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?

      • Karl@literature.cafeEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        Why is it not possible to have a sort of algorithm that ‘recommends’ an instance to each new user depending on which instances have less numbers?

        Is that a bad idea?

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          There is. Someone told me that it recommends lemmy.ml roughly half the time. I tried it personally and it first recommended hexbear.net, so I tried it again and then it recommended lemmy.ml. If I was an American-based centrist Reddit user, being sent to either of those places who literally celebrate and call for my literal and actual irl murder (not joking), I would nope out and never visit the Threadiverse again.

          So yes, it is a very bad idea if the goal is to entice people to join from any Western civilization.

            • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
              1·
              2 hours ago

              Nope, I still see both of them, very high up in the list too - despite it being sorted by “random”, which would make a kind of sense if it would weight more highly active instances higher, so not true random but with a random component. However, every time I refresh the page both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net consistently appeared in the top 5 instances every single time. So most definitely biased towards them, whatever the underlying reasoning may be.

              There was something that removed lemmy.ml long ago, but apparently it is not that one.

              I don’t want to send leftists to a conservative cesspit, and conversely I don’t want to send USA centrists to a leftist (“tankie”) version. Neither would feel terribly welcomed in those respective opposite spaces.

              Instead, the list should be curated to show only “Newbie-friendly” instances by default, even while allowing those others to appear as opt-in alternatives. Which, surprise surprise, the PieFed instance picker does do exactly that - see one of those at e.g. https://feddit.online/auth/instance_chooser.