Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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New users get overwhelmed with decision fatigue, especially when they have average intelligence.
When selecting a federation, new users should be told:
"Because Lemmy isn't run by a large corporation, lots of small volunteers run Lemmy and run different copies of Lemmy at the same time. These different copies are called instances. You can choose 1 or just click the large red button and we'll randomly select one of the most popular instances for you. If you aren't sure what to choose, just press the button!"
"...especially when they have average intelligence."
People with average experience struggle with the new paradigm. Nothing to do with intelligence and that kind of elitism is the reason I first bailed on lemmy.ml. I would have thought that someone with average intelligence would recognise how many of the worlds problems today stem from people punching down.
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Honestly, I think federation being (mostly) invisible is actually part of the problem. Trying to make these spaces look like something they're not makes people believe they work in a way that they don't. It makes "Lemmy" look like wish-dot-com Reddit, and Mastodon look like temu Twitter.
This is all something new. This is a thousand Reddits, where you can see over the fence at what each other Reddit is talking about. It's ten-thousand Twitters, where you can talk to people on other Twitters.
If you could post on Facebook articles from Twitter, people would get that maybe they don't see every single comment, or every single Facebook article all of the time. This would be understood. Twitter and Facebook look like, and are discussed as if, they're two totally different websites. The same would be true of AVForums and CivicForums, if they could cross-post.
But fediverse platforms go out of their way to hide what they are, and to strip each website of its identity. And that seems wildly fucked up to me.
I think federation being (mostly) invisible is actually part of the problem.
But fediverse platforms go out of their way to hide what they are, and to strip each website of its identity.
In what way? I don't think Lemmy hides anything, the communities and usernames all have the @instancename.com at the end of them.
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I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, "iT's JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY." None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, "It's easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork."
Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.
Once you're into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you're coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, "EmAiL! iT's LiKe EmAiL!" then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.
What's a good way to explain it then?
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defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn’t too pissy about downvotes.
You indeed made the good choice, Lemmy.cafe is the one
Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda…
Why not use both Lemmy and another platform?
You indeed made the good choice, Lemmy.cafe is the one
Yeah, it only took me 4 tries and I still am ready to jump ship if needed.
Why not use both Lemmy and another platform?
Already am, but at least on Reddit the mods can pretend to ban/control the propaganda accounts, but over here they are the only ones posting content (for my country) and that's tiring... the rest of the content is the same here and Reddit, so I feel more inclined to stay on Reddit since I don't really post anything anyway (I don't even comment over there anymore) and Lemmy feels like something I rather delete more and more... been thinking about PieFed, but the same problem as everything Fediverse, I have to pick a goddamn instance and I don't have energy for that for now.
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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 spent way too much time trying to understand why I wasn't taken to the comments when I hit the comment icon...
... in the screenshot
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I found a beautiful web client for Lemmy that I wish was the default experience. It would surely help Lemmy in gaining popularity.
here's the link: https://phtn.app/
Thanks so much! I was using m.lemmy.world, and while it improves most things I struggle with a touch interface on a desktop. Your recommendation is great!
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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?
Bells and whistles = ads, tracking, loads of bots
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Which server do you want to use is like asking "Do you want Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo for email?" it really isn't that big of a deal, but maybe people these days have a hard time doing that too...
While I agree in general, there is a bit more as unlike email... Defederation is a thing.
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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.
the fact that you notice decentralization as a user can be a problem for many
How would you notice though? I don't see how a user would be aware of defederation unless they look at the block list.
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Everyone gets signed up to that initially and those who want to transfer to another instance afterwards can.
That's the second big problem hidden in this model: account migration doesn't currently work (nor do I know of an ETA for feature release).
Not to mention the first problem: this heavily promotes centralization which is what caused this whole mess in the first place.
Absolute centralisation caused the mess. My suggestion is just initial centralisation. It lets people get active with the platform while they figure out the basics rather than paralysing them with options up front.
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Assumptions, exaggerations and over-assertions being said by yours and others' comments - and to be quite frank that toxic attitude turns me off of using Lemmy and the fediverse in the same way it turned me off of using reddit. Of all the communities I explore on Lemmy, this fediverse community is full of the kinds of posts and comments that would make the average person --or anyone, really-- assume this community is full of pompous jerks and isn't worth exploring. Fediverse is not user friendly to the average person, whether or not the community ever wants to admit it - and until it finally admits as such and attempts solutions the fediverse will probably fail. Modern technology can be as agile as possible, but if the user experience is still unfriendly it simply does not work to peak efficiency.
Damn right, I'm only on Lemmy because there isnt a better alternative, not because its great.
The sad fact is that for social media to not suck you need moderation, for moderation not to suck they need to be paid mods, which means it has to make money somehow, which either means adds, subscriptions or mining user data...
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Which server do you want to use is like asking "Do you want Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo for email?" it really isn't that big of a deal, but maybe people these days have a hard time doing that too...
People always use the email comparison but it's really not the same, it's more complicated than that. We know it's not too much of a big deal but it is when you don't know what it means to be on a server.
I remember being presented with a choice of servers myself and wondering what on earth it meant, and just wanting to join the "default" one. Ultimately it doesn't matter too much but at the time it feels like a big hurdle.
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Absolute centralisation caused the mess. My suggestion is just initial centralisation. It lets people get active with the platform while they figure out the basics rather than paralysing them with options up front.
One central server is created. Users finally have an easy time joining lemmy and most are content with staying right where they are. A large amount of content is now centralized to one place. Suddenly, financial interests take notice of a large amount of untapped potential. Caving in to the opportunity to live an easier life under the warm blanket of money, the central server owner sells the server to the highest bidder.
The new central server owner defederates from smaller instances, eventually cutting themselves off from all other lemmy servers. Enshittification begins.
I'm sure there's reasons this couldn't happen but I think the biggest strength of lemmy is having users just randomly pick and then figure later. I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and deceleration practices, so I moved.
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The apps are kinda meh. I haven't found one that doesn't come with significant disadvantages yet, and I've tried FIVE.
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There's no recommendations feed. You see what you're subscribed to, or everything. No in-between. You can't see what you've subscribed to, and a few posts that the algorithm thinks you might like. People like to complain about the algorithm, but one reason it's so addictive is that it's useful.
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Notifications don't work in every app
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Just having a feed that behaves normally seems to be really hard to do for apps. Stop slowing me posts I've already scrolled past, and when I click home/pull down to refresh, I want new posts, not the same thing again that I've already scrolled past and ignored. Some apps have settings (that are somehow not on by default) to hide read posts and mark posts read on scroll, but I haven't tried an app where that works every time.
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There's no "main" app. Think about Reddit before the API fees. There used to be a default app. It had its issues, but most features worked out of the box, and most things were intuitive and normie-friendly. You could use that to get comfortable with the social network itself, and then eventually try other apps when something got too annoying.
Compare that with Lemmy. You want to try it, and you already have to deal with choice paralysis. A ton of apps on the website, with utterly unhelpful descriptions ("an open-source Lemmy client developed by so-and-so"; wow, exactly zero of those words help me pick) and a random order that doesn't even let me default to one most popular one.
Quite a few apps focus on niche UI features like swipe-based navigation while still not having the basics down right. I'm several months into having joined Lemmy and I still haven't found an app that feels somewhat right. That is a challenge not one of the other social networks has managed. Congrats, Lemmy. Impressive.
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Picking a server and signing up in general is complicated. And it's an impactful decision that you have NO tools to make so early, unless you start researching like it's school homework.
.world? That's popular but you'll be judged for having joined it, plus you lose access to the piracy community. .ml? Hope you like communists and DRAMA. And if you get it wrong, there's no intuitive and easy way to migrate. You clunkily export your settings and re-import them; the servers will NOT talk to each other. And even then you lose some stuff.
This UX issue is tough. I don't have an easy solution. But I'm sure a UX expert could find one.
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Manual validation of your sign-up by a human. What is this, a Facebook group? If you introduce a 24-hour delay so early in the process, of course people are going to fall off.
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The mouse logo is kinda ugly, won't lie. I'm sure it's a more potent people repellent than you think.
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There is a LOT of tribalism. On Reddit, there's r/Canada, that's full of convinced conservatives that won't hesitate to artificially skew the discourse. And there's r/OnGuardForThee, basically the same but with progressives angry at the conservatives.
On Lemmy, that feels like the rule, not the exception. I just joined communities based on my interests, and my feed is full of communist vs communist vs non-communist drama. Can we frickin' chill?
If I need to start filtering out whole fields of interest that were taken over, joining less popular community clones or literally defederating instances to get a good experience, we've got it wrong. Normal people don't wanna do that when they literally just got here. They'll just leave.
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Somehow even more US-centric than Reddit. So... Much... American politics.
There's no "main" app. Think about Reddit before the API fees. There used to be a default app.
Which app was this? Reddit's 1st party app? I didn't think it was very popular until they did the API fees, I never used it and I don't know anyone who did.
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Technical aptitude != emotional maturity
Fuck end users I wish people still had to write dialup scripts to connect to the internet.
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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.
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
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I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
"You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
This is a great point. If it doesn't matter, why not randomly assign you to an instance? The reality is that it does because some instances are political, and some federate with other instances that could give a negative impression of Lemmy. By people recommending particular instances to sign up to, shows that there's an element of calculation as to which instance to pick.
Onto your second point, your impact would be negligible. I wouldn't worry about that scenario.
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I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
I guess even though you would be reducing their costs, in the spirit of the fediverse getting back to the internet’s roots, changing your instance based on the communities you interact with would kind of be like moving to a new email account host because most of the people you email are using it, which isn’t really a good or bad reason so much as a personal decision based on what you value.
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One central server is created. Users finally have an easy time joining lemmy and most are content with staying right where they are. A large amount of content is now centralized to one place. Suddenly, financial interests take notice of a large amount of untapped potential. Caving in to the opportunity to live an easier life under the warm blanket of money, the central server owner sells the server to the highest bidder.
The new central server owner defederates from smaller instances, eventually cutting themselves off from all other lemmy servers. Enshittification begins.
I'm sure there's reasons this couldn't happen but I think the biggest strength of lemmy is having users just randomly pick and then figure later. I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and deceleration practices, so I moved.
Maybe you're right, but I think that the issue isn't that everyone was on one server, but there was nowhere for them to go without loosing touch with the people they connect with there. The fediverse can easily give people an out and they can still stay in touch with the people they want.
"I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and defederation practices, so I moved."
That works for me. But most of us here have been running linux boxes on ARM devices for so long that we have trouble relating to the average user. I met someone recently who makes great contributions to Reddit posts like fact checking and providing digestible research. They're not tech savvy and I doubt we'll ever have the value of their contribution here while things are as complicated as they are up front.
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About the lack of an algorithm: do we really want to recreate the addictiveness of for-profit platforms? Is that actually a healthy feature? Perhaps it's better for society if our social media isn't as addictive as possible.
And on manual validation for sign-ups: before the mass migration from Reddit, most instances didn't seem to have validation, and then as it became popular, we got hit with trolls mass creating accounts posting CP and racist images, making it a game of whack-a-mole to stop it. As Lemmy is all volunteer run, we don't have paid content moderators always watching for that stuff, nor did they have an automated content filter. The main solution is to validate sign-ups so that the moderators and admins are not overwhelmed with spam.
And on manual validation for sign-ups
permissions/roles could improve this a lot https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3375#issuecomment-2657753039
Give thumbs up reactions on Github so the devs know what to prioritize
