Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/133162df-4437-43a9-8099-98727eec11ab.jpeg

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?

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blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The biggest UX issues, in my opinion, is the process of choosing an instance and content discovery.

When you go to “join lemmy”, rather than choosing a username, you’re presented a big list of instances, and you have no idea what that means and what it means for your experience if you choose one. Even though in reality it doesn’t really matter, just having the list paraylyses the user as it’s not a process they’re used to. Users are likely asking themselves:

Am I going to miss out on content from other instances?

Do I need an account per instance to interact with their communities?

Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn’t create any communities. So basically when they they’re directed to join-lemmy and go to sign up, they create an account on that instance right away and get started.
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- Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  People need to stop sending people to “join ___” sites. I get why they are, or at least were, necessary, but they’re totally superfluous when users are making recommendations to other users.
  
  Just recommend a website for them to join. Word of mouth + systematized signup makes zero sense.
  
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  - blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Just recommend a website for them to join.
    
    But the crux is which one do you recommend? We don’t want to send everyone to the same instance otherwise it’ll end up becoming dominant (see Lemmy World).
    
    Ideally we shouldn’t need to go through this motion of trying to work out which instance to choose or recommend one for them, they should be able to do that themselves after getting their feet wet.
    
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- Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The analysis paralysis of having to pick an instance is definitely the biggest hurdle in my opinion. I don’t think a read-only instance is the solution though, at least not one that requires registration. That just adds another step, which I think would further confuse people. The simplest way to onboard new people is to just shove them onto the biggest instance, but I know that kind of goes against the ideology and creed of the fediverse. There were endless debates about it during the Reddit exodus of 2023.
  
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- Obelix@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exactly this - Join-Lemmy.org has some (minor) UI and text issues. I’m also not quite happy about the sorting of the instances and the selection there. If f.e. you chose “General -> English” during onboarding, you get this screen here:
  
  Image
  
  Hexbear? Some random 11 user instance from finland? Lemmy.world nowhere to be seen? They are randomizing the instances, which kind of makes sense to prevent the bigger ones from growing even more, but which might confuse new users.
  
  But those are minor UI quirks that can be solved. All those reddit couch warriors that claim that everything should be completely redone exactly how they want it to be are insane. Normal users are able to understand the concept of instances.
  
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  - nutomic@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Lemmy.world is excluded because it represents more than 30% of all active Lemmy users, thats too much. And yes the list is somewhat randomized. Youre welcome to improve all this.
    
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- Coldcell@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Being able to just browse without signup and see largely federated content would pull in a lot of people. I am new to federated concepts, but would a generic, non-profit “home page” that’s browseable without signup is possible? Apps like Voyager could dump newbies into that until they want to post/interact?
  
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  - blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah you can browse an instance without being logged in, so that would be possible.
    
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- rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Read only instance would put them off too. The best solution, IMO:
  
  create a pool of instances that will act as the default ones
  
  when creating an account, create it on one of the instances, redirect the user there
  
  add an option to migrate an account to a different instance in case the user wants to choose a different one after a month or so
  
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  - blackn1ght@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    By read-only, I mean they couldn’t create any communities. So essentially it would be an instance that has accounts but nothing else. Users would still be able to vote and comment on other commnities and subscribe. They could stay on it if they wanted to, but of course they wouldn’t be able to create any communities.
    
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leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The vast majority of people want an experience where federation is invisible. Sign up and post/comment. To maintain the benefits of decentralisation and choice, that’s never going to be a truly workable thing.

The vast majority of people don’t want to create or even participate in communities, they just want to lurk, scroll and get their new content fix. Every social media based site I’ve ever been on, federated or centralised has a large group of people complaining about the lack of new content but never take it upon themselves to apply the obvious solution themselves.

These are not necessarily UX issues, these are people issues.

Maybe its time to stop continually worrying about this subject and concentrate on creating great communities? Because if we do that then users will participate organically.

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  We should do both.
  
  Give people a good UX, and build solid communities.
  
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  - leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not suggesting its impossible to improve the UX but I a) I think thats going to be an incredibly low priority for the developers and b) I’m not sure what changes can be made to address the essential conflict between the whole point of the fediverse - decentralisation - and a sign up process that essentially hides that without taking away an informed choice.
    
    In reality, its not really that much of a difficult concept to grasp and there are loads of resources like fedi.tips etc to help people. If the communities and content was of a sufficient quality (as oppose to quantity) people would make the fairly minimal effort to understand why the fediverse is the way it is.
    
    And if people don’t or won’t thats really their call.
    
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- Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honestly, I think federation being (mostly) invisible is actually part of the problem. Trying to make these spaces look like something they’re not makes people believe they work in a way that they don’t. It makes “Lemmy” look like wish-dot-com Reddit, and Mastodon look like temu Twitter.
  
  This is all something new. This is a thousand Reddits, where you can see over the fence at what each other Reddit is talking about. It’s ten-thousand Twitters, where you can talk to people on other Twitters.
  
  If you could post on Facebook articles from Twitter, people would get that maybe they don’t see every single comment, or every single Facebook article all of the time. This would be understood. Twitter and Facebook look like, and are discussed as if, they’re two totally different websites. The same would be true of AVForums and CivicForums, if they could cross-post.
  
  But fediverse platforms go out of their way to hide what they are, and to strip each website of its identity. And that seems wildly fucked up to me.
  
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  - Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I think federation being (mostly) invisible is actually part of the problem.
    
    But fediverse platforms go out of their way to hide what they are, and to strip each website of its identity.
    
    In what way? I don’t think Lemmy hides anything, the communities and usernames all have the @instancename.com at the end of them.
    
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- 3dmvr@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Idk I turn on the instance names on every app idk why they keep trying to hide the federation and how it works, it makes this experience unique, I dont want the same boring shit I already hated but was stuck with
  
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  - leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I do the same on mobile :) but I think once people do understand federation and why its actually a very good idea they would too - but thats not going to be true of the majority - certainly not before they use a federated service.
    
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HalfSalesman@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Reading these comments I feel a sense of dread. You are all experiencing survivor bias. Initially when I ran into barriers I gave up for like a year before bothering to try Lemmy again.

If you don’t want Lemmy to serve as an actual counter to corporate controlled social media if it means letting in “normies” then you are content with corporate controlled social media continuing to dominate our lives. Which sounds about right for humanity. The smugness is vile.

Just bring on the vacuum decay event already.

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- Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This post can be taken as-is with “Lemmy” replaced with “Linux”, and I fucking hate it. So many people despise the idea of “normies” coming to what they love as if they’re the reason things got so bad. This stuff could be so great if they were actually made for everyone.
  
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- Krauerking@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  While humanity can be incredible and beautiful to look at from a distance…
  Humans, tend to fucking suck.
  
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Etterra@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That bar to entry is a good thing; it helps keep most of the stupid out. The same stupid that ruined the rest of the internet.

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It doesn’t keep dumb people out, it keeps non tech savvy people out, I’ve seen extremely immature people on here
  
  I’d pick a mature user over a tech savvy user any day. Ideally they’d be both
  
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  - gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    it keeps non tech savvy people out,
    
    Picking a server isn’t a tech savvy person thing to do and it’s a good idea to stop pretending like it is. My wife, who needs me to move her steam games to other drives for her, managed to do it without asking me a thing. Tech skill has nothing to do with it
    
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_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Bad UX isn’t keeping most people away from Lemmy. Not being able to give up their addiction to Reddit is what’s keeping them from Lemmy. There’s a lot of people who will complain about the shitty things billionaires and tech companies and politicians do to them, but aren’t willing to lift a finger to change things.

You’re never going to bring those people to Lemmy unless Reddit shuts down and you develop an algorithm to spoon feed them whatever they want to feed their doomscrolling habit. Lemmy is better off without them.

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onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It’s literally like picking an email host. That’s the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? “Pick what you like” leads to people going “OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions😭😭” No wonder people love AI, because they can’t think for themselves.

The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.

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- TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think it’s less about ux and more about being confused. People aren’t faking being confused. I’m pretty tech savvy but had to do a double take. Still don’t fully understand the nuances of federation after over a year and a half. I don’t really need to understand all of it though.
  
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  - onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What’s there to understand? Does the average person understand that reddit consists of a frontend written in a frontend framework that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JS? Do they understand that HTTPS is used to make the request between the client and server on port 443? Do they know that the request is processed by a back end connecting to postgresql and redis or memcache for faster responses? That most assets are probably delivered by a CDN?
    
    Probably not. And why should they? They don’t need to understand how the fediverse works, nor do they have to understand how email works. All they need to do is select a server, create an account, and start interacting. Same as email.
    
    There’s no mystery. The fediverse isn’t complicated unless you freak out and start realising that the entire internet is more complicated than the shiny, glossy thing on top of it - which doesn’t need to be understood to have simple interactions with.
    
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- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Isn’t this why apple is popular. It just picks everything for you.
  
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- RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think the most important part to understand with lemmy is that the choice of server doesn’t matter that much because you can read and post on all the other servers as well. Unless you choose hexbear or whatever it is called these days. :)
  
  But it really is a problem when people can’t be bothered to choose from more than exactly one. I mean if you can make a selection from several different brands of toilet paper in a supermarket then why is it so hard to choose a server?
  
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  - onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My point exactly. How do you function in life if choice is too much for you to comprehend? Maybe people just need a website called Lemmy.org that redirects them to a random approved server and that’s it. “UX” problem solved.
    
    Anti Commercial-AI license
    
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- deadcatbounce@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Have you ever been on Facebook? Ever read the illiterate moronic uneducated garbage that people post as fact? It’s called ‘my truth’; maybe because it’s only true in their sphere (of one).
  
  There are going to be a seriously large number of people totally flummoxed by that question.
  
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  - onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If selecting a server is too much, then directing them to a random on that fits their criteria should solve the problem. Which joinlemmy, joinmastodon, joinoixelfed, and so on do.
    
    If even that is too much, then I’m totally fine without those people as I question what kind of stuff they’ll be saying.
    
    And this isn’t even elitist. It’s not “you have to have the ActivityPub spec memorised” or even know what ActivityPub is. It’s like “which email host should I pick”. No deeper than that.
    
    If Facebook and Apple have eroded people’s brains to the point where such a simple question cannot be answered without freaking out, then we’re in trouble.
    
    Anti Commercial-AI license
    
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Ulvain@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Couldn’t we design an “onboarder” where when you get started on lemmy, a “let’s get you started” wizard asks you 2 or 3 questions and based on your answers, it proposes 2 or 3 servers (or directly assigns you to one)?

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- donuts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  join-lemmy.org already had this in a way:
  
  Image Image Image
  
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  - skaffi@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The problem here is that those are filters, and the newcomer will usually still be faced with several options, which will still make them scratch their head.
    
    A wizard is a good idea, with simple questions, rather than filter buttons.
    
    But it needs to end up telling you “here you go, this is the one you want!”, giving you just a single instance. Doesn’t matter that multiple will probably match the answers given - then just pick one at random. Chances are, they will be equally happy on either, and if not, well, it isn’t very hard to switch to a new instance later on, when they have become regular Lemmists.
    
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  - Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Join-lemmy suggests outdated and defederated instances: lemmy.world/post/24220536
    
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  - Ulvain@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thanks for sharing! Very much aligned with what i have in mind… Only difference would be to narrow down to 1 or 2 (if at all) on the landing screen - maybe all other options are under a “advanced user? Click here to expand server selection” or something like that…
    
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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Something like this sounds great
  
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Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Could have auto versus manual server choice. Can always maintain option for granular selection, but “normies” could walk into a quiz when migrating?

Top three things you used Reddit for? (List of maybe 10+ things, servers can maintain their feature list to empower this)

Do you like A) talking to everybody about days topics B) talking to a smaller group of like minded people

Do you like A) a MORE moderated space B) a LESS moderated space, realizing you may see more spam and controversy

And then calculates a server that meets needs, if multiple, then random number generator to assign a server. On user side, all they see is a quiz followed by a typical registration screen. This would help with distribution of users across niche servers, but feel lighter for user. They also would assume a more curated experience, regardless of where they end up. Servers could have to opt in to be fed users from search of they were afraid of impact on cost to maintain server.

The above likely aren’t the right questions, but this framework could be effective
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- lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Somebody will have to host that. Whether it’s a Lemmy app developer, or baked into the Lemmy codebase itself.
  
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  - fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Baked in would be nicer. It would kind of cool for any landing page just kind of working to get you into the threadiverse. If I keep going to nomoreuserlemmy.org (or whatever fake one you want) it just redirects on the backend for me when I log in to an instance that actually works for me.
    
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- AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The lemmy servers could also provide how much headroom they have for extra users and the selection wouldn be weighed based on that so that smaller servers wont be overloaded and larger servers get enough users. They could implement some of this into the reddit api itself.
  
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  - Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Good point
    
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- WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The problem with that is there is no centralized website you go to for Lemmy. The closest thing to that would be the various apps you use for Lemmy so my question would be where would you put this quiz? I think when people talk about joining a server being hard it’s just hard for people used to a centralized social media to get used to the idea that one social media platform can be made up of a bunch of different websites and it becomes overwhelming to even figure out where to go. They’re very used to just going to reddit’s website so if they can’t just look up Lemmy and click the first link to join it’s gonna be too complex.
  
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  - Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure, the app that nailed this might separate itself as the popular option for zeitgeist to grab onto, but then it distributes users to many servers (as the app itself is an aggregator that’s agnostic to server. But yes, rush of that single app becoming “Lemmy” in many people’s minds.
    
    But you likely need to treat migration and understanding nuance of the tech as two different user journeys. Rather than solving problem though, likely better to stop and ask why we even want more users (if we even do?).
    
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  - OpenStars@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Just go to https://discuss.online, easy. :-)
    
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ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The comments here are smug as fuck.

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- Majorllama@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wasn’t gonna say anything but that’s another issue with the userbase on Lemmy.
  
  It’s occupied by a lot of people who think they are better and smarter than everyone else. Not that reddit didn’t also have that problem but the smugness levels are definitely way higher around these parts.
  
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  - SamboT@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah i have a comp sci degree and it took me a minute to understand the different servers and how to curate my feed and then balance quality vs quantity of posts.
    
    Im capable of understanding but i dont want to put effort into my leisure app, and it seems like nobody else does either.
    
    Good starting defaults for instances and the “everything” front page seems most important. Maybe training people on the front page to branch out by showing them posts from up and coming communities…
    
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  - boxfulloffoxes@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m sure it’ll go away with time, hopefully as more people join and contribute.
    
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LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- cevn@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lmao, so true. Buhh my user experience!! As if consuming endless amounts of garbage on reddit is a good experience.
  
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  - LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Based.
    
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- boxfulloffoxes@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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IonicFrog@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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 501©(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.

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- Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Feddit.org and lemmy.ca are also non profits
  
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  - PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As is .world
    
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- honeynut@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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?
  
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  - IonicFrog@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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?
    
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evilcultist@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It should have an account creation process like those old RPGs where it asks a series of questions then says, “we recommend this server: <blah>. It is <one short sentence about its content>” then has click next to proceed or click “I want to choose another server” to just get a list.

1-hate, 5-love Do you like capitalism? Do you like tech? Do you like sports? etc

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secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
New users get overwhelmed with decision fatigue, especially when they have average intelligence.

When selecting a federation, new users should be told:

“Because Lemmy isn’t run by a large corporation, lots of small volunteers run Lemmy and run different copies of Lemmy at the same time. These different copies are called instances. You can choose 1 or just click the large red button and we’ll randomly select one of the most popular instances for you. If you aren’t sure what to choose, just press the button!”

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- FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  “…especially when they have average intelligence.”
  
  People with average experience struggle with the new paradigm. Nothing to do with intelligence and that kind of elitism is the reason I first bailed on lemmy.ml. I would have thought that someone with average intelligence would recognise how many of the worlds problems today stem from people punching down.
  
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  - secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The idea that intelligence has no impact on computer skills and the ability to quickly learn computer skills is magical thinking. Intelligence differences are real and the solution is to make easy explanation to help people learn. I am not among the most intelligent people on Lemmy, the intelligence of the average Lemmy person probably at least an IQ above 115. It’s not about elitism, it’s about accessibility. I have terrible coordination. If someone tries to teach me advanced tennis, it would be bad, but if someone recognizes my coordination limits and is like, the goal is to just hit the ball once, then perhaps I have fun with tennis.
    
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- leadore@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sorry, that’s more than one sentence.
  
  person you’re saying that to: “So much words, very explaining!” runs away
  
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- saboteur@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is basically the solution. Just give a few words to explain that different servers can have some rules differences and offer the easy join button.
  
  Get people onboarded fast and easy! If they want to, they can learn more afterwards.
  
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FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

endless wars of who’s federeated with who

i’ve been here for months and months, i might have seen this mentioned as an aside once or twice. but “endless wars”?

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- conicalscientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m certain those replies are in bad faith to discourage people from leaving reddit. The first one is obvious for your aforemention reason. The second one. I mean the internet has been around for decades. People haven’t suddenly forgot how to use it. Even normies have been able to figure out how to click a server. They’re fomenting lazy inertia.
  
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  - FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “retention bots” of some description wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest…
    
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- ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The first year after the api debacle in 2023 was rife with culture class of redditors tromping through anarchist and communist communities and instances and freaking the fuck out they’re allowed to exist.
  
  Those instances have resulted in defederations or there’s been enough fatigue and migration that these days its really just down to like 3 chronically obsessed users variously spamming about it.
  
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- ArtificialHoldings@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Very inside baseball opinion. It’s like me describing reddit as “endless drama” because I read every thread on subreddit drama.
  
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C126@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
How did people figure out what email provider to use?

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stoly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
lol lol

Reddit sucks

I can’t be expected to make a decision

I’ll stick with reddit
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Smokeydope@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can’t do anything because these excuses are window dressing and not the core of the issue. The core of the issue is that 99% of people are incredibly unwilling to change their habits or spend five minutes to wrap their heads around how websites work. If the question of which server to join is too much, this kind of space isn’t for you.

No, having a full time job or a family is not an excuse to not learn how computers or the internet or networks in general work. You’ve had a lifetime to learn and are willfully ignorant.

Im personally fine with basic competence and tech literacy to be a natural gate keeping the unwashed morons out. Lemmy is growing at a fine pace without catering to the lowest common denominators.

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SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Add a bell button and a whistle button.

I think instead of promoting a page where people have to choose a server, just send people to lemmy.world directly. We should probably just get people to sign up there at first and have the ability to migrate their accounts to other servers if they want to do that later.

Having to choose from multiple servers is asking people to choose between a bunch of options they know nothing about. Get people straight to looking at content and posting stuff as soon as possible, once they’re more invested, and understand more about the different instances they can change servers if that’s what they want to do.

But yeah writhing the code needed to make account migration seamless might be a lot of work so not sure if that will happen.

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TeraByteMarx@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve decided this is good and want a Lemmy that is restricted to just the nerdiest of nerds. These little spaces are cool without all those horrible reddit users.

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kilgore_trout@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Lemmy UX is identical to Reddit. Come on.

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ArtificialHoldings@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A lot of disingenuous Lemmy users in that thread pretending that picking a server is more confusing than filing your taxes. I think join-lemmy should probably hot-list like 6 or 7 servers instead of making you choose via a primary interest, since you can migrate your account later anyway. But I am personally not tech oriented and managed to make an account and find an app without an issue.

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AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“Here’s Lemmy. It’s like Reddit. There’s a bunch of different websites for it, but they all have basically the same things on them. Just join one near you, if you don’t like it you can always use a different one later”

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SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good keep those numb nuts away. Reddit sucks not only because of Spez and his greedy overlords, many of the users suck as well and I bet there is a big overlap on the Venn diagram between people who suck and people who think lemmy is confusing

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ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Better UX than Reddit, they even point out that it’s like old.reddit instead of the trash UX they have now

It’s just dismissive to get people to agree without looking

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underwire212@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s why my less “tech savvy” friends won’t join. They don’t understand what federation is, and No they don’t want to take 2 minutes to learn.

It’s annoying, but it’s reality. People don’t understand the whole different servers thing, federation, and how to pick one.

I realize marketing isn’t a strong suit (nor should it be), but I’m proposing two solutions (well maybe not solutions, but something to help):

A quick animated video showing the benefits of Lemmy and how this all works (if it hasn’t already been done yet)

A service that basically simplifies and centralizes the signup process to one screen. During server selection, users can see the most populated servers and click on them to learn the specific rules for the server, etc.

Idk, maybe we already have all this…or this is just complicating the issue. Or maybe we only want people willing to take 2 minutes to learn about how it all works. Tbh that’s a pretty good natural filter for the types of users I want to be interacting and discussing with.
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loaf@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I assumed (probably incorrectly) that users would be visiting Lemmy via apps, so the UX would depend on which app they used.

I don’t know. I have a soft spot for Lemmy. The interactions here seem more genuine less about updoots.

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JasSmith@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

but it feels like old reddit

Yes, and that’s a good thing.

There are lots of Lemmy apps that display posts in different ways. If you want “bells and whistles”, then find an app that gives you that.

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spicehoarder@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Which server do you want to use is like asking “Do you want Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo for email?” it really isn’t that big of a deal, but maybe people these days have a hard time doing that too…

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Wiz@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“Wah wah it’s so hard to pick a server!”

JUST LIKE EMAIL YOU NITWIT!

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