Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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I feel like probably the biggest UX improvement Lemmy, and the fediverse more widely, could do is to make user migration more seamless. I’m thinking federated SSO, basically, where once you have an account anywhere on the fediverse you should a) be able to use that account anywhere else in the fediverse and b) move where that account is hoested to anywhere else in the fediverse.
I believe this is related to whatever the hell ActivityPod is doing? Feel free to correct me on that. Regardless, get something like this in place as well as better instance and services discovery (and maybe the ability to find your other connected services from you ‘account’ pages on whatever service you’re on) and I think people might start to think of fediverse as less ‘an alternative’ and more ‘the better one’.
Basically, we need standard protocols for user data management, transfer, credentials management, and service and instance discovery. I’m sure some of that exists, the important thing will be to streamline and standardise the actual UX.
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I tried to join Lemmy during the API debacle, but then it asked me to choose a server. It didn't explain what that meant or how it would affect me. I could read a long, confusing explanation of it elsewhere, but that illuminated nothing. So I gave up.
Eventually I tried again and just chose lemmy.world, since it was the largest. After that it was smooth sailing, and I like Lemmy a lot more than reddit. It turns out it didn't even really matter which server I chose. (Although now I see some comments from people saying there's something wrong with lemmy.world.)
You just need to hold the new user's hand a little. Anyone who has ever designed a UI for an office environment would know immediately that the server question is going to be an impenetrable wall for many users.
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At no point has Gmail ever said "we're no longer allowing you to send/receive emails to/from Hotmail" or has Yahoo said "we're maintained by a single volunteer who because of real life stuff can no longer continue so we're discontinuing our email service."
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Although now I see some comments from people saying there’s something wrong with lemmy.world.)
- No VPN
- older version of Lemmy (doesn't allow to remove uploads https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2024/03/04/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/)
- debatable policies (see the last one about "allow flat earthers" [email protected] )
- federated with Threads
- some power tripping [email protected]
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That's a cool idea
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Its an illusion of control and if lemmy grows their elitest sentiment will fade. They can go make a fringe instance with all the arbitrary knowledge requirements they want but the most populated instances on lemmy should be there for the layman users that want to do better than reddit.
Why, with an established federated platform, would we not want to be the replacement for corporate social media? If they are so proud of registering on lemmy then idk if they are all that smart.
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I'm not entirely sure if this is how it works, but I believe the instance that disables down votes does not federate downvotes from other instances. So if a downvote enabled instance downvotes a post from the non downvoting instance, other users on the same instance as the downvoter will see downvotes, but other instances will not see them.
Could be totally wrong about that though!
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None of that affects me, but if I switch, which one should I switch to?
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I've tried to join lemmy several times since 2021 but I could succeed only a few weeks ago.
I don't get why new accounts need manual approval.
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The second this hurdle is crossed we'll need a new Lemmy
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Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
The default one is a bit minimal, but we have many Alternative UIs are as modern looking as new Reddit.
They also work much better while being modern looking. There's a reason so many of us came over here when they got rid of third party apps, the new Reddit interface is... bad.
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Imagine sending your friend a minigame and you accidentally sign him up for lemmy
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It's also less likely to happen now. Back when that happened, users didn't have the ability to block instances and so it was up to the admins to do that for everyone.
It's now possible to block instances at the user level
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You make good points. I agree.
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New Reddit gets a lot of complaints too (loading issues, freezing), but it's aimed at Reddit as a whole since newer users don't know that old Reddit is an option.
At the same time, if I only ever used new Reddit, I would also think that old Reddit looks wrong
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This isn't really a federation problem, and more that there isn't a clear "winner" yet.
Even on centralized platforms, you end up with multiple communities for the same topic, until one of them grows enough to beat out the rest. Then eventually a scandal might cause it to fragment again. There are also separate communities that keep going independently because of ideological differences. See the various international news subreddits
The movies communities here were like that, but now there is a pretty clear "main community"
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Really it doesn't matter if it doesn't effect you. I use Jerboa and I'm sure most other apps work the same, you can switch between logins within the app. So if you want to join another instance, say dbzer0, which focuses around Piracy and Anarchy, you create a login from their page then sign in in your app. Switching between accounts is fluid and then if an instance you use does something to piss you off, you can slowly stop using it.
I like to think of it like a playground. We want everything spread out a bit and not all on one instance. So if the owners of that instance start to do things users don't like, you can just replace the softball field,, and keep the slides, swings, soccer fields, walking track etc. Each one of those I would be considering your main subs you are interested in. So if someone ties ads or starts being foul on that softball field, we walk away from the pitch, and onto another softball field and you keep your logins if you weren't based on that softball field. Everything else stays good.
