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How can we make the fediverse easier to adopt? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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or another way to ask it, what made fedi easier for you to adopt? I don't think the answer is better ways of explaining how federation exactly works, because no matter how good of an analogy you can make, most users don't care and just want to know how to get started

EDIT: I guess I'll go first, for something like Mastodon I think encouraging people to use a client like pinafore.social or Tusky instead of going directly to the website of the instance would help stop people from confusing themselves by getting redirected between instances. Same for Lemmy as better clients start to pop up

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[–] kadu 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

If we are going to be mainstream, we really need an app that abstracts away most of the technical aspects of Lemmy.

Sure, you and I might understand federation and like it - your average user will see this wall of text explaining how it works as a brick wall and give up.

So an app that just says something like "pick a server, don't worry you can still see content from others, here's our suggestion" and then "create an account and login" will work as even many games work like this.

Then the main feed needs to be abstracted away, replace long URLs with "community name" and let users subscribe and browse without any subdivisions (unless they want to filter it out). Make sure the interface treats everything as if it were a simple subreddit, they see a group about a game they enjoy and they subscribe - no friction.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I completely agree with the idea. I was initially intimidated about the sign up process a week ago. Left it and came back only because I’m determined not to use Reddit anymore. Also helps that I’m using mlem. It’s not the best but gets the job done. There’s improvements to be made, but if these suggestions are looked upon and implemented, it can really help.

Also I think having a popular person making a YouTube video on the sign up process might not be a bad idea. Visual guides are better than written ones for common users

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Mlem looks great! IOS only though rip

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Well if we give it time, there will be more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah a good Lemmy client app would probably help users migrate easier. I tried the only one on the android play store (Jerboa) but it crashes immediately when I log in

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Isn't there one called Jerboah or something? https://join-lemmy.org/apps Here you go

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Seconding everything you said. Speaking as someone who enjoys Ubuntu and being frustrated, I came this close to walking away from Lemmy.

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

This would be difficult to implement but is, absolutely, the best thing we could do to drive adoption.

On a dev level, one would need to open up third party sign on. This could cause quite a few issues as it makes mass creating bot accounts easier to do, and having it behind some auth system would gatekeep new projects. One could create an application system for the devs to get it implemented though.

Fantastic point though.