Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
-
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?
Reddit being popular is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy.
When you get right down to it: people don't care that Reddit is selling their information, that the site itself is a piece of garbage, that running the site requires a bunch of no-life weirdos whose numbers will only increase going forward and whose power will likewise, or that the design actively encourages bots to the point of disincentivizing actual human beings from using it.
They want their memes, they want their news, they want their niche little interest subs and they want their porn. The simple fact is that lemmy is a smaller version of Reddit with fewer options and to the majority of people who don't care about their data or the objectively dogshit running of the site, there is no reason to cross over to Lemmy.
Until Reddit takes a Musk-type turn into being totally unuseable, lemmy will only see a trickle of users who are burned by Reddit.
-
"Wah wah it's so hard to pick a server!"
JUST LIKE EMAIL YOU NITWIT!
JUST LIKE EMAIL YOU NITWIT!
We have very different perceptions of how people approach emails.
Guess how tech illiterates(?) approach email? They sign up on Gmail - perhaps with some handholding - and that's it. That's all they know or care about.
And before you say they don't deserve to be on the internet: they are all using Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp, etc. Unless platforms like Lemmy actually treat new users better, there's not much incentive for people to switch.
-
Voting being disabled is an option built into Lemmy that the admins can activate, though only a few choose to. I know Blaja disabled down votes but not upvotes.
Is that a consistent experience across lemmy though? I looked at some of those downvote-disabled instances, and then looked at posts in those instances from within an instance that still had downvotes enabled - and it appeared that people were still downvoting those posts just fine.
If it is possible to simply disable votes all together - including comment votes - I might try spending some time learning how to get that all setup and running and see how the experience is. But I would likely defederate from all vote-instances (or I don't know if there's a way to make the federation opt-in), so that community could be entirely free from voting effects.
-
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?
we can redesign the on onboarding process.
stop explaining new terms
fuck infinite list of random names with anime girls (what do you want me to do,read!?)Make it like a map and turn instances into buildings (or gardens/circle/doesnt matter). Show some stats like how big, who i can talk to, topic. Gamify the experience so the fatigue turns into curiousity.
-
Why is “drama” on Lemmy always highly exaggerated by people?
“Endless wars of who federates with who”. What is that person even talking about and who the fuck would even care as a normal user?
I haven't heard about any of that drama since the early days when things were still getting sorted out
-
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?
Choosing a server is the bridge too far to cross?
That's fine, keep the reddit people on reddit.
-
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?
I feel like probably the biggest UX improvement Lemmy, and the fediverse more widely, could do is to make user migration more seamless. I’m thinking federated SSO, basically, where once you have an account anywhere on the fediverse you should a) be able to use that account anywhere else in the fediverse and b) move where that account is hoested to anywhere else in the fediverse.
I believe this is related to whatever the hell ActivityPod is doing? Feel free to correct me on that. Regardless, get something like this in place as well as better instance and services discovery (and maybe the ability to find your other connected services from you ‘account’ pages on whatever service you’re on) and I think people might start to think of fediverse as less ‘an alternative’ and more ‘the better one’.
Basically, we need standard protocols for user data management, transfer, credentials management, and service and instance discovery. I’m sure some of that exists, the important thing will be to streamline and standardise the actual UX.
-
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?
I tried to join Lemmy during the API debacle, but then it asked me to choose a server. It didn't explain what that meant or how it would affect me. I could read a long, confusing explanation of it elsewhere, but that illuminated nothing. So I gave up.
Eventually I tried again and just chose lemmy.world, since it was the largest. After that it was smooth sailing, and I like Lemmy a lot more than reddit. It turns out it didn't even really matter which server I chose. (Although now I see some comments from people saying there's something wrong with lemmy.world.)
You just need to hold the new user's hand a little. Anyone who has ever designed a UI for an office environment would know immediately that the server question is going to be an impenetrable wall for many users.
-
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
At no point has Gmail ever said "we're no longer allowing you to send/receive emails to/from Hotmail" or has Yahoo said "we're maintained by a single volunteer who because of real life stuff can no longer continue so we're discontinuing our email service."
-
I tried to join Lemmy during the API debacle, but then it asked me to choose a server. It didn't explain what that meant or how it would affect me. I could read a long, confusing explanation of it elsewhere, but that illuminated nothing. So I gave up.
Eventually I tried again and just chose lemmy.world, since it was the largest. After that it was smooth sailing, and I like Lemmy a lot more than reddit. It turns out it didn't even really matter which server I chose. (Although now I see some comments from people saying there's something wrong with lemmy.world.)
You just need to hold the new user's hand a little. Anyone who has ever designed a UI for an office environment would know immediately that the server question is going to be an impenetrable wall for many users.
Although now I see some comments from people saying there’s something wrong with lemmy.world.)
- No VPN
- older version of Lemmy (doesn't allow to remove uploads https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2024/03/04/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/)
- debatable policies (see the last one about "allow flat earthers" [email protected] )
- federated with Threads
- some power tripping [email protected]
-
we can redesign the on onboarding process.
stop explaining new terms
fuck infinite list of random names with anime girls (what do you want me to do,read!?)Make it like a map and turn instances into buildings (or gardens/circle/doesnt matter). Show some stats like how big, who i can talk to, topic. Gamify the experience so the fatigue turns into curiousity.
That's a cool idea
-
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.
I’m so sick of this dumb ass argument…
The server question was 100% the reason I didn't join Lemmy right away. It's not that I didn't understand what a server is. It's that the signup form was asking me to make a decision I didn't know the answer to, so I gave up.
With a little more hand holding, I'd have joined months before I actually did.
-
Yeah and I completely agree with you, but look at the comments in this thread. So many people are coming off as elitists "why should we make things easier for stupid idiots we hate?".
Seems that many users here don't actually want anyone else joining unless they meet their arbitrary standards for intelligence or whatever.
Its an illusion of control and if lemmy grows their elitest sentiment will fade. They can go make a fringe instance with all the arbitrary knowledge requirements they want but the most populated instances on lemmy should be there for the layman users that want to do better than reddit.
Why, with an established federated platform, would we not want to be the replacement for corporate social media? If they are so proud of registering on lemmy then idk if they are all that smart.
-
Is that a consistent experience across lemmy though? I looked at some of those downvote-disabled instances, and then looked at posts in those instances from within an instance that still had downvotes enabled - and it appeared that people were still downvoting those posts just fine.
If it is possible to simply disable votes all together - including comment votes - I might try spending some time learning how to get that all setup and running and see how the experience is. But I would likely defederate from all vote-instances (or I don't know if there's a way to make the federation opt-in), so that community could be entirely free from voting effects.
I'm not entirely sure if this is how it works, but I believe the instance that disables down votes does not federate downvotes from other instances. So if a downvote enabled instance downvotes a post from the non downvoting instance, other users on the same instance as the downvoter will see downvotes, but other instances will not see them.
Could be totally wrong about that though!
-
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?
I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
-
Although now I see some comments from people saying there’s something wrong with lemmy.world.)
- No VPN
- older version of Lemmy (doesn't allow to remove uploads https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2024/03/04/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/)
- debatable policies (see the last one about "allow flat earthers" [email protected] )
- federated with Threads
- some power tripping [email protected]
None of that affects me, but if I switch, which one should I switch to?
-
Joining is a bad experience. "Please commit now to a server on this service you know nothing about... Then you can try it out!" I understand the concept of decentralization, but it's ass-backwards...
I've tried to join lemmy several times since 2021 but I could succeed only a few weeks ago.
I don't get why new accounts need manual approval.
-
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?
The second this hurdle is crossed we'll need a new Lemmy
-
Been using Lemmy for a couple of years, not seen this once.
Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
These people are just stakeholders in Reddit. They are afraid of change, or losing any rep they have. They sit on a pile of useless upvotes.
Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
The default one is a bit minimal, but we have many Alternative UIs are as modern looking as new Reddit.
They also work much better while being modern looking. There's a reason so many of us came over here when they got rid of third party apps, the new Reddit interface is... bad.
-
That's a cool idea
Imagine sending your friend a minigame and you accidentally sign him up for lemmy
