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?
Mobile users can be pointed towards alternative clients. Makes the whole thing much more manageable and familiar. I use sync (which no longer seems to be being updated) but there are others. Don’t know if there’s a desktop equivalent but that might help with UX problems.
Also, re onboarding - many Lemmites might be astonished to realise how many non technical ppl don’t know what a server is and are intimidated by the term. Maybe just say something like ‘Click on the place nearest to you or that you like the sound of’. I dunno, a metaphor. Like, your computer is a toilet, the fediverse is the ocean. When you take a crap and flush, your turd goes to the local sewage facility where it parties with all the other turds before being dumped into the sea.
There’s probably a better metaphor, but, y’know.
As a sys admin with a lot of experience, I am still unsure how to maintain and update my lemmy instance. So I am revisiting again, but it seems like we need work on the lemmy docker containers and possibly docker-compose.
pretty sure PieFed is easier to host
are we ready?
idk how to get more people aware of fediverse without joining stuff like reddit again and getting banned repeatedly mentioning fediverse.
This is a small one. I’d like to see a full screen edit window like Reddit has.
Let’s hope this time there won’t be a “boycott is over” moment.
There was a boycott is over moment? Isn’t reddit still blocking third party apps?
Basically a lot of people got their anger out, then moved on with their life.
I never boycotted Reddit, I just refused to use their app and new reddit. I ended up just using desktop mode old reddit without an app. If reddit moved to an age verification I would just drop it completely lol.
When I switched during the API blackout, the first issue I ran into was just a lack of content. That’s definitely been resolved since. I think at this point it just comes down to how well they can pick up on the concept of the fediverse, and picking an instance.
The only way lack of content still pervades is in niches. If I specifically like Game X, chances are worse than not that there’s no activity in the community built for that one game.
Basically, I guess I need to write 8 alt-account posts/memes complaining about how the Ghoul is overpowered in Dead by Daylight.
Quick, get into a war about your favorite character in Iconoclasts!
Lemmy seems in a great spot. I hope people give it a chance
Only way there is a mass rexit is if the bot accounts get fed up and leave.
Can’t say I’m looking forward to swarms of bot accounts descening on Lemmy
Lemmy is not capable of dealing with bots at all I believe
They are already arriving to some degree.
The difference being is that Lemmy and other similar services have zero controls or ability to handle bots or bop traffic if those bots were bots from 2014.
Not bots from today.
It’s a bit of a problem and honestly with increasing bot traffic across the internet and fedaverse being extremely vulnerable to it It’s absolutely bat shit insane, but I don’t see any other option than somehow having some form of human verification.
It’s a problem
One of my favorite tricks that a friend of mine showed me years ago was this:
Put a check box or radio button somewhere on the page that will never end up visible to the end user marked with a label like “check here to verify you’re not a not” or “choose your ethnicity from this list or select prefer not to say”, then reject accounts that ever check those boxes, because a human never would. If you occasionally snare a blind person by mistake,they can email to bypass that with a human admin.
I don’t know if it would trick modern bots, but he said it worked awesome back then.
Human verification? As in “give us your photo” or something?
Decision fatigue? Almost everyone picks lemmy.world, and the UX is the same everywhere, specially if you use mobile apps.
Lemmy.world has about 40% of the pop these days.
I just signed up, and it’s confusing. I used lemmy.world because it seemed like it was the only means to get my registration approved. It wasn’t clear whether or not this account can still view and interact with other “instances”, so I went with the website that had the largest userbase.
When I first signed up - when reddit did the API thing - I was also shocked how empty it felt here. And it is, but when I adjusted I came to prefer that. There’s fewer commenters but also less bullshit. I spend less of my linked screen time doomscrolling and more on other stuff, like reading and gaming.
I agree. This place feels dead? I’m sure I’m just doing it wrong. But, I downloaded Blorp, went to ‘Explore’, and the amount of 'subreddits ’ is so minimal. What am I doing wrong here? Lol
I’m the developer behind Blorp. The trouble with the threadiverse (a term that refers to Lemmy and PieFed) is it’s not tuned by big cooperations to get you addicted. That also means you gotta dig a little more to find the content you’re looking for. I’m happy to help direct you if you have questions!
Thanks for using my app!
Yes, it can. I’m from Piefed.social.
Yeah there are like a handful of instances with 90% of the users.
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?
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.
you mean https://join-lemmy.org/ ? they’ve removed those recommendations actually
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.
mine just says to join thelemmy.club or lemmus.org as the default, it doesn’t show a list by default
screenshot of default recommendation when you open the https://join-lemmy.org/ page:
That is how https://join-lemmy.org/ works now. I just got recommended thelemmy.club and in another browser it recommended lemmus.org
That’s cool
Lemmy.world, lemmy.zip, lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, fedinsfw.app, piefed social have the bulk combined. Lemmy.ca and feddit.org not too far behind.
I might actually have to instance block lemmy.world if it’s too bad since it attracts the worst kinds of new users due to open registration.
i just block politics.worlds, its usually the most problematic one for me, especially with thier subtle pro-zionist rhetoric. im fine with the other communities though.
I thought about spinning up a lemmy server but honestly the moderation and being responsible for content is a huge concern
If you were at all serious about that, I highly recommend reading https://jeena.net/lemmy-switch-to-piefed - the differences between those software platforms in terms of installation and maintenance is reportedly quite high, on top of the differences in features offered.
yea, thats why alot of other instance shut down, too much to handle.
how can we be ready this time?
I’m here to chew bubblegum and sass noobs; and I’m all outta noobs.
We could certainly keep trying to improve accessibility from a technical standpoint, like trying to make it easier for new accounts to hit the ground running. Basically, focusing on good defaults. I’ve heard people emphasize things like suggestions and starter packs based on simple interest questions for instance. UX is often heavily influenced by what apps you’re using for access however.
To be honest though, when I hear this kind of question, I always end up thinking “quality over quantity”. I feel like we need to remind ourselves that bigger doesn’t always mean better, particularly online. Particularly when the question is about attracting Redditors. Reddit is a cesspool, and cesspools often attract and breed noxious organisms.
The point is, it might be best to keep focus on raising awareness and promoting what the Fediverse is to those who might be receptive rather than trying to contort ourselves to suit the wants of those to whom the Fediverse’s appeal is lost. Do our best to be more accessible from a technical standpoint. Then just put out the welcome, open the door, let those masses yearning to break free come, let the rest be.
An exception to this argument is the objective of furthering the cause of federation itself more broadly, but this is a different concern and a completely different discussion.
Reddit isn’t terrible when a user adjusts what they are suggested, but the system they use to ban people pretty much sucks.
If I respond to a user that is suggesting the unnecessary euthanasia of a relatively healthy cat with, “Great. Now it is okay to k*** relatively healthy cats. This is a positive development,” I will get a warning for promoting the abuse of animals. Four of these strikes over any period of time will lead to a permanent ban.
…it’s not sustainable. Since there isn’t any human oversight, I have to heavily censor what I say to avoid being banned from the platform. I’m using an actual example. My appeal was denied.
Biggest problem for Lemmy and similar applications is scalability and controls and detection for bots.
The compute costs to operate instances are astronomical compared to the actual user load they receive.
That’s a bit of a side problem compared to bots though. Bots are a real problem that services like this are not equipped to handle.
PieFed is 25-fold more efficient in its data transfer than Lemmy, fwiw (source: that’s 5-fold less data transferred, despite it being for 5-fold more posts, hence 25-fold more efficiency)
To be honest though, when I hear this kind of question, I always end up thinking “quality over quantity”.
It’s funny you say that. When I first read the post I interpreted more as “We’re about to get a bunch of unruly Redditors. How are we going to deal with the increased workload on moderators.”
I mean… that sounds to me like an entirely valid question ⁉️ - how WOULD we handle such?
Aside from trying to recruit more mods, I have no idea. I think a big influx of Redditors is going to reduce discussion quality here no matter what we can do, and we have very limited resources to spend on damage control.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me can come up with something.
reddits arnt coming here, unless SPEZ/reddit decides to a massive purge wave again, which they wont now. because they realize they lost too much irl users to thier AI slop, and now bots/spammers are taking over reddit. they went with more subtle background shadowbans.
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.
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…
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.
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.
I get the sentiment, but I feel that the majority, if not all of those benefits can be achieved by a floss threaded forum server application and companion client applications. So long as the software’s design objectives includes content ownership and portability, you could bail to another instance with all your stuff and re-share it or not as you see fit.
As much as I understand the goals of federation, it introduces many, many, intractable problems with efficiency, privacy, security, moderation, and ease administration in exchange for openness benefits that can likely or definitely be attained in other ways.
I believe that the idea of federation is not fundamentally bad, per se, but seems to have had a hype wave at a really opportune time, that made it the forerunner among the solutions to lock-in being discussed at the time. Plenty of other solutions seemed just as valid, but they lacked newness and novelty that made them less hyped when Reddit alternatives were being heavily discussed.
I think user friction without federation will always result in too much lock-in. Federation is our only chance to actually defeat the network effect and allow new platforms/instances to actually have a fighting chance at competing when they are better.
That could be true. People do seem to tend to tolerate slow declines in platform quality surprisingly long before jumping to available alternatives. I think that’s at least in part due to that ‘critical mass’ effect described elsewhere in this conversation that makes people prefer to stay where they believe everyone else is.
If federation does end up being the only solution that pans out, I hope to see additional approaches beyond ActivityPub. As capable as it is, its design seems to confound any implementations of private communications or revocation of access at many levels where it would be very useful and empowering to admins, moderators, and regular users alike.
I would love to see a federation model where each user has an encrypted profile and content in their own archive that they manage and/or have stored somewhere for them, which they can then use to join servers and choose what data from their profile they share with who else on that server, as well as participate in server local and federated public channels, as well as private data exchanges facilitated but not readable by the server or federated network of servers you have a user account signed up.
I’m not sure it could promise revocation for all data on servers of unknown configuration, but could accommodate info that is facilitated by but not readable by any of the participating servers. Posts in public areas would have and require much lower revocation/deletion assurances, but could still have them in a manner at least as robust as ActivityPub.
I’ve been watching the space as time permits and am interested in a lot of the amazing things people make for free for the ‘love of the game’!
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.
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.
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.
I really hope the patience for trying to learn what the fediverse instances are and how to actually get an account dissuades a lot of the reactionaries and impending tiktok brainrot lol
Yeah honestly I’m pretty okay with things as they are. Lemmy.world is a bit too brain rotted/Redditor energy as is. Everyone in this thread is all ‘lets make things easier for the lowest common denominator’ but if someone can’t take 15 minutes to try to understand what they’re actually signing up for then why do we even want them here?
