A community to organize and discuss the growth of the fediverse as a whole
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/55413416
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 cannot get into Lemmy. It was just endless wars about who was federated with who.
Honestly, this gave me some trepidation when I first got here too. When you're checking out a list of servers, you're going by the descriptions written on the page. There's no footnotes about the little wars and name calling that on about this.
So someone is going to sign up on ml because it says it's focused on software dev and FOSS, then encounter people who judge them based on the fucking url after their username rather than the content of their posts. And I'm still not completely on board with the conversations and memes that perpetuate this.
When I got here and caught wind of this stuff, I actually questioned if I was even in the right place. That stuff is not attractive to new users who are just getting started up. It makes it seem like this platform is a minefield that you need to tiptoe around when you're seeing it for the first time.
This place has a few problems IMO. Not just the UX but also a lot of the users, I'm afraid to say. For example, in my first week here I saw another new user arrive and make a post in one of the ask communities asking if there is a gen z space. And this person didn't get an answer to their question but instead got a bunch of angry sounding snarky snark from people going "who cares about labels? I just came here and made the effort of typing this comment to show you how little I care. Because that's how cool I am."
And I've been seeing it all the time, to be honest. People here seem to struggle with the concept of just scrolling past something that doesn't interest them and they just have to stop by to tell anyone how stupid they think their interests are. And that's in addition to new users feeling like they need to tiptoe around instance wars. And that's after making the effort of trying to get started on a new, confusing (at first) platform.
So I'd love to see this place grow personally. But the longer I'm here, the more I have my doubts that it will happen. Honestly if another alternative popped up using the Bluesky protocol, I'd probably check it out in hopes that there's more women around who allowed to exist and in hopes that the general populace is a little more friendly as far as people's interests and likes and dislikes go.
I agree. I think the problem of choosing an instance in federated social media is quite difficult. From the outside, it's hard to tell if an instance is generally good or not (e.g. whether they're anti-bigotry, well-moderated, have a good atmosphere, etc.) because you don't have much information except for what the instance owners tell you. And even once you create an account on an instance it could still be hard to judge it well, because maybe the instance admins are assholes but you can't tell because they ban and defederate from anyone who points out things they do wrong and because anyone who remains on the instance either is ignorant of or tolerates the admins' bad behavior. (I don't really know if this happens on Lemmy specifically, but there is a Mastodon instance that is listed on joinmastodon.org that I used to think was chill, but I later found out that one of the admins has a habit of harassing people. How are you supposed to find this stuff out without ruining your time and mental health constantly following the latest federation disputes?) (And choosing a server from a list also has the disadvantage of centralizing the Fediverse further.)
So the most trustworthy way to pick a server I can think of is this: Have a friend or someone you already trust who uses the Fediverse, and use their judgment to help you pick a server. Now, this has the pretty big limitation of requiring you to already know someone on the Fediverse, which I imagine most new people on the Fediverse (including myself when I joined the Fediverse) don't. So a new joiner to the Fediverse has to do the hard work of weeding out the really bad instances and the instances that tolerate the really bad instances, and then they have to hope they didn't land on one of the subtly bad instances. That seems unpleasant and I imagine most people don't have the time and willingness and just give up.
A possible way to alleviate the problem might be to maintain carefully curated instance lists along with honest notes about the general experience of being in each instance. But that would take a lot of work to create and maintain, and it runs the problem of also having to ensure the trustworthiness of the person who makes such a list. For that reason, I don't think this solution that I'm proposing is likely to happen.
I do feel that flatness and context collapse are major problems for Lemmy and the threadiverse. In a chat group or a smaller forum, you can have a general idea of who will see and respond to what you post, and because everyone knows everyone else (or knows someone who knows everyone else) there is a social context that can be built on, with the community reaching consensus on certain social norms. But on Lemmy, even in small, niche communities, anyone can just drive by and post a comment after seeing something in their "All" feed, and unless it's bad enough to warrant moderator action then there may not be many social consequences outside of that one comment feed. In this sense, I feel that the design of Lemmy encourages certain patterns of behavior that feed into some of the problems of Lemmy's social environment. For example, the existence and prominence of the "All" feed makes it easy for people to express disdain at others' expressed preferences when it's not in their place to do so, because the "All" feed treats all posts essentially the same and lessens distinctions between the social expectations of different communities, for example if some communities expect members to have put in some effort to understand the topic of the community.
Very good thoughts. A curated list of instances would be really helpful. But who should have the authority?
Also very true about what you say concerning the special interest posts showing up on “All”. I use “All” also a lot more than I used to on reddit, just to see enough posts to satisfy my social media needs. Topics come and go and I guess many people don’t really subscribe to the groups so communities never grow. I hope things will improve and actually a couple of weeks ago I thought they had because there seemed to be a big influx of new users. Now I am not so sure anymore though.
And I’ve been seeing it all the time, to be honest. People here seem to struggle with the concept of just scrolling past something that doesn’t interest them and they just have to stop by to tell anyone how stupid they think their interests are.
Definitely
The fact these people think asking to which server you want to join is a hurdle says a lot
I wonder if they've had the same issue choosing their email provider
Or joining a MMO game server lol.
Lemmy users tend to forget linking to instances. It's usually much easier for someone to join if they know where to go
The one I use is: "Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"
I thought it was a hurdle, but I'm here.
I left the first time though because I couldn't decide, even though I knew of and believed in the benefits of decentralization.
Even now I sometimes think the instance I joined was a mistake and have anxiety about choosing a new one and also about moving to it.
Back in the day of AOL people had to pick what chat room they were going to use and then switch if it sucked. I think people that want to be here will make their way here over time.
I wonder what ever happened to Absolut1709...
Sure but we should still improve UX
The UX the way it currently is filters out non tech savvy people, so we mostly end up with tech savvy people here.
I downloaded sync and made an account through there. It automatically sent me to lemmy.world. It didn't even feel like a choice which might be what people migrating from reddit need.
I think this is the current best solution, Voyager does the same but defaults to lemm.ee, I point people there.
Is that a pretty smooth onboarding if we just simply tell people to download Voyager? I remember having to choose a server to log in on, which could trip people up. Does it just choose lemm.ee for you now? How long does it take for account approval on lemm.ee (another thing that seems to trip people up)? Sorry for all the questions, just trying to see how idiot proof this is lol. Would be great if we could just say -Download this app and follow the prompts!
How long does it take for account approval on lemm.ee (another thing that seems to trip people up)?
You can ask on !meta@lemm.ee
It's probably relatively easy to give them some of what they want: Stop the 3 or 4 drama communities, so the drama here doesn't drag out that much. And design a proper onboarding workflow, like give us a few of your interests, here are 5 suggestions for instances, click continue to accept the default, put in a username and you're done. Bonus for pre-made subscriptions for the topics of interest.
PieFed was similar to what you're suggesting, though only once I selected an instance. When I DDG piefed, the first link is the main piefed instance (piefed.social). The second offers piefed.social or other instances. If a person clicks other instances, it has the 3 available options described by the continent they're on. Once I selected to join feddit.online, I went through an experience similar to your suggestion.
Now that I'm here, the Fediverse system makes sense. But, I remember being confused and overwhelmed by it at first. It was the first website I remember using that wasn't a website, but many independent websites that all look the same. Another thing was the term "instance". I hadn't heard that term until then, so I was confused thinking, "just let me sign on, and I'll figure out which instance I want to join later." Lastly, although I understand why it is necessary, the manual approval by administrators for many instances can take up to a day. In general, users considering to join will mentally allocate 5 mins tops (but really maybe 1-2 mins average) to seeing if they like the site or not. That long delay probably makes people lose interest because they feel like the site is going to be a pain in the ass.
Agreed. I think it's important to manage the learning curve somehow. One big barrier in front isn't ideal, and I think (if possible) we should flatten out the curve and allow users to learn bit by bit, and later on, while actually using it. That's also way more fun and hands-down.
I like PieFed as well. I think it shows that PieFed often times wants to make an effort to do the right thing. Pay attention to what people need, try to remove obstacles, give moderators what they need, and generally foster good behaviour and bake that into the design if possible. It often feels (to me) like things aren't just an afterthought, but laid out in a way that make sense.
And yes, onboarding is a bit difficult. There are still some low-hanging fruits left, IMO it could be way easier, especially on Lemmy. And even with things like manual account approval, we still get spam on the platform. So I'm not even sure if that's the correct tool. I don't think it's a big concern, though. People can usually wait for the amount of time it takes, if their motivation is genuine. We might want to re-evaluate this though, I'm not sure if anyone has done some statistics on whether it really adds to anything, because it certainly is a mild annoyance.
Lemmy has good UI, the defaults set are just bad and most people will give up before discovering Photon etc.
Something like https://phtn.app/ really should be the default
Counterpoint: there are some communities here who moved from Reddit because their sub was banned. I'm not going to tell which ones to avoid brigading, but let's just say that they have a very average tech level. And average for the general population, not Lemmy.
They do here just fine. Someone posted a guide on their sub with three steps
The community has been active for more than 6 months now, and doing just fine.
Sync and Boost were literally clones from their Reddit versions. Desktop interface isn't the best, but desktop users are supposedly more tech savvy than mobile, so having a p.instance name for Photon, Alexandrite and Tesseract in the sidebar is acceptable (eventually pinned post for new joiners).
People are always going to complain about stuff
I made a post on Reddit a while ago if people are interested https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/
People are always going to complain about stuff
I cannot emphasise this enough - yes, there are real problems, too. But our senses might be overtuned to find reasons of "why don't people join." One big part of the reality is - most people don't like unfamiliar things and will rationalise their intuitive disliking with any arguments, often even ones they haven't experienced themselves, but heard about.
Again - not saying there aren't problems that need addressing, but there's a real risk of needlessly internalising every bad thing said about Lemmy, when it may sometimes just be unfounded, intuitive dislike instead of proper thought out critique.
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.
I got onto Reddit about ten years ago and only after I had heard about the site from multiple sources frequently. I'm technically minded and I know how to use a computer and navigate social media but even then, I was hesitant about using Reddit. Even once I got on, I had to stumble around, get into chat fights with people because I wasn't posting or commenting properly or in the wrong place in the wrong way and with the wrong group. As a new user without any guidance or help, I had to go wandering around on my own to figure things out but eventually I did. I even got it to the point of moderating a couple of my own subreddits. It took me a while to get used to it before I bailed on that site with the first Rexit in 2023.
I think most people migrating to the fediverse will be the same way. They'll be curious, they'll log on, they'll hate it, they'll find it difficult, they'll mess up and eventually they'll figure it out on their own because they want to. And through all those headaches of getting started in the fediverse, they'll be more likely to stay long term because they had to really work at building a space for themselves here.
Something like https://phtn.app/ really should be the default
Disclaimer: Photon is great and the dev does a fantastic job. Also, the beta is open, please give them feedback on !photon@lemdro.id
However, there as still issues induced by not using the default UI. One of the instances I used added photon as p.instance for a while
Photon was still in early stages, and there was a bug preventing it to load for some people (Firefox users IIRC). In the end the admin switched to Tesseract.
https://lemdro.id/ has photon as a Default, but it took them a while to the latest version, for quite some time it wasn't ideal. I would still go to https://l.lemdro.id/ just because the Comments view was available, or because some other info was missing/hidden.
Lemmy releases new versions quite regularly, and there are usually a few bugs. Photon development is independent, and the Photon dev has to catch-up with those. Add admins sometimes limited availability to the mix and the experience can really become subpar.
I also prefer the existing UI on Lemmy ... it's simple, straight to the point and no bells or whistles. I want to read content and have conversations ... not look at how pretty everything is.
I was getting a bit bored with the default UI and I thought I would give the alternatives like Photon a try ... it only made me realize how much I enjoy the default UI on a PC using Firefox.
KISS .... Keep It Simple Stupid
I'm here for the content and people, not in looking at a fancy layout with unique fonts or colors.
I don’t know. I loved Apollo for Reddit and Voyager does a pretty good job of emulating that feel.
Of course I’m not an average user since I’ve been in IT for 30 + years.
I think the UI itself is also a problem, i commented about it on your previous posts but tl;dr: no good card view, bad language implementation, and i wish we could customize the pins on the side, i don't want to see info about the instance i already know about; i want to see my subscriptions. (i know this is apart of your UX problems but i wrote it in perspective of bad defaults and am too lazy to rewrite it x) )
I completely agree we'll be replaced by a BSky alternative if we don't fix this. PS: They're remaking the lemmy ui, this is a good chance to fix a lot of issues:
I completely agree we’ll be replaced by a BSky alternative if we don’t fix this
There's no appeal for text-based forums nowadays. How people do you know in real life who use Reddit? Most of the people are on IG/TikTok/Twitter.
Yeah. Most people are interested with the content just being shown to them with not much thought about it. Ain't calling lemmy a think tank that's for sure, but at least to use it properly you have to engage in discussion.
I don't know anybody in real life using reddit or such, but they're only very obscure here in the middle east. I don't know about the rest of the world but reddit is a corpo, and you don't get to that position by being obscure. Just a thought
think tank
Not sure if on purpose or not ha ha
I didn't know of the literal meaning but i just hear it and picked it up in my vocabulary. Just saying sometimes we don't have the most deep discussions lol. At least i don't x)
TIL, thanks
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.
I mean one issue might be just mentioning lemmy. I use mbin because I like the ui better and I don't use smartphones and loathe the whole application thing for websites. there is another one too but I lost track of it but it was also about making an early experience better by having people select their interests.
Unless we fix the UX problems in Lemmy, a Bluesky-like alternative of reddit is going to pop up, and overtake Lemmy, like what happened with Mastadon
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.