Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Has software usage really gotten to the point where the average person can't handle being given a choice about anything? Where it's just too much effort to do anything more than mindlessly click on whatever is presented to them?
Unfortunately yes. And there is no going back.
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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?
There was a lot of debate about this when the reddit exodus happened in 2023. I initially joined then and have stuck around since. Something that was said a lot back then that I agree with is that Lemmy doesn't have to compete with reddit. It's alright for this corner of the internet to exist and not be the single dominant one.
If someone makes a reddit clone somewhere else with more liberal admins, good for them. I wouldn't be going there. The fact that Lemmy is sectioned into servers is part of the appeal. I'm glad that I can be part of a server with very progressive administration. I would never get this level of moderation and support from any other social media. I'm fine with that meaning that uninformed people who just want to doom-scroll are less likely to come here.
We have seen growth periods time and again when problems arise with private social media companies. Each time, a little more people from the initial wave join for good. I think that's fine. Most lemmy servers are run for free by people who just believe in what we're doing here. We can always add more servers, but we can't handle the kind of traffic that reddit handles. We're entirely dependent on dedicated people investing large amounts of their time to create and maintain these spaces for us.
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Is there even a point to which one you pick? I just picked .kbin because I liked the UI, and when that fell apart I moved to .world mostly at random.
Is there really a large difference between them?
I originally picked infosec but not too many communities were federated. Picked lemm.ee because it was easy to memorize and had a solid admin
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These things don't affect the average user (lurker) much at all. Ideally you just start with whatever instance and only move if you don't like it. A new user can't really know if an instance is bad or not before trying it.
(As long as there recommendation page doesn't give them an extremist instance)
Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance and they join and get banned and never come back. The instance matters, and they know that intuitively, which is why they have choice paralysis in the first place. We should help them choose by providing information about each instance.
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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.
Unless something has changed, migrating your account is more like copy/pasting config on a new account. Your post history etc however does not come with it. If that's something that matters to you then picking the "right" server matters a little bit.
For example lemmy.world has defederated from a bunch of instances (https://lemmy.world/instances)
Creating your account there means you're missing some of the full experience of Lemmy, for better or for worse.
A smaller instance may federate more content, but may run slower or worst case stop working entirely if the admin abandons it.I just used a handful of different servers over the course of a few weeks to see which was my ideal server.
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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.
same here, eternal september growth be damned
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I’ve mentioned a list with info of some nature a few times, with people shutting down the idea. It always boiled down to “the instances may lie about what their instance is about”. In their heads what their write may be the truth, even if it isn’t. This would leave it up to a third party to make summaries of these instances, which may or may not be agreed upon. There may be too many drastic and conflicting ideologies.
It would help of Lemmy had a simple migration option like Mastodon. Then, picking an instance wouldn't be a big deal.
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Greenleaf is pretty massively exaggerating about the extent of defederation, as only a handful ever get defederated regularly, certainly not enough to call it 'wars'.
As for UX, there's definitely room for lots of improvements, especially in making it easier to explore another instances local communities from within your own insinstancethout explicitly subbing to them all.
But I don't think the very concept of different instances is truly a barrier or bad UX, that other user is just giving lazy excuses for not switching away from Reddit.
There are definitely issues with Lemmy but these users specifically seem to just be complaining for the sake of complaining. They want Reddit without the parts they currently don't like, not realizing that they also need to get rid of the parts that eventually made Reddit go to the shitter - because otherwise it'd just repeat.
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I feel like most the old school redditors have long migrated, I've only ever heard good things about the new UI from relatively new users.
Lemmy is old reddit, if not OG internet ethos.
I'm an OG user and other than technical issues (most of which have been figured it by now) I prefered both the original redesign and the newest one (though I did like the previous one more, I think).
If you get used to the fact that it's just a bit different it's perfectly fine and actually looks better. Especially since it has dark mode.
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it keeps non tech savvy people out,
Picking a server isn't a tech savvy person thing to do and it's a good idea to stop pretending like it is. My wife, who needs me to move her steam games to other drives for her, managed to do it without asking me a thing. Tech skill has nothing to do with it
Brotha, don't forget, even knowing what Steam is, let alone that games don't exist in a vacuum with unicorns but on drives is far far far beyond what majority of people have had a chance to be familiar with.
It sucks.on the contrary, It took me days to figure out what the difference between servers are, what federates to what, etc.
And it had nothing to do with tech.
Analysis Paralysis is a thinhg:) -
People are still on Twitter while the owner makes Nazi salutes and Bluesky is a 1:1 replacement feature-wise with a modern interface. People just don't like to move.
The fact that Bluesky is almost a 1:1 copy (which includes the dumb stuff like post character limit) is precisely why I don't like it.
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Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance and they join and get banned and never come back. The instance matters, and they know that intuitively, which is why they have choice paralysis in the first place. We should help them choose by providing information about each instance.
Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance
Yeah but that's just join-lemmy, someone could make their own website that doesn't have this issue, even without overloading the user with info. It should only show instances that are middle of the road general instances.
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Is there even a point to which one you pick? I just picked .kbin because I liked the UI, and when that fell apart I moved to .world mostly at random.
Is there really a large difference between them?
I picked ani because I don't have to sub to every anime community, I can just go to the Local view and get everything I need.
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it keeps non tech savvy people out,
Picking a server isn't a tech savvy person thing to do and it's a good idea to stop pretending like it is. My wife, who needs me to move her steam games to other drives for her, managed to do it without asking me a thing. Tech skill has nothing to do with it
Tech savvy would be to start your instances. Going through the process of picking an instance and registering there is no more tech savvy than registering with facebook or any other online site. The complexity keeping people away isn't technical, it's domain specific. People don't know how to choose an instance because they're not given enough information to actually tell instances apart.
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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?
Aren't you guys sick of forced infinite growth in every aspect of our collective existence? The Fediverse is not shareholder owned, we don't have to be slaves to The Red Line That Must Go Up. Reddit went to shit when it was aggresively mainstreamed, I don't want it to happen to lemmy as well.
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Why is “drama” on Lemmy always highly exaggerated by people?
“Endless wars of who federates with who”. What is that person even talking about and who the fuck would even care as a normal user?
From everyone looking in: what the fuck is, ok, was Hexbear, why should I care and wtf can't I read anything from that place.
Same with registration, instances, etc. It's explained nowhere where how and why and i never have found a complete index with instances and communities.
I only can use lemmy because of sync. Yes, I'm also a reddit refugee.
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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?
phtn.app client is amazing. looks modern and beautiful.
Can recommend
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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?
Leave the micropenis guys alone, it's already a shit card to be dealt.
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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.
Maybe. But Lemmy isn't close to that volume of users yet
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You don't have to AB test all instances, we can do smaller tests.
But yea that's complicated and takes effort, instead we should at least follow good UX design principles for the default UX
Like I said you're welcome to make pull requests. Lemmy is not a corporation employing multiple designers, but an open source project run by volunteers. So if you want to see something done, it's best to do it yourself.
