Onboarding experience needs to be simpler for mass adoption
-
I'm not sure I'd like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don't get it in 2025, that ain't everyone else's fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an "instance" is.
-
Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.
I don't get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?
-
lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can't fathom that some people can't or don't want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that "it's not that hard" and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.
Edit: I hadn't even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There's someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.
-
They can't really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account
-
"Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
-
Yeah, I loved rif as the mobile app for reddit because reddit's mobile site has always been trash and the rif experience was so much better. I'm glad there are options for those who want them, and the desire for user tagging might lead me to trying something out eventually.
-
Unrelated but there's a word we Mexicans use that you should look up. It's "mamador". No particular reason.
-
It's the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.
-
I disagree that we should do that.
Internet became a shit show the second everyone got a smartphone and the barrier to entry evaporated.
Needing to put in some effort to participate is a good filter for low effort people and their low effort worldviews.
-
I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, "I don't need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!" and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.
-
Thanks ! I'm active on the fediverse under other accounts, but I wanted to try the piefed experience as The Devs intended
-
Spot on. Focusing on the software is the most tech-centered approach one can do, unfortunately tech people suck at make something excellent for non-tech people.
People don't like it but we need to put more focus on the fediverse as a network, say the AP word exactly once as to not confuse, but always operate in that state of mind.
And tech people must build a web extension to do fediverse stuff while being somewhere on the web ! That's what a User Agent is for, doing stuff for me
-
Oh, I'm sure the Venn diagram between Lemmings and Linux users is a circle.
-
Your mother would ask you what the hell an "instance" was and then think that picking one meant she couldn't look at posts from any others.
-
I think this should be baked into client apps.
The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.
Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone's mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.
Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.
-
Voyager defaults to lemm.ee IIRC
-
Good tech is easy an intuitive. Computers got popular after you could use a mouse and got a gui. Ipods dominated over the competition because of how dumb easy it was to use. Reddit was easy to move to from Digg because it was pretty much a clone in how it worked. Zero learning curve.
Popular tech is almost always easy.
-
It's not that the local tab replaces your home 'subscriptions' tab, it's that it's nice to have in addition to it.
My instance, slrpnk.net, caters to solarpunk topics only, and we're small enough that it has a tight community of regular posters whom I recognize. In my local tab I can see at a glance just the stuff posted to my community, with my other subscriptions not mixed in and cluttering it up. I also see in my local tab what's being posted in communities I'm not subscribed to, but will often have comments from our members since we all collectively view our local tab. It's like a sort've town square feel that my all and subscriptions tab don't have.
I like having access to both.
-
A part of the problem is that there are multiple similar general topic instances/sites to choose from. If there were more dissimilar, specific topic instances/sites it might help reduce the choice paralysis a little.
It might even better help highlight the perks of federation, as it would be easier to be like, "See, even though you're on cuteanimals.posts, you can still check out and comment on stuff besides cute animals if you want."
-
See, this falls apart when there's another instance that focuses on solarpunk. When some communities on that instance become more popular and active than the communities in your local instance, you'd want to be subscribed to the solar punk communities on that new instance too. Now, your local feed is only showing you solarpunk communities hosted on slrpnk.net but not solarpunk communities on other instances. This distinction is not meaningful because where a community is hosted can be totally detached from the content. The users you know by handle can also be very active, if not more active, on other instances talking about solarpunk than slrpnk.net.
