Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Gonna don my tinfoil hat here for a second...
Was the monetization of the API a deliberate move to kick out the progressive and tech-literate long-time reddit users (myself included, with 16 year badge and centuryclub), to in turn make the site more of a Nazi, pro-Trump circle jerk?
Because I really think it succeeded. The whole atmosphere shifted that day, and I've barely been back except when I end up there out of muscle memory or a Google result...and those often have the best answers removed by someone who went through and scrubbed their account.
We all remember how Spez treated r/thedonald, right?
Regardless if it was the plan, it's the result.
I can't stand what it has become, especially when some of the most problematic subs have massive influence over the rest of the site, like wsb.
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There are a few .world posters who make two to three posts a day about how much they hate lemmygrad hexbear and .ml.
you will probably stop seeing much of that if you block users that post a lot to fediverselore and meanwhileongrad. They're like the /r/subredditdrama of lemmy
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People these days look weird at you if don't use Gmail so you can't see their Google Calendar invite or some other thing that only works with Google... People are literally pushing tech monopolies.
I still see lots of different emails out there, outlook/hotmail is still huge, yahoo occasionally, icloud in the US.
Among my techy friend circle all of us have either our own self hosted mail, a 'privacy' company email, or something in the middle.
All to say, I don't think it's that uphill of a battle for the very large percentage of Internet users to accept the way federation works.
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It's literally in the "Introduction" to lemmy (third paragraph):
An "introduction" to lemmy that's buried behind clicking through vague smalltext, and not any of the brightly colored buttons enticing you to pick a server.
This is bad UX.
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I still see lots of different emails out there, outlook/hotmail is still huge, yahoo occasionally, icloud in the US.
Among my techy friend circle all of us have either our own self hosted mail, a 'privacy' company email, or something in the middle.
All to say, I don't think it's that uphill of a battle for the very large percentage of Internet users to accept the way federation works.
I'm a student and don't know anyone who doesn't use Gmail here... Guess that's the result of Google dominating education.
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Strawman
It’s the same thing.
Email even has its own version of federation and de federation in dkim.
The only difference is that you’re oftentimes not given access to an email address from your internet provider by default anymore so you’re not automatically joined into the system.
People balking at choosing a server are not showing you a bad user experience, they’re showing that they don’t really want to be part of a reddit alternative.
And the broader lemmy/activitypub/whatever needs to figure out if it wants to be like beehaw and hexbear and abandon the shape of reddit or if it wants to duplicate it and try to compete with reddit.
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If coding were something I could do, I'd be tempted to run a modified lemmy instance where voting is disabled all together, and default sorting is forum style.
Edit: oh and nested replies would be disabled too. Maybe add a quote button on people's comments.
Isn't that just NodeBB?
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Not necessarily, but we don't want a accidental filter that filters out non tech savvy people. We want all kinds of people on Lemmy
Hell, it can filter out tech people too. I'm a programmer by trade, but I almost dipped on lemmy because the onboarding is confusing enough. Like, I obviously (mostly) figured it out, but I did consider going "eh fuck it" and dipping. The site is ultimately a luxury and not a requirement, so effort or confusion required to get all started up is also something that'll drive me to consider it not all worth it for some social media I'm not even sure I want to be a part of yet.
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Cofigure swipes to hide posts and just swipe them out? Idk, it's not hard.
Oh, sure, especially if it's the same few users. It's just mildly surprising to not even run into them.
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I'm a student and don't know anyone who doesn't use Gmail here... Guess that's the result of Google dominating education.
At what level? I get a student email from my college (outlook based) as do the professors, though communication is primarily through Canvas. So that's what I see most often in that context.
I think a lot of people have Gmail incidentally for things like YouTube and other Google account stuff, very few people know you can even bring your own mail.
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
Voyager for iOS feels just like Alien Blue/Apollo
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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?
Yea getting into Lemmy is confusing. I only use sync because it's easier, I have no idea how to even access it on desktop. It definitely needs some QoL improvements before I can really start recommending it to people
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Wait wait wait... This implies people like new reddit... That shit makes my eyes bleed wtf
I read a really good article recently about how people from different generations process information differently and so their UI preferences are wildly different.
The gist of it was
- A Boomer walks into a bookstore to buy a book. They feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of books. They choose one by an author they know, that their friends said was good.
- A Gen Xer or a Millennial walks into a bookstore to buy a book. The check the various authors they like, check that the cover art is appealing and read the backs of the different books, figuring out which one they want to read, then they buy that one.
- A Zoomer walks into a bookstore to buy a book. They feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of books, and feel bombarded by the ads for books. They check the authors the influencers they subscribe to on Youtube and Tik Tok say are good. They grab one of those based on the color of the cover, ignore the back and the cover art, flip it open to a random page, read that page and if what they read grabs their their attention they buy that book, but if it doesn't, they move on.
As a result, each of these people will prefer to interact with vastly different UX.
Of course these aren't hard and fast rules, set in stone and there are tons of exceptions, but it's a definite trend.
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
Yea but imo that's part of the problem. I use sync because it makes it easy, but I've tried to figure out how to access lemmy on desktop and it's non-trivial (I still haven't bothered to figure it out, I've given up multiple times)
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The comments here are smug as fuck.
I wasn't gonna say anything but that's another issue with the userbase on Lemmy.
It's occupied by a lot of people who think they are better and smarter than everyone else. Not that reddit didn't also have that problem but the smugness levels are definitely way higher around these parts.
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It’s the same thing.
Email even has its own version of federation and de federation in dkim.
The only difference is that you’re oftentimes not given access to an email address from your internet provider by default anymore so you’re not automatically joined into the system.
People balking at choosing a server are not showing you a bad user experience, they’re showing that they don’t really want to be part of a reddit alternative.
And the broader lemmy/activitypub/whatever needs to figure out if it wants to be like beehaw and hexbear and abandon the shape of reddit or if it wants to duplicate it and try to compete with reddit.
Email is well established and has incredible UX.
Email wasn't competing with a well established centralised version of Email with a vastly superior UX when it was trying to gain users.
Lemmy doesn't exist in a vacuum
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Using Boost for Lemmy and it's almost like I never switched.
[email protected] gang
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I was on Sync for Reddit before going here, and checked out Lemmy as the devs switched platform. So the joke's on them, my UX is basically identical.
That said, sucks that people shy away because of complexity.
Unfortunately, Sync for Lemmy is basically dead. Hasn't been updated in nearly a year. I'm currently looking for a good alternative
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but it feels like old reddit
Yes, and that's a good thing.
There are lots of Lemmy apps that display posts in different ways. If you want "bells and whistles", then find an app that gives you that.
makes me think of people who say they don't like tofu. (tofu is a protein sponge that tastes like whatever you soak/cook it in)
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We need more users for those small spaces to grow, one of the reasons I still use Reddit alongside Lemmy is that there is no 'South African' community on here, there is a very alive and fun South African community on reddit, that alone will make me keep using Reddit.
I'm sure that's true for many other niche communities, for those to take hold in Lemmy we need numbers.
Absolutely! Growth is important and not every possible community is mirrored on the fediverse. But if anything this is all the more reason for interpersonal connections to drive new user growth. That will naturally help filter users to instances they align with. I’m considering going so far as to host an instance specifically for my geographical area to really lean into the idea of a “local” internet.
