Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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We already have good information, the barrier to entry just needs to be lowered
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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.
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That's how you create a bubble of only tech savvy people.
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Text-based forums are a niche. The vast majority of the population doesn't like that format. There's a reason no Bluesky has emerged, the appeal is just not there.
About Bluesky, there was an app that allowed "Reddit view" (so threads with votes). Can't find it back right now, the search mostly show Flashes, the Instagram alternative, which probably reflects the larger interest for that type of format.
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It's on a Bluesky community, there's a serious bias in those votes
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https://old.lemmy.world/ looks just like reddit. It's not the UI. It's network effect and there's not a lot to be done.
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I disagree. I'm an ex tech guy, and I found it to be a pain in the ass. I really appreciate everything that everyone here does, but it's empty enough that I recognize a number of users. The average person isn't signing up. At 50k active users, our voice is small.
I don't know what the grand vision is, but if it's to provide the people with a corporate free perform, there needs to be... The People.
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I assumed (probably incorrectly) that users would be visiting Lemmy via apps, so the UX would depend on which app they used.
I don't know. I have a soft spot for Lemmy. The interactions here seem more genuine less about updoots.
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Not many I'm assuming. I like pointing people to Voyager because it's both on android and apple, and it has a very smooth UX, you can install and start scrolling
My message is often something like
`
Checkout Lemmy, it's a solid reddit alternative.
https://phtn.app/If you want a mobile app: https://vger.app/settings/install
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Be careful that IIRC Reddit blocked the phtn URL and would automatically remove comments mentioning it.
Not sure if it's still the case now, but just a warning.
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The vast majority of users don't like the old.reddit view, else reddit would have that as default.
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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.
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I think the irony here is that the user-friendliness experience of Bluesky stems from it being a centralized service (in practice). I seriously doubt most people who signed up for Bluesky even understand what "decentralized social media" means.
I'm not saying Lemmy (and the greater Fediverse) can't improve, but it's clear that the biggest barrier for most people is the decentralized aspect itself -- the core of the Fediverse -- which is something one shouldn't really "hide".
As long as the state of social media usership demands centralized practices, then the Fediverse will forever be at a disadvantage in gaining mass adoption.
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If that was a legitimate issue, MMO’s (which also often have servers the player needs to choose) wouldn’t have the userbase they do. Nor would Email have taken off.
But in an MMO, you still get the same content no matter what server you choose. Over here, it directly impacts what content you can interact with based on (de)federation.
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Yes exactly!!
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If you joined a German-speaking WoW server as a non-speaking German, the experience was going to be subpar
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We have a slight disadvantage in that regard yes, but I know we can get to a UX comparable to Bluesky and Reddit.
There just doesn't seem to be much focus on it, I feel setting good defaults will solve most of these issues.
Lemmy is nice for me now, but it took a lot of effort finding the settings and UI that I like, people will give up long before that.
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OP, FYI I pinged you on this post but it was probably drown in the replies to your posts: https://lemm.ee/post/55244676
If you want to try out your approach (Photon as default, probably some communities hidden from the All feed), feel free to create a community dedicated to that project. You can probably promote it here and on a few other communities. The biggest challenge is probably going to find an admin wanting to give this a try.
I wanted to do something similar a months ago ( https://lemm.ee/post/52588852 ), but no admin was interested. Maybe you'll have more luck.
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This seems to be quite a problem here, too many techy people and too few people with other interests, sure I'm in the first group myself but even then this is still a problem
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Thank you I appreciate all the input, I won't have the time or energy to drive something like that.
I can get behind a cause like that and help push it, but won't be able to lead.I'd love a place where there is no politics, it might also be appealing to many and I think it should be the default.
