t fully completed yet - it both has features that Lemmy (and even Reddit!) lacks, while also missing some, like its search feature is pretty abysmally bad (on purpose, it just hasn’t been the top priority yet, to receive some love and attention:-). Though I still love it even so. You can keep your old account (to do things that PieFed cannot yet), and eventually you should find yourself using the new perhaps 90% of the time, as you adjust and come to love what it can do for you - though note that I find that the approach to finding content is quite different from when I used Lemmy, which only offers Subscribed vs. All, whereas PieFed has so many more options to choose from (it may be overwhelming at first - but it’s so fantastic to have choices!:-).
eh, back when the “exodus” was happening it felt like every second post is about defederation. Nowadays you don’t hear much about it anymore, but if you only looked back then I see how you could come to that conclusion.
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.
But in an MMO, you still get the same content no matter what server you choose. Over here, it directly impacts what content you can interact with based on (de)federation.
I’m on three different instances and the sort by All-hot feed is nearly identical.
I’m not on Beehaw or Hexbear, but those instances make it pretty well known they block a lot of other instances.
Some instances have very different rules on them that would affect your experience. Like not allowing downvotes, for example. Blahaj users can’t see downvotes or downvote anything themselves.
Yeah, true. But that’s cool. Having choice like that is great!
But I suppose that’s the issue. Trying to keep signup simple to help drive user engagement. How much do you try to wrap someone’s head around such nuanced differences, and when do you say “just join me on my instance”?
If you joined a German-speaking WoW server as a non-speaking German, the experience was going to be subpar
I just remembered that WoW nowadays offers a lot of different experiences: Classic, Seasons of Mastery, Retail, etc.
And people get different experiences based on the server they pick.
There are definitely issues with Lemmy but these users specifically seem to just be complaining for the sake of complaining. They want Reddit without the parts they currently don’t like, not realizing that they also need to get rid of the parts that eventually made Reddit go to the shitter - because otherwise it’d just repeat.
Ah yes, because telling people the reason they don’t join your platform is invalid is sure to make them change their minds. 🙄
0 marketing sense. People like you are why the Reddit userbase mostly steers clear.
Was going to post this. They’re just burying their heads in the sand.
Lemmy’s onboarding is trash and so is the main UI. Get away from that and it’s actually great. BUT, most people used the Reddit app when Reddit still allowed 3rd party apps and access so you HAVE to appeal to the masses, no matter how dumb you think they are. Don’t complain about not having mass appeal if you don’t want mass appeal or listen to them and make the change they’re asking for.
Been using Lemmy for a couple of years, not seen this once.
Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
These people are just stakeholders in Reddit. They are afraid of change, or losing any rep they have. They sit on a pile of useless upvotes.
Really? You never ran into the endless “…furthermore, .ml must be defederated” posts?
Same vibe as Cato in the Roman Senate: ml delenda est
Cofigure swipes to hide posts and just swipe them out? Idk, it’s not hard.
You can say the same thing about reddit but people still bitch about it constantly.
Oh, sure, especially if it’s the same few users. It’s just mildly surprising to not even run into them.
The UX once you figure out what works for you in Lemmy is nice, the UX getting to that point is terrible, as many have said. Most will quit before getting to the good part.
99% of gamblers quit right before they win big /j
Yeah, the UX of alexandrite, Voyager or even the Voyager web app for PC are sublime. I don’t see any difference from reddit tbh.
I barely remember reddit on PC. Except for people trying to convince me bitcoin would be valuable - and me thinking they were foolish. I would have sold at $25, anyways.
Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
The default one is a bit minimal, but we have many Alternative UIs are as modern looking as new Reddit.
They also work much better while being modern looking. There’s a reason so many of us came over here when they got rid of third party apps, the new Reddit interface is… bad.
When half the posts in your feed are “X instance bad” people get just tired and go out.
It has happened to me sometimes a meaningful part of my feed was just people brigading about some instance they don’t like. It’s ridiculous.
this is about 0.1% of posts… quit lying
You can either face reality or not, literally nobody cares about your opinion on the matter. Many people who don’t join lemmy say this, that is simple fact.
Sure, but trends seem to hit harder here, probably because we’re smaller. There have been weeks where it seemed like 60% of the non text posts in my feed were about jeans or beans or vegan cat food. Those probably weren’t more than 0.1% of posts, but they sure felt overwhelming at the time.
Really early on like right after the API fuckfest, there was a large influx of users who picked servers based on whatever. As a result, servers defederated and there was a lot of drama as a result.
Though that said I haven’t heard much about defederating in some time.
What would prevent the same happening in the next wave of rats jumping ship? They don’t know anything about the servers or their niches, so they pick whatever. Listing all the servers and their missions is a good start for those motivated to join, but for those more on the fence, how do we ease the transition?
I personally see three big issues with getting new users to Lemmy use and stat on Lemmy:
- knowing about it: It is a matter of time before Reddit bans linking to Lemmy. Either by outright preventing their discussion via shadow deletes or full deletes. join-lemmy.org would be well served by purchasing ads on Google and on Bing
- join-lemmy ux needs to be improved: this goes to your point and I fully agree that there needs to be a better onboarding experience. I am a fairly technical guy and even I had trouble understanding the major concepts behind Lemmy. Many of these concepts aren’t terribly important to a new user though. At least at first.
- more and better content: this is fortunately getting better but we’re not there yet
Join-lemmy provides a subpar experience: https://lemmy.world/post/24220536
Pull requests are more than welcome to improve the site. Its basic Typescript, TailwindCSS and Inferno.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site
You can also make changes to the documentation, its markdown just like Lemmy itself. So if you would write something differently then open a pull request and change it!
Thanks for reminding.
I’m more busy on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com at the moment but I might give it a go at some point.
Just seems strange to have so many people wanting to fix this in this thread without actually acting
Exactly it seems most people here still didn’t realize that this is an open source project run by volunteers, not a corporation with countless employees and a profit motive. If people want something to get done then it’s best they start doing it themselves.
I’ve mentioned a list with info of some nature a few times, with people shutting down the idea. It always boiled down to “the instances may lie about what their instance is about”. In their heads what their write may be the truth, even if it isn’t. This would leave it up to a third party to make summaries of these instances, which may or may not be agreed upon. There may be too many drastic and conflicting ideologies.
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Not really though - that only mutes communities, while the users are still free to troll you by replying and generating notifications in posts sent to other communities.
Worse, that protection has even weakened rather than strengthened over time - the notifications used to be blocked. I almost decided to leave Lemmy myself when I continued to receive notifications for WEEKS and WEEKS after accidentally responding to a post that I encountered in All - I hadn’t read the sidebar, I didn’t know about that instance, and so how was I supposed to know!?
I did that in Lemmygrad, and then again in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net - and after that, I very much understand why people say that we are miserable tankie trolls over here.
It’s the Nazi bar effect: “We” might be fine, but there are places here that anyone can just wander into without any advanced notice of what will happen…and then they leave. And complain over in r/RedditAlternatives, warning others against attempting the same.
And since it’s TRUE, we DESERVE this reputation. 100% of the people I’ve ever mentioned Lemmy to have outright chided me for having mentioned it. I can see why, with such bOtH sIdEs SaMe content as this:
There are a few .world posters who make two to three posts a day about how much they hate lemmygrad hexbear and .ml.
you will probably stop seeing much of that if you block users that post a lot to fediverselore and meanwhileongrad. They’re like the /r/subredditdrama of lemmy
Not necessailly federation, but I’ve seen a lot of people prejudge commenters for what instance they’re a part of, most commonly calling people from .ml or hexbear tankies just for being on .ml or hexbear. It gets old really quickly.
When you read that stuff on reddit there’s a parameter you need to keep in mind : these people are not really discussing Lemmy. They’re rationalizing and justifying why they are not on Lemmy. Totally different conversation.
Nobody wants to come out and say “I know mainstream platforms are shit and destroying the fabric of reality but I can’t bring myself to be on a platform except it is the Hip Place to Be”. So they’ll invent stuff that paints them in a good light.
You’ll still see people claiming that Mastodon is unusable because you have to select an instance - even though you don’t have to, you can just type Mastodon on Google, click the first link, and create an account in 2 clicks. It’s been ages. But the people still using Twitter need the excuse because otherwise what does it make them?
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From everyone looking in: what the fuck is, ok, was Hexbear, why should I care and wtf can’t I read anything from that place.
Same with registration, instances, etc. It’s explained nowhere where how and why and i never have found a complete index with instances and communities.
I only can use lemmy because of sync. Yes, I’m also a reddit refugee.
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Oh yeah, I don’t even know which one I signed up to without looking.
Been here a while now and I really like it. Doesn’t hurt that I’m a lefty that loves star trek, though.
It can be quiet at times and I don’t really have much to share, myself - but that’s not a bad thing to me. Easier to set it down sometimes.
I haven’t heard about any of that drama since the early days when things were still getting sorted out
The people who aren’t here are making excuses to not be here. Otherwise they’d be here.
That being said the feud between world and ml users is pretty noticeable
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Nothing, this seems like a good thing, I don’t want them here if they literally cannot even comprehend the concept of different servers, though somehow no one has this issue with discord even though it’s dogshit, almost as if they just yearn for the corporate boot.
Or even just accepting a default, or a randomly assigned one.
There was something in retail I learned. There are people who will come in on sale days, and they will demand perfect customer service, and demand the lowest prices, and ask for more sales and bring coupons, all while talking about how they spend so much money there and that they’re so loyal. Then they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again
You can spend time and effort with them, the ones who only care about the cheapest place, or you can spend time with the customers who are actually there regularly. The ones who get to know your names, who are loyal, or enjoy a sale sure but also will be there even when there isn’t one.
I don’t want to attract users simply because reddit bad, and cater our experience for people who can’t bother to learn just the basic tenant of the fediverse. I want to cater our experiences for those who are here daily, and the ones who are genuinely interested. It’s the longer slower approach, but we’ll stay more true to our goals
Nice comparison
With discord, though, the “server” part is largely hidden from the user or at least transparent - that’s the thing. It simplifies the same concept into something more tangible.
Lmao, so true. Buhh my user experience!! As if consuming endless amounts of garbage on reddit is a good experience.
Based.
If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn’t be a good community member anyway.
I consider myself an idiot when it comes to this, but even I had zero issues. Went to Lemmy, joined .zip because it sounded cool and started browsing All to discover other communities (same as Reddit). If it had more steps to that then I would’ve done that too because i acknowledge that Reddit is going to shit and I am committed to my principles.
You don’t even have to sign up to view posts or comments.
It’s not minescule. I remember actually taking days because I don’t understand where and how to. You’re a good person I can tell so stop being elitist as fuck it’s childlike
How did people figure out what email provider to use?
Pick the one everyone else is using. Your friend has a Hotmail? You make a Hotmail. Everyone switched to Gmail? You’ll also switch to Gmail. Also for a lot of people, email is just email. They don’t even know that you can choose a different provider.
Well the concept of email is much more popular than the concept of a reddit style platform or even social media entirely. So information spread more easily. And nowadays people just sign up for the account “required” by the OS of their phone which mostly comes with an email address.
You’d get an email address from your ISP. Early on you’d just dial the ISP, send/receive email, and then automatically hang up. College freshmen were assigned a school email address.
Eventually, “web mail” became popular because you could log in from any computer, like at the library.
By the time email became unavoidable, everyone had already been assigned at least one email address. It was seen as a major feature of the internet itself.
I picked the wrong one when I was a kid. I barely know why I picked the instance I did. It is hard to pick one. I say when trying to join lemmy, there should be interests tags that you select and an instance is populated for you.
They didn’t, they signed up for gmail.
Lemmy UX is identical to old Reddit. Come on.
An improved version of old reddit with a good mobile view, which old reddit lacks.
That’s UI. What they’re talking about is the barrier to entry for new users, which falls under User eXperience
I don’t really get that either. New users are immediately presented with posts and communities they can interact with, and all of the functions are familiar to anyone who has used reddit or forums. The interface is straightforward and uncluttered, as far as what that contributes to the user experience. Also I have never found federation confusing.
I guess OP is talking about the attitude of personality of lemmy members and I don’t agree with that, either. The 2-3 people on reddit quoted in the post are clueless and there’s no indication they represent a significant and amount of people’s perceptions. “Endless wars about federation” - what? There was controversy for like 1 week several months ago.
Am used to New Reddit UX (2020-2022ish) but i still like this tbh.
Could there be an option for a sorting hat that could either: look at the redditor’s post history and determine a good server for them or simply spin the wheel. Either way would get the lazies shit posting without them having to learn anything about fediverse. I know I would have just spun the wheel.
simply spin the wheel
That’s how the Lemmy info page (what comes up when you search for “Lemmy”) does it, and the experience isn’t great.
Before I knew how Lemmy worked I just clicked the first option it showed, which (for me) was a non-English instance. The second option was that LGBT-focused instance that defederated with lemmy.world a few months ago. Of course I didn’t know anything about either community so I just picked randomly. I went right back to Reddit until they pulled the next anti-user thing.
I’ve suggested something similar before and got shur down. Just sort people into a Lemmy server either based off their interests or location
“Nationality France = Lemmy France Server”
Or
“What are your interests? Gaming = Gaming Lemmy server”
Shut down as in someone shut down the website or people telling you that the idea is trash?
Shut down as in ‘that’s a terrible idea for the fediverse’
If it was public & randomly sorted to the fediverse Lemmy servers, I don’t see how it would be an issue
Do you know why? It sounds to me like a great addition to the fediverse.
@JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml commented above with a good experience of why it’s a crappy idea (I was thinking a randomzier would be good too.
I just clicked the first option it showed, which (for me) was a non-English instance. The second option was that LGBT-focused instance that defederated with lemmy.world a few months ago. Of course I didn’t know anything about either community so I just picked randomly.
I could see that happening a lot. I’ve messed with other randomizing systems and sometimes you forget how many niche or non matching picks can pop up when you really look at it. Even a 10% match with language barriers wouldn’t be good for a reliable system of placement.
I also don’t like the “what harry potter house” do you belong to quiz stuff or anything that asks to crawl or input your data (no thank you). Definitely more complicated than I thought.
Oh, yeah, I can see why uniform randomness would be a problem. I thought the criticism was directed at “Just sort people into a Lemmy server either based off their interests or location”
I was thinking that you do a little questionnaire and it gives you the best matching server.
The tough part for me is that the reason I use Reddit is for bullshitting with people about sports teams I like. Lets look at some of the communities here.
- Baltimore Orioles – There’s one on lemmy.world with 150 subscribers. The last post is from 4 months ago and it’s a game thread posted by a bot with 0 comments. There’s also one on fanaticus.social with the last post from 7 months ago.
- Carolina Panthers – There’s one on fanaticus.social with 3 subscribers.
- Miami Heat – There’s one on lemmy.world with 10 subscribers.
- Pittsburgh Penguins – Again, lemmy.world with 11 subscribers.
I’d love to get off reddit but until there’s actually people to talk with, this place is just never going to meet the needs of sports content that I use Reddit for. I had no interest in Bluesky until some people actually got on it as well. The Shutdown Fullcast for college football brought a bunch of people and fans there so it gave some utility to the site. Without utility, there’s no reason to be here.
In the early years fo Reddit, those wouldn’t exist either. You have to start with bigger groups (NFL, NHL, etc) and split them if they ever get big enough.
Even the NFL one, the front page of posts the most comments is 10.
!communitypromo@lemmy.ca had a thread about sport communities recently
Discoverability is a serious issue on Lemmy. I’d wager there’s a shitload of people here interested in the big US sports, but unless you know where the community is (and there’s often multiple, and sometimes on instances you’re not linked to), you’re not going to see it.
There’s just not enough users for any algorithm pushing of obscure communities you might be interested in either.
!communitypromo@lemmy.ca had a thread about sport communities recently
Yeah, people actively surrounding one water cooler aren’t likely to go across the room to a different water cooler with no one there to start a new community. There’s a lot of mental and social effort required there.
In the news in tech communities the moderation was becoming oppressive. If someone pisses all over the water cooler, then people are a lot more likely to change it up.
We see the same thing in the niche video gaming communities.
Well the only way to change that is to engage with those communities and provide content. Ofc. community building isnt easy.
Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.
What’s most annoying is that for 95% of users, federation doesn’t even matter. You just log on and use lemmy exactly like reddit. All feds are consolidated onto my front page anyway.
People make a big deal about it, it definitely intimidated me when I first logged up. It’s one of the reasons I put off getting into lemmy for such a long time, and it’s frustrating that in the end, it really makes no difference.
It makes a difference if you signed up for the only instance early on, and now everyone assumes you’re a tankie.
All is not consolidated, though. “All” is your local feed plus what is subscribed to by users on your instance. It isn’t everything by default, afaik.
“Extremely” confusing?
Maybe to someone who has never once used email. But, even then, you could say “It’s like choosing a car, some look different, but they can all use the same roads.” If someone has never used a car, you could say “It’s like choosing a brand of underwear”. If they don’t use underwear, do we really want them here?
Confusing as in why is it so prominent for something that doesn’t matter at all. Why is it separate if its the same damn thing except for the link
Because you have to make a choice. If you go to a restaurant and say “I’d like a meal, please” they’ll make you choose one from the menu. It doesn’t matter to them which one you choose, you just have to choose.
In this case, some Lemmy instance needs to be the one where you sign in. Most of them probably don’t care if you choose them or not. But, if you want to use Lemmy, at some point you have to make a choice.
Maybe I’m more tech oriented than many, but I don’t find federation confusing at all. I’ve never understood why it’s described that way.
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.
The political leaning is definitely unfortunate. The fediverse should be for everyone, not just a certain political section.
whoa bro chill with the fascism /s
I don’t think partisan is even the right word here as many Lemmy users are too far left for mainstream political parties. In fact I am further left than most any mainstream party, but am still considered a capitalist shill by people here.
Is this a joke?
I would think and hope so.
Leftists and ultra right wing were starting to get banned on Reddit long ago and federation and internet archtiecture and infrastructure is made by generally leftists and libertarian types. Gab is fediverse software. Lemmy.ml and hexbear are ex chapotraphouse folks. So yeah, lots of leftists and libertarian types are around these niche and relatively new (I started using the fediverse nearly 10 years ago lol). Surprise pikachu face when normal people stop using reddit and twitter and see leftists having discussions out in the open without recourse since they were shielded from them by corporations, but it shouldn’t be that surprising honestly
Um… okay, if the fairly mainstream for our demographic politics here repels certain people, good.
Especially because most users respond to this with “good.”
good.
Your comedic timing is impeccable.
Sure. You complained about that opinion, but it doesn’t mean I can’t hold that opinion. I don’t agree with your observations or conclusions. We don’t need more dimwit asshole conservatives here, if that’s what you mean by ‘wider audience’. That group already whines that Reddit is too leftist for them. I don’t really agree that Lemmy is more extreme in that regard, other than specific instances like .ml or grad. The politics I see here are not more extreme and I don’t find the user base ‘repellant’ at all, and I hold fairly typical US left views (would like more socialism, believe in human rights, universal healthcare, oppose racism, etc).
So you, a normal person, join and instantly when a meme or comment allude to being altruistic, you leave? It’s so unfathomable to me how this is probably true. So many people need the world to be egomaniac or they get uncomfortable. Maybe they’re the problem though
To be entirely honest if anybody like that comes here and bounces off that’s great.
But that’s not great. It’s great if you’re not interested in a social networking forum and want a meme feed sure but I don’t. I want people, I want the damaged ego people and I want to ask and talk to them about how they ended up like that
I get you.
But honestly come I’m kind of liking the vibe here and it’s not just a meme feed. More often than not you can have a real conversation with somebody you disagree with, you concied, they concied, learn a little bit about each other, follow a couple people maybe block a few assholes.
The first few redis exoduses filled the place with the people with the lowest tolerance for bullshit. Every time Reddit has a new Exodus, We get topped off with the next level of people that just want to watch everyone be pissed off.
I agree. I think it’s some kind of effect that also has me not wanting to live in a big city. When you see new people every day then never again, it’s like you eventually lose some humanity
So you, a normal person, join and instantly when a meme or comment allude to being altruistic, you leave?
Lol, the lack of self-awareness in your comment is astounding. You immediately jumped to interpreting them in the least charitable way possible, instead of just asking them to clarify like a normal person. You are exactly the type of leftist that pushes a lot of people away from using Lemmy.
Who needs conservative saboteurs when you have leftists to do their work for them?
Nah, I was talking about their ficticious person in their example scenario.
Since they are obviously here I thought that was obvious.
But I can see you are very self aware yourself and not at all bothered by why altruism scares you
Lemmy has good UI, the defaults set are just bad and most people will give up before discovering Photon etc.
Something like https://phtn.app/ really should be the default
Something like https://phtn.app/ really should be the default
Disclaimer: Photon is great and the dev does a fantastic job. Also, the beta is open, please give them feedback on !photon@lemdro.id
However, there as still issues induced by not using the default UI. One of the instances I used added photon as p.instance for a while
Photon was still in early stages, and there was a bug preventing it to load for some people (Firefox users IIRC). In the end the admin switched to Tesseract.
https://lemdro.id/ has photon as a Default, but it took them a while to the latest version, for quite some time it wasn’t ideal. I would still go to https://l.lemdro.id/ just because the Comments view was available, or because some other info was missing/hidden.
Lemmy releases new versions quite regularly, and there are usually a few bugs. Photon development is independent, and the Photon dev has to catch-up with those. Add admins sometimes limited availability to the mix and the experience can really become subpar.
There’s quite a few things we can do to improve the experience in the current default.
Eg. by optimising it’s defaults, turning ‘Auto expand media’ on makes it a much smoother transition for people, and makes the site look more modern and not like a forum from 15 years ago.
The reality is, our UX is bad else top comments in the post I shared wouldn’t look like that, and something needs to be done about it
What proportion of the potential new joiners are going to use the web UI compared to an app like Sync, Thunder or Arctic?
Not many I’m assuming. I like pointing people to Voyager because it’s both on android and apple, and it has a very smooth UX, you can install and start scrolling
My message is often something like
` Checkout Lemmy, it’s a solid reddit alternative. https://phtn.app/
If you want a mobile app: https://vger.app/settings/install `
Be careful that IIRC Reddit blocked the phtn URL and would automatically remove comments mentioning it.
Not sure if it’s still the case now, but just a warning.
Agreed. I really like the default UI personally but I know it’s not exactly the most new-user-friendly and modern. There is also tesseract: https://tesseract.dubvee.org/communities/lemmy.world
It’s all here ? https://phtn.app/_app/immutable/assets/0.CzFg6cYp.css
A theme chooser like misskey allows to do, should’nt be that complicated
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
I think the irony here is that the user-friendliness experience of Bluesky stems from it being a centralized service (in practice). I seriously doubt most people who signed up for Bluesky even understand what “decentralized social media” means.
I’m not saying Lemmy (and the greater Fediverse) can’t improve, but it’s clear that the biggest barrier for most people is the decentralized aspect itself – the core of the Fediverse – which is something one shouldn’t really “hide”.
As long as the state of social media usership demands centralized practices, then the Fediverse will forever be at a disadvantage in gaining mass adoption in my opinion.
What I don’t get is why not pretend it’s centralized and just recommend a server when you introduce someone to lemmy instead of trying to teach them?
Oh you want an alternative to Reddit, here, go to lemmy.ca since your Canadian.
This is my thought… Don’t hide it, really, more like toss a blanket over that part while people get settled. Most will stick with the defaults (whether a single default like lemmy.world or regional defaults like lemmy.ca), but they’ll get the option if that’s something they want to change later (I do wish there was a way to move instances rather than having to make a new account, that might also help improve adoption… “Just go with this one while you settle in and move when you know where you want to go”)
We have a slight disadvantage in that regard yes, but I know we can get to a UX comparable to Bluesky and Reddit.
There just doesn’t seem to be much focus on it, I feel setting good defaults will solve most of these issues.
Lemmy is nice for me now, but it took a lot of effort finding the settings and UI that I like, people will give up long before that.
Text-based forums are a niche. The vast majority of the population doesn’t like that format. There’s a reason no Bluesky has emerged, the appeal is just not there.
About Bluesky, there was an app that allowed “Reddit view” (so threads with votes). Can’t find it back right now, the search mostly show Flashes, the Instagram alternative, which probably reflects the larger interest for that type of format.
The web ui has this option now. Although you can’t collapse threads so it’s still pretty hard to navigate
If anything the success or the Twitter ui shows you don’t always need a good UX to succeed
Agreed. But as long as people don’t actively leave Lemmy in favor of the new service I’d be okay with it I guess. I mean it would still be cool if Lemmy grew larger but hey, we got a nice little community here
Unless we use one of those as the default UI, the problem isn’t solved, people will give up before knowing of their existence.
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Serious question here: what is the bad ux experience of lemmy compared to reddit? (except choosing an instance in the beginning, I get that this might turn off a lot of people)
Easy fix, if it isnt federated I give them a one star and talk about how im tired of ads and corporate influence in my discussion forums so id rather use the threadiverse, prob does nothing but if it gets even one person to google and switch it was worth the 5 seconds it took to type
People forget that user experience isn’t just the stuff on the screen you interact with. There is a governance piece that is lacking in a lot of instances, and in the open source community as a whole. A lot of the successful projects out there are backed by some kind of foundation.
Take a look at the latest Hexbear drama. Some person out there owned the domain for their instance and let it expire. Now they are in a bidding war with a crypto site with a hexagon-related name. If they had formed some kind of organization or entity that registered the domain and owned the instance, this probably wouldn’t have happened. Their users wouldn’t get redirected to a domain auction site when trying to access the site. That’s not an ideal user experience. It destroys trust.
SDF being a 501c(7) is one of the reasons that it’s my home instance. For me, it provides a level of trust that an instance run by some random person on the internet doesn’t. If there is a big federation/defederation debate, then it’s really up to the membership to decide, and not a collection of admins or a single person getting the vibe of the users.
Another thing to remember is that Lemmy really shouldn’t be competing against Reddit. The purpose of Reddit is to have the user generate content in order to keep the user’s attention on the site so they can sell targeted advertisements. This is the basic business model for all of commercial social media. It has nothing to do with creating communities. That is secondary. If you want more people on Lemmy so that there is more content for you to consume, just stay on Reddit or TikTok. They need to sell ads in order to fund model training to keep your engagement up in order to sell more ads in order to provide quarterly growth to their shareholders. If you want more people on Lemmy because more brains mean better communities, then focus the communities.
The real opportunity for the fediverse is getting a lot of the existing non-profits, social organizations, and other types of communities to set up their own instances. This answers the “what instance do I join?” question by joining the instance associated with the community you’re already involved in. Another reason I’m on SDF is retro computing. If you’re really into your local makerspace, then you probably have a community ready to go for a Lemmy instance. If you’re involved in your HOA and you all have a Facebook page or are all over Nextdoor, maybe set up a Lemmy instance. In all these cases, the organizational infrastructure is there for the administrative stuff like getting a domain and paying for hosting.
Also, I’m old enough to remember that Facebook took off when everyone’s parents started joining. Imagine if the AARP rolled out a Lemmy instance. They are big enough put some serious money into development. You would probably get a lot of accessibility improvements.
P.S.
Check out how theATL.social is organized. The guy did as a LLC, but he seems to be community focused and transparent.
https://yall.theatl.social/post/201135
Feddit.org and lemmy.ca are also non profits
Is there any way to set one up that protects the anonymity of the people involved (where even the organizers don’t know each other’s real names) for opsec purposes?
Do what rich people do and set up shell companies. There are law firms that specialize in this kind of thing.
But if that is a hard requirement is a Lemmy instance the right tool for the job? Wouldn’t something on Tor be better?
Do you really want mass appeal right now? Just be patient, build good information and ppl will come
We already have good information, the barrier to entry just needs to be lowered
I respectfully disagree. Reddit went downhill and became significantly more difficult to manage/moderate when the masses joined.
If people aren’t willing to invest a bit of time to understand how Lemmy works (and it’s really not that difficult to understand), then I don’t think Lemmy is a good fit for them.
Having a barrier to entry just filters out non tech savvy people, and creates a bubble.
We want all kinds of people on Lemmy, not just tech savvy people.
To my knowledge we don’t want to filter out non tech savvy people. If that’s what we want then cool, leave it as is.
But I don’t think that’s true, especially not for all instances.
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