Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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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?
"It was just endless war about who is federated with who?"
Thanks the anti-tankies turds and their constants whining.
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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.
Feddit.org and lemmy.ca are also non profits
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"It was just endless war about who is federated with who?"
Thanks the anti-tankies turds and their constants whining.
I don't think anti-tankies can be blamed when said tankies regularly engage in brigading of other instances. Like is everyone actually behaved this wouldn't have been an issue.
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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.
I don't think partisan is even the right word here as many Lemmy users are too far left for mainstream political parties. In fact I am further left than most any mainstream party, but am still considered a capitalist shill by people here.
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Feddit.org and lemmy.ca are also non profits
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I mean, I lost all my old posts (or at least access to them) when two instances I was on just poof'd.
Yeah this happened to me too. I guess I made bad choices.
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right wing?
Yeah, it's full of tankies and transphobes.
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I don't think anti-tankies can be blamed when said tankies regularly engage in brigading of other instances. Like is everyone actually behaved this wouldn't have been an issue.
What you call brigading are just normal people like me who encountered right-wing america-centered bullcrap and react to it.
I never saw tankies spamming the lemmyverse to whine about world.
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Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.
What's most annoying is that for 95% of users, federation doesn't even matter. You just log on and use lemmy exactly like reddit. All feds are consolidated onto my front page anyway.
People make a big deal about it, it definitely intimidated me when I first logged up. It's one of the reasons I put off getting into lemmy for such a long time, and it's frustrating that in the end, it really makes no difference.
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Has software usage really gotten to the point where the average person can't handle being given a choice about anything? Where it's just too much effort to do anything more than mindlessly click on whatever is presented to them?
These people must have been paralyzed with fear when they had to choose an email provider.
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I don't think partisan is even the right word here as many Lemmy users are too far left for mainstream political parties. In fact I am further left than most any mainstream party, but am still considered a capitalist shill by people here.
You fascist swine
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sorry I totally misread that as defederated lol
Yes I figured but wasn't sure if I wasn't missing something lol. Well at least I learned a new term (defederated).
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Yeah, it's full of tankies and transphobes.
well in that case join an instance that doesn't federate with queer/transphobe instances?
This is the advantage of federated social networks - it gives full control to the people who run their own instances -
well in that case join an instance that doesn't federate with queer/transphobe instances?
This is the advantage of federated social networks - it gives full control to the people who run their own instancesThat would require people actually recommending specific websites, and all people seem to want to do is circle jerk about "lemmy", as if it's a tangible place and not a website engine
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The UX is objectively bad, it breaks most good design principles
What UX? At least my instance have like 5 different forms to access, in the browser, then you have the apps too. There's no way all of those UX are not good for you
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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?
How did people figure out what email provider to use?
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Greenleaf is pretty massively exaggerating about the extent of defederation, as only a handful ever get defederated regularly, certainly not enough to call it 'wars'.
As for UX, there's definitely room for lots of improvements, especially in making it easier to explore another instances local communities from within your own insinstancethout explicitly subbing to them all.
But I don't think the very concept of different instances is truly a barrier or bad UX, that other user is just giving lazy excuses for not switching away from Reddit.
Ah yes, because telling people the reason they don't join your platform is invalid is sure to make them change their minds.
0 marketing sense. People like you are why the Reddit userbase mostly steers clear.
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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.
I've suggested something similar before and got shur down. Just sort people into a Lemmy server either based off their interests or location
"Nationality France = Lemmy France Server"
Or
"What are your interests? Gaming = Gaming Lemmy server"
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That would require people actually recommending specific websites, and all people seem to want to do is circle jerk about "lemmy", as if it's a tangible place and not a website engine
I guess that is because people don't understand what the fediverse is and why it exists.
It is one of the foundational problems the fediverse aims to fix. Marginalized communities get all the tools and authority to protect themselves from hatred and abuse.That would require people actually recommending specific websites
I actually think that's the way to go! lemmy.blahaj.zone would be one example of a queer-inclusive community.
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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?
If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn't be a good community member anyway.
