Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy

Comments

• doug@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • freely1333@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Base privacy rules of federation. The main difference in sign ups seems to be privacy policy. Or some filter on sign up that isn’t choose an instance but a filter that “finds you an instance.”

    “Do you want to provide an email address?”

    “Do you want x, y, z?”

    Filter down to a single instance or if multiple just randomize what instance you toss them to. Just don’t make it a decision. When they are finished signing up send them a note that’s says “you can always change instances by going to _____ link or something to make account or change instances ____”

    It’s really not complex but it’s the “feel” of complexity. For instance I froze a bit because some instances had no privacy policy, some said oh yeah we spy on you, some said no email needed just sign up… just get rid of that deer in the headlights moment, or standard privacy rules for federation in the “main” group.

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• Krauerking@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ah Lemmy. Still full of comments from smug assholes pretending their lack of sonder is the good kind, and if they don’t understand something it’s cause it’s worthless and pointless while their knowledge is the most important.

  Yeah, there are other reasons than the UX/UI and the screenshot even shows it.

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Pot, meet kettle.

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    • Krauerking@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I know when I say something inflammatory the response I will get, but I don’t let it stop me from changing my view, and I intend to converse to further share and understand information.

      I’m an asshole, not a hypocrite.

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• pigup@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • UrukGuy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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”

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    • howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Shut down as in someone shut down the website or people telling you that the idea is trash?

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  • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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• Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What can we do?

  File issues on the GitHub for how to improve the UX

  github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues

  Or even better, make pull requests if you’re a dev

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• passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The second this hurdle is crossed we’ll need a new Lemmy

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• moakley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I tried to join Lemmy during the API debacle, but then it asked me to choose a server. It didn’t explain what that meant or how it would affect me. I could read a long, confusing explanation of it elsewhere, but that illuminated nothing. So I gave up.

  Eventually I tried again and just chose lemmy.world, since it was the largest. After that it was smooth sailing, and I like Lemmy a lot more than reddit. It turns out it didn’t even really matter which server I chose. (Although now I see some comments from people saying there’s something wrong with lemmy.world.)

  You just need to hold the new user’s hand a little. Anyone who has ever designed a UI for an office environment would know immediately that the server question is going to be an impenetrable wall for many users.

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Although now I see some comments from people saying there’s something wrong with lemmy.world.)

    • No VPN
    • older version of Lemmy (doesn’t allow to remove uploads tech.michaelaltfield.net/…/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/)
    • debatable policies (see the last one about “allow flat earthers” !lemmyworld@lemmy.world )
    • federated with Threads
    • some power tripping !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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    • moakley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      None of that affects me, but if I switch, which one should I switch to?

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• hogmomma@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m all on board except for the comment about micro-penises. No one should ever resort to body-shaming.

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• rustydrd@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think Lemmy needs a higher-level sign-up procedure that hides the complexity of the fediverse. This could be a webpage with a simple, clutter-free interface that handles picking and registering on an instance from a curated list semi-automatically, for example, by asking you 3-4 questions before giving you a suggested server that fits your responses (that you can change) with a button to register right away (and handle the occasional additional sign-up requirements that some instances have).

  IMHO, 90% of users will never interact with the “federation” aspects of Lemmy after that, and they also don’t need to. I personally don’t feel like Lemmy being federated has much of an impact on my user experience day to day.

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• Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m going to be holding a teach-in about the fediverse. AFK I mean. Like the people I live with, and am in community with in meat space. They all want to ditch corpo social media, but aren’t sure how. I’ll hold a digital one too for my more extended community, but I want to start with the people I truly live with. I think word of mouth is a great way to onboard people as it allows for a dynamic level of handholding. This is essentially “grassroots” social media after all.

  I don’t really want Reddit to join Lemmy en masse. I want the people that see the value of pre-2010 social media, and the “local” internet, to understand and have access to these tools and spaces. I think that will be best done through education, not advertising. Advertising the platform is exactly what all the platforms we want to ditch do, and we are actively trying to not be those platforms.

  The sense of “needing” more users, to me at least, is a hold out of the “infinite growth”, capitalist, mindset. I don’t want infinite growth for my instance, I want the people it’s made for to find it, and enjoy communicating with the people they share it with.

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Cool for you to do a presentation. Feel free to share how it went here afterwards!

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  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We need more users for those small spaces to grow, one of the reasons I still use Reddit alongside Lemmy is that there is no ‘South African’ community on here, there is a very alive and fun South African community on reddit, that alone will make me keep using Reddit.

    I’m sure that’s true for many other niche communities, for those to take hold in Lemmy we need numbers.

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    • Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Absolutely! Growth is important and not every possible community is mirrored on the fediverse. But if anything this is all the more reason for interpersonal connections to drive new user growth. That will naturally help filter users to instances they align with. I’m considering going so far as to host an instance specifically for my geographical area to really lean into the idea of a “local” internet.

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• SuperSleuth@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you mention Lemmy, point someone towards a specific instance so it’s not so much of a shock. Then they can slowly learn about what it is.

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• Trincapinones@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That happened to me in the reddit exodus, I switched to Lemmy and faced a lot of analysis paralysis, ended up in Lemmy.world out of spite and then I regretted my decision.

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• jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I must be in the minority because I post so rarely that I don’t sign up when I ‘join’ the platform, I sign up when I want to post something. When I first wanted to post something, I just joined the instance it was going to be on. (Also because it’s queer, which I don’t tell you about for consistency). I also don’t care that much about not seeing what my instance has defederated. Or actually, not being able to comment on it, because I actually go on programming.dev sometimes, without having an account there. I don’t really get it. The fact that my Instance technically requires an application might actually be a UX hurdle, but otherwise, you just click Sign Up, enter email, name, and password, and that’s it, right? It could be a UX problem that you miss out on content you don’t see, but you also already see a load of content that you’re not going to miss out on. Tutorials on how x-instance moving works might be cool though, if they don’t already exist. Making them more visible might limit the defederation FOMO.

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• Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Fully agree with that, the bar is too to high usually unless you’re being handheld through the process, realistically there should be an app like how blue sky is that doesn’t give you any of the options because less options means easier setup. If they want to jump instances after that that would be considered an advanced function but they can choose to do so on their own accord.

  Another issue I think is lack of actual awareness, like Bsky got media coverage, the everyday person still is like “the hells a lemmy”

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    vger.app/settings/install

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    • Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’ve used Voyager before and while it comes close, unless they changed how the app operates, I don’t think that app fits the description that I’m asking for. 1.

      The entire issue with Lemmy is the Federation aspect of it, while it’s a good thing to have it’s way too confusing for the everyday person. For example I use eternity, the only layout that remotely looks decent in my opinion. It worked similar to Voyager where when you open it for the first time it brought you to an instance and then when you went to make an account it asked you which instance you wanted to make the account on. That right there is going to turn away a good 30 to 40% of the people looking. I know it almost turned me away.

      For the point of responding to this comment I reinstalled Voyager, I’m going to portray my experience from someone who doesn’t have experience with the fediverse. If you don’t wish to see the narration, you can skip the spoiler

      Okay cool I see a bunch of posts, I expect this lem.ee thing is the program oh fun they have Politics on the front page I thought I was trying to avoid that but okay there are some memes here that are pretty cool, let me try to like one,

      oh I need an account yeah that makes sense, neat they have a learn more button(most people likely won’t click this btw) okay an entire page explaining that the programs like an email client, how is up voting content like receiving emails 😕(personally think they should have used subscribe/follow for that imo)

      Okay cool I think I get it let me just use the default instance, let me just skip past all of this pointless TOS stuff, “please write I accept acknowledging that you’ve read the rules in the sidebar on the front page.” uhh Sidebar? Well I don’t know how to get to that so let me try the next instance, lemmy.world sounds good. and that one is a 1 2 3 process(if email verification works)

      From here they have a functioning account but the app has failed to tell them the core aspects of what federation is, they’ve failed to explain what defederation is, they failed to explain what the repercussions of choosing an instance does, it’s only explained that Lemmy is like email, and to the everyday user, email is identical across all providers, users very rarely if at all have an email provider actively block an email server because they don’t agree with what’s going on there. For example in the case of LW by choosing that platform you’re actively removing yourself from anything that’s against their mentalities such as the piracy community, you’re also subjecting yourself to a somewhat heavy moderation style instance and also subjecting yourself to hatred in the community without actually realizing you’re doing so. You won’t know this tell you get told by a user (and you WILL get told by a user).

      This could be avoided by having a integration with fediseer or being able to integrate with the instances Blacklist so you can see what is blocked. Or even just a link to their rules would be amazing.

      That’s my main annoyance in current mobile apps, they are only decent for established fediversers. Most people would have left second or third message into my experience and just gone back to other platforms

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• match@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Bad choice, many new users specifically came here because of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, which can’t be accessed from lemmy.world.

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    • match@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i would guess the piracy audience doesn’t struggle with the same problems that would make a default instance useful

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  • lunarul@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or just go to vger.app, which defaults to lemm.ee but allows you to register and log in with a whole bunch of different instances.

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• Iheartcheese@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  LEMMY IS FUN PLEASE

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  • Saltycracker@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes it is

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• nomoyknsns@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “It was just endless war about who is federated with who?”

  Thanks the anti-tankies turds and their constants whining.

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  • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think anti-tankies can be blamed when said tankies regularly engage in brigading of other instances. Like is everyone actually behaved this wouldn’t have been an issue.

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    • nomoyknsns@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What you call brigading are just normal people like me who encountered right-wing america-centered bullcrap and react to it.

      I never saw tankies spamming the lemmyverse to whine about world.

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• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “feels like old reddit” is a weird way to say “it feels like new reddit, but doesn’t leak ram, doesn’t take as much or more processing power as AI does to run, and interjects ads randomly into the feeds”

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• slingstone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I use Boost for Lemmy. The transition from Reddit was easy for me, and I know little about the fediverse other than the most basic outlines.

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    @AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee

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• Supervisor194@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Try not caring. The more Reddit users come here the more it’s going to suck.

  This is just bot-driven FUD anyway, Lemmy is nothing like old Reddit and it wouldn’t be disqualifying if it was.

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• peregrin5@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Lemmy only really became usable for me after I blocked certain instances/communities. Tbh if I wasn’t permabanned from Reddit I probably would have quit early on and went back to Reddit.

  This wasn’t because of UX. It’s was because some of the most active and highly upvoted instances that had posts hit All costly were full of terrible people and idiots.

  However now that I realize how powerful that is to be able to block whole instances and curate your experience and realize that it’s basically impossible to Permaban someone from Lemmy, I’m enjoying it a lot more.

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• papertowels@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  it feels like old reddit

  As someone who exclusively used old.reddit.com, this isn’t actually a bad thing.

  Also apps for the mobile experience, and I want to say alexandrite for the desktop experience?

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  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah if it looked like new reddit I wouldn’t be here. That site is ass. IDK how anyone can stand to use it.

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• Winterfrost@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ll be ditching reddit completely after 16th of April. Till then I’m slowly doing my migration. Lemmy is awesome.

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  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why April 16th?

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    • Winterfrost@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      After that my premium expires. Also I’m suspend indefinitely.

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why not keep your account to talk about Lemmy?

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    • Winterfrost@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t think reddit admin will lift the suspension. So I can’t post or comment. No point.

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• MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh so we badmouthing & smearing the Fediverse huh.

  Ok let’s ask them what counts as a “Good UI/UX” & “Endless wars” ? Really ?

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• Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Choosing a server is the bridge too far to cross?

  That’s fine, keep the reddit people on reddit.

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  • threshold_dweller@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s a pretty funny thing to say when talking about a platform explicitly designed to fill the same niche as reddit.

    The call is coming from inside the house!

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    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The self-selection of Lemmy vs Reddit users is an inherently stratifying medium. Lemmy is also distinctly left-leaning in a way that Reddit is not.

      Having experienced several waves of Reddit absorbing Facebook exoduses, and the subsequent worsening of experience, I can only infer the same pattern will exist in Reddit slop migrating to Lemmy.

      If anything, I’d prefer that entire crowd return to Facebook to bloviate their opinions and Boomerisms ad naseum.

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• SamboT@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why do we want more users? Because lemmy is insufferable. Im here, like many others, waiting for an alternative to reddit and hoping im already there.

  No we dont need gatekeeping based on a users understanding federated servers. We need more people so the smaller communities actually have posts and we dont need to scroll the dumpster fire that is “everything”.

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  • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Have you tried piefed.social ? Compatible with Lemmy (allows you to import your subscriptions list actually) and with a different approach: join.piefed.social/blog/

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    • SamboT@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I dont know what you are talking about. What subscriptions am i adding to where?

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• AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good! The last thing we need is the Facebook crowd.

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• zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Those comments are fairly meaningless. Federation wars? Where? There was some controversy like a year ago from why I recall and everyone has moved way on. I wouldn’t even consider that UX either.

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  • nomoyknsns@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Every other post is some worldist idiot whining about ml

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    • zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.

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• moseschrute@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m working on a lemmy app. Will be UI focused!

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  • MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good luck & we’ll be waiting

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  • CafecitoHippo@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, there’s already apps that are good that were created by reddit app developers. E.g. Boost for Lemmy. The problem isn’t the apps, it’s the availability of content and people. The /r/orioles on reddit has 85,163 subscribers. 110 people on the page right now. /c/Baltimore_Orioles here has 150 subscribers and no posts in 4 months which was a bot posted game thread with 0 comments on it.

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• HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Bells and whistles = ads, tracking, loads of bots

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• designated_fridge@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I spent way too much time trying to understand why I wasn’t taken to the comments when I hit the comment icon…

  … in the screenshot

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