Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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The problem is trying to get people into "Lemmy", where they have to understand federation and choose an instance, etc - instead of trying to get people into a specific instance. I know you don't want one bloated instance, but if that was the mission it would be a lot easier to get people on board.
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eh, back when the "exodus" was happening it felt like every second post is about defederation. Nowadays you don't hear much about it anymore, but if you only looked back then I see how you could come to that conclusion.
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The biggest UX issues, in my opinion, is the process of choosing an instance and content discovery.
When you go to "join lemmy", rather than choosing a username, you're presented a big list of instances, and you have no idea what that means and what it means for your experience if you choose one. Even though in reality it doesn't really matter, just having the list paraylyses the user as it's not a process they're used to. Users are likely asking themselves:
- Am I going to miss out on content from other instances?
- Do I need an account per instance to interact with their communities?
Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn't create any communities. So basically when they they're directed to join-lemmy and go to sign up, they create an account on that instance right away and get started.
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That's the thing though, it's the luck of the draw and you might be unlucky and sign up to a bad instance and then it's too late, first impression has been made and the user just goes back to Reddit.
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Preemptively defederating from Threads was widely discussed in a lot of places.
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Being able to just browse without signup and see largely federated content would pull in a lot of people. I am new to federated concepts, but would a generic, non-profit "home page" that's browseable without signup is possible? Apps like Voyager could dump newbies into that until they want to post/interact?
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People need to stop sending people to "join ___" sites. I get why they are, or at least were, necessary, but they're totally superfluous when users are making recommendations to other users.
Just recommend a website for them to join. Word of mouth + systematized signup makes zero sense.
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When half the posts in your feed are "X instance bad" people get just tired and go out.
It has happened to me sometimes a meaningful part of my feed was just people brigading about some instance they don't like. It's ridiculous.
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You did it, you saved Lemmy