Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Unless something has changed, migrating your account is more like copy/pasting config on a new account. Your post history etc however does not come with it. If that's something that matters to you then picking the "right" server matters a little bit.
For example lemmy.world has defederated from a bunch of instances (https://lemmy.world/instances)
Creating your account there means you're missing some of the full experience of Lemmy, for better or for worse.
A smaller instance may federate more content, but may run slower or worst case stop working entirely if the admin abandons it.I just used a handful of different servers over the course of a few weeks to see which was my ideal server.
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same here, eternal september growth be damned
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It would help of Lemmy had a simple migration option like Mastodon. Then, picking an instance wouldn't be a big deal.
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There are definitely issues with Lemmy but these users specifically seem to just be complaining for the sake of complaining. They want Reddit without the parts they currently don't like, not realizing that they also need to get rid of the parts that eventually made Reddit go to the shitter - because otherwise it'd just repeat.
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Brotha, don't forget, even knowing what Steam is, let alone that games don't exist in a vacuum with unicorns but on drives is far far far beyond what majority of people have had a chance to be familiar with.
It sucks.on the contrary, It took me days to figure out what the difference between servers are, what federates to what, etc.
And it had nothing to do with tech.
Analysis Paralysis is a thinhg:) -
The fact that Bluesky is almost a 1:1 copy (which includes the dumb stuff like post character limit) is precisely why I don't like it.
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Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance
Yeah but that's just join-lemmy, someone could make their own website that doesn't have this issue, even without overloading the user with info. It should only show instances that are middle of the road general instances.
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I picked ani because I don't have to sub to every anime community, I can just go to the Local view and get everything I need.
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Tech savvy would be to start your instances. Going through the process of picking an instance and registering there is no more tech savvy than registering with facebook or any other online site. The complexity keeping people away isn't technical, it's domain specific. People don't know how to choose an instance because they're not given enough information to actually tell instances apart.
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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.
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From everyone looking in: what the fuck is, ok, was Hexbear, why should I care and wtf can't I read anything from that place.
Same with registration, instances, etc. It's explained nowhere where how and why and i never have found a complete index with instances and communities.
I only can use lemmy because of sync. Yes, I'm also a reddit refugee.
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phtn.app client is amazing. looks modern and beautiful.
Can recommend
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Leave the micropenis guys alone, it's already a shit card to be dealt.
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Maybe. But Lemmy isn't close to that volume of users yet
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Like I said you're welcome to make pull requests. Lemmy is not a corporation employing multiple designers, but an open source project run by volunteers. So if you want to see something done, it's best to do it yourself.
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The problem is that in order to become a proper reddit replacement Lemmy needs enough users to create niche communities.
There are plenty of active communities related to technology and politics but there is no equivalent to r/batmanarkham or r/letgirlshavefun.
Plus there are plenty of communities that are all but abandoned.
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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(c)(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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I picked world cuz it was by far the biggest at the time
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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.
