That’s why I when I recommend the threadiverse (aka. lemmy or piefed or Mbin) to people I just send a link to an instance I think they’ll like. Instead of explaining the whole thing. If they join the instance with time federation will start to make sense to them and they might migrate later on.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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This.
There are rough edges to the actual onboarding experience, of course, but the joinlemmy and joinmastodon and joinwahtever websites really aren't a part of it. They're more of an ad for admins, demonstrating that there's an active network of sites already using the product. The fact that not even the product develoeprs seem to understand this is a real issue, though.
Honestly, we need to stop sending people to "Lemmy" or "Mastodon" or whatever. Those are website engines. It's like sending someone to "WordPress" when you want them to read your blog.
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It just isn't possible, and we should want to dumb down the introduction too much. The Fediverse is not a centralised medium, and to participate in it, its users should understand that, analogous to how you would instruct people before using motor vehicles. Some things are just essential and need to be taught. Not teaching the stuff doesn't make it disappear. If some people cannot get behind the idea, then either find novel, intuitive ways of conveying it, or just accept that they cannot be a part of the Fediverse.
I've seen people using Voyager for a year and not even knowing what their instance is. They seem content, vote, post just like on Reddit.
People can drive a car without knowing what type of engine it is. They turn the wheel, it turns.
I'm not sure your car analogy is a great one since most drivers are awful, don't respect the vehicle nor the responsibility they carry by piloting one, and tens of thousands of people die in car accidents every year. lol
Maybe we shouldn't let any idiot drive a car...
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Do we want 'mass adoption'? and if so, why? and what would that look like, if we had it? how would we know that we had got it, and what good would the getting do us?
Whether or not we want mass adoption I can't say, but what we don't want is to have a filter that only tech savvy people get past.
We want all kinds of people on Lemmy, not just tech savvy people that push through the bad UX
This keeps coming back from time to time. imo we need an instance or method to sandbox newbies.
My old comment:
A custom feed that allows new members to see a variety of the best that Lemmy has to offer would be a good start. Then, when they are comfortable with the platform and its dynamics, they can customise it further, or swap the newbie feed for their own custom filter (which practically would come down to community subscriptions, I suppose?)
Now instead of making this comment very long, I’ll put in an video game anology to make it a bit more digestible:
What we need is a tutorial area that showcases all the different things that the Lemmy endgame has to offer. Creating memes, sharing news, the art of shitposting, being a lurker, actual discussions vs just scrolling to see the funnies: all these things are enjoyed by different types of people, and before they can reclass and enjoy the wild open world of Lemmy, it would be good for them to get comfortable with the controls and settings in a relative safe space.
I think they should stick to the "email provider" analogy. Whole paragraph should be something like:
The only thing you need to start interacting with the Fediverse is an account with one of the many providers, just like with email! Providers are freely available across the globe: pick one that suits your location or interests best! You can start browsing the content of nearly the entire Fediverse from whatever provider you choose. Don't worry, you can always create an account with a different provider later.
You could add a sentence or two about where to find sensible defaults or link an article that explains the more subtle things.
I think the emphasis on instances (and not naming them the more familiar providers) hinders adoption.
The difference is that the email provider you chose won't make it so you can't send an email to your friends because your providers don't talk to one another.
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That's a great analogy, but it's too big a barrier for many, most give up before picking a instance, we should set good defaults and then the users can figure it out once they are used to the platform.
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Never considered it like that, good analogy
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I'm pretty techie and I've been here for months. I still don't fully understand why it matters and how a different instance would have changed my experience. The fediverse is so fragmented, it would be dumb to stick to one instance. My app is always set to browse "all". Everyone commenting seems to be from different instances. I'm certainly not going to start reading about different instances at signup when it presents the fact that you will be able to access all instances anyway. I picked randomly from one of the most popular choices. This whole process of a selection of an instance sounded good to software engineers, and sure this is how the technology fits together.....but these are "back end" issues that I (and other normies) don't care about at all. Users do not want to get into the weeds of how the back end works and it is certainly off putting.
Your instance is defederated from four other instances, so yeah it has an influence.
Where/how do I check or know what impact that has? I think this just further strengthens the point that Lemmy is not welcoming to normal users at all and is just for specialist nerds.
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Different instances that have a unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed, and can have a tangible community as you recognize names from your instance. That's the main difference.
Unique interests can be already be self-curated by subscribing to certain communities. All instances have the subscribed feed. There's no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.
There’s no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.
It's nice to have country or language-communities in the local feed of one instance. Feddit.org or jlai.lu are good examples.
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unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed
Then selection of interests and themes should be included in the onboarding process, instead of the mumbo-jumbo about choosing instances.
This isn’t always the case though. That’s just one example of difference between instances.
Instances can change everything, from being able to view nsfw content, if you can downvote or not, and who you can talk to (big difference between instances federated with ML/grad/hexbear and not. (And then the BeeHaw Defeds make a difference too).
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Makes sense once there's enough of a userbase....but currently there isn't a huge amount of content of interest on Lemmy and sticking to a local instance just limits this even more. Currently I have to stick to "all" as even areas of subscription can run out of content with a quick scroll session.
I think everyone agrees that the fediverse experience is highly different from the centralized experience, but I disagree that the fediverse must necessarily hide what it is and reproduce such a centralized system.
We've been fed the lie that tech is "easy" when it isn't at all, but that is not a problem. Driving a 2 tons box around at hundreds of km/h takes some skill, some time to learn, but we don't consider it too hard and skippable. I think we should put our efforts into simplifying the explanations, showing what it brings and what you lose, if we want more people to join (and I do)
We just need good defaults.
Sure driving a 2 ton box around takes skill, but we should still make it as easy and smooth ride as possible. Add Power Steering, Climate Control, ABS, Navigation, a Radio etc.
We shouldn't give people a shitbox and expect them to enjoy driving it, especially when they're used to better.
If we don't fix our bad UX, we're going to filter out all non tech savvy people, and create a bubble.
Default way to access the platform for the average potential news joiners is mobile
Voyager, Thunder, Artic provide good defaults.
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Honestly to a certain extent I think being decentralized is somewhat beneficial. Perhaps it's just the fact I've been visiting forums for like 20 years and feeling jaded, but I never liked that any knuckle dragger could easily make an account and act like an ass.
It's not a very high bar to clear to figure out how to sign up for lemmy, so if you can't even figure that out, maybe it's for the best to help prevent polluting the user pool. If you're gonna be an ass, you should at least have to work for it.
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Mass adoption did not end well for Earth.
If what instance you chose truly didn't matter this wouldn't be as big of an issue. Unfortunately defederation causes a tangled mess of netsplits.
Indeed, I see people saying "we should just randomly assign an instance from the top 10", when hexbear (RIP) was in the top 5
Also top 10 ( https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list )
- LW
- lemm.ee
- lemmynsfw.com - not suitable
- sh.itjust.work - shit in the name, not appealing to the average user
- lemmy.ml - power tripping https://feddit.uk/post/12952230
- lemmy.dbzer0.com - requires to follow and agree the Anarchist code of Conduct - not appealing to the average user
- lemmy.ca - Canada-oriented, non-Canadian users might not want to join as they wouldn't think they would belong
- feddit.org - German-focused, https://feddit.org/c/main content is in German
- lemmy.blahaj.zone - queer-focused
- programming.dev - programmers-focused
I made a more complete analysis in this post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on [email protected] ), nowadays I basically go with:
" Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
Because yes, the USA/EU question appeared during the Luigi announcement in LW.
If new users were asked to pick 3 or more topics from the top 10, then the most relevant instance could be assigned
hexbear (RIP)
Rest In Perdition
What happened to hexbear? I mean, I blocked the whole instance so I didn't have to read their crap any more, but did it disappear?
"Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
- [email protected] / https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 for the reasoning behind this comment
Edit: voyager link
Vger.app isn't an instance, it's an app.
I'm well aware, but it's the only one available on both platforms and looks better than the default UI on mobile
I actually usually point to https://vger.app/settings/install so that people have links to their versions