Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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It's a solved problem. Check out phtn.app and vger.app also Alexandrite, Next and Tesseract. Like the problem is solved 5 times over.
Unless we use one of those as the default UI, the problem isn't solved, people will give up before knowing of their existence.
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
This 100%. And there are other former-reddit-3rd party apps as well afaik
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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.
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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This is why email never caught on. Who wants to choose between Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Proton, and Comcast? A successful email service would be one where you can only communicate with users of the same email service. /s
Except everyone just uses gmail now
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Unless we use one of those as the default UI, the problem isn't solved, people will give up before knowing of their existence.
Tell it to the hosts.
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I specifically remember looking up tables of who defederates from who and what instances allow NSFW or downvoting because this was an issue among some of the top instances back then.
I ended up making 4 different accounts over 2 months until I landed on a server I'm happy with. That will never be acceptable to any normal user.
Every time someone brings up these issues, people here downplay them like you are doing it right now and nothing is ever done about it.
This, the survivor bias is absurdly high around lemmy.
This is my fourth instance because, for some reason, it's extremely hard to find an instance that defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn't too pissy about downvotes.Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda... And I don't feel comfortable creating a community for the same reason and there doesn't seem to be anyone else from my country so... Nobody who cared about it (or who could help me mod).
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People these days look weird at you if don't use Gmail so you can't see their Google Calendar invite or some other thing that only works with Google... People are literally pushing tech monopolies.
@Octagon9561 @isaaclyman worse some big email sending services like sendgrid embedded in a lot solutions don't work with privacy enhanced e-mail services.
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
Same...though it seems to do some weird stuff like not marking DMs read, or not having an easy way to embed a photo that's already hosted somewhere (and my instance seems a bit conservative with size limits).
Still, it's a solid app, and the only way I interacted with reddit.
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
For the android users : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy
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The UX for both Voyager and Sync seem really good. I've tried it out on a device, you can scroll before logging in, and when you try to create an account there aren't loops to jump through and a default instance is pre-selected
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I found a beautiful web client for Lemmy that I wish was the default experience. It would surely help Lemmy in gaining popularity.
here's the link: https://phtn.app/
Thanks for the tip Photon is great!
I use it with Alexandrite as well. Those alternative clients really made a difference in my experience on desktop.
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I found a beautiful web client for Lemmy that I wish was the default experience. It would surely help Lemmy in gaining popularity.
here's the link: https://phtn.app/
This I like, it solved many of the issues. I wish it was the default.
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The fediverse being "endless wars about who is federated" is not really true, is it?
Sure not everyone is federated with everyone else, but legacy social media is federated with nobody at all. Federation is the entire point of the Fediverse, you connect with people you want to connect with and you don't connect with people you don't. It's as simple as that.
Plus, do people really want to be on a single platform with everyone else in the world?
Because that's a big part of what broke the internet in the first place...99% of users are going to check out when you ask them what server to join.
I'm so sick of this dumb ass argument...
People who complain about "servers" need to tell me what they think "the internet" is. The existence of servers didn't stop online video games, email or discord/slack from catching on with hundreds of millions of people, so why is it suddenly a problem when it comes to the Fediverse?
Onboarding obviously needs to be better, but I'm going to be totally honest honest here: I don't think these are legitimate, actionable or useful critiques.
These are merely excuses from people who are addicted to legacy social media and who don't give a shit that the internet is owned and controlled by a few rich corporations.
Well ot kinda was true for the time of the big reddit exodus, there were very active and massively upvoted threads about one instance defederating from another, instances debating on whether they should defederate, beehive publicly wondering whether to ditch lemmy etc
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TBH, if you can't handle picking a server, please just stay away.
The reality is this filters out all non tech savvy people.
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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?
Tell them to download the thunder app (it's very similar to many of the popular reddit apps) and just give them a list of the 10 most popular fediverse's to pick from to make an account.
I mentioned this like a year ago. Users will need their hands held to get them to easily come over.
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Haha that’s very true. Same concept as signing up for a specific email provider. Hadn’t really thought of that.
It's literally in the "Introduction" to lemmy (third paragraph):
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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.
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.
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This is why email never caught on. Who wants to choose between Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Proton, and Comcast? A successful email service would be one where you can only communicate with users of the same email service. /s
Strawman
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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?
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.
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This, the survivor bias is absurdly high around lemmy.
This is my fourth instance because, for some reason, it's extremely hard to find an instance that defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn't too pissy about downvotes.Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda... And I don't feel comfortable creating a community for the same reason and there doesn't seem to be anyone else from my country so... Nobody who cared about it (or who could help me mod).
I like how you put that. We really are the ones who survived
