If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.

My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”

For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.

  • rako@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    I think everyone agrees that the fediverse experience is highly different from the centralized experience, but I disagree that the fediverse must necessarily hide what it is and reproduce such a centralized system.

    We’ve been fed the lie that tech is “easy” when it isn’t at all, but that is not a problem. Driving a 2 tons box around at hundreds of km/h takes some skill, some time to learn, but we don’t consider it too hard and skippable. I think we should put our efforts into simplifying the explanations, showing what it brings and what you lose, if we want more people to join (and I do)

          • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            What is wrong with apps? I get a lot of great features from the one I use that I don’t get with the web client.

            • multi-communities
            • user tagging
            • drafts
            • keyword blocking
            • themes
            • customizeable ui
            • etc
            • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              5 months ago

              Most of them space things out in ways I don’t like and I hate gestures because I do things accidentally all the time. I can keyword block througb ublock origjn, although I do understand it is easier in most apps.

              User tagging is the only feature I feel like I’m missing on default mobile lemmy.

              I have also hit app fatigue. Just fucking sick to death of having a massive number of separate things that could be done through the browser.

    • Thatuserguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Honestly to a certain extent I think being decentralized is somewhat beneficial. Perhaps it’s just the fact I’ve been visiting forums for like 20 years and feeling jaded, but I never liked that any knuckle dragger could easily make an account and act like an ass.

      It’s not a very high bar to clear to figure out how to sign up for lemmy, so if you can’t even figure that out, maybe it’s for the best to help prevent polluting the user pool. If you’re gonna be an ass, you should at least have to work for it.