A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
I've said it before but join-fediverse needs to ask a few simple questions to walk new users through a decision tree that offers them a couple of instances at the end of the process:
This is just what I'd do if someone asked.me about joining the Fediverse and should help minimise decision paralysis.
I think the replies in this thread are doing a good job making OP's point honestly 😓
You're welcome to improve the text. That said the site is in large part aimed at instance admins and technical people. For normal users it's better to link them directly to a specific instance.
I think this should be baked into client apps.
The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.
Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone's mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.
Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.
Voyager defaults to lemm.ee IIRC
Your mother would ask you what the hell an "instance" was and then think that picking one meant she couldn't look at posts from any others.
I disagree that we should do that.
Internet became a shit show the second everyone got a smartphone and the barrier to entry evaporated.
Needing to put in some effort to participate is a good filter for low effort people and their low effort worldviews.
Not all places went eternal September:
Some sites/apps had filters to hide low effort people.
Some had strict rules that were enforced, so even if you were clueless coming in, you would upskill fast while using it.
Some had a good onboarding course making upskilling a breeze.
lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can't fathom that some people can't or don't want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that "it's not that hard" and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.
Edit: I hadn't even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There's someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.
It's the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.
Oh, I'm sure the Venn diagram between Lemmings and Linux users is a circle.
Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.
I don't get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?
A part of the problem is that there are multiple similar general topic instances/sites to choose from. If there were more dissimilar, specific topic instances/sites it might help reduce the choice paralysis a little.
It might even better help highlight the perks of federation, as it would be easier to be like, "See, even though you're on cuteanimals.posts, you can still check out and comment on stuff besides cute animals if you want."
I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, "I don't need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!" and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.
I'm not sure I'd like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don't get it in 2025, that ain't everyone else's fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an "instance" is.
Unrelated but there's a word we Mexicans use that you should look up. It's "mamador". No particular reason.
They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the ~~Lazy ass~~ new users with the option to manually join any instances.
eh.
This could be solved with a:
Can't make up your mind?
Click here to choose a random general topic instance. Don't worry, if you want to switch later you can.
Who gets to decide which instances match that description? Everyone will come up with a slightly different list.
They can't really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account
If people can’t understand what federation is then just send them directly to .world or lemm.ee or another big instance. If they have common sense then send them to join-lemmy and let them pick an instance. If someone is unable or unwilling to learn a very basic concept then they probably are not going to be a very good neighbor to have on the fediverse.
I agree that the discoverability of communities needs improvement. I think that most instances should add starter pack like features with the most popular communities for people to choose to subscribe to when onboarding new users.
In my opinion, finding the right and active communities to subscribe to is the biggest onboarding hurdle, not picking an instance. If picking an instance is a hurdle, that person wasn’t willing to try another site in the first place
What if instances could be tagged with their focus?
Then during an app user creation they could click a few "topics" and narrow down the choices to a much shorter list including member counts?