Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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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.
The problem is that mainstream media has less integrity now than it did 30 years ago. The national broadcaster in Australia for example has been infiltrated by right wing people (BTW I don't want to get rid of ABC, just wish it was better). To cut through the propaganda, people need to acquire the skills to find their own media sources. Unfortunately that also means getting technical ability with computers now. Best thing I can think of is helping less adept people to navigate the space. Otherwise we end up with a much weaker democracy. Listening to C-SPAN callers in 2022-2024 scared the hell out of me and made me think Trump was gonna get voted back in. People stuck in legacy media space are getting brainwashed. I wish it was easier to curate RSS feeds for non-technical friends and family.
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Blahaj still federates with .world, which as you said in your previous comment is a problem.
Im curious about what the issue with lemmy.world is? It's just the big instance I saw when I started, so I went with that and haven't really had any issues. Nothing is really keeping me here so just wondering what im missing
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Choosing a server is the bridge too far to cross?
That's fine, keep the reddit people on reddit.
That's a pretty funny thing to say when talking about a platform explicitly designed to fill the same niche as reddit.
The call is coming from inside the house!
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I've suggested something similar before and got shur down. Just sort people into a Lemmy server either based off their interests or location
"Nationality France = Lemmy France Server"
Or
"What are your interests? Gaming = Gaming Lemmy server"
Shut down as in someone shut down the website or people telling you that the idea is trash?
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I don't think partisan is even the right word here as many Lemmy users are too far left for mainstream political parties. In fact I am further left than most any mainstream party, but am still considered a capitalist shill by people here.
Leftists were banned on Reddit long ago and federation and internet archtiecture and infrastructure is made by generally leftists and libertarian types. So yeah, lots of leftists and libertarian types are around these niche and relatively new (I started using the fediverse nearly 10 years ago lol). Surprise pikachu face when normal people stop using reddit and see leftists since they were shielded from them by corporations, but it shouldn't be that surprising honestly
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Im curious about what the issue with lemmy.world is? It's just the big instance I saw when I started, so I went with that and haven't really had any issues. Nothing is really keeping me here so just wondering what im missing
Drag has been misgendered (The he/him kind), harassed, and banned from communities on .world for using neopronouns. The admins don't care and do nothing.
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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?
Ah Lemmy. Still full of comments from smug assholes pretending their lack of sonder is the good kind, and if they don't understand something it's cause it's worthless and pointless while their knowledge is the most important.
Yeah, there are other reasons than the UX/UI and the screenshot even shows it.
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I stand corrected. However:
Neither Jerboa, the first app on join-lemmy.org and the one by the Lemmy devs, nor Lemmy.World's own web interface gave me this option. I downloaded Thunder, Voyager, and Sync, and only Thunder gave me that as an option. When searching how to block instances, the top results are that you can't (at least on DDG).
So, unless I'm being incredibly stupid right now, I can block instances, but only if I use a specific app, or perhaps choose the "right" instance. That's still very bad UX.
after using Thunder for a bit, this blocking clearly does not extend to users.
The people suggesting it know it doesnt do what you want. They are being disingenuous.
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If right wing (or even other leftist groups) came into ax explicitly tankie community and started arguing with people how would you react?
"Tankie" is how first-world "leftist" describe third-world leftists.
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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?
The tough part for me is that the reason I use Reddit is for bullshitting with people about sports teams I like. Lets look at some of the communities here.
- Baltimore Orioles -- There's one on lemmy.world with 150 subscribers. The last post is from 4 months ago and it's a game thread posted by a bot with 0 comments. There's also one on fanaticus.social with the last post from 7 months ago.
- Carolina Panthers -- There's one on fanaticus.social with 3 subscribers.
- Miami Heat -- There's one on lemmy.world with 10 subscribers.
- Pittsburgh Penguins -- Again, lemmy.world with 11 subscribers.
I'd love to get off reddit but until there's actually people to talk with, this place is just never going to meet the needs of sports content that I use Reddit for. I had no interest in Bluesky until some people actually got on it as well. The Shutdown Fullcast for college football brought a bunch of people and fans there so it gave some utility to the site. Without utility, there's no reason to be here.
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I like new reddit. It works well, I just wish I could keep it the same as it is. I HATE Lemmy desktop UI and nearly went back to Reddit because of it. Voyager for mobile and photon for desktop. Honestly photon for both might be better but I'm apparently the 1% of people on Lemmy that actually prefer an app over a website
️A lot of users here prefer a desktop environment that's only command line.
Apparently wanting even a GUI puts you in a minority on Lemmy.
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I’m working on a lemmy app. Will be UI focused!
I mean, there's already apps that are good that were created by reddit app developers. E.g. Boost for Lemmy. The problem isn't the apps, it's the availability of content and people. The /r/orioles on reddit has 85,163 subscribers. 110 people on the page right now. /c/Baltimore_Orioles here has 150 subscribers and no posts in 4 months which was a bot posted game thread with 0 comments on 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?
Its so nice tho, all the alternative front ends are fire, I like all the ios apps, I prefer it to reddits garbage, they made it worse every update down to forcing answers to take up a tab in the last one
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If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn't be a good community member anyway.
I consider myself an idiot when it comes to this, but even I had zero issues. Went to Lemmy, joined .zip because it sounded cool and started browsing All to discover other communities (same as Reddit). If it had more steps to that then I would’ve done that too because i acknowledge that Reddit is going to shit and I am committed to my principles.
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Yeah, it seems most people still on reddit prefer the newer mobile UI. I never used one of the 'fancy' modern reddit apps, and I'm lowkey scared for the inevitable switch I'll have to make when Eternity finally dies. All the other FOSS apps left have a very 'iOS' feel to them that I can't stand
I liked it a few years ago but they made it worse every update til it became near unusable, I used the spot where the put answers to hold a community so I can browse multiple at once like tabs
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
thats how it got shitty, you get thousands of pointless comments, reposts and bot accounts upvoted to the front page
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Hell, it can filter out tech people too. I'm a programmer by trade, but I almost dipped on lemmy because the onboarding is confusing enough. Like, I obviously (mostly) figured it out, but I did consider going "eh fuck it" and dipping. The site is ultimately a luxury and not a requirement, so effort or confusion required to get all started up is also something that'll drive me to consider it not all worth it for some social media I'm not even sure I want to be a part of yet.
I think the verifcation question might trip ppl up, just not used to needing one or it being an actual answer, or copying and pasting for it, I signed up for a few and each time I felt like I was doing it wrong
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The political leaning is definitely unfortunate. The fediverse should be for everyone, not just a certain political section.
whoa bro chill with the fascism /s
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The reddit concept of subreddits also doesn't work well with federation IMO (at least no Lemmy's implementation).
Want to talk about video games? Well, there's no /r/games, instead there are bunch of different /c/games on different servers with varying amounts of activity. You basically gotta make the "pick a server" decision again whenever you post something. If you make the wrong choice, your post might not get seen by anyone, and even if you post to the biggest sub, you'll be missing out on eyeballs from people on other servers who aren't subscribed to that instance for whatever reason.
For example, lemmy.ml/c/linux_gaming and lemmy.world/c/linux_gaming have around the same number of subscribers. Should I post to both? Maybe the same people subscribe to both, so that's pointless? Or maybe I'll miss out on a lot of discussion if I post only to one? There's no way for me to know.
For me, it makes Lemmy less useful than reddit for asking really niche questions and getting useful answers. For posting comments on whatever pops up in my feed though, it works great.
I don't have any good solutions to this, and I'm sure it has been considered already. When I first joined, I remembered seeing people bring this same issue up, but it doesn't seem like it went anywhere? (Or maybe it did?)
Its annoying but I also like it, you get different viewpoints and if you look at the feeds the focusses are usually different, like one might have mostly news and trailers, the other mostly discussions on questions, there are like 10 different shows movies tv communities
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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?
Lemmy doesn't need low bar registrations. Lemmy will grow slowly without the immaturities and the to pompous class.
People will build apps and make lemmy more "fun"
Corporate social media is easy because it keeps the ad clickers there. Do we really want that environment here?
All the quality (non bait clicking content suppliers) will come here and all the spam artists will stay over there.
Just let Lenny grow organically with a little barrier to climb and we'll be alright
