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?

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    119
    ·
    edit-2
    10 days ago

    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.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      10 days ago

      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.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          10 days ago

          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.

    • .Donuts@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      10 days ago

      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.

        • .Donuts@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          10 days ago

          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.

          • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            10 days ago

            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.

      • hemmes@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        10 days ago

        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.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 days ago

          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.

          • hemmes@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            9 days ago

            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”?

    • hinterlufer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      10 days ago

      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.

    • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      10 days ago

      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.

      • Ofiuco@lemmy.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        10 days ago

        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).

        • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 days ago

          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?

          • Ofiuco@lemmy.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            10 days ago

            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.

      • 3dmvr@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        9 days ago

        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

        • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          9 days ago

          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.

    • static_slabs@feddit.rocks
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 days ago

      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.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 days ago

        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.