Hey everyone, I’m honestly really liking Lemmy so far. Maybe that’s because it feels so much like browsing reddit 10 years ago and I think it’s safe to say many of us have migrated from the blackout. I’d been a Reddit user since 2010 so I’ve witnessed the slow decline over the years but popping here has really driven home how corporate it started to feel–less like a genuine hub of community and more like a manufactured product with low effort content and some genuine discussion/input peppered throughout.
That said, does anyone feel the idea of a federated platform might be confusing to some less network-savvy users? There’s other successful multi-server platforms like Discord but somehow for me the idea of a ‘chatroom’ versus something more like a forum/board seems like it would make more sense to a less informed user. I could see hearing that posts are aggregating from other sites or being cross-visible confusing to individuals who understand web usage as, ‘visit site–post to site–view content on site’.
Does that make sense? lol Anyways, loving the site so far–hope to see it grow!
I’m going to take a risky stance and say getting onboard isn’t actually hard. I didn’t learn anything or read anything to get in, I just kind of poked a few buttons and wrote two sentences about why I’m joining.
That said, the gumption to A) try anything new and B) write two cogent sentences might just be enough to deter a few people, and that’s no bad thing. The site(s) don’t need to become profitable, so it’s kind of a non-issue who joins or not.
It’s the interface more than the technology.
I’m a new user who’s not all that familiar with federated social media. But, I think if this instance looked and acted as much like Reddit as possible, most new users would be barely aware of federation.
I’ve written it before: instances should be more closely aligned with subreddits.
Currently we basically several Reddits existing side by side, who just happen to use a similar login.
I don’t think it needs to look like Reddit in particular, but everything needs to be more seamless and intuitive for mainstream users. As long as everything just works so they don’t even need to know what it means to be federated then I think it would attract a lot more people.
You probably would appreciate the various tampermonkey user scripts out on greasyfork then https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts?q=lemmy
There’s also !plugins@sh.itjust.works
In my opinion, the fact that you feel it’s a question worth asking is an answer in itself - absolutely it is.
What this reminds me of (and yes, showing my age here) is the text based Usenet groups of old. It’s kind of clunky but feels real the same way.
As this instance just got defederated from beehaw.org, I would definitely say so since that’s a massive pain, creating multiple accounts for one service just because some other members posted spam is really annoying.
Why can I still see Beehaw posts though?
Basically, we now have a local, frozen in time copy of the old beehaw communities on this instance, that will not sync with any other instance anymore since the main instance of that community is no longer talking to this instance. You can still make posts and comments on there, but the only people seeing them will be other lemmy.world users.
You can see their content, but they wont see anything you contribute to it. I just unsubscribed from any beehaw communities so I stop seeing them.
Wow, I didn’t know defederation was a thing until reading the comments in this post. In that case, I agree with the OP that not leading with federation when promoting Lemmy is probably the best.
I don’t think the federation in itself is an issue. We just need to figure out how to present it, and integrate everything.
I agree. It was presented confusingly, and made me think it was a lot more complex than it was. After I chose a server, it basically isn’t very different in experience from a non federated site.
If we had a better way to select a server (vs “here’s a list, good luck!”) Then I don’t think it’d be an issue at all
I’ve been thinking about setting up my communities based on what I used to follow on Reddit but honestly, I get about 30 seconds to browse at a time and it’s too much of a mental hurdle to be like ok…I need to go to what site was it? And I need to keep going back to my Reddit subreddit list, then search for every subreddit on [whatever that site was] then go to the app and paste some URL in… All of this is a pain in the arse on mobile and if it’s not the sort of thing I can do in a minute or two then it’s not going to get done.
Maybe someone will write a service that lets you enter your Reddit username and it just auto-searches for the closest matching community for each subreddit you are subscribed to and auto-adds them to your Lemmy account
Can’t you just log in to your Lemmy instance and search the communities by clicking the communities button? You just need to look at “all” instead of “local” communities.
As a new user, what does this mean?
I already signed into an instance and created a user name and password? Do I need to join a unique instance for every community I join? Does everyone just use password managers or something like that?
No, that’s what they’re saying. Don’t do that. Click on the magnifying glass in the top menu, and make sure that the selector that offers [Subscribed, Local, or All], choose All. That’ll include communities on other instances that this instance knows about.
Maybe? I thought I read that to search for communities across all instances you have to use some external website that indexed them all (can’t remember the name)
That’s the same problem anyone would have if they signed up for a new reddit account though
This might be a hot take but…
Is the interface really that terrible? I feel that if it were as easily accessible aa reddit or even facebook then we would be bombarded with so many brain dead posts by users who don’t understand how to get through a computer and therefore the quality of posting and discussion goes way down.
I’m probably wrongly stereotyping and judging here but I had to say it.
The structure of the interface isn’t bad, but I’ve encountered a lot of issues stemming from mistakes as novice as ID collisions. It works on phones, but it doesn’t look great. At best, it keeps itself simple, which is a positive.
It seems like a win but tech-literate is not equal to smart. Let’s say we want advice about cars. Now all the older mechanics who are very smart and technical with cars but not as much with computers won’t bring their expertise here. I really want Lemmy to take off. I think it is a good replacement for the scrolling and time-wasting that Reddit provides but I’m worried it will never be a useful resource the same way Reddit is. I think a lot would need to change for that to happen.
I only joined yesterday or the day before but I have to admit, I’m not loving this place so far. Adding communities that are not part of this instance is a giant PITA. The whole instance getting federated or defederated seemingly at the whim of the instance host is a bit sus to me too. Also, for some reason when I’m typing it just keeps having a popup saying “report created” in the bottom left. This place also is just as much of an echo chamber as Reddit from what I have seen, which is by far my biggest gripe with Reddit.
It actually sounds like you would’ve been way more satisfied if you joined some instance like beehaw.org that have a more sanitized approach to all this. But then again you said you don’t want defederation. Seems like you want to eat the cake, but also have it.
Is Beehaw less of an echo chamber? Reading their sidebar it seems like it would be even more of one. I’m curious as to why you think I might be happier there. Is it easier to navigate somehow?
I just imagined that because they are vetting you when you register. But surely you can just join any other small instance and customize your feed. You can even stay in lemmy.world instance and unsubscribe from /c/lemmy.world and other lemmy world communities to spare yourself those echoes.
I like to think myself as a power users and federations have been confusing in Lemmy and Mastodon for sure.
But in Mastodon more confusing than in Lemmy, I think it’s because the better interface of Lemmy and the ease to interact and follow other instances. I just think is a matter of interface and an well-thought integrated migration process so people could move between instances much easier if needed.
Someone will eventually get smart and stop talking about the fediverse and just build their platform on the fediverse. Then, people will flock to that platform and it will happen to be fediverse connected, allowing people to share content via an open standard.
This. I mean, you have to expect the community who built the thing to be excited by the thing, but if they want it to be a broader community, then the emphasis has to be on what gets the crowd engaged.
Having said that, I don’t think this or any platform should try to be all things to all men. It should have an identity and a focus, and it may not be for everyone - other communities will be right for other people.
Yeah i think people don’t really need to understand how the fediverse works but just use it. When it’s properly integrated into the search it doesn’t really matter if you know or not
A bit like Bluesky?
The issue with bluesky is it creates its own proprietary protocol. Nothing else is compatible with it. Lemmy and Mastodon (and countless others) use the ActivityPub protocol.
Inshallah
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I mean you don’t have to link people to join-lemmy. We can just link them to lemmy.ml or whatever and using it is exactly like reddit.
“The advanced features, namely being able to subscribe to communities in other instances, should be eased into it later”
I understand this and I would at first agree, but subscribing to communities is basically the most important thing and it’s frustrating/deterrent to learn that it’s on other websites and you can’t directly subscribe just like you can on other websites like you might on Reddit or Facebook or any other aggregator
It will absolutely.
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The average non-tech savvy person will be extremely confused about how federated services operate. You say “join lemmy’, and they say, 'ok, what’s the site?” and then you need to explain, well, you need to pick one of about four thousand instances, and then only go there when you want to sign in. Now they’re already confused. That can then be explained 'It’s like e-mail, lots of different servers to get email, but they all work together." But this doesn’t hit as well because a website is not e-mail, and so interconnected websites are not immediately intuitive. And as soon as you start going into any level of technical details, the average person just tunes out and decides “I don’t want to deal with this crap.”
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If they pick an instance (Like Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works) that allows free signup, they won’t have too much of a problem. If they pick one that has questions to answer and then a manual approval process that is COMPLETELY opaque, they will nope the fuck out immediately and not even bother to find other instances. Heck, I was turned off of Lemmy for several days because of this, and I’m very tech savvy, and have been doing this sort of crap forever. I signed up first at Lemmy.one, which eventually got my login active, but took 3 days. When I saw no indication of that signup working, though, I tried Beehaw. That STILL has not been activated and it’s been 5 or 6 days, and of course, there’s no indication of what’s going on during that time…it’s just a spinning wheel. Not until I went to an instance that didn’t have these ridiculous manual approvals did I begin using Lemmy. The average user is not going to bother with that.
These are going to be the biggest things that hold Lemmy back (there are also some serious usability issues with the main feed, concerning repeat posts showing for DAYS, and the autorefresh everywhere, which pushes content down constantly if you’re in the New feed).
Honestly I think people are making it more complicated than it is. Like everyone tries to compare it to email, but guess what I don’t know how email works either. And that’s fine, I don’t need to understand it. I type words, hit send, tech magic happens, and somebody reads more words. I’d say, just stop trying to explain the technical stuff behind lemmy.
I agree the servers with vetted sign-ups are a major hurdle. I tried behaw first, but I only gave it 15 minutes of waiting before trying to find a new server and now I’m here. I’d tell people to just go with specific open servers, create an account, and boom reddit replacement. The only other thing that needs explained is that some communities are on different servers, but that just means you hit “all” instead of “local” to search. Otherwise it’s basically reddit.
My opinion is people need to stop trying to explain the fediverse in detail, nobody cares, nobody needs to know, it’s just creating confusion. People don’t know how any of their services work and don’t care. Just tell them how to get setup in as painless a way as possible.
I was mad confused by “servers” in Minecraft, but my kids got it at 6 years old. We’ll figure this out, too.
Yeah I just tell people to join lemmy.world or beehaw and look for “all” instead of local. If they’re interested, they’ll find out about instances later.
My dumbass thought ‘local’ meant popular in my geo location and ‘all’ is worldwide when I first joined 😅
Yeah I think during design, they sometimes forget and use terminology that makes sense out of a federation perspective rather than newcomers. “Local” could as well have been named “This Server” and it would be much more clear.
Same here but I was confused because I didn’t give any location permissions, lt.
Not dumb! We’re all new to this!
Funny that you mention two very popular instances, one of which is now defederated from the other, so content between them isn’t shared. I agree with OP that a lot of people are just going to throw up their hands if they hit something like that early on.
I’m generally getting the hang of it, and get why we have situations like this defederation thing happening, but I’ve also been a software engineer for close to 40 years. I made a personal decision not to recommend it to some of my family members because I don’t think it’s ready for them. I think an app that automated things like subscribing to communities on other instances would go a long way.
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What do you mean one is defederated from the other? I’m on lemmy.world and can see all beehaw communities just fine.
You’re seeing older posts from before it was defederated.
I’m new to this as well, but I believe you’ll find that you can see their posts, but you won’t be able to contribute to them, and they won’t see what is posted to either of those instances.
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I tried behaw first, but I only gave it 15 minutes of waiting before trying to find a new server and now I’m here.
I gave it a couple of weeks, never got an email about whether my account was approved or denied. It was as transparent as mud. I mentioned it on IRC, and someone said “Oh just keep trying different servers.” Initially when I looked at the list a lot of them expressed that they were for people of leftist political leaning, for various countries specifically, LGBTQ+, POC. Joining a server was a complicated process of “What do I join? Will I be welcome there? What is their process? Why am I not seeing any answer?”
Then there’s finding communities. You can list them, and for all instances, but then it’s quite a massive list to sort through. Searching is hit or miss, and depends on knowing that you have to specifically try to search all instances. Community names aren’t super easy to discern so you have to try various forms of your search terms. And trying to do the “reddit like” syntax of /c/<area of interest> only works on your present server, so unless you know the exact name of the instance you want to try that community on to use the @<lemmy.instance> syntax, it won’t work.
You just described my entire journey for my first two days on Lemmy
See Bitcoin. And Mastadon. UX dev’s tend to not be front in line when developing the next random technology alternative.
It’s funny how all these things are either ignored or even ridiculed when not understood. I didn’t understand crypto and nfts and mastodon. I ridiculed my SO about the first two but trusted he knew what he was doing and when i saw results and success I learned and got a bit involved myself just enough to add to my retirement. But it’s funny, with Lenny he won’t bother learning about it and makes fun of me for even mentioning it. He was sending me reddit links and I told him at the very least screenshot as I’m not clicking on those. I guess he’ll come around eventually but until he understands how it works he will just get annoyed anytime I mention lemmy lol!
The issue is explaining it to them like that, just tell them the instance that you use or is the most popular one that is not shit, and when they go to the site, they will see the sign up button and they can join and learn from there. After joining an instance you can mostly use lemmy the same way as reddit, I already got my brother and gf to join and they are about as “normie” as it gets.
100% agree. I was a redditor for a decade, decided to try lemmy and heard beehaw was a popular one. Tried to sign up, saw they require manual approval with a reason and thought “well fuck” and assumed all servers were the same.
If it weren’t for a reddit post a few days later mentioning that some don’t require the approval, I would never have tried again
concerning repeat posts showing for DAYS
This bothers me a fair bit, I had a post about someone using comic sans as their programming font as the top post for days. Someone’s wacky font choices are just not that interesting I’m sorry.
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Yeah, for sure. I’m not sure I really mind that, though. It’s also not super crazy to get a basic handle on, so if it becomes popular enough, more people will be willing to try to figure it out. I also imagine that the developers working on it will try to find more intuitive ways for users to get started.
I don’t really care too much about the mainstream coming here, though. Part of the appeal of the Fediverse, I feel, is that it’s got that kind of “underground” vibe to it. We are out of the mainstream, but there are still people around, discussion is happening, content is being created. It has a fresh and unique feel to it.
