Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
Eternal September.
I still recall the digg migration.
Sort of a hypocrite through cause I'm part of the Reddit 3rd Party API migration...
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I use the Boost app for Lemmy so it basically feels exactly like the ideal Reddit experience felt back then, which is fantastic.
As for being put off, the only thing that really bothers me is the extreme hatred for Windows and the deepthroating of Linux. It's creepy.
Like, I love Linux and use it for many things alongside Windows, but I don't get obsessively weird about it to the point of creating memes or going out of my way to tell people why they're wrong for using one over the other, you know?
If that were toned down I'd certainly feel a little more relaxed, but on the whole the Lemmy experience has been lovely
I use eternity, used infinity beforehand so it basically felt like no change when migrating (eternity is a lemmy fork of infinity)
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I originally joined KBin because I liked the interface better than lemmy.
When I joined lemmy.world I just picked it because it was the most populous.
I haven’t even given it a second thought about changing because I don’t know why I would. It seems pretty arbitrary which instance you join.
Why not https://fedia.io/ ? It uses Mbin, the successor of Kbin
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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?
This is intentional. There’s a contingent of Lemmy power users who are actively sabotaging a push to make it more accessible. Every time this comes up, they openly admit their intentions are to keep it niche, and continue gatekeeping.
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Just recommend a website for them to join.
But the crux is which one do you recommend? We don't want to send everyone to the same instance otherwise it'll end up becoming dominant (see Lemmy World).
Ideally we shouldn't need to go through this motion of trying to work out which instance to choose or recommend one for them, they should be able to do that themselves after getting their feet wet.
Being already established, you have a few advantages over the newbies. You know about how a few different instances federate and work, and you know whether or not you like your instance.
Recommend your instance. Or if you wouldn't, whether because it's niche or doesn't work well in general, recommend a generic instance, even if it is .world, because it will probably work and give a good experience.
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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 feels like old reddit
As someone who exclusively used old.reddit.com, this isn't actually a bad thing.
Also apps for the mobile experience, and I want to say alexandrite for the desktop experience?
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I'm sure you've seen some of the bad experiences new users have posted on here.
But I'll summarise
- It's intimidating to pick a instance,
- Once you login the UI is very different to what you're used to and not very intuitive.
- No tutorial
etc.
Most of those things are kind of a matter of taste though aren't they? If you change those kinds of things you'll get other people complaining who like it like it is now. For example for me I think the default UI is excellent and the alternative ones I've tried are mostly terrible, but I know not everyone thinks the same way.
Other complaints are instance-specific but that's a good thing; instances can operate how they like because we have a choice, that's the whole benefit to Lemmy and federation.
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There are aspects that could be better, sure. I think communities should be like sets of posts, subject to unions, conjuctions, and other set operations. Then you wouldnt have the issue of 5 versions of c/memes, they could be virtually joined into one memes community at the user level (and the user can filter out instances icon unities risers they don't like of course). Moderation could be decoupled from communities and made a broader service that users choose to interact with, agreeing to a level of moderation comfortable for their experience.
But also, put me in the group that thinks lemmy should stay small. Corpo social has convinced us that a single big room with every idiot and literally their mother screaming into it is how the internet should be and it isn't. We can go back to smaller, focused online communities that don't openly invite everyone to come in and fight.
Centralization tendencies are all rooted in power and control. We need to fragment more.
Lemmy is supposed to be the best of both worlds. Smaller internet communities not owned by big corpos and federated together.
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I personally see three big issues with getting new users to Lemmy use and stat on Lemmy:
- knowing about it: It is a matter of time before Reddit bans linking to Lemmy. Either by outright preventing their discussion via shadow deletes or full deletes. join-lemmy.org would be well served by purchasing ads on Google and on Bing
- join-lemmy ux needs to be improved: this goes to your point and I fully agree that there needs to be a better onboarding experience. I am a fairly technical guy and even I had trouble understanding the major concepts behind Lemmy. Many of these concepts aren't terribly important to a new user though. At least at first.
- more and better content: this is fortunately getting better but we're not there yet
Join-lemmy provides a subpar experience: https://lemmy.world/post/24220536
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they could be virtually joined into one memes community at the user level
Good luck with !politics from LW, hexbear and feddit.org colliding
I think two communities could have a consensual federation - where posts from each community shows up in each community's feed.
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
Yes, I want my niche communities 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?
You can't do anything because these excuses are window dressing and not the core of the issue. The core of the issue is that 99% of people are incredibly unwilling to change their habits or spend five minutes to wrap their heads around how websites work. If the question of which server to join is too much, this kind of space isn't for you.
No, having a full time job or a family is not an excuse to not learn how computers or the internet or networks in general work. You've had a lifetime to learn and are willfully ignorant.
Im personally fine with basic competence and tech literacy to be a natural gate keeping the unwashed morons out. Lemmy is growing at a fine pace without catering to the lowest common denominators.
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Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host.
That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions
" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.
Isn't this why apple is popular. It just picks everything for you.
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Facebook has servers all over the world; there's not just one Facebook server although it appears to users like that. What would be the effect of asking (potential) Facebook users which server they would like to join?
In a somewhat related question, does anyone know how the extra-instance account transfer request is going? Not sure where to look to find out.
extra-instance account transfer request is going?
You mean settings or content?
Settings have been exportable for a while now.
Content cannot be and probably never will. Even Mastodon doesn't allow it:
Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media due to technical limitations, but your archive can be viewed by any software that understands how to parse Activity Streams 2.0 documents.
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Uh yeah. I’ve got no clue how to find new communities? Instances? Groups? Whatever the hell the equivalent of a subreddit is called. It’s not user friendly at all.
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The problem with that is that you need to make a user on one of those servers.
Why would you? The communities are accessible from every federated instance
My point is you have to pick SOME server to host your account. You are right that most communities are accessible from most servers, but that is where it becomes confusing for someone who just wants to look at memes for a specific fan base.
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Just recommend a website for them to join.
But the crux is which one do you recommend? We don't want to send everyone to the same instance otherwise it'll end up becoming dominant (see Lemmy World).
Ideally we shouldn't need to go through this motion of trying to work out which instance to choose or recommend one for them, they should be able to do that themselves after getting their feet wet.
But the crux is which one do you recommend?
"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"
For the rationale: https://feddit.uk/post/23882306
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According to https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy, the top 5 (where top 5 is defined by user count) are:
- lemmy.world
- lemm.ee
- sh.itjust.works
- hexbear
- lemmy.dbzer0
After there's:
- beehaw
- lemmygrad
- programming.dev
- lemmy.ca
Lemmy.world is pretty safe and generic, but it's already huge (173k users vs 33k of lemm.ee).
Lemm.ee is also a safe bet.
Hexbear is totally out of question
dbzer0 is great, but it leans heavily in a political direction -
Something else to keep in mind is that most Redditors nowadays (like Twitter and Bluesky users) are mobile users. I think a lot of Lemmy mobile apps have a good UI and solve that problem. However, it's hard to point new users at a single website/app/etc to join. Bluesky does that. Obviously, that's bad for decentralization, but Bluesky is also still a beta protocol that's headed toward decentralization at some point. Their single instance was necessary for them at the start.
When a new/small social media platform that acts as an alternative of a bigger platform pops up, one of the common topics on the alternative are people talking about how it's better than the old place and/or just trashing the old place. Eventually, they outgrow that (assuming that platform survives). I feel like that's happened with Bluesky. Browsing it, everyone seems to be talking about their own usual topics now, and I see very few posts calling out Twitter or comparing Bluesky to Twitter nowadays.
Lemmy still feels like it's in that "bash the old place" stage to me. Maybe ~20% or posts I see are talking about Reddit or talking about Lemmy in relation to Reddit. It's annoying.
Maybe ~20% or posts I see are talking about Reddit or talking about Lemmy in relation to Reddit. It’s annoying.
People talk about Reddit now due to the influx last week.
Usually Reddit isn't that discussed.
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I am very new here, and not as passionate about the fediverse as some of you are (like your average redditor most likely).
Reading the comments here I think that the fact that you notice decentralization as a user can be a problem for many but offering simple instance lists, community lists in the UI can mitigate that and make it more a feature than a nuisance (for those that have trouble navigating it).
On desktop, I don't mind switching servers with different URLs, especially since I can read them all with the same proton UI. However, on mobile (I spend more time on social media via mobile than desktop, I imagine most people do these days) using the Jerboa app I cannot figure out how to "visit" another server. I can't enter the URL, I cannot click on the URL, I cannot search for @URL and get a list of the communities hosted on it..
I am sure there is documentation somewhere explaining how I achieve this, but I should not have to look for that just to acces different instances. I use lemmy on breaks mostly and as I said, am not passionate enough about social media to read manpages for it.. I imagine some will think "then we don't need people like you here", but in the end if close-to mainstream user adoption is a goal, you kind of will need people who just want to look at cats and discover communities as well, and making jumping between instances and finding communities is an important part of making that happen.
Thank you for your comment, hope you like it here.
