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.
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I’m not sure I’d like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don’t get it in 2025, that ain’t everyone else’s fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an “instance” is.
What if instances could be tagged with their focus?
Then during an app user creation they could click a few “topics” and narrow down the choices to a much shorter list including member counts?
If what instance you chose truly didn’t matter this wouldn’t be as big of an issue. Unfortunately defederation causes a tangled mess of netsplits.
Indeed, I see people saying “we should just randomly assign an instance from the top 10”, when hexbear (RIP) was in the top 5
Also top 10 ( https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list )
- LW
- lemm.ee
- lemmynsfw.com - not suitable
- sh.itjust.work - shit in the name, not appealing to the average user
- lemmy.ml - power tripping https://feddit.uk/post/12952230
- lemmy.dbzer0.com - requires to follow and agree the Anarchist code of Conduct - not appealing to the average user
- lemmy.ca - Canada-oriented, non-Canadian users might not want to join as they wouldn’t think they would belong
- feddit.org - German-focused, https://feddit.org/c/main content is in German
- lemmy.blahaj.zone - queer-focused
- programming.dev - programmers-focused
I made a more complete analysis in this post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:
" Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
Because yes, the USA/EU question appeared during the Luigi announcement in LW.
hexbear (RIP)
Rest In Perdition
If new users were asked to pick 3 or more topics from the top 10, then the most relevant instance could be assigned
Do we want ‘mass adoption’? and if so, why? and what would that look like, if we had it? how would we know that we had got it, and what good would the getting do us?
Whether or not we want mass adoption I can’t say, but what we don’t want is to have a filter that only tech savvy people get past.
We want all kinds of people on Lemmy, not just tech savvy people that push through the bad UX
Your mother would ask you what the hell an “instance” was and then think that picking one meant she couldn’t look at posts from any others.
This could be solved with a:
Can’t make up your mind?
Click here to choose a random general topic instance. Don’t worry, if you want to switch later you can.
They can’t really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account
This keeps coming back from time to time. imo we need an instance or method to sandbox newbies.
My old comment:
A custom feed that allows new members to see a variety of the best that Lemmy has to offer would be a good start. Then, when they are comfortable with the platform and its dynamics, they can customise it further, or swap the newbie feed for their own custom filter (which practically would come down to community subscriptions, I suppose?)
Now instead of making this comment very long, I’ll put in an video game anology to make it a bit more digestible:
What we need is a tutorial area that showcases all the different things that the Lemmy endgame has to offer. Creating memes, sharing news, the art of shitposting, being a lurker, actual discussions vs just scrolling to see the funnies: all these things are enjoyed by different types of people, and before they can reclass and enjoy the wild open world of Lemmy, it would be good for them to get comfortable with the controls and settings in a relative safe space.
I think this should be baked into client apps.
The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.
Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone’s mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.
Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.
It just isn’t possible, and we should want to dumb down the introduction too much. The Fediverse is not a centralised medium, and to participate in it, its users should understand that, analogous to how you would instruct people before using motor vehicles. Some things are just essential and need to be taught. Not teaching the stuff doesn’t make it disappear. If some people cannot get behind the idea, then either find novel, intuitive ways of conveying it, or just accept that they cannot be a part of the Fediverse.
I’ve seen people using Voyager for a year and not even knowing what their instance is. They seem content, vote, post just like on Reddit.
People can drive a car without knowing what type of engine it is. They turn the wheel, it turns.
I’m not sure your car analogy is a great one since most drivers are awful, don’t respect the vehicle nor the responsibility they carry by piloting one, and tens of thousands of people die in car accidents every year. lol
Maybe we shouldn’t let any idiot drive a car…
Also everyone wants different driving experiences, the driving experience varies widely from clubtry to country and state/province to state/province, and everyone wants different features and capabilities in their cars.
Cars are a great comparison, although there are also people who don’t drive for a wife variety of reasons…
Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.
I don’t get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?
I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, “I don’t need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!” and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.
That’s why I when I recommend lemmy to people I just send a link to an instance I think they’ll like. Instead of explaining the whole thing. If they join the instance with time federation will start to make sense to them and they might migrate later on.
This.
There are rough edges to the actual onboarding experience, of course, but the joinlemmy and joinmastodon and joinwahtever websites really aren’t a part of it. They’re more of an ad for admins, demonstrating that there’s an active network of sites already using the product. The fact that not even the product develoeprs seem to understand this is a real issue, though.
Honestly, we need to stop sending people to “Lemmy” or “Mastodon” or whatever. Those are website engines. It’s like sending someone to “WordPress” when you want them to read your blog.
I look at it this way. If my grandma asks me how to “the email”, I’m not going to explain to her how she could choose outlook or gmail or whatever. I’m just going to choose and send the one I think is easiest for her to set up.
lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can’t fathom that some people can’t or don’t want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that “it’s not that hard” and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.
Edit: I hadn’t even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There’s someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.
It’s the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.
Oh, I’m sure the Venn diagram between Lemmings and Linux users is a circle.
They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the
Lazy assnew users with the option to manually join any instances.If people can’t understand what federation is then just send them directly to .world or lemm.ee or another big instance. If they have common sense then send them to join-lemmy and let them pick an instance. If someone is unable or unwilling to learn a very basic concept then they probably are not going to be a very good neighbor to have on the fediverse.
I agree that the discoverability of communities needs improvement. I think that most instances should add starter pack like features with the most popular communities for people to choose to subscribe to when onboarding new users.
In my opinion, finding the right and active communities to subscribe to is the biggest onboarding hurdle, not picking an instance. If picking an instance is a hurdle, that person wasn’t willing to try another site in the first place
Mass adoption did not end well for Earth.
