I mean have they seen how good Ice Cubes and Mlem look? How can they choose the default Twitter and Reddit apps over those masterpieces.
I mean have they seen how good Ice Cubes and Mlem look? How can they choose the default Twitter and Reddit apps over those masterpieces.
No, they haven't. 99% of people have never heard of the fediverse or any app within it.
People here are so out of touch here; it's super interesting
In a way, it's a good sign. The threadiverse is tight-knit and comprehensive enough to become people's primary social site. I've never seen any other reddit alternative get to this point.
Discuit still has less than 200 weekly commenters: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/HCHvcmBc
Lemmy has 42000 monthly active users
This is now the community's Top All Time post.
It beat the simpsons bar one!
Yeah, kicked that back into third!
As a non tech expert, in my view, the biggest concern for the fediverse to grow, presently, is how difficult it can be to sign up.
Go to a instance listing, try and choose one, signup... all of this should be acessible but mostly invisible for the average user. The user should only be questioned what sort of content they mostly intend to browse, have a NSFW explicit option, perhaps a server location preference, and that should be it.
Beneath the hood, this process should trigger a call to the network requesting a user slot for any server that could cater to that generic profile the prospect user filled. Even bans should be handled differently, in my opinion.
What do you think about this?
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
https://sopuli.xyz/ if you’re European
Out of curiosity, how come you don't recommend your own instance, feddit.org?
I think the main concern new users have are "Can I see everything across Lemmy, or will I be getting a fragmented experience?". This was my initial concern and I've seen Redditors also voice this concern. People don't know if being on an instance means you can only be isolated to that instance, which would mean missing out on wider content, or whether you see everything (at which point you might ask what is the point of the instances then?).
By presenting people with "here's an instance if you're American, here's another if you're European" might support the idea that people will get differenct experiences based on their location. They might ask: "Do Americans see different content to Europeans? What's the difference? Maybe the American instance will have more users so I'll pick that instead."
In reality it doesn't matter, you can sign up to an instance and subscribe to 0 communities on your own instance, but people don't know this if they don't know anything about it. I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?
It would be good if the join-lemmy site could randomly create you an account on one of the instances that qualify. Take that cognitive load away from the user and make that choice for them - and make it clear that they're free to sign up to any instance they want.
Out of curiosity, how come you don’t recommend your own instance, feddit.org?
Even if feddit.org is bilingual, the main language is still German. The sidebar text is in German first, !main@feddit.org is name "Haupteingang" and is mostly in German, the Matrix chat is in German, etc. It makes sense, it's the successor of feddit.de, but probably not ideal for a non-German speaker. My main account is on sopuli.
By presenting people with “here’s an instance if you’re American, here’s another if you’re European” might support the idea that people will get differenct experiences based on their location.
Indeed, I guess I'll add a short "using a server on your continent is better for latency, content is the same"
I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?
I kind of did a similar assesssment a while ago (https://feddit.org/post/5215276/3396746)
Long story short, there is no ideal generalist instance. If you open the top 20 instances (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/)
That's how I came up with sopuli.xyz (neutral name, stable, defederated grad and hexbear) and discuss.online (same)
"Can I see everything across Lemmy, or will I be getting a fragmented experience?".
This is 100% a huge concern for Mastodon. But for Lemmy isn't that figure closer to like 1%?
People who don't even know what things like "Beehaw" or "Hexbear" or "Lemmygrad" are, aren't going to be put out so much that access to them is barred.
Lemmy.World has ~80% of all Lemmy users last I checked though I expect that will radically shift in the next couple of months (due to their policy change announcement yesterday). Like it or not, Lemmy is far more centralized than other Fediverse offerings like Mastodon, PeerTube, and I would presume Friendica.
Also, doesn't Mastodon still lack an All feed? In contrast, the default sort option of https://discuss.online/ is to show All, so how is this really all that fragmented? The default sort option for lemmy.ml is Local, so without pressing any buttons the fragmentation effect is far greater there - they will see no posts to communities like !tenforward@lemmy.world or !AskUSA@discuss.online or anywhere else until they start poking around to see how the software works. But even there, unlike Mastodon (at least historically), pressing one button will instantly show the majority of the Fediverse content (well... minus everyone who got banned from that instance, which actually... is quite a lot).
Am I missing something though: what are users worried about in terms of fragmentation that applies to Lemmy? (That is actually true I mean, bc from what I can see, while it's true for other Fediverse offerings, it's not for Lemmy?)
Am I missing something though: what are users worried about in terms of fragmentation that applies to Lemmy?
I think it's that they don't know ANYTHING about it, other than it's a bunch of different servers that seem to operate independently. So they have no idea how the whole thing operates. I've been on Lemmy for about 18 months and I don't know how the federation works for Mastodon or Friendica - I actually looked up Friendica the other day but just gave up after looking at the list of instances. I don't know what it means to use a specific instance for Friendica, even though I know what it means for Lemmy. These people won't know what it means at all.
Oh okay. Though you said "I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?", and wanted to point out that Blaze has already done that work, which culminated in the list of those instances (discuss.online and sopuli.xyz). It's just that there are only a few instances (~20) that are most highly worth mentioning to someone who refuses to engage in such technical details, and beyond Lemmy.World that compromises ~80% of all users on Lemmy, everything else combined is part of that remaining 20% anyway.
So this list of two instances to check out is a highly optimized, extremely streamlined statement crafted to help people avoid exactly what you are referring to in analysis paralysis. Though perhaps a statement could be added that Lemmy specifically, unlike other Fediverse offerings, does not need to worry as much about the fragmentation effect?
The really cool thing about that list is that you can simply click and immediately get to browsing the entire Threadiverse (minus Threads:-P). You don't even need an account, and so to lurk this is all you need to know to get started. After that, if someone wanted to join an instance other than these, then yeah your list recommendation would help, but also keep in mind that it would need to be maintained as well as made in the first place, and then people made aware of where to go to view it, the latter of which imho is the chief problem since admins mostly refuse to update the sidebar text even to point to entire communities dedicated to discussing such matters, like e.g. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca. But if you are interested in making such a list btw, I'm saying just in case, that is a great community to post it to for a start.
Edit: I've often thought about making such a post with such a list, but (a) Blaze has already done it in the past, (b) it would keep changing e.g. Lemmy.World's huge announcement yesterday, and (c) I'm legit not certain what the point is really, bc most people (except those of us who discuss such matters inside of the Fediverse:-) don't seem to care so much about such details. The chief barriers to people joining seem to be: (a) where content at (we simply don't have the sheer amounts that especially Reddit does); and factors like "there be tankies there" or "I needz my free speech" (aka I'm a MAGAT and I would prefer Truth Social). In that regard, Lemmy.World's announcement might actually help bring more centrists here, rather than them being turned away by interaction with a power mod, though I leave it to others to judge if that will be a good thing or not.
Oh okay. Though you said “I do wonder whether instances should be scored by a few factors and recommended that way?”, and wanted to point out that Blaze has already done that work, which culminated in the list of those instances (discuss.online and sopuli.xyz)
Yeah fair enough, I didn't know !Blaze@feddit.org had done that before I commented. My only feedback is that I don't think they need to be categorised as "for Americans" and "for Europeans" - more like "here's a couple of great, healthy general purpose instances to get your feet wet in Lemmy - don't worry, you're not restricted to just those servers, you can vote, comment and subscribe to communities across Lemmy!"
Whilst we're on this topic of "sign-up friction" - here's a good example of some struggles that "regular" people face - it's about Pixelfed but I think the same logic applies:
Just installed it, clicked "Login" and I have to pick a server? Why do these new apps trying to replace Insta/Twitter/etc all have this without an explanation for people who don't know what they're selecting?
Does it matter what you pick? Are you "locked in" to a server? Do you only see the posts of people within the same server? Does everyone else see what server I choose? Can the servers shut down, leaving users stranded?
There needs to be a better intro for these decentralized services if they want more people to adopt. 99% of us want to click Sign Up, make a username/password and be in. Adding extra steps creates frustration which leads to just not finishing signup and loading up Instagram instead.
It's not just Americans vs. Europeans in general. Aussie.zone says "Lemmy for Australians and those that love Australia", and lemmy.ca says "A canadian-run community, geared towards canadians" Feddit.org says "Wir sind eine deutsch- und englischsprachige Lemmy Community und entwickelten uns aus feddit.de heraus.", which if you scroll down far enough is also translated as "We are a German and English-speaking Lemmy community that evolved from feddit.de."
All of these will welcome people from outside of their space, but then definitely have obvious themes going on relating to their nationality, which may cause some people to feel like they don't belong. Similarly, Lemmy.zip says "A Lemmy community for everyone, with a focus towards tech, PCs, and gaming." There are so many others for LGBTQIA+, climate change, NSFW, anime, specific show series like Star Trek, etc. And Midwest.social combines both a location and non-location based theme with "A lemmy server for, but not limited to, leftists in the Midwest USA." So leftists in another country or even region, or centrist libs, will feel excluded.
That's one reason why discuss.online is so great, "A general purpose Lemmy instance for discovery, fun, & sharing. It's a Lemmy place for all." And it has superb uptime, prompting me to move there when my previous instance startrek.website kept having so many connection issues. Though latency halfway around the world might be an issue? (I would not know, I haven't tested, and it legit might not be?) And as Blaze mentioned, different laws e.g. Donald Trump could demand that all negative mentions of his name be scrubbed, at which point any USA-based instance is going to have to comply or else face his (hand-picked) Supreme Court-backed wrath.
And then there's issues that would never be written down, or change too often even if they were, to be kept updated. e.g. all the database corruption issues that have been going on for months at programming.dev, see !meta@programming.dev for details.
One resource that helps me look at things is https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list. However, there is no way to share a URL that sorts that list by Monthly Active Users - so when you click that link, you won't recognize a single name there, and will have to onboard yourself with how to make use of that tool before you can begin to use it to see the top 20 or so instances.
And after all that effort, it still won't tell you some CRUCIAL details like whether an instance is only run by a single admin or not. I used to tell people about quokk.au as one of the only 3 instances across the entire Fediverse that had defederated from the big 3 tankie instances, but someone said that they had requested an account and after several days it was not accepted (a week? sorry I don't recall now how long they waited but the comment is here, https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/11386011, although the time resolution info is now gone I believe, or at least I don't know how to get higher precision using the web UI).
And then ofc there's the situation of prickly admins, most notably lemmy.ml that routinely bans people for opaque rules never written down anywhere, plus you can be banned from communities that you've never even heard of much less visited or interacted with in any way - it's just how they like to do things over there.
We who are here are okay with such complexities, in an ever-shifting landscape (can you post from Lemmy to Mastodon? okay, how about now? is Lemmy the only way to access the Threadiverse? I'm typing this from PieFed btw so definitely not anymore:-). But the mainstream person is not, and talking with Blaze to see all of these complexities I am convinced that they are too numerous for a simple explanation to suffice. Unless that is, someone is willing to do that kind of effort to understand and then make the post and then keep making new ones as time passes and things change - e.g. when Sublinks is released, Lemmy.World has strongly hinted at wanting to switch to it and thereby leave Lemmy software behind, bc of the association with it being tankies and dependent upon lemmy.ml for the listing of communities.
Given such complexities, the simple list here of just two alternatives for links to click on and check out even without needing an account signup to look and see what we are about, seems ideal.
But you are correct: the next layer down is still very much lacking. And then it all continues further with community discovery, after picking ah instance. For myself, I'm pinning my hopes on PieFed rather than Lemmy, for so many reasons but to name just two: Categories of Communities helping onboard new people without having to choose between simply All or Local, and it being written in Python rather than Rust. It has a long way to go yet to even catch up with some Lemmy features like searching for posts, yet in some ways it's already ahead of it so...
And then there’s issues that would never be written down, or change too often even if they were, to be kept updated. e.g. all the database corruption issues that have been going on for months at programming.dev, see !meta@programming.dev for details.
It got fixed yesterday, FYI.
It looks like the site has gone down 3 times in the last week. I hope this effort fixes its former issues:-).
If so, will it now be part of your recommendations? I note that it hasn't defederated from lemmygrad.ml - see e.g. this post. Plus it's themed, though the former is a bigger turnoff for me to want to recommend it even to someone interested primarily in posts about that topic area.
lemmygrad isnt defederated from but many of their communities are hidden from the feeds by default (so you dont see them unless you subscribe to them)
same thing for some other instances like lemmynsfw
ones that are more recent wont be hidden since I havent been able to due to the issues but I should be doing another hiding round soon
Thank you for explaining that! And also putting in the effort to create that space for your users.
I have a feeling that spez was an ordinary man when he started reddit. Then he became an asshat, of course.
I can't even blame spez for becoming that asshat. Trying to ride herd on something as large, diverse, and popular as reddit has become, requires someone who is willing to be an asshat.
If you ever find yourself in charge a group of diverse people remember that you will never satisfy everyone. And a lot of the time the best you can hope for is to piss off everyone equally.
Do you think you can be benevolent and also not try to satisfy everyone
You can be benevolent, but you can't satisfy everyone. Those are two different things. I can care about people, but I can't feed every starving person. I can work to rescue as many as I can, but I cannot save everyone.
And the larger the group you are trying to lead, the less likely it is that you can satisfy the needs of all of them. And sometimes, you might even need to be cruel in the moment to be kind over the long run to do the most good.
But you dont have to actively try to make it worse
Honestly, I would use Lemmy more except that some posts are just people being overly negative or strangely political in the comments. There are good communities without this don’t get me wrong but it can get old
I've found a massive reduction after blocking only a handful of users. It seems there are fewer of them than it first appears.
I might have to do that then, thanks! Might make my experience a bit better.
Also something I didn’t think about, there are enough users on Reddit to let the garbage comments sink to the bottom and not be seen. Here, you see them all
Yeah a lot of people on here have sticks up their butts hehe
You're talking about people that are content with "the internet" being google, facebook, instagram, snap, tiktok, youtube and twitter, nothing more.
What's snap?
I guess most people don’t want to wade through dozens of “eat the rich” posts every time thay open their favorite social media platform.
Nah, people get overwhelmed by choosing a server instance.
Or any political content at all. Most people just want to look at funny cats or memes.
Other people want absurd humor without the racist degeneracy of other outlets.
Yeah, a lot of people have quit Twitter over Musk being a huge douche and migrated to... Blusky. And they think they've done something really great. It's sad.
What are your complaints (iiuc) for Bluesky?
my personal dislike for it is that the claims of decentralization are countered by how expensive it is to operate in a truly decentralized manner.
To be truly decentralized you would need to run a relay server, not just a PDS which many people already do and simply holds your data. Unfortunately, the cost to run a relay server today is already about $500+ a month [1] and will only be getting more expensive.
Lastly, while the fediverse has figured out decentralized DM's, Bluesky DM's are completely centralized [1] and only work thanks to being funneled through their servers. I wouldn't call what they have private considering they can read what everyone on Bluesky is saying privately. Granted, fediverse DM's are not encrypted either, but at least they're decentralized and don't allow a single provider access to everyone's private messages.
[1] https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
[…] month [1] and […]
[…] centralized [1] and […]
[…] [1] https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
Thank you so much for putting in effort to try and cite your claims and for providing a references section! This is a practice that I think should be much more common. PM me if you're interested in the citation style that I use.
Just saw some of your comments and really like how you're using the spoiler tag. Will try to emulate it going forward. Appreciate your feedback and style. The internet urgently needs more comments backed by evidence!
[…] Will try to emulate it going forward. Appreciate your […] style.
Keep in mind that my citation style is still very much a WIP 😜. There's a few things that I'm not sure exactly the best way to handle, at the moment. If you see inconsistencies in my citation style, it's likely because I'm trying out a change in formatting to see if it works. I'm trying to not let perfect be the enemy of good, so I'm developing it as I use it. Eventually, if I can get it to a satisfactory state, I'm planning on publishing my citation style (likely in some git repo). That way, I can standardize it and version the changes.
Just saw some of your comments and really like how you’re using the spoiler tag. Will try to emulate it going forward. […]
FYI, I've heard a couple reports ^[1.1][1.2]^ that the spoiler tag isn't rendered properly on some front ends currently. Despite that, I haven't altered my usage of it, as I don't have any viable alternative at the moment.
References
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it's all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
Same with Sync, unfortunately.
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it's all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
❤️
See the context and discussion on previous posts here:
Memes about the Fediverse.
Other relevant communities: