Fediverse

Facebook has servers all over the world; there's not just one Facebook server although it appears to users like that. What would be the effect of asking (potential) Facebook users which server they would like to join?

In a somewhat related question, does anyone know how the extra-instance account transfer request is going? Not sure where to look to find out.

Something else to keep in mind is that most Redditors nowadays (like Twitter and Bluesky users) are mobile users. I think a lot of Lemmy mobile apps have a good UI and solve that problem. However, it's hard to point new users at a single website/app/etc to join. Bluesky does that. Obviously, that's bad for decentralization, but Bluesky is also still a beta protocol that's headed toward decentralization at some point. Their single instance was necessary for them at the start.

When a new/small social media platform that acts as an alternative of a bigger platform pops up, one of the common topics on the alternative are people talking about how it's better than the old place and/or just trashing the old place. Eventually, they outgrow that (assuming that platform survives). I feel like that's happened with Bluesky. Browsing it, everyone seems to be talking about their own usual topics now, and I see very few posts calling out Twitter or comparing Bluesky to Twitter nowadays.

Lemmy still feels like it's in that "bash the old place" stage to me. Maybe ~20% or posts I see are talking about Reddit or talking about Lemmy in relation to Reddit. It's annoying.

So they want to replace a social media site ran by rich fucks with a social media site run by rich fucks?

Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host. That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions😭😭" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.

The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Couldn't we design an "onboarder" where when you get started on lemmy, a "let's get you started" wizard asks you 2 or 3 questions and based on your answers, it proposes 2 or 3 servers (or directly assigns you to one)?

Love old.lemmy.world

Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?