With previous Rexit’s like the API debarcle etc. many users were left looking for an alternative, but with decision fatigue and bad UX etc. most did not find the Fediverse a viable option.
What needs to still improve, how can we be ready this time?
With previous Rexit’s like the API debarcle etc. many users were left looking for an alternative, but with decision fatigue and bad UX etc. most did not find the Fediverse a viable option.
What needs to still improve, how can we be ready this time?
User experience.
It is frustratingly bad for people just wanting to sign up. The idea of creating a single account, tied to a single instance that may or may not be federated is a confusing concept when most places online now are centralized. Then you have to choose which instance you sign up to, then depending on the instance you may need to go through an application or some other hoops to finally have a working account.
Then you may later find out your instance is not the community you thought it was, may be un-federated from other communities you had wanted to engage with, or the instance just shuts down one day, you loose your account and have to start all over again. That frustration and confusion is enough to turn away most casual and less techy users.
Also, there are lots of apps to pick from, but never a de facto one. While not necessarily a bad thing (in fact it can be generally good!) it does not help with the issues laid out above.
Exactly. Getting my account her took a week. I had to sign up then go through an application process. Like I get it, it helps reduce bots and stuff but golly it’s a pain and the average user isn’t going to do it
lemmy.world is really slow at accepting applications, we should not be suggesting it for new users
but you’re fine to stay there since you’re already in
Well what do you expect when the entire community thinks everyone should sign up for Lemmy.world and make this place even more centralized?
Its really stupid, but thats what it is… Hey look, we have federated technology! Lets all go to Lemmy.world because its the largest instance and users dont know what to pick anyway, so lets just put them there.
Lets make another centralized reddit with federated technology!
Honestly I dont think federation even is a valuable feature. People just want to be where everyone else is. The idea is good, but people dont care about the tech, they just want to use their apps and enjoy the experience.
There are some small advantages to many instances but the trend is to not even federate with instances that you dont like, so… Lol.
It’s a design feature of the fediverse that larger instances are better. Bluesky goes a long way towards solving these issues. So there’s no point in complaining about people not making sacrifices.
IDK I think it works brilliantly.
It prevents the iron grip on users/content like Reddit/Twitter have achieved. Enshitification can be defeated by moving instances, which is way easier when it can be done piecemeal instead of all at once, users can move at will and not even lose their friends and communities. Lemmy.world is less than a third of the Threadiverse, and only like 1% of the Fediverse. Enshitification relies on slowly boiling the frog, but here with federation that would cause a slow bleed of users moving until there’s no one left in your enshitified instance. Finding alternatives is really easy and you’ll already be used to the software since there are other instances with the same software.
If the software tries to enshitify then the code can be forked, instance admins can band together to support the new fork. Or switch to a different platform entirely like PieFed instead of Lemmy. Or even just changing the frontend to Photon or something like that.
The several apps thing I don’t see as much of a barrier to Redditors; most are already used to the platform’s official app being garbagepuke and going with something else so they’ll figure that out relatively quickly.
I haven’t yet seen the “Pick an instance to sign up with. It doesn’t matter, well actually it does, for reasons we’re not explaining right now” problem really addressed in a meaningful way. Those lists of instances to join when you go to Lemmy or pixelfed or whoever’s website? Most of them don’t get filled out correctly by instance admins; so they’re either the default boiler plate, or they’re the first two-thirds of the first sentence of a paragraph about what Lemmy is.
Lemmy.world
Lemmy is an open source, federated link aggregator platform powered by ActivityPub, the fastest growing…
I don’t really see how to ‘fix’ the first part because its fundamental to what the threadiverse is
True now, but doesn’t have to be. Could have a site that aggregates and simplifies these steps to one place, allows you to pick and choose your instance with explanations right there to help you make informed decision on your account, and let’s you know upfront on which instances have other restrictions. Filters for those lists, and other quality of life features that people have come to expect in a modern user experience.
I know some have tried sites like this before, and I’m sure there are some kind people out there that may even have the handy excel sheet to share as well, but few to no solutions out there do it all, and certainly not all of it well.
All this is to say, there’s things the fediverse could have better, but it’s really reliant on volunteers to make it what it is and those are in short supply.
we had a larger instance now shutdown and too many people are scattered to the other ones, and i noticed less content on my feed because of that.
Just explain it like you would explain email to a boomer in 1998. It is just another protocol.
On the surface, that works. Problem is, to use the Fediverse you have to get a bit deeper into it than with email.
Email is designed to evoke the UX of the physical post office. To use the post office, or email, you need to know your address, and your recipients address. You need to know where to put outgoing letters, and where to get incoming letters. Even if you’re vaguely aware of Grumman LLVs and letter sorting machines and trucks and trains and whatnot, you can still get away with conceptualizing it as, you put a letter in a box, it is then “In the mail” until it is delivered to the recipient. Email presents itself to the end user as exactly that.
ActivityPub might be “just another protocol” like smtp or pop3 or whatever but the user experience is vastly different in ways people really haven’t had to deal with before. Lemmy isn’t lke the post office, it’s like Reddit, except there’s 90 little Reddits each with their own slightly different rules and a complex web of which will communicate with what. The format of the electronic communique is of no consequence to the end user.
On Reddit, if I write a post in a subreddit and click Post, it is stored on Reddit’s servers, and anyone with a Reddit account can access Reddit’s servers and see it because we’re accessing the same monolithic system. On Lemmy, I’m currently posting to lemmy.world from a sh.itjust.works account in response to an account from programming.dev. On which of those three independent platforms will this message be stored? How could someone from, say, piefed.social see it? I genuinely don’t understand this fully msyself and I’ve been on Lemmy for a couple years now.
It’s stored on all of them. Piefed.social can see them because piefed.social is federated with sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world and programming.dev.