Hey everyone, I’m honestly really liking Lemmy so far. Maybe that’s because it feels so much like browsing reddit 10 years ago and I think it’s safe to say many of us have migrated from the blackout. I’d been a Reddit user since 2010 so I’ve witnessed the slow decline over the years but popping here has really driven home how corporate it started to feel–less like a genuine hub of community and more like a manufactured product with low effort content and some genuine discussion/input peppered throughout.
That said, does anyone feel the idea of a federated platform might be confusing to some less network-savvy users? There’s other successful multi-server platforms like Discord but somehow for me the idea of a ‘chatroom’ versus something more like a forum/board seems like it would make more sense to a less informed user. I could see hearing that posts are aggregating from other sites or being cross-visible confusing to individuals who understand web usage as, ‘visit site–post to site–view content on site’.
Does that make sense? lol Anyways, loving the site so far–hope to see it grow!
Someone will eventually get smart and stop talking about the fediverse and just build their platform on the fediverse. Then, people will flock to that platform and it will happen to be fediverse connected, allowing people to share content via an open standard.
Yeah i think people don’t really need to understand how the fediverse works but just use it. When it’s properly integrated into the search it doesn’t really matter if you know or not
A bit like Bluesky?
The issue with bluesky is it creates its own proprietary protocol. Nothing else is compatible with it. Lemmy and Mastodon (and countless others) use the ActivityPub protocol.
I’ve been thinking about setting up my communities based on what I used to follow on Reddit but honestly, I get about 30 seconds to browse at a time and it’s too much of a mental hurdle to be like ok…I need to go to what site was it? And I need to keep going back to my Reddit subreddit list, then search for every subreddit on [whatever that site was] then go to the app and paste some URL in… All of this is a pain in the arse on mobile and if it’s not the sort of thing I can do in a minute or two then it’s not going to get done.
Maybe someone will write a service that lets you enter your Reddit username and it just auto-searches for the closest matching community for each subreddit you are subscribed to and auto-adds them to your Lemmy account
That’s the same problem anyone would have if they signed up for a new reddit account though
Can’t you just log in to your Lemmy instance and search the communities by clicking the communities button? You just need to look at “all” instead of “local” communities.
As a new user, what does this mean?
I already signed into an instance and created a user name and password? Do I need to join a unique instance for every community I join? Does everyone just use password managers or something like that?
No, that’s what they’re saying. Don’t do that. Click on the magnifying glass in the top menu, and make sure that the selector that offers [Subscribed, Local, or All], choose All. That’ll include communities on other instances that this instance knows about.
As this instance just got defederated from beehaw.org, I would definitely say so since that’s a massive pain, creating multiple accounts for one service just because some other members posted spam is really annoying.
I wish we could just stop making a big deal out of the federation, other than choosing an initial home and having perceived duplicate groups it has more or less no impact to the front end users.
It’s a backend thing and we need to bury it more in the UI so people don’t feel it.
I mean, it’s all about the client. As long as the client makes it seamless, it’ll just feel like another sub/community, regardless of the instance it’s on. They don’t really need to care about or understand federation. Just sign up. Consume content. Ggez
And I’m pretty sure they’re working to make the default web version of Lemmy work more seamlessly.
Very much this. A normal user doesn’t care about federation and much less wants to spend extra effort to get around it.
I think this is where the crux of the matter is. It’s early days still for Lemmy, and where we are right now is great I feel.
However, the user experience for an average user is probably quite confusing. With other platforms you just go to the platform page, sign up, and done. Here you’re greeted with an explanation of the architecture, then you have to find an index of servers, and all that is probably quite overwhelming for some.
I spoke to my roomie about it, and he basically dismissed it saying “eh I might look into it when I have time to waste” - the platform simply wasn’t too approachable to him, and he is quite tech savvy!
Over time I think it might be good to maybe not abstract away, but at least be less in your face about the federation. Streamlining the user onboarding experience would go a long way I think.
I agree with you.
On Mastodon, a few weeks ago this topic was raised after the default mobile apps started to streamline signups for the “mastodon.social” server (equivalent to lemmy.ml here). Many were displeased by it, saying that “we cannot have only one big instance, it’s Twitter all over again” and something on that line.
But I think it is a good thing, personally, especially since mastodon have an account migration feature. Let the people experience the service, then give them the choices. Other apps and servers use this approach (eg. Mammoth for Mastodon app, Vivaldi browser’s instance…)
Lemmy is not as mature right now as Mastodon was during the Twitter migration. This is a challenge, but presents some opportunities for the devs and the community to see what works and what didn’t work for all this federation thing. But it does have potential to be “mainstream”.
I like the suggestion idea, except it should not just be one instance. I think it would be a great idea to show the top 2 or 3 so that one just doesn’t completely dominate
I think this comment 100% reflects how I feel as well, and I especially agree with your roommate. I’m a decently tech savvy person as well and between learning about federation and overthinking which instance to join it took 20-30 minutes to join Lemmy. I think the people in my life who don’t enjoy stuff like this as much will need me to help set up Lemmy or they won’t join at all.
Federation should not be an issue for users, I think we could make the front-end hide most of the complexity that it brings. There are only a few things that are harder now:
- discovering communities outside your own instance (this is now mostly done through a website that lists communities)
- logging in when you receive a link to a post on another instance (you have to go to your own instance, login there, and search for the post again)
- creating a community on another instance (this requires an account on the other instance to create the community, after that they can add you as a mod)
One of the things that could be improved is changing the login page to add least add something about Federation, so users won’t try to log in on another instance with the credentials of their home instance.
Your second bullet point is the one I have wanted fixed badly as soon as I started using lemmy. I want there to be a small button at the top of posts that takes me to that same post but through the server where my account is. Idk how that would work though. Maybe a browser addon that remembers where my accounts live? I wish I had the knowledge to make that sort of thing.
Sorry I deleted and reposted this comment, having an issue I’m trying to figure out.
This would require a browser extension or a central redirection server (similar to how single sign on is implemented between multiple URLs). The central server approach won’t really fit well with the decentralized concept, although that server only needs to know your Lemmy instance and will only redirect users.
A browser extension could easily inject some kind of button in the page, and it would be easy enough for the browser extension to know your own Lemmy instance. I’m not sure if there is an easy URL to a specific post on a certain instance though, for example this post is https://feddit.nl/post/39577 for me and does not contain any information that this post is actually on [email protected]. Those post URLs work fine if your home instance is aware about the post, but won’t work if nobody has subscribed to that community.
Why a browser addon? My first approach would be to have the client do the job. Link to the page via the current instance, and ask the server to fetch it if it doesn’t exist.
This is about a user browsing on another Lemmy instance. For example, a user from lemmy.world receives a link on a chat app to a post on beehaw.org. Now he wants to reply to that post, to do so the user has to go to the same post on their home instance. Beehaw.org has no idea that the user has an account on lemmy.world, so they can’t just redirect the user. It is very difficult for Lemmy instances to share this data, as browsers have built in protections to prevent websites from sharing common identifiers (those were used to track people over multiple websites).
A menu could be added where the user can select their instance, but that would still require Beehaw.org to know about the existence of the user’s home instance. This could still give issues with smaller instances, that are not well federated with other instances.
Oh, I see. I was thinking of opening links within Lemmy.
I’m not sure if there is an easy URL to a specific post on a certain instance though, for example this post is https://feddit.nl/post/39577 for me and does not contain any information that this post is actually on [email protected].
You should be able to see a very colorful button on every post and comment, this button will link to the post/comment on the instance it was sent from.
Ah, thanks! That works, and you can easily search for that link in your own Reddit instance, and it will fetch it to your home server if it was not yet available. That’s actually a very nice feature. I had no idea what that colourful image was, but it makes sense when you know it is the Fediverse logo.
It took me a little bit to wrap my head around the concept, but it’s fairly straight forward. Part of the problem is that when you want to “join lemmy” you’re presented with several dozen instances and it’s unclear what you’re supposed to do. I went through all of the “general lemmy” instances until I found this one which seems to be the most popular. I get that you can access other instances that are federated but that’s not immediately clear to the user.
Right now it will probably be like original Reddit where the user base is mostly tech savvy people.
I remember for years people would look at the interface of Reddit “old reddit” and just not understand it because of its totally utilitarian design. They couldn’t make out the subreddit names being r/asentencelikethis. It kept the mainstream users (or let’s just say less techsavey) out for a long time.
I think lemmy captures that original feeling of being slightly off-putting unless you’re willing to get your head around it.
Yeah I can kind of see a Basic vs. Advanced sign-up where the basic flow just auto-suggests a server
I think in the end the most important things will be a good UI, a clean and inviting look, maybe easy-to-understand guides and of course lots of great content. As soon as all of this exists, then the mainstream will have it easier to use Lemmy. An easy, flawless experience goes a long way and taking away any obstacle to get active here will help on the long run.
Yeah, for sure. I’m not sure I really mind that, though. It’s also not super crazy to get a basic handle on, so if it becomes popular enough, more people will be willing to try to figure it out. I also imagine that the developers working on it will try to find more intuitive ways for users to get started.
I don’t really care too much about the mainstream coming here, though. Part of the appeal of the Fediverse, I feel, is that it’s got that kind of “underground” vibe to it. We are out of the mainstream, but there are still people around, discussion is happening, content is being created. It has a fresh and unique feel to it.
I don’t think the federation in itself is an issue. We just need to figure out how to present it, and integrate everything.
I agree. It was presented confusingly, and made me think it was a lot more complex than it was. After I chose a server, it basically isn’t very different in experience from a non federated site.
If we had a better way to select a server (vs “here’s a list, good luck!”) Then I don’t think it’d be an issue at all
It absolutely will be, at least at first. But as long as Lemmy can keep some forward momentum, the idea will become less and less alien to more mainstream users as more people are exposed to it.
Lemmy doesn’t have to kill Reddit on the spot, it just has to be a viable alternative. And as long as we keep the communities here alive, it will become one. I don’t think the idea of federation will be strange at all in a few years.
The fragmentation of communities needs to be addressed. The fact is that most people just want to consume content. There needs to be a client-side solution that helps less tech-savvy users to more easily consume content from similar communities.
reddit has fragmentation as well. I think over time the more popular ones will win out and less popular will sorta wither away. Gaming is a good example. Reddit has games, gaming, pcgaming,pcmasterrace, patientgamers, etc…
Seeing a similar rush to land grab here as well. Basically it’ll sort itself out is my point and probably isn’t much different from early days of reddit or hell even modern day reddit.
Agreed. A sort of multireddit that combines similar communities is needed, though I don’t know if that would be better served as something individual users make for themselves, or as an official combination made by multiple communities banding together.
That makes sense, and if you’re talking about being purely read only, it can all be cached relatively cheaply
Just joined, absolutely puzzled about how this thing is structured. I can (just about) see how things are structured, after some stops and starts and also understand why that’s a positive thing now but it’s all backwards for me. Why should a user need to get to grips with all of that, and flit around wondering which instance might contain content they want when they just want to start reading stuff that interest them? I’ve joined this instance, who am I missing out on seeing in others? What’s being said in others that I’ll regret missing? Why is it all walled off seemingly necessitating me to register afresh each time I want to check someone where else out?
The content needs to come first, the structure should be presented and needed to be understood secondarily, it’s backwards and it WILL put people off I’m afraid.
You don’t need to make an account for other instances.
It’s like email, just becuase you may have an email account with Gmail doesn’t mean you are prevented from emailing Yahoo accounts.
If you have an account on lemmy.world, you can still read/comment/etc posts on other instances such as lemmy.ml. You may need to change the toggle from “local” to “all”, but you should be able to interact with other communities
From a slightly more technical perspective - ActivityPub is the protocol(like how email uses MIME and whatever the RFC is lol). Any activitypub service can hypothically communicate with any other activitypub service.(In practice is another story) This includes lemmy, mastodon, peertube and even facebook’s upcoming Thread service.
You don’t need to make an account for other instances.
Until that community you subscribe to on another instance disappears because they defederate from one that your account is on due to that other one not being a safe space.
@drubbis Doesn’t make sense in my opinion. If you turn off federation it’s basically just another Reddit
Two things matter: (1) Content (2) Accessibility to the content.
For (1), we need more active participations and generate more content.
For (2), the mechansim of remote community discovery and subscription are still very tedious and error prone. Not only the remote community is not visible to the instance (Yes I know it’s lazy fetching but it still does not work somehow for some remote community subscriptions), but also the lack of integration of community browser are still hard for general users.
In the last few days I have spent countless hours to try community subscriptions on a number of instances.
