Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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First of all, 99% of people don't have the technical expertise to self host Lemmy, and that's who we are talking about in this thread.
Secondly, there are very significant benefits to using a well established server versus self hosting.
The most obvious perk is having a built-in community to interact with and learn from.But more importantly, more established servers will already be subscribed to many of the major communities, making the task of finding and browsing remote communities that much easier. Consider this:
Your local version of c/science_memes only has ~200 posts and 1.2k comments. Also, many of the older posts didn't seem to federate the comments or upvotes. This is because your server only recently subscribed to that community, and federation doesn't occur retroactively.
The sh.itjust.works version of the community has 3.9k posts and 94k comments, because we have been subscribed since the community started.
The main version actually has 3.92k posts and 99.6k comments. Most of the missing comments on the SJW version are likely from lemmygrad and hexbear users, who are defederated by SJW but not by mander.xyz. This is also another major consideration about self hosting vs. joining a larger server: defederations. Some people will see predetermined defederations as a pro while others will consider it a con (also depending on which servers are defederated). The main thing is that people have options that work for them.
Funnily enough, the communick version is majorly fucked up, not sure why that is.
At this point I'm just getting curious, so I checked the lemmy.myserv.one version as well, and it's got an impressive 3.84k posts and 98.2k comments.
Might as well try it for c/greentext as well.
- Main community - 1.22k posts / 52.6k comments
- is.hardlywork.ing version - 501 posts / 901 comments
- communick.news version - 1.1k posts / 23k comments
- lemmy.myserv.one - 200 posts / 15 comments (I guess I never subscribed to that community on this account? Kinda weird)
- mander.xyz - 1.22k posts / 52.9k comments (not sure how it has more comments than the main version, someone should look into that)
So yeah, it's not quite as simple as you make it seem. Hopefully someday Lemmy will integrate the ability to federate communities retroactively as some kind of option. Because I think that was more of a design choice than anything, technically it should be possible to toggle a setting and get your instance to download all of the posts and comments from a remote community, even from before you subscribed.
And I feel like without having access to all of the old posts and comments that we have built up over the past couple years, content on Lemmy probably feels a lot more sparse for a new user. Personally, I have always enjoyed sorting by top posts of all time in various communities, both on reddit and now on Lemmy. Even if you've been subscribed to the community the whole time, you tend to miss out on some great posts if you only ever sort by new or hot.
And btw, I luckily have a free lifetime subscription to the communick Lemmy server because they did a promotion back in the day.
I gave up on the technical expertise part, thats why I use yunohost lol, and I defintiely went overkill with the 8core16gb for two apps that only im using, yeah its an issue you dont grab old posts, it shouldnt take up too much memory for text at least considering wikipedia can be downloaded for 58gb uncompressed
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I really really doubt the part about the content based on my interests part, I've tried Lemmy, Mastodon and Pixelfed, none of the has any content that I care about enough to join a community but they have way too much US politics (WAY TOO MUCH), so it really doesn't encourages me to try anything new on the fediverse (like Loops, picking an instance, creating user just to find no content for me?).
I'd like to know how good or bad the instance block works on PieFed, because here on lemmy I still see hexbear posts that other users crosspost, even when my instance already defederated that instance.Im trying to post more to comicbooks and other communities i like so others think its active and post there lol
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And then different servers even have different options so you're not stuck with one person's view of what things look like.
I was kind of upset that Kbin went under, lots of cool features, same data.
It got forked as mbin tho at least
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The problem is content, there isn't any. Either I select all -> hot and see new content that almost feels like /r/subreddit_name/new or I select all -> active and while those have engagement, its all very old content, like a day old, two days old, etc. And then the other problem is that I only see two types of content usually: Either articles or screenshots from social media. Nothing else.
I just think that unless there's a sudden influx of users for whatever reason, lemmy will never pick up. We just need more and more people, but have no way of getting them, not to mention so many communities just choosing not to migrate off Reddit, especially huge sports communities.
- [email protected] can help
- "Top Day / 12 hours/ 6 hours" works better than Hot
- "New comments " works better than Active
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For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
That's what I send to people:
"Lemmy has 42k 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/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
What research is needed?
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You've been toying with the idea of making money off an app often, let me guess?
A bit. Why?
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I’m so sick of this dumb ass argument…
The server question was 100% the reason I didn't join Lemmy right away. It's not that I didn't understand what a server is. It's that the signup form was asking me to make a decision I didn't know the answer to, so I gave up.
With a little more hand holding, I'd have joined months before I actually did.
Well, that's fair enough, I guess.
I think the difference between servers and what it means to be on one server vs another is not exactly obvious. On the other hand, if picking a Mastodon or Lemmy server gives a person choice paralysis, I don't know how they can pick anything in life without getting choice paralysis.
Like, how do you know which bread to buy? I guess you just arbitrarily pick one and if you like it then just stick with it, and if you don't then you try something else.
But listen, I'm no stranger to overthinking things, so I guess I do get it, even if it is a bit frustrating as someone who wants people to take the internet back from corporations and oligarchs. Sorry for being a bit overly dismissive. I think it's just that I'm a bit of an old school guy, and so I mostly just hate the idea that the entire internet needs to be centralized around one website/app/platform and that any small degree of choice or distribution is a bad thing.
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It's not empathetic. It just tries to understand human psychology well enough to manipulate consumer choices for more profits. If you want something on that philosophy, that's what reddit is already for.
I'm not trying to say that marketing is empathetic. I'm saying that meeting people where they are at is.
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Reading these comments I feel a sense of dread. You are all experiencing survivor bias. Initially when I ran into barriers I gave up for like a year before bothering to try Lemmy again.
If you don't want Lemmy to serve as an actual counter to corporate controlled social media if it means letting in "normies" then you are content with corporate controlled social media continuing to dominate our lives. Which sounds about right for humanity. The smugness is vile.
Just bring on the vacuum decay event already.
This post can be taken as-is with "Lemmy" replaced with "Linux", and I fucking hate it. So many people despise the idea of "normies" coming to what they love as if they're the reason things got so bad.
This stuff could be so great if they were actually made for everyone. -
And? The tech bros currently ransacking the federal government also work in IT.
That has nothing to do with the subject
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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've decided this is good and want a Lemmy that is restricted to just the nerdiest of nerds.
These little spaces are cool without all those horrible reddit users. -
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 main reason why I still prefer Reddit, is content. Even though I am subscribed to similar subs/communities/magazines/whatever on Reddit/Lemmy, the content of my Reddit home screen is filled with interesting content compared to Lemmy. And, I never had to ban/hide anything/anyone on Reddit.
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whatever, just make a lemmy app that defaults to lemmy.world i guess
Or just go to vger.app, which defaults to lemm.ee but allows you to register and log in with a whole bunch of different instances.
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For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
UX experience
We should shorten that to UXX
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I thought that when I first joined, as the weeks pass, its turned into a no, I like the community here, reddit is just a headache that I was addicted to
Yeah… you people are nice. Thank you all fr it’s so refreshing and rare to meet nice people on the internet these days
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The problem is content, there isn't any. Either I select all -> hot and see new content that almost feels like /r/subreddit_name/new or I select all -> active and while those have engagement, its all very old content, like a day old, two days old, etc. And then the other problem is that I only see two types of content usually: Either articles or screenshots from social media. Nothing else.
I just think that unless there's a sudden influx of users for whatever reason, lemmy will never pick up. We just need more and more people, but have no way of getting them, not to mention so many communities just choosing not to migrate off Reddit, especially huge sports communities.
You're right, but you're also not seeing some of the great and diverse content on Lemmy. Obviously reddit has a fuckton more content. Network effect and all that, but my Lemmy feed is not as you describe. I'm subscribed to a bunch of Linux, FOSS, privacy, music, and other great communities. While I do see articles and screen caps when I browse the all feed, my curated feed is full of questions, discussions, new (to me) music and more.
It certainly takes some effort to curate a feed for yourself, but it can be done.
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I've decided this is good and want a Lemmy that is restricted to just the nerdiest of nerds.
These little spaces are cool without all those horrible reddit users.The less profitable we are, the less they'll bother us.
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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 sincerely hope there's less content here than Reddit, forever. I hope the UI keeps the masses out, and the technically savy are the only ones here.
I want to doomscroll less, I want to be astroturfed less. I want to interact with more humans and fewer bots, even when that means I interact less. I want fewer AI prompts, AI Art and corpo spam ads masquerading as engagement. I want less video and more text. Overall, I want to be spending less time on the internet, on my phone, and I don't want to hear about every last toxic thing Trump did to drive me crazy. Lemmy helps me control that feed better, so I deleted my reddit account and I hope to stay here until I manage to stop opening social media at all.
Lemmy right now feels like the internet before the long september. I hope it never changes.
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That has nothing to do with the subject
If I send you (assuming you're an average person) a link to lemmy.world, that site has a basic signup. That is the same as virtually any site. There is no functional difference between joining reddit, and joining a lemmy instance. The only difference is you're not in a walled garden here.
I know freedom is scary if you're not used to it, but try it for a while. Once you get used to it, you'll find the corporate web is stale and banal.
You can't expect things to be different if you're applying old ways of thinking and looking at things, and trying to box the new into being the very thing you migrated away from.
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I'm not trying to say that marketing is empathetic. I'm saying that meeting people where they are at is.
Where they are is having spent most of their life in a walled garden corporate internet. What you need to understand is that all new things have a learning curve, and the process of learning needs to be accepted - rather than trying to pressure free systems into being the very thing everyone is wanting to get away from.
Freedom means having choice. Sometimes a lot of it. Sometimes that's scary. But it's worth embracing.
