I've BEEN saying this for a while now. How Lemmy users need to welcome new people with interests that are different than their own. People from different generations than their own.

I've given ideas how to make starting an account easier. The concept of picking a home instance for someone who's never heard terms like "instance", "federated" or "decentralized" can be quite intimidating to start. And if you fuck up, and randomly choose the wrong instance? You have to start over. All your comment history gets left behind.

So people are going to choose the most active instance, trusting the idea that OTHER people know what they're doing.

I gave the idea that Lemmy needs to adopt standards across all instances so you can push a button and move your account. All your data would come with you.

Instead I was given a list of technical reasons why it would never work. The basis of these reasons came down to "it won't work because it would be a lot of work".

I hear a lot of people on here complain about corporate greed, and enshitification, but you gotta admit that they do get shit done.

In 2010 Steve Jobs was reviewing the new iphone prototype. Jobs said he wanted it slimmer, and wanted it airtight. The developers said it was pretty airtight, and there was no more room inside to make it slimmer.

Essentially telling Jobs that his demands were not going to be met because it would be a lot of work. So Jobs stood up, grabbed the prototype, walked to a fish tank, and dropped it in. It sank, and bubbles came out. Thus destroying it.

He said "See that? Bubbles. There's air inside, which means there's room inside. It also not airtight. Make it smaller, and make it airtight." Then he left the room. When it released to the public, the final design was smaller, and airtight.

Not saying it WON'T be hard work to make true account migration a reality, but it IS possible. The developers just figuratively need their prototype dunked in a metaphorical fish tank.

Because until this process is easier, and users are greeted with a friendlier userbase, people are just going to sign up, realize they fucked up, realize the experience isn't great, and leave. If they have access to reddit, they will leave.

It seems everytime I search for a topic all the results are from a year ago. Which suggests to me that reddit fucked up, users exploded here, gave it a chance, disliked it, and left.

Meanwhile, I point out just SOME of the glaring problems. But instead of embracing the problem and starting a think tank on how to fix it, my posts are instead turned into an echo chamber of how wrong I am. How the ideas will never work, and the problems presented persist to this day.

All because I'm thinking from the perspective of the normie 95%, and not the linux minded 5%. Which really places an artificial self installed glass ceiling on top of you.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

but you gotta admit that they do get shit done.

I opened Reddit again today to have a look at my local city sub, where I'm an (inactive) mod, the interface to moderate now offers a terrible experience. Bloated, clunky, slow. So I'm not so sure they get things done.

All your comment history gets left behind.

What's the big deal with you leaving an old account behind? Lemmy has no karma, if you keep the same username (and even more with the same picture), people are going to recognize you, you can even add links to both accounts in the bio to make sure. I'm on probably my 10th alt, people still recognize me from time to time, whatever the account.

Instead I was given a list of technical reasons why it would never work. The basis of these reasons came down to “it won’t work because it would be a lot of work”.

As @[email protected] pointed out, the 2 main developers have limited time and resources. What is the community supposed to do, threaten them to leave will the vast majority finds account migration a non-critical feature?

The concept of picking a home instance for someone who’s never heard terms like “instance”, “federated” or “decentralized” can be quite intimidating to start.

Here's the post I made a few days ago on /r/RedditAlternatives: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/

Federation is confusing, people want a single website they can go to

Go to https://lemm.ee/

Have a look around, see if the content and the formatting is appealing to you, register an account if you want to be able to curate your feed further

Go to https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] to see communities (equivalent of subs) that might be interesting to you.

Use Voyager as a mobile app: https://www.lemmyapps.com/Voyager. When they ask for your "instance", use "lemm.ee"

If you want more choices for apps, have a look at https://www.lemmyapps.com/

Email has been working on a federation model for decades. People have to remember if they use Gmail or Outlook, but that's it. It's similar here.

There is a whole community here who has no idea what an instance or federation is, but they still use this community, and post 100 comments every 3 days. The platform is similar enough to Reddit for them to use. And I can tell you very confidently none of them (between 100 and 150 monthly active users) use Linux.

It seems everytime I search for a topic all the results are from a year ago.

Of course if you ask questions on a very niche topic on a dead community nobody will answer. That's what [email protected] threads are for, to make active communities emerge.

There is even https://quiblr.com/ if people want more tailored suggestions

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The statement about comment history is inconsiderate. People absolutely care about their content. I don’t have to know nor care for their reasons why but it is important to users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Depends what they use it for

being able to access past discussions? Still possible from an alt
wanting to keep their persona and reputation? Use same name and add links both ways in the bios

I can't think about anything else, but if anyone knows, feel free to jump in

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think your idea is a good one, and I'd like to see that happen someday.

I would point out though, that Apple was a behemoth company with large teams and massive budgets (essentially unlimited resources). Whereas Lemmy is just two guys barely scraping by a living wage from donations while slowly tackling an endless list of bug reports and feature requests.

Tossing Lemmy in the equivalent of a fish tank to motivate the devs would, most likely, just cause extreme burnout and a throwing up of hands. They are resource and time limited to a pretty extreme degree considering how popular Lemmy has become, and that should be appreciated and taken into account.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I I wasn't talking in a place where the developers gather. I was talking here. With other users, whom I assumed would have the health of the fediverse in mind.

The idea wasn't me stating a final idea of "do this now!". It was more of a starting point of a think tank. I was expecting to start the batton running, and pass it off to the next idea, or the continuation of the idea.

Instead, nobody joined in. Nobody took the batton. They swatted the batton down, and collectively said "No batton! No change!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

They swatted the batton down, and collectively said “No batton! No change!”

That's not what happened. People just agreed that other features have a higher priority.

The list of upcoming features is available here: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-09-11_-_New_NLnet_funding_for_Lemmy

Among them

Multicommunities
Moderation tools improvement
Private communities
Post tags
Ease discovery of federated communities
Post scheduling
Plugin system
Etc.

Which one of those features would you deprioritize compared to the account migration?

[–] Rolando 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was expecting to start the batton running, and pass it off to the next idea, or the continuation of the idea.

I think I see what you're saying. Lemmy is indeed a place where it's very easy to get involved, and people get involved in different ways. A lot of us just pick a community and start posting regularly. Some of us adopt dormant communities and bring them back to life. Others contribute by becoming mods or admins or setting up their own instances or debugging/coding. Even those people who were giving you reasons why the "transfer your account easily" project was difficult, they were helping you by telling you the challenges involved. Whenever a well-run project is started, you think about the hurdles, risks, and mitigations, then integrate those into your project plan.

I encourage you to keep getting involved. The trick is to find the right level of involvement for you, then sticking with it and seeing it through.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Nice comment, also cool to see you around

[–] Serinus 3 points 1 month ago

I agree with your argument, but not what you've applied it to.

"Federation" isn't the main feature of Lemmy, and we don't need to focus on it. It's enough that it exists. When selling a house, would the first thing you focus on be the insurance rates if something goes wrong?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I agree with you that the onboarding process is complicated for a user that doesn't want to invest time into learning how the fediverse works.

I think that is a positive thing.

The good thing about the Fediverse is that it isn't profit driven, it isn't necessary to grow without end, and because of this it also isn't necessary to appeal to the mass of users who don't want to learn how things work here. It's a filter, weeding out the people who aren't open to new structures - that often comes paired with the inability to have open minded discussions.

I do agree with you regarding the missing transfer options, but since karma isn't a thing here, a simple import/export function for subscribed communities and blocked items should suffice, and shouldn't be too hard to implement.

[–] PriorityMotif -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm gonna say it, Blockchain might actually have a usecase for Lemmy accounts.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm unclear what that means.

[–] PriorityMotif 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could decentralize user accounts so that they aren't attached to any instance, or at least the account owner can move their account from one instance to another.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This would be way easier to implement without blockchain. Data portability doesn't require any of the consensus mechanisms or distributed computation, even if they would result in user data being portable.

[–] PriorityMotif 0 points 1 month ago

If your instance disappears, then how can you make sure that you could use your same username on an instance that is created after that one disappears?