In other places on around the web, (chiefly /r/RedditAlternatives) whenever Lemmy is brought up, invariably I see the exact same complaints from brand new accounts.
Lemmy is too complicated, it wont gain traction, can’t figure out how to use it, can’t log in, etc.
Now, I’m definitely more tech savvy than the average redditor, but I just don’t see the complaints. You can go to any Lemmy site, instantly start doomscrolling with a familiar UI, and sign up on all the instances I’ve tried has been frankly more simple than making a new reddit account. The only real complaint I have is the generally smaller volume of users and posts.
My only thought here is the words like federation and instances getting people hung up. Maybe join-lemmy.org being a highly ranked site is doing more harm than good by creating an additional barrier to the instances and content.
Ideally, the first link someone sees when googling Lemmy would be a global feed on a fairly generic instance, with a basic tagline akin to ‘front page of the internet.’ End users don’t need to care about the technical details, at least not until they’re interested in the platform.
So is this “Lemmy is too confusing” sentiment even real? And if not, what motive would there be to astroturf this?
If it is a real issue affecting would-be users, how can we address it?
When I first signed up here, or tried to sign up here, join-lemmy just didn’t want to load anything. So I ended up going to bed and trying again the next morning. The next morning, it finally loaded the list of instances and going by the experience I had just had with the website battling to even load anything, I chose an instance advertised as “join here to reduce load on larger instances”. And this instance just didn’t want to load anything properly. Half of the images in posts just weren’t showing up. And when I searched LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, only dead communities showed up and I’m pretty sure nothing from Blåhaj.
Then I went to world and still found it to be a ghost town. Eventually I realised that it was because ‘English’ wasn’t selected in my language settings. Because I didn’t realise that you have to ctrl click to select both ‘undefined’ and ‘English’. I’ve used software where you have to ctrl click but I’m not sure I’ve ever come across another website where this is the case. And on this note, the whole fact that ‘undefined’ even exists as an option comes across as bush league and makes it look like a beta version.
Then there’s another issue here. The god damn internal politics. So someone signs up on the insurance that says “focused on programming and development”, then have everyone calling them a tankie or be cut off from multiple instances that have de-federated. It’s clear to me now that ‘ml’ stands for “Marxist Leninist” but when you’re new here and just looking at descriptions in join-lemmy, it just looks like a unique url like all the others.
Personally I think there’s a lot of reasons that people would give up trying to get started here. That’s before even trying to break them ice with a silly question in AskLemmy and getting snarky snark and smart asses in the replies. And I use that as an example because in my first week here, I saw someone post an innocent question in AskLemmy, get hostility as a response, then leave.
The English + Undefined issue is indeed a nasty issue that makes half of the content disappear for a reason that’s not easy to figure out. It really should be a separate checkbox of whether to show or hide posts where the language is not labelled. I do think that Undefined is selected by default now, but might still get unselected if the language setting is clicked and changed.
For those people saying “Ctrl+Click, should be obvious”, that won’t work at all on mobile web UI.
I’ve used software where you have to ctrl click but I’m not sure I’ve ever come across another website where this is the case
This is the standard behaviour on the web for lists where you can select multiple options. See the example here for instance: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/select#advanced_select_with_multiple_features
Most sites have a custom version though, since the built-in HTML element has such a poor user experience. I really wish browsers would just switch it to be a list with checkboxes.
The behaviour was based on Windows desktop apps in the 90s (where this behaviour was way more common), but after a while, most things switched to checkbox lists instead.
The behaviour was based on Windows desktop apps in the 90s
Ah, so that’s why it was chosen as the default here.
I don’t think Lemmy is too confusing to use but I do think it’s poorly explained. Most people new to a server are only looking at two things:
- Overall content on the front page and how effective its filtering is.
- A topic specific community they are interested in.
But when they begin see the content can be vastly different from server to server and the topics they care about can be split into many communities on different servers they aren’t sure how to access what they want and lose interest.
I miss the days when reddit was full of tech-minded people (back when they had to compete with Digg). These days it’s full of normies, and normies tend to be fucking idiots. Just look at any YouTube comment section.
Yes. Of course the big platforms actively seek to undermine competitors. There’s billions of dollars at stake. Something that really convinced me was reading about how Facebook ran VPN services to spy on traffic so they could spot budding competitor platforms.
We know reddit used bots at the beginning to generate activity to make the site look popular. Something I’m not convinced they ever stopped doing. I believe reddit corporate still bots their own site for whatever purpose they require in the moment. I absolutely believe they troll their own site. Remember spez is the guy who live edits the production database.
We know reddit used bots at the beginning to generate activity to make the site look popular.
That’s not quite it. The founders made a few of throwaway accounts and posted a bunch of links that exemplified what they wanted people to post. It was fake activity, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t automated. It was maybe 50 posts and I don’t think it was a bad thing to do.
Just a reminder that Reddit was once difficult for people to understand.
To be honest though, I’m a bit disappointed by the other users here. The quality of comments is really poor, both idiotic and adversarial. I’m talking fox news comment section level.
I’ve been seeing waaaay too much unwarranted vitriol and anger in comments lately, for things that really aren’t that big a deal (like Linux vs windows) and I find it disappointing. As a community we should want Lemmy to grow, and yes that does mean we will get more “normie” posts, but imo that’s good and if someone doesn’t like it they can use more niche community spaces, which there will be more of with a larger userbase.
for things that really aren’t that big a deal (like Linux vs windows)
LOL, Linux vs. Windows flame wars are literally as old as the World Wide Web, and UNIX vs. DOS flame wars are even older than that. Welcome to traditional Internet culture, undiluted by normies.
(Also, I would argue that copyleft Free Software vs. proprietary software riddled with spying, ads, and other user-hostile dark patterns is a way bigger deal than you’re giving it credit for, but that’s a topic for a different thread.)
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How is a person supposed to know which instance to choose before knowing what each instance is even about? Or what an instance even is. The barrier to creating an account is too high.
If there was an account migration option it would be possible to throw users into a random instance which federates with everyone and later let them migrate with their account age and post history.
Stupid people thinking little Lemmy is too complicated to use is a feature not a bug. If someone can’t figure out how to use the Lemmy interface why would we even want them here?
Agree. Some people are just too dumb to own a computer. Giving them access to internet is like giving a Kalashnikov to a monkey.
We got a glimpse of what a true exodus could look like, and I’m with you. As much as I’d love to see Reddit collapse from its own shittiness, for Lemmy’s sake I’d rather see a trickle who have a chance to learn manners and leave their vitriol behind.
Not saying Lemmy’s perfect. I’m not saying I’m perfect: I have bad days and make asshole responses, too. But they get swallowed, or I get a reasonable response and I apologize. In the main, the real, consistent excuses for human beings who resist the opportunity to become better people tend to join instances like Hexbear, and can be blocked en mass.
If the fediverse has any chance at properly succeeding it must create a “front page” for each alternative. Lemmy for reddit for example. There is no reason why all of lemmy can’t have a front page like old.lemmy.world with each community/platform on lemmy being connected and allowing for ease of access unlike what it is currently where you need a different account for every single Lemmy site
you need a different account for every single Lemmy site
What are you talking about? You are using a lemmy.world account to comment in a lemmy.ml community right now.
Maybe, but I believe in Occam’s razer. The simplest solution is probably correct.
The average user is incredibly lazy. Insanely lazy. Reddit has taught them that they should be just spoonfed content constantly with no assistance. People aren’t used to going out to find communities anymore. To them even these basic concepts are then “frustrating” and “complex”. It’s unfortunate, but that’s really how lazy they are.
They can’t go to the search bar, type in television, and hit subscribe, it’s literally too much for them.
Sure, but the complaints I see are never “I don’t see content there that I like”, it’s always “its too complicated and I can’t sign up/see content at all”
but if you make it to any Lemmy site, you’re right there on the home feed instantly, same as reddit.
So is it really a problem of users not even making it to an instance? Are they really all getting brick-walled by join-lemmy.org, or is something else going on here?
Also, Lemmy has ways of discovering communities. Just browse the all-local or all-federated feeds and you’ll see what communities are popular.
The “can’t sign up” complaints might have something to do with how most instances make you answer questions like “why do you want to sign up” and “what communities will you browse” as a simple way of stopping automated sign-ups, and if they didn’t put anything in the box or just said things like “IDK I’m from Reddit” they might have been rejected due to the admins thinking they’re a bot or spammer or something.
Gonna throw in my personal conspiracy theory (that I don’t have any evidence for): I haven’t been on Reddit Alternatives since I found Lemmy, but based on what i remember, there seem to be quite a few people who have spun up their own projects and are promoting them pretty hard on that subreddit. Who’s to say if one or more of them decided to buy bot comments to smear their competitors?
Reddit at this point a psyop for multiple different countries, political parties, celebrities, influenzars and such. US, Israel, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and others have Internet task force to push propaganda and limit negative PR.
Votes aren’t public in reddit and is a great cover for hiding any coordinated influence. Keep creating new accounts, make it seem natural by posting on random subs, use old accounts for posts/comments and new accounts for votes. To an unsuspecting user, nothing seems out of ordinary.
On ActivityPub all votes are public and manipulation can be detected or analyzed now or in future. Instance admins could check this and see a pattern. And there are many many many instances, so any one might run into something.
Also mod logs are public in lemmy, unlike reddit. Censorship from mods and admins are already a constant cause for drama but makes it a lot more transparent for the community.
So it’s less influential. So, they try to dissuade people from making Lemmy and Mastodon less interesting.
I’m not saying it’s not possible here, but it’s too early and needs a lot more work than reddit. People already do not interact with users from instances they dislike. You already see some patterns in how users of instance behave and avoid them.
Although since Lemmy votes are public, it does take some restraint to not message people that downvote your comments/posts and ask them why.
You can see who voted your comments? How? I don’t think I can.
Source?
What are you, a cop?
How dare someone ask for something like… facts and evidence.
My anti-lemmy sentiment comes from raw experience like dumbfuck comments and witnessing the extent of ACAB brainrot.
Okay, well you know where the exit is.
