Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Whatever the hell the equivalent of a subreddit is called.
That's communities. Did you have issues with the communities link at the top of the page? You can switch it to the "All" view.
Also what the other comments said is good too, like for finding a very niche community I'll use https://lemmyverse.net/communities
I can browse the All feed but not much interests me there. I’ve found a few on my instance and stumbled upon some from other instances via links in posts but if I find a community on something like the website you posted I have no idea how to get there and subscribe to the community. I try to paste the link into the search but that just treats it like a keyword to search my instance.
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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?
lol lol
- Reddit sucks
- I can’t be expected to make a decision
- I’ll stick with reddit
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Hard disagree. The entire point of Lemmy is to move away from Corporate run, Billionaire run, Millionaire run, social media
Lemmy is a protocol for networking individual privately hosted social media instances. It is not a panacea for corporate control of social media infrastructure. You're still hosting these sites on AWS / Azure / some other large corporately controlled private hardware setup. You're still securing the URL from a private DNS. You're still paying for these sites out of the surplus of a handful of wealth(ier) patrons and their friendly donors (or ending up like Hexbear.net, with a domain name up for grabs because it was mismanaged by part time broke amateurs).
Saying “Not our problem” is a woefully shortsighted.
There's not a lot we can do about it individually. I would argue that the fractured - often openly hostile - intra-instance infighting on Lemmy feeds directly into OP's image's "this is too weird and scary" attitude.
If popping into the Fediverse and just picking a Lemmy instance was as straightforward as selecting "Communities I'm interested in" on other bigger social media feeds, the onboarding would be smoother. But if you poke around and see people going whole hog frothing at the mouth "Everyone on <instance>.<whatever> is morally degenerate and has ruined the community at large!!!" reactionary in between instances, that's an immediate turn off that I don't think anyone within the Lemmy network knows how to deal with.
Its the same intra-channel fighting we saw on Reddit, just ported into a more decentralized network. And it neglects the fundamentals of modern web hosting (we're all at the mercy of the IANA / Cloudflare, etc / the major hosting companies).
Lemmy is, itself, a shortsighted patch on a much larger and scarier problem. The instance infighting only reveals how shortsighted.
First off, there's nothing we can do about moving away from larger hosting Corporations, not with the technology we currently have. If we want to reach a national or international audience, we need infrastructure, and that has to come from somewhere; a business model makes sense. If you're hosting to a small community, you'd be able to get away with 1 selfhost, but to scale you'd need redundancies and bandwidth. The best choice we can make is the companies we would rather do business with. At this point, I'm definitely favoring Cloudflare and Azure (in that order) over AWS.
I would argue that the fractured - often openly hostile - intra-instance infighting on Lemmy feeds directly into OP’s image’s “this is too weird and scary” attitude.
I see this in a lot of comments about this so while I don't want to downplay the severity of this, I've personally never see instance in-fighting. Maybe it's the things I'm subscribed to, idk, but I usually visit both my local and all just to see what's going on. The Hexbear domain being sold is probably one of the first times I've run across discussions about other instances. Also, their domain being sold is lowkey hilarious. That was a problem as old as the internet (losing a domain). As we move to decentralization and privatization/ownership of data that's going to continue to be a thing I think.
Its the same intra-channel fighting we saw on Reddit,
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intra-channel fighting - is it just disagreeable people commenting, or is it like "This community is better than that" or "This instance is better than that"? I often see discussions on Reddit, arguing, bad faith actors, but I wouldn't classify that as in-channel-fighting. idk.
There’s not a lot we can do about it individually.
Complain. JoinLemmy is Open Source on Github. If you have ideas - share them. If you take a look through their issues and feel like adding in your 2 cents, go for it.
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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?
feels like old reddit
They obviously haven't visited https://old.lemmy.world/
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I really really doubt the part about the content based on my interests part, I've tried Lemmy, Mastodon and Pixelfed, none of the has any content that I care about enough to join a community but they have way too much US politics (WAY TOO MUCH), so it really doesn't encourages me to try anything new on the fediverse (like Loops, picking an instance, creating user just to find no content for me?).
I'd like to know how good or bad the instance block works on PieFed, because here on lemmy I still see hexbear posts that other users crosspost, even when my instance already defederated that instance.In addition to keyword filters that Blaze mentioned, PieFed is basically the only way I know of, other than an app (Sync or Connect) that offers a true instance filter that blocks all users from the specified instance, without requiring admin support. I've blocked all those batshit insane comments from lemmy.ml and now if I go to the same identical posts, those comments from those users from those instances that you specify are flat gone. Regardless of the community. More in this post but that's basically it that I've said already.
Likewise, Categories of Communities allows you to have your cake and (when you want it) eat it too. e.g. check out https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft and note absence of it, in that category. Likewise https://piefed.social/topic/fediverse, and https://piefed.social/topic/food, and https://piefed.social/topic/gaming, and so on. But, in the very rare event that you ARE wanting it (hey, it happens!) it's still accessible at https://piefed.social/topic/news (& politics).
I would be remiss if I did not tell you that PieFed isn't fully completed yet - it both has features that Lemmy (and even Reddit!) lacks, while also missing some, like its search feature is pretty abysmally bad (on purpose, it just hasn't been the top priority yet, to receive some love and attention:-). Though I still love it even so. You can keep your old account (to do things that PieFed cannot yet), and eventually you should find yourself using the new perhaps 90% of the time, as you adjust and come to love what it can do for you - though note that I find that the approach to finding content is quite different from when I used Lemmy, which only offers Subscribed vs. All, whereas PieFed has so many more options to choose from (it may be overwhelming at first - but it's so fantastic to have choices!:-).
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It will definitely impact their experience though, doesn't matter if they know or not imo
If they look at the "all" feed they'll see 90% of the same stuff from 90% of instances.
Once (from experience) they learn what they want from an instance, they can always switch.
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I can browse the All feed but not much interests me there. I’ve found a few on my instance and stumbled upon some from other instances via links in posts but if I find a community on something like the website you posted I have no idea how to get there and subscribe to the community. I try to paste the link into the search but that just treats it like a keyword to search my instance.
could you give me an example of which community doesn't work?
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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?
"feels like old reddit" is a weird way to say "it feels like new reddit, but doesn't leak ram, doesn't take as much or more processing power as AI does to run, and interjects ads randomly into the feeds"
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A lot of disingenuous Lemmy users in that thread pretending that picking a server is more confusing than filing your taxes. I think join-lemmy should probably hot-list like 6 or 7 servers instead of making you choose via a primary interest, since you can migrate your account later anyway. But I am personally not tech oriented and managed to make an account and find an app without an issue.
it's confusing from the perspective of choice paralysis, ultimately you can just make a new account and move to another instance if you really don't like the one you're on.
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You don't need paid mods. If you have a good community people will volunteer to moderate out of altruism, because they enjoy the community and want to make sure it stays good. Paid mods are actually worse than volunteer mods imo, because they don't actually care as much.
Volunteers are a double edged sword. At some volume of users and content it either needs to be a huge team of like minded volunteers which increases the likelihood of ye power tripping bastards or someone who is paid to do it and spend the time with rules to follow.
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Maybe better TLDR of how it works will help people realise it doesn't matter too much which instance they pick
I mean, I lost all my old posts (or at least access to them) when two instances I was on just poof'd.
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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?
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.
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feels like old reddit
They obviously haven't visited https://old.lemmy.world/
oh shit that's awesome almost makes me want to not use sync anymore
almost
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Some instances have very different rules on them that would affect your experience. Like not allowing downvotes, for example. Blahaj users can't see downvotes or downvote anything themselves.
Yeah, true. But that’s cool. Having choice like that is great!
But I suppose that’s the issue. Trying to keep signup simple to help drive user engagement. How much do you try to wrap someone’s head around such nuanced differences, and when do you say “just join me on my instance”?
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Quality content as usual. I appreciate the thought you've put into this and agree with your reasoning.
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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?
(Guy who uses email at work): MuLtIpLe sErVeRs ArE tOo HaRd
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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?
It's worse than reddit. It's more liberal.
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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 fine with the effort bar being selecting an instance. If someone can’t get beyond that, there’s probably not much they have to say I’d be interested in.
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It's worse than reddit. It's more liberal.
Oh, cool, a new account to block.
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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?
That bar to entry is a good thing; it helps keep most of the stupid out. The same stupid that ruined the rest of the internet.
