Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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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.
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How did people figure out what email provider to use?
Well the concept of email is much more popular than the concept of a reddit style platform or even social media entirely. So information spread more easily.
And nowadays people just sign up for the account "required" by the OS of their phone which mostly comes with an email address. -
How did people figure out what email provider to use?
I picked the wrong one when I was a kid. I barely know why I picked the instance I did. It is hard to pick one. I say when trying to join lemmy, there should be interests tags that you select and an instance is populated for you.
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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?
When you read that stuff on reddit there's a parameter you need to keep in mind : these people are not really discussing Lemmy. They're rationalizing and justifying why they are not on Lemmy. Totally different conversation.
Nobody wants to come out and say "I know mainstream platforms are shit and destroying the fabric of reality but I can't bring myself to be on a platform except it is the Hip Place to Be". So they'll invent stuff that paints them in a good light.
You'll still see people claiming that Mastodon is unusable because you have to select an instance - even though you don't have to, you can just type Mastodon on Google, click the first link, and create an account in 2 clicks. It's been ages. But the people still using Twitter need the excuse because otherwise what does it make them?
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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.
Blahaj still federates with .world, which as you said in your previous comment is a problem.
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You fascist swine
Is this a joke?
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How did people figure out what email provider to use?
Pick the one everyone else is using. Your friend has a Hotmail? You make a Hotmail. Everyone switched to Gmail? You'll also switch to Gmail. Also for a lot of people, email is just email. They don't even know that you can choose a different provider.
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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.
If right wing (or even other leftist groups) came into ax explicitly tankie community and started arguing with people how would you react?
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That’s what that Star Trek server did.
The problem with that is that you need to make a user on one of those servers. Do you make it on the politics one, or the games one? What happens 3 months later when you realize the server you picked on a whim is full of assholes and gets defederated?
Do you think an average user at that point would move their subscriptions to a new account or will they get annoyed at the concept?
And it's not like exporting your subs to a CSV file or something to then upload to your new account on your new instance will work. Different instances will have different communities, so it won't be a 1:1 transition.
I can definitely see the friction for new users if this happens.
We all know people are lazy, so if the friction proposed by Lemmy is more of a burden compared to the inconvenience proposed by Reddit or another social media platform, then people won't change.
It would be interesting if there could be some tool that proposes similar communities on the instance you're joining based on the communities you were subscribed to in your previous instance. Community federation could allow for that linked list that could be reverse searched and served to a user, precluded by uploading a CSV file of your communities so you don't have to keep track of individual users in a server somewhere (which is anti-privacy anyways, and Lemmy imho is pro-privacy).
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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?
I’m working on a lemmy app. Will be UI focused!
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People like to commit, though. They want to commit. They want to make an account and be done. The ability for established users and communities to move around is a great feature that makes Lemmy superior to other sites, but it really needs to work on making new users feel comfortable enough to stay put when they're first figuring things out, because if a new user decides to leave, they're probably not switching instances, they're switching platforms.
Having the ability to export your account data (say to a CSV) might be useful for this reason.
If you want to move to a new instance, you can pack your bags and head out.
You can probably imagine how this won't be a 1:1 transition, however, because the new instance might not have the same communities as the old instance. I commented on another thread about how it would be cool if Lemmy took your communities list, looked at how those communities federate for instance (or just do a word search on the new instance with names of the communities of the old instance), and serve you suggested new communities to subscribe to.
And if you can export your data, then there's no need to store it in a centralized way to make these types of actions doable, which favors privacy.
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Is this a joke?
I would think and hope so.
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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.
The political leaning is definitely unfortunate. The fediverse should be for everyone, not just a certain political section.
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The reality is this filters out all non tech savvy people.
It's okay, if the technology doesn't run them off, the inhabitants will.
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It's shocking to me just how stupid the average person is today. Computing catering to the lowest common denominator has made it too easy for idiots. Make computing difficult again; make people actually have to learn something. A tall order for the idiocracy of 2025.
The problem is that mainstream media has less integrity now than it did 30 years ago. The national broadcaster in Australia for example has been infiltrated by right wing people (BTW I don't want to get rid of ABC, just wish it was better). To cut through the propaganda, people need to acquire the skills to find their own media sources. Unfortunately that also means getting technical ability with computers now. Best thing I can think of is helping less adept people to navigate the space. Otherwise we end up with a much weaker democracy. Listening to C-SPAN callers in 2022-2024 scared the hell out of me and made me think Trump was gonna get voted back in. People stuck in legacy media space are getting brainwashed. I wish it was easier to curate RSS feeds for non-technical friends and family.
