With the recent happenings in the United States, the dangers of the privately owned Internet is more apparent than ever, and frankly, it's scary. And so I'd like to make a simple request to anyone who is reading this; Please use the Fediverse, just a little more.

I personally hate it when I'm stuck having to visit say, YouTube or Reddit to get information, or to entertain myself in quiet moments, and if you're reading this, the likely chance is you're the same.

All I want to ask of you is to just comment a few more times, press send on that post that you felt wasn't of enough substance to be worth anyone's time. We have such a small community compared to everywhere else, but what we do have in common is that, in the grand scheme of things, we are the early adopters. And if we take that to heart and make this space a little bigger, maybe it will be just big enough we won't have to visit walled gardens so often.

Thank you :)

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[–] fireweed@lemmy.world 11 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

I'm a fediverse supporter (obviously, that's why I'm here), however what you're looking for requires a critical mass of users that the fediverse (at least the Lemmy side of it) will never achieve as long as two very critical problems persist:

sign up is confusing. People are used to clicking "create an account," inputting a user name, password, and maybe an email, and then BAM they're a user. I realize the whole instance thing is the entire point, but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they've even started using it.
the site (or at least lemmy.world) is sooo slooow. Basic functions like loading images take me back to the dial-up era of "click the image then do something else while it loads," which is downright ridiculous in the 2020s. Again I've stuck with it because I want to support the fediverse, but 99% of users won't.

And no, these aren't "features not bugs" unless you want to keep the site small and homogenous.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they've even started using it.

Then just directly recommend specific, general purpose instances to people.

[–] umean2me@discuss.online 4 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

I honestly don't understand point 1. no matter how much people say it.

Maybe I'm naive because it wasn't confusing to me personally, but it is only one extra step to create an account. When people explain the Fediverse to new people they compare it to e-mail anyway, which basically has the exact same sign-up structure. The only difference to me is the way it is advertised. Nobody in general says "you need to join e-mail", it's usually "join GMail" or "join Yahoo". I don't know how it would be solved without detracting from the "choose the instance that is right for you" experience though, since the instances with the most support and funding will obviously hold the most influence (as we currently see with lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, not to mention pixelfed.social).

IDK maybe I'm wrong, lmk, but I don't think choosing an instance is all the friction it's said to be.

The big instances are definitely slower though.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 57 minutes ago

I think you're drastically underestimating how even small steps like that can tune a ton of people out. If they're only sort of on the fence about it it might be enough to make it not worth it. Or maybe they'll think they'll check later but never get around to it.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago

Nobody in general says "you need to join e-mail", it's usually "join GMail" or "join Yahoo". I don't know how it would be solved without detracting from the "choose the instance that is right for you" experience though

No I think you're right, give them an instance. They won't have enough knowledge to choose an instance anyways. If they don't like the one you gave them then they can move later.

[–] mrvictory1@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago

I was confused by #1 before I got a grasp of Lemmy then I realized lemmy.world is the largest instance and I can just sign up here.

[–] Fungah@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I agree with you on 1. I hope it never fucking changes. The worst thing that could happen is we get the critical mass of dipshits that turns every online service into a fucking shit tornado.