I use the Boost app for Lemmy so it basically feels exactly like the ideal Reddit experience felt back then, which is fantastic.

As for being put off, the only thing that really bothers me is the extreme hatred for Windows and the deepthroating of Linux. It’s creepy.

Like, I love Linux and use it for many things alongside Windows, but I don’t get obsessively weird about it to the point of creating memes or going out of my way to tell people why they’re wrong for using one over the other, you know?

If that were toned down I’d certainly feel a little more relaxed, but on the whole the Lemmy experience has been lovely <3

Choosing a server is the bridge too far?

That’s fine, keep the reddit people on reddit.

There was a lot of debate about this when the reddit exodus happened in 2023. I initially joined then and have stuck around since. Something that was said a lot back then that I agree with is that Lemmy doesn’t have to compete with reddit. It’s alright for this corner of the internet to exist and not be the single dominant one.

If someone makes a reddit clone somewhere else with more liberal admins, good for them. I wouldn’t be going there. The fact that Lemmy is sectioned into servers is part of the appeal. I’m glad that I can be part of a server with very progressive administration. I would never get this level of moderation and support from any other social media. I’m fine with that meaning that uninformed people who just want to doom-scroll are less likely to come here.

We have seen growth periods time and again when problems arise with private social media companies. Each time, a little more people from the initial wave join for good. I think that’s fine. Most lemmy servers are run for free by people who just believe in what we’re doing here. We can always add more servers, but we can’t handle the kind of traffic that reddit handles. We’re entirely dependent on dedicated people investing large amounts of their time to create and maintain these spaces for us.

For me, a major issue isn’t even the UI. It’s federation control. On Mastodon & co, I can mute entire instances, cutting out A LOT of bullshit. On Lemmy, if I want that kind of control, I need to run my own instance. Doable, but kinda overkill.

It’s one thing to hide individual subreddits on a centralised platform. It’s another thing entirely to have many sites building a big platform, with the same communities duplicated with different rules and followings. That’s just a game of wack-a-mole at that point.

And if I don’t like the instance’s communities, chances are I don’t want to interact with its users either, leading to even more wack-a-mole.

Has software usage really gotten to the point where the average person can’t handle being given a choice about anything? Where it’s just too much effort to do anything more than mindlessly click on whatever is presented to them? 🤦

There are aspects that could be better, sure. I think communities should be like sets of posts, subject to unions, conjuctions, and other set operations. Then you wouldnt have the issue of 5 versions of c/memes, they could be virtually joined into one memes community at the user level (and the user can filter out instances icon unities risers they don’t like of course). Moderation could be decoupled from communities and made a broader service that users choose to interact with, agreeing to a level of moderation comfortable for their experience.

But also, put me in the group that thinks lemmy should stay small. Corpo social has convinced us that a single big room with every idiot and literally their mother screaming into it is how the internet should be and it isn’t. We can go back to smaller, focused online communities that don’t openly invite everyone to come in and fight.

Centralization tendencies are all rooted in power and control. We need to fragment more.

because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

No, it isn’t.

The UX is fine. It’s clean, fast, and functional. Anyone who is too fancy for “old Reddit” can stay on new Reddit with the bots and Xers. They’d just come over and be nothing but insufferable anyway.
o.o

Multiple front ends and themes are available. In the end, we’re here for the conversation, not fancy graphics, sounds, or CSS trash.

If someone can’t get past picking a server or simple graphics, the likelyhood of them being any benefit here is minimal. The more is not always the merrier.

“It was just endless war about who is federated with who?”

Thanks the anti-tankies turds and their constants whining.

I remember being curious about the fediverse and when I first looked and saw “instances” I got decision fatigue.

I didn’t know if an instance would limit me from interacting with others, could randomly disappear (ie hexbear domain), or if some instances would be a bad fit. I also didn’t know of it was unchangeable. Decision fatigue set in and I was less excited, but still registered.

To overcome that, there should be a “randomly choose for me” button with notes next to it that say you can change later, it won’t impact things, and you can interact with any instance. For random selection, just make it the top 3 most popular instances. Use a fun icon to indicate random change so the on boarding user has to think less.

Instances seem very confusing to an average user, as does federation. There could be an explanation like "Instead of 1 big company controlling everything, there are many copies of Lemmy that are in different places run by volunteers. These “instances” or copies are all Lemmy and can interact with each other, but having many copies means there isn’t ever 1 big company who can set all the rules and suddenly change thing in a bad way. " and then the random selection button which almost everyone would choose.

The average user dosn’t want to RTFM and also has an IQ of around 100 which is really low. The average reading ability of someone in the USA is like 6th grade level or something atrocious. You can’t overestimate average intelligence in an in boarding process.

Don’t over think it, the people who want to be here will be.

I spent way too much time trying to understand why I wasn’t taken to the comments when I hit the comment icon…

… in the screenshot

If you mention Lemmy, point someone towards a specific instance so it’s not so much of a shock. Then they can slowly learn about what it is.

This is why email never caught on. Who wants to choose between Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Proton, and Comcast? A successful email service would be one where you can only communicate with users of the same email service. /s

Hot take - I don’t blame them. The who’s federated with who and who can see what, and how it works is confusing as absolute fuck and extremely poorly explained.

it feels like old reddit

As someone who exclusively used old.reddit.com, this isn’t actually a bad thing.

Also apps for the mobile experience, and I want to say alexandrite for the desktop experience?