this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.

Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

What can we do?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

It should have an account creation process like those old RPGs where it asks a series of questions then says, “we recommend this server: . It is ” then has click next to proceed or click “I want to choose another server” to just get a list.

1-hate, 5-love Do you like capitalism? Do you like tech? Do you like sports? Would you prefer a large server? etc

It should also be possible to skip the quiz and go straight to server selection at any point.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (5 children)

For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.

The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.

It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.

[–] lunarul 2 points 10 hours ago

UX experience

We should shorten that to UXX

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

That's what I send to people:

"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users

Feel free if you have any questions"

What research is needed?

[–] Xella 6 points 16 hours ago

Yes. Lemmy is not friendly for the "average" user. We could come up with a list of severs with pros and cons to them and then people would feel more comfortable. I came here the moment reddit killed the API and I was so confused. Federated anything meant nothing to me and I discovered lemmy.world so that's just what I joined. LOL I still don't know the difference between servers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.

IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds 😅

[–] PaintedSnail 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

That does come with the unavoidable side effect that the majority of the people will simply not participate. It then follows that sites like Reddit will continue to be the place where the majority of the people will go.

If your goal is to participate in small communities and you are okay with the slow pace of those communities, then that's fine. If your goal is to move people away from corporate-sponsored media for whatever reason, then this won't work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

It also means that lemmy will forever be less useful as an actual tool. You can not find nearly as many in-depth answers to topics by typing lemmy at the end of the search bar as reddit; and people will stay on reddit after they get the information they need because why go somewhere else. I understand that part of it is because reddit has been around for so long but I would think I could at least get linux questions answered here and I really can't

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

I disagree that this is a concern. If you are already exaggerating about federation wars, chances are you already tried lemmy and know a good bit about selecting instances. The average user will not care as much as you do.

The average user will go to join-lemmy site, will not care at all about the different instances and likely choose the biggest one or first one they see. None of them will think "oh no this one is involved in federation wars" because thats not something you find out before knowing some about the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The average user will go to join Lemmy and abort, because they can't grasp the idea that joining one server gets them into other servers. They worry about server selection, have analysis paralysis, and nope out. That's why they're asking for a bluesky reddit and not a mastodon reddit.

Normie's want centralization because they don't understand how else it can work and while some can learn and have it explained many will give up before giving it a chance.

[–] DeepSeaHexapus 2 points 14 hours ago

That's about how it worked for me when I first tried giving it a go about a year ago. Wasn't until today when I saw that Reddit post talking about paywalling some subs that I decided to give it another go.

In fact that post had a pretty decent write up of how to set up Lemmy and what it was. Probably the only reason I managed to kinda figure it out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

The average user, me, will go to sign up, kinda briefly go to Wikipedia on fediverse, still not understand, and pick a random server, and then here I am trying to figure it out as I go

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Somehow most people figured out email. It's like picking Gmail, Outlook, Proton, Mailbox, Yahoo. Doesn't matter, pick the one you like, create as many accounts as you want, or make your own server if you want.

This isn't a Fediverse or Lemmy problem, but is speaks volumes of how broken the Internet has become and how far we've fallen. 😔

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

whatever, just make a lemmy app that defaults to lemmy.world i guess

[–] lunarul 2 points 10 hours ago

Or just go to vger.app, which defaults to lemm.ee but allows you to register and log in with a whole bunch of different instances.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Bad choice, many new users specifically came here because of [email protected], which can't be accessed from lemmy.world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

i would guess the piracy audience doesn't struggle with the same problems that would make a default instance useful

[–] [email protected] 24 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Reading these comments I feel a sense of dread. You are all experiencing survivor bias. Initially when I ran into barriers I gave up for like a year before bothering to try Lemmy again.

If you don't want Lemmy to serve as an actual counter to corporate controlled social media if it means letting in "normies" then you are content with corporate controlled social media continuing to dominate our lives. Which sounds about right for humanity. The smugness is vile.

Just bring on the vacuum decay event already.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

This post can be taken as-is with "Lemmy" replaced with "Linux", and I fucking hate it. So many people despise the idea of "normies" coming to what they love as if they're the reason things got so bad. This stuff could be so great if they were actually made for everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

imo this friction will erode as larger instances come into play; people will join a large, main instance without even knowing of the others, and-- if they have a problem with the instance they joined-- they'll find they can easily jump ship there.

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[–] Iheartcheese 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Better UX than Reddit, they even point out that it’s like old.reddit instead of the trash UX they have now

It’s just dismissive to get people to agree without looking

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

You're confusing UX with UI. UX = user experience, the entire experience, UI = the interface. UX is the entire user experience, and for example for joining reddit, you go to reddit.com and join. For lemmy you learn there are dozens of large instances, with intricate politics between them and if you join the wrong one everyone thinks you're a tankie....

That's terrible and i can imagine people are put off by it.

The interface of lemmy itself is indeed ok, and is close to old reddit, which at least the people here prefer.

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[–] finitebanjo 3 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Even worse, the Tankies are basically running the landing page that asks them which instance to join.

We should probably make a non-tankie version and get it trending for the Algorithm.

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[–] AA5B 12 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about

  • too few members
  • wtf is multiple servers?

While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I use Eternity on android and it's a fantastic and much cleaner feel than reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago (5 children)

If the miniscule effort of signing up for a platform keeps someone away, they probably wouldn't be a good community member anyway.

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[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 19 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

endless wars of who's federeated with who

i've been here for months and months, i might have seen this mentioned as an aside once or twice. but "endless wars"?

[–] knexcar 3 points 13 hours ago

I frequently see comments saying stuff like “don’t trust them, they’re from Lemmy.ml” or “I’m glad Hexbear defederated” usually in terms of tankies/pro-russia anti-Ukraine support. Or occasionally, a random dislike of Lemmy.world because it’s too much like Reddit (isn’t that the point?)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (3 children)

Lemmy UX is identical to old Reddit. Come on.

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