Onboarding experience needs to be simpler for mass adoption
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If people can’t understand what federation is then just send them directly to .world or lemm.ee or another big instance. If they have common sense then send them to join-lemmy and let them pick an instance.
If someone is unable or unwilling to learn a very basic concept then they probably are not going to be a very good neighbor to have on the fediverse.I agree that the discoverability of communities needs improvement. I think that most instances should add starter pack like features with the most popular communities for people to choose to subscribe to when onboarding new users.
In my opinion, finding the right and active communities to subscribe to is the biggest onboarding hurdle, not picking an instance. If picking an instance is a hurdle, that person wasn’t willing to try another site in the first place
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voyager is available as a web app if you’d rather use your browser vger.app
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This could be solved with a:
Can't make up your mind?
Click here to choose a random general topic instance. Don't worry, if you want to switch later you can.
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Well, it's meant as an introductory paragraph. I think such a general paragraph should not go to those lengths since the vast majority won't be facing that issue. Most large instances that you would recommend for first timers are federated well enough that at least the civilised part of Lemmy is very accessible. I think that with:
- sensible defaults/suggestions
- easy to understand intro
- a help/link to a detailed article
you cover enough for users who can't be bothered, who want to be informed, and those who want to understand what's going on behind the scenes.
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Tried it a year ago and didn't like it.
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Most of them space things out in ways I don't like and I hate gestures because I do things accidentally all the time. I can keyword block througb ublock origjn, although I do understand it is easier in most apps.
User tagging is the only feature I feel like I'm missing on default mobile lemmy.
I have also hit app fatigue. Just fucking sick to death of having a massive number of separate things that could be done through the browser.
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Fair enough reasons. If you're doing custom ublock filters and such, you're likely able to tweak a lot to how you want it without any outside help from an app.
I see in you rother comment to someone you haven't tried Voyager in a year. I haven't tried that one recently, but I will say even over the last 6-8 months, so many of these apps have really matured from where they were a year or so ago. Very significantly so IMO. I think Summit is really the sleeper champ of the apps for my use case, and the dev is super helpful and responsive.
To each their own though. I love we have such great variety in UI here. At this point, there should be a couple viable options for near anyone.
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They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the
Lazy assnew users with the option to manually join any instances. -
I'm not sure I'd like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don't get it in 2025, that ain't everyone else's fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an "instance" is.
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Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.
I don't get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?
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lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can't fathom that some people can't or don't want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that "it's not that hard" and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.
Edit: I hadn't even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There's someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.
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They can't really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account
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"Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
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Yeah, I loved rif as the mobile app for reddit because reddit's mobile site has always been trash and the rif experience was so much better. I'm glad there are options for those who want them, and the desire for user tagging might lead me to trying something out eventually.
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Unrelated but there's a word we Mexicans use that you should look up. It's "mamador". No particular reason.
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It's the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.
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I disagree that we should do that.
Internet became a shit show the second everyone got a smartphone and the barrier to entry evaporated.
Needing to put in some effort to participate is a good filter for low effort people and their low effort worldviews.
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I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, "I don't need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!" and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.
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Thanks ! I'm active on the fediverse under other accounts, but I wanted to try the piefed experience as The Devs intended
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Spot on. Focusing on the software is the most tech-centered approach one can do, unfortunately tech people suck at make something excellent for non-tech people.
People don't like it but we need to put more focus on the fediverse as a network, say the AP word exactly once as to not confuse, but always operate in that state of mind.
And tech people must build a web extension to do fediverse stuff while being somewhere on the web ! That's what a User Agent is for, doing stuff for me
