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?
donald glover saying good dot gif
Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
Submitted 1 year ago by AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/133162df-4437-43a9-8099-98727eec11ab.jpeg
Comments
8000gnat@reddthat.com 1 year ago
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about
- too few members
- wtf is multiple servers?
While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet
Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
The biggest advantage of federated social media is that there’s multiple servers. I know it can be a rough point for new users, but most people can just join whatever the largest server is and they’ll be perfectly fine. You need to pick a server because lemmy isn’t one website, and it shouldn’t be one website. People should be able to host an instance if they disagree with another one’s moderation/rules, and spreading the load across many servers helps to prevent large scale downtime when servers go down. All of these advantages can coexist with new users just being pointed to lemmy.world.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You don’t need to research and choose a server, unless you have personal issues. I get the impression that some people are so polarized they feel like logging into the wrong server would put them on the Wrong Side and make them evil. Just enjoy the content and ignore the complaints about numbers. The concept of multiple servers might keep some people away if they think they need to understand it, but they really don’t.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The average person is going to have no idea what “federated” means. They’ll probably assume it has something to do with the federal gov.
joelghill@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
lunarul@lemmy.world 1 year ago
UX experience
We should shorten that to UXX
Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
That’s what I send to people:
“Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
- discuss.online if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- sopuli.xyz if you want a server located in the EU
- vger.app if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions”
What research is needed?
Xella@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes. Lemmy is not friendly for the “average” user. We could come up with a list of severs with pros and cons to them and then people would feel more comfortable. I came here the moment reddit killed the API and I was so confused. Federated anything meant nothing to me and I discovered lemmy.world so that’s just what I joined. LOL I still don’t know the difference between servers.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I disagree. I just found a link to lemmy.world, with no idea of how lemmy worked, and I’m perfectly happy. People’s complaints about servers seem to come down to personal issues.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s like politics, hahaha. Those who don’t trouble themselves with too many details remain content with whatever they their emotions dictated while those who do research, sort out real facts, read reviews, understand the platform details live the next four years in constant anxiety
dekerta@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.
IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds 😅
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But once we need our over whatever we’re overly focussed on, we’re back to being the only ones in the computer lab at 3am
We need to bring enough nerds together or bridge the airgap, translate the jargon, find our unifying furry identity
Draegur@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Hmmm. Actually maybe it can be leveraged.
There should perhaps be a default instance that it funnels everyone into but makes a “power user” option available from a drop down where they can CHOOSE an instance. Make it an opt-in thing instead of a mandatory hurdle.
Mastodon needs this too.
…
Mastodon needs this ESPECIALLY.
khepri@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, that was my first thought when I read this too. There were plenty of people for whom the internet in general, or later social media, was too complex for them to bother with. I think each generation of technology leaves behind a certain % of people who are past the point of being willing or able to learn how to use something new, and that isn’t really a bad thing.
Yes, you have to have some notion of what “federated” means and how it works to make full use of federated sites. But it’s just asking people to learn a little bit about a couple new terms, and spending a few minutes outside of their comfort zone while they orient to a new environment, just like when the internet itself or social media started. And I think we obviate the entire point of building something new by trying to make it completely familiar and friction-less for people. If that was the best way to build community, then the internet would just be the phone book and social media would just be the personals section of a newspaper.
PaintedSnail@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That does come with the unavoidable side effect that the majority of the people will simply not participate. It then follows that sites like Reddit will continue to be the place where the majority of the people will go.
If your goal is to participate in small communities and you are okay with the slow pace of those communities, then that’s fine. If your goal is to move people away from corporate-sponsored media for whatever reason, then this won’t work.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I’ll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.
That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That’s the very thing that makes federation great.
You’re all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you’re going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.
One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That’s the very thing that makes federation great.”
Because for every choice presented, people want to know the consequences of each one before proceeding. It’s a well understood problem in sales and marketing. People do not want to put themselves in a position where they have to undo. Companies like Apple do this very well. In computer shops, the reason staff are hired is to help get the customer from “wanting a laptop” to “choosing one laptop”, rather than walk away feeling that they need to think about it more.
“Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice”.
Maybe if they said that on the signup page it would help. I think it would have helped me. But just because you have a sense of what “looks good” doesn’t mean the average person does. It’s the average person that I want to interact with on the internet.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
When I recommend federated sites to people, I literally just pick the ones I’m already on and send the link. Problem solved. They can learn more and try new things in their own time. It’s also not hard to just tell them, “It’s like email, but for the whole internet.”
“Of Earth’s estimated 400,000 plant species, we could eat some 300,000, armed with the right imagination, boldness and preparation. Yet humans, possibly the supreme generalist, eat a mere 200 species globally, and half our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat.”
Would you consider biodiversity to also be bad ux? Maybe consider that the benefits of decentralization far outweigh the cons of your marketing programming, and that the issue is more one of education. Dumbing down and patronizing people like we need somebody to make our choices for us sounds like a solution that’s worse than the problem.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 year 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
racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
You’re confusing UX with UI. UX = user experience, the entire experience, UI = the interface. UX is the entire user experience, and for example for joining reddit, you go to reddit.com and join. For lemmy you learn there are dozens of large instances, with intricate politics between them and if you join the wrong one everyone thinks you’re a tankie…
That’s terrible and i can imagine people are put off by it.
The interface of lemmy itself is indeed ok, and is close to old reddit, which at least the people here prefer.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I am aware of the difference
I was only commenting on one part of it
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Who cares? If someone can’t figure out how to join a server, then I don’t want them here. If people think that reddit has some amazing UX, then I don’t want them here.
The post about Lemmy has 500 upvotes while the crybaby replies only have like 100.
pogt@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
…and the fediverse doesn’t need to dominate all social media. Period.
You’ll never be able to migrate the IG influencer whose affiliate marketing business relies on the algorithm, or the Titkok million views dude who makes money off their views and lives. So I really don’t understand this argument of “Oh we’re alienating mass users”.
Just like there’s non-profit orgs vs businesses, open source software vs commerical ones, there also fediverse vs commercial social media. I prefer it here, and to each their own.
jim3692@discuss.online 1 year ago
The question is: do we want people to leave corporate services, and join the fediverse, or not? By showing such hostility towards such “crybabies” we will never get any traction.
We are facing a problem. “Crybabies” are arguing about lack of content and/or difficulty on signing up. People on Lemmy are arguing that they don’t want such users in their communities. Other people, thinking of onboarding, may not join after seeing hostile users like you.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
I don’t want anyone staying on Reddit tbh
HalfSalesman@lemm.ee 1 year 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.
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year 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.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 1 year ago
While humanity can be incredible and beautiful to look at from a distance…
Humans, tend to fucking suck.
MITM0@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh so we badmouthing & smearing the Fediverse huh.
Ok let’s ask them what counts as a “Good UI/UX” & “Endless wars” ? Really ?
zeppo@lemmy.world 1 year 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.
nomoyknsns@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
Every other post is some worldist idiot whining about ml
zeppo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
How can people figure out email, but lemmy is just too complicated?
ConstableJelly@midwest.social 1 year ago
Because email federation is inherent to everyone’s understanding of how that service works. And perhaps more importantly, email “instances” are run by corporations. Laymen are not signing up on a “server” or “instance,” they’re signing up for Google, Apple, or Microsoft - the service they get aligns to a company that provides it. Nearly every single service that anyone has ever signed up for online has followed the same essential process: go to fixed url, create id and password, gain access.
It’s easy to underestimate, especially in communities like this, how enigmatic the entire infrastructure of the internet is to the general population. Think of those videos where people are asked what “the cloud” is: they pause and ponder and then guess “satellites?” because they’ve never even wondered about it. I’m guessing that for many people, something like Twitter is just something that lives in their app store that they can choose to “enable” on their phone by installing it.
People know that software is “made up of code,” but they don’t understand what that means. The idea that an “application” is a collection of services run by code, that there are app servers and web servers, that there are backends and frontends, is completely unknown to (I’d guess) a significant majority of people. And if someone doesn’t understand that, it’s honestly near impossible to understand what anything in the fediverse is.
And most importantly: this is not any user’s fault. IT and the Internet developed so quickly, and it was made so seamlessly accessible by corporations who at first just wanted their services to be adopted, and then wanted everything even more deliberately opaque so those users were more likely to feel locked in and dependent while the services themselves tail-spun in degradation.
We need more, and more accessible, and friendlier, tech literacy in general. The complexity of our world is running away from us (“I have a foreboding [of a time…] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues” - Carl Sagan) and we simply can’t deeply understand many of the things that directly impact us. But because of its ubiquity, IT may be the best chance people have of getting better at understanding.
FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 1 year 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”?
knexcar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I frequently see comments saying stuff like “don’t trust them, they’re from Lemmy.ml” or “I’m glad Hexbear defederated” usually in terms of tankies/pro-russia anti-Ukraine support. Or occasionally, a random dislike of Lemmy.world because it’s too much like Reddit (isn’t that the point?)
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 1 year 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.
conicalscientist@lemmy.world 1 year 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.
FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“retention bots” of some description wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest…
ArtificialHoldings@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Very inside baseball opinion. It’s like me describing reddit as “endless drama” because I read every thread on subreddit drama.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 1 year ago
Lemmy UX is identical to Reddit. Come on.
Mwa@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Am used to New Reddit Ux (2020-2022ish) but i still like this tbh.
zeppo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
An improved version of old reddit with a good mobile view, which old reddit lacks.
MasterNerd@lemm.ee 1 year ago
That’s UI. What they’re talking about is the barrier to entry for new users, which falls under User eXperience
PokerChips@programming.dev 1 year ago
Lemmy doesn’t need low bar registrations. Lemmy will grow slowly without the immaturities and the to pompous class.
People will build apps and make lemmy more “fun”
Corporate social media is easy because it keeps the ad clickers there. Do we really want that environment here?
All the quality (non bait clicking content suppliers) will come here and all the spam artists will stay over there.
Just let Lenny grow organically with a little barrier to climb and we’ll be alright
3dmvr@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Its so nice tho, all the alternative front ends are fire, I like all the ios apps, I prefer it to reddits garbage, they made it worse every update down to forcing answers to take up a tab in the last one
CafecitoHippo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
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.
CafecitoHippo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Even the NFL one, the front page of posts the most comments is 10.
Saleh@feddit.org 1 year ago
Well the only way to change that is to engage with those communities and provide content. Ofc. community building isnt easy.
Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
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.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 1 year 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.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Pot, meet kettle.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 1 year 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.
moseschrute@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m working on a lemmy app. Will be UI focused!
MITM0@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Good luck & we’ll be waiting
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn’t be a good community member anyway.
C126@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
How did people figure out what email provider to use?
nomoyknsns@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
“It was just endless war about who is federated with who?”
Thanks the anti-tankies turds and their constants whining.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
Lemmy is too right wing to serve as a good Reddit replacement. The queer communities on Reddit don’t want to move here because their members will be harassed.
pigup@lemmy.world 1 year 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.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 1 year 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.
IonicFrog@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year 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.
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Leave the micropenis guys alone, it’s already a shit card to be dealt.
FossilVerbrechen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
phtn.app client is amazing. looks modern and beautiful.
Can recommend
Rooty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Aren’t you guys sick of forced infinite growth in every aspect of our collective existence? The Fediverse is not shareholder owned, we don’t have to be slaves to The Red Line That Must Go Up. Reddit went to shit when it was aggresively mainstreamed, I don’t want it to happen to lemmy as well.
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
There was a lot of debate about this when the reddit exodus happened in 2023. I initially joined then and have stuck around since. Something that was said a lot back then that I agree with is that Lemmy doesn’t have to compete with reddit. It’s alright for this corner of the internet to exist and not be the single dominant one.
If someone makes a reddit clone somewhere else with more liberal admins, good for them. I wouldn’t be going there. The fact that Lemmy is sectioned into servers is part of the appeal. I’m glad that I can be part of a server with very progressive administration. I would never get this level of moderation and support from any other social media. I’m fine with that meaning that uninformed people who just want to doom-scroll are less likely to come here.
We have seen growth periods time and again when problems arise with private social media companies. Each time, a little more people from the initial wave join for good. I think that’s fine. Most lemmy servers are run for free by people who just believe in what we’re doing here. We can always add more servers, but we can’t handle the kind of traffic that reddit handles. We’re entirely dependent on dedicated people investing large amounts of their time to create and maintain these spaces for us.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.
pogt@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
I use Eternity on android and it’s a fantastic and much cleaner feel than reddit.
maddenim@lemmy.world 1 year ago
UI =/= UX, and UX is what the comment on the post was about