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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
1980 points (95.0% liked)
Fediverse
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Right now, the fediverse is not very user-friendly for non-tech people.
I mean, there's instances de-federating from each other, weird federation sync anomalies still going on between instances, users have to create and maintain multiple user accounts on multiple instances if those instances have defederated each other, even the 'official' jerboa app for lemmy shits itself if you try and connect in to an instance that's one sub-dot version lower than what it was built for - plus it crashes on 1/3 of my android devices, some of the best lemmy apps have been removed from app stores due to non-compliance with app store terms and have to be installed manually from github. It's all still very DIY right now instead of plug-and-play....and if lemmy is to appeal to anyone other than tech nerds, it needs to become much more user friendly and much more plug-and-play.
I tried explaining it all to my wife (who is still a Reddit user) and she argues that lemmy on fediverse sounds way too complicated...and she's not wrong.
No need to explain all the other crap
For several weeks straight, the 'official' lemmy app, Jerboa, wouldn't even connect to Lemmy.world due to the difference of a minor version number, and when beehaw.org de-federated, many of the communities I was subscribed to just ceased updating and I could no longer participate in them. This is a major problem for people who don't have a deep understanding of how federation works and is implemented. Common users shouldn't need to have deep understanding of technology to be able to use it. This is a massive hurdle that lemmy will have to overcome if it is to be adopted by more than just tech geeks.
It's not as simple as you make it out to be...I can't tell if you are just being willfully ignorant or if you like arguing from the point of a wrong/bad position just for the sake of arguing here, but it's not simple and easy yet for your common non-technical reddit user...and it has to be before it sees more adoption among that group.
No I am saying to me it seems like the vast majority of confusion for new users is giving them this super long detailed explanation of federation, and/or users trying to figure out which instance they should be joining. As a new user all you really have to know is to go on lemmy.world and signup and its just like reddit.
What I said is what I've done and have had zero to worry about.
Yeah thats fair on your communities disappearing. Not really a common things thats happening though, and not something youd really notice until you used it for a while.
Okay, well that's a fair point, but I'll point out that communities disappearing is a lot more common than you think. For example, the single largest "Technology" community in the entire fediverse was the one hosted on beehive - a LOT of lemmy.world users were subscribed to that when it suddenly just ceased working correctly for them. That's just one example of many.
When it does just stop working like that, there's two perspectives an end user can have: a) they are new/novice users who just signed up for lemmy.world as you describe and shit just started breaking for apparently no reason which makes them think this junk is unreliable and broken, or b) they have an in-depth knowledge/understanding of how federation works and and understanding of why it broke.
Just ushering users into lemmy.world and giving them the expectation that it's just like reddit is setting them up for dissatisfaction. That is, in fact, exactly how my introduction to the fediverse/lemmy worked. I signed up, started subscribing to popular stuff without really understanding how any of it worked, and then shit just started breaking. Is that really the experience you think former reddit users should have or are expecting?
So true but the game changers are on the way Boost for Lemmy, Sync, and I think one I am missing. Hundreds of thousands if not several million potential Fediverse users .
These apps asked for preregistration for their upcoming Lemmy versions and some users may be maintaining Reddit until their app is ready . Some I am sure signed up for Lemmy, KBin, etc.and were discouraged and stayed with Reddit.
I am almost certain over the the next several months the user base will increase but will it increase enough to get decent engagement levels on more of the niche communities.
That is the sizeable advantage has at the moment.