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?
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 insinstance without explicitly subbing to them all or using lemmyverse.net.
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.
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.
Even if Lemmy was one big simple centralized server, that user would just come up with another reason they couldn’t switch.
“Oh, it’s too small, my niche communities aren’t there”
“The UI isn’t as nice”
“The mod tools aren’t as good”
Etc.
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.
PvP v. PvE seems like it would make s difference, probably? :-P
But yeah I get you: the list of varied options is too large, and worse yet opaque.
Fwiw Blaze most often just recommends 2-3 options to current Redditors, to KISS (Keep It SimpleS:-).
I’m on three different instances and the sort by All-hot feed is nearly identical.
I’m not on Beehaw or Hexbear, but those instances make it pretty well known they block a lot of other instances.
Some instances have very different rules on them that would affect your experience. Like not allowing downvotes, for example. Blahaj users can’t see downvotes or downvote anything themselves.
Yeah, true. But that’s cool. Having choice like that is great!
But I suppose that’s the issue. Trying to keep signup simple to help drive user engagement. How much do you try to wrap someone’s head around such nuanced differences, and when do you say “just join me on my instance”?
If you joined a German-speaking WoW server as a non-speaking German, the experience was going to be subpar
Yes, and if you join a German-speaking instance as a non-German speaking user, the experience will also be subpar. Hence I talked about content, not language.
I just remembered that WoW nowadays offers a lot of different experiences: Classic, Seasons of Mastery, Retail, etc.
And people get different experiences based on the server they pick.
eh, back when the “exodus” was happening it felt like every second post is about defederation. Nowadays you don’t hear much about it anymore, but if you only looked back then I see how you could come to that conclusion.
The only real federation dramas I can think of were relating to Hexbear and Beehaw. If Greenleaf was on one of those instances then maybe it could explain their skewed perspective. Otherwise yeah, I don’t get it.
Those went on and on and on and on for years though - it was only 3 months ago that Discuss.Online finally defederated from Lemmy.ml, making it the first top ranked instance that would be suitable to recommend to Redditors. And even then lemmy.ml still remains to bully and abuse the potential users with tankie BS (bOtH sIdEs SaMe don’t ya’know).
Also before those two started there was Lemmygrad and Exploding Heads, and others I cannot recall off the top of my head but they really do go back a ways - defederation fights is kinda Lemmy’s whole main entire deal. Sadly, I am not kidding: it’s a Nazi bar effect where you can’t convince people to join a bar that welcomes Alt-Right Nazis (although in this case it’s Alt-Left tankies), bc they are turned off by such.
It’s fine if we ignore what those users want btw, it’s just less so if we don’t acknowledge who we really are, and then wonder why nobody likes us - that kind of incel culture is not okay, at least not with me, and I will stand by that.
Preemptively defederating from Threads was widely discussed in a lot of places.
That’s fair I guess. I remember that. That was around the same time as well, so someone registered to say Beehaw or Hexbear during the Threads fediverse announcement period would probably get the idea that federation wars is all that’s going, at least if they stopped visiting Lemmy shortly thereafter.
I specifically remember looking up tables of who defederates from who and what instances allow NSFW or downvoting because this was an issue among some of the top instances back then.
I ended up making 4 different accounts over 2 months until I landed on a server I’m happy with. That will never be acceptable to any normal user.
Every time someone brings up these issues, people here downplay them like you are doing it right now and nothing is ever done about it.
This, the survivor bias is absurdly high around lemmy.
This is my fourth instance because, for some reason, it’s extremely hard to find an instance that defeds the 3 main propaganda instances, allows porn/hentai, piracy talk, weed and isn’t too pissy about downvotes.Still I am thinking about leaving lemmy due to a complete lack of content for my country other than government propaganda… And I don’t feel comfortable creating a community for the same reason and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else from my country so… Nobody who cared about it (or who could help me mod).
I like how you put that. We really are the ones who survived😂
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.
If it helps, the issue is much less prominent for PieFed. Pick https://piefed.social/ bc it is the flagship and new features will just magically appear every week or so (not joking! the pace of development really is that fast!) Also it’s easier to not have to start the community joining process for every community - that one being (by far) the largest for PieFed means that more often than any other instance, that work will have been done for you.
Also, when you join, you will become energized about the Fediverse again - the startup wizard helping you pick communities to subscribe to based off of your interests will make you happy:-). Whether it’s worth the pain of learning a whole new system after that or not… is up to you, but seriously if you need that jolt of positivity, sign up TODAY! (you can always abandon it tomorrow, though I hope you won’t, and am betting that actively seeing it in front of you may help… although tbf there is a bit of a learning curve as you adjust, and yet only bc there’s so much MORE you can do with PieFed, like Lemmy has just Subscribed vs. All, whereas PieFed has a whole slew of new options to add to that, in the Topics, in choosing to receive Notifications for content rather than have to navigate to it, and new stuff is coming like personalized multi-communitied as well - it kinda really is awesome and exciting!? 😊)
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.In addition to keyword filters that Blaze mentioned, PieFed is basically the only way I know of, other than an app (Sync or Connect) that offers a true instance filter that blocks all users from the specified instance, without requiring admin support. I’ve blocked all those batshit insane comments from lemmy.ml and now if I go to the same identical posts, those comments from those users from those instances that you specify are flat gone. Regardless of the community. More in this post but that’s basically it that I’ve said already.
Likewise, Categories of Communities allows you to have your cake and (when you want it) eat it too. e.g. check out https://piefed.social/topic/arts-craft and note absence of it, in that category. Likewise https://piefed.social/topic/fediverse, and https://piefed.social/topic/food, and https://piefed.social/topic/gaming, and so on. But, in the very rare event that you ARE wanting it (hey, it happens!) it’s still accessible at https://piefed.social/topic/news (& politics).
I would be remiss if I did not tell you that PieFed isn’t fully completed yet - it both has features that Lemmy (and even Reddit!) lacks, while also missing some, like its search feature is pretty abysmally bad (on purpose, it just hasn’t been the top priority yet, to receive some love and attention:-). Though I still love it even so. You can keep your old account (to do things that PieFed cannot yet), and eventually you should find yourself using the new perhaps 90% of the time, as you adjust and come to love what it can do for you - though note that I find that the approach to finding content is quite different from when I used Lemmy, which only offers Subscribed vs. All, whereas PieFed has so many more options to choose from (it may be overwhelming at first - but it’s so fantastic to have choices!:-).
US politics (WAY TOO MUCH)
Piefed has built in keywords filters, that can help
Im trying to post more to comicbooks and other communities i like so others think its active and post there lol
I looked this up when joining a month ago because I saw hella posts on it and joining world to not see the piracy community didnt help
Honestly, joining a community just for the type of content they have or what they filter is useless. Best approach for me is to have access to everything and then filter what you don’t like by yourself.
Ah yes, because telling people the reason they don’t join your platform is invalid is sure to make them change their minds. 🙄
0 marketing sense. People like you are why the Reddit userbase mostly steers clear.
Was going to post this. They’re just burying their heads in the sand.
Lemmy’s onboarding is trash and so is the main UI. Get away from that and it’s actually great. BUT, most people used the Reddit app when Reddit still allowed 3rd party apps and access so you HAVE to appeal to the masses, no matter how dumb you think they are. Don’t complain about not having mass appeal if you don’t want mass appeal or listen to them and make the change they’re asking for.
There are definitely issues with Lemmy but these users specifically seem to just be complaining for the sake of complaining. They want Reddit without the parts they currently don’t like, not realizing that they also need to get rid of the parts that eventually made Reddit go to the shitter - because otherwise it’d just repeat.
Just tell new users just sign up on your instance. Make it less confusing by sending them to a specific website and not just telling them about the software.
I swear to God, there are so many tech people here that overthink it because they know details that the average user would not give a single fuck about.
The biggest UX issues, in my opinion, is the process of choosing an instance and content discovery.
When you go to “join lemmy”, rather than choosing a username, you’re presented a big list of instances, and you have no idea what that means and what it means for your experience if you choose one. Even though in reality it doesn’t really matter, just having the list paraylyses the user as it’s not a process they’re used to. Users are likely asking themselves:
- Am I going to miss out on content from other instances?
- Do I need an account per instance to interact with their communities?
Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn’t create any communities. So basically when they they’re directed to join-lemmy and go to sign up, they create an account on that instance right away and get started.
On the discovery front, a potential idea would be to allow communities to have a specific category tags field. When a user signs up, the host instance could have a page that they’re directed to (this would be controlled by the instance, so they wouldn’t have to have it enabled) which lets the users pick some topics they’re interested in and can then subscribe to the communities right away.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, Lemmy’s (and Mastodon’s) issue is that the users experience is influenced by the decentralization.
The server side needs to be a decentralized database stored on a bunch of servers with all content available from one website with an API so people can develop apps for it (or even alternative websites), but otherwise the decentralization should have zero impact on what content the users have access to. In other words, do like Reddit but instead of having a ton of servers owned by AWS hosting everything, have those servers be owned by anyone who wants to host part of the database.
What can we do?
More flaming about tankies and .ml that will help.
ABSTRACT AWAY THE FEDERATION!
Could there be an option for a sorting hat that could either: look at the redditor’s post history and determine a good server for them or simply spin the wheel. Either way would get the lazies shit posting without them having to learn anything about fediverse. I know I would have just spun the wheel.
Aren’t you guys sick of forced infinite growth in every aspect of our collective existence? The Fediverse is not shareholder owned, we don’t have to be slaves to The Red Line That Must Go Up. Reddit went to shit when it was aggresively mainstreamed, I don’t want it to happen to lemmy as well.
I think people who claim that the UI/UX is fine are missing the point. It is fine to you, but it is not fine to whomever made the claim. And for every person that makes such claim, there are hundreds/thousands who think/feel the same but don’t say anything.
Lemmy, as a community and as a project, should seriously listen more to the opinion of newcomers.
Love old.lemmy.world
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 <3
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The second this hurdle is crossed we’ll need a new Lemmy
I’m working on a lemmy app. Will be UI focused!
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.
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!”
